Chapter Three.

Chapter Three.How Rasputin Poisoned the Tsarevitch.The dark forces established so ingeniously by the Kaiser behind the Russian throne in April, 1914, had now become actively at work.The small but all-powerful clique of which Rasputin was the head because he practically lived with the Imperial family and ate at their table—the little circle which the Russians called “The Camarilla”—were actively plotting for the betrayal of the Allies and a separate peace with Germany. Stürmer, the Austrian who had been pushed into the office of Prime Minister of Russia by his boon companion and fellowbon-viveur, the mock-monk of Pokrovsky, had already risen in power. The man whose long goatee-beard swept over the first button of his gorgeous uniform, all true loyal Russians in their unfortunate ignorance cheered wildly as he drove swiftly with thepristyazhka, or side-horse, along the Nevski, for he was believed to be “winning the war.” Russia, alas! to-day knows that with German gold flowing freely into his pocket he was in secret doing all he could to prevent ministers arriving from Great Britain, and laughing up his sleeve at his success in ordering a mock-railway from Alexandrovsk to be built in order to connect Petrograd to an ice-free port—a line which subsequently had to be taken up and relaid!Even our British journalists were cleverly bamboozled, for they returned from Russia and wrote in our newspapers of her coming great offensive, when they would sweep back the Kaiser’s hordes and be into Berlin ere we should know it. In Petrograd one heard of Rasputin as the Shadowy Somebody. But most people declared that he was only a monk, a pious person whom silly women admired, as women so often admire a fashionable preacher even in our own country, and further because of “something,” the Censor refused to allow his name to appear in any paper.In Russia the censorship is full of vagaries. My own novels came under his ban twenty years ago, because as correspondent ofThe TimesI had spoken some very plain truths in that journal. I remember well old Monsieur de Stael, then Russian ambassador in London and the cheeriest of good souls, laughing when I came back from Russia at my complaint regarding the censorship. “Why!” he said, “they censor my letters to my own daughter in Nijni! Please do not think any the less of Russia for that. You have been across the Empire, into Siberia, and surely you know how far we are behind the times!”Russia had, after all, advanced but little in those intervening twenty years, though it has produced the rascal Rasputin.That small circle of Germanophiles who met so frequently in secret at Rasputin’s house in the Gorokhovaya—the scene of the bi-weekly orgies of the “Sister-Disciples”—though they were unaware of it were, with clever insinuation, being taught that a separate peace with Germany would be of greatest advantage to the Empire. They were hourly plotting, and the details of their conspiracies which have now come to light and are before me, documents in black and white, which had been carefully preserved by the monk, are truly amazing. Surely no novelist, living or dead, could have ever imagined a situation so astounding and yet so tragic, for the fate of one of the mightiest Imperial Houses of the modern world was now trembling in the balance.That both the Prime Minister and his long-moustached sycophant Protopopoff, a political adventurer whose past is somewhat shady and obscure, were in daily consultation is plain from the reports of secret agents of the Revolutionists. The Duke Charles Michael, though heir to the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had, as part of the German Emperor’s subtle plot, become naturalised as a Russian three weeks before the declaration of war, and he, with the erotic scoundrel, was actively carding out Berlin’s set programme in the salons of Tsarskoe-Selo.“Grichka,” the convicted thief from the far-off Siberian village, the man who had a dozen “spiritual brides” at Pokrovsky, uncouth, unlettered and unwashed, had by this time obtained such hypnotic hold upon the female portion of Petrograd society that when he deigned to accept an invitation to dine at the various palaces of the nobility he would eat from his plate with his dirty fingers and his female admirers actually licked them clean! This is absolute fact, vouched for by dozens of patriotic Russians whose names I could give.It is contained in a plain report in cold unvarnished language in an official Russian report which is before me. Readers will, I believe, halt aghast. But such men have exercised the same powers over women—criminal lunatics always—through the long pages of history.The heart of Russia was being eaten out by the German canker-worm. The high-born women of Petrograd were being used by Rasputin to play the Kaiser’s game.Outwardly Stürmer, Protopopoff, the Bishop Teofan, and their place-seeking friends were good loyal Russians bent upon winning the war. In secret, however, they were cleverly arranging to effect various crises. The supply of food was held up by a ring of those eager to profit, and the Empire became suddenly faced with semi-starvation, so that rioting ensued, and the police were kept busy. Then there succeeded serious railway troubles, congestion of traffic to and from the front, “faked” scandals of certain females whom the camarilla charged with giving away Russia’s secrets to Germany. Some highly sensational trials followed, much perjured evidence was given, false reports ofagents provocateursproduced, and several officers in high command who, though perfectly innocent, were actually condemned as traitors, merely because they had become obnoxious to Rasputin and his circle.One day a sensational incident occurred when Rasputin visited the Ministry of the Interior, and sought the Adjunct-Minister Dzhunkovsky, who controlled the police of the Empire.On being shown into his room the monk insolently demanded why he was being followed by police-agents, and why his friends who visited his house in the Gorokhovaya were being spied upon.“My duty, my dear Father, is to know what is in progress in Petrograd,” replied the Minister coldly.“Are you not aware that I am immune from espionage by your confounded agents?” cried Rasputin in anger. “Are you in ignorance that my personal safety is in charge of the special Palace Police who are responsible for the safety of the Emperor?”“My own actions are my own affair,” was the chill reply—for truth to tell—the Revolutionists had already imparted to Dzhunkovsky certain evidence they had collected as to the traitorous conduct of the pseudo-monk and his traitorous friends.High words arose. Grichka, losing his temper, made use of some very insulting remarks regarding the Minister’s young wife, whereupon Dzhunkovsky sprang from his chair and promptly knocked down the “Saint.”An hour later Rasputin, with his eye bandaged, sat with the Empress in her room overlooking the Neva, and related how he had been assaulted by the Adjunct-Minister of the Interior, merely because he had expressed his unswerving loyalty to the throne. To the Empress the unwashed charlatan was as a holy man, and such insult caused her blood to boil with indignation.The fellow knew quite well that no word uttered against himself was ever believed by either Emperor or Empress. They were all said to be stories invented by those jealous of the Saint’s exalted position, and the wicked inventions of enemies of the Dynasty. Therefore, what happened was exactly what he expected. In a fury the neurotic Empress rose and went off to the Tsar who, then and there, signed a decree dismissing his loyal Adjunct-Minister from office, and appointing an obscure friend of Rasputin’s in his place!In that same week another incident occurred which caused the Saint no little apprehension. His Majesty had appointed Samarin as Procurator of the Holy Synod, an appointment which Rasputin knew might easily result in his own downfall. Samarin, an honest, upright man, was one of his most bitter enemies, for he knew the disgraceful past of both him and Teofan, and further he had gained accurate knowledge of which appointments of Bishops in the Pravoslavny Church had been the outcome of the ex-horse stealer’s influence. Therefore, the arch-adventurer saw that at all hazards this new Procurator must not be allowed to remain in office, for already he had announced his intention to clear the Pravoslavny Church of its malign influences and filthy practices.Three days later Rasputin went out to Tsarskoe-Selo, where the Emperor happened to be, and entering His Majesty’s private cabinet said in a confidential tone:“Listen, Friend. I have a secret to whisper to thee! Last night I was with Stürmer, and he revealed that a great revolutionary plot is afoot for thy deposition from the Throne!”“What!” cried the Emperor, pale with alarm as he sprang from his chair. “Another plot! By whom?”“Its chief mover is the man Samarin, whom thou hast appointed Procurator of the Holy Synod,” replied the crafty adventurer. “Stürmer urged me to come at once and to tell thee in private.”“Are you quite certain of this, Holy Father?” asked the Emperor, looking straight into his bearded face.The monk’s grey steely eyes, those hypnotic eyes which few women could resist, met the Tsar’s unwaveringly.“Thou knowest me!” was the “Saint’s” grave reply. “When I speak to thee, I speak but only the truth.”That same day Samarin was removed from office and disgraced. Everyone wondered why his appointment had been of such brief duration, but that same night, the Prime Minister Stürmer and Rasputin drank champagne and rejoiced together at the house in the Gorokhovaya, while Anna Vyrubova, the favourite lady-in-waiting, was also with them, laughing at their great triumph.Not a person in all the great Empire could withstand Rasputin’s influence. Honest men feared him just as honest women regarded him with awe. From dozens, nay hundreds, of place-hunters and favour-seekers he took bribes on every hand, but woe betide those who fell beneath the blackguard’s displeasure. It meant death to them. He was certainly the most powerful and fearless secret agent of all that the Huns possessed, scattered as they were in every corner of the globe. Yet it must not be supposed that there were none who did not suspect him. Indeed, a certain committee of revolutionaries, to whose action Russia is to be indebted, were watching the fellow’s career very closely, and some of the secret reports concerning him here as I write form intensely interesting reading, astounding even for the unfathomable land of Russia.Within a few weeks of his triumph over the newly-appointed Procurator of the Holy Synod he discovered, with the innate shrewdness of the Russian mujik, that certain secret reports seriously compromising him had been given into the Emperor’s hand. His Majesty, in turn, had shown them to his wife. Once again, he saw himself in peril, so, before any action could be taken, he abruptly entered the Empress’s room at Tsarskoe-Selo, and boldly said:“Heaven hath revealed to me in a vision that the enemies of the dynasty have spoken ill of me, have maligned me, and have questioned my divine power. I have therefore come to bid farewell of thee!”The Empress, who was seated with Madame Vyrubova, and the old Countess Ignatieff, rose from her chair, pale to the lips.“You—you—you are surely not going, Holy Father!” she gasped. “You cannot mean that you will desert us!” she cried. “What of poor little Alexis?” and the words faded from her lips.“Yes, truly I am going! Our enemies have, alas, triumphed! Evil triumphs over good in this terrible war,” was his slow, impressive answer.“Of Alexis,”—and he shook his shock head mournfully.“Ah, no!” shrieked the unhappy Empress hysterically.“Listen!” commanded the deep-voiced Saint very gravely. “I must not conceal the truth from thee. On the twentieth day of my departure, thy son Alexis will be taken ill—and alas! the poor lad will not recover!”Madame Vyrubova pretended to be horrified at this terrible prophecy, while the Empress shrieked and fainted. Whereupon the Saint crossed himself piously and, turning, with bent head left the room.Within half-an-hour he was on his way to his twelve “spiritual brides” in his sordid house at Pokrovsky.The Empress lived for the next twenty days in a state of terrible dread. Alas! true to the Holy Father’s prophecy the boy, on the twentieth day, was seized with a sudden mysterious illness which puzzled the Court physicians who were hastily summoned from Petrograd. Indeed, a dozen of the best medical men in the capital held a consultation, but opinions differed regarding the cause of the haemorrhage, and the Empress again sent wild telegrams urging her pet Saint to return.Little did she dream that her favourite lady-in-waiting had six hours before administered a dose of a certain secret Chinese drug to the young Tsarevitch and purposely caused the illness which the rascal had predicted.Time after time did Her Majesty telegraph, urging her “Holy Father” to return and save the boy’s life, signing herself affectionately “your sister Alec.” Yet the wires were dumb in reply. An Imperial courier brought back no response. The doctors, as before, could make nothing out of the poor boy’s illness, and were unable to diagnose it. The charlatan was playing with the life of the Heir of the Romanoffs.It has, however, been since revealed by analysis that the compound sold to Rasputin by the chemist—a secret administrator of drugs to Petrograd society named Badmayeff—was a poisonous powder produced from the new horns of stags, mixed with the root of “jen-shen.” In the early spring when the stags shed their horns there appear small knobs where the new horns will grow. It is from these that the Chinese obtain the powder which, when mixed with “jen-shen,” produces a very strong medicine highly prized in China and Thibet as being supposed to rejuvenate old persons, and to act as a kind of love-philtre. When used in strong doses it produces peculiar symptoms, and also induces dangerous haemorrhage.It is evident from evidence I have recently obtained, that on the twentieth day after Rasputin’s departure the high priestess of his cult, Madame Vyrubova, administered to the poor helpless little lad a strong dose in his food.Day followed day; she increased that dose, until the poor little boy’s condition became most precarious, and the deluded Empress was equally frantic with grief. At any moment he might die, the doctors declared.One night Rasputin returned quite unexpectedly without having replied even once to the Tsaritza’s frantic appeals.He made a dramatic appearance in her private boudoir, dressed in sandals and his monk’s habit, as though he had just returned from a pilgrimage.“I have come to thee, O Lady, to try and save thy son!” he announced earnestly in that deep raucous voice of his, crossing himself piously as was his constant habit.The distracted Empress flew to the boy’s room where the mock-saint laid his hands upon the lad’s clammy brow and then falling upon his knees prayed loudly in his strange jumble of scraps of holy writ interspersed with profanity, that curious jargon which always impressed his “sister-disciples.”“Thy son will recover,” declared the saint, thus for the second time impressing upon Her Majesty that his absence from Court would inevitably cause the boy’s death.“But why, Holy Father, did you leave us?” demanded the Empress when they were alone together ten minutes afterwards.“Because thou wert prone to believe ill of me,” was his stern reply. “I will not remain here with those who are not my friends.”“Ah! Forgive me!” cried the hysterical woman, falling upon her knees and wildly kissing his dirty hand. “Remain—remain here always with us! I will never again think ill of thee, O Holy Father! All that is said is by your enemies—who are also mine.”The pious rascal’s house in the Gorokhovaya, besides being the meeting-place of the society women who, believers in “table turning,” were his sister-disciples, was also the active centre of German intrigues. It was the centre of Germany’s frantic effort to absorb the Russian Empire.Twice each week meetings were held of that weird cult of “Believers” of whom the most sinister whisperings were heard from the Neva to the Black Sea. The “sister-disciples” were discussed everywhere.The “Holy Father” still retained his two luxurious suites of rooms, one in the Winter Palace, and the other in Tsarskoe-Selo, but he seldom occupied them at night, for he was usually at his own house receiving in secret one or other of his “friends” of both sexes. His influence over both Nicholas II and his German wife was daily increasing, while he held Petrograd society practically in the hollow of his hand. Now and then, in order to justify his title of “Saint” he would, with the connivance of a mujik of his Siberian village, who was his confederate, perform a “miracle” upon some miserable poor person who could easily be bribed and afterwards packed off to some distant part of the Empire so that he, or she, could tell no further tales. A hundred roubles goes far in Russia. The Prime Minister Stürmer, the blackmailer Protopopoff, the dissolute Bishop Teofan, a Court official named Sabouroff, and Ivanitski, a high official in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, all knew the absurd farce of these mock-miracles, yet it was to the interest of them that Rasputin should still hold grip over the weak-minded Empress and that crowd of foolish women of the Court who had become his “sister-disciples.” Oh! that we in Britain were in ignorance of all this! Surely it is utterly deplorable.The men mentioned, together with half-a-dozen others with high-sounding titles, were bent upon ruining Russia, and giving her over body and soul as prey to Germany. All had been arranged, even to the price they were each to receive for the betrayal of their country. This was told to the Empress time after time by Count Kokovtsov, the Adjunct-Minister of the Interior Dzhunkovsky, the Grand Dukes Nicholas Michailovitch, Dmitri Pavlovitch, and others. But Her Majesty would listen to nothing against her pet “Saint,” the Divine director, that disgracefully erotic humbug who pretended that he could heal or destroy the little Tsarevitch. When any stories were told of him, Anna, her favourite lady-in-waiting, would declare that they were pure inventions of those jealous of “dear Gregory’s” position and influence.While Boris Stürmer, frantically scheming for a separate peace with Germany, was with his traitorous gang engineering all sorts of disasters, outrages and military failures in order to prevent the Russian advance, Kurloff, another treacherous bureaucrat, sat in the Ministry of the Interior collecting the gangs of the “Black Hundred,” those hired assassins whom he clothed in police-uniforms and had instructed in machine-gun practice.Rasputin and Protopopoff were now the most dominant figures in the sinister preparations to effect Russia’s downfall. Rasputin was busy taking bribes on every hand for placing his associates into official positions and blackmailing society women who, having been his “disciples,” had, from one cause or another, left his charmed circle.Protopopoff, who once posed as our friend and hobnobbed; with Mr Lloyd George, was a man of subtle intrigue. From being a friend of Britain, as he pretended to be when he came here as Vice-President of the Duma, he was enticed away by Germany to become the catspaw of the Kaiser, and was hand in glove with the holy rascal, with his miracle-working, behind the throne.Rasputin, himself receiving heavy payments from Germany, had acquired already the most complete confidence of the Tsar and Tsaritza; indeed, to such an extent that no affair of State was even decided by the weak-kneed autocrat without the horse-stealer’s evil counsel. Loyal to his Potsdam paymaster, Rasputin gave his advice with that low and clever cunning which ever distinguished him. He gave it as a loyal Russian, but always with the ulterior motive of extending the tentacles of German influence eastward.In the voluminous confidential report here before me as I write, the disclosures of the rise and fall of Rasputin, I find an interesting memorandum concerning a certain Paul Rodzevitch, son of a member of the Council of the Empire. Alexander Makaroff, one of the three private secretaries of the Emperor, had died suddenly of heart disease, the result of a drinking bout at the Old Donon, and at the dinner-table of the Imperial family at Tsarskoe-Selo the matter was being discussed, Rasputin being present. He was unkempt, unwashed—with untrimmed beard, and a filthy black coat greasy at the collar, and his high boots worn down at heel, as became a “holy man.”The Tsar was deploring the death of this fellow Makaroff, a person whose evil life was notorious in Petrograd, and whose young wife—then only twenty—had followed the example of the Empress, and had become a “sister-disciple.”“Friend!” exclaimed the “Saint” with pious upward glance, for he had the audacity to address the Emperor thus familiarly, “Friend! Thou needst not seek far for another secretary; I know of one who is accomplished, loyal and of noble birth. He is Paul Rodzevitch. I will bring him to thee to-morrow as thy new secretary—and he will serve thee well.”His Majesty expressed satisfaction, for the holy man, the holiest man in all holy Russia, as was his reputation, had spoken.Next day the good-looking young fellow was appointed, and into his hand was given His Majesty’s private cipher. None knew, until it was revealed by the band of Russian patriots united to unmask the spy, that this fellow Rodzevitch had spent two years in Germany before the war, or that he was in receipt of a gratuity of twenty-five thousand marks annually from the spy bureau in the Königgratzer-strasse in Berlin!By this means Rasputin placed a spy of Germany upon all the Tsar’s most confidential correspondence.Madame Vyrubova, and the infernal witchdoctor, were already all-dominant. Stürmer and Protopopoff were but pawns in the subtle and desperate game which Germany was playing in Russia. The food scarcity engineered by Kurloff; the military scandals engineered by a certain creature of the Kaiser’s called Nicolski; the successful plot which resulted in the destruction of a great munition works with terrible loss of life near Petrograd; the chaos of all transport; the constant wrecking of trains, and the breakdown of the strategic line from the Arctic coast across the Lapland marshes, were all combining to hurl the Empire to the abyss of destruction.One day the Grand Duke Nicholas visited Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had a private interview with the Emperor—Rasputin’s creature, the new secretary Rodzevitch, being present. The Emperor had every belief in the man’s loyalty. His Majesty, weak and easily misled, never dreamed of treachery within his private cabinet.The words spoken by the Grand Duke that afternoon were terse, and to the point.“The Empire is doomed!” he said. “This verminous fellow Rasputin—the man contemptuously known in the slums of the capital as ‘Grichka,’ is working out Germany’s plans. I have watched and discovered that he is the associate of pro-Germans, and that his is the hand which in secret is directing all these disasters which follow so quickly upon each other.”“But he is a friend of Protopopoff!” the Emperor exclaimed. “Protopopoff has been to England. He has gone over the munition factories in Scotland that are working for us; he has visited the British fleet, and when I gave him audience a few weeks ago, he expressed himself as a firm supporter of our Allies. Read his speech in the Duma only the night before last!”“I have already read it,” replied the Grand Duke. “But it does not alter my opinion in the least. He is hand-in-glove with the monk and with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Why you continue to have either of them about you I cannot imagine. If you do not dismiss them, then the House of Romanoff must fall, I tell you that,” he declared quite bluntly.His Majesty pandered for a moment and replied—“Then I will give orders to the Censor that the names of neither are in future to be mentioned publicly.”This is all the notice the Emperor took of the Grand Duke’s first warning. The people did not dare in future to mention “Grichka,” for fear of instant arrest.Since the outbreak of war Mother Grundy has expired in every country in Europe. An unfortunate wave of moral irresponsibility seems to have swept the world, and nowhere has it been more apparent than in Russia.This unwashed rascal who posed as a saint, who, by his clever manoeuvres, his secret drugs and his bribes, had become so popular with the people, was entirely unsuspected by the simple folks who comprise the bulk of Russia’s millions. To them he was a “holy man” whom the great Tsar admired and fed at his table. No one suspected the miracle-worker to be the secret ambassador of the Assassin of Potsdam. Everywhere he went—Moscow, Kazan, Odessa, Nijni, and other cities, he was fierce in his hatred of the Kaiser, and while cleverly scheming for the downfall of his own people, he was yet at the same time urging them to prosecute the war.A man of abnormal intellect, he was a criminal lunatic of that types which the world sees once every century; a man whose physical powers were amazing, and who though dirty and verminous, with long hair unbrushed and beard untrimmed for a year at a time, could exercise a weird and uncanny fascination which few women, even the most refined, could resist.The terms upon which Rasputin was with the Empress it has been given to me to reveal in this volume. They would have been beyond credence if the German spy who had been placed as secretary to the Emperor, had been loyal to his unscrupulous employers. But he was not. Money does much in these war-days, and in consequence of a big payment made to him by Rasputin’s enemies, the patriots of Russia—and they were many—he intercepted a letter sent by the Empress to her “Holy Father” early in 1916—a copy of which I have in the formidable dossier of confidential documents from which I am culling these curious details.The “Holy Father” in hair-shirt and sandals had gone forth upon a pilgrimage, and the female portion of Petrograd society were in consequence desolate. The house in the Gorokhovaya stood with its closed wooden shutters. Stürmer was at the Empress’s side, but Protopopoff—Satan in a silk hat as he has been called—had gone upon a mission to Paris.The letter before me was addressed in her Majesty’s hand to Rasputin, at the Verkhotursky Monastery at Perm, whither he had retired in order to found a provincial branch of his “Believers” and initiate them into the mysteries of his new religion.This amazing letter which plainly shows the terms upon which the Empress of Russia was with the convicted criminal from Pokrovsky, contains many errors in Russian, for the German wife of the Tsar has never learnt to write Russian correctly, and reads as follows—“Holy Father! Why have you not written? Why this long dead silence when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you, and for your words of comfort?“I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me. Oh! if I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your shoulder! Ah! can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and blank forgetfulness that I experience when you are near me? Now that you have gone, life is only one grey sea of despair. There was a Court last night, but I did not attend. Instead, Anna (Madame Vyrubova) and I read your sweet letters together, and we kissed your picture.“As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good daughter of Christ. But oh! it is so very difficult. Help me, dear Father. Pray for me. Pray always for Alexis (the Tsarevitch). Come back to us at once. Nikki (the Tsar) says we cannot endure life without you, for there are so many pitfalls before us. For myself, I am longing for your return—longing—always longing!“Without our weekly meetings all is gloom.“Only the everlasting toll of war! Germany is winning—as she will surely win. But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May God bring you back to us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due to go to Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace you, and so do Nikki and Anna.“Your devoted daughter, Alec.” Has history ever before recorded such an astounding letter written by a reigning Empress to a sham saint?It must not be thought that Rasputin was without enemies. He had hosts of them, but in an almost incredible manner he seemed to scent danger wherever it lurked, and eluded the various traps set for him. This was probably because he had surrounded himself by creatures ready to do any evil work he ordered. Not only had he earned the most bitter vengeance of wronged husbands and fathers, but he had against him a small league of patriotic Russians, men and women, headed by a civil servant named Vilieff, who had banded themselves together with a view to tear away the veil and unmask the traitor. The rascal knew this, and was ever upon his guard, while Stürmer and Kurloff used their great influence for his protection. At the same time Rasputin had corrupted the Russian Church in its centres of power and administration until nearly half its high ecclesiastics were agents of Germany.In order to exhibit a swift, relentless hand in dealing with any enemy who should arise against him, Rasputin one evening cordially invited Vilieff, who had sworn to open the eyes of the people to the mock-monk’s villainy. Indeed, he had travelled to far-off Pokrovsky and collected much damning evidence concerning Grichka’s past. Kurloff was at dinner to meet the young man, the bait offered by Rasputin being that the official of the Ministry of the Interior intended to promote him to a highly lucrative post in his department.According to a statement made by the monk’s wily accomplice, Yepantchine, who afterwards came forward and made so many revelations, only the trio sat down to dinner, whereupon the traitorous bureaucrat openly suggested that the band he had formed against Rasputin should be betrayed to the Palace police, in return for which he had ready for him five thousand roubles in cash, and, in addition, would there and then appoint him to a lucrative position in the chancellerie of the Ministry.On hearing this, the young man sprang up and angrily denounced both monk and minister as traitors, declaring that he would at once expose the effort to purchase his silence.Without further ado Rasputin drew a revolver and, secretly approaching him, shot him dead.His body was found in the snow near the corner of the Kazanskaya early next morning. The dead man’s friends, who knew of his visit to Rasputin that night, informed the police, but the monk was already before them.At dawn he sought the Emperor at the Tsarskoe-Selo, and found him in his dressing-gown. To him he complained that enemies were making a disgraceful charge against him, and added:—“I seek thy protecting hand, friend. Wilt thou give orders to the police to leave me unmolested?”The Emperor, who believed in him as implicitly as his wife, at once gave orders over the telephone, and thus the murder was suppressed.A week later a man named Rouchine, who had, with Yepantchine, assisted him in his mock-miracles, discovered him with a certain Swede named Wemstedt, who was chief of the German Secret Service in Stockholm, and who had come in disguise to Petrograd to obtain certain reports furnished by Stürmer. His secret visit to Rasputin’s house was to get the documents for transmission to Germany, and to make one of the large monthly payments to the monk for his services as the Kaiser’s agent.Their meeting was watched by Rouchine, who overheard greater part of the conversation of the pair ere the “Saint” became aware there was an eavesdropper. Instantly he scented danger, for he trusted nobody; the monk made no sign, but when Wemstedt had gone he placed a bottle of vodka in a spot where he knew that Rouchine would find it.As he expected, his servant drank a glass, and within half-an-hour he expired in terrible agony, with Rasputin jeering at him in his death-throes.It is computed that during 1916 no fewer than twenty persons lost their lives in consequence of visits to that sinister house within the shadow of the Winter Palace. Armed with those secret Chinese drugs, the pious assassin could administer baneful doses which proved fatal hours afterwards, with symptoms which completely deceived the doctors.Knowing his own danger, he one day hit upon a new plan for his own protection, and when at dinner at the Imperial table he, addressing the Empress, said:“A vision of the fixture hath to-day been revealed unto me! It is a warning—one that thou surely shouldst heed! When I die, Alexis will live but forty days longer. Surrounded as I am by those who seek my downfall and death, I know not what plots may be formed against me. I only know that assuredly Alexis will only survive me through forty days. If God wills it, my end may be to-morrow!” he added, raising his eyes piously.At this the Empress betrayed terrible distress. But the ruse of the wily scoundrel worked well, for the personal protection at once afforded him by order of the Tsar was as complete as the surveillance upon the Emperor himself.

The dark forces established so ingeniously by the Kaiser behind the Russian throne in April, 1914, had now become actively at work.

The small but all-powerful clique of which Rasputin was the head because he practically lived with the Imperial family and ate at their table—the little circle which the Russians called “The Camarilla”—were actively plotting for the betrayal of the Allies and a separate peace with Germany. Stürmer, the Austrian who had been pushed into the office of Prime Minister of Russia by his boon companion and fellowbon-viveur, the mock-monk of Pokrovsky, had already risen in power. The man whose long goatee-beard swept over the first button of his gorgeous uniform, all true loyal Russians in their unfortunate ignorance cheered wildly as he drove swiftly with thepristyazhka, or side-horse, along the Nevski, for he was believed to be “winning the war.” Russia, alas! to-day knows that with German gold flowing freely into his pocket he was in secret doing all he could to prevent ministers arriving from Great Britain, and laughing up his sleeve at his success in ordering a mock-railway from Alexandrovsk to be built in order to connect Petrograd to an ice-free port—a line which subsequently had to be taken up and relaid!

Even our British journalists were cleverly bamboozled, for they returned from Russia and wrote in our newspapers of her coming great offensive, when they would sweep back the Kaiser’s hordes and be into Berlin ere we should know it. In Petrograd one heard of Rasputin as the Shadowy Somebody. But most people declared that he was only a monk, a pious person whom silly women admired, as women so often admire a fashionable preacher even in our own country, and further because of “something,” the Censor refused to allow his name to appear in any paper.

In Russia the censorship is full of vagaries. My own novels came under his ban twenty years ago, because as correspondent ofThe TimesI had spoken some very plain truths in that journal. I remember well old Monsieur de Stael, then Russian ambassador in London and the cheeriest of good souls, laughing when I came back from Russia at my complaint regarding the censorship. “Why!” he said, “they censor my letters to my own daughter in Nijni! Please do not think any the less of Russia for that. You have been across the Empire, into Siberia, and surely you know how far we are behind the times!”

Russia had, after all, advanced but little in those intervening twenty years, though it has produced the rascal Rasputin.

That small circle of Germanophiles who met so frequently in secret at Rasputin’s house in the Gorokhovaya—the scene of the bi-weekly orgies of the “Sister-Disciples”—though they were unaware of it were, with clever insinuation, being taught that a separate peace with Germany would be of greatest advantage to the Empire. They were hourly plotting, and the details of their conspiracies which have now come to light and are before me, documents in black and white, which had been carefully preserved by the monk, are truly amazing. Surely no novelist, living or dead, could have ever imagined a situation so astounding and yet so tragic, for the fate of one of the mightiest Imperial Houses of the modern world was now trembling in the balance.

That both the Prime Minister and his long-moustached sycophant Protopopoff, a political adventurer whose past is somewhat shady and obscure, were in daily consultation is plain from the reports of secret agents of the Revolutionists. The Duke Charles Michael, though heir to the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had, as part of the German Emperor’s subtle plot, become naturalised as a Russian three weeks before the declaration of war, and he, with the erotic scoundrel, was actively carding out Berlin’s set programme in the salons of Tsarskoe-Selo.

“Grichka,” the convicted thief from the far-off Siberian village, the man who had a dozen “spiritual brides” at Pokrovsky, uncouth, unlettered and unwashed, had by this time obtained such hypnotic hold upon the female portion of Petrograd society that when he deigned to accept an invitation to dine at the various palaces of the nobility he would eat from his plate with his dirty fingers and his female admirers actually licked them clean! This is absolute fact, vouched for by dozens of patriotic Russians whose names I could give.

It is contained in a plain report in cold unvarnished language in an official Russian report which is before me. Readers will, I believe, halt aghast. But such men have exercised the same powers over women—criminal lunatics always—through the long pages of history.

The heart of Russia was being eaten out by the German canker-worm. The high-born women of Petrograd were being used by Rasputin to play the Kaiser’s game.

Outwardly Stürmer, Protopopoff, the Bishop Teofan, and their place-seeking friends were good loyal Russians bent upon winning the war. In secret, however, they were cleverly arranging to effect various crises. The supply of food was held up by a ring of those eager to profit, and the Empire became suddenly faced with semi-starvation, so that rioting ensued, and the police were kept busy. Then there succeeded serious railway troubles, congestion of traffic to and from the front, “faked” scandals of certain females whom the camarilla charged with giving away Russia’s secrets to Germany. Some highly sensational trials followed, much perjured evidence was given, false reports ofagents provocateursproduced, and several officers in high command who, though perfectly innocent, were actually condemned as traitors, merely because they had become obnoxious to Rasputin and his circle.

One day a sensational incident occurred when Rasputin visited the Ministry of the Interior, and sought the Adjunct-Minister Dzhunkovsky, who controlled the police of the Empire.

On being shown into his room the monk insolently demanded why he was being followed by police-agents, and why his friends who visited his house in the Gorokhovaya were being spied upon.

“My duty, my dear Father, is to know what is in progress in Petrograd,” replied the Minister coldly.

“Are you not aware that I am immune from espionage by your confounded agents?” cried Rasputin in anger. “Are you in ignorance that my personal safety is in charge of the special Palace Police who are responsible for the safety of the Emperor?”

“My own actions are my own affair,” was the chill reply—for truth to tell—the Revolutionists had already imparted to Dzhunkovsky certain evidence they had collected as to the traitorous conduct of the pseudo-monk and his traitorous friends.

High words arose. Grichka, losing his temper, made use of some very insulting remarks regarding the Minister’s young wife, whereupon Dzhunkovsky sprang from his chair and promptly knocked down the “Saint.”

An hour later Rasputin, with his eye bandaged, sat with the Empress in her room overlooking the Neva, and related how he had been assaulted by the Adjunct-Minister of the Interior, merely because he had expressed his unswerving loyalty to the throne. To the Empress the unwashed charlatan was as a holy man, and such insult caused her blood to boil with indignation.

The fellow knew quite well that no word uttered against himself was ever believed by either Emperor or Empress. They were all said to be stories invented by those jealous of the Saint’s exalted position, and the wicked inventions of enemies of the Dynasty. Therefore, what happened was exactly what he expected. In a fury the neurotic Empress rose and went off to the Tsar who, then and there, signed a decree dismissing his loyal Adjunct-Minister from office, and appointing an obscure friend of Rasputin’s in his place!

In that same week another incident occurred which caused the Saint no little apprehension. His Majesty had appointed Samarin as Procurator of the Holy Synod, an appointment which Rasputin knew might easily result in his own downfall. Samarin, an honest, upright man, was one of his most bitter enemies, for he knew the disgraceful past of both him and Teofan, and further he had gained accurate knowledge of which appointments of Bishops in the Pravoslavny Church had been the outcome of the ex-horse stealer’s influence. Therefore, the arch-adventurer saw that at all hazards this new Procurator must not be allowed to remain in office, for already he had announced his intention to clear the Pravoslavny Church of its malign influences and filthy practices.

Three days later Rasputin went out to Tsarskoe-Selo, where the Emperor happened to be, and entering His Majesty’s private cabinet said in a confidential tone:

“Listen, Friend. I have a secret to whisper to thee! Last night I was with Stürmer, and he revealed that a great revolutionary plot is afoot for thy deposition from the Throne!”

“What!” cried the Emperor, pale with alarm as he sprang from his chair. “Another plot! By whom?”

“Its chief mover is the man Samarin, whom thou hast appointed Procurator of the Holy Synod,” replied the crafty adventurer. “Stürmer urged me to come at once and to tell thee in private.”

“Are you quite certain of this, Holy Father?” asked the Emperor, looking straight into his bearded face.

The monk’s grey steely eyes, those hypnotic eyes which few women could resist, met the Tsar’s unwaveringly.

“Thou knowest me!” was the “Saint’s” grave reply. “When I speak to thee, I speak but only the truth.”

That same day Samarin was removed from office and disgraced. Everyone wondered why his appointment had been of such brief duration, but that same night, the Prime Minister Stürmer and Rasputin drank champagne and rejoiced together at the house in the Gorokhovaya, while Anna Vyrubova, the favourite lady-in-waiting, was also with them, laughing at their great triumph.

Not a person in all the great Empire could withstand Rasputin’s influence. Honest men feared him just as honest women regarded him with awe. From dozens, nay hundreds, of place-hunters and favour-seekers he took bribes on every hand, but woe betide those who fell beneath the blackguard’s displeasure. It meant death to them. He was certainly the most powerful and fearless secret agent of all that the Huns possessed, scattered as they were in every corner of the globe. Yet it must not be supposed that there were none who did not suspect him. Indeed, a certain committee of revolutionaries, to whose action Russia is to be indebted, were watching the fellow’s career very closely, and some of the secret reports concerning him here as I write form intensely interesting reading, astounding even for the unfathomable land of Russia.

Within a few weeks of his triumph over the newly-appointed Procurator of the Holy Synod he discovered, with the innate shrewdness of the Russian mujik, that certain secret reports seriously compromising him had been given into the Emperor’s hand. His Majesty, in turn, had shown them to his wife. Once again, he saw himself in peril, so, before any action could be taken, he abruptly entered the Empress’s room at Tsarskoe-Selo, and boldly said:

“Heaven hath revealed to me in a vision that the enemies of the dynasty have spoken ill of me, have maligned me, and have questioned my divine power. I have therefore come to bid farewell of thee!”

The Empress, who was seated with Madame Vyrubova, and the old Countess Ignatieff, rose from her chair, pale to the lips.

“You—you—you are surely not going, Holy Father!” she gasped. “You cannot mean that you will desert us!” she cried. “What of poor little Alexis?” and the words faded from her lips.

“Yes, truly I am going! Our enemies have, alas, triumphed! Evil triumphs over good in this terrible war,” was his slow, impressive answer.

“Of Alexis,”—and he shook his shock head mournfully.

“Ah, no!” shrieked the unhappy Empress hysterically.

“Listen!” commanded the deep-voiced Saint very gravely. “I must not conceal the truth from thee. On the twentieth day of my departure, thy son Alexis will be taken ill—and alas! the poor lad will not recover!”

Madame Vyrubova pretended to be horrified at this terrible prophecy, while the Empress shrieked and fainted. Whereupon the Saint crossed himself piously and, turning, with bent head left the room.

Within half-an-hour he was on his way to his twelve “spiritual brides” in his sordid house at Pokrovsky.

The Empress lived for the next twenty days in a state of terrible dread. Alas! true to the Holy Father’s prophecy the boy, on the twentieth day, was seized with a sudden mysterious illness which puzzled the Court physicians who were hastily summoned from Petrograd. Indeed, a dozen of the best medical men in the capital held a consultation, but opinions differed regarding the cause of the haemorrhage, and the Empress again sent wild telegrams urging her pet Saint to return.

Little did she dream that her favourite lady-in-waiting had six hours before administered a dose of a certain secret Chinese drug to the young Tsarevitch and purposely caused the illness which the rascal had predicted.

Time after time did Her Majesty telegraph, urging her “Holy Father” to return and save the boy’s life, signing herself affectionately “your sister Alec.” Yet the wires were dumb in reply. An Imperial courier brought back no response. The doctors, as before, could make nothing out of the poor boy’s illness, and were unable to diagnose it. The charlatan was playing with the life of the Heir of the Romanoffs.

It has, however, been since revealed by analysis that the compound sold to Rasputin by the chemist—a secret administrator of drugs to Petrograd society named Badmayeff—was a poisonous powder produced from the new horns of stags, mixed with the root of “jen-shen.” In the early spring when the stags shed their horns there appear small knobs where the new horns will grow. It is from these that the Chinese obtain the powder which, when mixed with “jen-shen,” produces a very strong medicine highly prized in China and Thibet as being supposed to rejuvenate old persons, and to act as a kind of love-philtre. When used in strong doses it produces peculiar symptoms, and also induces dangerous haemorrhage.

It is evident from evidence I have recently obtained, that on the twentieth day after Rasputin’s departure the high priestess of his cult, Madame Vyrubova, administered to the poor helpless little lad a strong dose in his food.

Day followed day; she increased that dose, until the poor little boy’s condition became most precarious, and the deluded Empress was equally frantic with grief. At any moment he might die, the doctors declared.

One night Rasputin returned quite unexpectedly without having replied even once to the Tsaritza’s frantic appeals.

He made a dramatic appearance in her private boudoir, dressed in sandals and his monk’s habit, as though he had just returned from a pilgrimage.

“I have come to thee, O Lady, to try and save thy son!” he announced earnestly in that deep raucous voice of his, crossing himself piously as was his constant habit.

The distracted Empress flew to the boy’s room where the mock-saint laid his hands upon the lad’s clammy brow and then falling upon his knees prayed loudly in his strange jumble of scraps of holy writ interspersed with profanity, that curious jargon which always impressed his “sister-disciples.”

“Thy son will recover,” declared the saint, thus for the second time impressing upon Her Majesty that his absence from Court would inevitably cause the boy’s death.

“But why, Holy Father, did you leave us?” demanded the Empress when they were alone together ten minutes afterwards.

“Because thou wert prone to believe ill of me,” was his stern reply. “I will not remain here with those who are not my friends.”

“Ah! Forgive me!” cried the hysterical woman, falling upon her knees and wildly kissing his dirty hand. “Remain—remain here always with us! I will never again think ill of thee, O Holy Father! All that is said is by your enemies—who are also mine.”

The pious rascal’s house in the Gorokhovaya, besides being the meeting-place of the society women who, believers in “table turning,” were his sister-disciples, was also the active centre of German intrigues. It was the centre of Germany’s frantic effort to absorb the Russian Empire.

Twice each week meetings were held of that weird cult of “Believers” of whom the most sinister whisperings were heard from the Neva to the Black Sea. The “sister-disciples” were discussed everywhere.

The “Holy Father” still retained his two luxurious suites of rooms, one in the Winter Palace, and the other in Tsarskoe-Selo, but he seldom occupied them at night, for he was usually at his own house receiving in secret one or other of his “friends” of both sexes. His influence over both Nicholas II and his German wife was daily increasing, while he held Petrograd society practically in the hollow of his hand. Now and then, in order to justify his title of “Saint” he would, with the connivance of a mujik of his Siberian village, who was his confederate, perform a “miracle” upon some miserable poor person who could easily be bribed and afterwards packed off to some distant part of the Empire so that he, or she, could tell no further tales. A hundred roubles goes far in Russia. The Prime Minister Stürmer, the blackmailer Protopopoff, the dissolute Bishop Teofan, a Court official named Sabouroff, and Ivanitski, a high official in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, all knew the absurd farce of these mock-miracles, yet it was to the interest of them that Rasputin should still hold grip over the weak-minded Empress and that crowd of foolish women of the Court who had become his “sister-disciples.” Oh! that we in Britain were in ignorance of all this! Surely it is utterly deplorable.

The men mentioned, together with half-a-dozen others with high-sounding titles, were bent upon ruining Russia, and giving her over body and soul as prey to Germany. All had been arranged, even to the price they were each to receive for the betrayal of their country. This was told to the Empress time after time by Count Kokovtsov, the Adjunct-Minister of the Interior Dzhunkovsky, the Grand Dukes Nicholas Michailovitch, Dmitri Pavlovitch, and others. But Her Majesty would listen to nothing against her pet “Saint,” the Divine director, that disgracefully erotic humbug who pretended that he could heal or destroy the little Tsarevitch. When any stories were told of him, Anna, her favourite lady-in-waiting, would declare that they were pure inventions of those jealous of “dear Gregory’s” position and influence.

While Boris Stürmer, frantically scheming for a separate peace with Germany, was with his traitorous gang engineering all sorts of disasters, outrages and military failures in order to prevent the Russian advance, Kurloff, another treacherous bureaucrat, sat in the Ministry of the Interior collecting the gangs of the “Black Hundred,” those hired assassins whom he clothed in police-uniforms and had instructed in machine-gun practice.

Rasputin and Protopopoff were now the most dominant figures in the sinister preparations to effect Russia’s downfall. Rasputin was busy taking bribes on every hand for placing his associates into official positions and blackmailing society women who, having been his “disciples,” had, from one cause or another, left his charmed circle.

Protopopoff, who once posed as our friend and hobnobbed; with Mr Lloyd George, was a man of subtle intrigue. From being a friend of Britain, as he pretended to be when he came here as Vice-President of the Duma, he was enticed away by Germany to become the catspaw of the Kaiser, and was hand in glove with the holy rascal, with his miracle-working, behind the throne.

Rasputin, himself receiving heavy payments from Germany, had acquired already the most complete confidence of the Tsar and Tsaritza; indeed, to such an extent that no affair of State was even decided by the weak-kneed autocrat without the horse-stealer’s evil counsel. Loyal to his Potsdam paymaster, Rasputin gave his advice with that low and clever cunning which ever distinguished him. He gave it as a loyal Russian, but always with the ulterior motive of extending the tentacles of German influence eastward.

In the voluminous confidential report here before me as I write, the disclosures of the rise and fall of Rasputin, I find an interesting memorandum concerning a certain Paul Rodzevitch, son of a member of the Council of the Empire. Alexander Makaroff, one of the three private secretaries of the Emperor, had died suddenly of heart disease, the result of a drinking bout at the Old Donon, and at the dinner-table of the Imperial family at Tsarskoe-Selo the matter was being discussed, Rasputin being present. He was unkempt, unwashed—with untrimmed beard, and a filthy black coat greasy at the collar, and his high boots worn down at heel, as became a “holy man.”

The Tsar was deploring the death of this fellow Makaroff, a person whose evil life was notorious in Petrograd, and whose young wife—then only twenty—had followed the example of the Empress, and had become a “sister-disciple.”

“Friend!” exclaimed the “Saint” with pious upward glance, for he had the audacity to address the Emperor thus familiarly, “Friend! Thou needst not seek far for another secretary; I know of one who is accomplished, loyal and of noble birth. He is Paul Rodzevitch. I will bring him to thee to-morrow as thy new secretary—and he will serve thee well.”

His Majesty expressed satisfaction, for the holy man, the holiest man in all holy Russia, as was his reputation, had spoken.

Next day the good-looking young fellow was appointed, and into his hand was given His Majesty’s private cipher. None knew, until it was revealed by the band of Russian patriots united to unmask the spy, that this fellow Rodzevitch had spent two years in Germany before the war, or that he was in receipt of a gratuity of twenty-five thousand marks annually from the spy bureau in the Königgratzer-strasse in Berlin!

By this means Rasputin placed a spy of Germany upon all the Tsar’s most confidential correspondence.

Madame Vyrubova, and the infernal witchdoctor, were already all-dominant. Stürmer and Protopopoff were but pawns in the subtle and desperate game which Germany was playing in Russia. The food scarcity engineered by Kurloff; the military scandals engineered by a certain creature of the Kaiser’s called Nicolski; the successful plot which resulted in the destruction of a great munition works with terrible loss of life near Petrograd; the chaos of all transport; the constant wrecking of trains, and the breakdown of the strategic line from the Arctic coast across the Lapland marshes, were all combining to hurl the Empire to the abyss of destruction.

One day the Grand Duke Nicholas visited Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had a private interview with the Emperor—Rasputin’s creature, the new secretary Rodzevitch, being present. The Emperor had every belief in the man’s loyalty. His Majesty, weak and easily misled, never dreamed of treachery within his private cabinet.

The words spoken by the Grand Duke that afternoon were terse, and to the point.

“The Empire is doomed!” he said. “This verminous fellow Rasputin—the man contemptuously known in the slums of the capital as ‘Grichka,’ is working out Germany’s plans. I have watched and discovered that he is the associate of pro-Germans, and that his is the hand which in secret is directing all these disasters which follow so quickly upon each other.”

“But he is a friend of Protopopoff!” the Emperor exclaimed. “Protopopoff has been to England. He has gone over the munition factories in Scotland that are working for us; he has visited the British fleet, and when I gave him audience a few weeks ago, he expressed himself as a firm supporter of our Allies. Read his speech in the Duma only the night before last!”

“I have already read it,” replied the Grand Duke. “But it does not alter my opinion in the least. He is hand-in-glove with the monk and with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Why you continue to have either of them about you I cannot imagine. If you do not dismiss them, then the House of Romanoff must fall, I tell you that,” he declared quite bluntly.

His Majesty pandered for a moment and replied—“Then I will give orders to the Censor that the names of neither are in future to be mentioned publicly.”

This is all the notice the Emperor took of the Grand Duke’s first warning. The people did not dare in future to mention “Grichka,” for fear of instant arrest.

Since the outbreak of war Mother Grundy has expired in every country in Europe. An unfortunate wave of moral irresponsibility seems to have swept the world, and nowhere has it been more apparent than in Russia.

This unwashed rascal who posed as a saint, who, by his clever manoeuvres, his secret drugs and his bribes, had become so popular with the people, was entirely unsuspected by the simple folks who comprise the bulk of Russia’s millions. To them he was a “holy man” whom the great Tsar admired and fed at his table. No one suspected the miracle-worker to be the secret ambassador of the Assassin of Potsdam. Everywhere he went—Moscow, Kazan, Odessa, Nijni, and other cities, he was fierce in his hatred of the Kaiser, and while cleverly scheming for the downfall of his own people, he was yet at the same time urging them to prosecute the war.

A man of abnormal intellect, he was a criminal lunatic of that types which the world sees once every century; a man whose physical powers were amazing, and who though dirty and verminous, with long hair unbrushed and beard untrimmed for a year at a time, could exercise a weird and uncanny fascination which few women, even the most refined, could resist.

The terms upon which Rasputin was with the Empress it has been given to me to reveal in this volume. They would have been beyond credence if the German spy who had been placed as secretary to the Emperor, had been loyal to his unscrupulous employers. But he was not. Money does much in these war-days, and in consequence of a big payment made to him by Rasputin’s enemies, the patriots of Russia—and they were many—he intercepted a letter sent by the Empress to her “Holy Father” early in 1916—a copy of which I have in the formidable dossier of confidential documents from which I am culling these curious details.

The “Holy Father” in hair-shirt and sandals had gone forth upon a pilgrimage, and the female portion of Petrograd society were in consequence desolate. The house in the Gorokhovaya stood with its closed wooden shutters. Stürmer was at the Empress’s side, but Protopopoff—Satan in a silk hat as he has been called—had gone upon a mission to Paris.

The letter before me was addressed in her Majesty’s hand to Rasputin, at the Verkhotursky Monastery at Perm, whither he had retired in order to found a provincial branch of his “Believers” and initiate them into the mysteries of his new religion.

This amazing letter which plainly shows the terms upon which the Empress of Russia was with the convicted criminal from Pokrovsky, contains many errors in Russian, for the German wife of the Tsar has never learnt to write Russian correctly, and reads as follows—

“Holy Father! Why have you not written? Why this long dead silence when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you, and for your words of comfort?

“I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me. Oh! if I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your shoulder! Ah! can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and blank forgetfulness that I experience when you are near me? Now that you have gone, life is only one grey sea of despair. There was a Court last night, but I did not attend. Instead, Anna (Madame Vyrubova) and I read your sweet letters together, and we kissed your picture.

“As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good daughter of Christ. But oh! it is so very difficult. Help me, dear Father. Pray for me. Pray always for Alexis (the Tsarevitch). Come back to us at once. Nikki (the Tsar) says we cannot endure life without you, for there are so many pitfalls before us. For myself, I am longing for your return—longing—always longing!

“Without our weekly meetings all is gloom.

“Only the everlasting toll of war! Germany is winning—as she will surely win. But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May God bring you back to us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due to go to Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace you, and so do Nikki and Anna.

“Your devoted daughter, Alec.” Has history ever before recorded such an astounding letter written by a reigning Empress to a sham saint?

It must not be thought that Rasputin was without enemies. He had hosts of them, but in an almost incredible manner he seemed to scent danger wherever it lurked, and eluded the various traps set for him. This was probably because he had surrounded himself by creatures ready to do any evil work he ordered. Not only had he earned the most bitter vengeance of wronged husbands and fathers, but he had against him a small league of patriotic Russians, men and women, headed by a civil servant named Vilieff, who had banded themselves together with a view to tear away the veil and unmask the traitor. The rascal knew this, and was ever upon his guard, while Stürmer and Kurloff used their great influence for his protection. At the same time Rasputin had corrupted the Russian Church in its centres of power and administration until nearly half its high ecclesiastics were agents of Germany.

In order to exhibit a swift, relentless hand in dealing with any enemy who should arise against him, Rasputin one evening cordially invited Vilieff, who had sworn to open the eyes of the people to the mock-monk’s villainy. Indeed, he had travelled to far-off Pokrovsky and collected much damning evidence concerning Grichka’s past. Kurloff was at dinner to meet the young man, the bait offered by Rasputin being that the official of the Ministry of the Interior intended to promote him to a highly lucrative post in his department.

According to a statement made by the monk’s wily accomplice, Yepantchine, who afterwards came forward and made so many revelations, only the trio sat down to dinner, whereupon the traitorous bureaucrat openly suggested that the band he had formed against Rasputin should be betrayed to the Palace police, in return for which he had ready for him five thousand roubles in cash, and, in addition, would there and then appoint him to a lucrative position in the chancellerie of the Ministry.

On hearing this, the young man sprang up and angrily denounced both monk and minister as traitors, declaring that he would at once expose the effort to purchase his silence.

Without further ado Rasputin drew a revolver and, secretly approaching him, shot him dead.

His body was found in the snow near the corner of the Kazanskaya early next morning. The dead man’s friends, who knew of his visit to Rasputin that night, informed the police, but the monk was already before them.

At dawn he sought the Emperor at the Tsarskoe-Selo, and found him in his dressing-gown. To him he complained that enemies were making a disgraceful charge against him, and added:—

“I seek thy protecting hand, friend. Wilt thou give orders to the police to leave me unmolested?”

The Emperor, who believed in him as implicitly as his wife, at once gave orders over the telephone, and thus the murder was suppressed.

A week later a man named Rouchine, who had, with Yepantchine, assisted him in his mock-miracles, discovered him with a certain Swede named Wemstedt, who was chief of the German Secret Service in Stockholm, and who had come in disguise to Petrograd to obtain certain reports furnished by Stürmer. His secret visit to Rasputin’s house was to get the documents for transmission to Germany, and to make one of the large monthly payments to the monk for his services as the Kaiser’s agent.

Their meeting was watched by Rouchine, who overheard greater part of the conversation of the pair ere the “Saint” became aware there was an eavesdropper. Instantly he scented danger, for he trusted nobody; the monk made no sign, but when Wemstedt had gone he placed a bottle of vodka in a spot where he knew that Rouchine would find it.

As he expected, his servant drank a glass, and within half-an-hour he expired in terrible agony, with Rasputin jeering at him in his death-throes.

It is computed that during 1916 no fewer than twenty persons lost their lives in consequence of visits to that sinister house within the shadow of the Winter Palace. Armed with those secret Chinese drugs, the pious assassin could administer baneful doses which proved fatal hours afterwards, with symptoms which completely deceived the doctors.

Knowing his own danger, he one day hit upon a new plan for his own protection, and when at dinner at the Imperial table he, addressing the Empress, said:

“A vision of the fixture hath to-day been revealed unto me! It is a warning—one that thou surely shouldst heed! When I die, Alexis will live but forty days longer. Surrounded as I am by those who seek my downfall and death, I know not what plots may be formed against me. I only know that assuredly Alexis will only survive me through forty days. If God wills it, my end may be to-morrow!” he added, raising his eyes piously.

At this the Empress betrayed terrible distress. But the ruse of the wily scoundrel worked well, for the personal protection at once afforded him by order of the Tsar was as complete as the surveillance upon the Emperor himself.

Chapter Four.The “Hidden Hand” of Berlin.Rasputin, though revealing himself constantly as a blasphemous blackguard, had by the middle of 1916 become the greatest power in Russia. Through his good offices Germany hoped to crush the Empire.Examination of the confidential reports concerning his scandalous activities here before me causes me to halt aghast that the Imperial Court, which I attended in peace time, Petrograd society, and the hard-working classes in Russia, should have become so completely and so utterly hypnotised by his disgraceful “religion.” The latter had eaten into the Empire’s heart, causing an outburst of open and disgraceful immorality in the higher circles—a new “sensation” that was appalling. In Moscow, Kazan, Tambov, and other cities, “circles” of the “Sister-Disciples” had been eagerly formed, together with a branch which were meeting in secret at a small old-world monastery called Jedelevo, in the Province of Simbirsk, and about whose doings many scandalous whispers reached Petrograd.“Grichka” possessed the reputation of being a popular preacher. That was not so. He had never been ordained a priest; he was a pure adventurer, and did not belong to any ecclesiastical order. Therefore he had no licence to preach in a church. He was simply a Siberian peasant convicted of theft, blackmail, and outrage, who had set himself up to be a “holy man.” And as such, all Russia, from the Empress downwards, accepted him and swallowed any lie that he might utter. Truly the whole situation was amazing in this twentieth century.He preached often to his “sister-disciples” in theirsalons, and sometimes at “At Homes,” where fast society women who had fallen beneath the pious scoundrel’s fascination hoped to make other converts. To such “At Homes” only young and pretty women were ever invited. Rasputin had no use for the old and angular.One evening one of these reunions for recruiting purposes was held by the yellow-toothed old Baroness Guerbel, at her big house in the Potemkinskaya, and to it a young married woman, wife of an officer named Yatchevski, who was well-known in Petrograd, had been invited. Her husband, hearing of this, called three of his own burly Cossacks, and next night they concealed themselves close to Rasputin’s house. There they waited until the bearded “holy man” emerged to go upon his usual evening visit to the Winter Palace; when the men suddenly sprang upon him, and hustling him into a narrow side street, stripped him of his finely embroidered silk shirt, of the usual Russian model, his wide velvet knickerbockers, and his patent-leather top-boots. After that they administered to the fellow a sound and well-deserved thrashing, having first gagged and bound him. Afterwards they placed him, attired only in his underwear, upon a manure heap in a neighbouring stable-yard, while the clothes they had taken from him were packed in a big cardboard costume-box and delivered by special messenger privately to the Empress at the Palace.Her Majesty was, of course, furiously indignant that her dear “Father” should thus be made, sport of. At once a rigid inquiry was ordered, but the perpetrators of the well-merited punishment were never discovered.Rasputin was ever active as head of the camarilla. The attention of the Holy Synod had time after time been called to the amazing exploits of this pious charlatan, until at last it was deemed expedient to hold yet another inquiry, into the fellow’s conduct.Supplied with German money, he employed spies on every hand to keep him informed of any untoward circumstances, or any undue inquisitiveness. So he quickly heard of this proposed inquiry and consulted Bishop Teofan, brother of one of his favourite “sister-disciples,” who lived in Siberia. That night both Monk and Bishop sought the Tsar and Tsaritza. Rasputin declared angrily that there was a most formidable plot against himself. He therefore intended to leave Petrograd, and return to Siberia for ever.“Because by divine grace I possess the power off healing, thy Church is jealous of me,” he declared to the Emperor. “The Holy Synod is seeking my overthrow! Always have I acted for the benefit of mankind, and so through me thy dear son is under God’s grace. But the Russian Church seeks to drive me forth. Therefore, I must bow to the inevitable—and I Will depart?”“No! No!” cried the Empress in despair. Then, turning quickly to her husband, who had left some important business of State, which he was transacting in his private cabinet with the War Minister, Her Majesty exclaimed:“Nikki. This ecclesiastical interference cannot be tolerated. It is abominable! We cannot lose our dear Father! Order a list of his enemies in the Church to be made, and at once dismiss them all. Put our friends into their places.”“If thou wilt leave matters entirely to me,” said the sham saint, addressing the feeble yet honest autocrat, “I will furnish the list, together with names of their successors.”“I give thee a free hand, dear Gregory,” was the Emperor’s reply. Within twelve hours all those in the Russian Church who had sought to unmask the pious rascal found themselves dismissed, while in their places were appointed certain of the most drunken and dissolute characters that in all the ages have ever disgraced the Christian religion, their head being the arch-plotter Bishop Teofan.About this time, after many secret meetings of the camarilla at Rasputin’s house, Protopopoff succeeded in bribing certain generals at the front with cash—money supplied from Germany, to prevent a further offensive. In consequence, at a dozen points along the Russian lines the troops were defeated and hurled back. This created exactly the impression desired by the camarilla, namely, to show to the Russian people that Germany was invincible, and that a separate peace was far preferable to continued hostility. It was to secure this that Rasputin and his gang were incessantly working.Scandal after scandal was brought to light, and more than one officer of the high Russian command was arrested and tried by court-martial. Rasputin and Protopopoff had now become more than ever unscrupulous. Generals and others who had accepted bribes to further Germany’s cause were secretly betrayed to the Ministry of War, care, however, always being taken that they could produce no absolute evidence against those who had previously been their paymasters.A notorious case was that of General Maslovsky, who, before the war, commanded the Thirteenth Army Corps at Smolensk. He, with General Rosen, commandant of the Twenty-third Army Corps at Warsaw, had been induced by a “sister-disciple” of Rasputin’s—a pretty young Frenchwoman—to accept a large sum paid into his account at the Volga Kama Bank in Moscow, provided that the Russians retreated in the Novo Georgievsk region. This they did, allowing great quantities of machine-guns, ammunition and motor lorries to fall into the enemy’s hands.In order to create scandal and public distrust, the “holy man” secretly denounced these two traitors, who were arrested and tried by court-martial at Samara. The prisoners in turn revealed the fact that big payments had been made by the young Frenchwoman. So she, in turn, was also arrested. Rasputin, however, did not lift a finger to save his catspaw. She declared that she had simply been the tool of the mock-monk, but the latter privately informed the President of the Court that the young Frenchwoman was a well-known spy of Germany known to the Court, and whom he had held in suspicion for a considerable time.No word against Rasputin’s loyalty was ever believed, for was he not the most intimate and loyal friend of both Emperor and Empress? Therefore the court-martial found the prisoners guilty, and the trio paid the penalty of all spies—they were shot in the barrack-square of Samara!This is but one illustration of Rasputin’s crafty intrigue and cool unscrupulousness. Possessed of a deeply criminal instinct as he was, it was impossible for him to do an honest action. He never failed to betray his friends, or even send them to their graves upon false charges secretly laid, if by so doing he could further his own despicable ends.The dissolute rascal, possessed of superhuman cunning, held Russia in the hollow of his hand, and aided by his fellow-scoundrel, Protopopoff, he could make or break the most powerful men in a single hour.That he was in active communication with Germany, and that the vile plots against the Russian arms were being manufactured in Berlin, is plainly shown by the following letter, which after his death was discovered, together with a quantity of other highly incriminating correspondence—which I shall disclose later—in a small safe concealed beneath the stone floor of the well-stocked wine-cellar at the house in the Gorokhovaya.It is in one of the sentence-ciphers of the German Secret Service, but fortunately in the same safe the de-cipher was found, and by it that communication as well as others is now revealed.The letter is written upon thin pale-yellow paper, so that it might be the more easily concealed. It had probably been bound up in the cardboard cover of a book and thus transmitted. This letter before me reads as follows:—“Number 70. August 16th, 1916.“Your reports upon the activity of Krusenstern (Commander of the 28th Army Corps), and also upon the friendship of Sakharoff and Yepantchine (two prominent members of the Duma), is duly noted. The firm of Berchmann Brothers, of Kiev, are paying into the Crédit Lyonnais in Petrograd 120,000 roubles to your account, with a similar sum to your friend S. (Boris Stürmer, Prime Minister of Russia).“Instructions are as follows: Suggest to S. this plan against the Duma. From the archives of the Ministry of the Interior he can obtain a list of the names and places of residence of thousands of Russian Revolutionists of the extreme school. These he can, if we order it, place in prison or have them tried by court-martial and shot. He will, however, act most generously and secretly. He will, under promise of protection send them forth as his agents, well supplied with funds, and thus arrange for a considerable number of pro-German Social Democrats to enter Petrograd and work alongside the Russian Anarchists, Tolstoyans, Pacifists, Communists and Red Socialists. With such a widespread propaganda of wild and fierce agitators in the munition factories, we shall be able to create strikes and commit outrages at any moment instructions are given. They should be ordered to continually urge the working men to strike and to riot, and thus begin the movement that is to make Europe a federation of Socialist republics. This plan attracts the working-class, and has already succeeded on the Clyde and in Ireland. Your only serious opponent is Gutchkoff, but you will arrange with the Empress that his activities be at once diverted into another sphere.“Enlist on our side as many members of the Duma as possible. Furnish from time to time a list of payments made by you, and the firm of Berchmann will sustain your balance at the Crédit Lyonnais.“We await the result of your good services, which are highly appreciated by His Majesty, and which will be amply and most generously rewarded when we have Russia in our hands, which will not be long.“Messages: Tell S. (Stürmer, the pro-German Prime Minister and a creature of the Empress) to be extremely careful of the Grand Duke Dmitri. He holds a compromising letter written by Nada Litvinoff regarding her attempt to suborn Brusiloff. The woman Litvinoff is reported to be staying at the Regina Hotel in Petrograd. No effort should be spared to obtain and destroy that letter, as it is very compromising. Professor Miliukoff should be removed. Ten thousand roubles will be paid for that service. J. or B. might be approached. Both are in need of money.“Instruct Anna (Madame Vyrubova) to tell the Empress to receive a woman named Geismann, who will demand audience at noon on August 30th. She carries a verbal message from the Emperor. It is important that you should know Countess Zia Kloieff, of Voronéje. She possesses influence in a certain military quarter that will eventually be most useful and highly essential.“H— (a spy whose identity is up to the present unknown) has fixed August 29th, at 11:30 a.m., for the disaster at the shell-filling factory at Krestovsky. An electric line is laid beneath the Neva, and all is prepared.“Salutations from all three of us.—N.”Such were the secret instructions received from Berlin by the murderous charlatan who posed as one of the most loyal Russians in the Empire.His reply, of which a copy is appended—for strangely—enough he was a businesslike rascal—is as follows. It is brief but to the point:—“Yours and remittances received. S. already at work. Have informed Her Majesty. All is being prepared for our great coup. The more disasters and loss of life in munition factories the better the impression towards yourselves. S. has already sent four hundred extreme revolutionists to the front with money and instructions. Have noted all your points. Martos takes this to Helsingfors, and will await your reply with any further orders.“Have had no instructions concerning the Englishman C. Please send. Suggest imprisonment upon false charge of espionage. If so, please send incriminating papers to produce as evidence.—G.”The scoundrel’s reply here before me is, in itself, in his own handwriting, the most damning evidence against him.That Stürmer and Protopopoff acted upon those instructions has since become apparent. Events have shown it. Puppets in the hands of the Emperor William, with money flowing to them in an ever-endless stream from businesslike sources entirely unsuspected by the highly patriotic banks handling those substantial amounts, they were swiftly yet surely undermining the greatness of the Russian Empire and seriously cutting the claws of the Russian bear. The “Russian steam-roller,” as certain English prophets—oh! save them!—were so fond of calling the Muscovite army in the early days of the war, was growing rusty for want of proper lubrication. Rasputin and his friends were placing its machinery in the reverse gear by their marvellously well-concealed intrigues, and their lavish distribution of money to those long-haired revolutionists who had honestly believed that by removing the autocrat they would liberate their dear Russia.No plot more subtle, more widespread, or more utterly amazing has ever been conceived in the whole world’s history than the one which I am here disclosing.A convicted criminal, a mere unmannered and uncouth peasant from far Siberia, held both Emperor and Empress of Russia beneath his thumb. He gave to both of them orders which they weakly obeyed. If one of the erotic scoundrel’s “sister-disciples” asked a favour—the appointment of lover or of husband to a lucrative post—he went at once to the Emperor, and actually with his own illiterate hand wrote out the orders for His Majesty to sign.And to that unkempt blackguard, who seldom indulged in the luxury of a bath. Her Majesty the Empress bowed her knee, honestly believing that the Almighty had endowed him with powers superhuman, and that he could cause disaster or death whenever he willed it.Further amazing and incriminating letters are before me as I write, and I shall print more of this secret correspondence in order that readers in Great Britain may know the depths of Germany’s villainy and the exact methods by which Russia has been betrayed.The officialdossierconcerning the crimes and conspiracies of the arch-scoundrel is astounding. It becomes increasingly amazing as one turns over its voluminous pages, its confidential reports, its copies of telegrams dispatched under fictitious names, since obtained from the telegraph bureaux of Russia, and its originals of secret instructions from Berlin.In the latter one finds the subtle hand of the notorious Steinhauer, the head of the Kaiser’s spy-bureau, the fair-bearded, middle-aged Prussian who accompanied the German Emperor to Buckingham Palace on his last visit to London, and who was one of the select party of German motorists who came to tour England with Prince Henry of Prussia at their head.It devolved upon myself to accompany and watch that tour very closely. Even then one department in Whitehall had not been chloroformed by the dope of the Sleep-quietly-in-your-beds Party—a department in the formation of which I had had some hand. Steinhauer I had met in Germany, though he did not know me, and when he came to England with His Imperial Highness, as Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart, driving his big red “Mercedes,” I considered that it was high time to keep a strict eye upon him—which I did. What I discovered of his movements and of his associates has been of greatest advantage since the outbreak of war.No more expert spy exists in all the world today than “Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart”, whose real name is Steinhauer, known in the German Secret Service as “Number Seventy.”Thedossierhere placed at my disposal shows that Herr Steinhauer visited Rasputin in Petrograd four times before August, 1914, while his underlings arrived at the house in the Gorokhovaya many times after the two Empires had come to grips.Rasputin, in his unique position as autocrat aver the Autocrat, felt himself the personal agent of the Kaiser, and as such seems to have somewhat resented Steinhauer’s rather arrogant orders. Indeed, he complained bitterly to the German Emperor, who, in reply, propitiated the Siberian peasant by explaining that he was so occupied by the campaign against his enemies that he left all matters of detail to “our trusted and loyal friend Steinhauer, whose actions and orders are as my own.”On August 28th, 1916, there arrived in Petrograd a pretty dark-haired young Dutch woman named Hélène Geismann. She presented a letter of introduction to Rasputin that evening at his house, and was promised audience of Her Majesty the Empress at noon next day.The monk was at Tsarskoe-Selo when the young woman called. It was a meeting day of the higher, or Court Circle of the “sister-disciples,” such séances being held at five o’clock each Friday afternoon.Three new “disciples” had been initiated into the mysteries of the mock-pious rascal’s new “religion.” Their names were the Baroness Zouieff, and Mesdemoiselles Olga Romanenkoff and Nadjezda Tavascherne, the two latter being of the noblest families of Moscow, and all moving in the Court entourage.Nicholas II was away at the front, therefore Rasputin on such occasions ruled the Empire, and actually signed with his own hand orders and appointments, as His Majesty’s representative. When the Emperor was absent the dirty, unkempt peasant, who called himself a monk, usurped his place in the Imperial household.Through this unprincipled scoundrel and blackmailer Germany was cleverly working to undermine and effect the fall of the Muscovite Empire. No expense was being spared, nor were there any scruples. Germany intended that the Russian defensive should crumble.When the Empress received the young woman Geismann, an emissary from Berlin and the bearer of several documents, including an autograph letter from the Kaiser, the “Holy Father” was also present. The superstitious, neurotic Empress could do nothing without the advice of the man who had by his mock-piety and his sensuous “religion” so completely entranced her. She, like her weak, narrow-minded husband, had become completely hypnotised by the dissolute charlatan, in whose hands lay absolute power.When the Kaiser’s messenger presented the secret letter to the Empress, she also handed another to Rasputin.This was found among the contents of the safe in the basement of “Grichka’s” house, and is in German, as follows:—“Strictly private and confidential.“General Headquarters in France, Montmedy, August 10th, 1916.“Your excellent service to our Empire has been reported to me by Herr Steinhauer. I congratulate you, happy in the knowledge that the Empress Alexandra has, in yourself, such a good and wise counsellor. You have done much, but there is still more good work for you to accomplish.“Your friends must see that there is an increasing lack of material and ammunition, that information reaches Berlin regarding orders for guns, explosives and automobiles placed in England, in order that we can watch for them near the Finland coast, and destroy them. Disasters on railways, in munition works and elsewhere are advisable. Steinhauer is sending you six trusted agents to effect these. Your friends must afford them official protection, and they must be also afforded opportunity.“I have also sent certain suggestions to Her Majesty the Empress which she will discuss with you. Your two most dangerous enemies at the moment appear to be Prince Yuri Lvov, who has a great following, and the man from Tiflis, M. Cheidze. If their activities could be ended, you would be in far less danger. It may be possible for you to arrange this. Consult with the Empress. It is my Imperial will that the payment arranged between us shall be doubled from this date. Salutations.“Wilhelm R. and I.”Could any letter be more incriminating? The Kaiser, with his constant appeals to Almighty God, was suggesting outrage and assassination to his paid agent—the man who, aided by the Prime Minister Stürmer and the blackmailer Protopopoff, held the future of Russia in his unwashed hands!For half-an-hour the young Dutch woman, the Kaiser’s secret messenger, was kept waiting in an ante-room while the Empress consulted with her “Holy Father.” Then at last Her Majesty handed the woman an autograph letter to take back to the Emperor William. All that is knows of the contents of that note is that it contained a promise that Germany should triumph.What chance had poor suffering Russia against such crafty underhand conspiracy? Every one of her proposed military movements were being betrayed to Germany long before they were executed, and thousands of lives of her fine soldiers were daily being sacrificed, while the arch-traitor Rasputin continued his career of good-living, heavy-drinking, and bi-weekly “reunions.”At these meetings the blackguard usually crossed his hands upon his breast, and with appalling blasphemy declared himself sent by the Almighty to deliver Russia from the invader.Towards all—to society, to those of the immoral cult that he had founded, to Russia’s millions, he posed as a stern patriot. Every one believed him to be so. If not, surely, he would not be so closely intimate with their Majesties they argued. Nobody in Russia dreamed that he was the agent of the Kaiser, or that the Empress had full knowledge of the great plot in progress.In the following month there occurred a number of mysterious disasters. Four explosions occurred in rapid succession; two at Petrograd, one at Moscow, and one at Kostrovna, all involving considerable loss of life, while troop trains were derailed at several important junctions, and other outrages committed, by which it was apparent that German agents were actively work. Yet the police were powerless to detect the perpetrators of these dastardly acts. Truly the black eagle of Prussia had struck its talons deep into Russia’s heart.Late one night Rasputin was carousing at his house with the Prime Minister Stürmer and two “sister-disciples,” young married women whose names were Baroness Gliuski and Madame Pantuhine, well-known in Petrograd society for their loose living, and who were helping the plotters and receiving large sums from German sources for their assistance. The “Father” had only an hour before returned from Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had knelt at the bedside of the poor little Tsarevitch and then performed a pretended miracle. The truth was that Madame Vyrubova had administered to the boy in secret several doses of that secret drug with which the mock-monk had provided her. In consequence, he had become ill and his Imperial mother had once again called Rasputin to “heal” him. This the fellow did, for Madame Vyrubova withheld the dose, and within four hours of Rasputin placing his dirty hands upon the poor boy’s brow and uttering those cabalistic nine words of jargon from one of the blasphemous prayers which the scoundrel had written for use by the “sister-disciples,” the heir had recovered. And in that way, with his degenerate confederate, the rascal worked his “miracles.”The four were seated around the monk’s dining-table, smoking and drinking, the two women ever and anon devotedly kissing the “saint’s” dirty hands, when his body-servant entered with a note for his master. As Rasputin read it his face fell.“Danger!” he gasped.“What is it?” inquired the bearded Prime Minister eagerly, putting down his glass of champagne untouched.“Letchitzki! He is arrested!”“Letchitzki!” echoed Boris Stürmer, who was in uniform, as he had been to a diplomatic function at the United States Embassy that night. “This is indeed serious for us! Why is he arrested? Who has dared to do that?”“Goutchkoff, Minister of Munitions, has ordered his arrest for embezzlement—ninety thousand roubles!”“Curse Goutchkoff!” cried Stürmer, starting up. “In that case, our friend Protopopoff, as Minister of the Interior, is powerless to act in his interest!”“Is it really very serious?” asked the fair-haired young Baroness, who was at that moment holding the “saint’s” hand.“Serious!” cried the uncouth Siberian peasant, who had so completely hypnotised both the women. “Very. If his trial took place he would certainly expose us! We cannot afford that. He has sent me this secret message placing the onus of his release upon me, and I must secure it at once. He has documents, letters I have written him. If they were found, then the whole affair must become public property!”“That must not be!” declared Stürmer. “At any moment Miliukoff, or that young lawyer Kerensky, may get to know.”“Kerensky was again arrested yesterday at my orders for his speech in the Duma,” said Rasputin. “I agree. The prosecution of Letchitzki must not proceed. It is far too dangerous.”“Is there anything I can do?” asked the pretty Baroness, one of the most unscrupulous women in Russia.“Yes,” replied the monk. “You know the Minister Goutchkoff. Go to him early to-morrow morning, and appeal on Letchitzki’s behalf. Take with you ninety thousand roubles which I will give you as soon as the banks open. Pretend to the Minister that he is your lover, that he has embezzled the money to pay for presents to yourself—then hand over the sum missing.”“Excellent idea!” declared Stürmer. “You are always ingenious when cornered, Gregory!”“By that we shall clear the way for further action. We must both see the Empress at once. It is not yet too late,” Rasputin added, and the merry quartette at once broke up, the “sister-disciples” to their own homes, and the monk to drive to the Palace.Both conspirators, so well-known, passed the sentries unchallenged, and traversing the long corridors to the private apartments, went by the gigantic Cossack on duty at the end, and through the big swing-doors to the luxurious wing of the great Palace.It was already long past midnight, and the only person they could find was the Tsar’s eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, who had with the eldest of her sisters entered Rasputin’s “sisterhood” a year before. Every one, including the servants, had retired. The Princess, who was reading an English novel in her own little sitting-room, appeared surprised to see the “Holy Father” at that hour, but took from him an urgent message to the Empress.Ten minutes later the Tsaritza, in a dainty lace boudoir-cap and rich silk kimono, entered the room where the pair of scoundrels awaited her.When alone, Rasputin revealed the fact of Letchitzki’s arrest, adding:“Thou canst realise the great danger to us all. If that man is brought before the Court believing that we have not endeavoured to save him, he will, no doubt, reveal and produce certain letters I have sent to him. Our plans will then become public, and Russia will rise and crush us! At present they do not suspect thee of any pro-German leanings. Thou art the great and patriotic Tsaritza. But if this prosecution proceeds, then assuredly will the truth become known!”“But, Holy Father, what can I do?” asked the weak hysterical woman, alarmed and distracted.“Thou must telegraph at once to thy husband to order the prosecution to be dropped,” said the crafty scoundrel, standing in that erect attitude he was so fond of assuming, with one hand upon his breast and the other behind his back.“I will do all that you wish,” was her eager response, and she sat down at once to write the message to the Tsar who, on that night, was with his gallant soldiers at the front.“Paul Letchitzki, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Munitions, has been arrested for embezzlement of public funds,” she wrote. “It is highly necessary, for our peace, that the prosecution shall be instantly stopped. Every moment’s delay means danger. I will explain when you return. Telegraph your order for his immediate release and the end of all proceedings against him. I await your acknowledgment.—Alec.”Then, having read the telegram, of which both men approved, she gave Rasputin her golden bangle from her wrist. From it was suspended the tiny master-key of the escritoire in her boudoir.“Will you, my Holy Father, fetch me my private cipher-book?” she asked the mock-monk, at the same time bending and kissing his hand.The fellow knew where the little book was kept in such privacy, and in a few moments he had brought it. Then Stürmer at once sat down and put the message into cipher, afterwards taking it himself to the clerk in the telegraph room on the other side of the Palace, for transmission to the Emperor.At ten o’clock next morning a reply in code was handed to the Empress. When, with the aid of her little book, she de-coded it, she read:“I cannot understand how the prosecution of a thief of whose name I am ignorant can affect us adversely. I have, however, at your desire ordered his release and the suppression of all proceedings.—Nikki.”To this, the Tsaritza, after she had sent a copy of the reassuring despatch to Rasputin, replied:“I thank you for your kind generosity. How noble of you! Accused was an innocent victim of his enemies, and our action shows that you are open and just. Our Father and myself anxiously await your return.—Alec.” The moment Rasputin received the message from the hands of the trusted Cossack, Ivan Khanoff, the personal guardian of the young Tsarevitch, whom the Empress trusted with all her private correspondence, he telegraphed to Boris Stürmer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, telling him of the order of the Tsar.And both laughed triumphantly at each other over the telephone. Yet both certainly had had a very narrow escape of exposure, and for the first time the Tsaritza saw the handwriting on the wall.

Rasputin, though revealing himself constantly as a blasphemous blackguard, had by the middle of 1916 become the greatest power in Russia. Through his good offices Germany hoped to crush the Empire.

Examination of the confidential reports concerning his scandalous activities here before me causes me to halt aghast that the Imperial Court, which I attended in peace time, Petrograd society, and the hard-working classes in Russia, should have become so completely and so utterly hypnotised by his disgraceful “religion.” The latter had eaten into the Empire’s heart, causing an outburst of open and disgraceful immorality in the higher circles—a new “sensation” that was appalling. In Moscow, Kazan, Tambov, and other cities, “circles” of the “Sister-Disciples” had been eagerly formed, together with a branch which were meeting in secret at a small old-world monastery called Jedelevo, in the Province of Simbirsk, and about whose doings many scandalous whispers reached Petrograd.

“Grichka” possessed the reputation of being a popular preacher. That was not so. He had never been ordained a priest; he was a pure adventurer, and did not belong to any ecclesiastical order. Therefore he had no licence to preach in a church. He was simply a Siberian peasant convicted of theft, blackmail, and outrage, who had set himself up to be a “holy man.” And as such, all Russia, from the Empress downwards, accepted him and swallowed any lie that he might utter. Truly the whole situation was amazing in this twentieth century.

He preached often to his “sister-disciples” in theirsalons, and sometimes at “At Homes,” where fast society women who had fallen beneath the pious scoundrel’s fascination hoped to make other converts. To such “At Homes” only young and pretty women were ever invited. Rasputin had no use for the old and angular.

One evening one of these reunions for recruiting purposes was held by the yellow-toothed old Baroness Guerbel, at her big house in the Potemkinskaya, and to it a young married woman, wife of an officer named Yatchevski, who was well-known in Petrograd, had been invited. Her husband, hearing of this, called three of his own burly Cossacks, and next night they concealed themselves close to Rasputin’s house. There they waited until the bearded “holy man” emerged to go upon his usual evening visit to the Winter Palace; when the men suddenly sprang upon him, and hustling him into a narrow side street, stripped him of his finely embroidered silk shirt, of the usual Russian model, his wide velvet knickerbockers, and his patent-leather top-boots. After that they administered to the fellow a sound and well-deserved thrashing, having first gagged and bound him. Afterwards they placed him, attired only in his underwear, upon a manure heap in a neighbouring stable-yard, while the clothes they had taken from him were packed in a big cardboard costume-box and delivered by special messenger privately to the Empress at the Palace.

Her Majesty was, of course, furiously indignant that her dear “Father” should thus be made, sport of. At once a rigid inquiry was ordered, but the perpetrators of the well-merited punishment were never discovered.

Rasputin was ever active as head of the camarilla. The attention of the Holy Synod had time after time been called to the amazing exploits of this pious charlatan, until at last it was deemed expedient to hold yet another inquiry, into the fellow’s conduct.

Supplied with German money, he employed spies on every hand to keep him informed of any untoward circumstances, or any undue inquisitiveness. So he quickly heard of this proposed inquiry and consulted Bishop Teofan, brother of one of his favourite “sister-disciples,” who lived in Siberia. That night both Monk and Bishop sought the Tsar and Tsaritza. Rasputin declared angrily that there was a most formidable plot against himself. He therefore intended to leave Petrograd, and return to Siberia for ever.

“Because by divine grace I possess the power off healing, thy Church is jealous of me,” he declared to the Emperor. “The Holy Synod is seeking my overthrow! Always have I acted for the benefit of mankind, and so through me thy dear son is under God’s grace. But the Russian Church seeks to drive me forth. Therefore, I must bow to the inevitable—and I Will depart?”

“No! No!” cried the Empress in despair. Then, turning quickly to her husband, who had left some important business of State, which he was transacting in his private cabinet with the War Minister, Her Majesty exclaimed:

“Nikki. This ecclesiastical interference cannot be tolerated. It is abominable! We cannot lose our dear Father! Order a list of his enemies in the Church to be made, and at once dismiss them all. Put our friends into their places.”

“If thou wilt leave matters entirely to me,” said the sham saint, addressing the feeble yet honest autocrat, “I will furnish the list, together with names of their successors.”

“I give thee a free hand, dear Gregory,” was the Emperor’s reply. Within twelve hours all those in the Russian Church who had sought to unmask the pious rascal found themselves dismissed, while in their places were appointed certain of the most drunken and dissolute characters that in all the ages have ever disgraced the Christian religion, their head being the arch-plotter Bishop Teofan.

About this time, after many secret meetings of the camarilla at Rasputin’s house, Protopopoff succeeded in bribing certain generals at the front with cash—money supplied from Germany, to prevent a further offensive. In consequence, at a dozen points along the Russian lines the troops were defeated and hurled back. This created exactly the impression desired by the camarilla, namely, to show to the Russian people that Germany was invincible, and that a separate peace was far preferable to continued hostility. It was to secure this that Rasputin and his gang were incessantly working.

Scandal after scandal was brought to light, and more than one officer of the high Russian command was arrested and tried by court-martial. Rasputin and Protopopoff had now become more than ever unscrupulous. Generals and others who had accepted bribes to further Germany’s cause were secretly betrayed to the Ministry of War, care, however, always being taken that they could produce no absolute evidence against those who had previously been their paymasters.

A notorious case was that of General Maslovsky, who, before the war, commanded the Thirteenth Army Corps at Smolensk. He, with General Rosen, commandant of the Twenty-third Army Corps at Warsaw, had been induced by a “sister-disciple” of Rasputin’s—a pretty young Frenchwoman—to accept a large sum paid into his account at the Volga Kama Bank in Moscow, provided that the Russians retreated in the Novo Georgievsk region. This they did, allowing great quantities of machine-guns, ammunition and motor lorries to fall into the enemy’s hands.

In order to create scandal and public distrust, the “holy man” secretly denounced these two traitors, who were arrested and tried by court-martial at Samara. The prisoners in turn revealed the fact that big payments had been made by the young Frenchwoman. So she, in turn, was also arrested. Rasputin, however, did not lift a finger to save his catspaw. She declared that she had simply been the tool of the mock-monk, but the latter privately informed the President of the Court that the young Frenchwoman was a well-known spy of Germany known to the Court, and whom he had held in suspicion for a considerable time.

No word against Rasputin’s loyalty was ever believed, for was he not the most intimate and loyal friend of both Emperor and Empress? Therefore the court-martial found the prisoners guilty, and the trio paid the penalty of all spies—they were shot in the barrack-square of Samara!

This is but one illustration of Rasputin’s crafty intrigue and cool unscrupulousness. Possessed of a deeply criminal instinct as he was, it was impossible for him to do an honest action. He never failed to betray his friends, or even send them to their graves upon false charges secretly laid, if by so doing he could further his own despicable ends.

The dissolute rascal, possessed of superhuman cunning, held Russia in the hollow of his hand, and aided by his fellow-scoundrel, Protopopoff, he could make or break the most powerful men in a single hour.

That he was in active communication with Germany, and that the vile plots against the Russian arms were being manufactured in Berlin, is plainly shown by the following letter, which after his death was discovered, together with a quantity of other highly incriminating correspondence—which I shall disclose later—in a small safe concealed beneath the stone floor of the well-stocked wine-cellar at the house in the Gorokhovaya.

It is in one of the sentence-ciphers of the German Secret Service, but fortunately in the same safe the de-cipher was found, and by it that communication as well as others is now revealed.

The letter is written upon thin pale-yellow paper, so that it might be the more easily concealed. It had probably been bound up in the cardboard cover of a book and thus transmitted. This letter before me reads as follows:—

“Number 70. August 16th, 1916.

“Your reports upon the activity of Krusenstern (Commander of the 28th Army Corps), and also upon the friendship of Sakharoff and Yepantchine (two prominent members of the Duma), is duly noted. The firm of Berchmann Brothers, of Kiev, are paying into the Crédit Lyonnais in Petrograd 120,000 roubles to your account, with a similar sum to your friend S. (Boris Stürmer, Prime Minister of Russia).

“Instructions are as follows: Suggest to S. this plan against the Duma. From the archives of the Ministry of the Interior he can obtain a list of the names and places of residence of thousands of Russian Revolutionists of the extreme school. These he can, if we order it, place in prison or have them tried by court-martial and shot. He will, however, act most generously and secretly. He will, under promise of protection send them forth as his agents, well supplied with funds, and thus arrange for a considerable number of pro-German Social Democrats to enter Petrograd and work alongside the Russian Anarchists, Tolstoyans, Pacifists, Communists and Red Socialists. With such a widespread propaganda of wild and fierce agitators in the munition factories, we shall be able to create strikes and commit outrages at any moment instructions are given. They should be ordered to continually urge the working men to strike and to riot, and thus begin the movement that is to make Europe a federation of Socialist republics. This plan attracts the working-class, and has already succeeded on the Clyde and in Ireland. Your only serious opponent is Gutchkoff, but you will arrange with the Empress that his activities be at once diverted into another sphere.

“Enlist on our side as many members of the Duma as possible. Furnish from time to time a list of payments made by you, and the firm of Berchmann will sustain your balance at the Crédit Lyonnais.

“We await the result of your good services, which are highly appreciated by His Majesty, and which will be amply and most generously rewarded when we have Russia in our hands, which will not be long.

“Messages: Tell S. (Stürmer, the pro-German Prime Minister and a creature of the Empress) to be extremely careful of the Grand Duke Dmitri. He holds a compromising letter written by Nada Litvinoff regarding her attempt to suborn Brusiloff. The woman Litvinoff is reported to be staying at the Regina Hotel in Petrograd. No effort should be spared to obtain and destroy that letter, as it is very compromising. Professor Miliukoff should be removed. Ten thousand roubles will be paid for that service. J. or B. might be approached. Both are in need of money.

“Instruct Anna (Madame Vyrubova) to tell the Empress to receive a woman named Geismann, who will demand audience at noon on August 30th. She carries a verbal message from the Emperor. It is important that you should know Countess Zia Kloieff, of Voronéje. She possesses influence in a certain military quarter that will eventually be most useful and highly essential.

“H— (a spy whose identity is up to the present unknown) has fixed August 29th, at 11:30 a.m., for the disaster at the shell-filling factory at Krestovsky. An electric line is laid beneath the Neva, and all is prepared.

“Salutations from all three of us.—N.”

Such were the secret instructions received from Berlin by the murderous charlatan who posed as one of the most loyal Russians in the Empire.

His reply, of which a copy is appended—for strangely—enough he was a businesslike rascal—is as follows. It is brief but to the point:—

“Yours and remittances received. S. already at work. Have informed Her Majesty. All is being prepared for our great coup. The more disasters and loss of life in munition factories the better the impression towards yourselves. S. has already sent four hundred extreme revolutionists to the front with money and instructions. Have noted all your points. Martos takes this to Helsingfors, and will await your reply with any further orders.

“Have had no instructions concerning the Englishman C. Please send. Suggest imprisonment upon false charge of espionage. If so, please send incriminating papers to produce as evidence.—G.”

The scoundrel’s reply here before me is, in itself, in his own handwriting, the most damning evidence against him.

That Stürmer and Protopopoff acted upon those instructions has since become apparent. Events have shown it. Puppets in the hands of the Emperor William, with money flowing to them in an ever-endless stream from businesslike sources entirely unsuspected by the highly patriotic banks handling those substantial amounts, they were swiftly yet surely undermining the greatness of the Russian Empire and seriously cutting the claws of the Russian bear. The “Russian steam-roller,” as certain English prophets—oh! save them!—were so fond of calling the Muscovite army in the early days of the war, was growing rusty for want of proper lubrication. Rasputin and his friends were placing its machinery in the reverse gear by their marvellously well-concealed intrigues, and their lavish distribution of money to those long-haired revolutionists who had honestly believed that by removing the autocrat they would liberate their dear Russia.

No plot more subtle, more widespread, or more utterly amazing has ever been conceived in the whole world’s history than the one which I am here disclosing.

A convicted criminal, a mere unmannered and uncouth peasant from far Siberia, held both Emperor and Empress of Russia beneath his thumb. He gave to both of them orders which they weakly obeyed. If one of the erotic scoundrel’s “sister-disciples” asked a favour—the appointment of lover or of husband to a lucrative post—he went at once to the Emperor, and actually with his own illiterate hand wrote out the orders for His Majesty to sign.

And to that unkempt blackguard, who seldom indulged in the luxury of a bath. Her Majesty the Empress bowed her knee, honestly believing that the Almighty had endowed him with powers superhuman, and that he could cause disaster or death whenever he willed it.

Further amazing and incriminating letters are before me as I write, and I shall print more of this secret correspondence in order that readers in Great Britain may know the depths of Germany’s villainy and the exact methods by which Russia has been betrayed.

The officialdossierconcerning the crimes and conspiracies of the arch-scoundrel is astounding. It becomes increasingly amazing as one turns over its voluminous pages, its confidential reports, its copies of telegrams dispatched under fictitious names, since obtained from the telegraph bureaux of Russia, and its originals of secret instructions from Berlin.

In the latter one finds the subtle hand of the notorious Steinhauer, the head of the Kaiser’s spy-bureau, the fair-bearded, middle-aged Prussian who accompanied the German Emperor to Buckingham Palace on his last visit to London, and who was one of the select party of German motorists who came to tour England with Prince Henry of Prussia at their head.

It devolved upon myself to accompany and watch that tour very closely. Even then one department in Whitehall had not been chloroformed by the dope of the Sleep-quietly-in-your-beds Party—a department in the formation of which I had had some hand. Steinhauer I had met in Germany, though he did not know me, and when he came to England with His Imperial Highness, as Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart, driving his big red “Mercedes,” I considered that it was high time to keep a strict eye upon him—which I did. What I discovered of his movements and of his associates has been of greatest advantage since the outbreak of war.

No more expert spy exists in all the world today than “Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart”, whose real name is Steinhauer, known in the German Secret Service as “Number Seventy.”

Thedossierhere placed at my disposal shows that Herr Steinhauer visited Rasputin in Petrograd four times before August, 1914, while his underlings arrived at the house in the Gorokhovaya many times after the two Empires had come to grips.

Rasputin, in his unique position as autocrat aver the Autocrat, felt himself the personal agent of the Kaiser, and as such seems to have somewhat resented Steinhauer’s rather arrogant orders. Indeed, he complained bitterly to the German Emperor, who, in reply, propitiated the Siberian peasant by explaining that he was so occupied by the campaign against his enemies that he left all matters of detail to “our trusted and loyal friend Steinhauer, whose actions and orders are as my own.”

On August 28th, 1916, there arrived in Petrograd a pretty dark-haired young Dutch woman named Hélène Geismann. She presented a letter of introduction to Rasputin that evening at his house, and was promised audience of Her Majesty the Empress at noon next day.

The monk was at Tsarskoe-Selo when the young woman called. It was a meeting day of the higher, or Court Circle of the “sister-disciples,” such séances being held at five o’clock each Friday afternoon.

Three new “disciples” had been initiated into the mysteries of the mock-pious rascal’s new “religion.” Their names were the Baroness Zouieff, and Mesdemoiselles Olga Romanenkoff and Nadjezda Tavascherne, the two latter being of the noblest families of Moscow, and all moving in the Court entourage.

Nicholas II was away at the front, therefore Rasputin on such occasions ruled the Empire, and actually signed with his own hand orders and appointments, as His Majesty’s representative. When the Emperor was absent the dirty, unkempt peasant, who called himself a monk, usurped his place in the Imperial household.

Through this unprincipled scoundrel and blackmailer Germany was cleverly working to undermine and effect the fall of the Muscovite Empire. No expense was being spared, nor were there any scruples. Germany intended that the Russian defensive should crumble.

When the Empress received the young woman Geismann, an emissary from Berlin and the bearer of several documents, including an autograph letter from the Kaiser, the “Holy Father” was also present. The superstitious, neurotic Empress could do nothing without the advice of the man who had by his mock-piety and his sensuous “religion” so completely entranced her. She, like her weak, narrow-minded husband, had become completely hypnotised by the dissolute charlatan, in whose hands lay absolute power.

When the Kaiser’s messenger presented the secret letter to the Empress, she also handed another to Rasputin.

This was found among the contents of the safe in the basement of “Grichka’s” house, and is in German, as follows:—

“Strictly private and confidential.

“General Headquarters in France, Montmedy, August 10th, 1916.

“Your excellent service to our Empire has been reported to me by Herr Steinhauer. I congratulate you, happy in the knowledge that the Empress Alexandra has, in yourself, such a good and wise counsellor. You have done much, but there is still more good work for you to accomplish.

“Your friends must see that there is an increasing lack of material and ammunition, that information reaches Berlin regarding orders for guns, explosives and automobiles placed in England, in order that we can watch for them near the Finland coast, and destroy them. Disasters on railways, in munition works and elsewhere are advisable. Steinhauer is sending you six trusted agents to effect these. Your friends must afford them official protection, and they must be also afforded opportunity.

“I have also sent certain suggestions to Her Majesty the Empress which she will discuss with you. Your two most dangerous enemies at the moment appear to be Prince Yuri Lvov, who has a great following, and the man from Tiflis, M. Cheidze. If their activities could be ended, you would be in far less danger. It may be possible for you to arrange this. Consult with the Empress. It is my Imperial will that the payment arranged between us shall be doubled from this date. Salutations.

“Wilhelm R. and I.”

Could any letter be more incriminating? The Kaiser, with his constant appeals to Almighty God, was suggesting outrage and assassination to his paid agent—the man who, aided by the Prime Minister Stürmer and the blackmailer Protopopoff, held the future of Russia in his unwashed hands!

For half-an-hour the young Dutch woman, the Kaiser’s secret messenger, was kept waiting in an ante-room while the Empress consulted with her “Holy Father.” Then at last Her Majesty handed the woman an autograph letter to take back to the Emperor William. All that is knows of the contents of that note is that it contained a promise that Germany should triumph.

What chance had poor suffering Russia against such crafty underhand conspiracy? Every one of her proposed military movements were being betrayed to Germany long before they were executed, and thousands of lives of her fine soldiers were daily being sacrificed, while the arch-traitor Rasputin continued his career of good-living, heavy-drinking, and bi-weekly “reunions.”

At these meetings the blackguard usually crossed his hands upon his breast, and with appalling blasphemy declared himself sent by the Almighty to deliver Russia from the invader.

Towards all—to society, to those of the immoral cult that he had founded, to Russia’s millions, he posed as a stern patriot. Every one believed him to be so. If not, surely, he would not be so closely intimate with their Majesties they argued. Nobody in Russia dreamed that he was the agent of the Kaiser, or that the Empress had full knowledge of the great plot in progress.

In the following month there occurred a number of mysterious disasters. Four explosions occurred in rapid succession; two at Petrograd, one at Moscow, and one at Kostrovna, all involving considerable loss of life, while troop trains were derailed at several important junctions, and other outrages committed, by which it was apparent that German agents were actively work. Yet the police were powerless to detect the perpetrators of these dastardly acts. Truly the black eagle of Prussia had struck its talons deep into Russia’s heart.

Late one night Rasputin was carousing at his house with the Prime Minister Stürmer and two “sister-disciples,” young married women whose names were Baroness Gliuski and Madame Pantuhine, well-known in Petrograd society for their loose living, and who were helping the plotters and receiving large sums from German sources for their assistance. The “Father” had only an hour before returned from Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had knelt at the bedside of the poor little Tsarevitch and then performed a pretended miracle. The truth was that Madame Vyrubova had administered to the boy in secret several doses of that secret drug with which the mock-monk had provided her. In consequence, he had become ill and his Imperial mother had once again called Rasputin to “heal” him. This the fellow did, for Madame Vyrubova withheld the dose, and within four hours of Rasputin placing his dirty hands upon the poor boy’s brow and uttering those cabalistic nine words of jargon from one of the blasphemous prayers which the scoundrel had written for use by the “sister-disciples,” the heir had recovered. And in that way, with his degenerate confederate, the rascal worked his “miracles.”

The four were seated around the monk’s dining-table, smoking and drinking, the two women ever and anon devotedly kissing the “saint’s” dirty hands, when his body-servant entered with a note for his master. As Rasputin read it his face fell.

“Danger!” he gasped.

“What is it?” inquired the bearded Prime Minister eagerly, putting down his glass of champagne untouched.

“Letchitzki! He is arrested!”

“Letchitzki!” echoed Boris Stürmer, who was in uniform, as he had been to a diplomatic function at the United States Embassy that night. “This is indeed serious for us! Why is he arrested? Who has dared to do that?”

“Goutchkoff, Minister of Munitions, has ordered his arrest for embezzlement—ninety thousand roubles!”

“Curse Goutchkoff!” cried Stürmer, starting up. “In that case, our friend Protopopoff, as Minister of the Interior, is powerless to act in his interest!”

“Is it really very serious?” asked the fair-haired young Baroness, who was at that moment holding the “saint’s” hand.

“Serious!” cried the uncouth Siberian peasant, who had so completely hypnotised both the women. “Very. If his trial took place he would certainly expose us! We cannot afford that. He has sent me this secret message placing the onus of his release upon me, and I must secure it at once. He has documents, letters I have written him. If they were found, then the whole affair must become public property!”

“That must not be!” declared Stürmer. “At any moment Miliukoff, or that young lawyer Kerensky, may get to know.”

“Kerensky was again arrested yesterday at my orders for his speech in the Duma,” said Rasputin. “I agree. The prosecution of Letchitzki must not proceed. It is far too dangerous.”

“Is there anything I can do?” asked the pretty Baroness, one of the most unscrupulous women in Russia.

“Yes,” replied the monk. “You know the Minister Goutchkoff. Go to him early to-morrow morning, and appeal on Letchitzki’s behalf. Take with you ninety thousand roubles which I will give you as soon as the banks open. Pretend to the Minister that he is your lover, that he has embezzled the money to pay for presents to yourself—then hand over the sum missing.”

“Excellent idea!” declared Stürmer. “You are always ingenious when cornered, Gregory!”

“By that we shall clear the way for further action. We must both see the Empress at once. It is not yet too late,” Rasputin added, and the merry quartette at once broke up, the “sister-disciples” to their own homes, and the monk to drive to the Palace.

Both conspirators, so well-known, passed the sentries unchallenged, and traversing the long corridors to the private apartments, went by the gigantic Cossack on duty at the end, and through the big swing-doors to the luxurious wing of the great Palace.

It was already long past midnight, and the only person they could find was the Tsar’s eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, who had with the eldest of her sisters entered Rasputin’s “sisterhood” a year before. Every one, including the servants, had retired. The Princess, who was reading an English novel in her own little sitting-room, appeared surprised to see the “Holy Father” at that hour, but took from him an urgent message to the Empress.

Ten minutes later the Tsaritza, in a dainty lace boudoir-cap and rich silk kimono, entered the room where the pair of scoundrels awaited her.

When alone, Rasputin revealed the fact of Letchitzki’s arrest, adding:

“Thou canst realise the great danger to us all. If that man is brought before the Court believing that we have not endeavoured to save him, he will, no doubt, reveal and produce certain letters I have sent to him. Our plans will then become public, and Russia will rise and crush us! At present they do not suspect thee of any pro-German leanings. Thou art the great and patriotic Tsaritza. But if this prosecution proceeds, then assuredly will the truth become known!”

“But, Holy Father, what can I do?” asked the weak hysterical woman, alarmed and distracted.

“Thou must telegraph at once to thy husband to order the prosecution to be dropped,” said the crafty scoundrel, standing in that erect attitude he was so fond of assuming, with one hand upon his breast and the other behind his back.

“I will do all that you wish,” was her eager response, and she sat down at once to write the message to the Tsar who, on that night, was with his gallant soldiers at the front.

“Paul Letchitzki, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Munitions, has been arrested for embezzlement of public funds,” she wrote. “It is highly necessary, for our peace, that the prosecution shall be instantly stopped. Every moment’s delay means danger. I will explain when you return. Telegraph your order for his immediate release and the end of all proceedings against him. I await your acknowledgment.—Alec.”

Then, having read the telegram, of which both men approved, she gave Rasputin her golden bangle from her wrist. From it was suspended the tiny master-key of the escritoire in her boudoir.

“Will you, my Holy Father, fetch me my private cipher-book?” she asked the mock-monk, at the same time bending and kissing his hand.

The fellow knew where the little book was kept in such privacy, and in a few moments he had brought it. Then Stürmer at once sat down and put the message into cipher, afterwards taking it himself to the clerk in the telegraph room on the other side of the Palace, for transmission to the Emperor.

At ten o’clock next morning a reply in code was handed to the Empress. When, with the aid of her little book, she de-coded it, she read:

“I cannot understand how the prosecution of a thief of whose name I am ignorant can affect us adversely. I have, however, at your desire ordered his release and the suppression of all proceedings.—Nikki.”

To this, the Tsaritza, after she had sent a copy of the reassuring despatch to Rasputin, replied:

“I thank you for your kind generosity. How noble of you! Accused was an innocent victim of his enemies, and our action shows that you are open and just. Our Father and myself anxiously await your return.—Alec.” The moment Rasputin received the message from the hands of the trusted Cossack, Ivan Khanoff, the personal guardian of the young Tsarevitch, whom the Empress trusted with all her private correspondence, he telegraphed to Boris Stürmer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, telling him of the order of the Tsar.

And both laughed triumphantly at each other over the telephone. Yet both certainly had had a very narrow escape of exposure, and for the first time the Tsaritza saw the handwriting on the wall.

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