The Minister of Evil Part 26

I was compelled to return to Perm and inform Rasputin of the result of my investigations. Before doing so I went, at Rasputin's instructions by telegraph, to Peterhof and was admitted by Madame Vyrubova to the Empress's presence.

The handsome woman was resting in a gorgeous negligee gown prior to dressing for dinner, but she was quickly eager and interested when I explained that I had come from the monk and was returning to Perm at midnight.

"When will the Holy Father's pilgrimage end?" she inquired with a sigh.

"He has been away weeks, and never replies to my letters."

"His time is no doubt fully occupied with constant devotion," remarked Anna Vyrubova in excuse.

"The Father is much occupied, Your Majesty," I said.

"Tell him for me that I am daily longing for his return," she said. "But wait. I will write to him and you shall convey the letter," at which order I bowed.

"The Father is much troubled and perturbed," I remarked.

"About what?" asked Her Majesty.

"He has enemies. Some men and women have leagued themselves with the object of doing him harm."

"Harm!" she echoed. "What harm can come to him when, being sent to us by G.o.d, he is immune from any harm that can befall us who are merely human?

I do not understand."

Her words were in themselves sufficient to reveal how completely and implicitly the Empress of Russia believed in the pretended divinity of the blasphemous ex-convict.

"All I know, Your Majesty, is that the holy Father is unduly perturbed."

"Ah! surely he can have no apprehension?" she said. "Tell him from me that as Christ had enemies so, of course, he has. But his enemies cannot do him injury." Then rising and going across to a beautiful buhl escritoire, she added: "I will write to him. I sent him another letter by messenger only yesterday--eight letters, and not a line of response!"

For ten minutes or so, while the Empress sat writing, I chatted with Madame Vyrubova, and gave to her news of the monk.

"Tell him to return as quickly as possible," the woman said in a low, confidential voice. "If there really is a plot on foot against him he is safer in Petrograd than in Perm. Besides, being on the spot, he will be able to combat his enemies with a swift and relentless hand."

As Her Majesty was writing the telephone rang. Next moment it was plain that she was speaking with the Emperor, who was away at the headquarters of the army in Poland.

Having listened to something he told her, she said:

"The holy Father's secretary is here with me. The Father still remains at Perm. I am writing him urgently asking him to return to us. I wish you also to send a messenger to him to induce him to come back to Petrograd.

You will be back here next Friday, and is it not wise to hold another seance next day, eh?"

Then she listened eagerly.

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "I am glad you agree with me, Nikki. Yes, let us try and get the Father back by Sat.u.r.day at latest. Good-bye."

And having rung off, she calmly finished the letter and secured it with the well-known big seal of black wax.

"Remember," she said as she gave it to me, "the Father must be here next Sat.u.r.day for the seance, which the Emperor will attend. He wishes again to consult the spirit of his father Alexander. Urge the Father to return at once."

I promised to do her bidding, and, retiring, at once left the palace, and at midnight was on my way back to the far-off town on the Kama.

On the evening of the following day I drove up to the monastery and there found Rasputin at dinner with the ex-conjurer Rouchine. When I entered the cosy little room in which the pair were seated, Rasputin had removed his long robe and was seated in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves like the peasant he was. I handed him the letter from the German-born Empress, whereupon he said:

"Oh! read it to me, Feodor. The woman's handwriting is always a puzzle to me."

I knew how illiterate he was and the reason of his excuse.

I tore open the envelope and quickly scanned the scribbled lines.

"No," I replied, "not now, Gregory; later."

"But I insist!" cried the Starets fiercely.

"And I refuse!" was my determined reply. "I have reasons."

Those last three words were not lost upon him, for Grichka was nothing if not the very acme of shrewdness. Not an adventurer or _escroc_ in Europe could compare with him in elusiveness.

"Well, Feodor, if you have reasons, then I know that they are sound ones," he said. Then, turning to the "holy" conjurer, he grinned and said: "Feodor is a most excellent secretary. So discreet--too discreet, I often think."

"One cannot be too discreet in the present international crisis," I remarked. "Enemy eyes and ears are open everywhere. One can never be too careful. Russia is full of the spies of Germany."

"Quite true, Feodor--quite true!" exclaimed Rasputin, smiling within himself. "Don't you agree, friend Rouchine?"

"Entirely," replied his accomplice, who, though he was well paid to a.s.sist in working "miracles" before the peasants, never dreamed that the Starets, who handed him money with such lavish hand, was the chief agent of Germany in Russia.

Indeed, Rouchine's only son had been killed in the advance on Warsaw, hence he held the Hun in abhorrence, and I am certain that had he known Rasputin was the Kaiser's personal agent matters would have gone very differently, and in all probability the enemy plots so cleverly connived at by Alexandra Feodorovna would have been exposed in those early days of the war.

The Russian nation even to-day still reveres its Tsar. They know that he was weak but meant well, and he was Russian at heart and intent upon stemming the Teutonic tide which flowed across his border. But for "the German," Alexandra Feodorovna, not one in all our Russian millions has a word except an execration or a curse, and as accursed by Russia, as is all her breed, she will go down in history for the detestation of generations of those who will live between the Baltic and the Pacific.

Rasputin grew indignant because I crushed the woman's letter into my pocket without reading it aloud, but I knew well how to treat him, therefore I began to explain all that I had learnt from the Secret Police concerning the activities of Ivan Naglovski.

Both men listened with rapt attention.

"Then the fellow really intends evil?" asked the monk, as he laid down a chicken-bone, for he always ate with his fingers.

"I fear he does," was my reply. "But Her Majesty wonders why you should trouble. She says that you, being sent as Russia's saviour, are immune from bodily harm."

"Ah! but remember when that young fellow shot at you and grazed two of your fingers at Minsk," remarked the conjurer with a grin.

"Yes, quite so. I don't like this fellow Naglovski and his friends. I will see Kurloff."

Now, Kurloff was another treacherous bureaucrat, a creature of Rasputin's, who sat in Protopopoff's Ministry of the Interior, and who later on collected the gangs of the "Black Hundred," those hired a.s.sa.s.sins whom he clothed in police uniforms and had instructed in machine-gun practice--those renegades who played such a sinister part in the first Revolution.

I then gave the monk the urgent message from the Empress.

"Very well," he replied, "I will be back by Sat.u.r.day; not because I obey the woman, but became I must see Kurloff, and I must take active steps against this Ivan Naglovski and his accursed friends."

Half-an-hour later, when alone in the bare little room allotted to me, I took out the Empress's letter to the Starets and re-read it. It was as follows:

"HOLY FATHER,--It is with deepest concern that from your trusted Feodor I hear of the plot against you. That you can be harmed I do not believe. You, sent by G.o.d as Russia's guide to the bright future of civilisation which Germany will bring to her, cannot be harmed by mere mortal. But if there are any who dare dispute your divine right, then, with our dear Sturmer, take at once drastic steps to crush them.