The Minister of Evil Part 9

Instead of going to Tsarskoe-Selo we retired to the saint's little den, where we opened a bottle of champagne, of which we all three drank.

"Well, my friend Hardt?" asked the monk, flinging himself carelessly into his easy chair and unb.u.t.toning his long black coat for comfort. "What has happened? You can, as you know, speak before our faithful Feodor," he added.

"I have waiting outside a young woman whom I want you to see," replied the German agent.

"Does she wish to enter our circle?" inquired the monk, adding with his usual avariciousness: "Has she money?"

"No--neither," was Hardt's reply. "She does not want to become one of your disciples; indeed, the less you say on that matter the better!"

"Then why should I trouble to see her?"

"I will tell you all after you have chatted with her. May Feodor invite her in? She is sitting in a droshky outside."

"If you wish," growled Rasputin. "But why all this mystery? I have much to do. I am due at Countess Ignatieff's--and am already late."

"Remain patient, I beg of you, Father," urged the German suavely. "I am acting upon instructions--from Number Seventy."

"From Number Seventy!" echoed the monk, instantly realising that Hardt, an agent of the German Secret Service, was carrying out some well-concealed and ingenious project. "Very well," he said. "I rely upon you not to delay me longer than necessary. Feodor," he added, turning to me with that lofty air which his low mujik mind sometimes conceived to be superiority, "go and find this mysterious young person."

A few minutes later I conducted into the saint's presence a dark-haired, extremely handsome young woman of about thirty, who spoke with considerable refinement and whose arrival mystified me greatly.

Hardt introduced her to the holy man, saying:

"This is Mademoiselle Vera Baltz, of Stavropol, a friend of His Excellency Peter Stolypin."

"Ah! Welcome, my dear mademoiselle," exclaimed the monk affably. "So you are a friend of His Excellency--when he was Governor of Samara, I suppose?"

"Yes. I have come here because I crave your a.s.sistance. Monsieur Hardt knows all the circ.u.mstances, and will explain."

The saint turned to the fair-haired man seated opposite him, Mademoiselle Baltz having been given an easy-chair close by Rasputin's table. It was a writing-table, but the scoundrel never wrote. Sometimes he pretended to do so, but the truth was that it was a long and painful procedure with him. He preferred to scrawl his initials to any typewritten letter which I prepared.

"The explanation is briefly this, Father," said Hardt in his businesslike way. "Mademoiselle has been the dupe of His Excellency, who, while Governor, often went to Stavropol, where he stayed at an hotel under another name. Mademoiselle never knew his ident.i.ty until a year ago, when she saw his photograph in the papers as Prime Minister. She never knew that he was married--though I have here a letter in which he proposes marriage to her."

And he produced from his pocket a note, bearing the heading of the Centralnaya Hotel at Samara, which Rasputin read through.

"Well?" asked the Starets, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his bearded lips.

"Mademoiselle is anxious to meet His Excellency."

"Ah! I see," exclaimed the monk, whose mind at once turned to blackmail, a course which he himself was actively pursuing. "Mademoiselle wishes for money--eh?"

"No, Father," replied the young woman stoutly. "Not money--only justice!

Peter Stolypin misled me, as you see according to his letter. I am but one of his many victims, and I desire to expose him."

"H'm!" grunted Rasputin, who, having ascertained that no monetary consideration was forthcoming, was not particularly interested in the affair. He never did anything without reward. Those who could pay him well obtained through his influence at Court high office and big emoluments. Within my own knowledge in at least twenty cases he was already receiving heavy percentages upon the salaries, including those of two bishops and three under-secretaries, who had been dug out from nowhere and pitchforked into office by him.

By his influence with Nicholas the rascal ruled Russia with a relentless recklessness unparalleled in all history.

"Mademoiselle has already had audience of Her Majesty, who has sent her here to interview you," Hardt explained. "I am placing her case in the hands of our friend Altschiller."

The latter was a well-known lawyer, who, by the way, was afterwards proved to be a spy of Austria.

"What do you desire of me, my dear young lady?" asked Rasputin in the paternal manner he so often a.s.sumed towards the fair s.e.x who hung about the hem of his ragged robe, and knelt so constantly before him for his blessing.

"You, Father, are all-powerful in Russia," replied Vera Baltz. "Her Majesty told me that you would help me to--to destroy Stolypin," she said with a fierce expression in her black eyes.

Rasputin exchanged glances with the secret agent of Potsdam who, I knew, did so much dirty work on the Empress's behalf.

"What Her Majesty desires, I am here to obey," was the monk's quiet response. "I pray that no injustice be done," the blasphemer added, piously crossing himself.

"Injustice!" cried the girl angrily. "He deceived me, and left me to starve when he received his advancement and came here to Petrograd. He became the Tsar's favourite because of his cruel and harsh treatment of our poor people of Samara, and has climbed to office over the bodies of those shot down in the streets at his orders. Injustice! There is a.s.suredly no injustice to drag the ghastly truth concerning him into the light of day."

"Not at all! I quite agree," said Rasputin, rising and shaking her hand.

"You can tell your lawyer from me that you have my a.s.sistance, but in strictest secrecy, of course. Not a soul must know of it, remember!" he added, looking straight at her with that strange hypnotic glance of his, a gaze beneath which she quivered visibly.

"I shall remain silent," she promised.

"If the truth leaks out that you have seen either Her Majesty or myself, then I shall instantly become your enemy, and not your friend," the monk declared.

"Only Monsieur Hardt knows," the girl said. "It was he who took me to Peterhof."

"You may rely upon the silence of both my friends," Rasputin a.s.sured her, and a moment later I conducted her downstairs and out into the street.

When I returned to where Rasputin was still seated with his visitor, the latter was, I found, making explanation how he had, after considerable difficulty, traced the woman Baltz at the Empress's orders and taken her to the Palace, first, however, prompting her to seek revenge upon the Prime Minister.

"I cannot understand it at all," Hardt added.

"I do. Cannot you see that Stolypin is violently anti-German and openly disapproves of the Germanophile party at Court?"

"But he is closeted daily with the Emperor, I understand. And the Empress grants him frequent audiences."

"Because she is endeavouring to ascertain the true extent of His Excellency's knowledge of her own dealings with our friends in Berlin,"

was the monk's reply. "Alix pretends to be most gracious to him, yet she is distinctly antagonistic, more from fear than anything else. To-day he is a favourite at Court, to-morrow----"

And Grichka made a wide sweep with his dirty knotted hand without concluding his sentence.

"Has Her Majesty spoken to you concerning her fears that Stolypin has discovered something?" asked the man Hardt eagerly.

The monk grinned meaningly.

"Her Majesty is taking precautions," he replied evasively. "Possibly Stolypin has discovered the reason you travelled to Berlin a month ago. I have an idea that you were watched by the Okhrana."

"Do you really think so?" gasped the German in quick apprehension. "Why do you suspect?"

"From something whispered to me a week ago."

"Then Stolypin may know that Alexandra Feodorovna is behind the traitorous dealings of Colonel Mia.s.soyedeff on the frontier--eh?"