"It was a mean Siberian village half hidden in the Siberian snow, for the winter was unduly early. I observed my host closely, for I now knew him to be a traitor and a charlatan. The `monastery' as he called it in Petrograd, and for which hundreds gave him subscriptions, was not a religious house at all, and it had never been consecrated as such.

Rasputin himself was not even a monk, for he had never been received into the church."

In describing this "monastery" for which the monk had filched thousands upon thousands of roubles from the pockets of his neophytes in Petrograd, Helidor says:

"It was a large house, which had only recently been furnished luxuriously. It was full of holy ikons, of portraits of women, and of magnificent presents from their Majesties. The occupants of the place numbered a dozen women, mostly young, garbed as nuns and performing daily religious observances."

Apparently the establishment was a Siberian "Abode of Love," much upon the lines, as the Smyth-Piggott cult, yet Helidor has declared that what struck him most was the open hostility of the mujiks towards the "Holy Father."

"They are annoyed, my dear brother Helidor, because you have come with me from Petrograd," the "saint" declared in excuse.

But Helidor noticed that Antoine, the Archbishop of Tobolsk, who visited him, betrayed the same marked hostility, while the people of the village all declared without mincing matters that Grichka, whom they had known as a convicted horse-thief and a.s.saulter of women, was merely a _debauche_.

Again came wild telegrams from the Empress. The "Saint's" prophecy had been fulfilled and the Tsarevitch had been taken seriously ill at the exact hour he had predicted.

"Nikki has returned. Both of us are in deadly fear," she telegraphed.

"Kousmin (the Court physician) cannot diagnose the malady. Come to us at once, Holy Father, I pray to you, come and save us. Give your blessing and your sympathy to your devoted sister.--A."

At the same time His Majesty sent a telegraphic message to the man who made and unmade Ministers and who ruled all Russia at home and in the field. It was despatched from the Winter Palace half-an-hour after the message of the Empress, and read:

"Friend, I cannot command, but I beg of you to return instantly to us.

We want your help. Without it, Alexis will die, and the House of Romanoff is doomed. I have sent the Imperial train to you. It leaves in an hour.--Nicholas."

Of this summons the villainous ex-thief took no notice.

Helidor says: "He showed me the telegrams and laughed triumphantly, saying, `Nikki seems very much troubled! Why does he not return to the front and urge on his soldiers against the advancing hosts.' The greater our losses the nearer shall we be to peace. I shall take care that ignorant Russia will not win against the causes of civilisation and humanity."

"Civilisation and humanity!" This illiterate and dissolute peasant, who each night became hopelessly intoxicated and who in his cups would revile his paymasters the Huns and chant in his deep ba.s.s voice refrains of Russian patriotic airs, was actually the dear "friend" of the Tsar of All the Russias! The vicious scoundrel's influence was reaching its zenith.

To Western readers the whole facts may well appear incredible. But those who know Russia, with its complex world of official corruption and "religious" chicanery, are well aware how anything may happen to that huge Empire when at war.

After a fortnight's silence, during which the sinister hand of Anna Vyrubova regularly administered that secret drug to the poor, helpless son of the Emperor, Rasputin, with amazing effrontery, dared again to put his foot in Petrograd. On the night of his arrival the Tsaritza, awaiting him anxiously at Tsarskoe-Selo, sent him a note by Ivan Radzick, the trusted body-servant of the Emperor for fifteen years, a note which the miracle-worker preserved most carefully, and which ran as follows:

"Holy Father,--I await you eagerly. Boris (Sturmer) and Fredericks are with me. Things are increasingly critical. Hasten to us at once and cure poor little Alexis, or he will die. The doctors are powerless. I have had urgent news from Berlin. Miliukoff must be removed, and so must Kerensky and Nicholas (the Grand Duke). Boris has arranged it.

You have the means. Something must happen to them within the next forty-eight hours. Nicholas has handed Nikki an abominable letter of threats. The British Amba.s.sador is wary and knows of this. His despatches to London to-night must be intercepted. I am sending the car for you, and await in eagerness once again to kiss your dear hands.-- Your devoted sister, Alec."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

BAMBOOZLING THE ALLIES.

As a result of the denunciation in the Duma of "Russia's dark forces,"

Boris Sturmer was deprived of the Premiership and appointed by the Tsaritza's influence to a high office in the Imperial household, where he could still unite with Baron Fredericks in playing Germany's game.

A few days after this re-shuffling of the cards, M. Trepoff, the new Premier, made a rea.s.suring statement to the Duma, in which he said: "There will never be a premature or separate peace. Nothing can change this resolution, which is the inflexible will of the august Russian sovereign, who stands for the whole of his faithful people."

How Rasputin and the camarilla must have chuckled when they read these words of rea.s.surance!

On the very day that declaration was made the monk had received a telegram in cipher from Stockholm, whither it had been first sent from the Koniggratzer-stra.s.se in Berlin, and which, de-coded, reads as follows:

"Gregersen (a well-known German agent who had actively a.s.sisted von Papen in America) is arriving at Archangel upon a munition ship from New York. You will have early news of him. See that he is placed under P.'s (Protopopoff's) protection. He will bring you four boxes. Do not open them, but see they are stored carefully. Hand them to our friend R. (Professor Rogovitch, of Samara, a bacteriologist and friend of Rasputin).--Number 70."

The monk had "early news" of the arrival of the spy Gregersen, for on the day following the receipt of that advice of his coming, the ship upon which he had travelled from New York blew up in Archangel harbour, and no fewer than one thousand, eight hundred persons were killed or injured! Gregersen arrived at the Gorokhovaya that same night, and there met Protopopoff, who furnished him with false papers, upon which his photograph was pasted and sealed.

The four wooden boxes which the spy had brought from America, and which contained the bacilli of anthrax and bubonic plague, were, two days later, handed by the monk to the Professor. But the latter, carelessly handling them when opening them, became infected with anthrax himself, and subsequently died in great agony. By the scoundrel's timely death Russia was spared an epidemic of those two terrible diseases, it being the intention of Rogovitch and Rasputin to infect with plague the rats in Moscow and other cities.

The fact can never, of course, be disguised that the Tsar was fully cognisant of Rasputin's evil influence at the Imperial Court, though it seems equally certain that he never suspected him to be the arch-plotter and creature of the Kaiser that he really was. Before the war, Nicholas II had lived a hermit's life at Tsarskoe-Selo. Every foreign diplomat who has been stationed in Petrograd since his accession knows that he was the echo of everyone's opinion except his own. The flexibility of his mind was only equalled by its emptiness. Personal in everything, weak, shallow-minded, yet well-intentioned, he had long been interested in spiritualistic seances and table-turning. Indeed, the most notorious frauds and charlatans who brought psychical studies into disrepute have had the honour of "performing" before His Majesty, and have even received decorations from the hands of the gulled Emperor. It is, therefore, not surprising that this bold and amazingly cunning Siberian peasant known as "Grichka," with his mock miracles--worked by means of drugs supplied to him by the fellow Badmayeff, another charlatan who represented himself as an expert upon "Thibetan" medicine and who had a large clientele in Petrograd society--could so gull the Emperor that he actually consulted "the Holy Father" upon the most important matters concerning the State.

Through the critical Year of Grace, 1916, when the future of the world's civilisation was trembling in the balance, the Allies lived utterly unsuspicious of this astounding state of affairs. Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay were in ignorance of the deeply-laid plot of the Emperor William to crush and destroy that splendid piece of patriotic machinery, "the Russian steam-roller." We in England were frantically making munitions for Russia, and lending her the sinews of war, merely regarding the erotic monk as a society tea-drinking buffoon such as one meets in every capital.

The truth has, however, been revealed by the amazing results of diligent inquiries made by that patriotic little band of Russians who united at the end of 1916 to rid the Empire of its most dangerous enemy, and have placed their secret reports in my hands. The Emperor, though exceedingly rancorous, and though in appearance a quiet, inoffensive little man, was yet capable of the utmost cruelty and hardness. He has been responsible for some terrible miscarriages of justice. His callousness is well-known. After the catastrophe of Khodinska, which cost the lives of nearly two thousand of his subjects, he danced the whole night at a ball given by the French Amba.s.sador, while on reading the telegram which told him of the disaster of Tsushima, which cost Russia her whole fleet and the loss of so many precious lives, he made no remark, but continued his game of tennis in the park of Tsarskoe-Selo.

Those of his personal entourage wondered. They asked themselves whether it was stoicism, indifference, or a strength of mind abnormal. It was neither. Throughout the whole career of Nicholas II his only thought had been to flee from danger, and to leave to others the task of pulling the chestnuts from the fire.

Rasputin and his shrewd and clever fellow-traitors knew all this, and were acting upon the Emperor's weaknesses, more especially upon His Majesty's belief in spiritualism and his fear to thwart the imperious declarations of his German-born wife. Alexandra Feodorovna, the complex neurotic woman who had begun her career as Empress by determining to exclude from Court all ladies with blemished reputations, and all those black sheep who creep by back-stair influence into every Court of Europe, had now under Rasputin's influence welcomed any of the monk's lady friends, however tarnished their reputations.

There can be no doubt that the Empress's nerves were not in a sound condition. True, she was in constant communication with Germany, and her actions showed her readiness to betray Russia into the hands of her own people. This fact the world ought to take into consideration. The Empress is the most interesting character-study in the world to-day. We can have no sympathy with those who are traitors, yet it has been clearly proved that the horrors of the Revolution had left a deep impression on her mind. She had no fatalism in her character, and she lived in daily dread of seeing her children and husband murdered. She had no courage. Her highly-strung nature took more seriously to the soothing effect of the evil monk Rasputin's teaching than would the mind of a woman of normal calibre; hence, while "Nikki" her husband believed implicitly in "dear Gregory's" advice, she also believed him to be the heaven-sent deliverer of Russia, to wrest it from disaster, and to give to the poor little Tsarevitch good health as Heir to the Romanoff dynasty.

Those latter days of 1916 were truly strenuous ones in the Imperial household. On December 8th the Emperor had left for Moscow, and to him the Tsaritza telegraphed in their private code, as follows:

"Tsarskoe-Selo, December 8th, 11:30 a.m.

"Gregory says that Zakomelsky is proposing a resolution denouncing him at the Council of the Empire to-morrow. At all costs this must be prevented. Boris and Fredericks agree. You must stop it.--Alec."

To this there was sent a reply, the copy being on record:

"Moscow, December 8th, 10 p.m.

"Quite agree with undesirability of allowing Z. to criticise, but cannot see how I can prevent it, unless by arrest. I am communicating with a certain quarter. Shall return to-morrow.--Nikki."

Apparently the Emperor, whatever steps he took, was unable to secure the arrest of the Leader of the Centre, for on the following day, at the meeting of the Council, the resolution was moved by the Baron Meller Zakomelsky, who recognised M. Trepoff's honest and sincere desire to combat the so-called "dark forces," but warned the Prime Minister that the method chosen by him was wrong. The only effective weapon, he said, was light, and the Duma and the Council called on the Government to join them in revealing and denouncing the notorious sinister influence. The whole of Russia awaited the eradication of the plague which was corroding the State organism.

This resolution apparently stirred into action the forces gradually arising to combat the camarilla, for on December 13th, Baroness Mesentzoff, wife of Baron Paul Mesentzoff, chamberlain and councillor of State, and a fair-haired "sister-disciple" of Rasputin's, sent him a letter of warning which is in existence, and of which I here give an English translation.

It was handed to him late at night at his home in the Gorokhovaya.

Seated with him in that little sanctum into which his neophytes were admitted by his discreet body-servant, and drinking heavily as usual, were Sturmer, the ex-Premier, and a man named Kartchevsky, a renegade, who was actually at that moment secretary to General von Beseler, the German Governor-General of Warsaw.

The letter read as follows:

"Holy Father,--I have been with Anna (Madame Vyrubova) and Olga (the Tsar's daughter) an hour ago. I have told them to warn Her Majesty the Empress of a desperate plot against you. Do beware, I pray you, of Youssoupoff, and of the Grand Duke Dmitri. There is a conspiracy to kill you!

"Your pretended friend Pourichkevitch dined with me to-night, and he, too, intends that you shall be removed. We all pray that no harm shall befall you. But I send this at once in warning. I shall be at the seance tomorrow, when I hope to have an opportunity of speaking with you alone. A young friend of mine, Nadjezda Boldyieff, daughter of the General at Kiev, is anxious to enter our circle. So I shall bring her with me. But do, I beg of you, heed this warning, and avoid all contact with the persons herein named.--Your sister, Feo."

The monk, who was in his cups, as he usually was after midnight-- according to his servant's statement--handed the letter to Sturmer with an inane laugh. And stroking his beard, said with his extraordinary egotism:

"Enemies! Why do these silly impetuous women warn me? I am careful enough to look after myself. I rule Russia--at the orders of the Emperor William! The Tsar is only Tsar in name. The Emperor is myself, Gregory the monk!"

"But Pourichkevitch is dangerous," declared the traitorous ex-Prime Minister. "He is the fiercest member of the Extreme Right, and our friend Protopopoff has lately received many reports concerning him through the Secret Police."

"If so, then why is he not imprisoned?" asked Rasputin. "Protopopoff is far too hesitating. A few compromising doc.u.ments introduced into his house, a police search, an arrest, a word to the Emperor--and he would have an uncomfortable little room beneath the lake in the Fortress of Schusselburg. No, our friend Protopopoff is far too weak. He dallies too much for the public favour. What is it worth? Personally, I prefer their hatred."