Outwardly Sturmer, 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 of _agents provocateurs_ produced, 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 a.s.saulted 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 Sturmer, 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. "Sturmer 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 Sturmer 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 k.n.o.bs 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 p.r.o.ne 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 s.e.xes. 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 t.i.tle 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 Sturmer, 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.