The Minister of Evil Part 7

While Rasputin, having thrown off his cloak of piety, was leading a dissolute life in far-off Pokrovsky, and refusing to obey the Empress's repeated invitations, the guns of Peter and Paul one day boomed forth salvo after salvo, announcing to the world that the prayer uttered by the Starets before our Lady of Kazan had been granted.

An heir had been born to the Romanoffs!

There was but little public rejoicing, however, for Russia was, at the moment, plunged into grief over the disastrous result of her attack upon j.a.pan. Nevertheless, the event more than ever impressed upon the neurotic Empress that Grichka was possessed of some mysterious and divine influence. Her Majesty believed entirely in his saintliness, and her faith in the power of his prayers was complete. G.o.d had granted his prayer and sent an heir to the Romanoffs because of his purity and perfect piety. Already she was wondering whether, in some mysterious way, the child's life was not linked with that of the holy Father whom the Almighty had sent to protect her son's existence.

Because of this the Empress sent to Rasputin, at Pokrovsky, a number of telegrams, which eventually the monk gave over to me to docket and put away with the incriminating letters of his foolish and fascinated admirers. The women of Russia, from the Empress to the lowly superst.i.tious peasant, were now at the charlatan's feet.

One telegram from Alexandra Feodorovna read as follows:

"Father and Protector of our House, why do you refuse to come and give us comfort? G.o.d has given the Romanoffs an heir, and we desire your counsel and your prayers. Do, I beg of you, return to sustain us with your presence. When we met our conversation remained unfinished. I confess that I doubted then, but I now believe. Make haste and come at once to us. From your sister--ALEXANDRA."

Of this appeal the Starets took no notice. He preferred the society of his sister-disciples at Pokrovsky to that of the Tsaritza. Besides, was it not part of his clever plan to place the Empress beneath his influence by bringing her to the brink of despair? He had not yet met Nicholas II., and it was his intention to place his amazing and mysterious grip upon him also at the crucial moment. So again the Empress sent him a communication--a letter written in her own hand, and delivered by one of the Imperial couriers.

"Why do you still hesitate?" she asked. "I sent you word by Anna [Madame Vyrubova] that I desired eagerly to see you again. Your good works are to-day in everyone's mouth. All at Court are speaking of you and your beautiful soul-inspiring religion, of which I am anxious to know more details from your own lips. It is too cruel of you to sever yourself from Petrograd when all are longing for your presence. What can I do in order to induce you to come? Ask of me anything, and your wish shall be granted. Do reply.--ALEXANDRA."

Again he treated her invitation with contempt, for following this, ten days later, she sent him another telegram:

"If you still refuse to come I will send Anna to you to try and induce you to reconsider the situation. Nicholas is extremely anxious to consult you. Father, I again implore you to come to us.--A."

Rasputin, who had created such a favourable impression upon the lady-in-waiting Vyrubova, certainly had no intention of allowing her to go to Pokrovsky and see the sordid home which Russia believed to be a wonderful "monastery," and to which Petrograd society had subscribed so freely. He therefore sent Her Majesty a message--the first response she extracted--to the effect that he was leaving for Petrograd as soon as it was possible to fulfil his Divine "call."

In the meantime I had been introduced by Boris Sturmer, whom I met almost daily, to Stolypin, a friend of Rasputin's princ.i.p.al disciple in Petrograd, Madame Golovine, and to Monsieur Raeff, who afterwards, by Rasputin's influence, received the appointment of Procurator of the Holy Synod. At Sturmer's fine house there were, in the absence of the Starets, constant meetings of Raeff, General Kurloff, the Chief of the Political Police, and a beetle-browed official named Kschessinski, who was director of that secret department of State known as "the Black Cabinet," a suite of rooms in the central postal bureau in Petrograd, where one's correspondence was daily under examination for the benefit of the corrupt Ministers and their place-seeking underlings. In addition, at these dinners, followed by the secret conferences, there attended a certain smart, well-set-up officer named Mia.s.soyedeff, a colonel stationed at Wirballen on the East Prussia frontier, and who had received gracious invitations from the Kaiser to go shooting and to hob-n.o.b with him. This man afterwards became a spy of Germany, as I will later on reveal.

Kurloff, as head of the Political Police, had, before my appointment as secretary to the Starets, been my superior, and therefore I well knew the wheels within the wheels of his department. Naturally he was hand-in-glove with the director of the Black Cabinet, the doings of which would require a whole volume to themselves, and to me it was evident that some further great and deep laid plot was in progress, of which Rasputin was to be the head director.

One day in the Nevski I met Mitia the Blessed, the Starets who ran Rasputin so closely in the public favour. I saw he was hopelessly intoxicated, and was being followed by a crowd of jeering urchins. I did not, however, know that Sturmer and his friends had arranged this disgraceful exhibition of unholiness in order to discredit and destroy Grichka's rival. Five minutes later I met the Bishop Theopha.n.u.s walking with the Procurator of the Holy Synod, who, like myself, witnessed the degrading sight, and from that moment Mitia the Blessed no longer exercised power, and was not further invited to the salons of those mystical members of the aristocracy. He had been swept into oblivion in a single day.

Rasputin at last returned, forced to do so by the determined att.i.tude of the Empress, who without doubt was suffering from serious religious mania, as well as an acute form of neurotic heart disease. The monk arrived quite unexpectedly at the Poltavskaya, and rang me up on the telephone late one evening.

The Bishop Theopha.n.u.s was, I found, with him. He knew of his arrival, and had come from Peterhof to meet him and urge him to go next day and see the Empress.

"If it is thy wish, I will," replied the "saint" with some reluctance, for he knew too well that already he wielded an unbounded influence over the Tsaritza. The fellow whose record was the worst imaginable, and whose very nickname, "Rasputin," meant in Russian "the dissolute," was regarded by the Empress as possessed of divine power, and as saviour of Russia and protector of the Imperial family and its heir.

"I hear that Alexis, Bishop of Kazan, has turned your enemy, and has written to the Holy Synod regarding your questionable monastery at Pokrovsky," remarked Theopha.n.u.s. "It is very regrettable."

"Bah! my dear friend. I have no fear," declared the man whose vanity was so overweening. "Soon you will see that Nicholas himself will do my bidding. I shall play the tune, and he will dance. All appointments will, ere long, be in my hands, and I will place one of our friends as Procurator of the Holy Synod."

At the moment I was inclined to laugh at such bombastic a.s.sertion.

Little, indeed, did I dream that within twelve months his prophecy would be fulfilled, and that the ex-horse-stealer, whose secretary I had become, would actually rule Russia through the lethargic weakling who sat upon the throne as Tsar Nicholas II.

A week later I accompanied the Starets to have his first audience with His Majesty the Emperor at the Palace of Peterhof, that wonderful Imperial residence where the great Samson Fountain in gilded bronze throws up from the lion's jaws a thick jet seventy feet high, in imitation of Versailles, and where nearly six hundred servants were employed in various capacities. We pa.s.sed the Marly Pond, where the carp were called by the ringing of a bell, and the Marly Cascade, where water runs over twenty gilded marble steps. Truly, the beauties of Peterhof were a revelation to the Starets and myself. On the previous day he had had audience of the Empress at Tsarskoe-Selo, but I had not been present, therefore I remained in ignorance of what had transpired. All I know is that he returned home and drank a whole bottle of champagne to himself, in full satisfaction--not that he cared for the wine, for his peasant taste favoured the fiery vodka.

On entering Peterhof we were met by the valet Tchernoff, who greeted Rasputin very warmly with some meaning words, and said:

"His Majesty is in his private cabinet expecting you. Come."

Another valet took our hats and overcoats, and then Tchernoff led us up a great flight of marble stairs, and on through nearly a dozen panelled rooms with historic portraits, much like those I had once pa.s.sed through at Fontainebleau, until he entered the blue drawing-room, a great, old-fashioned, eighteenth-century apartment adorned by a number of magnificent pictures by Saltzmann.

Your British public have never truly realised the gorgeousness of the Palace at Peterhof, or the fact that in the Imperial service at the various residences there were no fewer than four thousand domestics, most of them useless and all uniformed. The "Arabys," imported especially from Abyssinia, and who wore fantastically embroidered blue and gold uniforms with a great crimson sash, and a kind of turban upon their heads, were simply well-paid puppets, who added pomp to the gorgeous salons, the doors of which they guarded.

As we pa.s.sed through the great rooms on our way to the Tsar's private cabinet, a hundred servants and officials bowed to us, but Rasputin remained quite unimpressed. He was possessed of a most astounding intuition, and he knew that by his mystical practices, his mock piety, and by apparently ignoring the Imperial pair that success was a.s.sured.

At last we stood before the door of the autocrat's room, which Tchernoff threw open unceremoniously, when we were confronted by His Majesty, who wore a rough tweed shooting-suit, presenting anything but an Imperial figure. I had expected to see him in uniform, like the thousand and one pictures which purport to represent him, instead of which I found a very ordinary-looking, bearded man, with deep-set eyes, a wan countenance, and rather lank hair. He was square-built, a trifle below the medium height, and a man whom, had you pa.s.sed him in the Nevski, you might have taken for a Jew tailor or a small tradesman. But the room itself was a beautiful one, like all the apartments in Peterhof, semicircular in shape, with a great bay window looking out upon the wonderful fountains, all of which were throwing up their jets, with a great vista of greenery beyond.

The Tsar bowed as the Starets, crossing himself, bestowed his blessing upon him. The owner of twenty palaces and seven hundred million acres of land turned his eyes to the carpet humbly as the mock saint uttered those words of incomprehensible jargon which half Russia believed to be inspired by the Divine will.

When Rasputin spoke His Majesty seemed cowed and thoughtful. Over his whole frame was written fear and exhaustion. His voice was hollow when he replied, and his glance was full of antic.i.p.ation. At every gesture of the Starets he seemed startled.

Was it any wonder when one recollected, so many were the plots against the dynasty, that at the moment he had removed from Tsarskoe-Selo, where a gang of a thousand men were engaged in digging deep trenches around the palace because the Okhrana had got wind of a desperate plot to tunnel beneath the Imperial residence and blow it up together with its Imperial occupiers.

His Majesty addressed the Starets as "thee" and "thou."

"I know, Father, that thou art our guide and saviour," said the autocrat, when together we were seated in the window, Rasputin explaining that he always took me with him in order that I might take mental notes of conversations and decisions.

"Feodor is mute," he added. "And he is part of myself."

Then His Majesty referred to Rasputin's "miracles" which he had performed in Warsaw, Kiev, and other places, mere conjuring tricks which had held the peasants speechless in amazement.

"Theopha.n.u.s has told us of them. Thou hast healed the sick and cured the lame," said His Majesty. "Truly, thou art greater in Russia than myself."

"Pardon, your Majesty," replied the impostor humbly, "I am but G.o.d's messenger, but thou art Tsar. It is not for me to exert authority, only to pray unceasingly for the Empire and for the well-being of its Imperial House. Theopha.n.u.s hath, I hope, told thee that I seek no emoluments, no advancement, no favour, no honour; I am but the humble Starets--a pilgrim who hopes one day to see Mount Athos, there to retire in devotion."

"Theopha.n.u.s has told me much," said the Emperor. "He has told me how at spiritualistic seances thou canst work thy will with our departed, and how at the house of our dear Sturmer not long ago thou didst obtain communication with the spirit of my dear father Alexander. Truly, thy powers are great, and we have need of thee. Why didst thou refuse to come to us even though the Empress sent thee so many commands?"

"Because, as I have replied to Her Majesty, I am no courtier. My work lies in the homes of the poor, not in the palaces."

"Ah, no," laughed the autocrat with good humour. "Thou art truly sent to us to save Russia. Thy place is here, in our own home."

I drew a long breath when I heard the Tsar p.r.o.nounce those words, for they showed quite plainly the strong, invincible grip the impostor had, by posing with unconcern, already obtained upon the Imperial family and the Court.

The Starets crossed himself, and again bowed. I was amazed to witness the cra.s.s ignorance and astounding superst.i.tion displayed by the Emperor of Russia, whom all Europe believed to be a progressive, wideawake monarch.

That he possessed a spiritualistic kink, as did also his German wife, was quite apparent. Any bogus medium or charlatan could easily impose upon him. A dozen men and women who, by their vagaries and pretended powers, had brought psychic studies into ridicule, had given seances before the Emperor, and had told him things which his crafty entourage had already paid them to "reveal."

On the night of the declaration of war with j.a.pan, Kouropatkine brought to Peterhof the French medium Jules Verrier, who received a handsome fee for pretending to get into touch with the spirit of Peter the Great, who declared that Russia, in declaring war, had carried out his wishes. And Nicholas was at once in high glee, and mightily enthusiastic to know that his historic ancestor approved of his action.

The Imperial Court was full of frauds, traitors, and sycophants. In all of them Nicholas had the fullest confidence, while his wife was possessed of certain knowledge which sometimes caused her to discriminate.

The commonplace-looking man in tweeds, who was the entire reverse of one's idea of an Emperor, grew confidential, and it was plain that he was quite as much impressed by Grichka as the Empress had been, for throughout the audience the monk had used to the full his inexplicable hypnotic power.

"Our good Theopha.n.u.s and Helidor favour us with their counsel, but, Father, thou hast our most complete confidence. I beg of thee to grant the Empress another interview to-morrow, for she is daily longing for counsel from thee. I will fix the audience. So, as our friend, please keep the appointment. But before we part I wish to grant to thee any request that thou mayest desire--any appointment or advancement of any friend. Speak, and thy wish shall be at once granted."

The monk reflected. It was, indeed, the moment of his first triumph.

"I have a young and extremely able friend named Protopopoff in the Ministry of the Interior," he replied. "He is a loyal son of Russia, and a pious believer. Cannot he be advanced?"

"He shall be. I will make a note of the name," and turning to his desk, he scribbled it upon the blotting-pad with a stubby pencil, repeating the words:

"Protopopoff--in the Ministry of the Interior."