Part 16 (1/2)
Apparently the Empress had been informed of the danger, and knew of the steps the conspirators were taking. Indeed, Rasputin declared:
”Alexandra Feodorovna is very anxious as to the future. She has had a violent quarrel with Nicholas regarding his refusal to dismiss Sheglovitof.”
”He must be dismissed,” declared von Wedel. ”The Emperor William insists upon it. Each hour he remains in office he becomes more dangerous.”
”I am already engineering disagreements in the Duma,” the monk replied.
”If he does not fall by them, then he will go naturally, for he is not a puppet hypnotised by the wishes of Tsarskoe-Selo, as are so many of our Ministers. The Tsar, who so quickly takes offence nowadays, prefers flunkeys to Ministers whose personality is too marked. Besides, we have the Woman [the Empress] ever on our side. No, Sheglovitof's hour has come.”
The meeting lasted nearly three hours, until at last Azef and the two German officials left, and Rasputin went to his room, where he consumed half a bottle of brandy. Meanwhile I sat chatting with Mademoiselle Paula until it was time to retire.
Next day, in consequence of a telephone message, I left with Rasputin for Paris, where we put up at the Grand Hotel, being visited on the day following our arrival by Azef, who, dressed differently, I would certainly have pa.s.sed in the street unrecognised. The two scoundrels retired to Rasputin's room, where they remained for half an hour, and then we all three went forth into the suns.h.i.+ne of the boulevard.
”It is about his time to pa.s.s,” the notorious spy remarked to the monk, who, by the way, wore an ordinary suit of tweeds and a soft felt hat.
”Let us sit here--at the Grand Cafe.”
In consequence we took seats at one of the little tables on the _terra.s.se_ and ordered ”bocks.”
Presently, as we watched the stream of pa.s.sers-by, Azef raised the newspaper he had been pretending to read, so concealing his face, and whispered:
”Here he is! That is our friend Krivochein!”
I looked and saw a well-dressed, quiet-looking English gentleman pa.s.sing along with his wife, who had apparently been shopping. Little did he dream that the eyes of the two most evil men in Europe were upon him.
”He leaves to-night on his return to London,” remarked Azef, when five minutes later we rose and returned to the hotel.
That same afternoon Rasputin, who declared that he had a bad headache, sent me to an English chemist's in the Avenue de l'Opera for a bottle of tabloids of aspirin. I was rather surprised, for he never took drugs.
When I gave him the little bottle he drew out the plug of cotton-wool and extracted a tabloid, which he put upon his dressing-table, afterwards replacing the wool.
About six o'clock a lady was announced, and when she was shown up to our sitting-room I found to my surprise that it was Paula Kereicha.
Rasputin was out with Azef, so Paula declared that she would wait till their return.
”I am staying at the Hotel Chatham, and have to go to London to-morrow,”
she told me. ”Krivochein has left the Chatham with his wife, and I am to follow.”
”The Father and Azef have gone round to the Chatham,” I said. ”They are evidently hoping to find you there.”
”Ah! Then I will return and see if they are there,” she said, and, rising, she left.
I did not see her again. She went to London next day, according to Azef's instructions, and as a French governess took a room in that quiet hotel near Victoria Station--the room wherein she was afterwards found dead.
At the time I had no knowledge of the tragedy, but later on I learned from Rasputin's own lips, while in one of his drunken, boastful moods, how he had introduced into the bottle of aspirin a single tabloid of one of Badmayev's secret poisons, made up to resemble exactly the other tabloids. With Azef he had gone to the Hotel Chatham on purpose to extract from her dressing-case her own bottle of aspirin--which she had purchased on the previous day from the same chemist in the Avenue de l'Opera--and replace it by the one containing the fatal dose.
The latter she had swallowed in ignorance because of a headache, death ensuing in a few seconds, and the post-mortem revealed nothing.
”Ah! my dear Feodor, that girl knew far too much! Besides, we discovered that, though she had been sent by our friend Azef to a.s.sist two of our friends to bring 'Krivochein's' career to a sudden end, she had actually warned him, so that he has succeeded in escaping to America to avoid us!”