Part 28 (1/2)
Rasputin heard me through, and, taking the cipher message, applied a match to it, after which Hardt, having swallowed a gla.s.s of vodka, left us.
But the monk, as a result of that message, was at once aroused to evil activity, and by means of a clever ruse invited Ivan Naglovski to dinner next day. He accepted, hoping, of course, to discover more concerning the monk, and quite unconscious that Rasputin knew of his hostile intentions.
To dinner there were invited the Prime Minister, Boris Sturmer, and a sycophant of his named Sikstel. Sturmer was in uniform and Sikstel in civilian attire. Naglovski, I found, was a youngish man, who, when I introduced him, appeared highly honoured to meet at Rasputin's table the Prime Minister of Russia, while the monk went out of his way to ingratiate himself with his enemy. Naglovski and his friends had been preparing a plot either to expose or a.s.sa.s.sinate the monk, hence the head of the conspiracy was congratulating himself that the plot was unsuspected by anybody.
The dinner pa.s.sed off quite merrily until, of a sudden, Sturmer, addressing his fellow-guest, said:
”News has been conveyed to the holy Father that you and your friends have formed a plot against him. Is that true?”
Naglovski started and turned pale. For a moment he was taken entirely off his guard.
”Ah!” went on Sturmer in his deep, thick voice, Rasputin having risen to go to the sideboard, ”I see it is true. Now, what can you gain by endeavouring to belittle the efforts of our dear Father for the salvation of Russia? Think. Are you patriots? No. Well,” he went on, ”the reason the Father has invited you here to-night is to come to terms with you.
For a list of your friends--a secret list that will be afterwards destroyed--the Starets will pay you twenty thousand roubles, and, further, I will give you a diplomatic appointment in one of the emba.s.sies abroad--wherever you desire.”
”What!” cried the young man. ”You ask me to betray my friends to that blasphemous rascal!” and he pointed his finger at Rasputin, who moved aside. ”Never! I refuse! And, further, I tell you,” he shouted, rising as he spoke, ”I intend to expose the mock-saint and his conjuring tricks; the criminal miracle-worker who, according to secret information I have just received, was the actual instigator of the terrible disaster at Okhta. This is what my friends, when I reveal to them the truth, will expose.”
As Ivan Naglovski uttered his biting condemnation Rasputin had crept up behind him, and drawing his revolver suddenly cried in a loud voice:
”Enough! You don't leave this house alive. Gregory Rasputin knows how to crush his enemies, never fear. All your friends will share your fate.
Take that!”
And he fired, the bullet striking the unfortunate man in the back, where it entered a vital spot.
Two hours later the body of Ivan Naglovski was discovered on some waste ground out at Kushelevka, on the other side of the city. Though the Director of Secret Police guessed what had occurred, he pretended that it was a complete and unfathomable mystery--and a mystery it has ever remained until this present exposure.
CHAPTER XI
POISON PLOTS THAT FAILED
BY the spring of 1916 Rasputin, though constantly revealing himself as a blasphemous blackguard, had become the greatest power in Russia.
His name was whispered by the awe-stricken people. All Russia, from the Empress down to the most illiterate mujik, accepted him as divine and swallowed any lie he might utter.
The weekly meetings of the ”sister-disciples” were becoming more popular than ever in Petrograd society, and there were many converts to the new ”religion.”
One evening a reunion for recruiting purposes was held by the old Baroness Guerbel at her big house in the Potemkinskaya. The yellow-toothed, loud-speaking old lady had been persistent in her appeals to Rasputin to hold one of his meetings at her house, and he had, with ill-grace, acceded. On fully a dozen occasions the baroness, who was a close friend of old Countess Ignatieff, had interviewed me and endeavoured to enlist my services on her behalf. At last the monk had said to me:
”Well, Feodor, if the old hag is so very persistent, I suppose I had better spend an evening at her house and inspect her lady friends.”
Thus it had been arranged, the ”saint” little dreaming of the outcome of that fateful reunion.
It seems that Baroness Guerbel had arranged it because she wished to introduce to Rasputin a certain Madame Yatchevski--the wife of an officer who was very rich--who saw that, by Rasputin's influence, she could aspire to a position at Court.
Olga Yatchevski proved to be a pretty, fair-haired little woman of girlish figure and sweet expression, and from the moment of their introduction the unkempt monk, after crossing himself and uttering a benediction, became greatly interested in her, the result being that she became an ”aspirant,” and her initiation into the secrets of the cult was arranged to take place on the following Wednesday.
The meeting ended, the dozen or so neurotic women, all of them of the highest society in the capital, each bent and kissed the unwashed hand of Russia's ”saviour,” as was their habit, and when they had gone the monk sat down and drank half a bottle of brandy served to him by his ugly old hostess.
Next night I happened to be out at the theatre when Rasputin, who was alone, emerged to walk round to a professional blackmailer named Ivan Scheseleff, who lived in the Rozhsky Prospekt. Suddenly he was set upon by three Cossacks--afterwards found to have been men hired by Madame Yatchevski's husband--who, hustling the ”saint” into a narrow side street, gagged him, stripped him of the silk blouse embroidered by the Tsaritza's own hands, his wide velvet breeches, and his beautiful boots of patent leather.