Part 4 (2/2)

”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.

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