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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41452 ***
+
+Rasputin the Rascal Monk
+Disclosing the Secret Scandal of the Betrayal of Russia by the mock-monk
+Grichka and the consequent ruin of the Romanoffs. With official
+documents revealed and recorded for the first time..
+By William Le Queux
+Published by Hurst & Blackett, Limited, Paternoster House, London EC.
+
+Rasputin the Rascal Monk, by William Le Queux.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+RASPUTIN THE RASCAL MONK, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
+
+PREFACE.
+
+WHY THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN.
+
+In the following pages I have attempted to take the reader behind the
+veil of the Imperial Russian Court, and to disclose certain facts which,
+in this twentieth century, may appear almost incredible.
+
+As one who knows Russia, who has traversed the Empire from Virballen to
+the Pacific coast, and who has met personally both the ex-Emperor and
+his consort, as well as many of the persons herein mentioned, I confess
+that I myself have often been astounded when examining the mass of
+documents which this dirty Siberian peasant--the convicted horse-stealer
+who rose to be the secret adviser of Nicholas II--had happily secreted
+in the safe in his cellar in the Gorokhovaya, in Petrograd, so that the
+real truth of his traitorous dealings with the Kaiser might be
+chronicled in history.
+
+I had hoped to be able to reproduce many of the cipher telegrams and
+letters in facsimile, but the present shortage of paper has precluded
+this, and it could only be done if this book were issued in expensive
+form.
+
+To me, it seems best that the British public should have access to it in
+a cheap and popular form, and hence I have abandoned the idea of
+facsimiles.
+
+I here publish the story of the mock-monk's amazing career as a further
+contribution to the literature upon Germany's spy system and propaganda
+so cleverly established as an insidious adjunct to her military attack
+upon the civilisation of our times.
+
+The conversations herein recorded have been disclosed by patriotic
+Russians, the truth has been winnowed out of masses of mere hearsay, and
+the cipher telegrams and letters I have copied from the de-coded
+originals placed at my disposal by certain Russians, Allies of ours, who
+desire, for the present, to remain anonymous.
+
+William Le Queux.
+
+Devonshire Club, London, S.W.
+
+November, 1917.
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+THE CULT OF THE "SISTER-DISCIPLES."
+
+The war has revealed many strange personalities in Europe, but surely
+none so sinister or so remarkable as that of the mock-monk Gregory
+Novikh--the middle-aged, uncleanly charlatan, now happily dead, whom
+Russia knew as Rasputin.
+
+As one whose duty it was before the war to travel extensively backwards
+and forwards across the face of Europe, in order to make explorations
+into the underworld of the politics of those who might be our friends--
+or enemies as Fate might decide--I heard much of the drunken, dissolute
+scoundrel from Siberia who, beneath the cloak of religion and
+asceticism, was attracting a host of silly, neurotic women because he
+had invented a variation of the many new religions known through all the
+ages from the days of Rameses the Great.
+
+On one occasion, three years before the world-crisis, I found myself at
+the obscure little fishing-village called Alexandrovsk, on the Arctic
+shore, a grey rock-bound place into which the black chill waves sweep
+with great violence and where, for four months in the year, it is
+perpetual night.  To-day, Alexandrovsk is a port connected with
+Petrograd by railway, bad though it be, which passes over the great
+marshy tundra, and in consequence has been of greatest importance to
+Russia since the war.
+
+While inspecting the quays which had then just been commenced, my friend
+Volkhovski, the Russian engineer, introduced me to an unkempt
+disreputable-looking "pope" with remarkable steel-grey eyes, whose
+appearance was distinctly uncleanly, and whom I dismissed with a few
+polite words.
+
+"That is Grichka (pronounced Greesh-ka), the miracle-worker!" my friend
+explained after he had ambled away.  "He is one of the very few who has
+access to the Tsar at any hour."
+
+"Why?"  I asked, instantly interested in the mysterious person whose
+very name the Russian Censor would never allow to be even mentioned in
+the newspapers.
+
+My friend shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned.  "Many strange
+stories are told of him in Moscow and in Petrograd," he said.  "No doubt
+you have heard of his curious new religion, of his dozen wives of noble
+birth who live together far away in Pokrovsky!"
+
+I glanced back at the receding shock-haired figure in the long black
+clerical coat and high boots, little dreaming that I had met the
+mock-Saint whose evil influence was to cause the downfall of the
+Imperial House of Romanoff.
+
+Strange it is that to-day I have before me the amazing official reports
+of his career from revolutionary and private sources--reports from which
+I intend to here set out certain astounding facts.
+
+First, it is quite beyond question that the Pravoslavny Church, with its
+malign influences and filthy practices, is, in the main, responsible for
+Gregory Novikh's success as a worker of bogus "miracles."  The
+evil-minded libertine upon whom his fellow-villagers in Pokrovsky, in
+the Siberian Province of Tobolsk, bestowed the name of Rasputin (or in
+Russian, "Ne'er-do-well-son)," was a fisherman who possessed an
+inordinate fondness for the village lasses, and also for vodka.  A mere
+illiterate mujik, disgusting in his habits and bestial in his manners,
+he grew lazy and dissolute, taking to theft and highway-robbery, for
+which, according to the official report of the Court of Tobolsk, before
+me, he was imprisoned twice, and a third time was publicly flogged and
+so degraded that he was compelled to bid farewell to Pokrovsky, much to
+the relief of the villagers.  Behind him he left a peasant wife, a
+little son, named Dmitri, and two daughters.  He also left behind him a
+handsome young peasant woman known as Guseva, a person who was destined
+to contribute a few years later in no small measure to his dramatic
+death.  Sins always follow the sinners.
+
+After a year or two of wandering as a rogue and vagabond, committing
+thefts where he could, and betraying any woman he came across, he
+suddenly conceived the brilliant idea of posing as a "holy man."  This
+idea came to him because, while in Pokrovsky, he had had as boon
+companion and fellow-drunkard a certain market-gardener who had joined
+the Pravoslavny Church and is to-day by his influence actually a bishop!
+
+In most Eastern countries, especially in India and China, there are many
+wandering "holy men," and modern Russia is no exception.  To lead a
+"gospel life" of endless pilgrimages to "holy" places and to collect
+money for nonexistent charities appealed to the fellow as an easy mode
+of lazy sensual self-indulgence.  Therefore he adopted it, being aided
+by the ex-market-gardener, who was already in the Church.  So both
+prospered exceedingly well.
+
+Rasputin had by this time discovered himself possessed of quite
+extraordinary powers.  Indeed a report upon him written by a great
+Russian alienist who knew him intimately, has recently reached London,
+and from its voluminous pages which I have had before me, I gather that
+both physiologically and psychically he was abnormal, while his natural
+hypnotic influence was marked by the rare power he possessed of being
+able to contract the pupils of his steel-grey eyes at will, regardless
+of sunlight or shadow.  Few persons can do this.  It is a sign well
+known to alienists that the person is a criminal degenerate.  Rasputin
+never smiled, even when he drank heavily.  He could consume three
+bottles of champagne and still be quite sober!  With vodka, his
+favourite spirit, he became talkative, but never indiscreet.  He was a
+lunatic of an intensely erotic type; a satyr who possessed a truly
+appalling influence over women of all ages, and even at his word men in
+high positions did not hesitate to cast off their brilliant uniforms and
+decorations and mortify their flesh!
+
+From this man, crafty, cunning and elusive, a fiendish satyr whose
+hypnotic influence was irresistible, no woman, however high-born,
+high-minded, or highly religious was safe.  He lived upon his wits, and
+lived well.  With that amazing cunning usual in such criminals he
+affected a deep piety, so that at the various monasteries where he
+sought hospitality he was welcomed.  In Russia many of the religious
+houses still unfortunately savour of the most disgraceful debauchery, as
+they did in England before the Reformation, and at such institutions
+Rasputin became a popular figure.  At certain convents the mock-monk,
+with the connivance of the Pravoslavny Church, was eagerly entertained
+by the dissolute nuns, more especially at Novo Tchevkask, on the Don, as
+well as at Viatka, and at Saratov, in Kasan.
+
+From the convent of Novo Dievichy (The Convent of the Virgins) near the
+last-mentioned town, a great place which overlooks the Volga half way to
+Wolgsk, some terrible scandals leaked out, when the Mother-Superior,
+probably to save herself from the public indignation, brought in four
+sturdy mujiks from the countryside, who pitched the "Saint" out into the
+road, and administered such a severe kicking that the "Holy Father"--as
+the Tsaritza afterwards called him--could only creep about in pain for
+many days after!
+
+Two months later, according to a report countersigned by Paul
+Dragomrioff, superintendent of the Secret Police of Moscow--a screed
+which, being somewhat ill-written, is difficult of translation--Rasputin
+was in that city.  I here quote from it:--
+
+"Report of Ivan Obroutcheff, Police-agent, Number 1287, of the 2nd
+Division, Secret Police, stationed at Moscow.  April 2nd:--
+
+"According to instructions from Police Headquarters, I visited at orders
+of Superintendent Dragomrioff, Number 136, Tverskaia, next to
+Loukonture's papier-mache factory at 1:35 a.m. to-day.  I there found in
+a carpeted but barely furnished room an assembly of the cult of the
+Naked Believers kneeling before the monk, Gregory Novikh.  Twenty-eight
+persons, all being women, fourteen of them ladies of birth and
+education, were present, and as I entered with my eight assistants the
+`holy man' stood at the lectern, reading passages from the Gospel of St
+Luke, interspersed with his own exhortations of the trials of the flesh.
+The walls of the room were decorated with disgusting pictures of a
+nature which would shock the modesty of all but the _demi-monde_, while
+behind the monk Novikh hung a copy of the Holy Ikon of Novgorod.
+
+"In accordance with instructions all present were arrested after they
+had dressed, and I ordered them to be conducted to the Central Police
+Bureau, where their names and addresses were taken, and they were
+interrogated singly.  Most of the midnight worshippers expressed
+indignation, and more especially the `Saint' Rasputin, who demanded in
+the name of the Tsar that he might telegraph to the Empress.  My
+superior officer, Nemiloff, Chief of Secret Police of Moscow, could not
+deny him this privilege.  The result has been that by eleven o'clock
+next day an order came from the Tsar for the release of all the
+prisoners, and orders that no facts should be permitted to appear in the
+Press.  Grichka has left for the capital by the 4:15 express this
+afternoon.
+
+"Signed: Ivan Obroutcheff."
+
+The report above quoted shows Rasputin in the early stages of his
+shameless debauchery.  In London we have had the notorious Swami, with
+her male accomplice, practising similar acts upon innocent girls, but in
+Moscow the drunken and verminous monk with his hair-shirt, a rope around
+his waist and sandals upon his bulging feet, had attracted a select
+_coterie_ of society women, daughters and wives of some of the greatest
+nobles of Russia, who, in secret and with gold in their hands, vowed
+themselves as docile followers of this Siberian fisherman whom nature
+had equipped as a satyr of such a type that happily none has ever been
+known in Britain in all its glorious years of history.
+
+I readily admit that the career of Grichka, the man whose name the
+Censor does not allow to be mentioned, the sinister power that later on
+so suddenly appeared behind the Russian throne and whose true story I am
+here revealing, will appear incredible to my readers.  I have written
+many works of fiction which some, of you may have read.  But no work of
+mine has ever contained facts so extraordinary as the real life of this
+unwashed charlatan who, under the active protection of his debauched
+Church--and I write here with a true and reverent sense of our Christian
+religion--succeeded in establishing himself in the apartments of the
+favourite lady-in-waiting upon the Empress, and further, to teach his
+horrible "religion" to the innocent daughters of the Tsar in turn!
+
+Much has already appeared in the newspapers regarding the sturdy unkempt
+rogue, but the greater part of it has emanated from the brains of
+writers who have not had access to official documents.
+
+In these present articles my intention is to tell the British public the
+bare unvarnished truth culled from documentary evidence at my disposal,
+and to leave them to form their own conclusions.  Russia, our great
+Ally, is, alas, still mysterious and much behind the times.  True, she
+has a press, a Duma, and many modern social institutions.  Yet her
+civilisation is only upon the surface.  The Empire is, unfortunately,
+still the same as England was under the Tudors, an underworld of
+profligacy, plotting, and strange superstitions.  The latter have, of
+course, been recently revived in London, as is proved by the prosecution
+of the fortune-tellers of Regent Street and St John's Wood.  Again,
+were not the scandals of the "Abode of Love" much the same as that of
+Rasputin's dozen-wived harem which he established in Pokrovsky?
+
+The criminal records of Holy Russia teem with amazing stories of this
+"holy" scoundrel who from a drunken Siberian fisherman rose, by erotic
+suggestion, to become the greatest consolation to the Empress, and the
+lever by which "Nikki the Autocrat" was flung from his throne.
+
+I remember how, when in Sofia, in the pre-war days with Sir George
+Buchanan, then our Minister to Bulgaria, and now ambassador to Russia, a
+cultured and clever diplomat to whom Great Britain owes more than she
+can ever know, and hence cannot acknowledge, we discussed the mystery of
+Russia and of the subtle influences near the Throne.
+
+Little did either of us dream that he would now be ambassador to the
+Russian Court, and I would be writing this exposure of the evil life of
+the blasphemous satyr Rasputin.
+
+The cult established by the pilgrimages of this illiterate peasant grew
+apace.  The "holy father" whose disgraceful past is recorded in the
+police _dossiers_ at Tyumen and Tobolsk had, by his astounding power of
+hypnotism, gathered around him a crowd of "Sister-disciples," mostly of
+the upper and leisured classes, to whom the new religion of nature
+strongly appealed.
+
+Upon his constant pilgrimages to Jaroslav, Vologda, Vitebsk, Orel and
+other places, he made converts everywhere.  He declared that no woman
+could obtain favour of the Almighty without first committing sexual sin,
+because that sin was the one which was forgiven above all others.  At
+his weekly seances at which, strange to say, the highest born ladies in
+the Empire attended in secret, the most disgraceful scenes were
+witnessed, the dirty unwashed monk, a most repellent creature to all
+save his "disciples," acting as the high-priest of this erotic
+sisterhood.
+
+Soon the disgusting rogue began to perform "miracles."  Into his
+confidence he took a young man named Ilya Kousmitch--who, be it said,
+afterwards made certain statements to those who at last meted out
+justice and who provided me with certain details--and with the young
+fellow's connivance he succeeded in bamboozling a number of perfectly
+respectable and honest women in Petrograd, as well as in Moscow and
+Kiev, where he effected some really mysterious "cures."
+
+In one instance at the house of a certain Madame Litvinoff, in the
+Sergiyevskaya, the most fashionable quarter of Petrograd, the man known
+as "the Stareb," or "Grichka," held a select meeting of his followers.
+The shameless charlatan treated the ladies who had assembled to worship
+him and to contribute lavishly to his imaginary charities, with the
+greatest disdain and most brutal contempt.  This man, guilty of the most
+appalling vices, addressed them as usual in a strange illiterate jumble,
+urging them to follow the new religion which he called "the trial of the
+flesh," interspersing his remarks with occult jargon from works upon
+black magic, interlarded with those self-same scriptural quotations
+which will be found marked in that big Bible used by the Swami and her
+fellow-criminal--a volume now preserved in the Black Museum at Scotland
+Yard.
+
+One of the women present, a certain Baroness Korotki, was suffering from
+acute rheumatism.  The "Saint" placed his hands upon her, looked into
+her eyes with that intense unwavering stare of his, uttered some strange
+incantation, and lo! the pains left her, and she declared herself
+healed!  The effect was electrical.  Others declared themselves
+suffering from various imaginary maladies, and after performing certain
+rites as laid down by the "Holy Father," he laid hands upon them one
+after the other, and hypnotised them into a belief that they were cured.
+
+Next day reports of these amazing "cures" ran like wildfire through
+Petrograd, and the superstitious lower-classes were at once seized by a
+belief that the Saint "Grichka," head of the fast-growing organisation
+of thinly disguised sensuality, was really a holy man and could work
+miracles.  Around him crowded the halt and maimed and the blind, and
+aided by his accomplice Ilya Kousmitch, he not only pretended to effect
+cures, but succeeded in making many more converts among the lower-class
+women by declaring, as he had told the society dames, that there was in
+him a portion of the Divine with whom, as he put it, "all that would be
+saved must be one in the flesh and in the spirit!"
+
+At one of his reunions, held a week or so later at Madame Litvinoff's,
+there attended Madame Vyrubova, the handsome leading lady-in-waiting at
+Court, and the chamber-confidante of both Tsar and Tsaritza.  Like the
+others, this intriguing woman at once fell beneath the mock-monk's
+inexplicable spell.  His new religion of the flesh appealed to her
+erotic temperament, and she at once became one of his most passionate
+devotees, a few days later introducing him at Court with astonishing
+result.
+
+The subtle intrigues of Madame Vyrubova were many.
+
+As chamber-confidante of both Emperor and Empress she had for a long
+time assisted in the spiritualistic seances which were given in private
+at Tsarskoe-Selo by a Russian monk named Helidor and his French friend,
+known as "Philippe."  The young Tsarevitch was in a state of
+fast-declining health, and Helidor, as a "holy man," had, at Madame's
+suggestion, been called in to pray for him.  Spiritualistic practices
+followed in strictest secrecy, and the credulous Empress first believed
+that the "holy man's" dealings with the unseen were resulting in a
+beneficial effect upon the weakly lad.
+
+At last, however, owing to.  Court intrigue, Helidor fell out of favour.
+It was just after this when Anna Vyrubova first met and fell beneath
+the evil influence of Rasputin.  Grichka was a "miracle-worker," and
+might, she thought, perhaps restore the Tsarevitch to health!  She knew
+that the Empress, a shallow-minded, ephemeral woman, lived for one
+object alone, namely, to secure for her son the crown of Romanoff.  But
+the physicians gave but little hope of this.  In a year--perhaps
+before--he must die, they had whispered.  Helidor had been dismissed.
+Would Rasputin be more successful?
+
+Madame sought out the charlatan who was busy with many "cures," and
+suggested that he should accompany her to the Palace, but with lordly
+disdain the drunken fisherman from Pokrovsky declared that to him all
+men and women were equal.
+
+To a friend, a certain Madame Kovalenko, wife of one of the high Court
+officials, Madame Vyrubova described this interview.  It took place in
+Petrograd at the house of a rich merchant living in the Tavritsheskaya,
+opposite the gardens.  When the lady-in-waiting, who had, like so many
+others, fallen beneath his spell, had made the suggestion that the
+master should be introduced to the Court circle, he placed his left hand
+behind his back, a favourite attitude of his, drew himself up and began
+to address her in that strange jargon which she hardly understood--
+quotations from the "Lives of the Saints" jumbled up with lewd
+suggestions, high phrases, and meaningless sentences.  As conclusion to
+this speech, however, the wily fellow added:
+
+"I care nothing for the rulers of earth, but only for the Ruler of
+Heaven, who has bestowed upon me His blessing, and has led me into the
+path of honour, righteousness and peace.  The rulers, of earth worship
+in their chapels and their tinsel cathedrals, but I worship everywhere,
+in the air, in the woods, in the streets, and you, lady, worship with me
+in body and in soul."  And he raised his cold eyes upward, his right
+hand with its bulgy joints and broken dirty finger nails being placed
+across his breast.  Then he sighed, as he added: "Ah! you do not yet
+understand!  God has placed within me the power to smite--as well as to
+heal."
+
+Madame Vyrubova, fascinated by his strange hypnotic glance, fell upon
+her knees before the "Saint," and kissing his bulgy unclean hand begged
+of him again and again to see the Empress.
+
+But the artful scoundrel remained obdurate.  He knew of Helidor's
+disgrace, and did not intend to hold himself at all cheaply.
+
+The result was that Madame Vyrubova sought him next day and, handed him
+an autograph note from the Empress inviting him to come to the Winter
+Palace and see the Grand Duke Alexis.  He read it, secretly much
+gratified, for he knew that not only had his latest devotee prevailed
+upon the Empress to seek the aid of another Russian monk to succeed the
+degraded Helidor, but that the Pravoslavny Church, the most powerful
+influence of State governance, had also been responsible for the
+invitation he held within his dirty fingers.
+
+From that moment Rasputin's power became assured--a power he wielded for
+evil from that hour until the day of his well-deserved end.
+
+When that grey afternoon the unkempt libertine was introduced to the
+small white-and-gold private salon of the Empress, which overlooks the
+gardens and the Neva on the northern wing of the palace, the Princess
+Obolensky, Princess Orbeliani and Countess Hendrikoff, maids-of-honour,
+were with Her Majesty, curious to see what manner of man it was who
+could perform miracles, and whom so many of the Society women in
+Petrograd and Moscow now acknowledged and addressed as "Master."
+
+Upon the threshold the mock-monk halted, and in that dramatic attitude,
+struck in order to impress his hearers, he stood with his left arm
+behind him, erect, with his unkempt head thrown back, his face stern and
+relentless, his grey eyes sharp and piercing.
+
+For some moments he remained there in statuesque silence, well-knowing
+how women were impressed by that pose.  The hypnotism of those grey eyes
+few of the opposite sex could withstand.  His conquests, or
+"conversions" as he termed them--were in every direction, and in every
+city.  The Cult of the Naked Believers had rapidly spread everywhere.
+He was besieged by female disciples eager to hold meetings, for without
+the actual presence of the Saint true worship of the erotic could not
+take place.
+
+"Great Lady!" he exclaimed at last in his deep, heavy voice, still that
+of the Siberian mujik, "you desire me here?  I have come!"
+
+The Empress rose and stretching out her hand eagerly welcomed the unholy
+charlatan into the Court circle, and half-an-hour later introduced him
+to fully a dozen of the highest-born women of the Empire, all of whom
+were at once impressed by his affected piety and humility.  But a "dark
+force" had now entered the very heart of Russia, and later that
+afternoon, in a luxuriously furnished bedroom the miracle-worker was
+shown the poor little Heir to the Throne lying upon his sick couch, he
+placed hands upon him, and Her Majesty herself fell victim to that
+strange spell which other women had found so indescribable and so
+inexplicable.
+
+"I will cure your son," said Rasputin slowly, after he had knelt beside
+him and looked long and earnestly into his eyes without uttering a word.
+
+Madame Vyrubova was present and exchanged glances of relief with the
+Empress.  To the latter, easily impressionable as she was, though all
+believed her to be a staid mother of a family, Rasputin became at once a
+Saint, a Divine agent, a miraculous guide.  He had cured the poor; why
+could he not, if he willed it, cure her son?
+
+Then in the days that followed "incidents" occurred in the Palace.  At
+select assemblies of one or two of the Empress's confidantes--parties,
+of course, arranged by Madame Vyrubova, Rasputin expounded his shameless
+"religion."  His jargon, the jumbled phrases of an illiterate peasant
+who knew not the meaning of what he uttered, his exhortations to commit
+sin so that it might be forgiven, his declaration of self-divinity, and
+his odds and ends of scripture mixed with the foulest vocabulary of
+Russian, was listened to with bated breath.  Why?
+
+Because, strange though it may seem, the health of the young Grand Duke
+Alexis had taken a sudden turn for the better.  Even his physicians were
+compelled to acknowledge it!
+
+Whether the latter were in any way under the influence of Rasputin by
+means of money-payment--for the fellow had by this time acquired a
+considerable fortune from his dupes--has not yet been ascertained.  One
+thing, however, is shown in the documents before me, namely, that the
+mock-monk's "miracles" were often effected by means of secret drugs of
+which he had quite a curious extensive knowledge.  How this was acquired
+is again a mystery, save that he was very friendly with a certain
+student of Chinese and Thibetan medicine, named Badmayeff, and that this
+person regularly furnished him at high prices with certain little-known
+drugs from the Far East.
+
+With the gradual improvement of the health of the poor little Grand
+Duke, Rasputin's ascendancy over the Empress rapidly increased.  He had
+been introduced to the Emperor, who, though regarding him with askance,
+tolerated him merely because his beloved son was improving beneath his
+daily prayerful treatment.  Meanwhile, the canker-worm of Rasputin's
+religion had, fostered by the Empress's favourite lady-in-waiting,
+entered into the Court circle, and many secret meetings were held in the
+Palace where under the pseudo-religious cloak certain ladies of the
+Russian Court became devotees of the "Holy Father," and practised
+abominations absolutely incredible.
+
+Official reports contain both dates and names of those who gave
+themselves into the unscrupulous hands of this man who claimed the
+Divine right and thus worshipped as "Believers."
+
+Rasputin was too clever a scoundrel to allow matters to proceed quite
+smoothly.  Several chance conversations with the Emperor and with
+Stolypin convinced him that he might ultimately share the same obscurity
+as Helidor.  He therefore one day pretended to be offended at some words
+of the Empress--whom he now addressed by the familiar terms of "thee"
+and "thou" which he used to his disciples, though even the Grand Dukes
+and Duchesses would have hesitated so to address the Empress--and after
+a dramatic farewell, he took himself off to the wonderful and luxurious
+monastery which, according to his statement to the Empress, he had built
+at his native Pokrovsky with the money he had collected upon his various
+pilgrimages.
+
+To the female section of Petrograd society he had been never tired of
+describing the beauties of this monastery where his fellow-monks lived a
+life of severe asceticism and constant prayer, therefore at his sudden
+resolve to leave, the capital--or the better-class women of it--grew
+tearful and the Empress most of all.
+
+Within four days of his departure for Siberia the little Tsarevitch was
+taken suddenly ill, and the Empress, beside herself at having expressed
+any words of doubt concerning the unkempt Saint who had so entirely
+entered into her life, telegraphed wildly to him.  This message, since
+unearthed by the Revolutionary Party, which ran as follows:--
+
+"I cannot bear your absence.  Life is so grey and hopeless without you,
+my dear comforter, my master.  Alexis has been taken ill.  Do not take
+any notice of Kokovtsov.  He is responsible for my hasty words to you
+and shall suffer for it.  Forgive me.  Return--for my sake and for the
+life of Alexis-Alec."
+
+But the crafty mujik was not to be thus entrapped.  He had been guest of
+the Minister Kokovtsov, a week before, and his host and his friends had
+made him roaring drunk.  In his cups he had made certain revelations.
+What they were the Saint could not recollect.  Hence he had absented
+himself from Court, in order to maintain his Divine dignity--and to plot
+further.
+
+At this point it is necessary to make a critical remark.
+
+For two years Rasputin had been speaking of his monastery at Pokrovsky.
+In the salons and boudoirs of Moscow and Kiev as well as in Petrograd,
+society spoke of the institute, discussed it and declared that indeed
+Grichka was a holy man.  The Metropolitan with his rich robes and
+jewels, and all the bishops were as common clay in comparison with the
+"Holy Father" who could cure by the laying-on of hands, who walked in
+humility and who devoted himself to good works.  Curiously enough it had
+occurred to nobody, not even to the ever-ubiquitous police of Petrograd,
+to investigate the story told by Rasputin regarding his monastery at
+far-off Pokrovsky.
+
+The world of Russia did not, of course, know that in that Siberian
+village there still lived Rasputin's peasant-wife with her children, or
+that his life had been so evil, a career of drink and profligacy which
+even in Siberia stood out in letters of scarlet in the police _dossiers_
+of Tobolsk.  It, however, remained for a female spy of the Revolutionary
+Party--a certain lady named Vera Aliyeff, from whose report I am
+writing--to travel to that sordid Siberian village and watch the Court
+charlatan in his home.  I may here say that to the untiring efforts of
+Mademoiselle Aliyeff is in a great measure due the downfall and
+assassination of the terribly sinister influence which cost the Tsar
+Nicholas his throne, and hundreds of women their good name--as I shall
+afterwards show.
+
+But to relate matters in their proper sequence as history I may here
+quote from the report of this patriotic woman-revolutionary who
+travelled to Rasputin's home in disguise, because he knew her, and as
+she was good-looking, he had already endeavoured to induce her to join
+the Cult of the Naked Believers.  She reports:--
+
+"I found the great monastery of Pokrovsky to be a dirty repellent hamlet
+of mujiks of the worst and most illiterate type.  There was no trace of
+the marble palace which Rasputin had described as having erected as the
+main building of the monastery.  The latter was, I found, a large,
+cheaply built, ordinary-looking house, three rooms of which were given
+up to the `Saint's' peasant-wife, his son Dmitri and the younger of his
+two daughters, while in the other part of the house lived twelve women
+of varying ages--the youngest being sixteen--who were his fascinated
+devotees and who had given up their lives in Europe to enter the
+seclusion of that sordid home and become his spiritual brides."
+
+Here Mademoiselle Aliyeff had an interview with the woman Guseva, and
+later on after an inspection of the police records at Tobolsk and
+Tyumen, she returned to Petrograd and reported the result of her visit
+to the Right Party in the Duma.
+
+Meanwhile, the Empress and also her favourite lady-in-waiting
+telegraphed to Rasputin urgently imploring him to return to Petrograd.
+But the verminous libertine was in too comfortable quarters with his
+dozen devotees to stir out far from his nest, and while going about the
+village standing drinks to all and sundry and ingratiating himself
+everywhere, he at the same time treated his old and ugly wife with
+brutal unconcern, and refused even to reply to the Imperial demand.
+
+At last he grew weary of his retirement--for, truth to tell, he usually
+retired there whenever he disappeared upon his many pretended
+pilgrimages in Russia--whereupon he one day sent a telegram to the
+Empress saying that he had at last been directed by a Divine call to
+again return to the bedside of the Tsarevitch.  This message was
+received with the greatest joy at Tsarskoe-Selo, where it set a-flutter
+hearts in which beat the noblest blood of Russia.
+
+"The Holy Father is on his way back to us!"  Such was the message
+whispered along the long stone corridors of the Winter Palace, the many
+windows of which look out upon the grey Neva.  The Empress went to her
+son's bedroom and told him the glad news, laying a tender hand upon the
+poor lad's brow.
+
+And Madame Vyrubova meeting the Emperor as he came out of his private
+cabinet chatting with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and the Minister
+Protopopoff, whispered the news into his ear.
+
+The Tsar smiled happily.  Little did His Majesty dream that by that
+return of the unwashed scoundrel whom the most delicately nurtured women
+worshipped, he was doomed to lose his throne.
+
+On Rasputin's arrival some intensely dramatic scenes ensued--scenes that
+would be deemed fantastic if any modern novelist had dared to describe
+them even as fiction.
+
+But from these voluminous reports and the _dossier_ before me I shall
+attempt to describe them.
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+SCANDALS AT THE WINTER PALACE.
+
+The rascalities of Rasputin were unparalleled, even in Russia.
+
+The mock-monk, much against his will, returned to the Winter Palace
+where the Court had gone for a few days and only because of the Divine
+call, as he pretended.  He treated the distracted Tsaritza with utter
+disdain when early one wintry morning he drove in from the Dvortsovy
+Square, passed the Palace Guards, and ascended the wide black-and-white
+marble staircase of the Great Hall, where she stood eager to receive
+him.
+
+"Ah!  Forgive me!  Forgive me, my Master!" implored the Empress in a low
+agonised tone.  "I was thoughtless and foolish."
+
+"Take me to Alexis," said the charlatan roughly interrupting her.  "He
+is ill--very ill--and God has sent me to him."
+
+Eagerly the Empress conducted him to the bedside of her son, the little
+Tsarevitch.  Madame Vyrubova, the mistress of Rasputin, was awaiting
+him, together with two nurses and a physician named Letchitzki.
+
+With rough deep-voiced dismissal the unkempt profligate sent everyone
+from the room, including the Empress herself.  He wished to pray by the
+sick lad's bedside, he explained.
+
+This he did, Madame Vyrubova alone remaining.  When the door was closed
+the blasphemous rascal quickly bent over the Heir to ascertain that he
+was sleeping, then he raised his own dirty hands for Madame to kiss,
+crossing himself at the same time, and whispering "The drug?  It seems
+to have acted well--eh?  Where is it?"  She slipped a tiny green-glass
+phial from her cream silk blouse and handed it to him, saying: "Yes,
+Badmayeff was right!  Each time I gave it to him in his milk, he grew
+worse."
+
+"Ah!" laughed the verminous fellow, his sensuous face bearded and
+blotchy with drink.  "Now that I have returned Divine Providence will
+restore him.  He will not get his six drops each day!"  The dastardly
+charlatan and poisoner of Russia's heir concealed the Thibetan drug in
+the folds of his ample habit, and whispering in his rough uncouth
+peasant way, "Now let the fools in again!" he threw himself upon his
+knees by the bedside commencing a fervent prayer.
+
+"O God--the Great! the Merciful! the Giver of all Bounties, the Creator,
+and the Death-giver--the Maker of Kings and the Destroyer of Nations--to
+Thee we pray--and of Thee we ask--"
+
+And as he uttered those blasphemous words the favourite lady-in-waiting
+opened the long white-and-gold door to admit the Imperial mother of the
+poor half-conscious elder son of the great House of Romanoff--the boy
+whose life was being trifled with by the administration of those
+pernicious drugs which, at any moment, when "Rasputin" willed, might
+cause death from haemorrhage.
+
+The fellow Novikh, the low-born thief and blackmailer from the far-off
+wilds of Siberia, had planted himself in the Winter Palace as a divinity
+to be worshipped.  The Court circle of silly women in search of
+sensation, and headed by the Empress herself, had fallen entirely
+beneath his baneful influence, believing that only by first practising
+his disgusting rites could they offer prayers to the Almighty.  Another
+of the Empress's intimates who had joined the Palace circle of Believers
+was Countess Ignatieff, who had also become a most devout follower of
+Rasputin and who exerted all her great influence in officialdom for his
+benefit and protection.
+
+War had broken out, and while the newspapers of the Allies were full of
+Russia's greatness and the irresistible power of her military
+"steamroller," the world was in utter ignorance that the Empress was
+actually educating her own daughters to enter the secret cult of the
+"Believers," a suggestion which they eventually obeyed!  Such was the
+truly horrible state of affairs at Court.  Thus in a few brief months
+that unmasked thief whom the workers of Petrograd contemptuously called
+"Grichka," and whose very name Rasputin meant "the ne'er-do-well" had,
+by posing as a holy man, and a worker of mock "miracles," become a power
+supreme at Court.
+
+Daily at eleven each morning this verminous libertine, whose weekly
+reunions were in reality orgies as disgraceful as any organised by the
+Imperial satyr Tiberius, knelt at the bedside of the poor little
+Tsarevitch to drone his blasphemous appeals to God, while the Empress,
+always present, knelt humbly in a corner listening to that jumble of
+exhortations, threats, and amazing assertions of his own divine right as
+high-priest of the Believers.  The Empress had fallen completely beneath
+the hypnotism of the grey steely eyes, the hard sphinx-like countenance
+that never smiled, and those long dirty knotted fingers, the nails of
+which were never cleaned.  To her, filth, both moral and personal, was
+synonymous with godliness.
+
+Then, after each prayer, Madame Vyrubova would assist the mock-monk to
+rise and declare--
+
+"The Holy Father is, alas! tired," and then lead him off into the
+adjoining ante-room overlooking the Neva where a silk-stockinged flunkey
+stood ready to serve the scoundrel with his usual bottle of Heidsieck
+monopole--the entire contents of which he would quickly empty and smack
+his lips over in true peasant manner.
+
+Mademoiselle Sophie Tutcheff, governess of the Tsar's daughters, very
+quickly perceived a change in the demeanour of her charges.  They were
+no longer the charming ingenuous girls they were before.  She had
+overheard whispered conversations between the Grand Duchess Tatiana and
+her sister, Marie.  Rasputin, moreover, had now been given luxurious
+apartments in the Palace, close to the rooms occupied by Madame
+Vyrubova, and each day he came to the schoolroom in which the three
+younger Princesses, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia were prosecuting their
+studies.
+
+It did not take Mademoiselle Tutcheff long to discern the true state of
+affairs.  The monk one day used the most lewd language while chatting
+with the three young Grand Duchesses, whereupon Mademoiselle, who
+belonged to one of the highest families in Russia, went off to the
+Empress in disgust and indignation.  Her protests were, as may be
+imagined, met with withering scorn.
+
+"I am Empress and the Holy Father is our guest in the Palace," exclaimed
+the Tsaritza, who was taking tea with two ladies of the Court who were
+her fellow-Believers.  "What you have said is an insult to him.  You are
+dismissed in disgrace."
+
+And an hour later poor Mademoiselle left the Palace without her pupils
+being allowed to bid her farewell.
+
+This, however, was but one illustration of the power which the rascally
+ex-highwayman had secured over the Imperial Court, and hence over the
+great Russian Empire itself.  His influence was more powerful than that
+of all the Grand Dukes, the Council of the Empire, and the Council of
+Ministers put together.  True, His Majesty was Tsar, but Gregory
+Rasputin was equally powerful, if not more so, because of his innate
+craftiness, his pseudo-divinity, his mock miracles, and the support he
+received from a certain section of the Church.
+
+Possessed of the curious cunning of the erotic criminal lunatic,
+Rasputin never allowed matters to run calmly for very long.  He was much
+too clever for that, well knowing, that while Protopopoff, Minister of
+the Interior was his friend, he had as powerful enemies, both Stolypin
+and Miliukoff--who, later on, became Minister for Foreign Affairs.  Both
+the latter he feared, as well as the Grand Duke Nicholas Michailovitch.
+
+The latter had secretly learnt much concerning the ex-thief of the
+far-off Siberian village--more, indeed, than Rasputin had ever dreamed.
+One day, a week after the departure of Mademoiselle Sophie Tutcheff, the
+Grand Duke attended a great reception at the Winter Palace.  The usual
+brilliant throng had assembled; the usual Imperial procession had taken
+place down the great Nicholas Hall, that famous salon wherein three
+thousand people can dance at one time--the salon the walls of which are
+adorned with golden plates, and where on the night of a Court ball the
+assembly is indeed a gorgeous one of stars, medals, exquisite dresses
+and brilliant uniforms.  Though Russia was at war, the Empress had given
+the ball, and all Russian Court Society had assembled.
+
+Among the throng were two men the Bishop Teofan, of the Pravoslavny
+Church, and with him the monk, silent and unbending, upon whom the eyes
+of all the women were turned.  Naturally there were many strange
+whisperings among those who were "Believers" and those who had not been
+initiated into the cult of the "Sister-disciples," whispers among the
+old and young--whispers which were not meant for any male ear.
+
+Bishop and monk passed down the great ballroom, through the beautiful
+winter-garden beyond, where many men and women were chatting beneath the
+palms, and then into the Oriental gallery, a place decorated with those
+engraved golden and silver plates which Catherine the Great received
+with bread and salt from those who came to do her homage.
+
+Thence the pair disappeared into one of the side rooms to what is known
+as the Jordan Entrance.
+
+A tall, bald-headed man with heavy brow, moustache, small round beard,
+and wearing a brilliant white uniform with many decorations had followed
+the pair from the ball-room.  With him walked a young, clean-shaven,
+dark-haired man in uniform, erect and determined.
+
+The elder was the Grand Duke Nicholas Michailovitch, the younger the
+Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch.
+
+They entered the small room unceremoniously, and confronted the
+illiterate Bishop and the peasant charlatan.
+
+"We have come to turn you out of the Palace!" exclaimed the elder man
+firmly.  "Your presence is obnoxious to us, especially the charlatan of
+Pokrovsky.  We are Grand Dukes of Russia, and we have no intention to
+mix with convicted thieves and beguilers of women!  Come!"  His Imperial
+Highness cried, "Go!  You are not wanted here!"
+
+"And pray by what right do you speak thus?" asked the Starets with
+offensive insolence.
+
+"By the right of my position," was the Grand Duke's reply.
+
+In response, Rasputin spat upon the pale blue carpet in defiance.
+
+In a moment the young Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, an athletic young
+officer who had only the day before returned from the German Front where
+he had been with von Rennenkampf, took the dirty monk by the scruff of
+his neck and flung him outside into the big marble hall, administering
+to him a severe kick in the presence of a dozen of the astonished Palace
+guards.
+
+"Put this scoundrel outside!" he commanded the men, and two minutes
+later, Rasputin, with his dirty black habit badly torn, found himself
+flung down the steps headlong into the snow.
+
+Meanwhile the Grand Duke Nicholas had administered to the dissolute
+Bishop--whose sister, by the way, was one of Rasputin's "spiritual
+brides" at his monastery, or harem, at Pokrovsky--a very severe
+castigation and with his own hands had torn the big crucifix from his
+neck and cast it across the room.
+
+Then, when at last the Bishop emerged into the Hall, he shared, at the
+Grand Duke's order, the same indignity that had befallen the dissolute
+blackguard whom the Empress caressed and called her "Holy Father."
+
+Of this episode Rasputin made no mention to Her Majesty.  It, however,
+caused him considerable misgivings and before morning he had decided
+upon a dramatic course of action.
+
+Next afternoon, a Wednesday, was the day fixed for the usual performance
+of the bi-weekly secret rites.  He took luncheon with the Emperor and
+Empress in their private apartments, Madame Vyrubova alone being the
+only other person at table.
+
+Suddenly the monk who had been talking with the Emperor, using his
+uncouth Siberian expressions, and even eating with his fingers, clasped
+his knotted, peasant fingers together and turning to the Empress,
+announced:
+
+"To-night, Great Lady, I go upon a pilgrimage.  Divine God has called me
+to Moscow, where work there awaits me.  I know not what it is, but when
+I arrive there I shall receive His divine direction.  Alexis will be
+well in my absence, and will improve, for twice each day he will have my
+prayers.  God has called me--I cannot remain."
+
+"Not even this afternoon?" gasped the unnerved hysterical woman who was
+Empress of Russia in this our Twentieth Century.
+
+"No.  I must take leave of you, great lady, to obey the call," was his
+deep answer.
+
+And by that night's express he left in a luxurious sleeping-berth for
+Moscow where, truth to tell, the Countess Ignatieff was awaiting him.
+
+The only "call" the licentious blackguard had received was the news that
+two very prepossessing young girls, named Vera and Xenie, daughters of
+the late Baroness Koulomzine, of Moscow, had expressed their desire to
+Countess Ignatieff to join the secret cult.  The Countess had shown him
+their photographs and the libertine, in pretence of performing a
+pilgrimage, travelled to Moscow in order to initiate them.  Next day, at
+the Convent of the Ascension, where the libertine had spent the night,
+he interviewed the two young gentlewomen.  Before an ikon with flowers
+upon the altar and in the presence of the Lady-Superior, he exorcised
+their sins according to his prescribed rite.
+
+It was a strange scene.  The penitents in the dimly-lit chapel each
+touched their forehead and breast with thumb and forefinger, gazing
+immobile and fascinated at the miracle-working "Master," their lips
+moving in proper response to the prayers of the Heaven-sent confessor.
+
+At what subsequently transpired I can only hint.  According to the
+official report before me the girls confessed to two officers, their
+half-brothers, that after the benediction the verminous monk induced
+them both to go to the Turkish baths together, for "purification" as he
+put it.
+
+Well, the mock-monk found himself under arrest, and only by the most
+strenuous efforts of the Countess Ignatieff was he released, after
+spending forty hours in a cell.
+
+But Rasputin merely smiled.  He knew his own power.  Next day he
+returned to Petrograd, and within twelve hours of his arrival
+Plestcheff, Chief of Police of Moscow, had, at the instance of the
+Empress, been relieved of his post in disgrace.
+
+Rasputin's exploits in Moscow brought him very nearly to disaster.
+
+Master-criminal that he was and as my intention is to show, he calmly
+reviewed his position, and saw that by cleverly playing his cards--now
+that the Empress and her easily gulled Court had become so completely
+enthralled by his "wonder-working"--he might assume his own position as
+the most powerful man in the Empire.
+
+His personal magnetism is indisputable.  I can personally vouch for
+that.  On the occasion when I met him in that grey cold repellent
+village on the Arctic shore, I myself felt that there was something
+strangely indescribable, something entirely uncanny about the fellow.
+Those grey eyes were such as I had never before seen in all my long
+cosmopolitan experience.  In those moments when we had exchanged
+greetings and bowed to each other he seemed to hold me beneath a weird
+curious spell.  He was demon rather than man.  Therefore I can quite
+conceive that the ordinary Russian woman of any class would easily
+succumb to his blasphemous advances and his assertions that he was
+possessed of a divinity as the deliverer of Russia.  Within the Russian
+soul, two centuries behind the times, of to-day, mysticism is still
+innate, and the mock-monk had already proved up to the hilt to his own
+complete satisfaction that, by pretending to fast, yet having a good
+square meal in secret; by pretending to make pilgrimages--but really
+throwing off his monkish "habits" and as a gay man about town taking a
+joy-ride in a motor car--and by crossing himself continuously and bowing
+low before every ikon at which he secretly sneered, he could gull the
+average woman whether she wore pearls or tended the pigs.
+
+Rasputin, a low-born immoral brute, by reason of the discovery of his
+own hypnotic powers, treated womenkind with the most supreme and utter
+contempt, and it seems that while clearly masquerading beneath that
+cloak of extreme piety and aided by his gardener-friend, the Bishop
+Teofan--a fellow-adventurer from Pokrovsky--he resolved after his Moscow
+adventure, to make a bold bid for further power.
+
+Most men in such circumstances as these would have been both cowed and
+careful.  Against him he had Stolypin, at that moment one of the most
+powerful men in the Empire, as well as the Grand Dukes Nicholas and
+Dmitri Pavlovitch, M.  Gutchkoff--a bearded man in gold pince-nez with
+whom I had had before the war many interesting chats in Paris and in
+Petrograd, and who subsequently became Minister of War and Marine--M.
+Miliukoff, the whole-hearted Deputy for Petrograd in the Duma, and what
+was far more serious, he had fifty or more wildly irate husbands and
+fathers, all eager and anxious to bring about the scoundrel's downfall.
+
+Traps were laid for him, but, with the amazing cunning of the erotic
+lunatic, he eluded them all.  Back in Petrograd, in the salons of the
+highest in the Empire, he lived in luxury, with cars always at his
+disposal.  The "Holy Father" who had his own suite in the private
+apartments of the Imperial family was welcomed everywhere he deigned to
+go.  His creature, Ilya Kousmitch, warned him of the pitfalls that were
+being set.  Even his dissolute crony the Bishop Teofan--whom, through
+the Empress, he had himself created--grew grave.  But the "Saint" merely
+bit his dirty finger nails, as is the habit of the Siberian peasant, and
+replied:
+
+"Gregory Novikh has been sent to Russia by Divine Providence.  He has no
+fear!"
+
+Soon after his narrow escape in Moscow he received a letter from the
+father of the two young girls who had so completely fallen beneath his
+pious blandishments--a letter in which the angry father declared that he
+would shoot him at sight.
+
+To that letter Rasputin, with the overbearing impudence of one who
+smoked and spat upon the carpet actually in the Empress's presence, and,
+who had the audacity to prompt the Tsar in making his appointments and
+dealing with the affairs of State, replied by telegram--a message still
+upon record--sent over the private wire from the Winter Palace:
+
+"Shoot--and God will reward your daughters bountifully.--Gregory."
+
+Though Rasputin presented a remarkably calm exterior, he no doubt, was
+much perturbed by that threat.  A single false step would certainly land
+him either in oblivion or in prison.  But criminal lunatics of his sort
+are notoriously clever and astute.  "Jack-the-Ripper" was of exactly
+similar type, and he defied the whole detective police of the world.
+
+The Secret Police of Russia, the wiles of which have been so vaunted by
+the modern novelist, were as childish idiots when their brains became
+pitted against those of the uncouth Siberian peasant, who, calling
+himself a "saint," could induce every silly woman to follow his immoral
+directions.
+
+Just then the Empress, whose shallow impressionable mind led her to
+adopt any new craze, and to seek any new sensation, met a person in whom
+she indiscreetly placed her trust--a treacherous, long-bearded political
+adventurer, named Boris Sturmer.  This man was a boon companion of the
+"Saint" in his debaucheries in the midnight wilds of Petrograd, for
+Rasputin, when believed to be absent for a week of prayer and
+self-denial, usually bathed himself, and wearing a well-cut evening-suit
+plunged into the gay midnight life at the Old Donon, the Belle Vue, or
+the Bouffes, on the Fontanka.  Thus Boris Sturmer, a strong pro-German
+who had many family connections with the enemy--and the bosom friend of
+Rasputin--actually became Prime Minister of Russia, such being the
+mock-monk's astounding influence over the Imperial Autocrat, whose wife
+and family were, alas! as but clay within his filthy hands.
+
+This latest triumph proved conclusively to Rasputin that his power was
+as great as that of the Emperor--indeed, to certain of his intimates he
+used laughingly to declare himself to be the uncrowned Tsar!
+
+"I live in the Palace," he would declare.  "The Empress does my bidding;
+her daughters are as my children; the Court bows to me; Nikki only
+smiles as an idiot--therefore, am I not the real Emperor of Russia?"
+
+Discovering his own overwhelming influence this sinister favourite of
+both Tsar and Tsaritza suddenly resolved upon a further move, the
+cleverness of which was indeed well within keeping with his marvellously
+astute reasoning.  He decided not to be dependent upon the charity of
+the Imperial pair, whom the Bishop Teofan had one day declared kept him
+in the Winter Palace as a tame saint.  His friend's taunt stung him to
+the quick.
+
+In consequence, he took a luxurious house in the Gorokhovaya, just
+beyond the Moyka, and close to the Palace, and while still retaining his
+apartments in the Palace, he lived mostly in his new abode, where in
+future he announced that the bi-weekly meeting of his disciples for
+prayer and consolation would be held.
+
+Like wildfire the decision of the "wonder-worker" ran through the salons
+of Society.  There was now a chance for others to enter the cult of the
+"Sister-disciples," and to become as one flesh with the Saint, and to be
+cured by Divine agency of any ill.
+
+Hundreds of society women were frantically anxious to enter this new
+sisterhood.
+
+His house was an expensive one, but only a few of the rooms were well
+furnished.  The dining-room on the ground floor was a large rather
+bare-looking place, with cheap chairs set round and equally cheap tables
+of polished walnut.  On the walls were portraits of the Tsar, the
+Tsaritza and himself.  Upstairs was his study, a large luxurious
+apartment, and from it led the bedroom of the "holy" man, which even
+eclipsed the study in luxury.  To this house the smart band of society
+converts who called themselves the "Sister-disciples" went regularly
+twice each week to hear the "miracle-worker" descant upon the beauties
+of his new religion.
+
+Among the members of this degenerate group were:--the pretty
+fluffy-haired little Princess Boyarski, Madame Pistolcohrse, sister of
+Madame Vyrubova, a certain Countess Yepantchine, whose splendid house
+was in the Sergiyevskaya, the most fashionable quarter without equal in
+Petrograd, as well as the Grand Duchess Olga, daughter of the Tsaritza,
+and many others.
+
+Though the blasphemous discourses were delivered and the disgusting
+secret rites practised twice each week at Rasputin's house, as well as
+also twice weekly in secret at Tsarskoe-Selo, many women seeking
+knowledge of the new religion--after having fallen beneath the spell of
+the mock-saint's eyes--went to the monk alone by appointment, and there
+had what the blackguard termed "private converse" with him in his
+upstairs study adjoining his luxurious sleeping apartment.
+
+The uncouth peasant's actions, his open immorality, and the cold-blooded
+manner in which he turned wife from husband, and betrothed from her
+lover, had now become open gossip at the street corners.  Whenever the
+mock-saint went forth in any car or carriage of his female admirers or
+of the Court, the people grinned and recognising the lady, would
+whisper--
+
+"Look!  Grichka has taken yet another bride!"
+
+At some of the mysterious meetings Rasputin's old friend the dissolute
+Bishop Teofan was present, and on one occasion a dramatic incident
+occurred.
+
+The little Princess Boyarski had apparently grown jealous of the "Saint"
+because he had paid too great attention to a new convert, a certain
+Mademoiselle Zernin, just turned twenty.  High words arose in the select
+circle of worshippers, and the Bishop with his big golden cross on his
+breast endeavoured to quell the dispute.  The Princess then turned
+furiously upon the Bishop, expressing the deepest resentment that he
+should have been admitted to their private conference at all, and vowed
+that she would use all her influence to get him turned out of the Church
+he had dishonoured.
+
+Rasputin and his friend ridiculed her threats, but two days later both
+grew extremely uneasy, for Teofan was already extremely unpopular with
+the Court circle, and all were only too ready to effect his dismissal
+and disgrace.  Indeed, forty-eight hours after the Princess had uttered
+those threats, she, with the Countess Kleinmichel, contrived to secure
+his expulsion from the Church.  Only after Rasputin had threatened the
+Empress that he would leave Petrograd, and in that case the Tsarevitch
+would, he declared, die, that he secured the re-instalment of his
+fellow-criminal.  Such was the scoundrel's influence at Court in these
+present war-days!
+
+By various tricks, in which he was assisted by the young servant, the
+man Ilya, the charlatan still performed "miracles" upon the poor, which
+naturally caused his fame to spread all over Russia, while his sinister
+influence was now being felt both in the Orthodox Church, and in the
+conduct of the war.  Contrary to what is generally supposed, he had
+never been ordained a priest, while he never attended church nor
+observed any of the forms of religious worship, save the immoral
+practices of his own invention.
+
+He claimed a semi-divinity, and thus declared himself to be above all
+man-made laws.
+
+In those scandalous discourses, in which he made use of the most erotic
+suggestions, he always urged his female devotees that only through his
+own body could they seek the protection and forgiveness of the Almighty.
+
+"I show you the way!" he would constantly say as he stood with his hand
+behind his back, his other hand upon the Bible.  "I am here to give you
+salvation."
+
+Such was his power in ecclesiastical matters in Russia that the most
+lucrative posts in the Church were now filled by men who had paid him
+for their nominations, and he boasted that the Procurator of the Holy
+Synod was merely his puppet.  From certain evidence before me I am
+inclined to believe this to be the truth, for some of the supposed
+"miracles" could never have been "worked" without the Procurator's
+connivance.
+
+Daily, smart society women came to Rasputin's house for "private
+converse."  Sometimes one of the circle of his elect would bring with
+her a young society girl who had heard vaguely of "the disciples," and
+whose curiosity was naturally aroused, to meet the wonderful
+wonder-worker.  At others, women went alone.  But in each case the
+result was the same.
+
+One afternoon the young wife of the wealthy Count Ivanitski went there
+in secret, attired in one of her maid's dresses, so as to escape
+observation, passing through the servants' entrance.  The Count,
+however, had heard whispers of this intended visit and, awaiting her
+return, followed her back to the Furshtavkaya, where they lived in a
+handsome house a few doors from the Liteyny Prospect.  He then coolly
+called his servants and compelled her to confess before them all that
+had happened to her in Rasputin's house.  Afterwards he drew a revolver
+and shot her dead.  Then he walked out and gave himself up to the
+police.  Within an hour news of the affair was brought to the Empress
+and to Rasputin, who were dining together in the Palace.
+
+The monk made a sarcastic grimace when he heard of the murder of the
+woman who had that afternoon been his victim.
+
+"Poor fool!" he exclaimed, his glass of wine in his hand.  "The Countess
+had already become a devoted disciple."
+
+But the Empress at once bestirred herself in fear of public indignation
+being aroused against the Holy Father, and telephoning to the Minister
+of the Interior, ordered the Count's immediate release.
+
+On another occasion, a week later, a young lieutenant of cavalry named
+Olchowski, who had been with von Rennenkampf at Brest-Litovsk, had
+returned to Petrograd, being met at the railway station by his devoted
+young wife, a mere chit of a girl, the daughter of a Baroness living at
+Ostroff.  They returned home together, whereupon somebody slipped into
+his hand an anonymous letter, stating that his pretty young wife Vera
+had become one of the "spiritual brides" who attended the bi-weekly
+meetings in the Gorokhovaya.  The Lieutenant said nothing, but watching
+next afternoon he followed her to the meeting place of the "Naked
+Believers," and having satisfied himself that during his absence at the
+front his beloved wife had fallen beneath the "saint's" spell, he
+concealed himself in the porch of a neighbouring house until after the
+worshippers had all departed.  Then Rasputin presently descended the
+steps to enter one of the Imperial carriages which had called for him as
+was usual each day.
+
+In an instant the outraged husband, half-mad with fury, flung himself
+upon the "holy" libertine and plunged a long keen knife into his breast.
+
+But Rasputin, whose strength was colossal, simply tossed his assailant
+away from him without a word, and entered the carriage.
+
+Beneath his monkish hair-shirt he had for some time, at the Empress's
+urgent desire, worn another shirt which she had had specially made for
+him in Paris, as also for the Tsar--a light but most effective shirt of
+steel-mail.
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+HOW RASPUTIN POISONED THE TSAREVITCH.
+
+The dark forces established so ingeniously by the Kaiser behind the
+Russian throne in April, 1914, had now become actively at work.
+
+The small but all-powerful clique of which Rasputin was the head because
+he practically lived with the Imperial family and ate at their table--
+the little circle which the Russians called "The Camarilla"--were
+actively plotting for the betrayal of the Allies and a separate peace
+with Germany.  Sturmer, the Austrian who had been pushed into the office
+of Prime Minister of Russia by his boon companion and fellow
+_bon-viveur_, the mock-monk of Pokrovsky, had already risen in power.
+The man whose long goatee-beard swept over the first button of his
+gorgeous uniform, all true loyal Russians in their unfortunate ignorance
+cheered wildly as he drove swiftly with the _pristyazhka_, or
+side-horse, along the Nevski, for he was believed to be "winning the
+war."  Russia, alas! to-day knows that with German gold flowing freely
+into his pocket he was in secret doing all he could to prevent ministers
+arriving from Great Britain, and laughing up his sleeve at his success
+in ordering a mock-railway from Alexandrovsk to be built in order to
+connect Petrograd to an ice-free port--a line which subsequently had to
+be taken up and relaid!
+
+Even our British journalists were cleverly bamboozled, for they returned
+from Russia and wrote in our newspapers of her coming great offensive,
+when they would sweep back the Kaiser's hordes and be into Berlin ere we
+should know it.  In Petrograd one heard of Rasputin as the Shadowy
+Somebody.  But most people declared that he was only a monk, a pious
+person whom silly women admired, as women so often admire a fashionable
+preacher even in our own country, and further because of "something,"
+the Censor refused to allow his name to appear in any paper.
+
+In Russia the censorship is full of vagaries.  My own novels came under
+his ban twenty years ago, because as correspondent of _The Times_ I had
+spoken some very plain truths in that journal.  I remember well old
+Monsieur de Stael, then Russian ambassador in London and the cheeriest
+of good souls, laughing when I came back from Russia at my complaint
+regarding the censorship.  "Why!" he said, "they censor my letters to my
+own daughter in Nijni!  Please do not think any the less of Russia for
+that.  You have been across the Empire, into Siberia, and surely you
+know how far we are behind the times!"
+
+Russia had, after all, advanced but little in those intervening twenty
+years, though it has produced the rascal Rasputin.
+
+That small circle of Germanophiles who met so frequently in secret at
+Rasputin's house in the Gorokhovaya--the scene of the bi-weekly orgies
+of the "Sister-Disciples"--though they were unaware of it were, with
+clever insinuation, being taught that a separate peace with Germany
+would be of greatest advantage to the Empire.  They were hourly
+plotting, and the details of their conspiracies which have now come to
+light and are before me, documents in black and white, which had been
+carefully preserved by the monk, are truly amazing.  Surely no novelist,
+living or dead, could have ever imagined a situation so astounding and
+yet so tragic, for the fate of one of the mightiest Imperial Houses of
+the modern world was now trembling in the balance.
+
+That both the Prime Minister and his long-moustached sycophant
+Protopopoff, a political adventurer whose past is somewhat shady and
+obscure, were in daily consultation is plain from the reports of secret
+agents of the Revolutionists.  The Duke Charles Michael, though heir to
+the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had, as part of the German
+Emperor's subtle plot, become naturalised as a Russian three weeks
+before the declaration of war, and he, with the erotic scoundrel, was
+actively carding out Berlin's set programme in the salons of
+Tsarskoe-Selo.
+
+"Grichka," the convicted thief from the far-off Siberian village, the
+man who had a dozen "spiritual brides" at Pokrovsky, uncouth, unlettered
+and unwashed, had by this time obtained such hypnotic hold upon the
+female portion of Petrograd society that when he deigned to accept an
+invitation to dine at the various palaces of the nobility he would eat
+from his plate with his dirty fingers and his female admirers actually
+licked them clean!  This is absolute fact, vouched for by dozens of
+patriotic Russians whose names I could give.
+
+It is contained in a plain report in cold unvarnished language in an
+official Russian report which is before me.  Readers will, I believe,
+halt aghast.  But such men have exercised the same powers over women--
+criminal lunatics always--through the long pages of history.
+
+The heart of Russia was being eaten out by the German canker-worm.  The
+high-born women of Petrograd were being used by Rasputin to play the
+Kaiser's game.
+
+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 assaulted 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 analysis 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 knobs 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 scraps 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 prone 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 sexes.  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 title 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.
+
+The men mentioned, together with half-a-dozen others with high-sounding
+titles, were bent upon ruining Russia, and giving her over body and soul
+as prey to Germany.  All had been arranged, even to the price they were
+each to receive for the betrayal of their country.  This was told to the
+Empress time after time by Count Kokovtsov, the Adjunct-Minister of the
+Interior Dzhunkovsky, the Grand Dukes Nicholas Michailovitch, Dmitri
+Pavlovitch, and others.  But Her Majesty would listen to nothing against
+her pet "Saint," the Divine director, that disgracefully erotic humbug
+who pretended that he could heal or destroy the little Tsarevitch.  When
+any stories were told of him, Anna, her favourite lady-in-waiting, would
+declare that they were pure inventions of those jealous of "dear
+Gregory's" position and influence.
+
+While Boris Sturmer, frantically scheming for a separate peace with
+Germany, was with his traitorous gang engineering all sorts of
+disasters, outrages and military failures in order to prevent the
+Russian advance, Kurloff, another treacherous bureaucrat, sat in the
+Ministry of the Interior collecting the gangs of the "Black Hundred,"
+those hired assassins whom he clothed in police-uniforms and had
+instructed in machine-gun practice.
+
+Rasputin and Protopopoff were now the most dominant figures in the
+sinister preparations to effect Russia's downfall.  Rasputin was busy
+taking bribes on every hand for placing his associates into official
+positions and blackmailing society women who, having been his
+"disciples," had, from one cause or another, left his charmed circle.
+
+Protopopoff, who once posed as our friend and hobnobbed; with Mr Lloyd
+George, was a man of subtle intrigue.  From being a friend of Britain,
+as he pretended to be when he came here as Vice-President of the Duma,
+he was enticed away by Germany to become the catspaw of the Kaiser, and
+was hand in glove with the holy rascal, with his miracle-working, behind
+the throne.
+
+Rasputin, himself receiving heavy payments from Germany, had acquired
+already the most complete confidence of the Tsar and Tsaritza; indeed,
+to such an extent that no affair of State was even decided by the
+weak-kneed autocrat without the horse-stealer's evil counsel.  Loyal to
+his Potsdam paymaster, Rasputin gave his advice with that low and clever
+cunning which ever distinguished him.  He gave it as a loyal Russian,
+but always with the ulterior motive of extending the tentacles of German
+influence eastward.
+
+In the voluminous confidential report here before me as I write, the
+disclosures of the rise and fall of Rasputin, I find an interesting
+memorandum concerning a certain Paul Rodzevitch, son of a member of the
+Council of the Empire.  Alexander Makaroff, one of the three private
+secretaries of the Emperor, had died suddenly of heart disease, the
+result of a drinking bout at the Old Donon, and at the dinner-table of
+the Imperial family at Tsarskoe-Selo the matter was being discussed,
+Rasputin being present.  He was unkempt, unwashed--with untrimmed beard,
+and a filthy black coat greasy at the collar, and his high boots worn
+down at heel, as became a "holy man."
+
+The Tsar was deploring the death of this fellow Makaroff, a person whose
+evil life was notorious in Petrograd, and whose young wife--then only
+twenty--had followed the example of the Empress, and had become a
+"sister-disciple."
+
+"Friend!" exclaimed the "Saint" with pious upward glance, for he had the
+audacity to address the Emperor thus familiarly, "Friend!  Thou needst
+not seek far for another secretary; I know of one who is accomplished,
+loyal and of noble birth.  He is Paul Rodzevitch.  I will bring him to
+thee to-morrow as thy new secretary--and he will serve thee well."
+
+His Majesty expressed satisfaction, for the holy man, the holiest man in
+all holy Russia, as was his reputation, had spoken.
+
+Next day the good-looking young fellow was appointed, and into his hand
+was given His Majesty's private cipher.  None knew, until it was
+revealed by the band of Russian patriots united to unmask the spy, that
+this fellow Rodzevitch had spent two years in Germany before the war, or
+that he was in receipt of a gratuity of twenty-five thousand marks
+annually from the spy bureau in the Koniggratzer-strasse in Berlin!
+
+By this means Rasputin placed a spy of Germany upon all the Tsar's most
+confidential correspondence.
+
+Madame Vyrubova, and the infernal witchdoctor, were already
+all-dominant.  Sturmer and Protopopoff were but pawns in the subtle and
+desperate game which Germany was playing in Russia.  The food scarcity
+engineered by Kurloff; the military scandals engineered by a certain
+creature of the Kaiser's called Nicolski; the successful plot which
+resulted in the destruction of a great munition works with terrible loss
+of life near Petrograd; the chaos of all transport; the constant
+wrecking of trains, and the breakdown of the strategic line from the
+Arctic coast across the Lapland marshes, were all combining to hurl the
+Empire to the abyss of destruction.
+
+One day the Grand Duke Nicholas visited Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had a
+private interview with the Emperor--Rasputin's creature, the new
+secretary Rodzevitch, being present.  The Emperor had every belief in
+the man's loyalty.  His Majesty, weak and easily misled, never dreamed
+of treachery within his private cabinet.
+
+The words spoken by the Grand Duke that afternoon were terse, and to the
+point.
+
+"The Empire is doomed!" he said.  "This verminous fellow Rasputin--the
+man contemptuously known in the slums of the capital as `Grichka,' is
+working out Germany's plans.  I have watched and discovered that he is
+the associate of pro-Germans, and that his is the hand which in secret
+is directing all these disasters which follow so quickly upon each
+other."
+
+"But he is a friend of Protopopoff!" the Emperor exclaimed.
+"Protopopoff has been to England.  He has gone over the munition
+factories in Scotland that are working for us; he has visited the
+British fleet, and when I gave him audience a few weeks ago, he
+expressed himself as a firm supporter of our Allies.  Read his speech in
+the Duma only the night before last!"
+
+"I have already read it," replied the Grand Duke.  "But it does not
+alter my opinion in the least.  He is hand-in-glove with the monk and
+with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.  Why you continue to have either
+of them about you I cannot imagine.  If you do not dismiss them, then
+the House of Romanoff must fall, I tell you that," he declared quite
+bluntly.
+
+His Majesty pandered for a moment and replied--"Then I will give orders
+to the Censor that the names of neither are in future to be mentioned
+publicly."
+
+This is all the notice the Emperor took of the Grand Duke's first
+warning.  The people did not dare in future to mention "Grichka," for
+fear of instant arrest.
+
+Since the outbreak of war Mother Grundy has expired in every country in
+Europe.  An unfortunate wave of moral irresponsibility seems to have
+swept the world, and nowhere has it been more apparent than in Russia.
+
+This unwashed rascal who posed as a saint, who, by his clever
+manoeuvres, his secret drugs and his bribes, had become so popular with
+the people, was entirely unsuspected by the simple folks who comprise
+the bulk of Russia's millions.  To them he was a "holy man" whom the
+great Tsar admired and fed at his table.  No one suspected the
+miracle-worker to be the secret ambassador of the Assassin of Potsdam.
+Everywhere he went--Moscow, Kazan, Odessa, Nijni, and other cities, he
+was fierce in his hatred of the Kaiser, and while cleverly scheming for
+the downfall of his own people, he was yet at the same time urging them
+to prosecute the war.
+
+A man of abnormal intellect, he was a criminal lunatic of that types
+which the world sees once every century; a man whose physical powers
+were amazing, and who though dirty and verminous, with long hair
+unbrushed and beard untrimmed for a year at a time, could exercise a
+weird and uncanny fascination which few women, even the most refined,
+could resist.
+
+The terms upon which Rasputin was with the Empress it has been given to
+me to reveal in this volume.  They would have been beyond credence if
+the German spy who had been placed as secretary to the Emperor, had been
+loyal to his unscrupulous employers.  But he was not.  Money does much
+in these war-days, and in consequence of a big payment made to him by
+Rasputin's enemies, the patriots of Russia--and they were many--he
+intercepted a letter sent by the Empress to her "Holy Father" early in
+1916--a copy of which I have in the formidable dossier of confidential
+documents from which I am culling these curious details.
+
+The "Holy Father" in hair-shirt and sandals had gone forth upon a
+pilgrimage, and the female portion of Petrograd society were in
+consequence desolate.  The house in the Gorokhovaya stood with its
+closed wooden shutters.  Sturmer was at the Empress's side, but
+Protopopoff--Satan in a silk hat as he has been called--had gone upon a
+mission to Paris.
+
+The letter before me was addressed in her Majesty's hand to Rasputin, at
+the Verkhotursky Monastery at Perm, whither he had retired in order to
+found a provincial branch of his "Believers" and initiate them into the
+mysteries of his new religion.
+
+This amazing letter which plainly shows the terms upon which the Empress
+of Russia was with the convicted criminal from Pokrovsky, contains many
+errors in Russian, for the German wife of the Tsar has never learnt to
+write Russian correctly, and reads as follows--
+
+"Holy Father!  Why have you not written?  Why this long dead silence
+when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you, and for your
+words of comfort?
+
+"I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me.  Oh! if
+I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your shoulder!  Ah!
+can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and blank forgetfulness
+that I experience when you are near me?  Now that you have gone, life is
+only one grey sea of despair.  There was a Court last night, but I did
+not attend.  Instead, Anna (Madame Vyrubova) and I read your sweet
+letters together, and we kissed your picture.
+
+"As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good daughter
+of Christ.  But oh! it is so very difficult.  Help me, dear Father.
+Pray for me.  Pray always for Alexis (the Tsarevitch).  Come back to us
+at once.  Nikki (the Tsar) says we cannot endure life without you, for
+there are so many pitfalls before us.  For myself, I am longing for your
+return--longing--always longing!
+
+"Without our weekly meetings all is gloom.
+
+"Only the everlasting toll of war!  Germany is winning--as she will
+surely win.  But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our
+Russian public.  In you alone I have faith.  May God bring you back to
+us very soon.  Alexis is asking for you daily.  We are due to go to
+Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here.  I embrace you, and so do
+Nikki and Anna.
+
+"Your devoted daughter, Alec."  Has history ever before recorded such an
+astounding letter written by a reigning Empress to a sham saint?
+
+It must not be thought that Rasputin was without enemies.  He had hosts
+of them, but in an almost incredible manner he seemed to scent danger
+wherever it lurked, and eluded the various traps set for him.  This was
+probably because he had surrounded himself by creatures ready to do any
+evil work he ordered.  Not only had he earned the most bitter vengeance
+of wronged husbands and fathers, but he had against him a small league
+of patriotic Russians, men and women, headed by a civil servant named
+Vilieff, who had banded themselves together with a view to tear away the
+veil and unmask the traitor.  The rascal knew this, and was ever upon
+his guard, while Sturmer and Kurloff used their great influence for his
+protection.  At the same time Rasputin had corrupted the Russian Church
+in its centres of power and administration until nearly half its high
+ecclesiastics were agents of Germany.
+
+In order to exhibit a swift, relentless hand in dealing with any enemy
+who should arise against him, Rasputin one evening cordially invited
+Vilieff, who had sworn to open the eyes of the people to the mock-monk's
+villainy.  Indeed, he had travelled to far-off Pokrovsky and collected
+much damning evidence concerning Grichka's past.  Kurloff was at dinner
+to meet the young man, the bait offered by Rasputin being that the
+official of the Ministry of the Interior intended to promote him to a
+highly lucrative post in his department.
+
+According to a statement made by the monk's wily accomplice,
+Yepantchine, who afterwards came forward and made so many revelations,
+only the trio sat down to dinner, whereupon the traitorous bureaucrat
+openly suggested that the band he had formed against Rasputin should be
+betrayed to the Palace police, in return for which he had ready for him
+five thousand roubles in cash, and, in addition, would there and then
+appoint him to a lucrative position in the chancellerie of the Ministry.
+
+On hearing this, the young man sprang up and angrily denounced both monk
+and minister as traitors, declaring that he would at once expose the
+effort to purchase his silence.
+
+Without further ado Rasputin drew a revolver and, secretly approaching
+him, shot him dead.
+
+His body was found in the snow near the corner of the Kazanskaya early
+next morning.  The dead man's friends, who knew of his visit to Rasputin
+that night, informed the police, but the monk was already before them.
+
+At dawn he sought the Emperor at the Tsarskoe-Selo, and found him in his
+dressing-gown.  To him he complained that enemies were making a
+disgraceful charge against him, and added:--
+
+"I seek thy protecting hand, friend.  Wilt thou give orders to the
+police to leave me unmolested?"
+
+The Emperor, who believed in him as implicitly as his wife, at once gave
+orders over the telephone, and thus the murder was suppressed.
+
+A week later a man named Rouchine, who had, with Yepantchine, assisted
+him in his mock-miracles, discovered him with a certain Swede named
+Wemstedt, who was chief of the German Secret Service in Stockholm, and
+who had come in disguise to Petrograd to obtain certain reports
+furnished by Sturmer.  His secret visit to Rasputin's house was to get
+the documents for transmission to Germany, and to make one of the large
+monthly payments to the monk for his services as the Kaiser's agent.
+
+Their meeting was watched by Rouchine, who overheard greater part of the
+conversation of the pair ere the "Saint" became aware there was an
+eavesdropper.  Instantly he scented danger, for he trusted nobody; the
+monk made no sign, but when Wemstedt had gone he placed a bottle of
+vodka in a spot where he knew that Rouchine would find it.
+
+As he expected, his servant drank a glass, and within half-an-hour he
+expired in terrible agony, with Rasputin jeering at him in his
+death-throes.
+
+It is computed that during 1916 no fewer than twenty persons lost their
+lives in consequence of visits to that sinister house within the shadow
+of the Winter Palace.  Armed with those secret Chinese drugs, the pious
+assassin could administer baneful doses which proved fatal hours
+afterwards, with symptoms which completely deceived the doctors.
+
+Knowing his own danger, he one day hit upon a new plan for his own
+protection, and when at dinner at the Imperial table he, addressing the
+Empress, said:
+
+"A vision of the fixture hath to-day been revealed unto me!  It is a
+warning--one that thou surely shouldst heed!  When I die, Alexis will
+live but forty days longer.  Surrounded as I am by those who seek my
+downfall and death, I know not what plots may be formed against me.  I
+only know that assuredly Alexis will only survive me through forty days.
+If God wills it, my end may be to-morrow!" he added, raising his eyes
+piously.
+
+At this the Empress betrayed terrible distress.  But the ruse of the
+wily scoundrel worked well, for the personal protection at once afforded
+him by order of the Tsar was as complete as the surveillance upon the
+Emperor himself.
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+THE "HIDDEN HAND" OF BERLIN.
+
+Rasputin, though revealing himself constantly as a blasphemous
+blackguard, had by the middle of 1916 become the greatest power in
+Russia.  Through his good offices Germany hoped to crush the Empire.
+
+Examination of the confidential reports concerning his scandalous
+activities here before me causes me to halt aghast that the Imperial
+Court, which I attended in peace time, Petrograd society, and the
+hard-working classes in Russia, should have become so completely and so
+utterly hypnotised by his disgraceful "religion."  The latter had eaten
+into the Empire's heart, causing an outburst of open and disgraceful
+immorality in the higher circles--a new "sensation" that was appalling.
+In Moscow, Kazan, Tambov, and other cities, "circles" of the
+"Sister-Disciples" had been eagerly formed, together with a branch which
+were meeting in secret at a small old-world monastery called Jedelevo,
+in the Province of Simbirsk, and about whose doings many scandalous
+whispers reached Petrograd.
+
+"Grichka" possessed the reputation of being a popular preacher.  That
+was not so.  He had never been ordained a priest; he was a pure
+adventurer, and did not belong to any ecclesiastical order.  Therefore
+he had no licence to preach in a church.  He was simply a Siberian
+peasant convicted of theft, blackmail, and outrage, who had set himself
+up to be a "holy man."  And as such, all Russia, from the Empress
+downwards, accepted him and swallowed any lie that he might utter.
+Truly the whole situation was amazing in this twentieth century.
+
+He preached often to his "sister-disciples" in their _salons_, and
+sometimes at "At Homes," where fast society women who had fallen beneath
+the pious scoundrel's fascination hoped to make other converts.  To such
+"At Homes" only young and pretty women were ever invited.  Rasputin had
+no use for the old and angular.
+
+One evening one of these reunions for recruiting purposes was held by
+the yellow-toothed old Baroness Guerbel, at her big house in the
+Potemkinskaya, and to it a young married woman, wife of an officer named
+Yatchevski, who was well-known in Petrograd, had been invited.  Her
+husband, hearing of this, called three of his own burly Cossacks, and
+next night they concealed themselves close to Rasputin's house.  There
+they waited until the bearded "holy man" emerged to go upon his usual
+evening visit to the Winter Palace; when the men suddenly sprang upon
+him, and hustling him into a narrow side street, stripped him of his
+finely embroidered silk shirt, of the usual Russian model, his wide
+velvet knickerbockers, and his patent-leather top-boots.  After that
+they administered to the fellow a sound and well-deserved thrashing,
+having first gagged and bound him.  Afterwards they placed him, attired
+only in his underwear, upon a manure heap in a neighbouring stable-yard,
+while the clothes they had taken from him were packed in a big cardboard
+costume-box and delivered by special messenger privately to the Empress
+at the Palace.
+
+Her Majesty was, of course, furiously indignant that her dear "Father"
+should thus be made, sport of.  At once a rigid inquiry was ordered, but
+the perpetrators of the well-merited punishment were never discovered.
+
+Rasputin was ever active as head of the camarilla.  The attention of the
+Holy Synod had time after time been called to the amazing exploits of
+this pious charlatan, until at last it was deemed expedient to hold yet
+another inquiry, into the fellow's conduct.
+
+Supplied with German money, he employed spies on every hand to keep him
+informed of any untoward circumstances, or any undue inquisitiveness.
+So he quickly heard of this proposed inquiry and consulted Bishop
+Teofan, brother of one of his favourite "sister-disciples," who lived in
+Siberia.  That night both Monk and Bishop sought the Tsar and Tsaritza.
+Rasputin declared angrily that there was a most formidable plot against
+himself.  He therefore intended to leave Petrograd, and return to
+Siberia for ever.
+
+"Because by divine grace I possess the power off healing, thy Church is
+jealous of me," he declared to the Emperor.  "The Holy Synod is seeking
+my overthrow!  Always have I acted for the benefit of mankind, and so
+through me thy dear son is under God's grace.  But the Russian Church
+seeks to drive me forth.  Therefore, I must bow to the inevitable--and I
+Will depart?"
+
+"No!  No!" cried the Empress in despair.  Then, turning quickly to her
+husband, who had left some important business of State, which he was
+transacting in his private cabinet with the War Minister, Her Majesty
+exclaimed:
+
+"Nikki.  This ecclesiastical interference cannot be tolerated.  It is
+abominable!  We cannot lose our dear Father!  Order a list of his
+enemies in the Church to be made, and at once dismiss them all.  Put our
+friends into their places."
+
+"If thou wilt leave matters entirely to me," said the sham saint,
+addressing the feeble yet honest autocrat, "I will furnish the list,
+together with names of their successors."
+
+"I give thee a free hand, dear Gregory," was the Emperor's reply.
+Within twelve hours all those in the Russian Church who had sought to
+unmask the pious rascal found themselves dismissed, while in their
+places were appointed certain of the most drunken and dissolute
+characters that in all the ages have ever disgraced the Christian
+religion, their head being the arch-plotter Bishop Teofan.
+
+About this time, after many secret meetings of the camarilla at
+Rasputin's house, Protopopoff succeeded in bribing certain generals at
+the front with cash--money supplied from Germany, to prevent a further
+offensive.  In consequence, at a dozen points along the Russian lines
+the troops were defeated and hurled back.  This created exactly the
+impression desired by the camarilla, namely, to show to the Russian
+people that Germany was invincible, and that a separate peace was far
+preferable to continued hostility.  It was to secure this that Rasputin
+and his gang were incessantly working.
+
+Scandal after scandal was brought to light, and more than one officer of
+the high Russian command was arrested and tried by court-martial.
+Rasputin and Protopopoff had now become more than ever unscrupulous.
+Generals and others who had accepted bribes to further Germany's cause
+were secretly betrayed to the Ministry of War, care, however, always
+being taken that they could produce no absolute evidence against those
+who had previously been their paymasters.
+
+A notorious case was that of General Maslovsky, who, before the war,
+commanded the Thirteenth Army Corps at Smolensk.  He, with General
+Rosen, commandant of the Twenty-third Army Corps at Warsaw, had been
+induced by a "sister-disciple" of Rasputin's--a pretty young
+Frenchwoman--to accept a large sum paid into his account at the Volga
+Kama Bank in Moscow, provided that the Russians retreated in the Novo
+Georgievsk region.  This they did, allowing great quantities of
+machine-guns, ammunition and motor lorries to fall into the enemy's
+hands.
+
+In order to create scandal and public distrust, the "holy man" secretly
+denounced these two traitors, who were arrested and tried by
+court-martial at Samara.  The prisoners in turn revealed the fact that
+big payments had been made by the young Frenchwoman.  So she, in turn,
+was also arrested.  Rasputin, however, did not lift a finger to save his
+catspaw.  She declared that she had simply been the tool of the
+mock-monk, but the latter privately informed the President of the Court
+that the young Frenchwoman was a well-known spy of Germany known to the
+Court, and whom he had held in suspicion for a considerable time.
+
+No word against Rasputin's loyalty was ever believed, for was he not the
+most intimate and loyal friend of both Emperor and Empress?  Therefore
+the court-martial found the prisoners guilty, and the trio paid the
+penalty of all spies--they were shot in the barrack-square of Samara!
+
+This is but one illustration of Rasputin's crafty intrigue and cool
+unscrupulousness.  Possessed of a deeply criminal instinct as he was, it
+was impossible for him to do an honest action.  He never failed to
+betray his friends, or even send them to their graves upon false charges
+secretly laid, if by so doing he could further his own despicable ends.
+
+The dissolute rascal, possessed of superhuman cunning, held Russia in
+the hollow of his hand, and aided by his fellow-scoundrel, Protopopoff,
+he could make or break the most powerful men in a single hour.
+
+That he was in active communication with Germany, and that the vile
+plots against the Russian arms were being manufactured in Berlin, is
+plainly shown by the following letter, which after his death was
+discovered, together with a quantity of other highly incriminating
+correspondence--which I shall disclose later--in a small safe concealed
+beneath the stone floor of the well-stocked wine-cellar at the house in
+the Gorokhovaya.
+
+It is in one of the sentence-ciphers of the German Secret Service, but
+fortunately in the same safe the de-cipher was found, and by it that
+communication as well as others is now revealed.
+
+The letter is written upon thin pale-yellow paper, so that it might be
+the more easily concealed.  It had probably been bound up in the
+cardboard cover of a book and thus transmitted.  This letter before me
+reads as follows:--
+
+"Number 70.  August 16th, 1916.
+
+"Your reports upon the activity of Krusenstern (Commander of the 28th
+Army Corps), and also upon the friendship of Sakharoff and Yepantchine
+(two prominent members of the Duma), is duly noted.  The firm of
+Berchmann Brothers, of Kiev, are paying into the Credit Lyonnais in
+Petrograd 120,000 roubles to your account, with a similar sum to your
+friend S.  (Boris Sturmer, Prime Minister of Russia).
+
+"Instructions are as follows: Suggest to S. this plan against the Duma.
+From the archives of the Ministry of the Interior he can obtain a list
+of the names and places of residence of thousands of Russian
+Revolutionists of the extreme school.  These he can, if we order it,
+place in prison or have them tried by court-martial and shot.  He will,
+however, act most generously and secretly.  He will, under promise of
+protection send them forth as his agents, well supplied with funds, and
+thus arrange for a considerable number of pro-German Social Democrats to
+enter Petrograd and work alongside the Russian Anarchists, Tolstoyans,
+Pacifists, Communists and Red Socialists.  With such a widespread
+propaganda of wild and fierce agitators in the munition factories, we
+shall be able to create strikes and commit outrages at any moment
+instructions are given.  They should be ordered to continually urge the
+working men to strike and to riot, and thus begin the movement that is
+to make Europe a federation of Socialist republics.  This plan attracts
+the working-class, and has already succeeded on the Clyde and in
+Ireland.  Your only serious opponent is Gutchkoff, but you will arrange
+with the Empress that his activities be at once diverted into another
+sphere.
+
+"Enlist on our side as many members of the Duma as possible.  Furnish
+from time to time a list of payments made by you, and the firm of
+Berchmann will sustain your balance at the Credit Lyonnais.
+
+"We await the result of your good services, which are highly appreciated
+by His Majesty, and which will be amply and most generously rewarded
+when we have Russia in our hands, which will not be long.
+
+"Messages: Tell S.  (Sturmer, the pro-German Prime Minister and a
+creature of the Empress) to be extremely careful of the Grand Duke
+Dmitri.  He holds a compromising letter written by Nada Litvinoff
+regarding her attempt to suborn Brusiloff.  The woman Litvinoff is
+reported to be staying at the Regina Hotel in Petrograd.  No effort
+should be spared to obtain and destroy that letter, as it is very
+compromising.  Professor Miliukoff should be removed.  Ten thousand
+roubles will be paid for that service.  J. or B. might be approached.
+Both are in need of money.
+
+"Instruct Anna (Madame Vyrubova) to tell the Empress to receive a woman
+named Geismann, who will demand audience at noon on August 30th.  She
+carries a verbal message from the Emperor.  It is important that you
+should know Countess Zia Kloieff, of Voroneje.  She possesses influence
+in a certain military quarter that will eventually be most useful and
+highly essential.
+
+"H--(a spy whose identity is up to the present unknown) has fixed August
+29th, at 11:30 a.m., for the disaster at the shell-filling factory at
+Krestovsky.  An electric line is laid beneath the Neva, and all is
+prepared.
+
+"Salutations from all three of us.--N."
+
+Such were the secret instructions received from Berlin by the murderous
+charlatan who posed as one of the most loyal Russians in the Empire.
+
+His reply, of which a copy is appended--for strangely--enough he was a
+businesslike rascal--is as follows.  It is brief but to the point:--
+
+"Yours and remittances received.  S. already at work.  Have informed Her
+Majesty.  All is being prepared for our great coup.  The more disasters
+and loss of life in munition factories the better the impression towards
+yourselves.  S. has already sent four hundred extreme revolutionists to
+the front with money and instructions.  Have noted all your points.
+Martos takes this to Helsingfors, and will await your reply with any
+further orders.
+
+"Have had no instructions concerning the Englishman C.  Please send.
+Suggest imprisonment upon false charge of espionage.  If so, please send
+incriminating papers to produce as evidence.--G."
+
+The scoundrel's reply here before me is, in itself, in his own
+handwriting, the most damning evidence against him.
+
+That Sturmer and Protopopoff acted upon those instructions has since
+become apparent.  Events have shown it.  Puppets in the hands of the
+Emperor William, with money flowing to them in an ever-endless stream
+from businesslike sources entirely unsuspected by the highly patriotic
+banks handling those substantial amounts, they were swiftly yet surely
+undermining the greatness of the Russian Empire and seriously cutting
+the claws of the Russian bear.  The "Russian steam-roller," as certain
+English prophets--oh! save them!--were so fond of calling the Muscovite
+army in the early days of the war, was growing rusty for want of proper
+lubrication.  Rasputin and his friends were placing its machinery in the
+reverse gear by their marvellously well-concealed intrigues, and their
+lavish distribution of money to those long-haired revolutionists who had
+honestly believed that by removing the autocrat they would liberate
+their dear Russia.
+
+No plot more subtle, more widespread, or more utterly amazing has ever
+been conceived in the whole world's history than the one which I am here
+disclosing.
+
+A convicted criminal, a mere unmannered and uncouth peasant from far
+Siberia, held both Emperor and Empress of Russia beneath his thumb.  He
+gave to both of them orders which they weakly obeyed.  If one of the
+erotic scoundrel's "sister-disciples" asked a favour--the appointment of
+lover or of husband to a lucrative post--he went at once to the Emperor,
+and actually with his own illiterate hand wrote out the orders for His
+Majesty to sign.
+
+And to that unkempt blackguard, who seldom indulged in the luxury of a
+bath.  Her Majesty the Empress bowed her knee, honestly believing that
+the Almighty had endowed him with powers superhuman, and that he could
+cause disaster or death whenever he willed it.
+
+Further amazing and incriminating letters are before me as I write, and
+I shall print more of this secret correspondence in order that readers
+in Great Britain may know the depths of Germany's villainy and the exact
+methods by which Russia has been betrayed.
+
+The official _dossier_ concerning the crimes and conspiracies of the
+arch-scoundrel is astounding.  It becomes increasingly amazing as one
+turns over its voluminous pages, its confidential reports, its copies of
+telegrams dispatched under fictitious names, since obtained from the
+telegraph bureaux of Russia, and its originals of secret instructions
+from Berlin.
+
+In the latter one finds the subtle hand of the notorious Steinhauer, the
+head of the Kaiser's spy-bureau, the fair-bearded, middle-aged Prussian
+who accompanied the German Emperor to Buckingham Palace on his last
+visit to London, and who was one of the select party of German motorists
+who came to tour England with Prince Henry of Prussia at their head.
+
+It devolved upon myself to accompany and watch that tour very closely.
+Even then one department in Whitehall had not been chloroformed by the
+dope of the Sleep-quietly-in-your-beds Party--a department in the
+formation of which I had had some hand.  Steinhauer I had met in
+Germany, though he did not know me, and when he came to England with His
+Imperial Highness, as Herr Eschenburg of Stuttgart, driving his big red
+"Mercedes," I considered that it was high time to keep a strict eye upon
+him--which I did.  What I discovered of his movements and of his
+associates has been of greatest advantage since the outbreak of war.
+
+No more expert spy exists in all the world today than "Herr Eschenburg
+of Stuttgart", whose real name is Steinhauer, known in the German Secret
+Service as "Number Seventy."
+
+The _dossier_ here placed at my disposal shows that Herr Steinhauer
+visited Rasputin in Petrograd four times before August, 1914, while his
+underlings arrived at the house in the Gorokhovaya many times after the
+two Empires had come to grips.
+
+Rasputin, in his unique position as autocrat aver the Autocrat, felt
+himself the personal agent of the Kaiser, and as such seems to have
+somewhat resented Steinhauer's rather arrogant orders.  Indeed, he
+complained bitterly to the German Emperor, who, in reply, propitiated
+the Siberian peasant by explaining that he was so occupied by the
+campaign against his enemies that he left all matters of detail to "our
+trusted and loyal friend Steinhauer, whose actions and orders are as my
+own."
+
+On August 28th, 1916, there arrived in Petrograd a pretty dark-haired
+young Dutch woman named Helene Geismann.  She presented a letter of
+introduction to Rasputin that evening at his house, and was promised
+audience of Her Majesty the Empress at noon next day.
+
+The monk was at Tsarskoe-Selo when the young woman called.  It was a
+meeting day of the higher, or Court Circle of the "sister-disciples,"
+such seances being held at five o'clock each Friday afternoon.
+
+Three new "disciples" had been initiated into the mysteries of the
+mock-pious rascal's new "religion."  Their names were the Baroness
+Zouieff, and Mesdemoiselles Olga Romanenkoff and Nadjezda Tavascherne,
+the two latter being of the noblest families of Moscow, and all moving
+in the Court entourage.
+
+Nicholas II was away at the front, therefore Rasputin on such occasions
+ruled the Empire, and actually signed with his own hand orders and
+appointments, as His Majesty's representative.  When the Emperor was
+absent the dirty, unkempt peasant, who called himself a monk, usurped
+his place in the Imperial household.
+
+Through this unprincipled scoundrel and blackmailer Germany was cleverly
+working to undermine and effect the fall of the Muscovite Empire.  No
+expense was being spared, nor were there any scruples.  Germany intended
+that the Russian defensive should crumble.
+
+When the Empress received the young woman Geismann, an emissary from
+Berlin and the bearer of several documents, including an autograph
+letter from the Kaiser, the "Holy Father" was also present.  The
+superstitious, neurotic Empress could do nothing without the advice of
+the man who had by his mock-piety and his sensuous "religion" so
+completely entranced her.  She, like her weak, narrow-minded husband,
+had become completely hypnotised by the dissolute charlatan, in whose
+hands lay absolute power.
+
+When the Kaiser's messenger presented the secret letter to the Empress,
+she also handed another to Rasputin.
+
+This was found among the contents of the safe in the basement of
+"Grichka's" house, and is in German, as follows:--
+
+"_Strictly private and confidential_.
+
+"General Headquarters in France, Montmedy, August 10th, 1916.
+
+"Your excellent service to our Empire has been reported to me by Herr
+Steinhauer.  I congratulate you, happy in the knowledge that the Empress
+Alexandra has, in yourself, such a good and wise counsellor.  You have
+done much, but there is still more good work for you to accomplish.
+
+"Your friends must see that there is an increasing lack of material and
+ammunition, that information reaches Berlin regarding orders for guns,
+explosives and automobiles placed in England, in order that we can watch
+for them near the Finland coast, and destroy them.  Disasters on
+railways, in munition works and elsewhere are advisable.  Steinhauer is
+sending you six trusted agents to effect these.  Your friends must
+afford them official protection, and they must be also afforded
+opportunity.
+
+"I have also sent certain suggestions to Her Majesty the Empress which
+she will discuss with you.  Your two most dangerous enemies at the
+moment appear to be Prince Yuri Lvov, who has a great following, and the
+man from Tiflis, M.  Cheidze.  If their activities could be ended, you
+would be in far less danger.  It may be possible for you to arrange
+this.  Consult with the Empress.  It is my Imperial will that the
+payment arranged between us shall be doubled from this date.
+Salutations.
+
+"Wilhelm R. and I."
+
+Could any letter be more incriminating?  The Kaiser, with his constant
+appeals to Almighty God, was suggesting outrage and assassination to his
+paid agent--the man who, aided by the Prime Minister Sturmer and the
+blackmailer Protopopoff, held the future of Russia in his unwashed
+hands!
+
+For half-an-hour the young Dutch woman, the Kaiser's secret messenger,
+was kept waiting in an ante-room while the Empress consulted with her
+"Holy Father."  Then at last Her Majesty handed the woman an autograph
+letter to take back to the Emperor William.  All that is knows of the
+contents of that note is that it contained a promise that Germany should
+triumph.
+
+What chance had poor suffering Russia against such crafty underhand
+conspiracy?  Every one of her proposed military movements were being
+betrayed to Germany long before they were executed, and thousands of
+lives of her fine soldiers were daily being sacrificed, while the
+arch-traitor Rasputin continued his career of good-living,
+heavy-drinking, and bi-weekly "reunions."
+
+At these meetings the blackguard usually crossed his hands upon his
+breast, and with appalling blasphemy declared himself sent by the
+Almighty to deliver Russia from the invader.
+
+Towards all--to society, to those of the immoral cult that he had
+founded, to Russia's millions, he posed as a stern patriot.  Every one
+believed him to be so.  If not, surely, he would not be so closely
+intimate with their Majesties they argued.  Nobody in Russia dreamed
+that he was the agent of the Kaiser, or that the Empress had full
+knowledge of the great plot in progress.
+
+In the following month there occurred a number of mysterious disasters.
+Four explosions occurred in rapid succession; two at Petrograd, one at
+Moscow, and one at Kostrovna, all involving considerable loss of life,
+while troop trains were derailed at several important junctions, and
+other outrages committed, by which it was apparent that German agents
+were actively work.  Yet the police were powerless to detect the
+perpetrators of these dastardly acts.  Truly the black eagle of Prussia
+had struck its talons deep into Russia's heart.
+
+Late one night Rasputin was carousing at his house with the Prime
+Minister Sturmer and two "sister-disciples," young married women whose
+names were Baroness Gliuski and Madame Pantuhine, well-known in
+Petrograd society for their loose living, and who were helping the
+plotters and receiving large sums from German sources for their
+assistance.  The "Father" had only an hour before returned from
+Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had knelt at the bedside of the poor little
+Tsarevitch and then performed a pretended miracle.  The truth was that
+Madame Vyrubova had administered to the boy in secret several doses of
+that secret drug with which the mock-monk had provided her.  In
+consequence, he had become ill and his Imperial mother had once again
+called Rasputin to "heal" him.  This the fellow did, for Madame Vyrubova
+withheld the dose, and within four hours of Rasputin placing his dirty
+hands upon the poor boy's brow and uttering those cabalistic nine words
+of jargon from one of the blasphemous prayers which the scoundrel had
+written for use by the "sister-disciples," the heir had recovered.  And
+in that way, with his degenerate confederate, the rascal worked his
+"miracles."
+
+The four were seated around the monk's dining-table, smoking and
+drinking, the two women ever and anon devotedly kissing the "saint's"
+dirty hands, when his body-servant entered with a note for his master.
+As Rasputin read it his face fell.
+
+"Danger!" he gasped.
+
+"What is it?" inquired the bearded Prime Minister eagerly, putting down
+his glass of champagne untouched.
+
+"Letchitzki!  He is arrested!"
+
+"Letchitzki!" echoed Boris Sturmer, who was in uniform, as he had been
+to a diplomatic function at the United States Embassy that night.  "This
+is indeed serious for us!  Why is he arrested?  Who has dared to do
+that?"
+
+"Goutchkoff, Minister of Munitions, has ordered his arrest for
+embezzlement--ninety thousand roubles!"
+
+"Curse Goutchkoff!" cried Sturmer, starting up.  "In that case, our
+friend Protopopoff, as Minister of the Interior, is powerless to act in
+his interest!"
+
+"Is it really very serious?" asked the fair-haired young Baroness, who
+was at that moment holding the "saint's" hand.
+
+"Serious!" cried the uncouth Siberian peasant, who had so completely
+hypnotised both the women.  "Very.  If his trial took place he would
+certainly expose us!  We cannot afford that.  He has sent me this secret
+message placing the onus of his release upon me, and I must secure it at
+once.  He has documents, letters I have written him.  If they were
+found, then the whole affair must become public property!"
+
+"That must not be!" declared Sturmer.  "At any moment Miliukoff, or that
+young lawyer Kerensky, may get to know."
+
+"Kerensky was again arrested yesterday at my orders for his speech in
+the Duma," said Rasputin.  "I agree.  The prosecution of Letchitzki must
+not proceed.  It is far too dangerous."
+
+"Is there anything I can do?" asked the pretty Baroness, one of the most
+unscrupulous women in Russia.
+
+"Yes," replied the monk.  "You know the Minister Goutchkoff.  Go to him
+early to-morrow morning, and appeal on Letchitzki's behalf.  Take with
+you ninety thousand roubles which I will give you as soon as the banks
+open.  Pretend to the Minister that he is your lover, that he has
+embezzled the money to pay for presents to yourself--then hand over the
+sum missing."
+
+"Excellent idea!" declared Sturmer.  "You are always ingenious when
+cornered, Gregory!"
+
+"By that we shall clear the way for further action.  We must both see
+the Empress at once.  It is not yet too late," Rasputin added, and the
+merry quartette at once broke up, the "sister-disciples" to their own
+homes, and the monk to drive to the Palace.
+
+Both conspirators, so well-known, passed the sentries unchallenged, and
+traversing the long corridors to the private apartments, went by the
+gigantic Cossack on duty at the end, and through the big swing-doors to
+the luxurious wing of the great Palace.
+
+It was already long past midnight, and the only person they could find
+was the Tsar's eldest daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, who had with the
+eldest of her sisters entered Rasputin's "sisterhood" a year before.
+Every one, including the servants, had retired.  The Princess, who was
+reading an English novel in her own little sitting-room, appeared
+surprised to see the "Holy Father" at that hour, but took from him an
+urgent message to the Empress.
+
+Ten minutes later the Tsaritza, in a dainty lace boudoir-cap and rich
+silk kimono, entered the room where the pair of scoundrels awaited her.
+
+When alone, Rasputin revealed the fact of Letchitzki's arrest, adding:
+
+"Thou canst realise the great danger to us all.  If that man is brought
+before the Court believing that we have not endeavoured to save him, he
+will, no doubt, reveal and produce certain letters I have sent to him.
+Our plans will then become public, and Russia will rise and crush us!
+At present they do not suspect thee of any pro-German leanings.  Thou
+art the great and patriotic Tsaritza.  But if this prosecution proceeds,
+then assuredly will the truth become known!"
+
+"But, Holy Father, what can I do?" asked the weak hysterical woman,
+alarmed and distracted.
+
+"Thou must telegraph at once to thy husband to order the prosecution to
+be dropped," said the crafty scoundrel, standing in that erect attitude
+he was so fond of assuming, with one hand upon his breast and the other
+behind his back.
+
+"I will do all that you wish," was her eager response, and she sat down
+at once to write the message to the Tsar who, on that night, was with
+his gallant soldiers at the front.
+
+"Paul Letchitzki, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Munitions, has been
+arrested for embezzlement of public funds," she wrote.  "It is highly
+necessary, for our peace, that the prosecution shall be instantly
+stopped.  Every moment's delay means danger.  I will explain when you
+return.  Telegraph your order for his immediate release and the end of
+all proceedings against him.  I await your acknowledgment.--Alec."
+
+Then, having read the telegram, of which both men approved, she gave
+Rasputin her golden bangle from her wrist.  From it was suspended the
+tiny master-key of the escritoire in her boudoir.
+
+"Will you, my Holy Father, fetch me my private cipher-book?" she asked
+the mock-monk, at the same time bending and kissing his hand.
+
+The fellow knew where the little book was kept in such privacy, and in a
+few moments he had brought it.  Then Sturmer at once sat down and put
+the message into cipher, afterwards taking it himself to the clerk in
+the telegraph room on the other side of the Palace, for transmission to
+the Emperor.
+
+At ten o'clock next morning a reply in code was handed to the Empress.
+When, with the aid of her little book, she de-coded it, she read:
+
+"I cannot understand how the prosecution of a thief of whose name I am
+ignorant can affect us adversely.  I have, however, at your desire
+ordered his release and the suppression of all proceedings.--Nikki."
+
+To this, the Tsaritza, after she had sent a copy of the reassuring
+despatch to Rasputin, replied:
+
+"I thank you for your kind generosity.  How noble of you!  Accused was
+an innocent victim of his enemies, and our action shows that you are
+open and just.  Our Father and myself anxiously await your return.--
+Alec."  The moment Rasputin received the message from the hands of the
+trusted Cossack, Ivan Khanoff, the personal guardian of the young
+Tsarevitch, whom the Empress trusted with all her private
+correspondence, he telegraphed to Boris Sturmer at the Ministry of
+Foreign Affairs, telling him of the order of the Tsar.
+
+And both laughed triumphantly at each other over the telephone.  Yet
+both certainly had had a very narrow escape of exposure, and for the
+first time the Tsaritza saw the handwriting on the wall.
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+RASPUTIN'S SECRET ORDERS FROM BERLIN.
+
+Some pages of Rasputin's _dossier_ concern his intimate friendship with
+the Imperial family, and more especially with the Tsar's daughters, whom
+the Empress herself had placed beneath his "tuition" and influence.
+
+It seems that the monk Helidor--who because of his patriotism fell out
+of favour when Rasputin commenced to perform his conjuring tricks, which
+the Imperial Court believed to be miracles--still retained his
+friendship with the Grand Duchess Olga, and the governess of the
+Imperial children, the honest and straightforward Madame Tutcheva.
+
+To Helidor--who afterwards revealed all he knew to the Revolutionary
+Party--the young Grand Duchess confessed her love for a certain very
+handsome officer, Nicholas Loutkievitch, of the Imperial Guard.  She saw
+him often in the vicinity of the Palace, and also when she went to
+church, and he used to smile at her.
+
+"Holy Father," she said one clay to Helidor, "what can I do?  I love
+him.  But alas! love is forbidden to me--for I am an Imperial princess.
+It is my torment."
+
+Helidor had tried to console her by saying that she was young, and that
+she would love many times before she found the man who was to be her
+husband.  It was surely not strange that the handsome young Grand
+Duchess should be attracted by a handsome man, for after all, even
+Imperial princesses are human.
+
+Helidor, who belonged to the Pravoslavny Church, under Bishop Teofan,
+saw Rasputin a few days later and incidentally mentioned the youthful
+infatuation of the young Princess.
+
+"Oh!  I have already cured all that!" said the scoundrel with a laugh.
+"Her infatuation has been dispelled.  I have cast the devil out of her."
+Then Rasputin boastingly disclosed to Helidor certain things which left
+no doubt in the latter's mind as to the true state of affairs existing
+at Tsarskoe-Selo, or the truth of what Madame Tutcheff had alleged.
+
+Indeed, among the filed pages of the _dossier_ which deal with this
+particular incident, is a letter which I venture here to reproduce.
+Rasputin, with all his mujik's shrewdness, preserved many letters
+written to him by women of all grades, hoping that when cast out of the
+Imperial circle he could use them for purposes of blackmail.  Here is
+one of them:
+
+"Palace of Peterhof.
+
+"March 23rd, 1916.
+
+"Holy Father,--Dear true friend, we are all desolate without you.  When
+are you returning from Pokrovsky?  You promised to be here on the third,
+yet we have had no word from you.  Dear true friend and father, how is
+Matroysha (Rasputin's peasant wife)--and the children?  Give my love to
+them.  Tatiana and I are sending them some things by the courier to-day.
+Each time we go to Anna's (Madame Vyrubova) all is but blank despair.
+We miss our sweet and helpful reunions, and long always for your return.
+You, my holy Father, are my inestimable friend.  I no longer think of
+Nicholas, but of you alone, and of our holy religion.  My mother is
+desolate without you.  Pray for me.  I kiss your dear hands.  Your
+loving daughter, Olga."
+
+I copy this from the great mass of papers before me--the documentary
+evidence of the tragic story of the downfall of the great Imperial House
+of Romanoff--in order that the reader may be able to form some slight
+idea of the marvellous, almost incredible grip which Germany had upon
+the Tsar's family, his household and his nation through the medium of
+the verminous peasant who had declared himself a Heaven-sent apostle of
+God.
+
+The moral atmosphere of the Court was shocking.  Rasputin, chief agent
+of the Kaiser, was posing, just as the Kaiser himself posed, as a
+God-fearing, prayerful man sent by Divine-right as a deliverer.  The
+monk's mission was, however, to deliver Russia into the hands of
+Germany.
+
+The next pages of the _dossier_ contain advice notes of German funds
+paid to the "saint" through the most unsuspicious channels.
+
+As instance of these I copy the following dates and extracts, the actual
+letters of advice themselves being of a pretended business character and
+of no importance:
+
+April 6th.--Payment to His Excellency Boris Sturmer by Jules Wick,
+Morskaya 57, advocate, sum due from the estates of the late Baroness
+Nikeleuko, of Doubno.--78,600 roubles.
+
+April 18th.--Payment made to Gregory Rasputin by Nicholas Pokotilo.
+Address Select Hotel, Ligovskaya 44, Petrograd, representatives of
+Messrs. Solovoioff, of Odessa.--62,460 roubles.
+
+June 1st.--Payment to His Excellency D.A.  Protopopoff made for rent of
+lands at Vyazma, by Alexander Koltchak, agent of the estate of Prince
+Tchekmareff, less 15 per cent, commission to Messrs. Montero and
+Company, of Kieff;--21,229 roubles.
+
+June 3rd.--Payment to Vera Zoueff, dancer at Luna Park, by G.  Merteus,
+Nevsky 81, Petrograd.--13,000 roubles.  (The woman who passed as a
+Russian was one, Bertha Riehl, a German dancer, and a secret agent of
+Berlin.)
+
+June 17th.--Payment to Sophie Tatistcheff (who had married Baron
+Roukhloff, one of the Tsar's secretaries who had control of his
+Majesty's private correspondence), by Safonov's Bank, in settlement of
+an insurance claim for property destroyed by fire at Poltava.
+
+I have copied these in their order of sequence, but the items number
+over one hundred, and reveal payments of huge sums of German secret
+service money to Rasputin and his friends, thus forming a most
+illuminating disclosure as to the manner in which Russia was rapidly
+being undermined.
+
+With such dark forces at work in the very heart of the Empire, it is
+indeed marvellous that General Brusiloff could have effected his
+superhuman offensive between Pripet and the Roumanian frontier.  He
+started with his four armies early in June, 1916, and by the middle of
+August had captured 7,757 officers, 350,845 men and 405 guns.  Berlin
+became seriously alarmed at such a situation.  All Rasputin's plotting
+with Sturmer, Count Fredericks, Protopopoff, Countess Ignatieff, Madame
+Vyrubova, and a dozen other less prominent but equally importunate
+officials, together with all the steady stream of German marks flowing
+into Petrograd could not stem the Russian tide on the German and
+Austrian front's.  The Russian "steam-roller" seemed really progressing.
+
+The Kaiser grew seriously alarmed.  At the instigation of Count von
+Wedel, his right-hand in espionage and unscrupulous propaganda, a secret
+message was sent to Rasputin--a message which he preserved among his
+other papers.  It runs as follows, and is in the German cipher of the
+Koniggratzer-strasse of which the mock-monk kept a de-cipher in his
+interesting safe.  Hence it has been available:
+
+"F.G. 2,734--22.
+
+"Memorandum from `Number 70,' August 29th, 1916.
+
+"It is deemed of extreme urgency that the offensive of the Pripet should
+at once cease; and be turned into a victory for the Central Powers as
+promised us in your despatch of July 1st.  You are not keeping faith
+with us!  What is wrong?  S.  (Sturmer, the Prime Minister) is inciting
+the Russians to victory in his speeches.
+
+"His triumphant telegrams to Asquith must cease.  They only serve to
+encourage the Allies.  This advance must not continue.  Further, the
+munition factories at Vologda and Bologoye have not yet been destroyed
+as we ordered.  We know that K.  (a clock-maker named Kartzoff who blew
+up the explosive works at Viborg in which 400 lives were lost), who did
+such good work in that direction, is arrested and shot, together with
+the woman R.  (Mdlle.  Raevesky, whose father was in the Ministry of the
+Interior under Protopopoff).  We note that you gave information to the
+police concerning both persons, because they became lovers and were
+likely to open their mouths and thus become dangerous to us.
+
+"_Secret Instructions_:--That to Nicholas Meder be entrusted the task of
+destroying the Vologda and Bologoye works, and that Madame Fleischer,
+who lives in Volkovo, be appointed as his assistant--each to receive six
+thousand roubles for their services.
+
+"As your efforts to prevent the offensive in the Pripet region have
+failed up to the present, it is ordered that General Brusiloff be
+removed by the means already employed in other enemy countries.  Send a
+trustworthy messenger to Doctor Klouieff, living in the Vozkresenskaya,
+in Kazan, to ask for `a tube.'  He will know.  The contents of the tube
+introduced into any drink will produce tetanus--with a rapid end.
+Klouieff is German, and may be entirely trusted.  Brusiloff has a
+body-servant named Ivan, Sawvitch who is a friend of Boris Koltchak, a
+soldier in the 117th Infantry Regiment of Muisk.  Koltchak, who has been
+in our service for five years, is to be ordered and facilities rendered
+him to visit his friend Sawvitch at General Headquarters, and to
+introduce the contents of the tube into Brusiloff's food or drink.  For
+this service you are ordered to pay in secret twenty-five thousand
+roubles upon its completion.  The man Sawvitch is in love with the
+sister of Koltchak, a fact which will ease certain difficulties.  Be
+careful, however, of Marya Ustryaloff, who is jealous of the woman in
+question.
+
+"General Korniloff may be removed by the accidental explosion of a
+hand-grenade, in the same manner in which General Zhukovsky was removed
+in March last at Pultusk.  This service could be entrusted to the
+soldier Paul Krizhitsky, of the 17th Grenadiers of Moscow, who is a
+despatch-rider and constantly at the General Headquarters.  He should
+examine the bomb--a pine-apple one, in preference, and release the pin
+by accident.  For this service you can pay in secret up to eighteen
+thousand roubles.
+
+"Further, it is urgent that you should induce the Emperor at once to
+order the release of the men Polenov and Levitsky, and the woman Erich,
+who were arrested in the Hotel Brosi at Vitebsk.  Their papers, if
+found, must be restored to them.  The documents are probably stored in
+the strong rooms of either the Ootchotny Bank, in the Hevsky, or at
+Lampe's.  So get hold of them, as they contain facts incriminating S.
+(Sturmer) and V (Madame Vyrubova).  It is of most urgent importance that
+the prosecution in question be dismissed, and further, that those who
+instigated it should be degraded in pursuance of our policy.  For this
+service you will be granted a generous extra payment.  S.--70."  The
+signature, scribbled in blue ink upon these remarkable instructions, is
+that of the notorious Herr Steinhauer, the Kaiser's chief spy and
+controller of the whole secret ramifications of Imperial Germany
+throughout the civilised world.  I venture to publish it in these pages
+in order to show the devilish cunning of Germany, and their frantic
+efforts, by any underground and dastardly means, to stem the tide of war
+which threatened to overwhelm them.
+
+In consequence of these instructions Rasputin immediately set to work to
+execute the wicked command of His Imperial Master in Berlin.
+
+On the day following that secret message being delivered into his hands
+by a woman dressed as a peasant, as, descending from his carriage, he
+entered a house in the Nevski, he walked into the Emperor's private
+study and, placing his hand across his breast in that mock-pious
+attitude he so often assumed, he said:
+
+"Friend!  Thou hast always been held by thy people to be a just and
+honest ruler; but in Vitebsk those who act in thy Imperial name are
+acting illegally and persecuting two poor men and a woman with motives
+of revenge.  God has placed His holy protecting hand upon our dear
+Russia, and has given victory unto our gallant Brusiloff.  But if
+injustice be done in thy Imperial name then the Divine Providence will
+most assuredly withdraw protection from us."
+
+"What is this, Holy Father?" asked the Emperor in great surprise.
+
+"At Vitebsk two men, Polenov and Levitsky, together with a woman called
+Erich, three patriotic Russians who have, been engaged in Red Cross
+work--have, because of the ill-will of the Governor Wauthier, been
+apprehended, and false charges instituted against them."
+
+"Of what nature?"
+
+"Of communicating with the enemy--a vague charge which to-day may be
+made against even the most patriotic," replied the monk, the "Holy
+Father" of the Empress, standing in that same attitude he had at first
+assumed.  "From the Holy Father of the monastery at Vitebsk I have
+received a confidential, and urgent report that the Governor Wauthier,
+an ill-living official, has instituted these false charges in order to
+conceal his own disgraceful misdeeds, which the woman Erich has
+threatened to expose."
+
+Then, after a pause, the dissolute monk and secret agent of the German
+Emperor said in that insolent, familiar manner he assumed when
+addressing the Tsar:
+
+"Friend!  This Governor, against whom the Holy Father at Vitebsk sends
+me secret information, should be dismissed and disgraced, and thy three
+innocent subjects released.  If thou wilt permit injustice in thy
+Empire, then the success of thy arms cannot be maintained."
+
+"Holy Father," said the weak impotent monarch, "the Governor shall be
+dismissed.  Pass me over a telegraph-form."
+
+And Rasputin took from the writing-table one of the forms upon which the
+Tsar wrote his autocratic orders, and actually at the monk's dictation
+His Majesty wrote an order for this release of the prisoners and the
+dismissal of the innocent, patriotic Governor, against whom the lying
+agent of the Kaiser had, according to his instructions from Berlin, laid
+a charge!
+
+Truly the great patriotic Russian Empire had already fallen beneath the
+"Mailed Fist," even though thousands of her sons were daily sacrificing
+their lives to secure her freedom.
+
+On the day following, Petkoff; who had already opened his separatist
+propaganda among the Ukrainian prisoners, in favour of Germany, arrived
+hot-foot in Petrograd, and spent some hours with Rasputin at his house,
+where the Prime Minister Sturmer and His Excellency Protopopoff were
+also closeted.  The secret meeting was held at three o'clock and lasted
+until eight, when one of the Imperial carriages came from the Winter
+Palace, as it did daily, to convey the "Holy Father" there.
+
+The Emperor had left again for the front three hours before, but the
+Empress remained.  The dirty monk at once sought her, explaining that
+Germany had reached the last limits of her power upon the eastern front,
+and urgently needed a slackening of the Russian offensive.
+
+"It is truly God's will that our friends the Germans shall not be
+crushed!" declared the cunning blackguard.  "Are we not told that if we
+are smitten by an enemy upon one cheek we should turn the other?  I
+declare to thee that if we press our enemies further, then the wrath of
+God will assuredly fall upon thy house--and upon thy son the
+Tsarevitch," he said in his low base voice, crossing himself piously the
+while.
+
+Indeed, that night, so deeply did the charlatan impress the poor Empress
+that she sat trembling at the fate which must be Russia's should
+Brusiloff's victory be maintained.
+
+Incredible as it may seem, the Kaiser now held Russia in the hollow of
+his hand.  No despatch from Petrograd to the Allies; no order for
+material; no communication of whatever sort, Imperial, diplomatic or
+private, but copies were at once transmitted to the Wilhelmstrasse,
+where the negotiations were known as soon as they were in Downing
+Street--and sometimes sooner!
+
+Within a fortnight of Rasputin's grim prophecy of Russia's downfall if
+she further defied the Imperial power of Germany, the cunning plot to
+infect General Brusiloff with tetanus was attempted by the soldier
+Koltchak, while in a train conveying him from Borisoff to Petrograd, on
+a flying visit to consult with the Minister of War.  Happily the plot
+failed, but the coffee in which the deadly culture had been placed was,
+alas! unfortunately drunk by a certain Major Dobrovolski, who died
+mysteriously and in great agony four days later; the General, of course,
+being entirely ignorant of Berlin's vile plot against him.
+
+An attempt was also made upon General Korniloff at Chernitsa ten days
+later.  A soldier who had no business near, handled a hand-grenade
+carelessly, just as the General happened to be riding by.  The bomb
+exploded, killing the General's horse on the spot, but he himself
+escaped with a deep cut over the left eye.  Everybody, of course,
+believed it to be a pure accident, therefore the affair was never
+reported.
+
+These two attempts upon the lives of Russia's military leaders, the
+documentary evidence of which exists, were only the forerunners of
+several others even more ingenious and more desperate, as I shall later
+on disclose in these pages.
+
+The failure of the attempts to assassinate Brusiloff and Korniloff, and
+the continuation of the Russian offensive, now caused the greatest
+consternation in Berlin, where it was believed that Rasputin was
+neglecting the work for which he was being paid so heavily.
+
+A message was conveyed to him through Swedish sources telling him of the
+Kaiser's extreme displeasure at the failure of the plans, and reminding
+him of His Majesty's words when he had had secret audience and accepted
+the Imperial proposals to become chief agent of Germany in Russia.
+Certain further instructions were also given as matters of extreme
+urgency.  The Russian progress had aroused the most serious fears in
+Berlin.
+
+Meanwhile the monk's ambition knew no bounds.  With marvellous cunning
+he was busy blackmailing a number of unfortunate society women who,
+having entered his cult, had afterwards abandoned it, and while being
+the practical ruler of Russia, because of the Tsaritza's devotion to
+him, yet he was daily plotting with his pro-German friends for the
+nation's downfall.
+
+At each of the reunions of his sister-disciples he would strut about and
+play the part of "saint."  On each occasion he would declare: "If you
+repulse me, God will abandon you!  I am the chosen of God--sent to
+deliver Holy Russia!"
+
+To those who were sceptical he would speak more plainly and
+convincingly, saying "If you do not obey me, then I will see that you
+are punished by my friends."  So by this means he surrounded himself by
+an increasing number of hysterical women whose wealth he exploited, and
+from whom he took bribes to procure high places, distinctions and
+decorations for their husbands and brothers or their lovers.
+
+Indeed, before him the highest officials in the Empire bowed, crossed
+themselves, and kissed his hand--not because he was a priest--but
+because they constantly feared lest they should incur his displeasure,
+well knowing that if they did, they would at once be superseded.
+
+At Peterhof, or at Tsarskoe-Selo, the actions of the bearded blackguard
+were believed to be inspired by Providence.  This dissolute Siberian
+fakir, the Madame Vyrubova, and her Imperial mistress, the Tsaritza,
+formed a trinity which ruled the Empire at war; and thousands of brave
+Russian soldiers died in consequence.
+
+The pro-German propaganda, fostered in secret by the dissolute three,
+was permeating every department of the State, and was even being spread
+among the armies at the front.  At each success of the Russians the
+Empress would grow irritable and despondent, while the slightest success
+of the enemy caused her to be wildly jubilant.  One day, at one of the
+seances of the higher circle of Sister-Disciples held at Tsarskoe-Selo,
+news was conveyed to Her Majesty that the Germans were retreating and
+that their fortified base at Vladimir Volgnsk, near Lutsk, had been
+captured.  Thereupon the Empress cried in great distress:
+
+"Why is this allowed!  Why is this advance against the Germans not
+stopped?  Russia will never crush Germany.  She shall not do so!  Holy
+Father! pray for our dear Germany!"
+
+"O Sister!  In thy heart harbour neither fear nor distrust, for indeed
+God hath revealed unto me that there will be a separate peace and the
+ultimate triumph of the German arms," replied the mock-saint, assuming
+his most pious attitude, with his hands crossed upon the Russian blouse
+of rich dark blue silk deeply embroidered with gold, which it was his
+habit to wear at the seances at Court.  "While on my pilgrimage last
+week with Father Macaire, in the Monastery of Verkhotursky, I had a
+vision."
+
+"A vision!" echoed the Empress, while her daughter Olga and a dozen
+ladies of the Court sat agape and eager.  "Holy Father, tell us of what
+has been revealed," urged Her Majesty.
+
+"I saw hosts of men entering a great city as conquerors--hordes from the
+west bringing to us all the benefits and a higher civilisation.  I saw
+His Majesty the German Emperor advance and grasp the hand of thy
+Imperial husband the Tsar, and kiss him fraternally upon both cheeks.
+And over all was set the halo of God's glory, and Russia rejoiced that
+she had cast off the yoke of her Allies."
+
+"God be thanked!" gasped the Empress hysterically.  "Then we need no
+longer fear.  Truly Heaven is good to send thee to us, dear Father!" she
+added, taking his rough hand, with its bulgy knuckles and unclean nails,
+and kissing it fervently, while all her Court echoed the words so
+constantly used at the gatherings of the cult: "Holy Father!  God be
+thanked that we are thy chosen sisters."
+
+On the following day, however, Rasputin having returned to his house in
+Petrograd, a secret meeting was held at the house of a man named
+Roukhloff, situate in the Vereiskaya.  The meeting was convened by
+certain of the monk's enemies in order to expose him as an impostor and
+a charlatan.  It must be remembered that none dreamed that the scoundrel
+was the direct secret agent of the Kaiser himself, or that Sturmer and
+Protopopoff were anything else than fine sterling Russian patriots.  All
+three were urging every one to "get on with the war."
+
+And with this in mind it induces one to wonder whether a similar farce
+is not to-day being played in certain political circles in other
+countries of the Allies!
+
+Rasputin had many friends, but he had also made many bitter enemies.  As
+an outcome of that secret meeting, the man Roukhloff, son of a
+functionary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, defied the authorities
+and publicly denounced the "Saint" as "a dangerous erotic humbug."  The
+effect was electrical.  The Emperor, with the Empress, Count Fredericks,
+and Madame Vyrubova, was in the Imperial train, travelling to the
+Crimea.  The moment of that hostile attack was well-chosen, and for a
+time the "Saint's" position was a precarious one.  But as soon as it
+became known in Petrograd that he had been denounced, his house was
+crowded by his faithful sister-disciples, who would have no word said
+against him.
+
+He at once announced his intention to return to Siberia, and addressing
+them with his usual mock piety, said:
+
+"The people of Petrograd have cast out the man sent to them by God.  I
+will return to my monastery at Pokrovsky, and pray for their salvation.
+Assuredly God will punish the disbelievers.  You, my sisters, keep faith
+in your belief.  If I never return--then pray for me."
+
+An hour afterwards the impostor left for the Nicolas Station,
+accompanied by a crowd of women-believers of all classes, but instead of
+travelling to Siberia he changed his route at Moscow and hurried in the
+track of their Majesties.  Meanwhile, the ill-living Archbishop Teofan,
+who had declared that he "heard in the Holy Father Rasputin the voice of
+God," and that to hound him from Petrograd meant the incurring of the
+Divine displeasure and the downfall of the Empire, and Bishop Hermogene,
+another of the monk's creations who had also belauded him, now both saw
+an opportunity of denouncing the monk's duplicity and malpractices, and
+thereby securing the favour of the people for themselves.
+
+This they did, and in consequence a great sensation was caused in
+society, both in Petrograd and in Moscow.  In the Duma, Rasputin was
+openly denounced by M.  Goutchkoff, a man of large experience and who
+had worked in the Manchuria campaign and done much to assist the Grand
+Duke Nicholas and General Alexeieff in the munition crisis of 1915.  He
+was Director of the Committee of War Industries, and had, introduced
+into this committee some highly capable Labour delegates, who were now
+no longer blinded by the halo of sanctity which Rasputin had assumed for
+himself.
+
+Thus a storm suddenly burst over the head of the holy rascal who had
+practised his abominations under his pseudo-religious cloak, and who was
+at the same time secretly plotting for the triumph of Germany.
+
+But so cleverly did he juggle with the future of the Russian Empire that
+he went post-haste across Europe, down to Yalta in the Crimea, and on
+arrival drove through the pine woods to the Imperial Palace.  He arrived
+there at six o'clock in the morning, after a long and fatiguing journey.
+But such was his iron nerve and strong constitution that he was as
+fresh as when he bade farewell to his clinging devotees in Petrograd who
+had so fervently kissed his dirty hands.
+
+He had the audacity to go straight to the Tsar's dressing-room, and
+there met His Majesty as he was coming from his bath.  Naturally
+Nicholas II was surprised, and on inquiring the reason of his unexpected
+visit, the "Saint" exclaimed:
+
+"They have driven me, the man of the Lord, from Petrograd!  I go back to
+Siberia to dwell there in peace.  But God will now assuredly weak
+vengeance upon Russia, and all that she holds most dear--as well as upon
+thy son and heir."
+
+"But, Holy Father!" gasped the Emperor, "what has happened?  Tell me."
+
+As the Tsar sat in his red bath-wrap, the unwashed "Saint" made
+explanation that both the Church and the Duma had declared him to be an
+impostor, adding:
+
+"I will not trouble myself over those who defame me.  They are as dust.
+God has sent me to Russia, and the Russians have despised me."
+
+"But who are your enemies?" asked His Majesty anxiously.
+
+That was the question which Rasputin intended that the Emperor should
+ask.  At once he explained that the Archbishop Teofan and Bishop
+Hermogene had both turned against him, and in consequence the Tsar
+called his servant to bring him a telegraph-form at once.
+
+"Whither shall I send those persons?" asked His Majesty.
+
+"Nowhere.  Let them work their evil will against thy Empire.  God will
+himself punish them!" replied the fakir and ex-thief who had
+self-assumed the title of "Father."
+
+"I shall leave to-night for Siberia, and shall not return."
+
+"No.  Forgive them, Holy Father," urged the Emperor apprehensively.
+"For my sake and for Russia's sake forgive them.  I will send Teofan,
+your false friend, to the Taurida, and Hermogene shall retire to the
+monastery of Tobolsk.  Helidor, too, is no friend of yours.  He shall be
+sent to prison."
+
+"Thy will shall be done regarding the two first, but spare Helidor.  He
+may yet be useful unto thee," was the crafty mujik's reply.
+
+"Is there any other enemy who should be removed?" inquired the Emperor.
+"Tell me, Holy Father--and I will deal with him if you will still remain
+with us.  If you leave, poor little Alexis will die."
+
+The mock-saint, sprawling his legs in the Emperor's dressing-room,
+reflected for a few moments.  He knew that by his own hand Russia was
+ruled.
+
+"Yes," he said presently.  "God has told me to forgive my enemies.  I
+will do so if thou wilt assist me.  Too little consideration is given to
+our friends."
+
+"All consideration shall be given them.  To whom do you refer?"
+
+The monk drew from beneath his, long black habit a scrap of paper
+already prepared, and consulting, it, said:
+
+"I wrote down here yesterday certain appointments which should be given
+to those who support thee, against thy enemies."  It was a list of
+favours which the rascal had promised to women for their male
+acquaintances, and from each he would receive a generous _douceur_,
+according to the means of the person indicated.
+
+"You will note Ivan Scheveleff, of the Imperial chancellerie.  He has
+served thee well for the past five years, and should have the title of
+Excellency, and consequent promotion," said the religious rascal.
+"Again, there is Sergius Timacheff, of the Imperial printing works, who
+should be appointed a privy councillor; and Madame Grigoiovitch, who is
+in the Peter-and-Paul prison, should be released and amends made to her
+for the false charge upon which she was convicted at the instance of
+Michael Alexandrovitch."
+
+"I will telegraph orders in each case," was the Emperor's reply, as he
+lit a cigarette prior to his valet entering.
+
+"And the salary of the Minister Protopopoff is far too little.  It
+should be increased by at least one-half.  He is thy most devout and
+devoted friend and servant of Russia."
+
+"That shall be done," was the monarch's weak reply.  Little did His
+Majesty dream that Protopopoff was one of Russians traitors.
+
+"Brusiloff should be watched, as there is evidence of treachery against
+him.  Before the war he was friendly with a man named von Weber, an
+agent of Germany.  Nekrasov, Minister of Communications, is also a
+traitor, and should be dismissed," said the monk, thus denouncing two of
+Russia's strongest and most patriotic fighters, who were perfectly
+innocent.
+
+"It shall be done," replied the Emperor quietly.  "Father, I am glad you
+have, told me."  Indeed, owing, to the false statements of pro-German
+police officials, General Brusiloff was within an ace of arrest a week
+later.  The Minister Nekrasov, however, received his dismissal,
+Protopopoff being one of his enemies, and in that manner was the monk
+playing Germany's game.
+
+Thus the evil power of this arch-scoundrel was paramount.  By his
+influence men were made and broken daily.  Indeed, to-day dozens of men
+who because of their suspicion of the saint's "divinity," incurred the
+blasphemer's displeasure are, languishing in gaol in various remote
+parts of the Empire, while German agents occupied some of the "highest
+offices in Russia," while the head of the Church of holy Russia had been
+appointed by the unwashed blackguard himself.
+
+As proof of this interview at Livadia, the _dossier_ of Gregory
+Rasputin, the Siberian Cagliostro, which is before me, contains the
+following letter:
+
+"Rizhsky Prospect, 37.
+
+"My dear Father,--I have heard that you have left upon a pilgrimage to
+your own monastery in Siberia.  May God be with you, and bless you.
+To-day my title of Excellency is officially announced.  My bankers have
+passed to yours the sum of 30,000 roubles.  There will be a further sum
+of 10,000 roubles passed if you will kindly send me, under cover, those
+two letters of the Countess Birileff.  I await your reply.--Ivan
+Scheveleff."
+
+Rasputin's mania for filing his correspondence is the basis of our true
+knowledge of his astounding career and activity, for the next folio in
+the _dossier_ is a copy of a blackmailing letter he wrote a few weeks
+after his visit to the Crimea, to the man Sergius Timacheff.  It reads
+as follows:
+
+"Friend,--It is now many days since His Majesty appointed you Privy
+Councillor of the Empire, but I have received no word from you or from
+your bank as we arranged.  If I receive nothing by next Thursday, the
+facts concerning your son's implication in the Platanoff affair (the
+blowing up of a Russian battleship in the Baltic by German agents) will
+be passed on to the Admiralty.  If double the sum we arranged passes to
+my bank before the date I have named, I shall remain silent.  If not, I
+shall take immediate action.--G."
+
+The "holy" blackmailer was becoming more and more unscrupulous.  Behind
+him he had the Emperor and Empress, soothed to sleep by his marvellous
+cunning and his mock miracles.  Incredible as it seems, he was able to
+evade all the many pitfalls set for him by his enemies, because he swept
+them all from his path by Imperial orders and stood forth alone as the
+"Holy Father," sent by Providence to create a new and prosperous Russia.
+
+He had no fear of death.  He wore a shirt of mail, and the Palace
+police, the same ever-alert surveillance as that placed upon the person
+of the Tsar himself, kept a watchful eye upon him, though through
+Protopopoff they had orders to relinquish their watchfulness at any
+moment the "Saint" deemed it necessary.
+
+He frequently deemed it necessary if he held his conferences with
+Sturmer, Protopopoff, Anna Vyrubova, and the small camarilla of persons
+who were being so richly rewarded by mysterious incomes from estates
+they did not possess--or, plainly speaking, by money from Berlin.
+
+Rasputin saw that in order to keep faith with his "sister-disciples" in
+Petrograd, it was necessary for him to journey again to his Siberian
+village.  He therefore declared to the Emperor that he had much business
+there, and promised that he would return to Peterhof as soon as the
+Imperial family arrived there.
+
+When the Tsar of all the Russias had bent and kissed the monk's filthy
+hands, and promised that his orders should be despatched at once by
+telegram to Petrograd, the monk sought the Empress, told her what had
+occurred, explaining how his enemies had denounced "the man sent by
+God."  The Tsaritza sat appalled.  Could the Russian people have
+denounced her "Holy Father"?  To her it seemed impossible.  She bent
+before the rascal and wept bitterly.
+
+"Oh, Sister!" he said in his deep voice, "I will retire to Pokrovsky
+until these enemies of Russia have been discomfited and defeated.  Then,
+verily, I will return to stand beside thee and fight as thy friend, as
+God has commanded me."
+
+Then he took his leave and travelled to the so-called "monastery" he had
+established in his far-off Siberian village--the big house in which a
+dozen of his female devotees were so eagerly awaiting him.
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+RASPUTIN'S SECRET INSTRUCTIONS FROM BERLIN.
+
+Now that Rasputin's amazing career is being here investigated, chapter
+by chapter, the facts disclosed seem almost incredible, but, of course,
+such a situation could only have occurred in a country where nearly
+ninety per cent, of the priest-ridden inhabitants are unable to read or
+write, and which is in most things a full century behind the times.
+
+Surely in no other country in all the world to-day could an illiterate,
+verminous mujik, who had actually been convicted and punished for the
+crimes of horse-stealing, falsely obtaining money, and assaulting two
+young girls, be accepted as a Divine healer, a "holy" man, and the
+saviour of Russia.  Here was a man whose whole life had been one of
+scandalous ill-living, a low drunken libertine of the very worst and
+most offensive class, actually ruling the Empire as secret agent, of the
+Kaiser!
+
+By the clever ruse of establishing his cult of "sister-disciples" he had
+so secured the ears of the weak-kneed Emperor and his consort, that
+whatever views he declared to them they at once became law.  So
+amazingly cunning was he that he realised that the only way in which to
+retain the hold he had established at Court was now and then to absent
+himself from it, first making certain "prophecies," the fulfilment of
+which could be effected by his secret friends.
+
+As often as he uttered a prophecy and left Petrograd upon one of his
+erotic adventures--to found provincial circles of the cult of
+Believers--so surely would that prophecy come true.  He foretold the
+downfall of one official, the death of another upon a certain date, a
+further relapse of the Tsarevitch, and so on, until their Majesties held
+him in awe as heaven-inspired.  In the high Court circle of which he was
+the centre, this "Holy Father" could do no wrong, while his most
+disgraceful exploits, scandals unprintable, were merely regarded as
+mundane pleasures allowable to him as a "saint."
+
+No reign since the days of the Caesars was more fraught by disgraceful
+scandals than those last days of the _regime_ of the ill-fated
+Romanoffs.  The Roman empresses were never traitors as the Tsaritza most
+certainly was.  Can any one have sympathy with the once-Imperial,
+afterwards exiled to Siberia--that same zone of that illimitable tundra
+to which the Tsar of all the Russias had exiled so many of his innocent
+and patriotic subjects, men and women who fought for Russia's right to
+live, to expand, and to prosper?  Let us remember that in Siberia to-day
+lie the bones of a hundred thousand Russian patriots, persecuted under
+the evil _regimes_ of Alexander and of Nicholas.  In the days of the
+ex-Tsar's father I went to Siberia, and I visited the convict prisons
+there.  I saw convicts in the mines chained to wheelbarrows by forged
+fetters, and I saw those poor tortured wretches who worked in the
+dreaded quicksilver mines of Nertchinsk, their teeth falling out and
+their scalps bare.  Of what I myself witnessed, I years ago placed on
+record in black and white.  Those reports of mine will be found in the
+public libraries of Great Britain.  But to-day they do not concern the
+reader of this book only inasmuch as they furnish proofs, with others,
+of the oppressive hand of the Romanoffs upon the devoted and
+long-suffering people of Holy Russia--"Holy"--save the mark!  The erotic
+rascal Rasputin was in himself a striking example of the men who control
+the Paroslavny Church.
+
+This mock-pious blackguard, to whose artful cunning and clever cupidity
+has been due the death of hundreds of thousands of brave Russians of all
+classes in the field, held the fortunes of the great Empire within the
+hollow of his dirty paw.
+
+The contents of the big _dossier_ of his private papers disclose this
+satanic scoundrel's double-dealing, and the true terms in which he stood
+with the Wilhelmstrasse.
+
+To me, as I study the documents, it is astounding how accurately the
+Germans had gauged who were their actual friends in Russia and who were
+their enemies.  Surely their sources of information were more astounding
+and more complete than even the great Stiebur, the King of Spydom, had
+ever imagined.
+
+It sterns that while Rasputin was living a dissolute life at the
+"monastery" he had established in his far-off native village of
+Pokrovsky, he received many telegrams from Tsarskoe-Selo, both from the
+Emperor and Empress, urging him to forgive his traducers and to return.
+To none of these he responded.  One day, however, he received a
+telegraphic message which came over the wires as a Government one,
+marked "On His Imperial Majesty's Service," from Madame Vyrubova.  Its
+copy is here before me, and reads:
+
+  "Return at once to Petrograd.  A dear friend from afar, awaits you.
+  It is most urgent that you should come back at once.  There is much to
+  be done.--Anna."
+
+Such an urgent summons showed him that his presence was required.  He
+knew too well that the "dear friend" was a German agent sent in secret
+to see him.
+
+Therefore he bade farewell to his dozen "sister-disciples," the head of
+whom was the opulent "Sister Vera," sister of the dissolute Bishop
+Teofan whom Rasputin himself had created.  Teofan was a fellow-criminal
+of his who had been imprisoned for horse-stealing in Tobolsk, and now he
+wore richly embroidered ecclesiastical robes and bent the knee before
+the altar daily.
+
+In consequence of this message from his friend Anna, Rasputin hastened
+back to Petrograd.
+
+Now Madame Vyrubova was Rasputin's tool throughout.  Hers had been a
+strange history.  Her past had been shrouded in mystery, yet I here
+disclose it for the first time.  As Mademoiselle Taneieff, daughter of
+the director of the private chancellerie of the Tsar, she became five
+years before one of the maids-of-honour of the Empress.  A pretty,
+high-spirited girl, she at first amused and afterwards attracted the
+neurotic spouse of the stolid, weak-minded Autocrat.  In due course she
+married a rather obscure but good-looking naval officer named Vyrubova--
+a lieutenant on board the cruiser _Kazan_.  The husband, after a year at
+sea, learned certain scandals, and therefore he went one night boldly to
+the Emperor--who happened to be at Peterhof--and asked that he might
+divorce his wife.
+
+His Majesty was both surprised and angry.  He made inquiry, and
+discovered a very curious state of affairs--a scandal that had been
+hushed up and is now revealed by the new light shining upon Russian
+Court life and the internal scandals of the Empire.
+
+Briefly put.  His Majesty found that his wife the Empress had fallen in
+love with a certain General O--.  The dark-haired Madam Vyrubova had
+acted as go-between for the couple--a fact which her husband knew, and
+threatened to expose as a vulgar scandal if the Emperor did not allow
+his divorce!  It seemed that General O--had rather slighted the Empress,
+and had taken up with a certain Princess B--, who had been on the stage,
+and who was declared to be one of the prettiest women in all Russia.
+The General had followed the beautiful princess to Cairo.  A week later
+at Assouan, in Upper Egypt, he had been seized by a mysterious illness
+and died.  The explanation given to the Emperor by the husband Vyrubova
+was that the General had fallen a victim to the jealousy of his wife the
+Empress.
+
+The Tsar made secret inquiry, and to his surprise found that all the
+officer had asserted had been correct.  Madame Vyrubova had at the
+Empress's orders followed the General and arranged his death.  Therefore
+His Majesty could do nothing else than allow the officer to divorce his
+wife, who, truth to tell, was the catspaw of the poisoner Rasputin, who
+held her in his grip.
+
+These widespread ramifications of the mock-monk's influence and his
+power created by the judicious expenditure of German palm-oil are
+utterly astounding.  The more deeply one delves into this voluminous
+_dossier_, the more amazing does it become, until the enemy's wicked
+attempts to undermine Russia, our ally, almost stagger belief.
+
+When Rasputin at last returned to Petrograd, in response to the orders
+of the handsome Anna, he was handed a secret communication from Germany.
+
+This confidential despatch, as it lies here before me, speaks for
+itself.  It is in a German letter-cipher, different from all the others,
+and for a considerable time it defied all efforts, to decipher it.  At
+last it was accomplished by the Russian Secret Police, and it certainly
+reveals a most dastardly series of amazingly cunning plots.  Here it is:
+
+"Memorandum 26874.327.
+
+"`Number 70' is sending to you Sister Molfetta, of the Italian Red
+Cross, whose number is 168.  She will leave Berlin on the 3rd prox, and
+travel by way of Gothenburg.  Please inform P.  (Protopopoff) and
+request him to give her his protection and prepare her dear passport.
+She will stay at the house of B.  (Bukoff, a furrier in the Vereiskaya,
+who was a German agent and assistant to Rasputin); you will call upon
+her there.
+
+"The object of her mission is to cultivate friendly relations with the
+barrister Alexander Kerensky, who, though at present obscure, will, it
+is here believed, shortly make his influence felt very strongly against
+us.  The woman 168 has orders to compromise him, and afterwards create a
+public scandal in order to discredit him in the eyes of the public.
+
+"Further, we seriously view the strength of Kerensky and the influence
+he may exert in the prosecution of the war, therefore we leave it to
+your personal discretion whether or not he should be removed.  Number
+168 possesses the means, and will act upon your orders.
+
+"_Secret Instructions_.--You are to inform His Majesty in confidence
+that M.I.  Tereshchenko (now Minister for Foreign Affairs) is dangerous,
+and should be arrested.  If his house in Kiev is searched, compromising
+papers which have been placed there by S.  (a German agent named
+Schumacher) will be discovered.  Tereshchenko is threatening to expose
+your friend S.  (Sturmer, Prime Minister), and should it once be
+suppressed by imprisonment.
+
+"The letter herewith enclosed please give into the hands of Her Majesty
+the Empress in secret.  Also inform her that the wishes she has
+expressed in her last letter to His Majesty shall be carried out.
+
+"You are to inform S. and P.  (Sturmer and Protopopoff) that the
+shortage of food in Russia is, owing to Birileff's indecisive policy,
+not sufficiently marked.  He must be dismissed upon grounds of
+incompetence, and they must appoint a new Food Controller who will,
+connive, by holding up supplies, to create a famine.  An epidemic, if
+spread in Moscow, Kazan, Kharkow, Odessa, and other cities at the same
+time as the famine, would greatly contribute towards Germany's success.
+The matter has already been discussed, and an outbreak of cholera
+suggested.  You should consider the suggestion at your end, and if you
+decide upon it, the necessary steps can easily be taken, though we
+consider nothing should be done in Petrograd, because of yourselves and
+the Imperial family.
+
+"The bearer of this will remain in Petrograd four days, and then bring
+back any news you can send regarding the future situation.  Matters are
+now becoming desperate with us.  Hindenburg has decided that at all
+hazards we must withdraw troops from your frontier, and send them to the
+west.  We rely upon you and your friends to create a famine, for which
+you will receive increased gratuities, as in the case of the retreat
+from Warsaw."
+
+Thus will it be seen that the "holy" blackguard, the right-hand and
+adviser of the Emperor Nicholas, was posing as the saviour of the great
+Russian Empire, whom Great Britain was supplying with munitions of war,
+and while he was everywhere declaring that Brusiloff's strategy would
+wreck the German offensive, yet at the same time he was plotting famine
+and pestilence in the very heart of the Empire!
+
+None knew this secret--except the German-born Tsaritza.  From her,
+Rasputin held back nothing.  In secret he showed her all the despatches
+he received from the Koniggratzer-strasse.  His influence upon Her
+Majesty at this stage is made vividly apparent by significant remarks
+which he made to Sturmer on the night after his return to Petrograd, and
+the delivery into his hands of that cipher despatch from Berlin as
+revealed above.
+
+"My dear Excellency!" he said, tossing off a glass of vodka and eating
+some caviare at the great carved sideboard in his own room before
+sitting down to dinner, "you have been speaking of the Tsar and the
+Tsaritza.  To the Tsar I am Christ, the saviour of Russia and the world!
+Their Majesties salute me; they bow to me and they kiss my hand.  What
+higher sphere can I achieve?  The Imperial children prostrate before me;
+they kiss my hands.  Ah! my dear Excellency, I could disclose to you
+things which--well, which I could not relate without blushing!"
+
+It was at this period, when a friend of the "holy" peasant,
+Striaptcheff, a fellow-thief of Pokrovsky and a man convicted of
+burglary, pressed his attentions upon the "Holy Father" and demanded an
+appointment.  Incredible as it may appear, yet the criminal in question
+was six days later appointed as a bishop of the Russian Church, with the
+usual fat emoluments, and he could scarcely read or write.  Truly Holy
+Russia was progressing beneath the Rasputin _regime_.  She had a burglar
+as bishop.
+
+Meanwhile, the monk proceeded at once to carry out his secret orders
+from Berlin.
+
+We know that the camarilla held council a week later, and that Sturmer,
+Protopopoff, Striaptcheff--who had now become inseparable from
+Rasputin--as well as Manuiloff, an ex-journalist who conducted the
+secret police under Sturmer, were present at the monk's house.  At the
+meeting the false Red Cross sister from Berlin was also present.
+
+It was agreed that it would be best to remove Kerensky, who, though a
+headlong enthusiast, would be a very difficult man for a woman to
+compromise.  It was known that he possessed secret sources of knowledge
+regarding the intention of the camarilla to betray Russia into Germany's
+hands, therefore the woman Molfetta was given orders to carry out her
+plot, to secure his assassination at the hands of a renegade Jew of
+Warsaw named Levinski, who was ready to commit any crime if paid for it.
+
+The attempt was made three weeks later.  While Kerensky, who lived to
+become afterwards Prime Minister of the new Government, was turning the
+corner by the Alexandra Hospital to cross the Fontanka to the Sadovaya,
+late one night, on his way home to the Offitzerskaya, he was shot at
+three times by the fellow Levinski.  Each shot happily went wide, and as
+a result Alexander Kerensky still lives to pilot Russia to her freedom.
+
+The manner in which the traitorous camarilla brought about a famine in
+the capital, and in certain districts in the Empire, until the people of
+Petrograd paraded the city crying "Give us bread, or end the war!" is
+well known to all.  But how they attempted to carry out the dastardly
+orders of Berlin to create an epidemic of cholera at the same time, I
+will reveal with quotations from official documents in the next chapter.
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+THE PLOT TO SPREAD EPIDEMICS IN RUSSIA.
+
+In my work of unmasking Rasputin I find that constant secret
+communications were at that time passing between the "holy" scoundrel
+and his infamous paymasters in the Koniggratzer-strasse, while messages
+were continually being exchanged in strictest confidence between the
+Kaiser and the German-born Tsaritza, who lived beneath the thraldom of
+this common horse-stealer.
+
+Berlin, with all its devilish inventions for unfair warfare prohibited
+by the Hague Convention, had not overlooked the fact that owing to the
+primitive sanitation of Russia, epidemics had very often been widespread
+and most difficult to stamp out; therefore the suggestion to
+artificially produce outbreaks of bubonic plague and Asiatic cholera in
+the heart of the Empire had been suggested to that traitor, the Prime
+Minister Boris Sturmer, and his fellow-conspirators of the "camarilla,"
+of whom the Siberian charlatan known as "Holy Father" was the head.
+While the Imperial Court bowed its knees to the erotic rascal, yet
+strangely enough the people doubted him, and in secret jeered at him.
+The satanic suggestion from Berlin, however, appealed to the camarilla
+of pro-German plotters.
+
+The Russian army was gallantly holding out, even though many traitors
+held highest commands.  The Germans had reached the height of their
+offensive power on that front, and a separate peace with Russia was in
+Berlin admitted to be, highly necessary, if the ultimate success of
+their arms was to be achieved.  Therefore, if a devastating epidemic
+broke out, then Sturmer would have excuse to go to the Tsar and strongly
+urge the necessity for peace as the only salvation of the Empire.
+
+Hence the necessary steps were at once taken by the conspirators who
+were in the habit of meeting almost daily in the Gorokhovaya.  Proof of
+what was on foot is disclosed by the following secret despatch from
+Berlin, which is included in Rasputin's private papers, which so
+fortunately fell into the hands of the patriotic party of Russia.  I
+here reproduce it:
+
+"Memorandum 26932.366.
+
+"`Number 70' has placed your communication and suggestions before a high
+quarter, and they are all approved.  He is sending you, by way of Malmo,
+Karl Johnke, whose number is 229, a bacteriologist of the Frankfort
+Institute, who will arrive in Petrograd on the 18th, and seek you.  By
+the same ship will arrive, consigned to our friends the firm of
+Yakowleff and Company, wholesale fruiterers, of the Nikolskaya, in
+Moscow, one hundred and twenty-six barrels of Canadian apples, with
+ninety cases of Canary bananas.  These will be distributed in the
+ordinary course of trade to Kazan, Kharkow, Odessa, and other centres.
+See that P.  (Protopopoff) grants easy facilities for rapid transport to
+the consignees in Moscow, as they are perishable.
+
+"`Number 229' has full instructions to deal with Ivan Yakowleff, who is
+our `fixed post' in Moscow, and who is receiving his instructions in
+secret by the messenger who brings you this.  The fruit must not be
+handled or eaten, as it has been treated and is highly dangerous.
+
+"Cholera should occur within three weeks of the arrival of the fruit.
+We rely upon P. taking steps to facilitate its rapid delivery.  Some of
+it should be presented to charitable institutes for distribution among
+the poor.
+
+"Inform A.  (Anna Vyrubova) that Korniloff (General Korniloff, whom all
+know to be one of the most successful of Russian generals) suspects her
+concerning the Zarudni affair and has at his house some correspondence
+which is incriminating.  It is in a cupboard in his bedroom and should
+be secured at once.  (G.  Zarudni was active in political law cases
+before the Revolution, and has since been appointed Minister of Justice
+in the Kerensky Cabinet.)  Zarudni is working against both S.  (Sturmer)
+and yourself.  If an accident happened to him it would render the
+atmosphere more clear.  The same applies to his friend N.V.  Nekrasov,
+who is on the Duma Budget Committee and on the Railway Committee.  Both
+may upset our plans.
+
+"Against General Ostrogradski, Inspector-General of Cavalry, a charge of
+treason should be made.  The bearer brings documents in order to arouse
+suspicion that he has sold military secrets to Austria.  These can be
+produced at his trial.  His continued activity against us, and his
+hatred of yourself are both dangerous.
+
+"`Number 229' will make personal reports to you concerning the
+negotiations with Roumania and also regarding the efforts we are making
+to prevent war material from England reaching Russia.
+
+"`Number 70' notes with gratification that the explosion at the
+nitro-glycerine works at Viborg has been effected, and that the factory
+was totally destroyed and most of the workmen killed.  Please pay E.
+(an analytical chemist named Paul Eck, who was a friend of Rasputin's)
+the sum promised.
+
+"It would be best if their Majesties removed to Tsarskoe-Selo.  Anna
+Vyrubova should cultivate Boris Savenkov, Commissioner to the Seventh
+Army.  (This suggestion shows the remarkable foresight of Berlin, for
+to-day Boris Savenkov is acting Minister of War.)  You yourself should
+lose no time in becoming acquainted with Countess Vera Kokoskin, who
+lives at Potemkinskaya, 29.  She is eager to meet you.  Admit her as a
+disciple, for being an attractive and ambitious woman, she has
+considerable knowledge of what is in progress in certain quarters in the
+Duma.  Being in want of money, and being blackmailed by a penniless
+lover named Sievers, she would probably be ready to become our friend.
+`Number 70' therefore throws out this suggestion, yet at the same time
+impresses upon you and your friends the necessity of the creation of the
+epidemic and the bringing in of Roumania on the side of the Allies."
+
+Those final words of that cipher despatch disclose a cunning that was
+indeed unequalled.  I know full well that readers may be inclined to
+pause and to doubt that such dastardly methods could actually be pursued
+against civilisation.  To such I can only point out that boxes of the
+same microbes were found in the German Legation in Bucharest, and were
+officially reported by the United States Legation in that city.
+
+The fierce German octopus--so carefully fostered and so well prepared--
+had alas! stretched its thousand searching tentacles upon the patriotic
+Russian people who were ruled by their weak and careless Emperor, while
+the pro-German Empress listened to every rumour, and in her heart hoped
+for a separate peace with Germany as the only salvation of her land.
+Truly the Romanoffs have proved themselves a weak-kneed and
+irresponsible dynasty.  Alexander, however, was never weak.  In the
+long-ago days when I had audience with his late Majesty one morning in
+his small reception-room in the Winter Palace, he wore a rough drab
+shooting suit; bluff and full-bearded as any of his ministers, he talked
+to me fully of his regret that the Nihilists should be ever plotting to
+kill him, and assured me of his own personal efforts to free his people
+from a corrupt Church and an iron bureaucracy.
+
+"Please tell your British people that as Tsar I am doing the utmost in
+my power to improve and civilise my dear Russian people, to whom I am
+devoted, and to whom I will if necessary give my life."
+
+Those words of the father of the Tsar Nicholas will be found reproduced
+in the columns of _The Times_ after my joining as "Russian
+Correspondent."
+
+But let us examine the result of the secret order to Rasputin from
+Berlin which I have reproduced above.
+
+In the first place I find among the papers, a letter dated from the
+Potemkinskaya, 29, as follows:
+
+"Holy Father,--I thank you for your introduction yesterday to Her
+Majesty the Empress, and to the Grand Duchess Olga.  Truly we are all
+your kindred spirits and disciples, who know at last the joys and
+pleasures of the life which Almighty God has given unto us.  Anna was
+most charming, and I saw His Majesty as arranged.  At your suggestion I
+mentioned the Gospodin Sievers, and the Emperor has promised to appoint
+him Vice-Governor of Omsk.  All thanks to you, dear Holy Father.  I
+shall be at our reunion at your house to-morrow, and my daughter Nada,
+who is in search of the Truth, will accompany me.  Till then, I kiss
+your dear hand.--Vera Kokoskin."
+
+This letter speaks for itself.  Another document is a letter to Rasputin
+dated from the Hotel Metropole, Moscow, and is in plain language as
+follows:
+
+"The consignment of fruit from your generous donors has duly reached the
+Maison Yakowleff and is being distributed in various charitable quarters
+and is much appreciated in these days when prices are so high.  Some of
+it has been sent to the director of the Borgoroditsky Convent at Kazan,
+and also some to the Society of St George at Kiev.  Please inform and
+thank the donors.--Karl Johnke."
+
+Eagerly the camarilla awaited the result of their dastardly handiwork.
+The allotted three weeks passed, but no epidemic was reported.
+Evidently the monk wrote to the German bacteriologist, who was posing as
+a Dane, for the latter wrote from the Hotel Continental at Kiev:
+
+"The fruit, owing to delays in transit, was not in a condition for human
+consumption.  This is extremely regrettable after all the trouble of our
+kind donors."
+
+Therefore, while certain isolated cases of cholera were reported from
+several cities--as the sanitary records prove--Russia had had indeed a
+providential escape from a terrible epidemic, the infected fruit being
+distributed over a wide area by charitable organisations quite
+unsuspicious of its source.
+
+Failure to produce the desired result induced Rasputin and his
+paymasters in Berlin to adopt yet another method of forcing Russia into
+a separate peace.
+
+Brusiloff had recommenced his gallant offensive, and the situation was
+being viewed with increased apprehension by the German General Staff.
+Roumania was still undecided whether or not to throw in her cause with
+that of the Allies.  The great plot to destroy Roumania is again
+revealed by documentary evidence contained among Rasputin's papers, and
+also in the despatches received in Bucharest--where, of course, the
+clever intrigue was never suspected.
+
+A message in cipher received by Rasputin, on August 8th, the day of
+General Letchitzki's great triumph, reveals a truly Machiavellian plan.
+It reads thus:
+
+"Memorandum 27546.112.
+
+"Matters in the Dobroudja are approaching a serious crisis.  Urge S.
+(Boris Sturmer, the Prime Minister) to suggest at once to the Emperor,
+while at the same time you make a similar suggestion to Her Majesty,
+that Roumania must be forced to take up arms against us.  She must not
+be allowed to remain neutral any longer.  S. must send a despatch to
+Bucharest so worded that it is our ultimatum.  If she does not join the
+Allies immediately she must fight against Russia."
+
+Accordingly, three days later, after the Holy Father and his unholy
+fellow-conspirator had had audiences at Tsarskoe-Selo, Sturmer sent an
+urgent despatch to the Roumanian Government demanding that it should
+join the Allies, without further delay.  At Bucharest no plot was
+suspected, and indeed on the face of things, it seemed no unusual
+request.  Even people in Great Britain were daily asking each other
+"When will Roumania come in it?"
+
+The reason she had not joined was because she was not yet prepared.
+Germany knew that and with Rasputin's aid had laid a plot to invade her.
+She was, while still unready, forced into the war by Sturmer.  Nineteen
+days after the despatch of that cipher message from Berlin she formally
+declared hostilities against Austria-Hungary.
+
+Berlin was delighted, and the sinister "dark force" of Russia rubbed his
+dirty hands with delight.  The plot he saw must succeed.  Truly it was a
+vile and devilish one, which not even the shrewdest diplomat suspected,
+namely, to deliver Roumania and her resources of grain and oil to the
+enemy.  As an outcome of the conspiracy the Russo-Roumanian army, owing
+to treachery in the latter, at once retreated under pressure from
+Mackensen's forces, and very quickly, almost before the Allies were
+aware of it, Roumania and the Constanza railway were in the enemy's
+hands.  Disaster, engineered by the camarilla, followed disaster after
+that "Now or never" ultimatum of Sturmer's.  The promises made to the
+brave Roumanians were broken one after the other.  Why?  Because with
+Rasputin, Protopopoff and certain Generals suborned by the mock-monk,
+the Prime Minister's intention was to use the great retreat and the
+rapid absorption of Roumania as a means to force the Tsar and his Empire
+into a separate peace.
+
+Indeed, Rasputin--in attendance daily at Tsarskoe-Selo--by declaring to
+the Empress and his sister-disciples at Court that he had been accorded
+a vision of the Tsar and Kaiser fraternising, and interpreting this as a
+divine direction that peace should at once be made with Germany, had
+very nearly induced His Majesty to sign a declaration of peace, when one
+man in the Empire discovered the dastardly manoeuvre, the Deputy
+Gospodin Miliukoff, whose actions I will describe in a further chapter.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+THE MOCK-MONK UNMASKED.
+
+Documentary evidence contained in the papers which the monk so carefully
+preserved shows conclusively that he paid a secret visit to Berlin in
+the first week of October, 1916.  While the brave Russian army were
+fighting valiantly, ever and anon being betrayed by their leaders,
+treachery of the worst and vilest sort was afoot in the highest
+quarters.
+
+That German potentate, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who occupied an
+important position in the entourage of the Tsar, was acting as
+counsellor to the Tsaritza, and at the same time, aided actively by the
+woman Vyrubova, was working to delude the Emperor and defeat his gallant
+armies.  At Russian Field Headquarters the Tsar was cheered everywhere,
+and his officers were enthusiastic.  It was known that the German
+offensive had spent itself, and it was believed by those who were being
+bamboozled that, when all was ready, Russia would press on to her
+well-deserved victory.
+
+But the day of Russia's great offensive never arrived.  Great Britain
+and France were supplying her with guns and munitions conveyed up to
+Alexandrovsk with much difficulty, and the Allies were daily hoping that
+the "Russian steam-roller" would once again start upon its westward
+course.  London, Paris and Rome were in ignorance of the amazing plot of
+the pro-German traitors.
+
+Meanwhile the mock-monk, in the garb of a Dutch pastor, had arrived in
+Berlin to make arrangements with the enemy for Russia's final conquest.
+
+By the scoundrel's fatal weakness for preserving letters addressed to
+him, in the hope that when he fell out of favour at Court he might use
+them for blackmailing purposes--for after all this "holy" man had
+started life as a common thief--we have again evidence of his treachery
+in the following letter dated from Tsarskoe-Selo, October 18th, the day
+following the Allied landing in Athens.  Addressed to Rasputin, it is in
+German, in the fine handwriting of the Tsaritza, and reads as follows:
+
+"Holy Father,--At last we have welcome news of you!  This morning your
+messenger reached us bringing me a letter, and one for Anna.  What you
+tell us is indeed good news.  We are glad that you have seen William
+(the Emperor), and that he has been so gracious to you.  Your news
+regarding the forthcoming offensive against the British is most
+encouraging.  The British are Germany's real enemies.  Tell His Majesty
+that all goes well, and that Sturmer quite agrees that we must have a
+separate peace and is taking every step towards that end.
+
+"Nikki is still at the front encouraging the troops.  How foolish, and
+yet we have all to show a bold front.  The news of the landing at Athens
+has disconcerted us, though it has caused great joy in Petrograd.
+Inquire if nothing can be done further in an attempt to spread disease
+in the more populous regions.  This would kill enthusiasm for the war
+and force peace quickly.
+
+"Dmitri (the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, who was Rasputin's fiercest
+enemy) has been sent by Nikki to Samara.  It would be a relief to us all
+if he never returned.  He with Nicholas (the Grand Duke Nicholas
+Michailovitch) are plotting to defeat us.  But Germany shall win.  It
+shall be as you, my dear Father, saw in your vision.
+
+"Pray for us, O Father.  Give us your benediction, for while you are
+absent we are all dull and lonely.  Tell William to send you back
+quickly and safely to us.  Give my best greetings to the brave
+Hindenburg.  It is horrid to be compelled to sustain an anti-German
+attitude when one knows that our Fatherland is unconquerable, even
+though the Russian flag be bathed in blood.
+
+"Inform the General Staff that the secret agent Erbach-Furstenau, who
+fell into General Neudorff's hands last month has at my instigation been
+acquitted by the court-martial and will very shortly escape back to
+Germany.  I have personally arranged that the papers seized upon him
+shall be destroyed.
+
+"Charges are being levelled against General Sukhomlinoff.  He has been
+betrayed by a man named Kartzoff.  In order to suppress the latter's
+further activity, he has been arrested for treason at my instigation and
+sent without trial to an unknown destination.  So we have one enemy the
+less.  It is reported that Manasevitch-Manuiloff (private secretary to
+Prime Minister Sturmer) has been arrested for attempting to blackmail
+his chief.  But I will see that Nikki stops the trial.
+
+"My dear boy Alexis is improving.  Anna is with him constantly.  He
+sends his greetings and asks for your prayers.  I kiss your holy hand.
+Your sister Alec."
+
+Russia was still being betrayed by the Empress, who had fallen so
+entirely beneath the occult influences of the rascal who, in turn, had
+become the catspaw of the Kaiser.
+
+The charges against General Sukhomlinoff, ex-Minister of War, mentioned
+by the Tsaritza, had apparently alarmed her.  And well they might.  An
+official in the ministry named Kartzoff had betrayed his chief,
+whereupon Colonel Tugen Baranovsky, late Chief of the Mobilisation
+Department of the Russian General Staff, had made depositions to the
+effect that the mobilisation plans drafted by the General were full of
+errors, while rifles, machine-guns, and field and heavy guns were all
+lacking.  Depositions had been made by General Petrovsky, late Chief of
+the Fortifications Department, to the effect that the General had only
+twice visited the artillery administration during the whole time he held
+his portfolio as Minister, while a third official, Colonel Batvinkine,
+one of the heads of the Artillery Administration, had asserted that
+General Sukhomlinoff had insisted upon important contracts for
+machine-guns being given to the Rickerts Factory at a cost of two
+thousand roubles each while the Toula Factory could turn out excellent
+machine-guns at nine hundred roubles.
+
+Such were a few of the charges against the ex-Minister, a bosom friend
+of Rasputin and of Sturmer, and these were being whispered abroad
+everywhere, even though by the influence of the Tsaritza the principal
+witness against the General had been sent to "an unknown destination!"
+
+Written on the same day and conveyed secretly to the monk in Berlin--
+evidently by the same messenger who carried the Tsaritza's letter to her
+"Holy Father"--was one from the conspirator Protopopoff.  It is on the
+private note-paper of the Minister of the Interior and discloses truly
+an amazing state of affairs, as follows:
+
+"Brother Gregory,--I send you this hastily and with some apprehension.
+Both Nicholas and Dmitri (the Grand Dukes), are actively at work against
+us!  Beware!  They know far too much, hence it behoves us to be most
+discreet.  I was at Tsarskoe-Selo yesterday and discussed it with F.
+(Count Fredericks, Minister of the Imperial Court).  There is a secret
+movement to upset our plans, but I have ordered the Secret Police to
+spare no pains to present full and adequate reports to me, and rely on
+me to take drastic steps.
+
+"An hour ago it came to my knowledge that an individual named Wilhelm
+Gebhardt, living at Hildegard-strasse, 21 Wilmersdorf, Berlin, has
+knowledge that you are in the German capital and is probably watching
+your movements to report to our enemies here.  Give news of this to our
+friend `Number 70' and urge that he shall be immediately arrested as a
+spy of Russia.  If he is executed his mouth would be closed, for he is
+dangerous.  The man with whom he is in association in Petrograd, a
+person named Tchartovyski, member of the Duma, I have ordered to be
+arrested and charged with communicating with persons in Germany.
+
+"S.  (Sturmer) is eager for news regarding the proposed German offensive
+against the British in Flanders, and the exact position regarding the
+`U' boat campaign.  Inform the Chancellor that news we received from
+Washington to-day shows that President Wilson is determined, and warn
+him that J. and G., whom he will know by initials as German agents in
+the United States, have been discovered, and may be arrested.  He may
+perhaps communicate with them by wireless, and they may escape while
+there is still time.
+
+"Further, inform the Chancellor that our efforts to make more marked the
+shortage of food have been negatived by the action of Nicholas and
+Dmitri, for we fear to go further lest the truth be disclosed.  Their
+activity cannot be ignored.
+
+"Urge that the distribution of fruit to charitable institutions be
+repeated.
+
+"The charges against Sukhomlinoff are extremely grave, and may have
+serious consequences.  I am, however, taking steps to ascertain the
+intentions and to arrest those who are in association.
+
+"Her Majesty is eager and nervous regarding you.  Write and assure her
+that all is well with your dear self.  As the saviour of Russia from the
+wiles of the Allies, the Russian people ought to regard you as great as
+the Great Peter himself.
+
+"A tall, thin individual named Emil Dollen will probably call upon you
+at your hotel.  If so, receive him.  He may convey a message from me
+sent by wireless to Riga and re-transmitted.
+
+"Present my humble compliments to His Majesty the Emperor.  Would that I
+were with you at glorious Potsdam.  These Russians of ours are arrant
+fools, or we should have been hand-in-glove with Berlin against the
+effete nations who are our Allies.  I salute you and await your
+return.--Your brother, D.A.  Protopopoff."
+
+This autograph letter is from the man who was Russian Minister of the
+Interior--the man in whom every true-born son of Russia believed so
+implicitly that he went to his death fiercely and gallantly for his
+Emperor!
+
+Surely that position had no parallel in history.  Imperial Germany with
+her long-prepared plans had seized the Russian bear by the throat, and
+was throttling it, just as she has attempted to grapple with the British
+lion.  If the ever-spreading tentacles of the Kaiser's propaganda bureau
+and his unscrupulous and well-financed spy-service were so successful in
+Russia, which before the war was half-Germanised by the Tsaritza, the
+villain Rasputin and their traitor ministers, then one is permitted to
+wonder to what depths the Koniggratzer-strasse, with the Kaiser at its
+head, have descended in order to try and create famine and revolution in
+the British Isles, wherein dwell "the worst enemies of Germany."
+
+The documentary evidence extant shows that the unkempt "prophet," whose
+peasant hands were kissed by the Empress of Russia, and before whom
+bowed the greatest ladies of the Imperial Court, lived during the
+greater part of October, 1916, in that small hotel, the
+Westfalischer-Hof, in the Neusladische-strasse, on the north of the
+Linden.  He called himself Pastor van Meeuwen, and his companion was his
+trusty manservant, a cosmopolitan fellow, who afterwards disclosed much
+that I have here been able to reveal to British readers.
+
+That he had frequent audiences of the Emperor William and received his
+personal instructions is apparent from the copies of telegrams which the
+revolutions eventually unearthed from the archives of the Ministry of
+Telegraphs.
+
+One message by wireless, despatched from a Russian warship in the Baltic
+to the Admiralty station at Reval, coded in the same cipher as that used
+by Rasputin and his German confederates, the key of which was found in
+the safe in the Gorokhovaya, is as follows:
+
+"To his Excellency the Minister Protopopoff.--All goes well.  I had an
+audience at the Neues Palais to-day of three hours' duration.  Inform
+Charles Michael (the Duke Charles Michael of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who
+was the German adviser of the Tsaritza, and naturalised as a Russian
+subject in July, 1914) that the Emperor William sends his best greetings
+and acknowledgments of his despatch of the 3rd inst.  It has been found
+necessary to recall the troops who have been held ready at Hamburg and
+Bremen for the invasion of Britain.  The General Staff have, after due
+consideration, decided that an invasion might meet with disaster, hence
+they are turning their attention to submarine and aerial attacks upon
+Britain in order to crush her.  I have learnt from a conversation with
+the Kaiser that London is to be destroyed by a succession of fleets of
+super-aeroplanes launching newly-devised explosive and poison-gas bombs
+of a terribly destructive character.
+
+"Urge S.  (Sturmer) to disclaim at once all knowledge of the Rickert
+contracts.  The payments are completely concealed.  I have no fear of
+Sukhomlinoff's betrayal.  He is discredited and will not be believed:
+yet it would be best if the Emperor ordered the trial to be cancelled.--
+The Tsar did so, but the General was tried after his deposition.
+
+"To yourself and our dear Empress greetings.  I pray for you all, and
+send you my benedictions.--Your brother, Gregory Efimovitch."
+
+That the rascal hurried back to Petrograd is apparent by a letter dated
+a week later from Madame Kokoskin, the latest of his sister-disciples,
+who wrote from the Potemkinskaya 29, Petrograd, saying:
+
+"Holy Father,--I have just heard with joy from dear Anna that you have
+returned to-night.  May God grant you the fruits of your pilgrimage.
+(To his sister-disciples he had pretended to make a pilgrimage to the
+monastery of Verkhotursky, where in secret most disgraceful orgies often
+took place.)  My daughter Nada will be with me at our reunion at Anna's
+to-morrow at six.--Vera."
+
+Rasputin seems to have arrived in Petrograd the bearer of certain verbal
+messages from the Kaiser to the Tsaritza, for he went at once to
+Tsarskoe-Selo and there remained all next day.  That the Empress had now
+grown very frightened regarding the attitude of the Grand Dukes Nicholas
+and Dmitri, the latter a young and energetic figure in Russian politics,
+is proved by an attempt which, a few days later, she made to conciliate
+them both.  But they discarded her advances, for, having already learnt
+much regarding the "Holy Father," they were actively preparing to bring
+about the prosecution of General Sukhomlinoff, well knowing that its
+disclosures must wreck the _regime_ of the hated mock-monk and shake the
+House of Romanoff to its foundations.
+
+Hence it was that, two days later, the patriotic informer Ivan Kartzoff,
+the unfortunate official who had been sent by the Tsaritza's influence
+to "an unknown destination," was found shot dead in a wood near
+Kislovodsk, a small town in the North Caucasus, while two of the other
+witnesses were arrested at Protopopoff's orders upon false charges of
+treachery, incriminating papers--which had been placed among their
+effects by _agents provocateurs_--being produced as evidence against
+them.
+
+Thus the most strenuous efforts were being made by the camarilla to
+prevent the bursting of that storm-cloud which grew darker over them
+with every day that passed.
+
+The monk was, however, fully alive to the danger of exposure, and he
+therefore resolved to play yet another bold clever card in the desperate
+game of the betrayal of the Russian nation.
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE OF TREACHERY.
+
+Germany never plays straight, even with those who accept her gold to
+play the dangerous game of traitor.  The few who know the ramifications
+of the underground politics of Europe are well aware of this fact.
+
+This was brought home to Rasputin, when immediately after his return to
+Petrograd from his secret visit to the Kaiser in the guise of a pious
+Dutch pastor, the German Press became guilty of a grave indiscretion.
+Naturally the monk waxed furious.  The _Kolnische Zeitung_, in its
+unwonted enthusiasm, wrote: "We Germans need have no fear.  Sturmer may
+be relied upon not to place any obstacles in the way of Russia's desire
+for peace with Germany."  While the _Reichspost_ said: "We may rest
+assured that Sturmer will be independent in his relations with Downing
+Street."
+
+And yet Sturmer was at this moment crying, "No separate peace!" and had
+sent constant despatches to Downing Street assuring us of his intention
+to prosecute the war to the finish.  By this he misled the Allies, who
+naturally regarded the assertion of the German newspapers as mere frothy
+enthusiasm.
+
+But those indiscreet German assurances were instantly seized upon by
+that small and fearless band of Russian patriots who--headed by the
+Grand Dukes Nicholas and Dmitri--had united to expose and destroy the
+disgraceful camarilla whose object it was to wreck the Empire, and hand
+it mangled and defenceless to be torn by the eagle of Germany.
+
+At the instigation of the peasant-charlatan and thief whose hand the
+Empress kissed, calling him her Holy Father, Sturmer--also paid lavishly
+by Germany--was following a clever policy of isolation, and had raised a
+lofty barrier between the Government and the elected representatives of
+the people.  After ten months of office this _debauchee_ and traitor had
+only appeared in the Duma on one occasion, and then he made a speech so
+puerile that he was greeted with ironical laughter.
+
+With the very refinement of cunning which betrayed the criminal mind,
+he, at Rasputin's suggestion, crowded the work of legislation into the
+Parliamentary recesses, and passed Bills by virtue of Article 87 of the
+Fundamental Laws, which allowed the Government to legislate when the
+Duma was not in session.  Till then all had gone smoothly for Berlin.
+But there opened a new chapter of the history of the downfall of the
+great Romanoffs.
+
+Early in November, 1916, a number of very serious and secret conferences
+of the camarilla took place at Rasputin's house.  Both Sturmer and
+Protopopoff were now viewing the situation with the gravest anxiety, for
+the Empire was being swiftly aroused to a sense of its insecurity.
+There were sinister whispers on all hands of traitors, and of a
+disinclination on the part of the capitalists and Government to win the
+war.
+
+The Empress had been guilty of a serious indiscretion, for she had
+mentioned to a young officer at Court the dastardly attempt of German
+agents to produce an epidemic of cholera by distribution of infected
+fruit to charitable institutions.  That officer's name was Tsourikoff.
+The hand of Rasputin was heavy and swift.  Four days after the fact
+became known he died suddenly in his rooms in the Moskovskaya Quarter in
+Petrograd.  He had been to the Bouffes in the Fontanka, where he had met
+a dark-eyed siren with whom he had afterwards had supper at that
+well-known establishment, Pivato's, in the Morskaya.  The lady could not
+be traced after his death.  Truly the hand of the illiterate monk was
+ruling Russia with his pretence of working miracles, and with that
+mock-religious jargon in which he addressed his noble-born
+sister-disciple.  He held secret death within his fingers, to be dealt
+to any who might upset his plans, or those of the Empress.
+
+That the latter actually did, in an excess of her enthusiasm for the
+success of her native Germany, betray the plans of Rasputin and his
+paymasters to the young officer Tsourikoff, is proved by a telegram
+which she addressed to the monk from the Imperial train at Sinelnikovo,
+on the way to Livadia.  This sardonic message still remains upon the
+records of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, and reads:
+
+"The accident to Captain Tsourikoff is to be deplored.  Please place a
+wreath upon the grave on my behalf.  Pray for us.--Alec."
+
+In the last days of October, 1916, the diabolical conspiracy entered
+upon a new and even more desperate stage, for very slowly the astounding
+truth was leaking out to the long-suffering Russian people.  The Grand
+Duke Nicholas had been joined by the Grand Duke Serge, formerly
+Inspector-General of Artillery, General Vernandea, ex-Assistant Minister
+of War, and M.  Mimascheff, who all three had been actively
+investigating the alleged treachery of General Sukhomlinoff.  They had
+publicly made further statements most damning to the General.  His late
+colleague Vernandea had alleged that the Minister of War had paid no
+heed to the equipment of the Army, had given no contracts except to
+those factories who gave him bribes, and that after 130 days of war the
+Russian Army were without shells.  The Grand Duke Serge had told a
+secret meeting in Petrograd that General Sukhomlinoff had suppressed the
+personal reports addressed to the Tsar by all the heads of the Ministry
+of War and had actually prevented new guns being ordered from the
+Schneider Works, while the ex-Minister of Commerce declared that the
+Minister of War had never once requested him to organise manufacturers
+and owners of works for national defence.
+
+On hearing from Rasputin that these allegations were being made, the
+Empress at once, at the monk's instigation, telegraphed in cipher to the
+Tsar, who was at the front:
+
+"Suppress at once, I beg of you in the interest of us all, the base
+charges now being made against Sukhomlinoff.  Boris threatens to resign
+if they continue.  If you do not act immediately the situation will
+become a very ugly one."
+
+In reply the Emperor sent a message to his wife at Livadia next day, in
+which he said:
+
+"I have taken the necessary steps that the allegations shall not be
+repeated."
+
+They were, however, repeated in Court at the trial of the ex-Minister at
+Petrograd on August 28, 1917.
+
+Meanwhile Rasputin, Sturmer, and Protopopoff, a truly diabolical trio,
+proceeded to put into force a new and ingenious plan to create further
+unrest and by that means dishearten the people.  The Empress returned to
+Tsarskoe-Selo, where the charlatan immediately saw her and obtained her
+full approval to his suggestion.  The plan was to disseminate the
+wildest rumours, in order to incite disorder among the proletariat.  In
+that highly-charged atmosphere created by the growing food crisis--which
+Sturmer and Protopopoff had so cleverly brought about at Germany's
+instigation--it was easy to throw a spark among the inflammable popular
+masses, exasperated and disorganised by the deplorable state of affairs.
+In consequence, a veritable whirlwind of false rumour was released in
+the hope that a movement would be started which would shatter, weaken
+for long, or stifle all manifestations of patriotism, and cause the
+country to sue for a separate peace.
+
+Rasputin himself was responsible for putting this new plan into
+execution.  Rumours arose with a startling rapidity.  It was said in
+Petrograd that all Moscow was involved in a rising; the wires were cut,
+the Moscow police were on strike, and that the troops had refused to
+fire on the crowd.  Simultaneously, similar rumours were circulated in
+Moscow concerning a sanguinary riot in Petrograd; while at Kharkoff it
+was believed that Moscow was in revolution, and at Moscow it was
+declared that there was a revolution at Kharkoff.
+
+These rumours, which all emanated from the malignant brain of the
+"Saint," were of course false, but colour was given to them by the
+dastardly outrages committed by two German secret agents, Lachkarioff
+and Filimonoff (who were subsequently allowed to escape to Sweden), who
+blew up two great mills outside Moscow, and also blew up the blast
+furnaces at the Obukhov Steel Factory, causing great loss of life; while
+at the same time, a desperate attempt was made also by other German
+agents to destroy the great powder factory opposite Schusselburg, which,
+before the war, had been owned by Germans.
+
+The unrest thus created by Rasputin quickly assumed alarming
+proportions, and the camarilla was secretly satisfied.  The Prime
+Minister, Sturmer, in order to mislead the public further, made a speech
+deploring the fact that anybody credited such unfounded reports; but he
+did not do so before the Labour group of the Central War Industrial
+Committee had issued a declaration to the working classes warning them
+to remain patient and prosecute the war with vigour.
+
+How amazingly clever was this traitorous camarilla, seeking to hurl
+Russia to her destruction, is shown by a significant fact.  On the very
+day of the issue of that Labour declaration General Brusiloff,
+interviewed at the Russian Headquarters of the South-West Front by Mr
+Stanley Washburn, said:
+
+"The war is won to-day, though it is merely speculation to estimate how
+much longer will be required before the enemy are convinced that the
+cause, for the sake of which they drenched Europe with blood, is
+irretrievably lost.  Personally, never since the beginning have I
+believed that the enemy had a chance of winning."
+
+Meanwhile the Emperor was still absent at the front, and Rasputin, in
+addition to directing the affairs of the Empire through the Empress,
+whom he visited daily at the Palace, was holding constant reunions of
+his sister-disciples, whereat he pretended to see visions, while he was
+also blackmailing all and sundry, as his voluminous correspondence with
+some of his "sisters" plainly shows.  Two letters from the Grand Duchess
+Olga, daughter of the Tsar, dated October 30th and November 1st, are
+indeed plain evidence that the monk was forming a fresh "circle" of his
+female neophytes, consisting wholly of young girls of noble families.
+
+Suddenly, like a bombshell, there dropped upon the Tsaritza and the
+camarilla the startling news, that Miliukoff, who had now at his back
+the Grand Dukes Nicholas, Serge and Dmitri, intended to publicly expose
+the Empress's pet "Saint."  From Tsarskoe-Selo she wrote to him on
+November 7th, apparently in great haste, for it is a pencilled note:
+
+"Holy Father,--Anna has just told me of Miliukoff's intention in the
+Duma.  The Emperor must further adjourn its re-assembling (which had
+been prohibited from meeting since July).  I have telegraphed to him
+urging him to do this.  If not, Noyo's suggestion to pay the agents J.
+or B. ten thousand roubles to remove him.  I would willingly pay a
+hundred thousand roubles to close his mouth for ever.  This must be
+done.  Suggest it to P.  (Protopopoff).  Surely the same means could be
+used as with Tsourikoff, and the end be quite natural and peaceful!  You
+could supply the means as before.  But I urge on you not to delay a
+moment.  All depends upon Miliukoff's removal.  If he reveals to the
+Duma what he knows, then everything must be lost.  I kiss your dear
+hands.  With Olga I ask your blessing.--Your dutiful daughter, A."
+
+It seems incredible in this twentieth century that an Empress should
+have been so completely beneath the thraldom of an erotic criminal
+lunatic.  But the evidence is there in black and white.
+
+Two previous attempts upon the life of Professor Miliukoff had happily
+failed, but the tenor of that letter illustrates the Tsaritza's
+increasing fears lest the real traitor should be unmasked.
+
+A cipher telegram from the Emperor, who was at the South-West
+Headquarters, is on record, dated November 8th, and was addressed to the
+Tsaritza.  It was evidently a reply to her frantic request:
+
+"Tell our dear Father (Rasputin) that to postpone the Duma would, I
+fear, create an unfavourable impression, and I judge impossible.
+Protopopoff has asked my authority to arrest Miliukoff upon some
+technical charge, but I do not consider such a course good policy.  I
+agree that to-day's situation is grave, and agree that at the last
+moment some steps should be taken to prevent him from speaking."
+
+On receipt of that very unsatisfactory reply the Tsaritza summoned the
+mock-monk, who was remaining at the Palace evidently awaiting the
+Emperor's reply.  Sturmer and Madame Vyrubova, the high-priestess of the
+Rasputin cult, were also present.  What actually transpired at that
+Council of Three is unknown.  It is, however, beyond question that it
+was arranged that M.  Miliukoff, whom they held in such fear--as well as
+a friend of his, a Conservative deputy named Puriskevitch--should be
+"removed."  That the illiterate scoundrel, with his unique knowledge of
+the scriptures, was an adept in the art of using certain secret drugs,
+and that by his hand several persons obnoxious to the camarilla had died
+mysteriously is now proved beyond any doubt, for as cleverly as he
+systematically drugged the poor little Tsarevitch, so also he could with
+amazing cunning "arrange" the deaths of those who might betray him.
+
+M.  Miliukoff, knowing that his patriotic and hostile intentions were
+being suspected, took such precautions, however, that even the bold
+emissaries of Rasputin failed to approach him.
+
+At noon, on November 14th, the Minister Protopopoff wrote a hurried note
+upon the paper of the Ministry of the Interior, which is on record, and
+is as follows:
+
+"Dear friend Gregory,--How is it that your plans have so utterly failed
+and M.  (Miliukoff) is still active?  To-day at 2 the Duma meets!
+Cannot you arrange that he is absent?  Cannot you work a miracle?
+Skoropadski (a well-known German agent) has betrayed us and put the most
+incriminating documents into M.'s hands.  We tried to arrest the fellow
+last night in Riga, but, alas, he has eluded us.  Take every precaution
+for your own safety.  If M. attends the sitting we are all lost.--Yours
+cordially, D.A.P."
+
+The plot to kill M.  Miliukoff had failed!  The Empress knew of it and
+sat in the Winter Palace, pale, breathless and eager for messages over
+her private telephone.  The vile, black work done by her "Holy Father"
+was to be exposed!  What if her own Imperial self were exhibited in her
+true traitorous colours!
+
+Meanwhile, at two o'clock, M.  Rodzianko took his seat as President at
+the Tauris Palace.  The usual service was held and then the historic
+sitting of the Duma opened.  The House was crowded, and the British,
+French and Italian Ambassadors being in the diplomatic box, the members,
+Octobrists, Progressive Nationalists, the Centre, the Zemsto Octobrists
+and Cadets, rose in one body and gave vociferous cheers for the Allies.
+"Russia will win!" they cried.
+
+The first speaker was M.  Garusewicz, who, on behalf of the Polish Club,
+addressed the Allied Powers, protesting against the Austro-German action
+and expressing the hope and confidence that a final solution of the
+Polish problem would be the outcome of the war.
+
+The two men whom the camarilla had plotted to murder were calmly in
+their places.  M.  Miliukoff, a pleasant-looking grey-haired man, sat
+gazing at the speaker through his gold-rimmed spectacles, listening
+attentively until the speaker had concluded.  Meanwhile the Tsaritza,
+sitting in her luxurious little room in the Palace with the dissolute
+Anna Vyrubova as her sole companion, was listening to messages which, as
+arranged, came to her over the telephone every ten minutes.
+
+At last M.  Miliukoff rose, quite calm, and bowed to the President.
+Instantly there was silence.  Without mincing matters in the least he
+told the House--in a speech which was wholly suppressed by the
+authorities--how the camarilla had endeavoured to remove him but in
+vain; and then, after many hard words which electrified all present, he
+denounced the "Saint" as the dark and sinister force which was hurling
+the Russian Empire to its destruction.  Then, branding the pro-German
+Prime Minister Boris Sturmer as "Judas the Traitor," he took up a bundle
+of documents, and shaking them in his hand dramatically he declared: "I
+have here, gentlemen, the evidence of Judas.  Evidence in cold figures--
+the number of shekels, the pieces of silver, for betrayal."
+
+The House sat breathless!  The ghastly truth was out.  When M.
+Miliukoff sat down his friend M.  Puriskevitch rose politely and asked
+permission and indulgence to make a speech in German--the hated
+language--promising it should be very brief.  All he uttered were the
+two words: "Hofmeister Sturmer!"  The Duma, understanding, cheered to
+the echo.
+
+Over the telephone the Empress, pale and neurotic, listened to what had
+been alleged against her "Holy Father" and his friend Sturmer, whereupon
+she suddenly gave a low scream and fainted.
+
+The truth was out at last!  The first blow of retribution had on that
+afternoon fallen upon the Imperial House of Romanoff.
+
+But Rasputin, the amazing, remained unperturbed.  He merely smiled
+evilly.  The game had become desperate, he knew, but he still had other
+cards to play.
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+DISCLOSES THE CHARLATAN'S WILES.
+
+Up till this juncture the penalty for even mentioning the name of
+Rasputin was imprisonment.  The censorship, controlled by his catspaw
+Protopopoff, took care to adopt the most drastic measures to suppress
+every mention of the mysterious "Saint" who was the centre of that band
+of neurotic noblewomen who kissed his filthy hands and bowed their knees
+to him.
+
+"O Holy Father! the Chosen One of God!  Give us thy blessing and we
+beseech of thee to pray for us.  May the sin we here commit be committed
+for the purification of our souls; and may we, thy sister-disciples, be
+raised to thine own plane of piety by God's great mercy."
+
+Thus ran the blasphemous opening prayer repeated at each of the
+scoundrel's erotic reunions--those meetings held with closed doors both
+within the Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo, in the Gorokhovaya, and elsewhere.
+
+But on that historic November 14th, 1916, the "Saint" had been publicly
+named, and hence became seriously alarmed.  Two hours after the fearless
+Miliukoff had denounced him in the Duma the whole of Petrograd
+palpitated with excitement.  All knew that the utterances of the
+fearless patriot who had actually pilloried the monk in public would be
+denied publication in the Press.  Therefore those who were bent upon
+winning the war at once arranged to have typewritten copies of the
+speech circulated from hand to hand, and by that means the bold
+denunciation obtained a wider circulation than any other words ever
+spoken in the Duma.
+
+The newspapers appeared with black columns.  "M.  Miliukoff continued
+the debate," was all that was allowed to appear in print.  The cables to
+the Allies were rigorously censored, so that in England even Downing
+Street were in ignorance of what had really occurred.  Paris, London and
+Rome were still living in a fool's paradise, thanks to the grip which
+Germany had gained upon official Petrograd, and were being led to
+believe that all in the Russian Empire were united against the hated
+Hun.
+
+The reports in the British Press of that period were most mystifying.
+That the Duma were dissatisfied with the state of affairs was plain, but
+had not the House of Commons often expressed equal dissatisfaction?  The
+fact, however, that the name of Rasputin had actually been mentioned and
+that the "Holy Father" had been exposed as Germany's spy, who controlled
+the "Hofmeister Sturmer," was never dreamed until a month later, even by
+such outspoken journals as the Paris _Matin_.
+
+At Tsarskoe-Selo, however, all were in deadly fear.  Even Anna Vyrubova
+viewed the situation with greatest alarm.  She wrote to him an hour
+after Miliukoff had denounced him, as follows:
+
+"Her Majesty is prostrated.  All seems lost.  The Emperor departs for
+the front again at midnight.  He fears a rising in Petrograd, and is
+regretful that M.  (Miliukoff) was not suppressed in time to save us.
+Someone, he says, has blundered.  If you would save yourself go
+instantly upon a pilgrimage.  Describe a vision that will allay the
+people's anger and give them further confidence in you.  M. has
+denounced you as a mocker of God and a mere juggler with woman's
+credulity.  Our dear Empress knows you are not.  But she must continue
+in that belief.  Shall Alexis be taken with another seizure?  If so,
+prophesy the day and hour.  I await word from you in secret, and ask
+your blessing.--Your sister, Anna."
+
+The suggestion in this letter is, of course, that a dose of the secret
+drug be administered to the poor little Tsarevitch at an hour to be
+previously prophesied by the mock-monk.  The Matter was, however, on the
+alert.  On receipt of the letter he went at once to the Palace, abruptly
+leaving the camarilla who had assembled to plot further, and to save
+themselves and their own fat emoluments by more juggling with the
+security of the Empire.
+
+To the Empress, whom he found in her _neglige_ in her boudoir, with Anna
+in sole attendance, he said:
+
+"Truly, O Sister! our enemies seek to encompass us!  But God is our
+strength.  As surely as the Russian people have denounced me, so surely
+will God in His wrath send His punishment upon the Heir to the Throne.
+Miliukoff, who has sought the protection of Satan himself, has spoken
+his poisonous words against me.  Therefore I go to-morrow upon a
+pilgrimage to retire and to pray for the future of the Empire, and the
+forgiveness of those who have dared to speak ill of one sent by God as
+the Deliverer."
+
+"No!  No!" gasped Her Majesty, starting from her chair in pale alarm.
+"You will not leave us at this juncture--you will not, Holy Father,
+leave us to our fate?"
+
+"It is decreed," he said in that low hard voice of his.  "I have
+witnessed a vision even an hour since--I have heard the Voice!  I must
+obey.  But," he added seriously, "I tell thee, O Sister! that near five
+o'clock in the morning of the day following to-morrow thy dear son will
+be visited by God's wrath.  He--"
+
+"He will be again ill!" gasped the unhappy woman, who believed that the
+bearded man in the black kaftan before her was sent by Providence as
+Russia's deliverer.  "Surely you cannot mean that!  You will pray for
+him--you will save him.  Remember he is my son--my all!"
+
+"Truly I mean what I have spoken, O Sister!" was his reply.  "But I will
+pray for his recovery--and all can be achieved by the sacrifice of the
+flesh and by prayer.  God grant his recovery!" he added piously, making
+the sign of the cross and raising his mesmeric eyes heavenwards.
+
+At this the hysterical traitress in her pale-pink gown edged with wide
+Eastern embroidery of emeralds and turquoises, fell upon her knees and
+kissed the scoundrel's knotted, unclean fingers, while her faithful Anna
+looked on and crossed herself, muttering one of the prayers in the
+blasphemous jargon of the "sister-disciples."  The failure to
+assassinate Professor Miliukoff had brought home to the camarilla and
+also to the spy-bureau in Berlin--acting through Swedish diplomatic
+channels--that the Grand Dukes Nicholas, Serge and Dmitri, together with
+their small circle of staunch friends of the nobility, were determined
+to place them in the pillory.
+
+The agent of Germany, Skoropadski, a friend of the notorious Azeff, of
+the Russian Secret Police, whose exploits before the war were often
+chronicled, had betrayed his employers.  Commencing life as a Russian
+_agent provocateur_, employed in Warsaw against the Revolutionists, and
+consequently a most unscrupulous and heartless person, he had entered
+the service of Germany with Protopopoff's connivance and had been the
+means of the ruin and downfall of dozens of patriotic Russian officials.
+By virtue of his office as spy of Germany he knew the double game that
+the Prime Minister, Sturmer, was playing at Rasputin's instigation.
+Documents passed through his hands, and often he passed in secret
+between Petrograd and Berlin and _vice versa_, posing as a Swede and
+travelling by way of Stockholm.
+
+He was an expert spy, and ready to serve any paymaster.  Furthermore, he
+had a grudge against Rasputin because one of his own lady friends had
+joined the cult of "Believers," and thus had his hatred been aroused.
+Therefore, when the little band of patriots at the head of which was the
+Grand Duke Nicholas approached him in secret, he was at once ready to
+place the most damning documentary evidence in their hands--those papers
+which Professor Miliukoff had flashed in the faces of the Duma.
+
+The anger of Sturmer and Protopopoff was now at a white heat.  The
+latter, as Controller of the Secret Police, made every effort to arrest
+the artful Pole, but he happily escaped, and is now believed to be in
+Paris.
+
+Such was the story, revealed here for the first time, of the manner in
+which the Revolutionists were able to present to the people's
+representative the infamous acts of the monk Rasputin and his official
+"creatures" who wore their tinselled uniforms, their tin decorations and
+enjoyed titles of "Excellency."  Traitors have been in every land since
+the Creation; and, as I examined this amazing _dossier_ collected by the
+patriotic party in Russia, with its original letters, its copies of
+letters, its photographs and its telegrams in the sloped calligraphy of
+their senders, I marvel, and wonder who in other countries are the
+traitors--who while pretending to serve their own kings or their
+presidents are also serving the Mammon of Germania?
+
+I pen these chapters of the downfall of Tsardom with unwilling hand, for
+I have many friends in Russia and, as a traveller in the Land of the
+Tsar over many thousands of versts, I have grown to know--perhaps only
+slightly--the hearty, homely and hospitable Russian people.  I have
+suffered discomforts for months among those clouds of mosquitoes on the
+great "tundra," and I have travelled many and many weary miles over the
+snows of winter, yet never did I think that I should sit to chronicle
+such a _debacle_.
+
+Notwithstanding the tears of the Empress, the villainous Rasputin,
+having arranged with Anna the hour when she should drug the poor little
+Tsarevitch, departed on a pilgrimage to the Monastery of Tsarytsine.
+
+Facts concerning this journey, when he fled from the wrath of the
+people, have just been revealed by his friend the monk Helidor, who
+having learnt the manner in which he betrayed the Empire, has come
+forward to elucidate many things hitherto mysterious.
+
+Helidor, who is a man of high intelligence and true religious
+principles, has stated that at Rasputin's invitation both he and
+Monsignor Hermogene joined "Grichka," as he terms his dissolute friend,
+upon the pilgrimage.  Rasputin the traitor was received everywhere as an
+angel from Heaven.  The people of all classes prostrated themselves and
+kissed his unclean hands.  In Tsarytsine during two days he entered many
+houses, where he embraced all the good-looking women, but discarded the
+old and ugly.  He was often drunk and riotous.
+
+On entering the monastery at last he isolated himself for four days on
+pretence of prayer, but he was assisted in his religious exercises by a
+good-looking young nun with whom he openly walked in the monastery
+grounds.
+
+Tired of the retirement and the nun's companionship, he travelled to his
+native Siberian village of Pokrovsky, Helidor accompanying him.
+
+"During our journey, which was a long one," Helidor says, "I tried to
+discover some testimony to the sanctity of my companion.  I only found
+him to be a most uncouth and dissolute person, whose constant talk was
+of women, and who drank incessantly.  I had been mystified by him until
+then, but I realised that even having been denounced in the Duma, he was
+quite undisturbed, for his egotism was colossal, and he constantly
+declared to me that he was the actual Autocrat."
+
+Helidor's description of the so-called "monastery" at Pokrovsky is
+interesting as being from an authentic and reliable source.
+
+"We arrived there at last," he declared in an interview the other day.
+"It was a mean Siberian village half hidden in the Siberian snow, for
+the winter was unduly early.  I observed my host closely, for I now knew
+him to be a traitor and a charlatan.  The `monastery' as he called it in
+Petrograd, and for which hundreds gave him subscriptions, was not a
+religious house at all, and it had never been consecrated as such.
+Rasputin himself was not even a monk, for he had never been received
+into the church."
+
+In describing this "monastery" for which the monk had filched thousands
+upon thousands of roubles from the pockets of his neophytes in
+Petrograd, Helidor says:
+
+"It was a large house, which had only recently been furnished
+luxuriously.  It was full of holy ikons, of portraits of women, and of
+magnificent presents from their Majesties.  The occupants of the place
+numbered a dozen women, mostly young, garbed as nuns and performing
+daily religious observances."
+
+Apparently the establishment was a Siberian "Abode of Love," much upon
+the lines, as the Smyth-Piggott cult, yet Helidor has declared that what
+struck him most was the open hostility of the mujiks towards the "Holy
+Father."
+
+"They are annoyed, my dear brother Helidor, because you have come with
+me from Petrograd," the "saint" declared in excuse.
+
+But Helidor noticed that Antoine, the Archbishop of Tobolsk, who visited
+him, betrayed the same marked hostility, while the people of the village
+all declared without mincing matters that Grichka, whom they had known
+as a convicted horse-thief and assaulter of women, was merely a
+_debauche_.
+
+Again came wild telegrams from the Empress.  The "Saint's" prophecy had
+been fulfilled and the Tsarevitch had been taken seriously ill at the
+exact hour he had predicted.
+
+"Nikki has returned.  Both of us are in deadly fear," she telegraphed.
+"Kousmin (the Court physician) cannot diagnose the malady.  Come to us
+at once, Holy Father, I pray to you, come and save us.  Give your
+blessing and your sympathy to your devoted sister.--A."
+
+At the same time His Majesty sent a telegraphic message to the man who
+made and unmade Ministers and who ruled all Russia at home and in the
+field.  It was despatched from the Winter Palace half-an-hour after the
+message of the Empress, and read:
+
+"Friend, I cannot command, but I beg of you to return instantly to us.
+We want your help.  Without it, Alexis will die, and the House of
+Romanoff is doomed.  I have sent the Imperial train to you.  It leaves
+in an hour.--Nicholas."
+
+Of this summons the villainous ex-thief took no notice.
+
+Helidor says: "He showed me the telegrams and laughed triumphantly,
+saying, `Nikki seems very much troubled!  Why does he not return to the
+front and urge on his soldiers against the advancing hosts.'  The
+greater our losses the nearer shall we be to peace.  I shall take care
+that ignorant Russia will not win against the causes of civilisation and
+humanity."
+
+"Civilisation and humanity!"  This illiterate and dissolute peasant, who
+each night became hopelessly intoxicated and who in his cups would
+revile his paymasters the Huns and chant in his deep bass voice refrains
+of Russian patriotic airs, was actually the dear "friend" of the Tsar of
+All the Russias!  The vicious scoundrel's influence was reaching its
+zenith.
+
+To Western readers the whole facts may well appear incredible.  But
+those who know Russia, with its complex world of official corruption and
+"religious" chicanery, are well aware how anything may happen to that
+huge Empire when at war.
+
+After a fortnight's silence, during which the sinister hand of Anna
+Vyrubova regularly administered that secret drug to the poor, helpless
+son of the Emperor, Rasputin, with amazing effrontery, dared again to
+put his foot in Petrograd.  On the night of his arrival the Tsaritza,
+awaiting him anxiously at Tsarskoe-Selo, sent him a note by Ivan
+Radzick, the trusted body-servant of the Emperor for fifteen years, a
+note which the miracle-worker preserved most carefully, and which ran as
+follows:
+
+"Holy Father,--I await you eagerly.  Boris (Sturmer) and Fredericks are
+with me.  Things are increasingly critical.  Hasten to us at once and
+cure poor little Alexis, or he will die.  The doctors are powerless.  I
+have had urgent news from Berlin.  Miliukoff must be removed, and so
+must Kerensky and Nicholas (the Grand Duke).  Boris has arranged it.
+You have the means.  Something must happen to them within the next
+forty-eight hours.  Nicholas has handed Nikki an abominable letter of
+threats.  The British Ambassador is wary and knows of this.  His
+despatches to London to-night must be intercepted.  I am sending the car
+for you, and await in eagerness once again to kiss your dear hands.--
+Your devoted sister, Alec."
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+BAMBOOZLING THE ALLIES.
+
+As a result of the denunciation in the Duma of "Russia's dark forces,"
+Boris Sturmer was deprived of the Premiership and appointed by the
+Tsaritza's influence to a high office in the Imperial household, where
+he could still unite with Baron Fredericks in playing Germany's game.
+
+A few days after this re-shuffling of the cards, M.  Trepoff, the new
+Premier, made a reassuring statement to the Duma, in which he said:
+"There will never be a premature or separate peace.  Nothing can change
+this resolution, which is the inflexible will of the august Russian
+sovereign, who stands for the whole of his faithful people."
+
+How Rasputin and the camarilla must have chuckled when they read these
+words of reassurance!
+
+On the very day that declaration was made the monk had received a
+telegram in cipher from Stockholm, whither it had been first sent from
+the Koniggratzer-strasse in Berlin, and which, de-coded, reads as
+follows:
+
+"Gregersen (a well-known German agent who had actively assisted von
+Papen in America) is arriving at Archangel upon a munition ship from New
+York.  You will have early news of him.  See that he is placed under
+P.'s (Protopopoff's) protection.  He will bring you four boxes.  Do not
+open them, but see they are stored carefully.  Hand them to our friend
+R.  (Professor Rogovitch, of Samara, a bacteriologist and friend of
+Rasputin).--Number 70."
+
+The monk had "early news" of the arrival of the spy Gregersen, for on
+the day following the receipt of that advice of his coming, the ship
+upon which he had travelled from New York blew up in Archangel harbour,
+and no fewer than one thousand, eight hundred persons were killed or
+injured!  Gregersen arrived at the Gorokhovaya that same night, and
+there met Protopopoff, who furnished him with false papers, upon which
+his photograph was pasted and sealed.
+
+The four wooden boxes which the spy had brought from America, and which
+contained the bacilli of anthrax and bubonic plague, were, two days
+later, handed by the monk to the Professor.  But the latter, carelessly
+handling them when opening them, became infected with anthrax himself,
+and subsequently died in great agony.  By the scoundrel's timely death
+Russia was spared an epidemic of those two terrible diseases, it being
+the intention of Rogovitch and Rasputin to infect with plague the rats
+in Moscow and other cities.
+
+The fact can never, of course, be disguised that the Tsar was fully
+cognisant of Rasputin's evil influence at the Imperial Court, though it
+seems equally certain that he never suspected him to be the arch-plotter
+and creature of the Kaiser that he really was.  Before the war, Nicholas
+II had lived a hermit's life at Tsarskoe-Selo.  Every foreign diplomat
+who has been stationed in Petrograd since his accession knows that he
+was the echo of everyone's opinion except his own.  The flexibility of
+his mind was only equalled by its emptiness.  Personal in everything,
+weak, shallow-minded, yet well-intentioned, he had long been interested
+in spiritualistic seances and table-turning.  Indeed, the most notorious
+frauds and charlatans who brought psychical studies into disrepute have
+had the honour of "performing" before His Majesty, and have even
+received decorations from the hands of the gulled Emperor.  It is,
+therefore, not surprising that this bold and amazingly cunning Siberian
+peasant known as "Grichka," with his mock miracles--worked by means of
+drugs supplied to him by the fellow Badmayeff, another charlatan who
+represented himself as an expert upon "Thibetan" medicine and who had a
+large clientele in Petrograd society--could so gull the Emperor that he
+actually consulted "the Holy Father" upon the most important matters
+concerning the State.
+
+Through the critical Year of Grace, 1916, when the future of the world's
+civilisation was trembling in the balance, the Allies lived utterly
+unsuspicious of this astounding state of affairs.  Downing Street and
+the Quai d'Orsay were in ignorance of the deeply-laid plot of the
+Emperor William to crush and destroy that splendid piece of patriotic
+machinery, "the Russian steam-roller."  We in England were frantically
+making munitions for Russia, and lending her the sinews of war, merely
+regarding the erotic monk as a society tea-drinking buffoon such as one
+meets in every capital.
+
+The truth has, however, been revealed by the amazing results of diligent
+inquiries made by that patriotic little band of Russians who united at
+the end of 1916 to rid the Empire of its most dangerous enemy, and have
+placed their secret reports in my hands.  The Emperor, though
+exceedingly rancorous, and though in appearance a quiet, inoffensive
+little man, was yet capable of the utmost cruelty and hardness.  He has
+been responsible for some terrible miscarriages of justice.  His
+callousness is well-known.  After the catastrophe of Khodinska, which
+cost the lives of nearly two thousand of his subjects, he danced the
+whole night at a ball given by the French Ambassador, while on reading
+the telegram which told him of the disaster of Tsushima, which cost
+Russia her whole fleet and the loss of so many precious lives, he made
+no remark, but continued his game of tennis in the park of
+Tsarskoe-Selo.
+
+Those of his personal entourage wondered.  They asked themselves whether
+it was stoicism, indifference, or a strength of mind abnormal.  It was
+neither.  Throughout the whole career of Nicholas II his only thought
+had been to flee from danger, and to leave to others the task of pulling
+the chestnuts from the fire.
+
+Rasputin and his shrewd and clever fellow-traitors knew all this, and
+were acting upon the Emperor's weaknesses, more especially upon His
+Majesty's belief in spiritualism and his fear to thwart the imperious
+declarations of his German-born wife.  Alexandra Feodorovna, the complex
+neurotic woman who had begun her career as Empress by determining to
+exclude from Court all ladies with blemished reputations, and all those
+black sheep who creep by back-stair influence into every Court of
+Europe, had now under Rasputin's influence welcomed any of the monk's
+lady friends, however tarnished their reputations.
+
+There can be no doubt that the Empress's nerves were not in a sound
+condition.  True, she was in constant communication with Germany, and
+her actions showed her readiness to betray Russia into the hands of her
+own people.  This fact the world ought to take into consideration.  The
+Empress is the most interesting character-study in the world to-day.  We
+can have no sympathy with those who are traitors, yet it has been
+clearly proved that the horrors of the Revolution had left a deep
+impression on her mind.  She had no fatalism in her character, and she
+lived in daily dread of seeing her children and husband murdered.  She
+had no courage.  Her highly-strung nature took more seriously to the
+soothing effect of the evil monk Rasputin's teaching than would the mind
+of a woman of normal calibre; hence, while "Nikki" her husband believed
+implicitly in "dear Gregory's" advice, she also believed him to be the
+heaven-sent deliverer of Russia, to wrest it from disaster, and to give
+to the poor little Tsarevitch good health as Heir to the Romanoff
+dynasty.
+
+Those latter days of 1916 were truly strenuous ones in the Imperial
+household.  On December 8th the Emperor had left for Moscow, and to him
+the Tsaritza telegraphed in their private code, as follows:
+
+"Tsarskoe-Selo, December 8th, 11:30 a.m.
+
+"Gregory says that Zakomelsky is proposing a resolution denouncing him
+at the Council of the Empire to-morrow.  At all costs this must be
+prevented.  Boris and Fredericks agree.  You must stop it.--Alec."
+
+To this there was sent a reply, the copy being on record:
+
+"Moscow, December 8th, 10 p.m.
+
+"Quite agree with undesirability of allowing Z. to criticise, but cannot
+see how I can prevent it, unless by arrest.  I am communicating with a
+certain quarter.  Shall return to-morrow.--Nikki."
+
+Apparently the Emperor, whatever steps he took, was unable to secure the
+arrest of the Leader of the Centre, for on the following day, at the
+meeting of the Council, the resolution was moved by the Baron Meller
+Zakomelsky, who recognised M.  Trepoff's honest and sincere desire to
+combat the so-called "dark forces," but warned the Prime Minister that
+the method chosen by him was wrong.  The only effective weapon, he said,
+was light, and the Duma and the Council called on the Government to join
+them in revealing and denouncing the notorious sinister influence.  The
+whole of Russia awaited the eradication of the plague which was
+corroding the State organism.
+
+This resolution apparently stirred into action the forces gradually
+arising to combat the camarilla, for on December 13th, Baroness
+Mesentzoff, wife of Baron Paul Mesentzoff, chamberlain and councillor of
+State, and a fair-haired "sister-disciple" of Rasputin's, sent him a
+letter of warning which is in existence, and of which I here give an
+English translation.
+
+It was handed to him late at night at his home in the Gorokhovaya.
+Seated with him in that little sanctum into which his neophytes were
+admitted by his discreet body-servant, and drinking heavily as usual,
+were Sturmer, the ex-Premier, and a man named Kartchevsky, a renegade,
+who was actually at that moment secretary to General von Beseler, the
+German Governor-General of Warsaw.
+
+The letter read as follows:
+
+"Holy Father,--I have been with Anna (Madame Vyrubova) and Olga (the
+Tsar's daughter) an hour ago.  I have told them to warn Her Majesty the
+Empress of a desperate plot against you.  Do beware, I pray you, of
+Youssoupoff, and of the Grand Duke Dmitri.  There is a conspiracy to
+kill you!
+
+"Your pretended friend Pourichkevitch dined with me to-night, and he,
+too, intends that you shall be removed.  We all pray that no harm shall
+befall you.  But I send this at once in warning.  I shall be at the
+seance tomorrow, when I hope to have an opportunity of speaking with you
+alone.  A young friend of mine, Nadjezda Boldyieff, daughter of the
+General at Kiev, is anxious to enter our circle.  So I shall bring her
+with me.  But do, I beg of you, heed this warning, and avoid all contact
+with the persons herein named.--Your sister, Feo."
+
+The monk, who was in his cups, as he usually was after midnight--
+according to his servant's statement--handed the letter to Sturmer with
+an inane laugh.  And stroking his beard, said with his extraordinary
+egotism:
+
+"Enemies!  Why do these silly impetuous women warn me?  I am careful
+enough to look after myself.  I rule Russia--at the orders of the
+Emperor William!  The Tsar is only Tsar in name.  The Emperor is myself,
+Gregory the monk!"
+
+"But Pourichkevitch is dangerous," declared the traitorous ex-Prime
+Minister.  "He is the fiercest member of the Extreme Right, and our
+friend Protopopoff has lately received many reports concerning him
+through the Secret Police."
+
+"If so, then why is he not imprisoned?" asked Rasputin.  "Protopopoff is
+far too hesitating.  A few compromising documents introduced into his
+house, a police search, an arrest, a word to the Emperor--and he would
+have an uncomfortable little room beneath the lake in the Fortress of
+Schusselburg.  No, our friend Protopopoff is far too weak.  He dallies
+too much for the public favour.  What is it worth?  Personally, I prefer
+their hatred."
+
+"And yet you are the great healer--the idol of the working-class, just
+as Gapon was long ago!" laughed the ex-Premier.
+
+"Yes, I am their Grichka," laughed Rasputin in his drunken humour.  "It
+is true, my dear Boris.  There is but one Tsar, and it is myself--eh?"
+And he chuckled as he drained his glass of champagne, and laughed at the
+warning sent him by the woman who had sat at his knee and who had given
+over her whole private fortune to him, just as a dozen other society
+women in Petrograd had done.  If his "sister-disciples" failed him in
+funds, then he simply held their letters and blackmailed them till he
+drove them to desperation, and in six known cases to suicide.  The fears
+of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna for the safety of her pet monk in
+whom she believed so devoutly, seem to have been aroused by the warning
+given by the Baroness Mesentzoff, for next day there came to him an
+urgent telegram from Gatchina, where the Tsaritza had gone on a visit to
+the Dowager Empress.  It read:
+
+"You are in grave danger.  Mother Superior Paula, of the Novo-Devitsky
+Nunnery, has disclosed something to me.  Come to Tsarskoe-Selo at once.
+Nikki is eager to consult you.--A."
+
+The monk was quick to realise by this telegram his true position in the
+Imperial household.  Only a few weeks before Anna Vyrubova, the
+high-priestess of his disgraceful cult, had warned him of his waning
+influence.  But he had not cared one jot, because, in his safe, he had
+stowed hundreds of letters and telegrams from society women compromising
+themselves.  By the sale of these he could obtain sufficient money to
+establish a fortune for the rest of his life.
+
+Here, however, a new phase had arisen.
+
+He was in active communication with Germany, he had already wrecked
+Russia's splendid offensive, and was gradually bringing the Empire into
+bad odour with neutrals.  For this he had, in secret, received the
+heartfelt thanks of his Imperial paymaster the Kaiser.  German money was
+flowing to him from all quarters, and German agents were swarming in
+Petrograd, as well as across the Russian front.  Brusiloff was doing his
+best, but having gauged the position, had realised that it was becoming
+hopeless.  German influence was eating the heart out of Russia as a
+canker-worm--and that canker-worm was Gregory Rasputin himself.
+
+In consequence of the telegram from the Empress, followed by a letter
+sent by Imperial messenger by the Grand Duchess Olga, the monk hastened
+to the Palace and had a long interview with Her Majesty.
+
+He left with Anna Vyrubova soon after noon in one of the Imperial cars
+which were always at his disposal, in consequence of the seance arranged
+at his house in Petrograd, and more especially because the Baroness
+Mesentzoff had sent him a photograph of Nadjezda Boldyieff, who was
+anxious to join the "disciples."
+
+Notwithstanding the critical situation, the seance was held, and the
+handsome Nadjezda was admitted to the "sisterhood."
+
+Truly those were critical days in Russia.  The rascal had been warned,
+but did not heed.  The Allies, fighting for the just cause, were in
+ignorance of the fierce resentment now aroused in the hearts of the
+Russian people by the denunciation in the Duma by those who were bold
+enough to speak their minds and defy the camarilla.  The news allowed
+out of Russia during the last month of the year was most meagre.
+Protopopoff, the Kaiser's silk-hatted creature, controlled it, and only
+allowed intelligence of the most optimistic character to filter through
+to us.  Hence while the British, American, and French Press were
+publishing wholly fictitious accounts of Russia's gains, the
+"miracle-worker" was daily driving the Imperial House of Romanoff
+towards the abyss of oblivion.
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+THE TRUE STORY OF RASPUTIN'S END.
+
+Events were now proceeding apace.
+
+The Grand Duke Nicholas Michailovitch had dared to seek audience of the
+Tsar, at which he had handed him a memorandum of protest.  In this
+letter, which is still upon record, the Grand Duke wrote:
+
+"Where is the root of the evil?  Let me explain it in a few words.
+
+"So long as your manner of choosing Ministers was known to narrow
+circles, things could muddle along, but when it became a matter of
+public knowledge and all classes in Russia talked about it, it was
+senseless to attempt to continue to govern Russia in this fashion.
+Often did you tell me that you could put faith in no one, and that you
+were being deceived.
+
+"If this is so, then it applies particularly to your wife, who loves you
+and yet led you into error, being surrounded by evil-minded intimates.
+You believe in Alexandra Feodorovna.  This is natural.  But the words
+she utters are the product of skilful machinations, not of truth.  If
+you are powerless to liberate her from these influences, then at all
+events be on your guard against constant and systematic influence of
+intriguers who are using your wife as their instrument...  If you could
+remove the persistent interference of dark forces in all matters, the
+regeneration of Russia would instantly be advanced, and you would regain
+the confidence of the enormous majority of your subjects, which you have
+forfeited."
+
+This was pretty outspoken.  But further, during the course of the
+conversation, the Grand Duke spoke of Protopopoff and asked Nicholas II
+whether he was aware that this politician had been palmed off on him by
+the agency of Rasputin, whom Protopopoff had first met at the home of
+the charlatan Badmayeff, the man who secretly practised so-called
+"Thibetan" medicine and who supplied the "Saint" with his drugs.
+
+The Emperor smiled and declared that he was already acquainted with the
+facts.
+
+The Emperor took the memorandum to the Empress and read it aloud to her.
+When he came to the passage dealing with the evil influences
+surrounding her, she flew into a rage, seized the document, and tore it
+up in the Tsar's face!
+
+Meanwhile the camarilla were still plotting further the downfall of
+Russia, and endeavouring to implicate Sturmer's successor.
+
+Suddenly, on December 26th, the greatest consternation was caused both
+in society circles in Petrograd and at the Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo,
+owing to rumours that Rasputin was missing.
+
+He had been absent from the capital on many occasions, travelling upon
+his supposed pilgrimages, but there was persistent gossip on the Nevski
+that something had happened.
+
+After the _debacle_ three telegrams in English were found in the
+Department of Posts and Telegraphs.  They had been sent by the Empress
+from Tsarskoe-Selo to the Emperor, and read as follows:
+
+"Tsarskoe-Selo, December 26th.
+
+"I am worried by the awful rumours.  No details.  Remember what I wrote
+to you.--Alec."
+
+Four days later Her Majesty telegraphed again to the Tsar:
+
+"Tsarskoe-Selo, December 30th, 4:37 p.m.
+
+"Can you send Voyeipoff to me at once?  I want his help and advice.  We
+still hope for the best.  Dmitri and Felix are implicated.--Alec."
+
+Six hours later she again telegraphed frantically:
+
+"Tsarskoe-Selo, December 30th, 10:24 p.m.
+
+"Nothing discovered yet.  Felix stopped on his way to Crimea.  How I
+wish you were here.--Alec."
+
+And again at midnight she sent two further telegrams.  The first read:
+
+"Tsarskoe-Selo, December 30th, 11:47 p.m.
+
+"Father (Rasputin) is no more.  Punish the enemies of Russia and of our
+House.  Come back at once.  I can bear it no longer.--Alec."
+
+The second was addressed:
+
+"To Father Makarius, Verkhotursky Monastery, Perm.
+
+"December 30th, midnight.
+
+"Great misfortune.  Something happened to Father (Rasputin).  Pray for
+him and for us.  Those responsible will be punished.  Come at once to
+us.--Alexandra."
+
+For days the sensational affair was hushed-up from the public by order
+of the Tsar, and with the connivance of Protopopoff.  Many fictitious
+accounts have appeared in the Press regarding the final hours of the
+amazing rascal who, as tool of the Emperor William, brought to an end
+the Imperial House of Romanoff.
+
+I am here enabled, however, to explain the truth from an authentic
+source, namely, from the statement of a lady--a Russian nursing-sister--
+who was an eye-witness and who is in London at the moment when I write.
+The lady in question is well known in London, and I have begged her to
+allow me to disclose her name, but for certain reasons she has held me
+to my promise of secrecy.  There are, one must remember, still
+influential friends of Rasputin in Russia, and as she is returning
+there, her objection is obvious.
+
+It seems that on December 15th (Russian style) the "Saint" had been
+invited to the elegant house of Prince Youssoupoff to a merry supper.
+The _penchant_ of the monk for a pretty face and a mysterious adventure
+being well-known, it had been hinted to him that a certain lady who
+desired to remain incognito, wished to meet him.
+
+Now the house of Prince Youssoupoff in Petrograd--who, by the way, had a
+house in London before the war and was well-known in Mayfair--runs from
+the Moskaya to the Offitzerskaya, where at a back entrance, the wine
+from the famous estate in the Crimea is sold, just as wine is sold at
+the mediaeval palaces of Florence.
+
+The Prince was supposed to be alone to meet his guest and this
+mysterious young and pretty lady who desired to enter the cult of the
+"Sister-Disciples."  As a matter of fact, however, there were assembled
+in a room on the first floor several persons determined to rid Russia of
+this erotic traitor who was daily betraying her into the hands of the
+Huns.
+
+They were the Prince Youssoupoff, the Grand Duke Dmitri (who was
+suspected by the Empress), the Deputy of the Extreme Right,
+Pourichkevitch, a man named Stepanoff, a well-known _danseuse_ (the
+mysterious lady who acted as decoy, named Mademoiselle C--), and the
+lady who has described the scene to me.
+
+Eleven o'clock struck.  It was a dramatic scene.  All were anxious for
+Rasputin's arrival, but he did not come.
+
+The Prince went to the telephone and asked for the monk at his house.
+
+The reply was that the Father had gone out to dine somewhere early in
+the evening.
+
+Would he come?  Would he walk into the trap so cunningly baited for him?
+
+The moments seemed hours as the little assembly sat waiting and
+discussing whether any one could have given him warning, for it was
+known that the "miracle-worker" had, through his catspaw Protopopoff,
+spies set everywhere.
+
+At twenty minutes past eleven a car was heard at the back-door in the
+Offitzerskaya, and his host, rushing down, admitted him mysteriously.
+The monk removed his big sable-lined coat, disclosing his black clerical
+garb and big bejewelled cross suspended around his neck.  Then he
+removed his galoshes, for it was snowing hard outside.
+
+"You need not be afraid, Father," said his host.  "We are alone, except
+for my friend Stepanoff.  He is one of us," he laughed merrily.
+
+Then he conducted the "Saint" into the large handsome dining-room, where
+a tall, fair-bearded man, Paul Stepanoff, came forward to meet him.
+
+Upon the table were two bottles of wine.  Into one cyanide of potassium
+had been introduced, and its potency had an hour before been tried upon
+a dog, which at the moment was lying dead in the yard outside.
+
+After Stepanoff had been introduced, the Prince said in a confidential
+tone:
+
+"The lady I mentioned has not yet arrived.  I shall go to the door to
+await her so that the servants are not disturbed."
+
+Thus the Father was left with his merry, easy-going fellow-guest, who at
+a glance he saw was a _bon viveur_ like himself.
+
+The two men began to talk of spiritualism, in which Stepanoff declared
+himself to be much interested, and a few minutes later he poured out
+some wine, filling the Father's glass from the poisoned bottle while he
+attracted his attention to a picture at the end of the room.
+
+They raised their glasses, and drank.  Some dry biscuits were in a
+silver box, and after Rasputin had drained his glass, he took a biscuit
+and munched it.
+
+But to Stepanoff's amazement the poison took no effect!  Was the monk
+after all under some divine or mysterious protection?  Stepanoff was
+expecting him to be seized by paroxysms of agony every moment.
+
+On the contrary, he was still calm and expectant regarding the
+mysterious lady whom he was to meet.
+
+Suddenly, however, Rasputin, slightly paler than usual, exclaimed:
+"Curious!  I do not feel very well!"
+
+And he crossed the room to examine an ancient crucifix, beautifully
+jewelled, which was standing upon a side table.
+
+Stepanoff rose and followed him, remarking on the beauty of the sacred
+emblem, yet aghast that the "Saint" could take such a dose of poison and
+yet remain unharmed.
+
+Prince Youssoupoff with the others, was standing silent in the upstairs
+room eagerly awaiting Stepanoff's announcement that the traitor was no
+more.  Those moments were breathless ones.  What, they wondered, was
+happening below!  They listened, and could hear the voices of the pair
+below still in conversation.
+
+"Ah!  That spasm has passed!"  Rasputin was heard to declare.
+
+Passed!  Was he immune from the effects of that most deadly poison?
+They looked at each other astounded.  The fact was that he had only
+sipped the wine, and having had sufficient already to drink he had
+contrived to empty his glass into a dark porcelain flower-bowl.
+
+The monk had taken the big crucifix in his hand to examine it the more
+closely, when Stepanoff, seeing that Rasputin was still unharmed
+suddenly drew a big Browning pistol, and, placing it under the monk's
+arm and against his breast, fired.
+
+The others above, hearing the shot, rushed out upon the wide balcony,
+while Stepanoff dashed up the stairs to meet them, crying:
+
+"The Saint is dead at last!  Russia is freed of the scoundrel!"
+
+The others shouted joy, and re-entering the room, toasted the liberation
+and regeneration of Russia.  Suddenly, they heard a noise and went out
+upon the balcony again, when, to their horror, they saw the door of the
+dining-room opened, and Rasputin, haggard and blood-stained, staggering
+forth, with an imprecation upon his lips, to the door opening to the
+street, in an effort to escape!
+
+The attempt at poisoning him had failed, and he had only been wounded.
+
+The tension was breathless.  Was he after all endowed with some
+supernatural power?
+
+"You have tried to kill me!" shrieked the monk, his hands stained with
+blood.  "But I still live--I live!--and God will give me my revenge!"
+With his hands clasped over the spot where he had been wounded, he gave
+vent to a peal of demoniacal laughter, which held the little knot of
+witnesses on the balcony utterly dumbfounded and appalled.
+
+Only one man seemed to have courage to stir.
+
+According to the lady who was present and who gives me the description
+which I here reproduce--the only true and authentic account of the
+affair--Stepanoff, his revolver still in his hand, again dashed down the
+stairs, and preventing the monk from opening the outer door, sprang upon
+him and emptied the contents of his weapon, barrel after barrel, into
+the monk's head.
+
+At last the spy and traitor was dead!
+
+Ten minutes later a closed car arrived containing Doctor Stanislas L--,
+and driven by a soldier in uniform named Ivan F--.  In the car the body
+of the monk was placed by the doctor, the soldier, and the patriotic
+executioner Stepanoff.
+
+Leaving the Prince and those who had assembled to witness the death of
+the hated agent of the Kaiser who had so misled the Russian Imperial
+family and the Russian people, and who had been directly and indirectly
+responsible for the death of thousands of brave men, British and French,
+on the various battle-fronts, the men drove with the fellow's body, the
+great golden cross still dangling around its neck, to the Petrovsky
+Bridge.
+
+It was very dark and snowy.  Nobody was about, therefore the doctor, the
+soldier, and the man who had that night lopped off the tentacle of the
+German octopus in Russia, carried the body to a point between the second
+and third arches of the bridge.  Here it had been ascertained earlier in
+the night that the ice was broken, and a large hole existed.
+
+They raised the body to cast it over when, horror!  The dead hand caught
+in the soldier's shoulder-strap!
+
+"Is this a curse upon me?" gasped Ivan.
+
+"Curse or not, he goes!" cried Stepanoff, and all three hurled him over
+the parapet.
+
+There was a loud splash.  Then all was silent again, and the trio,
+re-entering the car, drove hurriedly away.
+
+For six days there were rumours everywhere in Petrograd that "something"
+had happened.  Fredericks, Sturmer, and Protopopoff were frantic.  The
+Secret Police, at orders of the Emperor, were making every inquiry, for
+the Holy Father was missing!
+
+On December 31st, at 3 p.m., the Tsaritza despatched the following
+telegram to Nicholas II.
+
+"Order Maksimovitch arrest Dmitri (the Grand Duke) in your name.  Dmitri
+waited to see me to-day.  I refused.  The body has not yet been found.--
+Alec."
+
+To this His Majesty replied that he was taking every measure, and that
+he had ordered the Grand Duke Nicholas into exile to his estates.
+
+Then, on the following day, the distracted Empress, who was
+grief-stricken and inconsolable at the tragedy, telegraphed "Thanks for
+your wire.  Body found in the river."
+
+An abandoned motor-car soaked in blood had been found miles out of the
+city.  It was believed to belong to a Grand Duke.  The entire police and
+detective force of the capital had in the meantime been afoot, and raked
+through all the houses of ill-fame, gipsy singers' haunts, and in fact
+every conceivable place, until the finding of a blood-stained galosh,
+proved to have belonged to Rasputin, gave evidence of a tragedy.
+
+The ice on the river and canals was, of course, several feet thick, but
+it is the custom in Russia to cut openings where water is obtained and
+linen is rinsed by laundresses.  Divers went down, but discovered
+nothing; eventually, however, the body was picked up near the bank, not
+far from where it had been thrown in.
+
+When it was discovered the Empress saw it in secret and knelt before it,
+crying hysterically for half-an-hour.  Anna Vyrubova standing in silence
+at her side.
+
+Then, at the Empress's orders, it was buried privately and at night at
+Tsarskoe-Selo.
+
+In the meantime the Emperor had arrived post-haste from the front, and
+for three days extremely guarded references to an "interesting murder"
+appeared in the Petrograd and foreign Press.  Alongside were printed
+some biographical notes regarding the chief actors in the tragedy.  No
+mention, however, was allowed to be made of Rasputin.
+
+Suddenly, however, the public were told that the notorious monk had
+"ended his life."  But nothing was said as to when or by what means.
+
+Thus closed the infamous career of the dark force in Russia, and by the
+tragedy the whole amazing truth which I have here disclosed became
+revealed.  The secret plotting of Germany, and the using of the
+mock-monk to sap the power of Russia's offensive, will live ever in
+history, and will, no doubt, be the theme of many future historians.
+But all will agree that the words of the weak, neurotic Empress, when
+she was told by Anna Vyrubova of Rasputin's death, were prophetic.
+
+"Dead!" she gasped, her face blanched to the lips.  "If the Holy Father
+is dead, then, alas! the Dynasty of the Romanoffs is dead also!"
+
+Those words of hers were true indeed, for within three months the Tsar
+had signed his abdication, and the Imperial pair, together with the
+camarilla of traitors, were prisoners in the hands of those who intended
+that Russia should yet be re-born and freed of its Teuton taint, and of
+the disgraceful cult of that blasphemous and scheming rascal Rasputin.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Rasputin the Rascal Monk, by William Le Queux
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41452 ***