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.