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.
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The End.
End of Project Gutenberg's Rasputin the Rascal Monk, by William Le Queux