“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 Stürmer 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 Stürmer 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.