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: