Hardly had we been in the rather dismal hotel an hour when a waiter introduced into our private sitting-room, where I stood alone, a tall, dark, middle-aged man, who clicked his heels as he bowed elegantly before me.
Smiling, and without uttering a word, my visitor handed me half of a plain visiting-card that had been roughly torn across, after I had scribbled my signature across the back. From my cigarette-case I took the other half, and placing them together, ascertained that they fitted. The torn portion that the Baron von Hausen—for that was his name, I learnt—had handed to me had been conveyed to Berlin by Hardt a month before, in order that we might repose confidence in any person who called upon us and bore it as the credential of the Königgrätzerstrasse.
My visitor was a pleasant, shrewd-eyed man, well dressed and wearing a fine diamond in his black cravat, who, when he had seated himself at my invitation, glanced to see if the door was closed, and then exclaimed:
"Well, Herr Koster, I trust that the Father and yourself have had a comfortable journey."
"Quite," I replied. "But, of course, it is a very roundabout route."
"I expected you two days ago," said the baron, who at that moment rose at the entry of Rasputin and greeted him.
The appearance of the monk in Berlin was very different from the figure he presented in Petrograd. His hair and beard had been trimmed, he had washed, and in his clerical garb he looked a typical Dutch pastor.
I introduced the pair, whereupon the baron said:
"His Majesty the Emperor wishes you to come to Potsdam at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon. You are to meet the Chancellor."
To this the monk agreed, saying in his halting German: