"Yes," he said at last, when she offered him a monetary consideration in exchange for his silence. "But I am not content with a few paltry roubles. I am collecting for my new monastery at Kertch, and what you give will atone to God for your crime."
Within ten minutes she had written out a cheque for the whole of her private fortune, while at the monk's dictation I wrote out a declaration that his allegations were false, a document which he signed and handed to her, together with Lachkarioff's original statement.
Even then Rasputin's cunning was not at its limit.
Lachkarioff's usefulness to Germany in Russia was at an end. He was in Gothenburg, and being a close friend of an English journalist there, it was feared lest he should allow himself to be interviewed, and reveal something of the truth concerning the subterranean working of Germany in Petrograd.
"The man's lips ought to be closed," Steinhauer had written to Rasputin only a week before. "Can you suggest any way? While he lives he will be a menace to us all. Filimonoff is safe in an asylum in Copenhagen, though I believe he is perfectly sane. Only it is best that no risk should be run."
Here were means ready to hand to close the mouth of Felix Lachkarioff, for the woman whom he had betrayed was furiously vengeful.
"You said the other day that you would be ready to strike a blow at that enemy of Russia who has so grossly misled you," Rasputin said to her in a deep, earnest voice, as she sat in his room. "Would not such a course be deeply patriotic? Why not, as expiation of your sin, travel to Gothenburg and avenge those hundreds of poor people who were his victims at Obukhov? I can give into your hand the means," he added, looking her straight in the face.
"What means?" she asked.
He crossed to his writing-table, and, unlocking a drawer with a key upon his chain, he took out a tiny bottle of extremely expensive Parisian perfume, a pale-green liquid, which he handed to her.
"It looks like scent," he remarked, with a grin, "but it contains something else—something so potent that a single drop introduced into food or drink will produce death within an hour, the symptoms being exactly those of heart disease. That is what deaths resulting from it are always declared to be. So there is no risk. Meet him, be friendly, dine with him for the sake of old days in Petrograd, and before you leave him he will be doomed," added Rasputin, in a low whisper. "He surely deserves it after deceiving you as he has done!"