"No! I can't!" cried the wretched woman over whom Rasputin had now once again cast his inexplicable spell.
"But you shall, Xenie! I, your holy Father, command you to render this assistance to your land. None shall ever know. Féodor, who knows all my innermost secrets, will remain dumb. The world cannot suspect, because no toxicologist has ever discovered the existence of the perfume, nor are they able to discern that death has not resulted from heart disease."
"But I should be a murderess!" gasped the unhappy woman beneath that fateful thraldom.
"No. You will be fulfilling a duty—a sin imposed upon you in order that, by committing it, you shall purify yourself for a holy life in future," he said, referring to one of the principles of his erotic "religion."
She began to waver, and instantly I saw that Rasputin had won—as he won always with women—and that the patriot Miliukoff had been sentenced to death.
"Go!" he commanded at last. "Go, and do my bidding. Return to-morrow night, and tell me of your—success!"
Then he bowed out the reluctant but fascinated young woman, who in her silver chain-bag carried the small bottle of perfume.
That night Rasputin, after drinking half a bottle of brandy, retired to bed, declaring that women were only created to be the servants of men. Then I sat down, and taking a sheet of plain and very common writing-paper, I typed upon it a warning to the man who, at the Empress's suggestion, was to be so ruthlessly "removed." The words I typed were:
"You will be invited to tea to-morrow by Xenie Kalatcheff. Do not accept. There is a plot to cause your death. This warning is from—A Friend."
I typed an envelope with Monsieur Miliukoff's address, and then, slipping to the door quietly, I stole out and dropped it in the letter-box at the corner of the Kazanskaya.
