Then came the final dramatic coup.
Of its exact details I have no knowledge. I give—as I have given all through this narrative of fact—only what I know to be actual truth.
On December 29th, at eleven o'clock, I left the palace to take a message to Protopopoff, and to interview the much-travelled Hardt, who was coming to Petrograd from Stockholm with his usual fortnightly dispatch from Berlin. I returned to the Palace about eight o'clock in the evening, when I received a message through one of the silk-stockinged servants, whose duty it was to wait upon "his holiness," to the effect that the monk had gone suddenly to Petrograd upon urgent business, and would return on the morrow.
Naturally, I accepted the message, ate my dinner, read the paper, and after a chat with Madame Vyrubova, who lived in the adjoining apartments, I retired to bed.
Next day I returned to the Gorokhovaya, but the monk had not come back. Countess Ignatieff called upon him, but I had to express my ignorance as to his whereabouts. I told her that he might possibly have gone upon another pilgrimage.
Late that night I went back to the palace, where I found Madame Vyrubova much perturbed.
"It is strange, Féodor!" she exclaimed. "He never leaves Petrograd without first informing me."
I set her mind at rest by suggesting that, as affairs were so critical, he was probably with Stürmer and Protopopoff plotting further manœuvres.
Next night, however, a thrill went through the Court, as well as through the Russian people, by the six-word announcement in the Exchange newspapers, which coldly said: