Kitabı oku: «The Minister of Evil: The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia», sayfa 10
"Thou hast done well, my son, and thou art worthy the throne of the Romanoffs. Continue to defend our beloved land. Trust in the counsels of those about thee, of thy wife, of thy Ministers, especially Stürmer, Protopopoff and Soukhomlinoff, as well as the advice which the holy Father is ever giving thee. All have been sent to thee as good and faithful guides. My blessing is upon thee, O my son!"
Such was the "message" so cleverly given to the credulous monarch by the traitors and intriguers about him. And alas! he believed truly and absolutely, ignorant of the fact that some thousands of roubles had gone into the medium's pocket as price of his connivance.
On returning to Petrograd late on Thursday night I found among the monk's correspondence a letter from Madame Svetchine, a long, regretful letter, in which she expressed the greatest sorrow for the words she had uttered at the assembly of the sister-disciples, and begged to be forgiven. Further, she announced her intention of calling upon the Father "upon a serious and urgent matter."
I told him this, whereat he growled:
"Ah! the woman is coming to her senses. Yes. If she comes I will see her. She is pretty, Féodor—pretty—yes, very pretty."
I drew a long breath. The unfortunate woman knew, no doubt, the serious charge against her husband, but never dreamed that Rasputin was the cause of that false accusation.
Just before I ascended to my room to retire—the hour being about one o'clock in the morning—the telephone bell rang, and I answered it.
One of the officials at the War Office was, I found, at the other end.
"His Excellency the Minister has an urgent message to transmit to the Father," said the voice.
"Very well," I said, stating who I was.
"Then listen, please. The message he has written reads: 'Colonel Ivan Svetchine has been tried by court martial, which sat until half an hour ago. He has been condemned on a charge of dealing with the enemy and revealing military secrets to Germany, and ordered to be executed for treason. The execution is fixed to take place in the Peter and Paul Fortress at dawn on Saturday.'"
I replaced the telephone receiver with a heavy heart. Yet another innocent man was to die as victim of Rasputin's overweening vanity and evil influence in every quarter.
When I entered and told the monk, who was already in bed in a half-drunken state, he merely turned over and continued snoring.
On Friday night, when, as usual, we had returned from Tsarskoe-Selo in one of the Imperial motor-cars, I was told that a lady was waiting to see the Starets, but she would give no name. She was persistent that she must see him, and had already waited nearly three hours.
When I entered the waiting-room, a small chamber at the end of a corridor, I found it to be the wife of the condemned man. She was dressed in dead black, her beautiful face tear-stained and deathly pale.
"Ah! Monsieur Rajevski!" she cried, rushing towards me. "You know me—Madame Svetchine—eh?"
"Yes, madame," I said. "I remember you."
"You will let me see him—won't you?" she cried in great distress, as she gripped my hand nervously. "He has, I hope, forgiven me; surely he–"
"I gave him your letter," I said.
"Yes—and what did he say?" she gasped in eagerness.
"Well, the truth is that he said nothing," I replied, adding: "He was much occupied with other things."
"Ah! I must see him!" cried the frantic woman. "I was wrong to speak as I did. The Father is the great power in Russia. I must throw myself upon his mercy."
I promised to take her to him, and left her to inform Rasputin of the arrival of his expected visitor.
With an evil glint in those terrible eyes of his, he rubbed his hands together.
"Good, Féodor!" he said, striding across the room. "I will see the woman. Oh, yes, if she wishes to see me I will not deny her that pleasure," he added with biting sarcasm. Truly, he was weird and horrible in the hour of his triumph.
A few moments later I ushered the pale, wan woman in black into his presence.
"Holy Father!" she cried wildly, "forgive me—say that you forgive the unconsidered words of a weak and unworthy woman."
"Forgive—why?" he asked, standing erect and fingering his bejewelled cross. "I do not understand why I am honoured by this visit, madame."
"Ah! Of course you do not know. Pardon, I have forgotten to explain. My husband–" And she broke into tears. "My dear husband–"
"Well, what of your husband?" asked Rasputin. "He is at the front. Has he been wounded—or–"
"No, no—not that!" she cried. "They have made a false charge against him. Some woman named Isembourg, whom he knew in Vilna before the war, has made an allegation against him of traitorous dealings with the enemy. She has given over to the Ministry of War some documents containing the plans of the defences of Grodno, which she declares he has sold to her! But it is lies—all lies. I know it!"
"Really, this is quite a romantic story, madame," said Rasputin, quite unmoved. "Why should this woman make such charges?"
"How can I tell? Ah! but you do not know the worst!" she went on. "The court martial actually accepted this woman's statements—statements that were lies—all of them! My husband is devoted to me, and I love him—ah, so dearly! He is all in all to me. And–"
"But the woman—Isembourg, I believe you say—she is a friend of his, eh?" interrupted the monk, his hands crossed over his breast in that pious attitude he always assumed when listening.
"She says she was his friend before the war—before we married, indeed. Perhaps she was," answered the condemned man's wife. "But she is undoubtedly an agent-provocateuse of police set to tempt men to their downfall."
"Of that I have no knowledge," was Rasputin's cold reply.
"But you will help me, holy Father! Do—for the sake of a man who is innocent—for the sake—the sake of his unborn child! Ah! you will show mercy, won't you?" she begged.
"I do not follow you," was the monk's reply, in pretence of ignorance.
In a frenzy of despair the wretched wife flung herself upon her knees before the scoundrel, and cried:
"My husband! There is yet time to save him! He—he is to be shot—to-morrow—as soon as it is light! You—and you alone—can induce the Emperor to order a revision of the sentence or a new trial. You will—you are all-powerful and divine!"
"Pardon, madame, that is not your true estimate of Gregory Rasputin," he said, with biting sarcasm. "Only a short time ago I was a charlatan and a fraud! No; your opinion cannot have altered in so short a time."
"But you—if you are sent by God to Russia—will never allow an innocent man to be murdered in this fashion—condemned upon the word of a notorious woman."
"The affair does not concern me, I assure you," he laughed. "If your husband has been condemned to death he must have had a fair and impartial trial by his brother officers. I am not a military man, and know nothing of such matters. If he has been found to be a traitor," added the unholy spy of Germany, "then the sentence is just."
"But he is no traitor. He is as patriotic as you are yourself, Father! He has ever been so," cried the despairing woman.
"I have no means of knowing that," he replied in a hard voice, gazing at her with those strange, wide-open eyes, and endeavouring to put that spell upon her that few women could resist. "Nevertheless, I will forgive you, and, further, I will exercise my influence to save your husband's life if you will consent to enter the circle of our holy disciples."
The desperate young woman held her breath for a few seconds, staring at him wildly as upon her knees she still knelt, clutching the "saint's" dirty hands.
"No," she replied. "That I will never do."
Rasputin saw that his plot had failed. Here at least was one woman over whom he was powerless, one who regarded him as a fraud. In an instant he flew into a sudden rage.
"Enough!" he cried, throwing her off. "You refuse to accept my condition—therefore your husband shall die!"
The wretched woman, her countenance pale as death, tried to speak. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Next moment, by dint of supreme effort, she struggled to her feet and rose stiffly. Then, a moment later, her hands clenched and despair in her splendid eyes, she turned and staggered out.
Four hours later Colonel Svetchine boldly faced a firing-party in the yard of the fortress. There was a word of command, and next second the gallant soldier fell forward on his face—dead.
CHAPTER X
TRAITOROUS WORK
The true story of the tragic death of a Russian civil servant named Ivan Naglovski, and of the mysterious explosion which destroyed the great munition works at Okhta and killed over four hundred and fifty persons and injured seven hundred, has never been told.
There have been sinister whisperings in Russia, but I am here able to unfold the amazing truth for the first time.
I had accompanied Rasputin to the Verkhotursky Monastery at Perm; the house in the Gorokhovaya was closed, its wooden shutters were fastened, and the Empress was desolate without her "holy Father." Stürmer, the Prime Minister, was with the Emperor, daily plotting and striving for the betrayal of our nation to the Germans, and "Satan in a silk hat"—as one of the Grand Dukes had nicknamed the Minister of the Interior, Protopopoff—had gone on a mission to London, ostensibly in Russian interests, but really as a spy of Germany. The latter was, of course, not known at the time, for the British Government sent him on a tour of munition and other centres, showed him what they were preparing, and fêted him in London as the representative of their ally. We now know that, on his return to Petrograd, he at once became violently anti-British, and made a full report of all he knew to the Wilhelmstrasse!
The purpose of the monk's pilgrimage to Perm was to form a branch of his believers in that city. He had left Petrograd dressed as a pilgrim, with hair-shirt and staff complete, and as such he posed to everybody. The world, however, did not know that the rooms allotted to him in the monastery by the rascally bishop, whom he had himself appointed, were the acme of luxury, and that in them he held drunken orgies every night.
After we had been there three weeks an Imperial courier brought him a letter from Peterhof. It was night, and the monk was in an advanced state of intoxication with his companions, three other mock-pious rascals like himself.
When I handed him the letter he glanced at the Imperial cipher on the envelope, and, grinning, exclaimed:
"It is from the Empress. Read out what the woman says."
I hesitated, suggesting that it would be better if I read it to him in private.
"Bah!" he laughed. "There is nothing private in it. Read it, Féodor."
So, thus ordered, I obeyed. The letter was written in Russian, but with mistakes in grammar and orthography, for the Empress had never learned to write Russian correctly. These are the words I read for the delectation of the dissolute quartette:
"Holy Father,—Why have you not written? Why this long dead silence when my poor heart is hourly yearning for news of you and for your words of comfort?
"I am, alas! weak, but I love you, for you are all in all to me. Oh! if I could but hold your dear hand and lay my head upon your shoulder! Ah! can I ever forget that feeling of perfect peace and blank forgetfulness that I experience when you are near me.
"Now that you have gone, life is only one grey sea of despair. There was a Court last night, but I did not attend. Instead Anna [Madame Vyrubova] and I read your sweet letters together, and we kissed your picture.
"As I have so often told you, dear Father, I want to be a good daughter of Christ. But oh! it is so difficult. Help me, dear Father. Pray for me. Pray always for Alexis [the Tsarevitch]. Come back to us at once. Nikki [the Tsar] says we cannot endure life without you, for there are so many pitfalls before us. For myself, I am longing for your return—longing—always longing! Without our weekly meetings all is gloom–"
Here I broke off. What followed ought, I saw, not to be read aloud to that trio, who might at any moment turn to be enemies of the Starets.
"Yes," he said, smiling in gratification. "The woman evidently misses me. It places a woman in her proper position to discard her for a while," he added with a drunken laugh. "What else does she say?"
"Only that they are due to go to Yalta, but that Her Majesty awaits your return," I replied.
"Then let her wait. I am very comfortable here. Perm is pleasant as a change."
I knew well that he was enjoying himself hugely and had already formed a great circle of hysterical women who believed in his divinity and practised the rites of his disgraceful "religion."
The final words of that amazing letter, which in itself showed the terms upon which Alexandra Feodorovna was with the convicted horse-stealer from Pokrovsky, were as follows:
"Here, O dear Father, we have only the everlasting toll of war! Germany is winning—as she will surely win. She must. You will see to that! But we must all of us maintain a brave face towards our Russian public. In you alone I have faith. May God bring you back to us very soon. Alexis is asking for you daily. We are due to go to Yalta, but shall not move before we meet here. I embrace you, and so do Nikki and Anna.—Your devoted daughter, Alix."
The unkempt quartette, treating the Empress's expressions of affection as a huge joke, filled their glasses with champagne and drank heavily again, while Rasputin began to regale his "saintly" companions with stories of the intimate life of the pro-German Empress.
Truly, it was a gay, dissolute life that the verminous rascal was leading at the Verkhotursky Monastery, and many were the women over whom he exercised his weird, uncanny fascination.
"Believe in me and you will receive God's blessing," was his constant blasphemous declaration to every woman whose looks were even passable. "Doubt me and you will be damned."
By Russia's millions in the provinces he was looked upon as the holy man sent by God to the Tsar. Did not the "saint" eat at the Emperor's table, and did he not prompt His Majesty in fighting the Germans? None ever dreamed that the unkempt miracle-worker, whose fascination for women was so astounding, was the secret ambassador of the Assassin of Potsdam.
Two of those companions of his nightly drinking bouts at Perm were named Rouchine and Yepantchine, brawny fellows whose evil life was almost as notorious as Rasputin's. Rouchine had been a conjurer before he adopted a "holy" life, and by reason of his knowledge of magic and illusions he frequently assisted the Starets in performing those "miracles" that so astounded the mujiks who witnessed them with open mouths.
Whenever things grew a little dull, or Rasputin believed that his divinity was being doubted, he would calmly announce:
"I have had a vision. Last night the Holy Virgin appeared unto me and declared that I must again perform a miracle so that the world should be made aware that God, through me, is protecting our dear nation Russia."
Instantly the news would spread from mouth to mouth—Rasputin's name being forbidden to be mentioned in the newspapers—that the Starets was about to perform a miracle, and thousands would assemble in some open place, where one of Rouchine's conjuring tricks would be performed.
By this time so deeply had Rasputin corrupted the Russian Church in its centres of power and administration that half the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries were of his creation, his fellow-thief in Pokrovsky having been appointed to a bishopric.
Very naturally, Rasputin had made many enemies. His overbearing vanity, his relentlessness in dealing with any who stood in his path, and the exposure of his use of agents-provocateurs in securing the conviction and imprisonment of anyone who displeased him, had aroused against him a fierce hatred in certain quarters both in Petrograd and Moscow. Many of those who had sworn to be avenged were wronged husbands and fathers, a number of whom it had been my duty to endeavour to pacify even at personal risk to myself as the rascal's secretary.
It was while at Perm that Rasputin received news that a man named Ivan Naglovski had been in Pokrovsky busily inquiring into his past, and interviewing his sister-disciples who were living there. Further, it was reported that he had been in communication with the monk Helidor, a man named Golenkovski, whose young wife was a "disciple" in Petrograd, and with Marie Novitski, who was preaching loudly against the erotic doctrine of the new "religion."
It was plain that Ivan Naglovski was a secret enemy.
Acting upon the monk's instructions I returned to Petrograd, and at the headquarters of the Secret Police made application that Naglovski's movements should be watched. Three days later I was assured that a small league of patriotic men and women had been formed, with Naglovski at their head, determined to unveil and unmask the traitorous rascal who was my employer.
I was compelled to return to Perm and inform Rasputin of the result of my investigations. Before doing so I went, at Rasputin's instructions by telegraph, to Peterhof and was admitted by Madame Vyrubova to the Empress's presence.
The handsome woman was resting in a gorgeous negligée gown prior to dressing for dinner, but she was quickly eager and interested when I explained that I had come from the monk and was returning to Perm at midnight.
"When will the Holy Father's pilgrimage end?" she inquired with a sigh. "He has been away weeks, and never replies to my letters."
"His time is no doubt fully occupied with constant devotion," remarked Anna Vyrubova in excuse.
"The Father is much occupied, Your Majesty," I said.
"Tell him for me that I am daily longing for his return," she said. "But wait. I will write to him and you shall convey the letter," at which order I bowed.
"The Father is much troubled and perturbed," I remarked.
"About what?" asked Her Majesty.
"He has enemies. Some men and women have leagued themselves with the object of doing him harm."
"Harm!" she echoed. "What harm can come to him when, being sent to us by God, he is immune from any harm that can befall us who are merely human? I do not understand."
Her words were in themselves sufficient to reveal how completely and implicitly the Empress of Russia believed in the pretended divinity of the blasphemous ex-convict.
"All I know, Your Majesty, is that the holy Father is unduly perturbed."
"Ah! surely he can have no apprehension?" she said. "Tell him from me that as Christ had enemies so, of course, he has. But his enemies cannot do him injury." Then rising and going across to a beautiful buhl escritoire, she added: "I will write to him. I sent him another letter by messenger only yesterday—eight letters, and not a line of response!"
For ten minutes or so, while the Empress sat writing, I chatted with Madame Vyrubova, and gave to her news of the monk.
"Tell him to return as quickly as possible," the woman said in a low, confidential voice. "If there really is a plot on foot against him he is safer in Petrograd than in Perm. Besides, being on the spot, he will be able to combat his enemies with a swift and relentless hand."
As Her Majesty was writing the telephone rang. Next moment it was plain that she was speaking with the Emperor, who was away at the headquarters of the army in Poland.
Having listened to something he told her, she said:
"The holy Father's secretary is here with me. The Father still remains at Perm. I am writing him urgently asking him to return to us. I wish you also to send a messenger to him to induce him to come back to Petrograd. You will be back here next Friday, and is it not wise to hold another séance next day, eh?"
Then she listened eagerly.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "I am glad you agree with me, Nikki. Yes, let us try and get the Father back by Saturday at latest. Good-bye."
And having rung off, she calmly finished the letter and secured it with the well-known big seal of black wax.
"Remember," she said as she gave it to me, "the Father must be here next Saturday for the séance, which the Emperor will attend. He wishes again to consult the spirit of his father Alexander. Urge the Father to return at once."
I promised to do her bidding, and, retiring, at once left the palace, and at midnight was on my way back to the far-off town on the Kama.
On the evening of the following day I drove up to the monastery and there found Rasputin at dinner with the ex-conjurer Rouchine. When I entered the cosy little room in which the pair were seated, Rasputin had removed his long robe and was seated in his shirt-sleeves like the peasant he was. I handed him the letter from the German-born Empress, whereupon he said:
"Oh! read it to me, Féodor. The woman's handwriting is always a puzzle to me."
I knew how illiterate he was and the reason of his excuse.
I tore open the envelope and quickly scanned the scribbled lines.
"No," I replied, "not now, Gregory; later."
"But I insist!" cried the Starets fiercely.
"And I refuse!" was my determined reply. "I have reasons."
Those last three words were not lost upon him, for Grichka was nothing if not the very acme of shrewdness. Not an adventurer or escroc in Europe could compare with him in elusiveness.
"Well, Féodor, if you have reasons, then I know that they are sound ones," he said. Then, turning to the "holy" conjurer, he grinned and said: "Féodor is a most excellent secretary. So discreet—too discreet, I often think."
"One cannot be too discreet in the present international crisis," I remarked. "Enemy eyes and ears are open everywhere. One can never be too careful. Russia is full of the spies of Germany."
"Quite true, Féodor—quite true!" exclaimed Rasputin, smiling within himself. "Don't you agree, friend Rouchine?"
"Entirely," replied his accomplice, who, though he was well paid to assist in working "miracles" before the peasants, never dreamed that the Starets, who handed him money with such lavish hand, was the chief agent of Germany in Russia.
Indeed, Rouchine's only son had been killed in the advance on Warsaw, hence he held the Hun in abhorrence, and I am certain that had he known Rasputin was the Kaiser's personal agent matters would have gone very differently, and in all probability the enemy plots so cleverly connived at by Alexandra Feodorovna would have been exposed in those early days of the war.
The Russian nation even to-day still reveres its Tsar. They know that he was weak but meant well, and he was Russian at heart and intent upon stemming the Teutonic tide which flowed across his border. But for "the German," Alexandra Feodorovna, not one in all our Russian millions has a word except an execration or a curse, and as accursed by Russia, as is all her breed, she will go down in history for the detestation of generations of those who will live between the Baltic and the Pacific.
Rasputin grew indignant because I crushed the woman's letter into my pocket without reading it aloud, but I knew well how to treat him, therefore I began to explain all that I had learnt from the Secret Police concerning the activities of Ivan Naglovski.
Both men listened with rapt attention.
"Then the fellow really intends evil?" asked the monk, as he laid down a chicken-bone, for he always ate with his fingers.
"I fear he does," was my reply. "But Her Majesty wonders why you should trouble. She says that you, being sent as Russia's saviour, are immune from bodily harm."
"Ah! but remember when that young fellow shot at you and grazed two of your fingers at Minsk," remarked the conjurer with a grin.
"Yes, quite so. I don't like this fellow Naglovski and his friends. I will see Kurloff."
Now, Kurloff was another treacherous bureaucrat, a creature of Rasputin's, who sat in Protopopoff's Ministry of the Interior, and who later on collected the gangs of the "Black Hundred," those hired assassins whom he clothed in police uniforms and had instructed in machine-gun practice—those renegades who played such a sinister part in the first Revolution.
I then gave the monk the urgent message from the Empress.
"Very well," he replied, "I will be back by Saturday; not because I obey the woman, but became I must see Kurloff, and I must take active steps against this Ivan Naglovski and his accursed friends."
Half-an-hour later, when alone in the bare little room allotted to me, I took out the Empress's letter to the Starets and re-read it. It was as follows:
"Holy Father,—It is with deepest concern that from your trusted Féodor I hear of the plot against you. That you can be harmed I do not believe. You, sent by God as Russia's guide to the bright future of civilisation which Germany will bring to her, cannot be harmed by mere mortal. But if there are any who dare dispute your divine right, then, with our dear Stürmer, take at once drastic steps to crush them.
"We cannot afford to allow evil tongues to speak of us; neither can we afford the vulgar scandal that some would seek to create. If you, O Father, feel apprehensive, then act boldly in the knowledge that you have your devoted daughter ever at your side and ever ready and eager to place her power as Empress in your dear hands. Therefore strike your enemies swiftly and without fear. Lips prepared to utter scandal must be, at all costs, silenced.
"Our friend Protopopoff has returned from England and tells me that Lloyd George and his friends are exerting every effort to win the war. Those British are brave, but, oh! if they knew all that we know—eh? They are in ignorance, and will remain so until Germany conquers Russia and spreads the blessing of civilisation among the people.
"Nikki is returning. A séance is to be held on Saturday. You must be back in time. He is sending a messenger to you to urge you to return to us to give us comfort in these long dark days. Anna and the girls all kiss your dear hand.—Your devoted daughter, Alix."
On the following day a middle-aged, fair-haired, rather well-dressed man, who gave the name of Nicholas Chevitch, from Okhta, a suburb of Petrograd, was brought to me by the monk who acted as janitor, and explained that he had private business with Rasputin.
I left him and, ascending to the monk's room, found him extremely anxious to meet his visitor.
"I will see him at once, Féodor. I have some secret business with him. Here is the key of a small locked box in your room. Open it and take out ten one-thousand rouble notes and bring them to me after you have brought in Chevitch."
This I did. Having admitted the visitor to Rasputin's presence, I opened the small iron box which the Starets always carried in his supposed "pilgrimages," and took out the money, leaving in it a sum of about twelve thousand roubles.
The ten thousand I carried to Rasputin, but as I opened the door I heard the fair-haired man say:
"All is prepared. The wire is laid across the river. We tested it five days ago and it works excellently."
"Good! Ah, here is my secretary Féodor!" the monk exclaimed. "He has the ten thousand roubles for you, and there will be a further ten thousand on the day your plan matures."
I wondered to what plan the Starets was referring. But being compelled to retire I remained in ignorance. The man Chevitch stayed with the monk for over an hour, and then left to return to the capital.
Later on I referred to the visit of the stranger, whereupon Rasputin laughed grimly, saying:
"You will hear some news in a day or two, my dear Féodor. Petrograd will be startled."
"How?"
"Never mind," he replied. "Wait!"
We arrived back in Petrograd on the following Friday morning, but although the Empress sent a messenger to the Gorokhovaya urging the monk to go to Peterhof at once, as she desired to consult him, he disregarded her command and did not even vouchsafe a reply. Indeed, Rasputin treated the poor half-demented Empress with such scant courtesy that I often stood aghast.
"The woman is an idiot!" he would often exclaim to me petulantly when she was unusually persistent in her demands.
Next evening, however, we went to the palace, whither another French medium, a man named Fournier, had been summoned, having, of course, been administered palm-oil to the tune of some thousands of roubles to give a "message from the dead" in the terms required by the wire-pullers in Potsdam.
I was not present at the séance, but later that night, when Rasputin was sitting alone with me over a bottle of champagne which an "Araby" flunkey had brought him, he revealed that the "message" from the Tsar's dead father had been precise and much to the point.
"Nicholas, I speak unto thee," the spirit had said. "Though thou art brave and thine armies are brave, yet thine enemies will still encompass thee. Loss will follow upon loss. The great advance will soon become a retreat, and the hordes of William will dash forward and Poland will become German. Yet do not be afraid. Trust in the good counsel of thy wife Alexandra Feodorovna and in thy Father Rasputin, whom Heaven hath sent to thee. Believe no evil word of him, and let his enemies be swept from his path. Such is my message to thee, O my son!"
As Rasputin repeated those words with mock solemnity, he laughed grimly.
The pity of it was that Nicholas, Tsar of All the Russias, believed in those paid-for messages, uttered by those presented to him as mediums and able to call up the spirit of his lamented father.
"Poor idiot!" Rasputin remarked, first glancing to see that the door was closed. "He must have something to occupy his shallow brain. That is why the Empress arranges the sittings. But Féodor," he added, "I must see this enemy of mine, Ivan Naglovski. He is not a person to be disregarded, and it seems from what you told me he has a number of important friends. We will discuss the matter to-morrow."
He afterwards dismissed me with a wave of his dirty hand, and I retired to bed in a room at the farther end of the long softly carpeted corridor.
At noon next day we had news of a terrible disaster. Precisely at half-past eleven the city of Petrograd had been shaken to its foundations by a terrific explosion, followed by half a dozen others, which shattered windows and blew down signs and chimneys in all parts of the city. At first everyone stood aghast as explosion followed explosion. Then it transpired that the great munition works at Okhta, across the Neva, opposite the Smolny Monastery, had suddenly blown up, and that hundreds of workers had been killed and maimed and the whole of the newly-constructed plant wrecked beyond repair.
