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With Azef he had gone to the Hôtel Chatham on purpose to extract from her dressing-case her own bottle of aspirin which she had purchased on the previous day from the same chemist in the Avenue de l'Opéra and replace it by the one containing the fatal dose. The latter she had swallowed in ignorance because of a headache, death ensuing in a few seconds, and the post-mortem revealed nothing.
"The Father and Azef have gone round to the Chatham," I said. "They are evidently hoping to find you there." "Ah! Then I will return and see if they are there," she said, and, rising, she left. I did not see her again.
A hundred dramas could be written upon the intrigues of Grichka and Azef. Some of them were amazing; all were disgraceful. The life of the most upright and honest man or woman was not safe if marked down by the pair of scoundrels.
"Only by an ace has the whole of our arrangements with your Empress, and with yourself as our agent, been suppressed from Downing Street. And that by steps taken by our friend here, Monsieur Azef. But we are not yet safe. I tell you quite frankly that though you are a good servant of ours, yet your habit of taking intoxicants is dangerous. You boast too much!
"Ah! my dear Féodor, that girl knew far too much! Besides, we discovered that, though she had been sent by our friend Azef to assist two of our friends to bring 'Krivochein's' career to a sudden end, she had actually warned him, so that he has succeeded in escaping to America to avoid us!"
Having listened attentively to the conversation between the two scoundrels, I at last came to the conclusion that they were conspiring against some mysterious person named Krivochein. After the pair had consumed a bottle of champagne, Azef rose and, shaking his friend's dirty paw, said: "I hope to have everything arranged when we meet. I would not yet mention the matter to the Empress."
In the discussion which ensued I gathered that Rasputin and Azef had resolved, with the connivance and at the instigation of the German Foreign Office, to assassinate a certain well-known British member of Parliament who had been in Russia and had learned, through the British secret agent Mac, the betrayal of Russia into the hands of the Wilhelmstrasse.
About six o'clock a lady was announced, and when she was shown up to our sitting-room I found to my surprise that it was Paula Kereicha. Rasputin was out with Azef, so Paula declared that she would wait till their return. "I am staying at the Hôtel Chatham, and have to go to London to-morrow," she told me. "Krivochein has left the Chatham with his wife, and I am to follow."
I looked and saw a well-dressed, quiet-looking English gentleman passing along with his wife, who had apparently been shopping. Little did he dream that the eyes of the two most evil men in Europe were upon him. "He leaves to-night on his return to London," remarked Azef, when five minutes later we rose and returned to the hotel.
In consequence we took seats at one of the little tables on the terrasse and ordered "bocks." Presently, as we watched the stream of passers-by, Azef raised the newspaper he had been pretending to read, so concealing his face, and whispered: "Here he is! That is our friend Krivochein!"
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