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What the pair arranged I had no idea, for when I returned to the Gorokhovaya the general was just stepping into his big car with its brilliant headlights. "Good night, Féodor!" he shouted to me merrily, for he was of a genial nature, and next moment the powerful car drove away. Events marched rapidly during the next fortnight.
I returned at once to the Gorokhovaya, where the monk and the prince sat with a bottle of champagne between them, and gave them the message. A quarter of an hour later the banker returned excitedly, and was ushered in to Rasputin, who saw him alone. They remained together for about ten minutes, and then the victim departed.
In that small fireproof safe of his, concealed beneath the floor of the wine-cellar at the Gorokhovaya that safe in which were preserved so many amorous letters from neurotic women whom the monk intended later on to blackmail was also much documentary evidence of the "saint's" vile plots, correspondence which, later on, fell into the hands of the revolutionary party, who revealed only a portion of it after Rasputin's tragic end.
The call was answered from the Admiralty Square; a sled dashed up the Gorokhovaya and halted beside him. Taking the single seat, he lifted her gently upon his lap and held her very tenderly in his arms. "Where?" asked the istvostchik. Boris was about to answer "Anywhere!" but the lady whispered in a voice of silver sweetness, the name of a remote street, near the Smolnoi Church.
Yet we had not been back at the Gorokhovaya an hour when the man Chevitch called, and at the monk's orders I handed him the balance of his blood-money. That same evening Hardt, the secret messenger from Berlin, arrived, having travelled by way of Abö, in Finland.
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.
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."
In the "saint's" study in the Gorokhovaya there was arranged the terrible railway "accident" which occurred near Smolensk, in which a crowded troop train collided with an ambulance train, the wreckage being run into by a second troop train, all three trains eventually taking fire and burning. The exact loss of life will never be known.
Indeed, shortly before midnight I left the Gorokhovaya with the box of Swedish matches in my inner pocket. The journey from Petrograd due south to Polotzk, where I had to change, proved an interminable one and occupied nearly two days, so congested was the line by military traffic and ambulance trains.
He was not at his house, but by bribing the doorkeeper I learned that he would be found in a very questionable gambling-house in the vicinity. There I discovered him and drove him to the Gorokhovaya. "Listen," the monk said as I ushered him in. "There is a furrier in the Nevski named Violle. Both he and his wife are dangerous revolutionists and must be arrested at once. You understand eh?"
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