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Updated: May 2, 2025
"Because I know from my friend Venikoff, one of the assistant-directors of Secret Police, that the man, a discharged agent-provocateur and incensed at the way he has been treated by Stolypin, has joined forces with some mysterious young woman named Baltz. There is a whisper that between them they are engineering a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister!" Rasputin's strange eyes met mine.
"You see," went on the prince, "one can never tell into whose hands may fall that collection of confessions which the Father has extracted from those who are guilty." "And you think you can obtain it for me?" asked the banker. "I am still friendly with many of Rasputin's friends. It is merely a matter of payment another hundred thousand roubles, and surely it is worth it."
I bowed in assent, little dreaming of the devilish scheme which, instigated from Potsdam, and paid for by German gold, was about to be worked. Already Germany had decided to conquer Russia, and already the far-seeing Kaiser had watched and recognised that he could use Rasputin's undoubted influence in our priest-ridden country for his own dastardly ends.
Into Rasputin's place stepped Protopopoff. He maintained his hold over the czar by means of spiritualistic séances in which he pretended to have communication with the spirit of the dead monk. The conspiracy continued unabated, only now Protopopoff worked with the fury of desperation. And so the crisis soon came to a head. All Russia, save for the small palace group, was against him.
From that moment the unfortunate banker was irretrievably in Rasputin's hands, and I saw much of his dealings with him. Pretending to leave everything with his friend Prince Gorianoff, he refused to see the guilty man again. In the meantime the prince, whom I accompanied as the monk's secretary, went to Tver three weeks after the first transaction, and we saw the victim in secret.
Besides, she saw that by entering Rasputin's cult there was a prospect of becoming on terms of personal friendship with the Empress. Anyhow, a week later Olga Yatchevski, having bidden farewell to the monk, was forced to depart with her husband to the important town of Kaluga, and for a fortnight I heard nothing.
I have been, at Rasputin's orders, many times in the central bureau of the Secret Police in search of the index-card of some person who had fallen beneath the monk's displeasure. In these indices and in the corresponding files the persons concerned were, I found, never designated by their own names, but by code-names that could be telegraphed if necessary from city to city.
Alexandra Feodorovna, frantic and bewildered, informed the Emperor by telegraph, and by the time he had returned the monk's body had been recovered from the river. I was present at the Mass served by the Petrograd Metropolitan Pitirim, an evil-liver of Rasputin's creation, after which I went with the body, which was conveyed to Tsarskoe-Selo.
Some members opposed the suggestion, whereupon Stürmer resolved to execute it upon his own initiative. In Rasputin's room, and in my presence, he drew up a document to that effect, but to make it law it required the Tsar's consent, and Nicholas was far away. It was Stürmer or the Duma.
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.
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