"What?" I gasped, aghast at the serious charge levelled against me. "I am no revolutionist! I carry that weapon merely for my self-protection."
The bearded man gave a low whistle, and next moment three grey-coated policemen in uniform sprang up from nowhere, and I was unceremoniously marched through the streets to the head police bureau in the Gostiny Dvor, well knowing the seriousness of the allegation against me.
Two hours later I was taken to the dark-panelled room of the Chief of Police, a bald-headed, flabby-faced functionary in a dark blue uniform glittering with decorations. Before his big table, standing between two policemen, I answered question after question he put to me, my replies being carefully noted by a clerk who sat at a side table. In the room were also the two officers of the Okhrana who had travelled, unknown to the Empress, in order to keep Her Majesty beneath their surveillance.
"Why did you arrive at the Frantsiya and await the coming of the two ladies?" snapped the Chief of Police in his peculiarly offensive manner.
I was at loss what to say. I was unable to tell the truth lest I should betray the plot of Boris Stürmer and General Kouropatkine. I recollected my friendship with the hotel clerk, and my eagerness for the arrival of the travellers.
"Ah! You hesitate!" said the all-powerful functionary with a sinister grin, and knowing what I did of the political police and their arbitrary measures towards those suspected, I realised that I was in very grave danger.
"You had secret knowledge of Her Majesty's journey incognita, or you would not have been watching in the church with a loaded revolver in your pocket," he went on. "Your Brothers of Freedom, as you term them, never lack knowledge of Their Majesties' movements," my inquisitor said.
"I deny, your Excellency, that I was there with any evil intent," I protested. "Such a thing as you suggest never for a second entered my mind."
The man in the brilliant uniform laughed, saying:
"I have heard that same declaration before. It is a clever plot, no doubt, but fortunately you were watched, and the knowledge that you were being watched prevented you from putting your plans into execution. Comeconfess!"
"I had no idea that I was being watched until I was arrested," I declared.
"But you cannot explain the reason why you travelled from Petrograd to Kazan. Let us hear your excuse," he said with increased sarcasm.
"I have no excuse," was my very lame reply. I was wondering what had become of the Starets. It was quite evident that they knew nothing of my double journey up to the monastery, and further, there was no suspicion against Rasputin. That being so I hesitated to explain the truth, in the faint hope that Kouropatkine, as Minister of War, would hear of my arrest, and contrive to obtain my release. I saw that, at least, I ought to remain loyal to those who employed me, and further, even if I told the truth it would not be believed.
"It will be best to make some inquiries in Petrograd regarding this individual," suggested the police agent who had arrested me.
"I really don't think that is necessary," replied the Chief of Police of Kazan, tapping his desk impatiently with his pen, as he turned to me and said:
"Now, tell me quickly, young man. Why are you here?"
What could I reply?
"Ah!" he said, smiling. "I see that there are others whom you refuse to implicate. It is useless to send such people as you for trial."
"But I demand a fair trial!" I cried in desperation, a cold sweat breaking out on my brow, because I knew that he had power to pass sentence upon me as a political suspect who refused informationand that his order would certainly be confirmed by the Minister of the Interior.
Too well did I know the drastic powers of the Chiefs of Police of the principal cities.
At my demand the bald-headed man simply smiled, and replied:
"My order is that you be conveyed to Schlüsselburg. You will there have plenty of leisure in which to repent not having replied to my questions."
To Schlüsselburg! My heart fell within me. Once within that dreaded fortress, the terrible oubliettes of which are below the surface of the Lake Ladoga, my identity would be lost and I should be quickly forgotten. From Schlüsselburg no prisoner ever returned!
Would any of the conspiring trio, whose tool I had been, raise a finger to save me? Or would they consider that having served their purpose it would be to their advantage if my lips were closed?
"Schlüsselburg!" I gasped. "Nono, not that!" I cried. "I am innocentquite innocent!"
"You give no proof of it," coldly replied the Chief of Police, rising as a sign that the inquiry was at an end. "My orders are that you be sent to Schlüsselburg without delay." Then, turning to the two agents of the Okhrana, he added: "You will report this to your director at Tsarskoe-Selo. I will send my order to the Ministry for confirmation to-night. Take the prisoner away!"
And next moment I was bundled down to a dirty cell in the basement, there to await conveyance to that most dreaded of all the prisons in the Empire.
By a single stroke of the pen I had been condemned to imprisonment for life!
CHAPTER II
RASPUTIN ENTERS TSARSKOE-SELO
I confess that I felt my position to be absolutely hopeless.
I was a political suspect, and therefore I knew full well that to attempt to communicate with anyone outside was quite impossible. The Chief of Police of Kazan, honestly believing that he was doing his duty and unearthing a subtle plot against the life of the Empress, on account of the revolver in my possession, had condemned me to imprisonment in the Fortress of Schlüsselburg. Its very name, dreaded by every Russian, recurred to me as I recollected Kouropatkine's significant words. Had he not threatened that, if I revealed one single word of the secret doings of the holy Starets, my tongue would be cut out within those grim dark walls of that prison of mystery?
We Russians had from our childhood heard of that sinister fortress, the walls of which rise sheer from the black waters of Lake Ladogathat place where the cells of the political prisoners, victims of the thousand and one intrigues of the Russian bureaucracy, consequent upon the autocracy of the Tsar, are deep beneath the lake's surface, so that they canwhen it is willed by the Governor or those higher Ministers who express their devilish desirebe flooded at will.
Hundreds of terrified, yet innocent and nameless victims of Russia's mediæval barbarism, persons of both sexesalas! that I should speak so of my own countryhave, during the past ten years of enlightenment, stood in their narrow dimly-lit oubliette and watched in horror the black tide trickle through the rat holes in the stone floor, slowly, ever slowly, until water has filled the cell to the arched stone roof and drowned them as rats in a trap.
And all that has been done by the accursed German wirepullers in the name of the puny puppet who was Tsar, and from whom the truth was, they said, ever carefully hidden.
The Kazan police treated me just as inhumanly as I expected. By my own experience as an official in the Department of Political Police, and knowing what I did in consequence, I was expecting all this.
Four days I spent in that gloomy, but not very uncomfortable cell in Kazan, when, on the fifth morning, I was taken, handcuffed to another prisoner who I found afterwards had murdered his wife, to the Volga steamer which, after twelve hours of close confinement, landed us at Nijni.
A hundred times I debated within myself whether it were best to remain silent, and not reveal my past career in the Department of Political Police, or to state the absolute facts and struggle by that means to obtain a hearing and escape.
One fact was patent. General Kouropatkine and Boris Stürmer both trusted in my silence, while the rascal monk had found in me a catspaw who had remained dumb. In truth, however, my secret intention was to watch the progress of events. Of the latter, Rasputin had, of course, no suspicion. If I wereas I had already proved myselfhis willing assistant, then he and his friends might endeavour to save me.
Such were my thoughts as I sat in the train between two police agents on the interminable journey from Nijni to the capital.
On arrival at the Nicholas Station the murderer to whom I was manacled and myself were shown no consideration. We had been without food for twelve hours, yet the three men in charge, though they ate a hearty meal in the buffet, gave us not a drink of water. Humanity is not in the vocabulary of our police of Russia when dealing with political suspects, so many of whom are entirely innocent persons who have proved themselves obnoxious to the corrupt bureaucracy.
We had two hours to wait in Petrograd, locked in one of the waiting-rooms where we were at last given a hunk of bread and a piece of cold meat. Then we were driven out to Schlüsselburg in a motor-car, arriving there in the grey break of dawn and being conveyed by boat to the grim red-brick fortress which rose from the lake.
Stepping from the boat on to the floating landing-stage we were conducted by armed warders through the iron gate and along innumerable stone corridors where, ever and anon, we passed other wardersmen who, criminals themselves, spent their lives in the fortress and were never allowed to land in order that they might not reveal the terrible secrets of that modern Bastille. Those who would form a proper opinion of our Empire should remember that this horrible prison was at the disposal of each of the Ministers and their sycophants, and that hundreds of entirely innocent people of both sexes had for years been sent there out of personal spite or jealousy, and also in the furtherance of Germany's aims for the coming war.
Within those dark, gloomy walls, where many of the dimly lit cells were below the lake, hundreds of patriotic Russians had ended their lives, their only offence being that they had been too true to their Emperor and their own land!
Ever since my childhood I had been taught to regard Schlüsselburg as an infernoa place from which no victim of our corrupt bureaucracy had ever emerged. Only His Excellency the Governor and the under-Governor had for years landed from that island fortress. To all others communication with the outside world was strictly forbidden. Hence I was fully aware that now I had set foot in the hateful place my identity had become lost, and only death was before me.
And such deeds were being done in the name of the Tsar!
At the time I believed in His Majesty, feeling that he was in ignorance of the truth. Nowadays I know that he was, all the time, fully aware of the crimes committed in his name. Hence, I have no sympathy with the Imperial family, and have welcomed its well-deserved downfall.
Into a small room where sat an official in uniform I was ushered, and later, after waiting an hour, was compelled to sign the big leather-bound register of prisoners. Already my crime had evidently been written down in a neat official hand, yet I was given no opportunity to read it.
"Enough!" said the big bearded officer with a wave of the hand. "Take him to his cellnumber 326."
Whereupon the three men who had conveyed me there bundled me down two steep flights of damp stone steps, worn hollow by the tread of thousands of those who had already gone down to their doom, into a corridor dimly lit by oil-lampsa passage into which no light of day ever penetrated.
There we were met by an evil-looking ex-convict who carried a key suspended by a chain.
"Three-two-six!" shouted one of my guardians, whereupon the gaoler opened a door and I was thrust into a narrow stone cell, the floor of which was an inch deep in slime, faintly lit by a tiny aperture, heavily barred, about ten feet above where I stood.
The door was locked behind me and I found myself alone. I was in one of those oubliettes which at the will of my captors could be flooded!
I held my breath and glanced around. Within me arose a fierce resentment. I had acted honestly towards my scoundrelly employersthough, be it said, my object was one of patriotic observationyet they had allowed me to become the victim of the secret police who would, no doubt, obtain great kudos, and probably a liberal douceur, for having unearthed "a desperate plot against Her Majesty the Empress!"
That there was a plot was quite truebut one unsuspected by the Chief of Police of Kazan.
My paroxysm of anger I need not here describe. Through the hours that passed I sat upon the stone seat beside the board that served me as bed, gazing up at the small barred window.
Clapclapclap was the only sound that reached meand with failing heart I knew the noise to be that of waves of the lake beating upon the wall within a few inches of my window, the dark waters which in due time would no doubt rise through my uneven floor and engulf me. Big grey rats ran about in search of fragments of foodof which there was none. I was a "political," and my food would certainly not be plentiful.
In those awful nerve-racking hours, never knowing when I might find my floor flooded as signal of a horrible death, I paced my cell uttering the worst curses upon those who had employed me, and vowed that if they gave me the gracefor their own endsto escape I would use my utmost endeavours to destroy them.
I did not blame the Okhrana or the Chief of Police of Kazan. They had both acted in good faith. Yet I remembered that I was the catspaw of Kouropatkine and of Stürmer, either of whom could easily order my release. And that was what I awaited in patience, although in terror.
Days went byhopeless, interminable days. The lapping of the waters above me ever reminded me of the fate that had been of the many hundreds who had previously occupied that same fearsome oubliette and had been drowned, deliberately murdered by those into whose bad graces they had fallen.
When the grey streak of light faded above me the gruff criminal in charge would unbolt my door and bring me a small paraffin lamp to provide me with light and warmth for the night. When the lamp was brought each night I thought of Marie Vietroff whose name was still upon everyone's lips. The poor girl, arrested though innocent as I had been, had been confined in a cell in the fortress of Peter and Paul, and her fate was known in consequence of certain revelations admitted by the Assistant Public Prosecutor. This official, the tool of higher and more corrupt officials, had admitted that the girl, though entirely innocent of any crime, had been arrested out of spite and sent to the fortress where, to escape a doom more horrible than death itself, she had emptied the oil from her lamp over herself while in bed, and then set fire to it.
Often, even in that deep oubliette, the sounds of woman's shrieks reached me, and each time I thought of the girl-victim of an official's revenge.
Days passedso many that I lost count of themuntil I had abandoned hope. The scoundrels whom I had served had forsaken me now that I had served their purpose. Rasputin had fascinated the Empress by that mesmeric glance of his, and it had probably been deemed wiser that my mouth should be at once closed. At any moment I might discover the water oozing up between those green slime-covered stones.
One day, however, at about noon the gruff uncommunicative peasant who was my gaolera man incarcerated for murder in Moscowunlocked the door and bade me come out.