Another long wait, and finally I decided to venture back into the main cellar. Slipping out of the kitchen, I darted into the shadows. I spotted Dmitri and Purichkevich crouching by the curtain and peering through it as I had done before. In the light coming through the gap between the curtain and the wall, I could see that their faces were contorted with disbelief at Rasputin’s having withstood the tremendous amount of poison they thought he’d consumed.
As I watched, Dmitri produced a revolver and excitedly waved it in Purichkevich’s face. Obviously he was suggesting they shoot Rasputin. Purichkevich, however, seemed to be protesting that the Mad Monk would be as impervious to bullets as he was to poison. In the end, his view seemed to prevail. Dmitri set the gun down on the cellar floor behind him and they continued watching.
By shifting my position a bit, I was able to see beyond the curtain. The angle enabled me to focus on Rasputin and the girl. They were entwined on the fur rug in front of the fireplace. They still had their clothes on, but from the avidity with which Rasputin was assailing her, they wouldn’t remain on for long.
I watched as he pulled up her skirts and fumbled. The girl had an extremely strange expression on her face. As Rasputin reached higher, the expression changed to outright laughter. With the laughter, Rasputin froze. Now his face took on a strange, flabbergasted look. His jaw hung open and he removed his hand from under the skirts.
Roaring now, the girl reached up to her head and pulled at her hair. The entire coiffure came away in her hands. It was a wig! And suddenly I realized what it was that had stopped Rasputin.
The girl wasn’t a girl at all! She was a man!
Yes, the object of Rasputin’s passion was a guy in drag. While he was still absorbing this, Dmitri and Purichkevich, realizing that the deception was revealed, went through the curtain and into the plush room beyond. Fearful and curious, I crossed over to where they’d been hiding and watched from there. Now I could see the entire scene.
Rasputin was a good sport. Evidently he took the whole thing as a practical joke. He slapped his knee and laughed and embraced all three of the men. The one in drag was introduced to him now as Prince Felix Yusupov. The introduction was in Russian of course, but I caught the name and it hit me as a shocker.
Yusupov was the third assassin that Putnam had mentioned to me! Putnam! What the hell was keeping him? The three conspirators had Rasputin now, and if something didn’t happen quickly, he was a dead pigeon.
As I was thinking this, I felt something poke me in the backside. I reached behind me and picked it up. It was‘ the gun Dmitri had stashed there. I realized it was also intended to be the instrument of Rasputin’s murder.
Well, I could do something about that. I wanted to delay them as long as possible, and so I decided to deal them a blow that would reinforce their belief in Rasputin’s invincibility. It would have been easy to just remove the bullets from the gun, but the sight of a tool bench across the cellar gave me an even better idea.
I took the gun over to the tool bench and removed the cartridges from the chamber. Using a vise and a pair of pliers, I yanked the lead slug out of each individual cartridge. I was careful to leave the powder in the casings. Then I tore some small strips from a rag lying there and wadded them into each of the cartridges in place of the lead slugs. I replaced the cartridges in the chamber and put the gun back where I found it.
In effect I’d turned the bullets into blanks. They’d fire loudly, but they wouldn’t do any harm. Not to the target, anyway. On the other hand, they should be good for some mental trauma to whoever fired the gun.
I didn’t have to wait long before it was put to the test. Rasputin, somewhat drunk, was regaling Purichkevich with a dirty story when the fairy Prince Yusupov and the Grand Duke excused themselves -- probably on the pretext of going to the bathroom. As soon as they were on my side of the curtain, the Grand Duke picked up the revolver and handed it to the high-caste female impersonator. The way he was gesticulating, there was no doubt about the fact that he was urging Yusupov to shoot Rasputin.
He convinced him. As soon as they reentered the room, Yusupov walked up to Rasputin and shoved the gun in his face. Yusupov shouted something that sounded like a Russian version of “Sic semper tyrannis!” and fired the gun. There was a loud bang. Rasputin just stood there. Yusupov fired again. Still nothing happened. The Prince fired until the chambers were empty.
Then there was a long moment’s silence. The three conspirators looked stunned. So did Rasputin—at first. But then he must have decided this too was all part of the joke. He burst out laughing, clapped them each on the back, took a long swig from a bottle of vodka on the sideboard and launched into another dirty story. His three listeners stared at him as if he was the Devil incarnate.
After a while his tongue grew thick with the liquor. His head slid forward and he began to nod. When they were sure he’d drifted off to sleep, the three disappointed killers tiptoed out of the room to hold a consultation.
Dmitri was the most determined of them. Rasputin had fallen into their trap, and his attitude was that the Mad Monk should not be allowed to escape no matter how tough it seemed to be to kill him. In line with this, Dmitri crossed to the door leading from the cellar to the outdoors and bolted it with a heavy iron bar. He put a padlock on it, locked it with a large key, and replaced the key on the hook over the tool bench from whence he’d taken it.
When he rejoined the other two near the curtained doorway, I crept over to the tool bench and took the key. As I did so, I noticed a box of ammunition lying there. Concealed from them by the shadows, I worked quickly to turn the bullets into slugs as I’d done with the other bullets before. It was a good forethought. Just as I’d finished, Dmitri walked over to the tool bench, grabbed a handful of cartridges and reloaded his gun.
While he was doing that, I slipped over to the outside door, unlocked the padlock and removed the iron bar. When Purichkevich and Yusupov joined Dmitri at the tool bench, I took advantage of their preoccupation and darted into the room where they’d left the dozing Rasputin.
I shook him by the shoulder and covered his mouth so he wouldn’t cry out at being awakened so sharply. “Listen to me,” I told him in German. “They aren’t joking with you. They actually intend to kill you. Believe me. Trust me. I saved your life once before and now I’m trying to save it again.”
“I trust you. I believe you,” he whispered back. “What is their plan?”
“They are going to try to shoot you again. They don’t know it, but the bullets are duds. Pretend that they’re not. Pretend you’ve been hit. Pretend you’re dead. Play for time. Help is on the way.”
That was all the conversation we could manage. The trio of killers was coming back through the curtain. I ducked behind the couch where they couldn’t see me. Rasputin pretended he was still dozing.
They didn’t waste any time. Yusupov walked straight up to Rasputin, pressed the revolver against the temple of the starets and fired point-blank. Rasputin had natural talent. His hand flew to his temple as if by reflex. He’d gotten some of the frosting from the cakes and now he smeared it on his temple. As he slumped forward, it actually looked like blood. Still the Prince wasn’t taking any chances. He fired two more bullets at Rasputin’s body as it lay there. Rasputin’s tongue popped out of his mouth, his eyes stared, there was no sign of breathing. If ever anybody looked dead, he did.
The assassins were convinced. Their next job was to dispose of the body. Appalled, I watched from behind the couch as they carried it through the curtain and up to the large furnace standing in the center of the cellar. As Yusupov threw the door of the furnace open, Rasputin must have felt the blast of heat and realized how they intended to dispose of him.