Five minutes later Rasputin returned with the Emperor's scribbled signature still wet, and in my presence handed it to the Director of Political Police. Ostrovski had been transferred to Japan, where he would be harmless, even though he might have learned facts from Botkine. But what had Rasputin decided should be the fate of the latter? For the sake of Alexandra Feodorovna and the whole camarilla Botkine's lips must, I knew, be closed. That had been decided. I longed to learn what the Empress had said when the monk had revealed the truth to her and pointed out her peril. No doubt Her Majesty would see to it that the affair was hushed up. I knew full well that she understood that once Kokovtsov obtained evidence too many people would be implicated, and perhaps a public trial might result. Both she and Rasputin, no doubt, realised that it would be unwise to allow a member of the Okhrana--as Botkine had been--to be arrested, for fear of the scandal public revelations would cause. The capital teemed with Germans like Stuermer and Fredericks, traitors like Protopopoff and Soukhomlinoff, men like Azeff, Guerassimoff and Kurtz--one day the bosom friend of Ministers and powerful noblemen, and the next cast into the fortress of Peter and Paul--Rogogin, the sycophant Raeff--whom Rasputin had made Procurator of the Holy Synod--and the drunken "saint" Mitia the Blessed--at last dismissed--spiritualists, charlatans, and cranks. Upon such fine society was the Throne of the Romanoffs based! Was it any wonder that it was already tottering preparatory to its fall? I left Peterhof with Rasputin at about three o'clock that afternoon, and on our return to the Poltavskaya I spoke over the telephone, at the monk's orders, to Doctor Badmayev, the expert herbalist who prepared those secret drugs with which Madame Vyrubova regularly doped the little Tsarevitch, keeping him in a constant state of ill-health and in such a condition that he puzzled the most noted physicians in Europe. Badmayev, a small, ferret-eyed man, his features of Tartar cast, came and dined with us, after which Rasputin signed a cheque for twenty-eight thousand roubles, a sum to which "the doctor" was entitled under an agreement. Well did I know that the sum in question was payment for his active assistance in supplying certain drugs of which the monk in turn declared that he himself held the formula. The drugs--which he pretended to be the secret of the priests of Tibet--were those which he doled out in small quantities to his sister-disciples, and which produced insensibility to physical pain, drugs which were so baneful and pernicious that the monk always warned me against them, and never took any himself. After dinner, at which they both drank deeply of champagne, the monk and his friend went out to spend the evening at a low-class variety theatre, while I was left alone until midnight.