Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/190

174 On his return from Siberia he had another conversation with the Emperor, to whom he put the direct question, whether he intended to fight the approaching revolution by the only practical means of issuing a new law of peasant ownership. Failing such a measure Stolypin threatened to resign. The Tsar promised to support the project, and to exact from the landed gentry submission to the new law.

When the landowners learned of the impending measure, they pressed General Kurlov to remove Stolypin for ever. A new plot was being hatched in the bureau of the secret police when unexpectedly Stolypin left for Kiev to take part in some celebration. General Kurlov seized the occasion to issue the order for the execution of the Prime Minister. It was carried out by an agent of the secret police, who was also a member of the social-revolutionary party. Stolypin was hit by several revolver bullets on entering the Kiev theatre and expired soon after. The assassin was hanged amidst rather mysterious circumstances, and all subsequent descriptions of the case are either inventions or vague rumours on a forbidden subject.

How was it possible for the murderer to enter the theatre, for which all tickets were distributed individually only to officials and to the best known people of Kiev, and of which all entrances were guarded by gendarmes, the metropolitan and secret police, and the military?

Behind the murder were the hands of Kurlov and