midnight
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 . In consequence I visited some friends in the Ivanovskaya , and returned to Rasputin 's at about a quarter-past twelve . Twenty minutes later he returned in a hopeless state of intoxication ; therefore I did not speak to him till next morning . Such was the fellow 's vitality that he was up before six o'clock .