The Minister of Evil Part 1

The Minister of Evil.

by William Le Queux.

TO THE READER

AFTER the issue to the public of the curious chronicle of "Rasputin the Rascal Monk," based upon official doc.u.ments, and its translation into a number of languages, I received from the same sources in Russia a bulky ma.n.u.script upon very thin paper which contained certain confessions, revelations, and allegations made by its writer, Feodor Rajevski, who acted as the mock-saint's secretary and body-servant, and who, in consequence, was for some years in a position to know the most inner secrets of Rasputin's dealings with those scoundrelly men and women who betrayed Holy Russia into the hands of the Hun.

This ma.n.u.script, to-day before me as I write, is mostly in Italian, for Rajevski, the son of a Polish violinist, lived many years of his youth in Bologna, Florence, and old-world Siena, hence, in writing his memoirs, he used the language most familiar to him, and one perhaps more readily translated by anyone living outside Russia.

In certain pa.s.sages I have been compelled to disguise names of those who, first becoming tools of the mock-saint, yet afterwards discovering him to be a charlatan, arose in their patriotism and--like Rajevski who here confesses--watched patiently, and as Revolutionists became instrumental in the amazing charlatan's downfall and his ignominious death.

These startling revelations of the secretary to the head of the "dark forces" in Russia, as they were known in the Duma, are certainly most amazing and unusually startling, forming as they do a disgraceful secret page of history that will prove of outstanding interest to those who come after us.

I confess that when first I read through the bald statements of fact, which I have here endeavoured to place in readable form for British readers, I became absorbed--therefore I venture to believe that they will be just as interesting to others who read them.

WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

DEVONSHIRE CLUB, LONDON, _January, 1918_.

CHAPTER I

RASPUTIN MEETS THE EMPRESS

THE Spanish author Yriarte wrote those very true words:

"_Y ahora digo yo; llene un volumen_ _De disparates un Autor famoso,_ _Y si no alabaren, que me emplumen._"

For those who do not read Spanish I would translate the pa.s.sage as:

"Now I say to you; let an author of renown fill a book with twaddle, and if it is not praised by the critics, you may tar and feather me."

I am not an author of renown. Indeed, I make no pretence of the delicacies of literary style, or the turning of fine phrases of elegant diplomacy. My object is merely to record in these pages the truth regarding the crumbling of Russia, and the downfall of our Imperial Throne.

Anyone who cares to search the voluminous records in the Bureau of Police in the long Bibikovsky Boulevard, in Kiev, will find my _dossier_ neatly filed and tabulated, as are those of most Russians. You will find that I, Feodor, son of Feodor Rajevski, musician temporarily abroad, and his wife Varvara, was born in the Via Galliera, at Bologna, in Italy, on July 8, 1880, and on March 3, 1897, entered the University in the Vladimirskaya.

I venture to think that the police have but little inscribed to my detriment save perhaps a few students' pranks in the Kreshtchatik, and the record of that memorable night when we daubed with blue and white paint the equestrian statue in front of the Merchants' Club, and I was fined twenty roubles by the bearded old magistrate for the part I played in the joke.

Had there been anything serious against me I doubt whether I should have occupied, as I did for some years, the post of confidential secretary to "Grichka," that saintly unwashed charlatan whose real name was Gregory Novikh, and whom the world knew by the nickname of "Rasputin."

Of my youth I need say but little. After my student days I obtained, through the influence of a high Government official named Branicki, a friend of my father, a clerical post in the bureau of political police of the Empire, a department of the Ministry of the Interior, and for several years pursued a calm, uneventful life in that capacity. In consequence of a grave scandal discovered in my department--for my chief had secured the conviction of a certain wealthy n.o.bleman named Tiniacheff, in Kharkoff, who was perfectly innocent of any offence--I was one day called as witness by the court of inquiry sitting in Moscow.

It was at that inquiry early in 1903 that I first met General Kouropatkine, who at that time had risen to high favour with Her Majesty the Empress and was--as was afterwards discovered--urging the Tsar to make war against j.a.pan, well knowing that any attacks by us would be foredoomed to failure. At the General's instigation I was transferred to the Ministry of War as an under-secretary in his Cabinet, and he sent me--on account of my knowledge of Italian--upon a confidential mission to Milan. This, I presume, I carried out entirely to his satisfaction, for on two other occasions I was sent to Italy with messages to a certain Baron Svereff, a rich Russian financier living in San Remo, and with whom no doubt Kouropatkine was engaged in traitorous dealings.

One day, having been called by telephone to the house of His Excellency, I found, seated in his big luxuriously furnished room, and chatting confidentially, a strange-looking, unkempt, sallow-faced man of thirty or so, with broad brow, narrow sunken cheeks, and long untrimmed beard, who, as soon as he turned his big deep-set eyes upon mine, held me in fascination.

His was a most striking countenance, broad in the protruding forehead which narrowed to the point of his black beard, and being dressed as a monk in a long, shabby, black robe I recognised at once he was one of those fakirs we have all over Russia, one of those self-sacrificing bogus "holy" men who wander from town to town obsessed by religious mania, full of fict.i.tious self-denial, yet collecting kopecks for charity.

Religion of all creeds has its esoteric phases, and our own Greek Church is certainly not alone in its "cranks."

"Rajevski, this is the Starets, Gregory Novikh," said the General, who was in uniform with the cross of St. Andrew at his throat.

I stood for a few seconds astounded. On being introduced to me, the unkempt, uncleanly fellow crossed his arms over his chest, bowed, and growled in a deep voice a word of benediction.

I expressed pleasure at meeting him, for all Russia was at the moment ringing with the renown of the modest Siberian "saint" who could work miracles. For the past month or so the name of "Grichka" had been upon everyone's lips. The ignorant millions from the Volga to Vladivostok had been told that a new saint had arisen in Russia; one possessed of Divine influence; a man who lived such a clean and blameless life in imitation of Christ that he was destined as the spiritual Guide and Protector of Russia, and to eclipse even Saint Nicholas himself.

As one level-headed and educated I had always had my doubts concerning all "holy" wanderers who meander across the steppes collecting alms.

Knowing much of the evil life lived in our Russian monasteries and convents, and the warm welcome given to every charlatan who grows his beard, forgets to wash, lifts his eyes heavenwards, and begs, I had, I confess at the outset, but little faith in this new star in Holy Russia's firmament now introduced to me by His Excellency the Minister of War.

"I have been speaking with the Starets concerning you," the Minister said, as he turned in his padded chair, and flicked the ash from his exquisite Bogdanoff cigarette. "I have detached you from my department to become secretary to the Starets. Yours will be an enviable post, my dear Feodor, I a.s.sure you. Russia is in her degeneration. The Starets has been sent to us by Divine Providence to regenerate and reform her."

"But, your Excellency, I am very content in my present post--I----"

"I issued the decree from the Ministry this morning," he interrupted in his fierce, bl.u.s.tering manner, that manner which, years later, carried him through the war with j.a.pan. "It is all arranged. You are the secretary of our protector whom Almighty G.o.d has sent to Russia for our salvation."

My eyes met the piercing gaze of the unkempt scoundrel, and, to my surprise, I found myself held mystified. Never before had any man or woman exercised such an all-powerful influence over me by merely gazing at me. That it was hypnotic was without doubt. The fellow himself with his sallow cheeks, his black beard, his deep-set eyes, and his broad brow was the very counterpart of those portraits which the old cinquecento artists of Italy painted of criminal aristocrats.

In the Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence, in the great gallery in Siena; in Venice, Rome, and Milan hung dozens of portraits resembling closely that of Gregory Novikh, the man who, to my own knowledge as I intend to here show, betrayed Russia, and destroyed the Imperial House of Romanoff.

In that look I had foreseen in him something terrible; I had read the whole of his destiny in his glance. His gaze for the moment overwhelmed me. Once or twice in my life--as it comes to most men--I have met with that expression in the countenances of those I have come across: it presaged crime, and the prophecy, alas! has been verified. Crime was in Gregory Novikh.

Perhaps Rasputin--as the world called him and as I will call him--knew that crime was in him. I think he did. By his eyes I knew him to be a criminal sensualist with murder in his heart.

I had heard a whisper of his sordid and miserable elemental pa.s.sions, even though the Starets was, next to His Majesty the Tsar, the most popular man in all the Empire.

To be appointed his confidential secretary was surely great advancement at a single bound, for though sensuality was to him as natural as the air he breathed, yet he had the highest society of Petrograd already at his feet.

Compelled to accept my unwanted appointment, I bowed, and expressed gratification that I should have been chosen for such a post.

"You must be discreet, my dear Feodor," said His Excellency, throwing his cigarette end into the great bronze bowl at his elbow. "When I have sent you upon confidential missions you have been as dumb as an oyster. This new post I give to you because I know that you are a true patriotic Russian, and if you see and know certain things you will never chatter about them to the detriment of myself, or of our very good friend Grichka. To him, remember, everything is permitted. You will learn much, but rather than speak let your tongue be cut out. And that," he added, looking at me very seriously as he lowered his voice, "and that, I warn you, will be the judgment upon you in the fortress of Schlusselburg if you dare to divulge a single secret of Russia's saviour!"

I stood aghast between this all-powerful War Minister in his glittering decorations, the Emperor's right hand and confidant, and the unkempt, ragged, wandering collector of kopecks--the man whose eyes held me in their fascination each time they met my gaze.

The suddenness of it all bewildered me. The salary I was to receive, as mentioned by His Excellency, was most generous, indeed, more than double that which I had been paid by the Ministry of War. It meant luxury beyond my wildest dreams; a life of ease, affluence, and influence.

Is it any wonder therefore that I accepted it, little knowing in those days of peace that I was a p.a.w.n in the great game of the Hun?

How shall I describe Rasputin? My pen fails me. He was one of a few great charlatans of saintly presence and of specious words, fascinators of women, and domineerers of men, who have been sent to the world at intervals through all the ages. Had he lived in the twelfth or thirteenth century of our era he would no doubt have been canonised. This rough, uncouth, illiterate Siberian peasant, who had been convicted of horse-stealing, and of immorality, who had served years of imprisonment in the gaol at Tobolsk, and who had only a month before we met been flung out of a monastery in Odessa and kicked half to death by its inmates as a fraud, had actually become the most popular person in Petrograd.

With the women of the aristocracy he was well-known, but to the Imperial Court he had not risen. Yet, being a _protege_ of Kouropatkine, matters were no doubt being arranged, although I was, of course, in ignorance of the traitorous plans in progress.

On the following morning, according to my instructions given me by my new chief, I called upon him at the small ground-floor flat which he occupied in the Poltavskaya, close to the Nicholas Station. The house, the remaining rooms of which were unoccupied, was a dark forbidding-looking one, with a heavy door beneath a portico, and containing deep cellars into which n.o.body ever penetrated save the Starets himself.

On the morning of my first visit there, I was, from the beginning, much mystified. The dining-room was quite a luxurious apartment, so was the "saint's" study--a den with a soft Eastern carpet, a big writing-table, a high porcelain stove of chocolate and white, and silk-upholstered settees. From this den a door opened into the "holy" man's sleeping-room, an apartment of spartan plainness save for its big stove, a replica of the one in the study.