The Minister of Evil | Page 3

interrupted in
his fierce, blustering manner, that manner which, years later, carried
him through the war with Japan. "It is all arranged. You are the
secretary of our protector whom Almighty God 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 passions,
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 Féodor," 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
Schlüsselburg 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 pawn 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 protégé 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