The Minister of Evil | Page 9

were closed?

"Schlüsselburg!" I gasped. "No--no, not that!" I cried. "I am
innocent--quite innocent!"
"You give no proof of it," coldly replied the Chief of Police, rising as a
sign that the inquiry was at an end. "My orders are that you be sent to
Schlüsselburg without delay." Then, turning to the two agents of the
Okhrana, he added: "You will report this to your director at
Tsarskoe-Selo. I will send my order to the Ministry for confirmation
to-night. Take the prisoner away!"
And next moment I was bundled down to a dirty cell in the basement,
there to await conveyance to that most dreaded of all the prisons in the
Empire.
By a single stroke of the pen I had been condemned to imprisonment
for life!
CHAPTER II
RASPUTIN ENTERS TSARSKOE-SELO
I CONFESS that I felt my position to be absolutely hopeless.
I was a political suspect, and therefore I knew full well that to attempt
to communicate with anyone outside was quite impossible. The Chief
of Police of Kazan, honestly believing that he was doing his duty and
unearthing a subtle plot against the life of the Empress, on account of
the revolver in my possession, had condemned me to imprisonment in
the Fortress of Schlüsselburg. Its very name, dreaded by every Russian,
recurred to me as I recollected Kouropatkine's significant words. Had
he not threatened that, if I revealed one single word of the secret doings
of the holy Starets, my tongue would be cut out within those grim dark
walls of that prison of mystery?
We Russians had from our childhood heard of that sinister fortress, the
walls of which rise sheer from the black waters of Lake Ladoga--that
place where the cells of the political prisoners, victims of the thousand
and one intrigues of the Russian bureaucracy, consequent upon the

autocracy of the Tsar, are deep beneath the lake's surface, so that they
can--when it is willed by the Governor or those higher Ministers who
express their devilish desire--be flooded at will.
Hundreds of terrified, yet innocent and nameless victims of Russia's
mediæval barbarism, persons of both sexes--alas! that I should speak so
of my own country--have, during the past ten years of enlightenment,
stood in their narrow dimly-lit oubliette and watched in horror the
black tide trickle through the rat holes in the stone floor, slowly, ever
slowly, until water has filled the cell to the arched stone roof and
drowned them as rats in a trap.
And all that has been done by the accursed German wirepullers in the
name of the puny puppet who was Tsar, and from whom the truth was,
they said, ever carefully hidden.
The Kazan police treated me just as inhumanly as I expected. By my
own experience as an official in the Department of Political Police, and
knowing what I did in consequence, I was expecting all this.
Four days I spent in that gloomy, but not very uncomfortable cell in
Kazan, when, on the fifth morning, I was taken, handcuffed to another
prisoner who I found afterwards had murdered his wife, to the Volga
steamer which, after twelve hours of close confinement, landed us at
Nijni.
A hundred times I debated within myself whether it were best to remain
silent, and not reveal my past career in the Department of Political
Police, or to state the absolute facts and struggle by that means to
obtain a hearing and escape.
One fact was patent. General Kouropatkine and Boris Stürmer both
trusted in my silence, while the rascal monk had found in me a catspaw
who had remained dumb. In truth, however, my secret intention was to
watch the progress of events. Of the latter, Rasputin had, of course, no
suspicion. If I were--as I had already proved myself--his willing
assistant, then he and his friends might endeavour to save me.

Such were my thoughts as I sat in the train between two police agents
on the interminable journey from Nijni to the capital.
On arrival at the Nicholas Station the murderer to whom I was
manacled and myself were shown no consideration. We had been
without food for twelve hours, yet the three men in charge, though they
ate a hearty meal in the buffet, gave us not a drink of water. Humanity
is not in the vocabulary of our police of Russia when dealing with
political suspects, so many of whom are entirely innocent persons who
have proved themselves obnoxious to the corrupt bureaucracy.
We had two hours to wait in Petrograd, locked in one of the
waiting-rooms where we were at last given a hunk of bread and a piece
of cold meat. Then we were driven out to Schlüsselburg in a motor-car,
arriving there in the grey break of dawn and being conveyed by boat to
the