The Minister of Evil Part 14

Every Russian subject of any note, and every foreign traveller, was watched, not because of his disloyalty, but because Rasputin and his camarilla, including the Empress, feared lest he should discover how they were daily betraying Russia and its Tsar.

I have been, at Rasputin's orders, many times in the central bureau of the Secret Police in search of the index-card of some person who had fallen beneath the monk's displeasure. In these indices and in the corresponding files the persons concerned were, I found, never designated by their own names, but by code-names that could be telegraphed if necessary from city to city. Thus the Deputy Cheidze (since become famous) was registered under the name of "drawing-room" (gostini), Lenin (also since famous) as "symbol," Miliukoff as "gra.s.s," and the traitor Soukhomlinoff as "glycerine."

Those were indeed terrible days in Holy Russia--days when the innocent were sent to their death, while Rasputin, the religious fraud, laughed and drank champagne with his high-born devotees, who believed him, even in this twentieth century, to be divine!

I remember that on May 16th, 1914, when the political horizon was cloudless and no one dreamed of war, I sat in the visitors' gallery of the Duma, having been sent there by Rasputin to listen to the debate and report to him.

The labour leader Kerensky, who afterwards became Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government, rose and from the tribune proclaimed the infamy of the police. He did not mince matters. He said:

"The most notorious jailers of the period of Alexander III. knew how to respect in their political enemies the man who thought differently, and when they shut him up in the fortress of Schlusselburg they would sometimes come to chat with him. And some of those martyrs, those men struggling for liberty, have been able to return to us with the glamour about them of twenty years' hard labour. But now, the sons of those famous jailers do not hesitate to seize young men of seventeen or eighteen and make them die slowly, but surely, under the blows of the knout, under the strokes of the rod, or by the burns of a red-hot iron.

Are we not returning to the days when political prisoners were walled up alive? And you imagine, gentlemen, that you can claim for this country the civilising mission of a European nation!"

He spoke of a man whom I knew well, one of the most sinister persons in all Russia, a man who, like Rasputin and Sturmer, accepted German gold.

The man's name was Evno Azef, upon whom unfortunately the French Government bestowed the Legion of Honour.

Before he went to Paris, Azef was a close friend of Rasputin and of Sturmer. He was a criminal of the worst type, an expert in crime, though he was a recognised agent of the Russian Political Police. And yet so clever was he as an _agent-provocateur_ that he actually managed to get himself elected as director of the Terrorist organisation of Petrograd, and as a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Party!

In my presence he one night, when in his cups, boasted to the merry monk what he had to his credit as a revolutionary. He organised the murders of the Minister of the Interior, Plehve, and of the Grand Duke Sergius.

It was he who prepared the attempted murders of Admiral Duba.s.sof, the Governor-General Guerchelman, and the attempt on Nicholas II. The latter was with Rasputin's knowledge and consent! Perhaps Alexandra Feodorovna knew of it. Who knows? That she was not so devoted to "Nikki" as she pretended is well known to everyone who was at the Imperial Court at the time. Happily, however, the plot failed because of circ.u.mstances which Azef could not control.

The scoundrel also a.s.sisted in the drawing up of the plans for the military mutinies at Moscow, Viborg, and Kronstadt, while he knew beforehand of the preparations for the a.s.sa.s.sination of General Sakarof, and of Governor Bogdanovitch at Ufa, as well as a number of Terrorist crimes which succeeded.

One of his crimes in conspiracy with Rasputin I will here relate, because it is a mystery which has long puzzled the London police.

On the morning of January 11th, 1909, the London newspapers contained a report of a strange discovery. Four days before there had arrived at Victoria Station a young French lady, dark-haired and extremely good-looking, who took a cab to a small but highly respectable private hotel in the vicinity. There she gave the name of Mademoiselle Thomas, and her profession as governess. Next morning a tall, thin young foreigner called for her, and they went out together, she returning very late that night apparently exhausted after a long motor journey. Next day she remained in her room all day. On the third day an elderly man called, and she went out with him, being absent about a couple of hours. On her return she went straight to her room and nothing was seen of her further until the next day at noon the chambermaid failed to arouse her by knocking. The police were informed, the door was forced, and Mademoiselle Thomas was found dead. She was lying upon the floor fully dressed.

The medical evidence at the inquest was that the pretty French governess had been dead fully eighteen hours. Upon her or in her small hand-luggage there was nothing to establish her ident.i.ty. That she had taken poison was the opinion of the expert medical witness. Yet the poison could not be established. Apparently it was a case of suicide, for the laundry marks and names of the makers of her clothing had been deliberately removed.

One thing, however, was extremely mysterious. Upon the marble top of the washhand-stand in the bedroom the police found some scrawled words in a character they could not decipher. Experts were brought in, when it was found that the writing was in Russian character, and the words were: "The holy Starets is----"

This conveyed nothing to the London police, who, of course, knew nothing save that a "Starets" in Russia is a "saint."

Therefore the experts at Scotland Yard were, after much patient investigation, compelled to dismiss it as one of London's unsolved mysteries.

Now for the truth.

One night, a year before, when I had returned with Rasputin from Tsarskoe-Selo, we found awaiting us the somewhat dandified man of a hundred aliases and as many disguises, the notorious Azef. He greeted us both warmly, and being a close friend of Rasputin, the monk took him into his cosy little den, where for over an hour they remained closeted together.

I was one of the few who knew the secret of Azef's crimes. Indeed, when I entered the room while the pair were talking I heard him ask with a laugh:

"What if we give him a taste of the necktie of Stolypin--eh?"

"It certainly would be best, my dear Evno," the monk agreed. "That is if you think the accusation can be well made."

"Trust me," laughed the great _agent-provocateur_. "A denunciation, the discovery of papers--you have those of Buchman in your safe, by the way, and they could be used--arrest, trial, and the necktie! It would be quite easy, and his mouth would be closed."

"He is growing dangerous," growled Rasputin. "What you say is perfectly true."

Then turning to me, he said:

"Feodor, bring those papers which Manuiloff brought me a week ago--the papers used for the arrest of Professor Buchman in Warsaw."

I obeyed, well knowing how that file of incriminating correspondence with an Anarchist group in Zurich had been forged by Sturmer's secretary Manuiloff, and how it had been found among the professor's effects.

"The necktie of Stolypin," was Azef's playful allusion to the ever-ready gallows to which he, plotting with Rasputin, Manuiloff, Guera.s.simof, and others, was so constantly sending innocent persons.

Truly, Russia was a strange country even before the outbreak of war.

The immediate object of Azef's activities, combined with Rasputin's, was at Germany's direction to extend the Terrorist action and thus cause trouble and unrest in the Empire. By every fresh success he obtained more money from Berlin, and at the same time strengthened his privileged position in the ranks of the Terrorists, while his worth was increased in the eyes of both the Minister of the Interior and of the Emperor. The scoundrel's revolutionary career and his police career were inseparable.

He was a Terrorist to-day, a police official to-morrow, but, like Rasputin, a secret agent of Germany always!

Terrible as it may seem, the Okhrana, with the connivance of the Wilhelmstra.s.se, and with the Empress's full knowledge--of this there is no doubt, because doc.u.mentary evidence exists which proves it--caused the highest personages in Russia to be murdered or hanged in order to prove to those lucky ones who survived how necessary was the organisation for their own existence!

A hundred dramas could be written upon the intrigues of Grichka and Azef.

Some of them were amazing; all were disgraceful. The life of the most upright and honest man or woman was not safe if marked down by the pair of scoundrels. The attempt upon Admiral Duba.s.sof, in which Count Konovnicin met his death; the attempt upon General Guerchelman, Governor-General of Moscow; the a.s.sa.s.sination of General Slepzof at Tver, with half a dozen other murders of the same kind, were all the work of Azef. Why? Because both Azef and General Guera.s.simof, chief of the Secret Police, were in the toils of Germany. The Wilhelmstra.s.se paid well, but threatened exposures if this or that person were not removed. Hence Azef, as one of the heads of the Terrorists, received his orders through Rasputin, and, obeying, was paid his blood-money.

Many of the dastardly crimes which Azef, aided by the monk, committed at Germany's orders will never be known. Hundreds of innocent persons were arrested, and when the police searched their homes the most incriminating doc.u.ments were found concealed--doc.u.ments which when produced they had never before seen. Hundreds of men and women were hurried to Siberia, and hundreds of others were sent to rot in jails and fortresses, while upon dozens there was placed "the necktie of Stolypin."

"Ah! my dear Gregory," Azef said, after he had lit a fresh cigarette, "there will be no security until that man's mouth is closed. I see that you agree with me."

"Quite," replied the monk, who, I saw, was rather agitated because of something which the police spy had told him.

"Good! Then I will go further. To-day I have proposed to the Council of Workmen's Delegates that we should blow up the Central Bureau of the Okhrana, with Guera.s.simof in the centre of it. The killing of Guera.s.simof appealed to them. They hate him--as you know. Really, those people are humorous. They think I am their friend, and yet each day the police arrest one or two members regularly but quietly, and they disappear no one knows whither. I have suspicions of Menchikof, of the Okhrana at Moscow. The other day I met him at Princess Kamenskoi's, and what he told me set me wondering. He poses as your friend, but I feel convinced he is your enemy."

Rasputin's bearded face relaxed into that strange, sardonic grin of his as he replied:

"I know Menchikof. He is harmless. The only man we may fear is Burtsef.

He knows far too much of the police organisation and the deeds of our provocating agents."

"I agree. But he lives in Paris, and hence the Okhrana cannot lay hands upon him. If only he would return to Russia, then he would not be long at liberty. That I a.s.sure you."

"He is in Paris. Could we not send him a message that his daughter Vera--who married young Tchernof last year--has been taken suddenly ill, and thus summon him at once to Vilna? Once on Russian soil he could be arrested."

Azef smiled. "Our friend Burtsef knows a little too much of our methods to fall into such a trap. He would recognise my hand in it in an instant.

No, some other means must be found. Meanwhile we must deal with the person under discussion. We were agreed that he must be suppressed at all hazards, eh?"

"Exactly. And we must suppress Burtsef afterwards."

Paris, Lausanne, Geneva, Zurich and Nice swarmed with Russian secret agents, who, at orders from Azef and Rasputin, kept constant vigil upon the doings of everyone. The directors of the foreign service of our political police were Ratchkovsky in Paris, and Rataef in London. The latter posed as a Russian journalist, and usually spent his afternoons over cups of coffee in the cosmopolitan Cafe Royal in Regent Street.

All this I knew, and much more. I knew that Ivan Manuiloff, who was now secretary to Sturmer, had begun his lucrative career as the agent and catspaw of Ratchkovsky in Paris. But he intrigued against his chief, and was then transferred to Rome. Of that man and his dastardly doings I will tell more later. Suffice it to say that the Emperor so deeply believed in him that one day he gave him a gold cigarette-case with his initials in diamonds "as a mark of his esteem"!

Having listened attentively to the conversation between the two scoundrels, I at last came to the conclusion that they were conspiring against some mysterious person named Krivochein.

After the pair had consumed a bottle of champagne, Azef rose and, shaking his friend's dirty paw, said:

"I hope to have everything arranged when we meet. I would not yet mention the matter to the Empress."

"Of course I shall not," remarked Rasputin, with that crafty grin of his.

"She would only worry over it--and just now she is greatly troubled over the Tsarevitch. He has had another attack."