



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Rasputin the Rascal Monk
Disclosing the Secret Scandal of the Betrayal of Russia by the mock-monk
Grichka and the consequent ruin of the Romanoffs. With official
documents revealed and recorded for the first time..
By William Le Queux
Published by Hurst & Blackett, Limited, Paternoster House, London EC.

Rasputin the Rascal Monk, by William Le Queux.

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RASPUTIN THE RASCAL MONK, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

PREFACE.

WHY THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN.

In the following pages I have attempted to take the reader behind the
veil of the Imperial Russian Court, and to disclose certain facts which,
in this twentieth century, may appear almost incredible.

As one who knows Russia, who has traversed the Empire from Virballen to
the Pacific coast, and who has met personally both the ex-Emperor and
his consort, as well as many of the persons herein mentioned, I confess
that I myself have often been astounded when examining the mass of
documents which this dirty Siberian peasant--the convicted horse-stealer
who rose to be the secret adviser of Nicholas II--had happily secreted
in the safe in his cellar in the Gorokhovaya, in Petrograd, so that the
real truth of his traitorous dealings with the Kaiser might be
chronicled in history.

I had hoped to be able to reproduce many of the cipher telegrams and
letters in facsimile, but the present shortage of paper has precluded
this, and it could only be done if this book were issued in expensive
form.

To me, it seems best that the British public should have access to it in
a cheap and popular form, and hence I have abandoned the idea of
facsimiles.

I here publish the story of the mock-monk's amazing career as a further
contribution to the literature upon Germany's spy system and propaganda
so cleverly established as an insidious adjunct to her military attack
upon the civilisation of our times.

The conversations herein recorded have been disclosed by patriotic
Russians, the truth has been winnowed out of masses of mere hearsay, and
the cipher telegrams and letters I have copied from the de-coded
originals placed at my disposal by certain Russians, Allies of ours, who
desire, for the present, to remain anonymous.

William Le Queux.

Devonshire Club, London, S.W.

November, 1917.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE CULT OF THE "SISTER-DISCIPLES."

The war has revealed many strange personalities in Europe, but surely
none so sinister or so remarkable as that of the mock-monk Gregory
Novikh--the middle-aged, uncleanly charlatan, now happily dead, whom
Russia knew as Rasputin.

As one whose duty it was before the war to travel extensively backwards
and forwards across the face of Europe, in order to make explorations
into the underworld of the politics of those who might be our friends--
or enemies as Fate might decide--I heard much of the drunken, dissolute
scoundrel from Siberia who, beneath the cloak of religion and
asceticism, was attracting a host of silly, neurotic women because he
had invented a variation of the many new religions known through all the
ages from the days of Rameses the Great.

On one occasion, three years before the world-crisis, I found myself