uma, 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_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
1. RASPUTIN MEETS THE EMPRESS 1
2. RASPUTIN ENTERS TSARSKOE-SELO 19
3. THE POTSDAM PLOT DEVELOPS 36
4. THE MURDER OF STOLYPIN 53
5. THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE 68
6. RASPUTIN IN BERLIN 85
7. SCANDAL AND BLACKMAIL 100
8. RASPUTIN THE ACTUAL TSAR 116
9. THE TRAGEDY OF MADAME SVETCHINE 132
10. TRAITOROUS WORK 148
11. POISON PLOTS THAT FAILED 163
12. RASPUTIN AND THE KAISER 180
13. THE "PERFUME OF DEATH" 197
14. MILIUKOFF'S EXPOSURE 214
15. THE TRAITORS DENOUNCED 229

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 passage 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 i