holas Michailovitch had held a long interview with the czar in
which he had openly denounced the czarina and Rasputin in such strong
terms that when he had finished, having realized he had gone extremely
far, he remarked:

"And now you may call in your Cossacks and have them kill me and bury
me in the garden." In reply the czar only smiled and offered the grand
duke a light for the cigarette which he had been fingering in his
nervous rage. It was by a member of the Imperial family that the first
vital blow was struck at the dark forces. In the early morning hours
of December 30, 1916, a dramatic climax was precipitated.

It was then that a group of men drove up in two motor cars to the
residence of Prince Felix Yusupov, a member of the Imperial family
through his having married a cousin of the czar. Among the men in the
two cars were Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch, ex-Minister of the
Interior, A. N. Khvostov, also an ex-Minister of the Interior, and
Vladimir Purishkevitch, at one time a notorious leader of Black
Hundred organizations, but since the beginning of the war an active
worker in the social organizations and a deputy in the Duma, where he
formed one of the Progressive Bloc.

A few minutes later the policeman on duty in the neighborhood heard
shots within the house and cries of distress. On making an
investigation he obtained no satisfaction, nor did he dare to continue
his inquiry on account of the high rank of the owner of the house.
Again the men came out of the house and carried between them a large
bundle resembling a human form, which they hustled into one of the
automobiles and rode off.

Next morning blood spots were found in the street where the motor cars
had stood. Then a hole was discovered in the ice covering the river
Neva, beside which were found two bloody goloshes. Further search
revealed a human body, which proved to be the corpse of no less a
person than the notorious monk Rasputin himself.

CHAPTER LXXVIII

THREATENING OF THE STORM

Thus was Rasputin finally removed from his sphere of evil influence by
men who before the war had been of the very inner circles of the
autocracy, but who had gradually undergone a great change of opinion.
They believed that even the autocracy itself was only secondary in
importance to Russia herself, and they had taken it upon themselves,
after doing all in their power to circumvent the traitors through
legitimate means, to remove the archconspira