aid. "I will see to it at once."

And five minutes later he went out to seek the Minister.

I was horrified at my position, compelled as I was to convey the means of
death to the hands of the German spy Tchernine, who had been placed as
servant to the Russian commander. I saw that I must leave Petrograd for
Minsk that night; therefore I set about preparing for my adventurous
journey. Indeed, shortly before midnight I left the Gorokhovaya with the
box of Swedish matches in my inner pocket.

The journey from Petrograd due south to Polotzk, where I had to change,
proved an interminable one and occupied nearly two days, so congested was
the line by military traffic and ambulance trains. At last on arrival
there I joined a troop-train with reinforcements going to Minsk, where I
duly alighted, to discover that General Brusiloff's headquarters were out
at a village called Gorodok, about five miles distant, in the direction
of Vilna. The evening was bitterly cold, and as I drove along I became
filled with ineffable disgust of Rasputin and the disgraceful camarilla
who were slowly but surely hurling the nation to its doom.

Had I refused to undertake that devilish mission, the monk would have
instantly suspected me of double dealing, and sooner or later I should
have met with an untimely end, as, alas! so many others had done. So
completely had he placed me beneath his thumb that I was compelled to act
as he dictated, in order to save my own life, for, as I have already
explained, the "holy" man held the lives of those who displeased him very
cheaply.

At headquarters, which proved to be a veritable hive of military
activity, I posed to a sergeant as Tchernine's brother, and begged that I
might see him. It was nearly dark as I stood with the man, who had
roughly demanded my business there.

"I fear you will not be able to see him," he replied. "The Emperor has
just arrived on a visit to headquarters, and he is with the general, and
your brother is in attendance upon them."

Tchernine, a spy of Germany, was actually in attendance upon the Emperor,
and hence could listen to the conversation between His Majesty and the
army commander!

"But I have come all the way from Petrograd," I whined. "I have a message
to give my brother from his wife, whom I fear is dying."

This moved the honest sergeant, who, calling one of his men, told him to
go to Tchernine and tell him he was wanted immediately.

"Only for a few moments," I