taken against possible failure. The cargo arrived, and was
at once sent on by rail to its destination, payment being made for it
through ordinary channels, and nobody suspecting. Food was welcomed
indeed in Russia in those days of 1916.

In the stress of exciting events that followed I forgot the affair for
several weeks. One night, however, Rasputin, on returning from Peterhof,
where the Court was at that moment, received Protopopoff, and the pair
sat down to drink together.

Suddenly His Excellency exclaimed, with a laugh:

"Your mission to Berlin has borne fruit, my dear Gregory! For the past
four days I have been receiving terrible reports from Vologda, and worse
from Nijni-Novgorod. The inhabitants have been seized by a mysterious and
terribly fatal disease. A medical commission left Petrograd yesterday to
study it."

"Let them study it!" laughed Rasputin. "They will discover no mode of
treatment."

"Both towns are rapidly becoming decimated. There have been over thirty
thousand deaths, and the mortality is daily increasing."

"As I expected," remarked the monk. "The professor knows what he is
doing. Later on we shall be sending the infection into England and cause
our John Bull friends a surprise."

"But the position is terribly serious," said His Excellency.

"No doubt. Berlin is watching the result. One day they may deem it wise
to infect our army. But that must be left to their discretion."

Truly the result of that devilish plot was most awful. In the three
months that followed--though not a word leaked out to the Allies, so
careful were Protopopoff and the camarilla to suppress all the
facts--more than half the population of the two cities died from a
disease which to this day is a complete mystery, and its bacilli known
only to German bacteriologists.

CHAPTER XIII

THE "PERFUME OF DEATH"

"I AM much grieved to hear of the disaster at Obukhov. The
accident to Colonel Zinovief is most deplorable. Please place a
wreath upon his grave from me. Pray always for us.
"ALIX."

This was the text of a telegram addressed to Rasputin from the Empress,
which I opened when it was placed in my hands. It had been sent from
Bakhtchisaray, the Oriental town in the Crimea, where Alexandra
Feodorovna had gone to visit the military hospitals, it being necessary
for her to pose before Russia as sympathetic to the wounded.

The dis