The facts were briefly as follow. The German agent Lachkarioff, who with
his accomplice had blown up the Obukhov steel works and was now safe in
Sweden, had, while in Petrograd, made the acquaintance of a certain
Madame Doukhovski, the young wife of the President of the Superior
Tribunal at Kharkof. She was a giddy little woman, and the monk had
plotted with old Countess Ignatieff to entice her to join the cult, but
she had always refused. Lachkarioff was a good-looking, well-dressed man,
who posed as a commercial magnate of Riga, and she, I suppose, fell
beneath his charm. At any rate, for a long time the pair were
inseparable.

One day the German agent, who was an exceedingly wily person, came to
Rasputin and told him that he had induced the young lady of Kharkof to
reveal to him certain secrets concerning the dealings of Soukhomlinoff
and the supply of machine-guns for the Army--facts which had been
presented in strictest confidence by one of the War Minister's enemies to
the President of the Kharkof tribunal.

Rasputin smiled in triumph when he heard the exact details which Madame
Doukhovski had divulged.

"Sit down yonder, my friend, and put that into writing, and sign it,"
said the monk, indicating the table by the window.

"You will not punish her for her indiscretion, I hope," remarked the man,
who was at the moment plotting that series of terrible disasters.

"Not in the least," Rasputin assured him. "Your friend is my friend. But
when such statements are made I like to have them on record. If
Soukhomlinoff comes up for trial--which I very much doubt--then the
memorandum may be of use to prove what silly and baseless gossip has been
in circulation."

In consequence of this assurance, Lachkarioff wrote down what had been
told him by the judge's wife, a document which the "saint" preserved with
much care--until the Obukhov catastrophe had taken place and its author
was out of Russia. Then he wrote to Madame Doukhovski and asked her to
call upon him upon an urgent matter concerning her husband.

In surprise, and perhaps a little anxious, she kept the appointment one
afternoon, and I ushered her into the monk's room.

He rose, and, addressing her roughly, said:

"So you have obeyed me, woman! And it is best for you that you have done
so. Hitherto you have held me in contempt and refused all invitations to
visit me. Why?"

"Because I am not a believer," was her open, straightforward answer.

"Then y