German army
hammering at our front and a German influence infecting those about the
Tzarina?"

"But surely," expostulated the congressman, "you can't be serious. How
can an enemy influence survive at a belligerent capital?"

Ivangoroff shrugged his shoulders.

"You call it incredible, yet because of that influence the greatest
soldier in Europe was stripped of his powers as commander-in-chief and
exiled to a nominal viceregency in the Caucasus."

Boone leaned forward, his attention challenged.

"You mean the Grand Duke Nicholas?"

"Yes. You ask how such things can be. I can reply only that they are."

The Russian raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of one who
expresses disgust for the unalterable.

"And yet what would you?" he demanded. "If a weak monarch is torn
between a genuine love, almost an idolatry, for a stronger man, and a
carefully fostered fear of him? If, while the soldier is in the field,
there are those at home who every day are whispering into the anxious,
imperial ear that his great kinsman will presently overshadow and
replace him, what are the probabilities? With the Empress ruling her
consort, and herself being ruled by a closet cabinet of women and monks,
what else was possible than that the captain who was busy stemming the
outer enemy should fall before the inner enemy?"

"And," mused Boone thoughtfully, "there were few who could not have been
better spared."

"My friend," asserted the Russian, "the world does not yet appreciate
the Grand Duke's measure. In retrospect history will devote some pages
to his achievements. She will canonize the magnificent ability and the
grim courage with which he fought on without support, without munitions,
crying out for the metal which did not come, and vainly demanding the
death of traitors at home whose failure to supply him was eating up his
armies. She will celebrate an orderly retirement which under other
leadership would have been a rout: the reluctant giving back of hosts
that were interposing bare breasts to artillery. As for the Tzar's
jealous fears--bah!"

The speaker paused to light a cigarette, and from it puffed nervous
clouds of brown smoke through his nostrils.

"I was at the Moghileff headquarters," he resumed, "when the Tzar
arrived to take into his own hands the duties that those stronger hands
had held. What took place between the two Romanoffs, I cannot tell you.
My place was not inside those doors ... but at the end