On his return from abroad Rgevsky was at once arrested under the pretext of having blackmailed another police agent. Furious at what he considered to have been a breach of faith, he contrived to apprise Rasputin of the position in which he found himself placed, and revealed to him that the object of his mission had been to see and speak with Illiodore to try to persuade the latter to organise a conspiracy with the help of the many followers he still had in Russia. The object of this plot was to be the murder of the “Prophet.” Illiodore had been considered ever since his quarrel with Rasputin one of the latter’s worst enemies, and it was felt that he would enter with alacrity into the plot which it was proposed to engineer. But to the stupefaction of the persons who had thus applied to him in the hope of finding in him the instrument which they required, Illiodore went over to the enemy. On the advice of Rgevsky he telegraphed to Rasputin, asking the latter to send some one whom he could trust to Norway, and telling him that he would deliver into the hands of that person the proofs of the plot that was being hatched against his, Rasputin’s, life. Mr. Chvostoff, when taken to task for the affair, of course, denied it in its entirety. He declared that he had given quite different instructions to Rgevsky, and that he had sent the policeman to Norway to buy the memoirs of Illiodore, which he had heard the latter was about to publish abroad. But at the same time Chvostoff made no secret of his feelings of repugnance to Rasputin, and declared that he considered him a most dangerous and mischievous man, whose presence at Petrograd was exceedingly harmful for the prestige of the dynasty, as well as for the welfare of the State in the grave circumstances in which the country was finding itself placed. According to Mr. Chvostoff, Rasputin was surrounded with individuals of a most suspicious character, who spent their time in concocting any amount of shady affairs and transactions, and who had organised a regular plundering of the public exchequer. He did not dare to do anything directly against the “Prophet,” but he tried to get at him through the arrest of several of his adepts and friends. He caused the houses of a considerable number of these to be thoroughly searched for compromising documents. Among other places searched was the flat of a Mr. Dobrovolsky, who held the position of a school inspector. This search gave abundant evidence by which he might have been incriminated in more than one dirty transaction. But he was not immediately arrested and contrived to make his escape. Another of the Rasputin crew, a certain Simanovitsch, was arrested at the very moment when he returned to his home in the private automobile of Mr. Sturmer, one of whose familiar friends he happened to be.