Alas for this security! An unexpected incident was to destroy it in the most ruthless manner. Rasputin, together with Mr. Maniuloff, went too far in the system of blackmailing which they had been practising with such skill for so many long months. For once they found their master in the person of one of the directors of a large banking establishment in Petrograd, who, upon being threatened with all kinds of unpleasantness unless he consented to pay a large sum of money, did not protest as others had done before him in similar cases, but gave it immediately, first having taken the numbers of the banknotes which he had handed over to Mr. Maniuloff. He went with these numbers to the military authorities and lodged with them a formal complaint against the blackmailers. The result was as immediate as it was unexpected. The General Staff had been waiting a long time for just such an opportunity to proceed against Rasputin and the members of his crew. That very same night, in obedience to orders received from the military commander of Petrograd, Mr. Manassevitsch-Maniuloff’s house was searched from top to bottom, and he himself conveyed to prison, without even having been allowed to acquaint his chief, Mr. Sturmer, with what had happened to him. CHAPTER VIII The arrest of the Prime Minister’s private secretary produced, as may well be imagined, an immense sensation in Petrograd and intense consternation among the friends of Rasputin. They were thus deprived of the one strong ally capable of guiding their steps in the best direction possible under the circumstances, and, moreover, of the one who was possessed of information which no one else could possibly get at. Mr. Sturmer himself was more than dismayed at this step taken by the military authorities without consulting him and resented it as a personal affront. He tried to interfere in the matter and went so far as to demand as his right the liberation of Manassevitsch-Maniuloff. But his intervention, instead of helping the person in whose favour it had been displayed, gave on the contrary the signal for a series of attacks against Mr. Sturmer himself, attacks of which the most important was the speech made by Mr. Miliukoff in the Duma, where he publicly accused the Prime Minister of being in league with Germany and of working in favour of a separate peace with that country.