Next day the good-looking young fellow was appointed, and into his hand was given His Majesty's private cipher. None knew, until it was revealed by the band of Russian patriots united to unmask the spy, that this fellow Rodzevitch had spent two years in Germany before the war, or that he was in receipt of a gratuity of twenty-five thousand marks annually from the spy bureau in the Koniggratzer-strasse in Berlin! By this means Rasputin placed a spy of Germany upon all the Tsar's most confidential correspondence. Madame Vyrubova, and the infernal witchdoctor, were already all-dominant. Sturmer and Protopopoff were but pawns in the subtle and desperate game which Germany was playing in Russia. The food scarcity engineered by Kurloff; the military scandals engineered by a certain creature of the Kaiser's called Nicolski; the successful plot which resulted in the destruction of a great munition works with terrible loss of life near Petrograd; the chaos of all transport; the constant wrecking of trains, and the breakdown of the strategic line from the Arctic coast across the Lapland marshes, were all combining to hurl the Empire to the abyss of destruction. One day the Grand Duke Nicholas visited Tsarskoe-Selo, where he had a private interview with the Emperor--Rasputin's creature, the new secretary Rodzevitch, being present. The Emperor had every belief in the man's loyalty. His Majesty, weak and easily misled, never dreamed of treachery within his private cabinet. The words spoken by the Grand Duke that afternoon were terse, and to the point. "The Empire is doomed!" he said. "This verminous fellow Rasputin--the man contemptuously known in the slums of the capital as `Grichka,' is working out Germany's plans. I have watched and discovered that he is the associate of pro-Germans, and that his is the hand which in secret is directing all these disasters which follow so quickly upon each other." "But he is a friend of Protopopoff!" the Emperor exclaimed. "Protopopoff has been to England. He has gone over the munition factories in Scotland that are working for us; he has visited the British fleet, and when I gave him audience a few weeks ago, he expressed himself as a firm supporter of our Allies. Read his speech in the Duma only the night before last!" "I have already read it," replied the Grand Duke. "But it does not alter my opinion in the least. He is hand-in-glove with the monk and with the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Why you continue to have either of them about you I cannot imagine. If you do not dismiss them, then the House of Romanoff must fall, I tell you that," he declared quite bluntly. His Majesty pandered for a moment and replied--"Then I will give orders to the Censor that the names of neither are in future to be mentioned publicly." This is all the notice the Emperor took of the Grand Duke's first warning. The people did not dare in future to mention "Grichka," for fear of instant arrest.