According to a statement made by the monk's wily accomplice, Yepantchine, who afterwards came forward and made so many revelations, only the trio sat down to dinner, whereupon the traitorous bureaucrat openly suggested that the band he had formed against Rasputin should be betrayed to the Palace police, in return for which he had ready for him five thousand roubles in cash, and, in addition, would there and then appoint him to a lucrative position in the chancellerie of the Ministry. On hearing this, the young man sprang up and angrily denounced both monk and minister as traitors, declaring that he would at once expose the effort to purchase his silence. Without further ado Rasputin drew a revolver and, secretly approaching him, shot him dead. His body was found in the snow near the corner of the Kazanskaya early next morning. The dead man's friends, who knew of his visit to Rasputin that night, informed the police, but the monk was already before them. At dawn he sought the Emperor at the Tsarskoe-Selo, and found him in his dressing-gown. To him he complained that enemies were making a disgraceful charge against him, and added:-- "I seek thy protecting hand, friend. Wilt thou give orders to the police to leave me unmolested?" The Emperor, who believed in him as implicitly as his wife, at once gave orders over the telephone, and thus the murder was suppressed. A week later a man named Rouchine, who had, with Yepantchine, assisted him in his mock-miracles, discovered him with a certain Swede named Wemstedt, who was chief of the German Secret Service in Stockholm, and who had come in disguise to Petrograd to obtain certain reports furnished by Sturmer. His secret visit to Rasputin's house was to get the documents for transmission to Germany, and to make one of the large monthly payments to the monk for his services as the Kaiser's agent. Their meeting was watched by Rouchine, who overheard greater part of the conversation of the pair ere the "Saint" became aware there was an eavesdropper. Instantly he scented danger, for he trusted nobody; the monk made no sign, but when Wemstedt had gone he placed a bottle of vodka in a spot where he knew that Rouchine would find it. As he expected, his servant drank a glass, and within half-an-hour he expired in terrible agony, with Rasputin jeering at him in his death-throes. It is computed that during 1916 no fewer than twenty persons lost their lives in consequence of visits to that sinister house within the shadow of the Winter Palace. Armed with those secret Chinese drugs, the pious assassin could administer baneful doses which proved fatal hours afterwards, with symptoms which completely deceived the doctors. Knowing his own danger, he one day hit upon a new plan for his own protection, and when at dinner at the Imperial table he, addressing the Empress, said: