No word against Rasputin's loyalty was ever believed, for was he not the most intimate and loyal friend of both Emperor and Empress? Therefore the court-martial found the prisoners guilty, and the trio paid the penalty of all spies--they were shot in the barrack-square of Samara! This is but one illustration of Rasputin's crafty intrigue and cool unscrupulousness. Possessed of a deeply criminal instinct as he was, it was impossible for him to do an honest action. He never failed to betray his friends, or even send them to their graves upon false charges secretly laid, if by so doing he could further his own despicable ends. The dissolute rascal, possessed of superhuman cunning, held Russia in the hollow of his hand, and aided by his fellow-scoundrel, Protopopoff, he could make or break the most powerful men in a single hour. That he was in active communication with Germany, and that the vile plots against the Russian arms were being manufactured in Berlin, is plainly shown by the following letter, which after his death was discovered, together with a quantity of other highly incriminating correspondence--which I shall disclose later--in a small safe concealed beneath the stone floor of the well-stocked wine-cellar at the house in the Gorokhovaya. It is in one of the sentence-ciphers of the German Secret Service, but fortunately in the same safe the de-cipher was found, and by it that communication as well as others is now revealed. The letter is written upon thin pale-yellow paper, so that it might be the more easily concealed. It had probably been bound up in the cardboard cover of a book and thus transmitted. This letter before me reads as follows:-- "Number 70. August 16th, 1916. "Your reports upon the activity of Krusenstern (Commander of the 28th Army Corps), and also upon the friendship of Sakharoff and Yepantchine (two prominent members of the Duma), is duly noted. The firm of Berchmann Brothers, of Kiev, are paying into the Credit Lyonnais in Petrograd 120,000 roubles to your account, with a similar sum to your friend S. (Boris Sturmer, Prime Minister of Russia).