"Urge S. (Sturmer) to disclaim at once all knowledge of the Rickert contracts. The payments are completely concealed. I have no fear of Sukhomlinoff's betrayal. He is discredited and will not be believed: yet it would be best if the Emperor ordered the trial to be cancelled.-- The Tsar did so, but the General was tried after his deposition. "To yourself and our dear Empress greetings. I pray for you all, and send you my benedictions.--Your brother, Gregory Efimovitch." That the rascal hurried back to Petrograd is apparent by a letter dated a week later from Madame Kokoskin, the latest of his sister-disciples, who wrote from the Potemkinskaya 29, Petrograd, saying: "Holy Father,--I have just heard with joy from dear Anna that you have returned to-night. May God grant you the fruits of your pilgrimage. (To his sister-disciples he had pretended to make a pilgrimage to the monastery of Verkhotursky, where in secret most disgraceful orgies often took place.) My daughter Nada will be with me at our reunion at Anna's to-morrow at six.--Vera." Rasputin seems to have arrived in Petrograd the bearer of certain verbal messages from the Kaiser to the Tsaritza, for he went at once to Tsarskoe-Selo and there remained all next day. That the Empress had now grown very frightened regarding the attitude of the Grand Dukes Nicholas and Dmitri, the latter a young and energetic figure in Russian politics, is proved by an attempt which, a few days later, she made to conciliate them both. But they discarded her advances, for, having already learnt much regarding the "Holy Father," they were actively preparing to bring about the prosecution of General Sukhomlinoff, well knowing that its disclosures must wreck the _regime_ of the hated mock-monk and shake the House of Romanoff to its foundations. Hence it was that, two days later, the patriotic informer Ivan Kartzoff, the unfortunate official who had been sent by the Tsaritza's influence to "an unknown destination," was found shot dead in a wood near Kislovodsk, a small town in the North Caucasus, while two of the other witnesses were arrested at Protopopoff's orders upon false charges of treachery, incriminating papers--which had been placed among their effects by _agents provocateurs_--being produced as evidence against them. Thus the most strenuous efforts were being made by the camarilla to prevent the bursting of that storm-cloud which grew darker over them with every day that passed. The monk was, however, fully alive to the danger of exposure, and he therefore resolved to play yet another bold clever card in the desperate game of the betrayal of the Russian nation. CHAPTER NINE. DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE OF TREACHERY. Germany never plays straight, even with those who accept her gold to play the dangerous game of traitor. The few who know the ramifications of the underground politics of Europe are well aware of this fact.