"Will you please tell your friend that I have arranged for your visit here, and that you will be welcomed. Be outside the French Embassy at three o'clock, when a yellow car will drive up. Enter it, and you will be brought here. I shall await you." And then he wished me good night. The wire over which I had spoken was, I knew, one of the private ones to the Neues Palais at Potsdam. Rasputin had again triumphed. When I told him he laughed coarsely, remarking: "People are too apt to regard this Kaiser fellow as lord of the world. He will never work his will upon Gregory. Nicholas tried, and failed. Let William try, and he will discover that at least one man is his equal--and more!" On the following day at three o'clock we both stood upon the kerb in the Pariser Platz, opposite the closed French Embassy, when suddenly from the Sommerstrasse a big yellow car approached us and drew up. The driver, who had evidently been given our descriptions, got down, saluted, and opened the door for us. Then a minute later we were on our way out of Berlin on the Potsdam road. The papers that day had reported that the Emperor was in Brussels, but such misleading statements are permissible in war. When we had come down the hill to the Havel and passed over the Glienicke Bridge, we sped through the pleasant town of Potsdam, until at last we entered the great Sanssouci Park, driving past the fountains straight up the tree-lined Hauptweg till we pulled up before the private door of the palace, that used by the Imperial family. The baron, in uniform and all smiles, was there to meet us, as he had promised. "I had a difficulty with the Emperor," he whispered to me. "But as the Father insists, His Majesty has given way." Rasputin overheard his words, and I saw upon his bearded lips a sinister smile. Through rooms with painted ceilings we were conducted, through the Shell Salon--the walls of which were inlaid with shells, the friezes being of minerals and precious stones--across the Marble Room, and then along an endless, thickly carpeted corridor, which reminded me of one at Peterhof leading to the Empress's private apartments, until the baron saluted a sentry, passed him, and a little farther on knocked discreetly at a polished mahogany door, that of the Kaiser's private workroom. A moment later we were ushered into a rather small room, plainly furnished, very much like an office. In a chair by the fire sat the grey-bearded Chancellor smoking a cigar, and standing with his back to the English grate was the Emperor William, looking grey and worn, dressed in a drab suit of tweeds. "Ah, Gregory!" exclaimed His Majesty, who took no notice of my unimportant self, "I do not forget our last meeting. Well, you have done well--excellent work for our Fatherland!" And he introduced the monk to the Imperial Chancellor, who, I thought, greeted the charlatan somewhat contemptuously.