* * * * * In the spring of 1916 the legations and embassies at Washington had their birds of passage. They were neither secretaries nor attaches in precise definition, yet men vouched for by their chiefs. Uniforms bloomed, and among the visitors were those who wore scars and decorations. To this category belonged the Russian Ivangoroff, and between him and Boone Wellver sprang up a friendship which, if not intimate, was certainly more than casual. Ivangoroff was young, tall and electric with energy. Animation snapped and sparkled in his dark eyes; it broke into a score of expressive gestures that enlivened his words: it manifested itself in quick movements and a freshet flow of unflagging conversation. It puzzled Boone that, though he was some sort of adjunct to the Russian Embassy, his gossip of intrigue at the Court of Petrograd should, on occasion, permit itself a seemingly unguarded candour. One evening, as the two sat together at dinner, the Kentuckian made bold to suggest something of the sort, and his companion laughed with an infectious spontaneity that bared the flash of his white teeth. "Even at the court itself talk is quite frank," he declared. "Every dinner party is a small cabal. What would you, with a German army hammering at our front and a German influence infecting those about the Tzarina?" "But surely," expostulated the congressman, "you can't be serious. How can an enemy influence survive at a belligerent capital?" Ivangoroff shrugged his shoulders. "You call it incredible, yet because of that influence the greatest soldier in Europe was stripped of his powers as commander-in-chief and exiled to a nominal viceregency in the Caucasus." Boone leaned forward, his attention challenged. "You mean the Grand Duke Nicholas?" "Yes. You ask how such things can be. I can reply only that they are." The Russian raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of one who expresses disgust for the unalterable. "And yet what would you?" he demanded. "If a weak monarch is torn between a genuine love, almost an idolatry, for a stronger man, and a carefully fostered fear of him? If, while the soldier is in the field, there are those at home who every day are whispering into the anxious, imperial ear that his great kinsman will presently overshadow and replace him, what are the probabilities? With the Empress ruling her consort, and herself being ruled by a closet cabinet of women and monks, what else was possible than that the captain who was busy stemming the outer enemy should fall before the inner enemy?" "And," mused Boone thoughtfully, "there were few who could not have been better spared."