aster to which she referred had taken place at the great steel
works at Obukhov, the outrage having been committed by two German secret
agents named Lachkarioff and Filimonoff, who had visited Rasputin and
from whose hand they had received German money. Nearly five hundred lives
had been lost, as the foundry had been in close proximity to an
explosives factory, where Colonel Zinovief, the director, had been blown
to atoms.

It was late at night, and the monk, who was in a state of
semi-intoxication, on hearing of the wish of Her Majesty, remarked:

"Ah! a clever woman, Feodor--very clever. She never misses an opportunity
to show her sympathy with the people. Oh! yes--order the wreath to-morrow
from Solovioff in the Nevski--a fine large one." Then laughing, he added:
"The people, when they see it, will never suspect that Alexandra
Feodorovna knew of the pending disaster eight days ago. But," he added
suddenly, after a pause, "is it not time, Feodor, that I saw another
vision?"

I laughed. I knew how, during the week that had elapsed since our return
from the secret visit to Potsdam, he was constantly holding reunions of
his sister-disciples, many fresh "converts" being admitted to the new
religion.

Both Lachkarioff and Filimonoff, authors of the terrible disaster at
Obukhov, had been furnished with passports by Protopopoff, and were
already well on their way to Sweden, but the catastrophe was the signal
for a terrible period of unrest throughout Russia, and in the fortnight
that followed, rumours, purposely started by German agents and the secret
police under Protopopoff, assumed most alarming proportions.

All was the creation of Rasputin's evil brain. With the Emperor and
Empress absent in the South, he had, with the connivance of "No. 70,
Berlin," determined to undermine the moral of the whole nation by
disseminating false reports and arranging for disaster after disaster.

In the "saint's" study in the Gorokhovaya there was arranged the terrible
railway "accident" which occurred near Smolensk, in which a crowded troop
train collided with an ambulance train, the wreckage being run into by a
second troop train, all three trains eventually taking fire and burning.
The exact loss of life will never be known.

Another outrage was the destruction of the big railway bridge over the
River Tvertza, not far from Kava, thus blocking the Petrograd-Moscow
line, while a train conveying high explosives made in England a few