just published contained an account of the mysterious murder of Professor Hertzenstein near his summer home in Terioki, Finland. No one could be found in St. Petersburg who knew of it, so Professor Miliukoff despatched a messenger to Finland to investigate. Professor Hertzenstein, while walking in his garden with his daughter, was fatally shot that night at a little before nine o’clock, or three hours after the governmental newspaper in Moscow had announced his murder!
The next morning the “Retsch” printed a concise statement of the facts—and the police instantly seized the entire edition.
Several weeks later it developed that the assassin was an ex-gendarme officer who was paid to do away with the one man whom intellectual Russia trusted to bring them through the thicket of the agrarian tangle.
Another famous instance was that of a prominent Moscow physician, named Vorobieff. About the time of the Moscow insurrection, Vorobieff’s house was entered by a party of police commanded by an ex-guards officer called Ermoleff. Ermoleff accused Vorobieff of “treating revolutionaries.”
“I am not a politician,” replied the doctor; “I am a physician, a surgeon, and as such I do what I can for whoever is brought to me without regard to political belief.”
“Have you a revolver in the house?” inquired the police officer.
“Yes,” said the doctor, “and I also have a government permit to own it and to carry it.”
“Where is it?” demanded the officer.
“In the drawer of my desk.”
“Get it.”