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Newspaper Page Text
THE HOUR OF GRACE Why the Czar's Chief of De- tectives Resigned. "During my. year of office as the czar's chief of detectives' I frustrated nine separate plots," said Casimir Boutcheff. "But my nerves broke down and I had to resign my post. "Imagine nine desperate men, each reckless of his life, each bent upon wiping out his ruler in the most devilish and ingenious ways, and you can imagine some thing of my own difficulties. "The ninth, the anarchist Stro goff, was. the immediate cause of my "resigning. Nothing but the slightest oversight, the most providential forgetfulness of a single natural phenomenon, frus trated this last attempt. He was J the man who was blown to pieces in the king's gardens, Copen hagen, by some mysterious and never understood agency." "The man who succeeded in obtaining a postias assistant in the King of Denmark's kitchen ?" asked the interrogator. "Precisely," replied Boutcheff smiling. "As you know, the czar was formerly very fond of visit ing his august relative at Copen hagen.' There he felt free from the constant nervous tension" in duced by the presence of those who wished his death. "Here he would picnic in the royal gardens, secure in the knowledge "that no anarchist past the sentv' r r could penetrate nels. "Yes, Sfrogoff niariaged to pierce the circle of sentries, for he" was one of the men detailed to open the royal picnic hamper, and none suspected his evil purpose. "But even so, I was there, dis guised as a waiter, and he could never have penetrated to within fifty yards of where the czar sat, laughing and chatting among his relatives, under the' elm tree be neath which the feast was spread. He relied upon a plan,which had been carefully considered by the inner circle of assassins that sent him there. ".You have doubtless seen those bottles, much used in this coun-,, try, consisting of an inner and outer case, with a vacuum be tween, designed to keep! liquids either hot or cold for a period of hours, i Six of these were in use among the royal party, and it was through the agency of one of these that the murder was to be 'accomplished, -for to substitute the prepared bottle for any of the others was comparatively easy. "One of these bottles had been filled in a laboratory at St. Peters- burg with .liquid air, compressed at an almost impossible tempera ture below zero. Of course you know that liquid air, a substance which has only been made in la- fi boratories during the past few t years, will, when allowed to ex- ., pand to the gaseous point through the raising of the tem perature, explode with terrific o violence; in fact, if it were prac- n ticable to keep it at a regulated is.