The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-01-17

H ~ ant and erratic genius whose
@ diatribes against democracy
had stirred all the courts of
the continent, 1t had become organ
ICED in a single veal in every country
between Spain and the Urals. Kings
had become members of 1t, and the
league, backed by the most powerful
of influences, had acquired immunity
from governments and threatened to
impose its will upon the civilized
world. Then the inevitable happened.
Factions arose, base men perverted
fits aims to their own ends; the best
element abandoned IL In disgust, a
counter-organization of Western rul-
ers was initiated, and, after the issue
had hung for months in the balance,
the scales fell, and the league became
discredited.
And up and down Europe, travelling
from court to court, a cohort of pala-
dins, each fighting singly and whole
~heartedly, strove for the two factions.
That the league was planning a
desperate stroke in order to regain
its former influence was the sub
stance of a conversation between
Lord Claude Tresham, secretary to
the cabinet of kings which had fought
the league successfully, and Paul
Lane, the young American million
aire. as they sat together in the palm
roo of the Hotel des Anglais, at
Geneva, and looked out at the snowy
crested mountains.
Paul's wits had been sharpened in
many fights when he was serving the
league. He had been induced to
place his fortune and his services at
it's disposal by the Princess Clothilde
of Austria, the guiding spirit of the
society. When he came to under
stand that he was but a tool in the
hands of an INSCRIPTIONS woman,
whom, nevertheless, he had grown to
love with a passion which, he knew,
would last during the remainder of
his life; when, too, he understood,
in shame and humiliation, that the
high motives of the league were
shams masking criminal designs, he
offered his services to Lord Tresham,
Co fight his former friends. He had
performed several missions with hon
or, he had met Clothilde herself in
battles of wits and worsted her; but
each encounter only drove home more
deeply the shaft of the pitiless archer
who wounded him to the heart.
For this reason he fought the more
daringly. He had become, next to
Tresham, the opposing organizations
most powerful agent.
Tresham had summoned Paul to
Switzerland to undertake a mission
which was to overthrow the leagues
last remnants of power and influence
IN Europe. He explained it to him in
the afterglow of the glorious August
%evening.
THE league has one prop. Paul"
he said, "and you are to kick it away.
The kaiser has long abandoned it;
so has Alfonso of Spain, its leading
western ally. But in the realm Of
the Tsar the league still rests
supreme. The Russian agent of that
INSCRIPTIONS association is Apollodo-
rus, the monk who has obtained so
strong a hold over the people and
over the superstition-ridden Nicholas
II. AS you undoubtedly know, this
Apollodorus, whose headquarters are
In the monastery at Nishikoff, is the
latest of a long train of charlatans
who have duped Nicholas with spirit
ualistic phenomena. At Nishikoff,
they say, he calls up the ghost of his
majesty the late Alexander III, and
this spectral adviser, whose counsels
are, of course, always those Of the
league, and who is, in reality, the
medium Apollodorus himself, directs
che policy Of the whole realm of Rus
sia. Paul, did you aver turn the dark
santern on a spirit at a seance?"
81 did" said Paul, %chuckling over
Eege days. 1 exposed the notorious
Brale, who had fooled many leading
people in New York, and photographed
him with a calcium light, capering
round the room in fifteen yards OF
crash towelling."
"That, Paul, is exactly what you are
Co do to ~Apollodorus," answered Lord
Claude. you can imagine the scene:
the Tsar, wildly %credulous, his attend
ants secretly sceptical, but outwardly
believers, and just a little bit inclined
to a mystical Interpretation of the
phenomena because of the inherent
human tendency to self-deception.
can obtain admittance for you
through friends at st. Petersburg
You will, then, attend the seance with
a dark lantern under your coat, ex
pose the fraud at the psychological
moment, and obliterate the leagues
influence in Russia in a food OF ridi
Guile. Once Nicholas has left 1t, W.
shall hear very little more about It,
Paul left for st. Petersburg on the
following day, bearing a letter of in
production to Count Gabel, a man o.
old family who, though at presenr
out Of favor. anticipated the day wher
the wheel OF fortune would once more
place him In office. Paul had beer
instructed that Gabel was a firm be
liever in the phenomena and that HI
must obtain admlttance to the seanc,