later on "ordained" as a priest. Gilevitch, together with Dr. Panchenko, who was treating Buturlin for impotence, was instrumental in murdering the millionaire. The physician prescribed an overdose of some poison, and the old man died. Gitlevitch escaped to America, while Panchenko was tried and sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. The case was known as the Affair of De-La-Cey and Buturlin. The events described took place in the city of Wilno, in 1910 and 1911.
CHAPTER XXII.
Platon Instigates the Beiliss Blood Accusation
The murder just described was not the final chapter in Platon's "exploits." He planned another crime, and if he had been successful, he would have stigmatized the entire Jewish people. He got in touch with the notorious hangman Silberman, whose specialty it was to put to death political offenders, many of whom were entirely innocent of any wrong doing. With the help of Silberman, Platon birbed Vera Cheberiak. This Vera Cheberiak, a woman of the Kiev underworld, first killed her own children in order to avoid suspicion. A few days later the same fate befell the young boy Andrey Yushchinsky who was lured to one of the sheds of Zaitzev's brick factory and murdered. It was Vera Cheberiak who killed him. After the murder, Vera Cheberiak, together with Silberman, who was present at the murder of Yushchinsky, lay in ambush for Mendel Beiliss, foreman of the factory, who, they knew, had to pass the shed on his way to work. He passed that memorable morning as usual and came across Yushchinsky's dead body. Very much frightened, he was about to run away, but the detectives, who lay in wait for him, egged on by the accusations of Vera Cheberiak and Silberman, took him into custody. The Beiliss affair, it will be remembreed, caused a world-wide sensation. Prosecutors and defenders flocked from all ends of the world. My father, in spite of the warnings on the part of a few very important statesmen, asked Feodor Plevako, the well-known barrister, to take upon him-
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