Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/105

 and innocent young girls. Into the bargain, he had robbed his devotees of the sum of $500,000. He escaped to Paris whence he will soon be brought in irons and put in the same place where his friend, General Semionov, nicknamed Ludlow, had spent a few weeks.

I immediately applied to the American judicial authorities, retaining Ralph Frinck, the well-known lawyer. I hope and believe that American justice will decide the case fairly anr [sic] promptly.

In September, 1922, soon after the suit was begun, I was summoned to a Referee's chambers, at 1475 Broadway, where Metropolitan Platon with his tricky clique of anarchists, monarchists, adventurers, and thieves, was present. To the offer to settle the case peacefully, made me by th [sic] Referee, and to Platon's plea that he was a mundane god, I gave this final, brief reply: "There can be no reconciliation," and I asked the Referee to bring the entire case to the New York Supreme Court as a criminal case, in open court, with a jury.

The Referee paid no attention to my request and continued subpoening me to many other places, so that nobody could learn about my case against the "Holy" Platon. Platon told wild tales, as plausible as his announcement of a recent appointment as Chinese Emperor.

Both my witnesses and I herd Platon's ludicrous bragging. In his stories he referred to an American semi-millionaire Carlton and to one F. Pashkovsky. Platon had ordained this Pashkovsky to the rank of Archbishop. He had him appointed to Chicago to take charge of the Illinois Diocese. Two or three weeks later the people drove Pashkovsky out of the Diocese, pelting him with rotten eggs. Pashkovsky then ran away to Canada, leaving his mitre with a woman whom he owed $200. In Canada he began to preach to the people, promising them good positions if the Monarchy were restored in Russia. He was finally found out and suffered the same fate as in Chicago.

These two "pillars", Carlton, the semi-millionaire, and Archbishop Pashkovsky, who took Platon'spart, testified that they had been in