Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/115



Wife of former Captain of the Russian Army, Priest John F. Dudikoff.

Maria M. Bogdanova-Dudikoff, being duly sworn, deposes and says that she was with her husband in Petrograd, Russia, in June, 1917 and that her husband wrote a letter to the defendant, Metropolitan Rozhdesttvensky, requesting him to return the $7,800.00 which he owes him;

That Platon Rozhdestvensky gave my husband 5,600 rubles in 500-ruble notes, in the Kiev Hostelry in the ecity of Petrograd, in the same month of June. These rubles were valueed at 42 rubles to a dollar;

That Platon was given a receipt by my husband and that on the lower part of the receipt which my husband signed, it was designated that the balance would be paid by Metropolitan Rozhdestvensky in American dollars;

That she saw how Rozhdestvensky crumpled up and threw away the old reeceipt which her husband contended should not be considered;

That her husband, having been seriously wounded in the war, the said Rozhdestvensky called her aside and said that her husband would hardly live long, and that she should not be afraid that the money might be lost and, making the sign of the cross, added: "I will pay out the money to a copeck, and I'll pay it in Dollars."

That she also was with her husband in Moscow in the same year and that there Metropolitan Rozhdestvensky, in the apartment of the all-Russian Patriarch Tikhon, at the Swiato-Troyetzky Hostelry, gave his word that he would refund the $7,800.00 with interest, in American dollars and asked her husband to wait a few days, promising to notify him when the dollars would come, in order to pay either her husband or herself.

That all these promises made in the presence of the all-Russian Patriarch Tikhon, turned out to be lies. Metropolitan Rozhdestvensky did not keep his promise and left for the Caucasus without having written a single word to her husband, regarding the payment in dollars, which he had promised to make before the Patriarch.

That she was with her husband in Kiev in January, 1918, and asked him to make up with Platon in order not to run the danger of