Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/55

 politan Platon, who is at present in this country, in the City of New York, at 15 East 97th Street, and has proclaimed himself, without any authority, as the representative of the All-Russian Patriarch Tikhon, and as independent Russian spiritual ruler of North and South America and Canada. Those who were cheated out of their money were given packages with Metropolitan Platon's sealing wax stamp, which he either applied in person or had his secretary, Archpresbyter John Slunin apply.

Whenever the simple folk made an attempt to complain to the authorities, Platon's confederates, who had expected this course of



action, would arrest them fer no cause whatever, knowing that these helpless people, ignorant of the laws of the land, would be intimidated. When, on the other hand, victims attempted to protest, a worse fate befell them—they were "lost" or their dead bodies were picked up somewhere, and the death recorded as "dead, cause unknown." As a rule, however, after having robbed the simpletons, they persuaded them to go back to Russia, telling them that well-paying positions awaited them there. They shipped them on the boats of the Scandinavian Line, mainly to Libau, where immediately upon