Part 12

Before I had time to reply, the old man’s eye suddenly lighted up. He took a step towards me, uttered an amazed ejaculation, and then, before I knew what was happening, fell on his knees before me, and, seizing my right hand, respectfully kissed a ring on the little finger. At the same time the other members of the party crowded round, evidently impatient to follow his example.

The ring which excited this extraordinary demonstration was one which I had worn so long that I had forgotten all about it. It had been given me seventeen years before, in Baghdad, by an old woman I had saved from the bastinado at the hands of a savage Pasha.

She was a gipsy, I now remembered; she had forced the ring upon me against my will, and had urged me never to take it off night or day, assuring me in the most solemn manner that it would one day be the means of saving my life. This prophecy, which I had laughed at as a vain boast and quickly forgotten, was coming true at last.

Blessing the old lady with all my heart, and inwardly apologising to her for my past scepticism, I put on the air of one who was accustomed to, and expected, the homage he was receiving.

‘That will do, my friends,’ I said, when each man had saluted the magic ring in turn--it was engraved with a pentagram. ‘Now, if I give you some money, how long will it take you to procure some bottles of good wine?’

A grunt of pleasure welcomed this inquiry. I heard a word which sounded like canteen. Then one of the men rose, in obedience to a nod from the chief.

‘Cheni will fetch it in five minutes,’ said the old man.

I placed a double handful of gold in his outstretched palms. A perfect salvo of approving cries greeted this munificence.

While we were waiting for the wine to appear I offered an account of myself which appeared to be quite satisfactory. I said I was a Pole, of gipsy descent through my mother, that I was engaged in a plot to bring about a general rising in the event of war between Austria and Russia, and that I was specially engaged to secure the support of the numerous gipsies along the frontier, who were to watch the movements of the two great belligerents on our behalf, a service for which they would be handsomely paid.

The arrival of six bottles of first-rate Tokay gave all the confirmation to my words that was required. As the wine vanished down their throats, the gipsies laid aside all reserve, and freely imparted to me what information they possessed.

They told me, in the first place, that the six batteries I was tracing were within a few yards of us, skilfully hidden among the trees. Their arrival brought the force designed for the occupation of Galicia up to a total strength of eighty thousand men and seventy-two guns, all of whom had been secretly brought across the frontier at different points during the last few days, and were now ready to move in concert as soon as the signal was given, and overrun the unprepared province.

Vast convoys of provisions were being held in readiness on the Russian side of the frontier, and a second army of one hundred and twenty thousand men was to be secretly mobilised in and around Warsaw, ready to come to the support of the first, in the event of serious resistance on the part of the Austrian Government.

This last item rested on hearsay, but the presence of two army corps on Galician soil was a fact for which my informants were able to vouch from their own observation. The fact was known to every smuggler along the Galician frontier, and yet, so profuse were the bribes they had received, and so perfect was their secrecy, that not the slightest hint had been suffered to reach any official of the Austrian Government.

I spent some hours of the most agonising suspense I have ever known, in the company of these drunken outlaws, before I dared to risk an effort to get away. Their suspicions, or rather their natural distrustfulness, caused them to raise all sorts of objections to my departure. It was only by swearing on the sacred pentagram that no hair of their heads should ever be imperilled by any action of mine, that I was able to tear myself away.

When I got out on to the high road again, at the spot where I had left my motor, I found, as I had feared, that it was no longer there. I turned at haphazard in the direction of the frontier post. As soon as I came in sight of the Russian guard-house, I saw, to my delight, my car standing on the road in the front of the door, with a group of interested soldiers curiously inspecting every part of it.

Now the car happened to be a Panhard, of the most powerful construction yet turned out by the famous French firm.

I strolled up carelessly, greeted the astonished soldiers in broken Russian, and asked them if they were familiar with the machine. The lieutenant of the post, a man in education and intelligence below the level of an English sergeant, bustled out and began questioning me, with the evident intention of ordering my arrest.

I handed him my passport to read, a process which takes some time with an illiterate Russian officer, and went on explaining the mechanism of the car to the inquisitive soldiers. Finally I came to the driving power.

‘And now, my friends,’ I said, ‘I will show you how the car is propelled. Stand back clear of the wheels, if you please. You see this lever. I place my hand on it so----’

‘Stay!’ shouted the officer, divining the danger in this demonstration.

He spoke too late. As my hand grasped the lever, I vaulted into the car, and before the excited soldiers realised that it was under way, the Panhard was tearing towards the boundary line at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour.

The Russian sentry ran out into the middle of the road to stop me. He was a poor peasant, perhaps from the banks of the Volga, who must have thought that the Evil One himself was upon him. I saw his face blanch, and almost heard the chattering of his teeth, but he did not flinch from his duty. I rode right over him, and I am sorry to say that I believe he was killed.

The Austrian sentry simply fired off his gun as a warning to his comrades at the guard-house further along the road. They swarmed out, and I pulled up the machine. I had put the brake on immediately after crossing into Austrian territory.

‘In the Emperor’s name!’ I whispered to the Austrian officer of the guard. ‘I am not an Englishman, but a member of the Austrian Secret Service. By allowing me to pass without delay you will render the Government a vital service.’

‘You have just killed a man,’ the officer objected, pointing to the blood on my wheels.

‘I am afraid so. The fact that I killed a Russian sentry in order to cross the frontier should convince you that I am in deadly earnest.’

The officer, by some rare chance, was intelligent enough to believe me.

‘Pass on, sir,’ he said.

I pressed the lever, and set out on my mad race across an Empire to Vienna. I had nothing to eat or drink. I had no shields for my eyes; the Russian soldiers must have removed them while the car was in their hands. I was utterly unprepared for my terrible journey. But some intuition warned me that every moment was precious, and I kept my splendid machine at full pressure for the whole five hundred miles.

I will not attempt to describe that nightmare ride. Late in the evening of the following day, I alighted at the gate of the palace of Schönbrunn, worn-out, my face and hands chapped and bleeding, my eyes half-blinded with dust, and my strength nearly gone.

‘The Emperor! Take me to the Emperor!’ I gasped to the first person I met. ‘It is life or death!’

I was conducted into the presence of a chamberlain, who sought to impose all sorts of obstacles.

‘You cannot see his Majesty now. I dare not intrude upon him. He is closeted with the Archdukes. It is a Habsburg Family Council.’

‘My God!’ I cried out. ‘You have given me ten thousand reasons for insisting! If it costs my life, I must interrupt his Majesty.’

My violence cowed the official. He conducted me, or, in fact, supported me, for I was almost too weak to stand, to the door of the Council Chamber.

‘Go in, if you must,’ he said. ‘For my part, I dare not announce you.’

I turned the handle of the door, and staggered into the room.

The spectacle which met my eyes was dazzling. In a blaze of light all the Archdukes of the Imperial House, wearing their uniforms and robes of State, were grouped in a semicircle, facing a throne on which the representative of the Cæsars was seated in his Imperial mantle, wearing the great Double Eagle Crown of Austria. Before him, on a footstool, knelt a handsome lad of fifteen, in whom I had no difficulty in recognising the Archduke Karl, the destined successor to the throne.

At the moment I burst in I saw the venerable Emperor raise his hands to his head, lift up the Imperial Crown, in which the huge diamonds and rubies and sapphires sparkled like founts of fire, and hold it poised in the air over his young kinsman’s bent head. In another second it would have rested on the boy’s brow, and Francis-Joseph would have ceased to reign.

‘Pardon!’

My voice rang out like the hoarse scream of a drunkard. I tottered forward and fell on my knees, while the Emperor half rose from his throne, still grasping the great crown in both hands.

‘Pardon, sire! At this hour a Russian army of eighty thousand men is encamped upon the soil of Austria!’

Francis-Joseph sank back on his seat, and mechanically replaced the diadem on his own head.

* * * * *

The explanations which followed between the two Governments were not communicated to me. But I learned through my friends the gipsies that the discovery of the motor, and my subsequent flight gave the alarm to the Russian War Office. The invading force retired as stealthily as it had come, and all vestiges of its having crossed the frontier were so speedily and skilfully effaced that if Count Lamsdorff fell back on a denial of the truth, it is probable that the Austrian Government found itself unable to press the charge.

So the evil day has been postponed; for, as long as Francis-Joseph reigns over the Dual Monarchy, Russia will be content to bide her time.

In the meanwhile I have been informed that a warrant has been issued against me, in the Russian courts, for the murder of the sentry whose fate I have described.

IX

THE DEATH OF QUEEN DRAGA

It is with painful feelings, and only after long consideration, that I have resolved to lift the veil from the tragic mystery which surrounds the fate of the Queen who perished under the knives of assassins in Belgrade in the month of June 1903.

The hesitation I have felt in approaching this melancholy story is due to reasons of a personal character. Many years before, when the late Queen of Servia occupied a private station, it was my lot to meet her, and to fall under the spell of that fascination which this extraordinary woman possessed over men, and which will cause her to be remembered in history with Helen and Cleopatra, and all those enchantresses who have involved kingdoms in ruin by their charms.

I had no right to suppose that the Countess, as she then was, distinguished me from the crowd of those who paid homage to her; but yet it seems as though I had in some manner inspired her with a feeling of confidence and regard warmer than that usually felt by any woman for a man who is neither her lover nor her kinsman.

I believe myself to be the only survivor of the tragedy who possesses the key to that strange and terrible career, and that in imparting my knowledge to the world I am discharging what has become a sacred duty to the dead.

With this apology I will come straight to the history.

It was some years since I had seen or heard anything of the Countess Draga, though, of course, I was aware, in common with all well-informed students of contemporary politics, of the passion which she had inspired in the young King of Servia, when I was astonished by receiving one day a private letter from her, imploring me to come to Belgrade at once to advise her on a matter of the highest importance.

I lost no time in obeying the summons, by which I was singularly moved, since there is only one thing which can ever be of the highest importance to a woman.

It was in the courtyard garden of an old stonewalled Servian house--more like a fortified farmhouse than a private mansion--that the revelation burst on my ears which was so soon to startle the capitals of Europe.

A fountain plashed into a marble basin strewn with rose leaves, and the faint scent of myrtle and lemon blossom came from the curtain of shrubs which screened the gateway in the thick grey wall. The beautiful woman whose name was the object of maledictions throughout a continent, reclined on a low couch heaped with Oriental cushions, and fixed her dark eyes on me with a tragic intensity of appeal, as she confessed her secret.

‘I need the advice of a disinterested friend, one who stands apart from the intrigues which centre round the Servian throne.’

I sat upright on the French chair provided for me, and gazed down at her, outwardly calm and stern as ever, but gripping the throttle of emotions whose strength none can know but myself.

‘My advice will be disinterested in one sense,’ I answered slowly. ‘I care nothing for the plots and conspiracies which, under the name of politics, serve as a substitute for the old brigandage of the Balkans. But I am interested in your happiness.’

The Countess Draga let her eyelids fall for a moment as a quick spasm of pain crossed her face.

‘Do not let us speak of my happiness,’ she said in low tones. ‘It is of Alexander I must think.’

I folded my arms across my chest, and said nothing.

‘He has asked me to be his Consort.’

I did not succeed in quite concealing the astonishment with which I heard this piece of news, as yet unsuspected by Europe, and for which my friend Baron Rothschild would gladly have paid 1,000,000 francs.

‘I refused him,’ the Countess added; ‘I have refused him not once but twice, but he persists.’

‘Kings ought to marry kings’ children,’ I observed, as she seemed to wait for some expression of opinion from me.

‘Add that boys ought to marry girls and not grown women, and you will say what the world will say as soon as it hears of this,’ she returned, with some bitterness. ‘That is what I have told Alexander; and he has sworn upon the crucifix in my presence that he will marry only me.’

‘Leave Servia. Spend a year on the Riviera--or in Paris’--she glanced swiftly at me as I said this--‘and he may change his resolution.’

The Servian’s reply startled me.

‘I cannot. At this moment I am under secret arrest.’

‘Under arrest?’

‘You forget that Alexander has made himself master, and that reasons of State cover a great deal in Servia which they would not cover in France.’

I was staggered. A stranger situation I had never encountered in all my strange experience.

‘He holds you a prisoner till you consent to become his Queen!’

‘Till I become his Queen,’ she corrected.

I sat still for a minute, considering. The chancelleries and the public of Europe would never believe this story. They would think, they were already thinking and saying, that the Countess was an adventuress, luring the young King to his ruin.

‘There is one very simple solution,’ I said at last. ‘I will arrange your escape.’

‘Impossible!’ she sighed.

I frowned.

‘Pardon me, my dear Countess, but when you did me the honour to consult me, I assumed that you had some confidence in my ability. I offer to take you wherever you wish to go.’

‘You misunderstand me, my dear friend. I do not doubt your power to release me. But my flight would become a public event; Alexander has too little self-restraint to keep silence about it. I should thus damage him as much as by accepting the throne which he offers me. He has sworn, moreover, that if I persist in my refusal, he will abdicate.’

With what sophistries will a woman deceive herself where her heart is concerned! And how worse than useless is it to reason with her.

‘You have told me enough,’ I answered, in a voice which was melancholy in spite of myself. ‘I perceive that this young monarch is not indifferent to you.’

The lovely Servian lowered her glance, and began picking a rose to pieces with her delicate fingers.

‘He is my King,’ she murmured. ‘He is the last of the dynasty of Obrenovitch, which my family have served faithfully for a hundred years. The one thing which alarms me most in the whole situation is that I have been urged to accept the King’s hand by Colonel Masileff.’

‘Colonel Masileff?’

‘Who is understood to be the secret head of the party in favour of Prince Peter Karageorgevitch.’

I now understood the seriousness of the affair, since it was clear that whatever step was favoured by the supporters of the Karageorgevitch claimant must be fraught with some danger to the Obrenovitch.

‘Is Alexander aware of this fact?’

‘I have told him, but he considers it an excuse on my part. Perhaps, if you were to warn him, he might listen to you.’

I did not much relish the task of forcing my advice on a headstrong youth, intoxicated with love and sovereignty. In the end I decided to return from Belgrade through Switzerland and take an opportunity of finding out something about Alexander’s rival for the Servian crown.

But the ways of women are proverbially difficult to calculate.

While I was still lingering in Belgrade, on the look-out for some useful introduction to Prince Peter, the world was startled by the public announcement of the forthcoming marriage of the King and the Countess.

I went at once to wait on the prospective Queen of Servia to tender my formal congratulations. I found her already surrounded by a throng of courtiers, among whom I discerned the lean military figure and vulture nose of the man whom Draga herself had denounced to me a few days before--Colonel Masileff.

So magical is the influence of royalty that I found myself able to detect a difference already in the manner, and even in the very voice, of the woman who had bared her heart to me so short a time before. She was gracious and cordial, but it was the graciousness and cordiality of a Sovereign to a subject, rather than that of a beautiful woman to a man.

Coming away I thrust my arm through that of the formidable Colonel.

‘Have you any commands for Geneva?’ I asked. ‘I shall be there in the course of two days.’

Masileff let himself be surprised.

‘But I thought you were a friend of the Countess?’ he stammered.

‘Certainly--as you are,’ I retorted. ‘It seems to me that the Countess is doing a very good stroke of work for a cause in which you and I are both interested.’

Masileff glanced at me with curiosity.

‘Do you know, Monsieur V----’ (I had not seen cause to disguise my identity on this occasion), ‘that I think you must be more fortunate than I am. That is to say, I think you must possess the confidence of a person who has not yet honoured me by a sign that my services are acceptable to him.’

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ I replied, bowing. ‘Your message shall be delivered in the right quarter.’

I left Belgrade the same night, and two days later found myself in the presence of a quiet, elderly man in a modest apartment near the famous Lake Leman.

I had sent in my card with the pencilled addition: ‘Confidential agent of the Tsar, the German Emperor, and Monsieur Chamberlain.’

I felt sure that the names of the powerful triumvirate who, between them, controlled the destinies of the Old World, would secure me the attention of Prince Peter Karageorgevitch; and I was not mistaken.

The Prince received me with a real or assumed nervousness, and expressed himself anxious to receive any message I might have for him.

‘I have no message of any importance for your Highness,’ I replied, scrutinising carefully the careworn features of the elderly man who sat in front of me. ‘My only message at all is one from Colonel Masileff, which is perhaps not worth your attention.’

‘I have heard of the Colonel, and shall be pleased to hear anything on his behalf,’ the Prince replied cautiously.

‘Colonel Masileff is a little disappointed, sir, that your Highness has not offered him any token of your approbation. He would welcome some sign that you are not indifferent to your friends in Servia.’

Prince Peter looked at me with a glance which, though quiet, was not less searching than my own.

‘I thank you, Monsieur V----. Is that all?’

‘It is the whole of the message, sir.’

‘Again, thank you.’

‘Your Highness does not wish to make me the medium of your answer, perhaps?’ I hinted.

‘There is no answer.’

I perceived that I was dealing with a man of no ordinary penetration and shrewdness. With such men it is always best to come straight to the point and to be frank.

‘And now, sir, for the real object of my visit. I need not tell your Highness that I did not come to Geneva to oblige Colonel Masileff.’

‘That is already quite clear,’ the Prince commented drily.

A remark from which I inferred that it was in the power of Masileff to have given me credentials which would have secured me a very different reception.

‘I have come here, then, to beg for the life of a woman.’

Karageorgevitch started slightly, and began for the first time to look uneasy.

‘I thought you said you had no important message,’ he reminded me.

‘I have none. The woman I speak of is totally ignorant of the step I take in coming here.’

‘Then your interest in the matter is----?’

‘Is personal merely. I make it my private prayer to your Highness that, in a certain event which no longer seems improbable, the life of this woman shall be spared.’

Prince Peter gave an imperceptible shrug, a shrug which said very plainly, nevertheless, ‘I have no motive for obliging you.’

Aloud his Highness remarked--

‘I am strongly opposed to all bloodshed, Monsieur V----. I feel sure there is no reality in the danger you foresee, or I should be as earnest as yourself in wishing to prevent it.’

‘I can say no more, sir; I am here, as I have said, merely in my private capacity. Still, I happen to have rendered important services to some very powerful personages’ (the Prince glanced at the names I had inscribed on my card), ‘and, without being a blackmailer, I feel confident that if I appealed to those personages for their influence on behalf of a righteous and honourable cause, I should not be refused.’

Prince Peter rose to his feet, and walked twice up and down the room before replying.

‘It is evident to me,’ he said at length, ‘that you have a strong personal interest in the new Queen of Servia, and that you are a man who is to be trusted. That being so, I will explain to you frankly my position. I have friends in Servia who desire to see the restoration of my dynasty, and derive much confidence from the misconduct of this youth in whom the Obrenovitch line terminates.

‘Their reports reach me regularly, and I am therefore able to anticipate their plans to some extent. But I have resolved that if I am ever to seat myself on the Servian throne, I must keep my hands clean. For that reason I have never committed myself by approving any of the measures contemplated on my behalf.

‘If Masileff really told you he never heard from me, he told you the actual truth. I have never yet returned any answer to any of the communications I receive almost weekly from Belgrade. To that rule I must adhere. All I can promise you is this, that if hereafter I receive any information which convinces me that the life of the Countess Draga is in danger, I will at once break silence, and send a peremptory order to my friends that she is to be allowed to leave the country in safety.’