‘And why?’ I demanded bluntly, throwing myself back in my chair.
The Russian statesman looked at me for a minute, as though trying to
make up his mind whether it would be of any use to offer me a false
excuse. I prepared to listen to something about the obligations of
international honour and good faith.
‘Suppose I were to tell you that I am acting under the confidential
instructions of my own Emperor, who lacks the courage to put his veto
on the policy of the Grand Dukes?’
‘In that case your object can be attained much more simply. Procure
me a line in the handwriting of Nicholas II. to Francis-Joseph, and I
undertake to deliver it, and to burn it afterwards with my own hand.’
The Russian heaved a sigh of amused resignation.
‘You are too deep for me, M. V----. Very well, then, I will tell
you.’ He bent forward and lowered his voice. ‘Russia is not ready to
strike. A war now would mean the bankruptcy of the Empire. The others
will not believe this, but I know it. I will not have my carefully
laid plans shattered by them, for the sake of a miserable province
like Galicia.
‘I am a statesman, not a pettifogger. With my railways I am reaching
forward to clutch the great Empires of Asia. China is already within
my grasp; India is being drawn closer year by year. When a thousand
millions of men obey the sceptre of the Tsar, these petty European
States will fall like ripe plums into our lap.’
The Russian spoke with real emotion. If I still retained any faint
misgiving, it was not enough to restrain me from accepting the
service required of me.
Within three days I found myself in the palace of Schönbrunn.
Of all my clients Francis-Joseph is the most unapproachable. Modern
ideas of democratic equality find little encouragement in the
Austrian Court. After the friendly bonhomie of the German Kaiser,
and the tactful kindness of the King of England, the Austrian
sovereign’s manner affects one disagreeably: it is like touching a
lump of ice. Yet, according to his lights, the Emperor is gracious
and even cordial, especially to those who approach him in his private
hours.
I found him in his favourite room overlooking the Park. His Majesty
did not invite me to be seated in his presence, an omission which
indicated no unfriendliness.
‘I am pleased to receive you, monsieur,’ he said in a clear, stately
voice. ‘The services you have rendered me entitle you to ask for an
audience, and I have no doubt your reason for seeking it is a proper
one. Be good enough to state it.’
‘I have taken the liberty of asking for this audience in order that I
might offer your Majesty certain information about your forthcoming
abdication.’
The Emperor could not repress a slight start. Lifting his eyebrows,
he gazed at me steadily in the face.
[Illustration: “The Emperor could not repress a slight start.”]
‘I have communicated my _desire_ to abdicate,’ he said with a
significant intonation, ‘to six persons only. Two of them are brother
sovereigns; two are members of my own family; the other two are
the Chancellor of the Empire and the Prime Minister of Hungary.
Through which of them did you receive your information?’
‘Not one of the persons in your Majesty’s confidence has the
slightest idea that I have heard anything whatever on the subject. I
must respectfully beg your Majesty not to press me further.’
The aged Emperor was evidently much disturbed.
‘If what you say is true--and I do not doubt your word--the
information must have reached you through an intermediary. That is to
say, my purpose is known to at least eight persons, in short, to the
whole world.’
I held my tongue. It is the art by which I have learned most of my
secrets.
After a few minutes’ silent consideration, during which the frown on
his face steadily deepened, his Majesty looked at me again.
‘What do you wish to tell me?’
‘I wish to put your Majesty on your guard.’
‘You have done that already, most effectually,’ he interrupted.
‘I have come to beg you to distrust the assurances you have received,
no matter from what quarter, that your Majesty’s abdication will
pass off quietly. And if I should be so fortunate as to possess your
confidence, I would further request your Majesty to employ me on the
service of ascertaining what the intentions of your neighbours really
are.’
The Emperor perceived that I was keeping something back.
‘In what directions do your suspicions point?’ he inquired sternly.
‘Chiefly to Russia,’ I answered with intentional vagueness.
‘You are mistaken, I believe. You cannot know the nature of the
assurances I have received. Besides, I am well acquainted with the
position of Russia. M. Witte is the man who counts in the Russian
Government, and he is all for peace. He needs time to develop his
plans. The country is nearly insolvent. However much the war party
may desire to make a snatch at Galicia, they will not be allowed to
do so.’
‘Will your Majesty pardon me if I venture to make a proposition? I
will undertake to ascertain the actual state of things at my own
risk. If I am able to report that my suspicions are unfounded, your
Majesty shall make me no acknowledgment whatever.’
Francis-Joseph threw me a displeased look.
‘I regret that you should have permitted yourself to speak to me in
that way, monsieur. Be good enough to remember who I am. I do not
employ servants without paying them. Your former services give you a
claim to consideration; your position and character entitle you to be
treated seriously; and I am not going to reject your present request.
You may consider yourself retained to make this investigation. Have
you anything else to say?’
This acceptance of my offer, glacial though it was, consoled me
for the rebuke by which it was accompanied. Nevertheless, as I
left the Emperor’s presence, I regretted that he had not been more
frank with me. It was no doubt my own reticence which provoked this
corresponding reserve on his Majesty’s part. But the result might
have been unfortunate.
It will be noticed particularly that although the Emperor had
practically admitted that it was his intention to vacate the throne,
he had refrained from giving me the smallest hint as to the _date_ of
the abdication.
I took my way towards the Galician frontier in the character of a
British tourist, armed with a sheaf of the coupons of Messrs. Cook. I
was aware that this disguise would serve better than any other as a
cloak for prying and impertinent questioning.
Galicia, I need hardly say, is that part of Poland which fell to the
share of Austria in the famous partition of the eighteenth century.
Bitterly as the Poles hate the Russians, the two peoples are allied
in language and blood, and Russia has always looked forward to
incorporating the whole of the ancient realm of the Jagellons in her
own dominions in course of time. The break-up of the Dual Monarchy
would naturally be the signal for Russia to execute her designs on
the Polish province of the Habsburgs.
In Galicia itself I found everything in a state of the most profound
peace and security. There was the usual frontier garrison, but
the camps showed no signs of special activity. I toured along the
frontier almost from end to end, in a motor which I had ordered from
Paris, and I came upon great stretches of country, several miles in
extent, where a whole Russian army corps could have crossed the line
without being observed, far less opposed.
At the end of this inspection, which lasted about a week, I crossed
over to the Russian side.
I found myself received without apparent distrust. The legend of
the mad Englishman on his motor-car had no doubt preceded me. The
Russians do not dislike Englishmen, as individuals, in the way they
dislike Germans. At all events I had no difficulty in making friends
with many of the officers in command of frontier posts. They offered
me hospitality, and showed no resentment at my somewhat daring
exploration of their frontier.
At the first blush, everything seemed as peaceful on this side as on
the other. The number of troops under arms was not excessive, and the
men showed none of those signs of suppressed excitement which warn an
experienced eye that some movement is in contemplation.
Presently, however, I began to remark an extraordinary number of
telegraphic despatches arriving at the various posts. Special
messengers seemed to come and go with a frequency that hardly seemed
necessary in time of peace. At last, one night, I was roused from
sleep by a sound which my ears were quick to recognise. It was
the muffled rumble of an artillery train passing over the rough
paving-stones of the small town in which I had stopped for the night.
I got up, softly drew back the curtain of the window, and cautiously
peeped out. There, in the moonlight, rolled by gun after gun,
followed by the caissons and all the supplementary outfit of a park
of artillery.
They were heading southward, and the frontier lay only three miles
away. I counted six batteries--thirty-six guns--the equipment of an
army corps. When all had gone by I retired to rest again.
I rose at break of day, took out my car, and followed in the route
of the cannon. The road conducted me without a turning straight to
the frontier post, where I found a sleepy Russian sentry exchanging
friendly greetings with a still drowsier Austrian one. A short way
beyond stood the Austrian guard-house, with the men lounging on a
bench outside the door in the sunlight, waiting for their coffee.
Everything was as if my vision of the night before had been a dream.
I turned my car round, and drove back slowly, scrutinising every
hedge and tree along both sides of the road. Less than a mile from
the post my attention was caught by a place on the left hand side,
where the hedge appeared to have been mended or replanted. I ought
to explain that the road was bordered at this point by a thick wood
apparently impenetrable to anything bigger than a stoat.
I stopped the car, got down, and approached the hedge, examining
every inch of the ground.
The first discovery I made was that the road itself had been recently
mended. Creases in the surface, like the ruts made by heavy wheels
in turning, had been filled up, and the dust from other parts of the
road carefully raked over the spot.
Then, looking closely at the hedge, I perceived that the bushes were
no longer growing in their place. The entire hedge had been cut
away level with the ground for a space of several yards, and then
replaced, the matted bushes being wired together so as to form a sort
of gate or hurdle, like the furze hurdles in common use in England
and other countries. The leaves were already beginning to droop from
want of the nourishment supplied by the roots.
I drew up my car close to the hedge, and, mounting upon it, managed
to scramble over into the wood, at the cost of some scratches.
I found myself in the midst of a pile of brush-wood which extended
for some paces, completely covering the soil from view. Immediately
beyond came a gap in the trees, not in front, but at one side, so
that it was quite invisible from the road. Turning sharply towards
the frontier, and running almost parallel with the high road, was a
grassy drive or lane, about ten feet wide, and sufficiently free from
undergrowth to admit the passage of an army.
With my heart thumping against my ribs, and almost holding my breath
in my excitement, I stole along this path, which revealed, by a
hundred tokens, that it had recently been used for heavy traffic. I
followed its windings for I should think a mile and a half, when I
found myself brought up abruptly by a post and rail fence, the posts
being painted yellow on the side which faced me, and black on the
reverse.
This fence was the boundary between the two empires. A narrow
footpath bordered it on each side, so that the patrol might pass
along it each day on his rounds.
As for the artillery, it seemed to have disappeared, to have been
swallowed up by the earth.
I looked round me in all directions. The woodland road by which I
had reached the frontier stretched away on the other side of the
fence. This was in itself a suspicious sign. It scarcely seemed
likely that two independent drives would have been constructed so as
to meet in the heart of the forest, unless there was some traffic
meant to pass that way. All at once the explanation burst upon me. It
was a smuggler’s route!
The high tariffs of the Russian and Austrian empires have fostered an
important contraband traffic. The soldiers who patrol the frontier
are easily bribed by a share in the gains of the smugglers. What the
Russian War Office had done was to bribe the smugglers in their turn
to act as its allies in this strange invasion.
I have used the word invasion. Unless my deductions were wholly
false, the thirty-six guns which I had seen passing my window in the
night were by this time actually planted on the soil of Austria.
I sprang over the fence, and hurried forward on the still clearly
revealed track.
At the end of an hour from my first entrance into the forest, my ear
caught a low murmur which warned me that I was drawing near to some
kind of encampment. Striking from the lane into the wood, I advanced,
creeping from tree to tree. But I have had few opportunities of
learning woodcraft, and there were keener ears, and more stealthy
footsteps than mine in the forest. Suddenly I felt a powerful hand
gripping my throat, a dark cloth descended over my eyes, and I was
thrown violently to the ground.
I did not lose consciousness, while I was lifted up by the feet and
shoulders, and carried a distance which I calculated at two hundred
paces. After some twisting and turning I was set down, and the cloth
was taken off my head. I sat up and looked round.
I found myself in a small hut or wigwam of boughs and woven rushes,
surrounded by half a dozen dark-faced men who squatted between me
and the doorway, the only opening by which light was admitted. One
glance at my captors satisfied me that they were neither soldiers nor
Russians. Reassured on this point I prepared to defend myself boldly.
The head man of the party appeared to be an old fellow with a short
grey beard, who might have passed equally well in the uncertain light
for a Wallach, a Slovene, a gipsy, or a Jew, but certainly not for
an honest man of any race. Addressing myself to the chief of the
smugglers, as I conceived him to be, in Polish, I asked--
‘Why have you dared to treat me like this?’
‘He is a Pole!’ The muttered exclamation solved my doubt as to the
race of the smugglers. The language they used between themselves was
Romany.
‘What were you doing in our wood?’ the old gipsy asked threateningly.
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.
[Illustration: “I rode right over him.”]
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.’