“We know for an absolute fact that in Netschuinar, a suburb of Sofia, there is a band which is being drilled in the use of arms. We know that these people—Beltcheff’s murderers are among them—have taken an oath to murder me.
“The gang of which I have been speaking consists of Rosareff, Hala, Arnaut, Tufektschieff, and some others. Tufektschieff has been sentenced at Constantinople to fifteen years’ hard labour for the murder of Vulkovitch. Nevertheless he goes about here in safety.
“Velikoff and the other culprits are now at the head of affairs. Stoiloff is nowhere obeyed. Why therefore should not the ‘tyrant,’ the ‘vampire,’ the ‘adulterer’ be assassinated?”
After the appearance of that interview the British agent at Sofia made a determined attempt to obtain from Ferdinand permission for Stambuloff to leave Sofia. He was not successful. All surrounding Ferdinand knew that he laid his plans to be out of Sofia when the blow should fall, and that he would send his sympathy, rejected by the widow, from Carlsbad.
“If that fox should send a wreath, do not let it enter the house,” moaned Stambuloff on his bed of agony. They were his dying words. His right hand, slashed off by his vile butchers, remains, as I have said, unburied to this day. For twenty years the Lesser Czar has walked under the shadow of that dead hand; has walked so warily that the horrid death for which his enemies destine him has not yet overtaken him.
For Ferdinand had taken his precautions long ere he had his enemy done to death by hired braves. He knew he was going to a land where the knife played an important part in affairs of State. “In our future dominions,” wrote the Count de Grenoud, who accompanied him on this journey in disguise to Bulgaria to assume the purple, “people are assassinating each other. I wonder if we shall reach Bulgaria safe and sound?”
It was a consideration which affected Ferdinand powerfully while on the journey; so powerfully that he shook with fright at his first greeting by his future subjects. But he had already taken elaborate precautions against a death with the idea of which he was already familiar.
His interest in chain armour, displayed whenever any fine specimen was brought under his notice, was not merely the enthusiasm of the antiquarian. For years he wore a suit of it under his clothing; for all I know, he wears it still. His craft has not so far failed him that he has become careless of his life.
The apartment at the palace at Sofia which he calls mon fumoir (my den) has walls of steel and a door that can be hermetically fastened by a spring operated from the writing desk. A series of secret signals, known only to the trusted men who surround him, ensures that this door shall only be opened to the men who are safe; or, rather, to the men with whom Ferdinand is safe.
The shadow of the dead pursues him to Euxinograd, where the most elaborate precautions are taken throughout the neighbourhood whenever a royal visit is in progress. He is a haunted man even in his hunting quarters at the monastery of Rilo, where the whole district is policed by the monks in anticipation of the arrival of the kingly sportsman.