ROUMANIA
His Majesty King Charles of Roumania.
CHAPTER I
BUCHAREST OF TO-DAY
My friend the spy—How I was watched through the Balkans—An exciting half-hour—The Paris of the Near East—Gaiety, extravagance, and pretty women—Forty years of progress—The paradise of the idler—Husbands wanted!
My friend the spy picked me up at Rustchuk.
He was a well-dressed, middle-aged man, in a black overcoat with a velvet collar. His face was sharply cut and intelligent, but his dark eyes were set rather too closely together to suit me. Suddenly I recollected having seen the same man in the streets of Sofia a week before. Indeed, I saw him frequently when in the Bulgarian capital, but until I met him that night upon the Danube steamer, between Rustchuk and Guirgevo, the thought never occurred to me that the fellow was persistently following me.
Then, like a flash, each of the occasions I had seen him came back to me. Not only had he followed me in Sofia, but I now recollected having seen him in Belgrade and in Zimony. The fellow was a spy—Austrian without a doubt. It was not my first acquaintance with spies. I had met many of them in the course of my wanderings up and down Europe. Some, indeed, are among my personal acquaintances.
Until you travel in the Balkans, and more especially if you are having interviews with Ministers and officials, you can have no idea of the audacity and activity of Austria’s secret agents. They swarm everywhere. The Grand Hotel at Belgrade is full of them, and in Sofia they also flourish as part of the great secret army which the Austrian Government keeps in the East, from Zimony right down to Constantinople.
It was a bitterly cold night, with slight drizzling rain. The spy was standing on deck in the shadow at a little distance from me. The recollection that I had with me a quantity of official documents given and lent to me by the Servian and Bulgarian Governments was the reverse of reassuring. I felt in my pocket for my revolver. Yes, the handy little weapon was ready for use, in case of necessity.