”‘I—I was waiting to bid you adieu,’ she answered tamely.
”‘And you were at the same time making yourself acquainted with the contents of that document which I have carried in my belt ever since I left Sofia—that document of which you and your interesting friend, Zekki, have ever since desired sight—eh?’ I exclaimed, bitterly. ‘My duty is to call in the police, and hand you over as a political Spy to be expelled from the country.’
”‘If m’sieur wishes to do that he is at perfect liberty to do so,’ she answered, in quick defiance. ‘The result is the same. I have read Petkoff’s declaration, so the paper is of no further use,’ and she handed it to me with a smile of triumph upon those childlike lips. ‘Arrest or liberty—I am entirely in monsieur’s hands,’ she added, shrugging her shoulders.
“I broke forth into a torrent of reproach for I saw that Bulgaria had been betrayed to her arch-enemy, Turkey, by that sweet-faced woman who had so completely deceived me, and who, after the first plot had failed, had so cleverly carried the second to a successful issue.
“Defiant to the last, she stood smiling in triumph. Even when I openly accused her of being a spy she only laughed.
“Therefore I opened the door and sternly ordered her to leave, knowing, alas! that, now she had ascertained the true facts, the Bulgarian secret policy towards Turkey would be entirely negatived, that the terrible atrocities in Macedonia must continue, and that the Russian influence in Bulgaria would still remain paramount.
“I held my silence, and spent a dull and thoughtful Sunday in the great London hotel. Had I remained in Bucharest, as was my duty, and handed the document in Petkoff’s handwriting to the King’s Messenger, who was due to pass in the Orient express, the dainty Olga could never have obtained sight of it. This she knew, and for that reason had told me the story of her torture in the prison at Riga and urged me to save her. Zekki, knowing that I constantly carried the secret declaration of Bulgaria in the belt beneath my clothes, saw that only by my unconsciousness, or death, could they obtain sight of it. Hence the dastardly plot to kill me, frustrated by the utterance of the password of the Turkish spies themselves.
“It is useless for a man to cross swords with a pretty woman where it is a matter of ingenuity and double-dealing. With the chiefs of the Foreign Office absent, I could only exist in anxiety and dread, and when I acted it was, alas! too late.
“Inquiries subsequently made in Constantinople showed that the house in which Zekki had received me, situated near the konak of Ali Saib Pasha, was the headquarters of the Turkish Secret Service, of which the sallow-faced scoundrel was a well-known member, and that on the evening of the day of my return to London the body of Nicholas, the Montenegrin kavass who saved my life, had been found floating in the Bosphorus. Death had been his reward for warning me!
“Readers of the newspapers are well aware how, two months later, as a result of Turkish intrigue in Sofia, my poor friend Dimitri Petkoff, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, was shot through the heart while walking with me in the Boris Garden.