The days passed. From the first morning of my arrival I found myself as before in a vortex of gaiety; invitations to the Legations poured in upon me, cards for dances here and there, receptions by members of the Cabinet, and official dinners by the British and French Ministers, while daily I spent each afternoon with my friend, Colonel Mayhew, the British military attaché, in his comfortable quarters not far from our Agency.
All the while, I must here confess, I was working my cards very carefully. I had sounded my friend, Petkoff, the grave, grey-haired Prime Minister—the splendid Bulgarian patriot—and he was inclined to admit the British proposals. The Minister of War, too, was on my side. German agents had approached him, but he would have none of them. In Bulgaria just then they had no love of Germany. They were far too Russophile.
Indeed, in this strenuous life of a fortnight or so I had practically lost sight of the ugly old gentleman who had been addressed by the passport-officer as his Highness. Once or twice I had seen him wandering alone and dejected along the streets, for he apparently knew nobody, and was having a very quiet time, Greeks were disliked in Sofia almost as much as Turks, on account of the Greek bands who massacre the Bulgars in Macedonia.
One night at the weekly dance at the Military Club—a function at which the smart set at Sofia always attend, and at which the Ministers of State themselves put in an appearance—I had been waltzing with the daughter of the Minister of the Interior, a pretty dark-haired girl in blue, whom I had met during my last visit to Bulgaria, and the Spanish attaché, a pale-faced young man wearing a cross at his throat, had introduced to me a tall, very handsome, sweet-faced girl in a black evening-gown trimmed with silver.
A thin wreath of the same roses was in her hair, and around her neck was a fine gold chain from which was suspended a big and lustrous diamond.
Mademoiselle Balesco was her name, and I found her inexpressibly charming. She spoke French perfectly, and English quite well. She had been at school in England, she said—at Scarborough. Her home was at Galatz, in Roumania, where her father was Prefect.
We had several dances, and afterwards I took her down to supper. Then we had a couple of waltzes, and I conducted her out to the carriage awaiting her, and, bowing, watched her drive off alone.
But while doing so, there came along the pavement, out of the shadow, the short ugly figure of the old Greek Vassos, with his coat collar turned up, evidently passing without noticing me.
A few days later, when in the evening I called on Mayhew at his rooms, he said:
“What have you been up to, Martin? Look here! This letter was left upon me, with a note asking me to give it to you in secret. Looks like a woman’s hand! Mind what you’re about in this place, old chap! There are some nasty pitfalls, you know!”