It is with painful feelings, and only after long consideration, that I have resolved to lift the veil from the tragic mystery which surrounds the fate of the Queen who perished under the knives of assassins in Belgrade in the month of June 1903.

The hesitation I have felt in approaching this melancholy story is due to reasons of a personal character. Many years before, when the late Queen of Servia occupied a private station, it was my lot to meet her, and to fall under the spell of that fascination which this extraordinary woman possessed over men, and which will cause her to be remembered in history with Helen and Cleopatra, and all those enchantresses who have involved kingdoms in ruin by their charms.

I had no right to suppose that the Countess, as she then was, distinguished me from the crowd of those who paid homage to her; but yet it seems as though I had in some manner inspired her with a feeling of confidence and regard warmer than that usually felt by any woman for a man who is neither her lover nor her kinsman.

I believe myself to be the only survivor of the tragedy who possesses the key to that strange and terrible career, and that in imparting my knowledge to the world I am discharging what has become a sacred duty to the dead.

With this apology I will come straight to the history.

It was some years since I had seen or heard anything of the Countess Draga, though, of course, I was aware, in common with all well-informed students of contemporary politics, of the passion which she had inspired in the young King of Servia, when I was astonished by receiving one day a private letter from her, imploring me to come to Belgrade at once to advise her on a matter of the highest importance.

I lost no time in obeying the summons, by which I was singularly moved, since there is only one thing which can ever be of the highest importance to a woman.

It was in the courtyard garden of an old stonewalled Servian house—more like a fortified farmhouse than a private mansion—that the revelation burst on my ears which was so soon to startle the capitals of Europe.

A fountain plashed into a marble basin strewn with rose leaves, and the faint scent of myrtle and lemon blossom came from the curtain of shrubs which screened the gateway in the thick grey wall. The beautiful woman whose name was the object of maledictions throughout a continent, reclined on a low couch heaped with Oriental cushions, and fixed her dark eyes on me with a tragic intensity of appeal, as she confessed her secret.

‘I need the advice of a disinterested friend, one who stands apart from the intrigues which centre round the Servian throne.’

I sat upright on the French chair provided for me, and gazed down at her, outwardly calm and stern as ever, but gripping the throttle of emotions whose strength none can know but myself.

‘My advice will be disinterested in one sense,’ I answered slowly. ‘I care nothing for the plots and conspiracies which, under the name of politics, serve as a substitute for the old brigandage of the Balkans. But I am interested in your happiness.’

The Countess Draga let her eyelids fall for a moment as a quick spasm of pain crossed her face.

‘Do not let us speak of my happiness,’ she said in low tones. ‘It is of Alexander I must think.’

I folded my arms across my chest, and said nothing.

‘He has asked me to be his Consort.’

I did not succeed in quite concealing the astonishment with which I heard this piece of news, as yet unsuspected by Europe, and for which my friend Baron Rothschild would gladly have paid 1,000,000 francs.

‘I refused him,’ the Countess added; ‘I have refused him not once but twice, but he persists.’

‘Kings ought to marry kings’ children,’ I observed, as she seemed to wait for some expression of opinion from me.

‘Add that boys ought to marry girls and not grown women, and you will say what the world will say as soon as it hears of this,’ she returned, with some bitterness. ‘That is what I have told Alexander; and he has sworn upon the crucifix in my presence that he will marry only me.’

‘Leave Servia. Spend a year on the Riviera—or in Paris’—she glanced swiftly at me as I said this—‘and he may change his resolution.’

The Servian’s reply startled me.

‘I cannot. At this moment I am under secret arrest.’

‘Under arrest?’

‘You forget that Alexander has made himself master, and that reasons of State cover a great deal in Servia which they would not cover in France.’

I was staggered. A stranger situation I had never encountered in all my strange experience.

‘He holds you a prisoner till you consent to become his Queen!’

‘Till I become his Queen,’ she corrected.

I sat still for a minute, considering. The chancelleries and the public of Europe would never believe this story. They would think, they were already thinking and saying, that the Countess was an adventuress, luring the young King to his ruin.

‘There is one very simple solution,’ I said at last. ‘I will arrange your escape.’

‘Impossible!’ she sighed.

I frowned.

‘Pardon me, my dear Countess, but when you did me the honour to consult me, I assumed that you had some confidence in my ability. I offer to take you wherever you wish to go.’

‘You misunderstand me, my dear friend. I do not doubt your power to release me. But my flight would become a public event; Alexander has too little self-restraint to keep silence about it. I should thus damage him as much as by accepting the throne which he offers me. He has sworn, moreover, that if I persist in my refusal, he will abdicate.’

With what sophistries will a woman deceive herself where her heart is concerned! And how worse than useless is it to reason with her.

‘You have told me enough,’ I answered, in a voice which was melancholy in spite of myself. ‘I perceive that this young monarch is not indifferent to you.’

The lovely Servian lowered her glance, and began picking a rose to pieces with her delicate fingers.

‘He is my King,’ she murmured. ‘He is the last of the dynasty of Obrenovitch, which my family have served faithfully for a hundred years. The one thing which alarms me most in the whole situation is that I have been urged to accept the King’s hand by Colonel Masileff.’

‘Colonel Masileff?’

‘Who is understood to be the secret head of the party in favour of Prince Peter Karageorgevitch.’

I now understood the seriousness of the affair, since it was clear that whatever step was favoured by the supporters of the Karageorgevitch claimant must be fraught with some danger to the Obrenovitch.

‘Is Alexander aware of this fact?’

‘I have told him, but he considers it an excuse on my part. Perhaps, if you were to warn him, he might listen to you.’

I did not much relish the task of forcing my advice on a headstrong youth, intoxicated with love and sovereignty. In the end I decided to return from Belgrade through Switzerland and take an opportunity of finding out something about Alexander’s rival for the Servian crown.

But the ways of women are proverbially difficult to calculate.

While I was still lingering in Belgrade, on the look-out for some useful introduction to Prince Peter, the world was startled by the public announcement of the forthcoming marriage of the King and the Countess.

I went at once to wait on the prospective Queen of Servia to tender my formal congratulations. I found her already surrounded by a throng of courtiers, among whom I discerned the lean military figure and vulture nose of the man whom Draga herself had denounced to me a few days before—Colonel Masileff.

So magical is the influence of royalty that I found myself able to detect a difference already in the manner, and even in the very voice, of the woman who had bared her heart to me so short a time before. She was gracious and cordial, but it was the graciousness and cordiality of a Sovereign to a subject, rather than that of a beautiful woman to a man.

Coming away I thrust my arm through that of the formidable Colonel.

‘Have you any commands for Geneva?’ I asked. ‘I shall be there in the course of two days.’

Masileff let himself be surprised.

‘But I thought you were a friend of the Countess?’ he stammered.

‘Certainly—as you are,’ I retorted. ‘It seems to me that the Countess is doing a very good stroke of work for a cause in which you and I are both interested.’

Masileff glanced at me with curiosity.

‘Do you know, Monsieur V——’ (I had not seen cause to disguise my identity on this occasion), ‘that I think you must be more fortunate than I am. That is to say, I think you must possess the confidence of a person who has not yet honoured me by a sign that my services are acceptable to him.’

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ I replied, bowing. ‘Your message shall be delivered in the right quarter.’

I left Belgrade the same night, and two days later found myself in the presence of a quiet, elderly man in a modest apartment near the famous Lake Leman.

I had sent in my card with the pencilled addition: ‘Confidential agent of the Tsar, the German Emperor, and Monsieur Chamberlain.’

I felt sure that the names of the powerful triumvirate who, between them, controlled the destinies of the Old World, would secure me the attention of Prince Peter Karageorgevitch; and I was not mistaken.

The Prince received me with a real or assumed nervousness, and expressed himself anxious to receive any message I might have for him.

‘I have no message of any importance for your Highness,’ I replied, scrutinising carefully the careworn features of the elderly man who sat in front of me. ‘My only message at all is one from Colonel Masileff, which is perhaps not worth your attention.’

‘I have heard of the Colonel, and shall be pleased to hear anything on his behalf,’ the Prince replied cautiously.

‘Colonel Masileff is a little disappointed, sir, that your Highness has not offered him any token of your approbation. He would welcome some sign that you are not indifferent to your friends in Servia.’

Prince Peter looked at me with a glance which, though quiet, was not less searching than my own.

‘I thank you, Monsieur V——. Is that all?’

‘It is the whole of the message, sir.’

‘Again, thank you.’

‘Your Highness does not wish to make me the medium of your answer, perhaps?’ I hinted.

‘There is no answer.’

I perceived that I was dealing with a man of no ordinary penetration and shrewdness. With such men it is always best to come straight to the point and to be frank.

‘And now, sir, for the real object of my visit. I need not tell your Highness that I did not come to Geneva to oblige Colonel Masileff.’

‘That is already quite clear,’ the Prince commented drily.

A remark from which I inferred that it was in the power of Masileff to have given me credentials which would have secured me a very different reception.

‘I have come here, then, to beg for the life of a woman.’

Karageorgevitch started slightly, and began for the first time to look uneasy.

‘I thought you said you had no important message,’ he reminded me.

‘I have none. The woman I speak of is totally ignorant of the step I take in coming here.’

‘Then your interest in the matter is——?’

‘Is personal merely. I make it my private prayer to your Highness that, in a certain event which no longer seems improbable, the life of this woman shall be spared.’

Prince Peter gave an imperceptible shrug, a shrug which said very plainly, nevertheless, ‘I have no motive for obliging you.’

Aloud his Highness remarked—

‘I am strongly opposed to all bloodshed, Monsieur V——. I feel sure there is no reality in the danger you foresee, or I should be as earnest as yourself in wishing to prevent it.’

‘I can say no more, sir; I am here, as I have said, merely in my private capacity. Still, I happen to have rendered important services to some very powerful personages’ (the Prince glanced at the names I had inscribed on my card), ‘and, without being a blackmailer, I feel confident that if I appealed to those personages for their influence on behalf of a righteous and honourable cause, I should not be refused.’

Prince Peter rose to his feet, and walked twice up and down the room before replying.

‘It is evident to me,’ he said at length, ‘that you have a strong personal interest in the new Queen of Servia, and that you are a man who is to be trusted. That being so, I will explain to you frankly my position. I have friends in Servia who desire to see the restoration of my dynasty, and derive much confidence from the misconduct of this youth in whom the Obrenovitch line terminates.

‘Their reports reach me regularly, and I am therefore able to anticipate their plans to some extent. But I have resolved that if I am ever to seat myself on the Servian throne, I must keep my hands clean. For that reason I have never committed myself by approving any of the measures contemplated on my behalf.

‘If Masileff really told you he never heard from me, he told you the actual truth. I have never yet returned any answer to any of the communications I receive almost weekly from Belgrade. To that rule I must adhere. All I can promise you is this, that if hereafter I receive any information which convinces me that the life of the Countess Draga is in danger, I will at once break silence, and send a peremptory order to my friends that she is to be allowed to leave the country in safety.’

I thanked the Servian prince for this pledge, which was all I had any right to expect. The claimant to a Crown could hardly be asked to veto all attempts on his behalf on the mere chance that some of them might endanger the lives of the reigning family.

I returned to Paris, and sought to distract myself in my work from brooding over the tragedy which seemed to be shaping itself in the Servian capital.

As we had both foreseen, Queen Draga incurred the obloquy of the world by marrying Alexander. Her reputation was sacrificed to his, and I believe that she deliberately posed as the instigator of all his violent and injudicious measures, in the hope of acting, so to speak, as a conductor of the popular wrath, and thereby saving her husband.

Had she been able at the same time to wean Alexander from his wild passion for herself, he and his dynasty might have been preserved. It is the charitable view to take that the young King was not fully responsible for his acts at this time. The distressing circumstances of his bringing-up, the fatal inheritance of his father’s example and influence, render it impossible to regard Alexander Obrenovitch as a normal young man.

The long period of suspense which I passed through, while watching from Paris over the safety of the Queen of Servia, was at last put an end to by a cypher telegram from the agent whom I had stationed in Belgrade unknown even to Draga herself.

‘Death of King fixed for next week. Queen must be persuaded to fly at once.’

The despatch reached me just half an hour before the departure of the Oriental express, into which I flung myself panting as it began to glide out of the station.

My agent, warned from Vienna, met me as I alighted in Belgrade.

The pallor of his countenance told me that he had bad news to communicate.

‘The worst—instantly!’ I exclaimed, in Polish, a language I have taught to all the most trusted members of my staff.

‘Nothing has happened,’ he stammered out. ‘But I tried to give a hint to the Queen; she has passed it on to her husband. The conspirators have learned that suspicion has been aroused in the Palace; and——’

‘And what?’ I seized him by the wrist.

‘The assassination is to be carried out to-night, instead of next week.’

‘To-night!’

Exhausted as I was by the long journey, this news almost broke me down. I had to lean against my agent for support.

The poor wretch, conscious that he had blundered disastrously, dared not meet my eye, and I felt him trembling.

It is my maxim never to be angry with an employee except for bad faith. If an agent of mine blunders or breaks down I consider the fault is mine for having intrusted him with a task beyond his powers. Besides, there are no perfect instruments. In my own career I have made two mistakes.

Therefore I assured the unfortunate man that all was well, since Queen Draga was yet alive. We went together to the house in which my agent had been residing for some time in the character of correspondent of the Havas Agency. There I assumed the Servian dress which he had had the forethought to prepare for me, and, disguised as a sous-officier, I set off for the Palace.

My military uniform naturally inspired confidence in the sentries, those in the plot no doubt supposing that I was so, also.

I made my way round to a side entrance, suitable to my apparent station, and there, by my agent’s advice, asked to see Anna Petrovitch, the waiting-maid who had shared the Queen’s fortunes for many years.

I was admitted without any demur, and presently Anna herself appeared. She took me apart into a small chamber apparently used by the upper servants of the Palace, and asked me what I wanted.

‘I must see the Queen immediately, in private,’ I answered.

‘You cannot do that. Her Majesty is just sitting down to dinner. What is your name; and what do you want to see her about?’

‘My name does not matter. I come as a friend, and I bring her Majesty a message from one who wishes her well.’

I knew that if this woman were really in Draga’s confidence these words would not fall unheeded.

‘Cannot you tell me something more? I will try to get you an audience as soon as dinner is over, provided I am sure that you are a friend.’

‘Listen!’ I bent forward and whispered in her ear. ‘Have you ever heard the Queen mention a certain Monsieur V——?’

The woman gave a start of joy, impossible to be feigned.

‘You come from him?’

I bowed.

‘Then I will endeavour to let the Queen know at once. In the meantime, follow me.’

Anna conducted me up one of the back staircases of the Palace and along a corridor, till we arrived at a door, which she unlocked with a key taken out of her pocket.

I found myself in a small bedroom, humbly, but comfortably furnished.

‘This is my own room. The Queen’s boudoir is reached through that door,’ she explained, pointing to it. ‘Wait here, and excuse me if I take the precaution of locking you in.’

‘Stay,’ I said sharply. ‘In situations like this I trust no one. Give me the key, and I will lock myself in, and open to your knock.’

The servant made no objection, and a signal was arranged between us; after which she stole away, leaving me there in the gathering dusk, with the fate of a kingdom trembling in the balance.

Of my feelings during the next half hour it would be useless to speak. Murder, red-armed and tiger-eyed, was whetting its knife against the bosom of the woman whom I would gladly have died to save. And I could do nothing but stand there and gaze furtively through the window for the first sign of the approaching cyclone.

At the end of thirty eternal minutes the expected knock came at the outer door. I took out my loaded revolver, cocked it, and advanced to the threshold.

‘Who is there?’

‘The Queen’s friend,’ came the expected answer.

I unlocked the door, opened it just widely enough to admit the waiting-maid, and promptly shut and locked it again.

‘The Queen knows you are here, but she dares not leave the table for another half hour. At the end of that time she will be in her boudoir, and will admit us.’

I took out my watch, and cursed each dilatory hand.

‘Is the danger so pressing, then?’ asked the frightened woman.

‘I do not know how pressing it is,’ I answered gloomily. ‘I cannot even be sure that Queen Draga will be suffered to leave that table alive.’

‘Oh, you are mistaken there!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘My mistress is safe. She has had a private assurance that she will be allowed to flee.’

‘Has she fled?’ I retorted. I thought I knew Draga better than her servant did.

Silence followed. The knowledge that Prince Peter had evidently contrived to give orders on behalf of the Queen, in the event of violence being employed, soothed me to some extent. Nevertheless, a sad and terrible presentiment warned me to expect the worst.

A low scratching on the inner door, that leading into the Royal boudoir, told us that the victim was still alive. A bolt was withdrawn, and the next moment I found myself in Queen Draga’s presence.

It was the same woman whom I had left a few years ago, in the full bloom of her womanhood, but how changed, how stricken! The harassed brow, the hunted look in the eyes, the grey streaks in the hair, all told me what the difference had been between the lot of the Queen and the simple Countess.

‘You are from Monsieur ——?’ she whispered.

I drew myself up. Recognition flashed in her eyes.

‘You are Andrea!’

That word repaid me for everything. I went down on one knee, and pressed her offered fingers to my lips.

It was only by the light of the moon that we were able to see each other. Anna was moving towards the key of the electric lamps, but the Queen forbade her with a gesture.

‘Now, tell me, what is it?’

‘You must this very minute put on Anna’s dress, and leave the Palace with me. We shall go straight to the railway, where my agent has by this time chartered a special train.’

Draga drew back unconvinced.

‘The assassination is fixed for next Tuesday,’ she declared.

‘It is fixed for to-night.’

‘To-night? You must be mistaken.’

I smiled bitterly.

‘The Tsar of Russia has never said that to me, madam.’

‘But how?—when?—Your own agent told me—if he was your agent——’

I waved my hand impatiently.

‘All that was true three days ago, madam. Your Majesty told King Alexander, and the conspirators have advanced the hour in consequence.’

For the first time the heroic woman turned pale, and began to tremble.

‘At what hour to-night is it?’

‘I have not ascertained. For ought I know the assassins are at this moment surrounding the Palace. There may be just time for you to leave.’

‘But the King! Alexander! My husband!’

‘I do not think there will be time for him to leave as well,’ I said gravely.

Queen Draga threw one hand across her breast with a superb defiance.

‘I do not go without my husband, sir.’

I was torn between admiration and despair.

‘I should have done better to remain in Paris, I perceive,’ I said sullenly.

‘On the contrary, dear Andrea, I, who know you so well, know that you have the heroism of soul to save the man you hate at the prayer of the woman you love.’

I stood thunderstruck, while she crossed the room into the adjoining bedchamber, and sounded a silver bell.

‘Inform his Majesty that I desire to see him very particularly as soon as possible.’

The servant who had answered the bell bowed and withdrew, with startled looks, from which I was inclined to suspect that he was in the pay of the assassins. Fortunately, he had not been able to see me where I stood.

The Queen now began hurriedly to change her dress for one more suitable for the emergency. Meanwhile there was no sign that her message had reached Alexander.

‘You have been betrayed, madam,’ I observed at last. ‘That servant was a traitor. I saw it in his face.’

Draga uttered a cry of despair.

‘You, Anna, you go and bring the King here at all costs.’

Anna darted out of the room.

The Queen, too terribly anxious to go on with her own preparations for flight, paced the room like a lioness listening for the approach of the hunters.

Five minutes passed—ten minutes—a quarter of a year! Then a step was heard in the adjoining room, and the young King of Servia, his dark face flushed with wrath, strode in.

‘What is all this? Are you trying to frighten me, Draga?’

He saw me and stopped, at the same time putting his hand to his side where his sword should have been. The weapon was missing, perhaps by accident.

‘This is our best friend, Alexander. He has come to save us. The assassins have changed their plans, and will be here to-night. A special train has been got ready, and if you can leave the Palace in disguise, all will be well.’

The ascendency of a powerful intellect in the moment of danger made itself felt. Alexander looked about him, half-dazed, as the poor youth well might be, by the ghastly imminence of the peril.

‘What disguise can I wear?’ he demanded, in a choked voice.

‘Change clothes with your valet,’ the Queen replied, with feminine quickness. ‘This gentleman affirms that he is one of the conspirators.’

‘Constantine! Impossible! I do not believe it.’

Draga wrung her hands.

‘I cannot save him. He is obstinate!’ she sobbed.

The sob conquered the stubborn narrow mind which would have resisted all argument. Alexander darted into his dressing-room, from which the valet was just trying to escape.

Seizing the man by the throat, Alexander dealt him a blow on the temple which deprived him of his senses. I had followed his Majesty, and I now stripped the valet while the King hastily undressed. While the King was assuming the disguise thus provided for him, I carried the insensible man into the bedroom, and placed him between the royal sheets.

At this moment the white face of Anna Petrovitch appeared in the doorway beyond.

‘They are coming! I see them outside in the courtyard.’

‘Quick, quick!’ burst from the lips of Queen Draga, whose self-possession seemed almost unnatural. And she pushed her husband towards the door of his own dressing-room.

‘This way?’ he exclaimed, his mind unable to keep pace with hers.

‘Yes. You are Constantine. You are in the plot, remember. You must let them in to kill your master, who is asleep.’

I shuddered. My suspicion—for it was hardly more—was going to be fatal to the valet.

‘Go with him,’ Queen Draga added, turning to me. ‘I am safe. I need neither protection nor guidance. He needs both. I adjure you, Andrea!’

Swept away by the torrent of her impetuosity, I followed Alexander to the dressing-room.

Draga herself came to the door, and closed it softly after us.

We were just in time to meet a party of a dozen soldiers, headed by Colonel Masileff himself.

Stepping past the young King, who was shaking like a leaf, I whispered in Masileff’s ear—

‘Be quiet, or you will awake him. He is lying on the bed, drunk.’

The soldiers filed in past us, not one casting so much as a glance at our faces, shrouded by the darkness.

The moment the last man had stepped across the threshold of the dressing-room, I took Alexander by the arm and drew, or rather dragged, him out into the corridor, and down the great staircase of the Palace.

We passed out unquestioned. It did not occur to one of the men whom we found outside that Masileff could have missed his prey.

My uniform was enough to disarm suspicion, for it was that of a regiment in which every man had sworn on the Gospel not to let Alexander escape alive. My agent had served me well.

We found him at the station. The special train was ready, with steam up, waiting for the signal to place us in safety on the soil of Austria.

I made Alexander take his seat in the meanest compartment, while I waited outside the station for the appearance of the two women.

I waited a long time.

From the town, all buried in darkness, there came sounds of tumult and exultation, which must have shaken the heart of the young man in the train.

It was not till I had been there for nearly three-quarters of an hour that I saw one female form creeping feebly along the road towards the station.

I darted out to meet her, and uttered an oath.

Anna Petrovitch fell weeping into my arms, with the doleful cry: ‘Queen Draga is dead! Queen Draga is dead!’

Five minutes later I had placed the desolate creature in the train, and we were speeding on our way to Vienna.

It was in the train that I learned the few particulars that Anna had to tell. But I had already guessed the nature of the catastrophe.

Another party of soldiers, headed by a personal enemy of the Queen’s, had invaded the Royal suite through the waiting-maid’s room at the instant that Masileff and his men burst into the bedroom where the valet was lying insensible. Whether Draga’s life might really have been spared or not, it is impossible to say. The heroic woman’s resolution was instantly taken. She knew that if the valet were recognised there would at once be a hue and cry, and that the King would be pursued and probably taken; and she resolved to give her life for her husband’s. She cast herself on the inanimate form lying on the bed, concealed the face in her arms, and allowed herself to be stabbed by a dozen bayonets.

Of the savage details of the murder I dare not trust myself to write. To those who know how thin is the veneer of civilisation on the Southern Slaves, how faint is the moral difference between some of these so-called Christians and their Mohammedan neighbours, it will not come as a surprise to learn that when the bloodhounds desisted from their work there was no longer any possibility of recognising either of their victims.

Of the young King, and what has become of him since that hideous night, I intend to say no single word. Of her who perished, let no man henceforth say anything but good.