nothingregarding his engagement to his sister Marion. To it all Sir Charleslistened attentively, without comment.
At last, after a long silence, he said:
"Well, look here, Rolfe. A sudden thought has occurred to me. I thinkit possible that to-morrow, in a certain quarter, I shall be able tomake a confidential inquiry regarding the whereabouts of the Doctor.All that you've told me interests me exceedingly, because I have allalong believed that very shortly Petrovitch was returning to power andjoin forces with Pashitch."
"But didn't they quarrel a short time ago?" Rolfe remarked.
"Oh, a mere trifle. It was nothing. The Austrian press made a greatstir about it, as they always do. All news from Servia emanates fromthe factory across the river yonder, at Semlin. If the journalistsdared to put foot on, Servian soil they'd soon find themselves underarrest, I can tell you. No, the broad lines of policy of bothPetrovitch and Pashitch are identical. They intend to develop thecountry by the introduction of foreign capital. The king himself toldme so at an audience I had a month ago. He then told me, in confidence,that he had invited the Doctor to return and rejoin the Ministry. Thatis why I firmly believe that the poor Doctor, one of the best and moststraightforward statesmen in Europe, has fallen a victim to hisenemies."
"Then you will set to work to discover what is known among theOpposition?" urged the young man.
"I promise you I will. But, of course, in strictest confidence," wasthe Minister's reply. "Petrovitch is my friend, as well as yours. Iknow only too well of the bitter enmity towards him in some quarters,especially among the partisans of the late king and a certain section ofthe Opposition in the Skuptchina. Mention of his name there causescheers from the Government benches, but howls from the enemies of lawand order. There was, some three years ago, a dastardly plot againsthis life, as you know."
"No, I don't know it. I have never heard about it," was Rolfe's reply.
"Ah! he never speaks about it, of course," Sir Charles said,reflectively. "While driving out at Topschieder with his little orphanniece, of whom he was very fond, a bomb was thrown at the carriage. Thepoor child was blown to atoms, the horses were maimed, the carriagesmashed to matchwood, and the coachman so injure that he died within anhour. The Doctor alone escaped with nothing more serious than a cutacross the cheek. But that terrible death of his dead sister's childwas a terrible blow to him, and he has not been since in Belgrade.Because of that, I expect, he has hesitated to obey the king's commandto return to office."
"Awful! I never knew of that. Maud has never told me," said Rolfe."What blackguards to kill an innocent child! Was the man who threw thebomb caught?"
"Yes. And the conspiracy was revealed by me activity of the secretpolice. They made a report to the Minister of Justice, who showed it tome in confidence."
"Then you actually know who threw the explosive?"
"I know also who was responsible for the dastardly conspiracy--who aidedand abetted it, and who furnished the assassins with money and promiseda big reward if they encompassed the Doctor's death!" said the Minister,slowly and seriously.
"You do! Who?" cried Rolfe.
"It was someone well-known to you," was his reply. "The inquiries madeby the Servian secret police led them far afield from Belgrade. Theytraced the conspiracy to its source--a source which would amaze you, asit would stagger the world. And if I am not much mistaken, Rolfe, thissecond plot has been formed and carried out by the same person whosefirst plot failed!"
"A person I know?" gasped the young man.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE.
THE GATEWAY OF THE EAST.
The diplomat would say nothing more. When pressed by Charlie Rolfe hesaid that it was a surmise. Until the truth was proved he refused tospeak more plainly.
"You declare that the plot by which an innocent child died was formed bya friend of mine!" the younger man exclaimed.
"I tell you that such is my firm belief," Sir Charles repeated."To-morrow I will endeavour to discover whether the same influence thatcaused the explosion of the bomb at Topschieder is responsible for theDoctor's disappearance."
"But cannot you be more explicit?" asked Rolfe. "Who is the assassin--the murderer of children?"
"At present I can say no more than what I have already told you," wasthe diplomat's grave response.
"You believe that the same motive has led to the Doctor's disappearanceas was the cause of the bomb outrage at Topschieder?"
"I do."
"Then much depends upon the Doctor's death?"
"Very much. His enemies would reap a large profit."
"His enemies in the Skuptchina, you mean?"
"Those--and others."
"He had private enemies also--secret ones that were even more dangerousthan the blatant political orators."
"Then private vengeance was the cause?"
"No--not exactly; at least, I think not," Sir Charles replied. "Butplease ask no more. I will tell you the truth when I have establishedit."
"I wish I could discover where Maud is. Surely it is strange that thePrime Minister's wife should have said she met her lately here, inBelgrade."
"Maud Petrovitch is not in Servia. I am certain of that point."
"Why?"
"Because her father would never allow her to return here after thattragedy at Topschieder."
"The assassin--the man who threw the bomb. Where is he?"
"In the fortress--condemned to a life sentence," the diplomat answered."He was caught while running away from the scene--a raw peasant fromValjevo, hired evidently to hurl the bomb. He was subjected to asearching examination, but would never reveal by whom he was employed.He was tried and condemned to solitary confinement, which he now isundergoing. You know the horrors of the fortress here, on the Danube,with its subterranean cells--eh?"
"I've heard of them," responded the younger man. "But even that fate istoo humane for a man who would deliberately kill an innocent child!"
"A life sentence in the fortress is scarcely humane," the BritishMinister remarked grimly. "No one has ever entered some of thoseunderground dungeons built by the Turks centuries ago. Their horrorscan only be surmised. To all outsiders, who have wished to inspect theplace, the Minister of Justice has refused admission."
"Then the assassin has only received his deserts."
"The person who formed the plot and used the ignorant peasant as hiscat's-paw should be there too--or even instead of him," declared SirCharles angrily. "The peasant suffers, while the real culprit gets offscot-free and unknown."
"Then he is still unknown?" exclaimed Rolfe in surprise.
"Save to perhaps three persons, of whom I am one."
"And also the man who threw the bomb!"
"I have heard that the solitary confinement in a dark cell alreadyworked its effect upon him. He is hopelessly insane."
Rolfe drew a long breath, and glanced around the cosy room with its longrow of well-filled book-cases, its big writing-table, and its smallertables filled with Japanese bric-a-brac, of which Sir Charles was anardent collector.
In the silence that fell the footman tapped at the door and presented acard. Then Rolfe, declaring that he must go, rose, gripped thegrey-haired Minister's hand, and extracting from him a promise to tellthe truth as soon as he had established it, followed the smart Englishfootman down the stairs.
That night, as he sat amid the clatter and music of the brilliantly litGrand Cafe, he reflected deeply on all that had been told him, wonderingwho was the friend who had been responsible for the outrage, which hadinduced the Doctor to forsake his native land never to return. Serviawas a country of intrigue and unrest, as is every young country. Helooked around the tables at the gay crowd of smart officers with theirribbons and crosses upon their breasts and their well-dressed womenkind,and wondered whether any fresh conspiracy was in progress.
The rule of King Peter--maligned though that monarch had been--hadbrought beneficent reforms to Servia. And yet there was an oppos
itionwho never ceased to hurl hard epithets against him, and to charge himwith taking part in a plot, of the true meaning of which he certainlyhad had no knowledge.
Belgrade is a city in which plots against the monarchy are hinted at andwhispered in the corners of drawing-rooms, where diplomacy is a mass ofintrigue, a city of spies and sycophants, of concession-hunters andpolitical cliques. Gay, pleasant, and easy-going, with its fineboulevard, its pretty Kalamegdan Garden, and its spick-and-span newstreets, it is different to any other capital of Europe; more full oftragedy, more full of plot and counter-plot.
Austria is there ever seeking by her swarm