CHAPTER XIII.
PREPARING FOR THE CAMPAIGN.
I don’t know any place where money talks with such effect as in the southeast of Europe; and I made it talk for all it was worth during the week that I was getting ready to go to Belgrade.
I reckon that when you want to gain an end the chief means are to know quite definitely what you want, to grip on it with all your teeth, to pay liberally for what you must know to gain it, and to hold your tongue and let the other man do the chattering. You may also at need have a stalking horse.
I used one now in the campaign to win Gatrina. I was hit very hard when she told me the barrier between us was no less than her chance of succeeding to the Servian throne; but I wasn’t knocked out. On the contrary, the bigness of the barrier soon ceased to frighten and began to attract me. I meant to win her; and to go to Belgrade to do it. But I shut that purpose away in the strongest safe in my thoughts with a time lock which would only open to let it out when the fitting moment arrived. What I said was that I was going to Belgrade in regard to a big loan which that little kingdom was just then particularly anxious to float.
It served me well. Any man who was going to put his money into such a venture would naturally want to know things; and, if some of the points on which I sought information did not seem to have any connection, there were plenty of people ready to give it, and none to bother with my motives, so long as I chose to foot the bills.
I was well served by my agents, and inside the week I knew far too much to let me dream of trusting a nickel to the Servian exchequer, but quite enough to enable me to go to Belgrade and play the part of a representative of a group of American capitalists with amiable financial intentions.
I knew other things, too. Secrets, many of them, about intrigues that were in progress against the Servian rule and government. And a nice mess of unhealthy pottage they made. One thing I had been particularly urgent to discover—the character of Prince Albrevics. It was anything but cleanly. He was one of those men who learn the commandments pretty thoroughly by breaking every one of them consistently, and then sigh in blase regret that, as there are only ten of them, they have to stoop to repetition in order to live comfortably.
My money began to talk that same evening in Samac.
Soon after Gatrina had started on her journey, I surprised the depot folk at Samac with a request for a special train. I looked a pretty object to travel special, no doubt; and at first they laughed and were for hustling me out of the place as a lunatic. But I soon had them hustling with a very different purpose. Money did it. And inside of five minutes the station master himself, a lean hungry looking Austrian, had put himself absolutely at my disposal and was working all he knew to figure out the best means of getting me through to Vienna.
I said I would start in an hour and a half, and having sent a wire in cypher to my agent in Vienna to help matters on at that end, I went to Karasch, and with him rode back to Poabja to get the priest’s help in straightening things out in the matter of that Austrian officer.
He did not give me a very pleasant reception.
“You have been to Samac?” he asked.
“I have just come from there.”
“Then why do you come to me?” he asked with cold austerity.
“Not to say I’m sorry for having gone there, but to get you to render me a service.”
“You have seen—” he paused, and I filled in the words for him.
“The Princess? Yes.”
“Did she send you to me?”
“No.”
“I can do nothing for you,” he answered, as if to close matters.
Then I let the money talk. I counted out the sum which I thought would be necessary for paying a search party and also such an amount as I guessed he would be glad to have for his church and his poor; and laid them on the table in two heaps.
“This is for the church and your poor; and this is for you to disburse for me;” and I described very briefly what I wanted done.
“Are you thinking to bribe me?”
“Nothing of the kind. The Princess is involved in this matter of the Austrian, and for her sake as well as mine the thing must be arranged. She knows what passed at the camp and would, of course, testify if necessary. But I can take care of myself when I get to Vienna; and I am going there to-night by special train.” I added the last detail as an impressionist money argument.
“Who are you?”
“I am an American citizen; and nothing else matters just now. This is more for the Princess Gatrina than for me. She had to be saved, and I couldn’t do it with kid gloves on.” He thought over this.
“It is either a right or a wrong thing you are asking of me. If right I do not desire to be paid for it; if wrong, I am not to be bribed to do it;” and he pushed back toward me the money I had offered him for his church.
“It’s clean money,” I said, getting up. “You needn’t be afraid. Keep it untouched until you are satisfied it is clean and then use it, or not, as you please. I should like to have a report of what you do.”
“To whom shall I send it?”
“To me. You heard my name—Burgwan—and can send to that name under cover to this address in Vienna;” and I wrote the name of a man so well known that he started.
“Baron Burndoff, the great banker.”
“Yes, the banker,” I repeated; “and my friend.”
“I don’t understand it,” he murmured, half to himself.
“There is one other little favour you might render me. I need badly a fresh suit of clothes. Could you tell me how to get one?”
“I do not furnish disguises, sir,” he answered, so curtly that I almost smiled, as I retorted, suavely:
“I am sorry to have caused you to say discourteous things.”
He drew himself up. “I am not concerned for your feelings. I am acting for the Princess Gatrina;” and he bowed stiffly and formally to dismiss me. But I noticed that he kept both the sums of money; and I went out satisfied that he would do what was necessary and I was well pleased at the result.
On the ride back to Samac I made a discovery. I was somewhat at a loss what to do with Karasch. Staunch and brave he was undoubtedly; but there was very much of the rough diamond about him. I could not quite see how he was going to fit himself into the routine of my service.
“What would you like to do, Karasch?” I asked him.
“Follow you and serve you,” he replied simply and promptly.
“I don’t think you quite understand what that implies; and I wish you to do so. I live thousands of miles away, in America; and I expect to return there soon.”
“When you have done with me, you can turn me away. I am your man.”
“You are too good a fellow for me to turn you away. But the life I live is not like that in the camp yonder. I’ve had as much of that just now as I want. Life in a city is a very different thing and you might find it cramping.”
“Do you wish me to leave you? You have but to speak.”
“You don’t understand me. I owe you a debt which nothing I can do for you will ever repay. But I can do something toward it. If you can think of any kind of life you’d like to lead, I’ll see that you have the chance. If you’d like to be gentleman at ease, I’ll find you the means.”
“A gentleman at ease? What’s that?”
“To have enough money to live upon without working for it.”
He swore good humouredly, and asked with a laugh: “Do you think I want to do nothing?”
“Well, if you’d like to work I’ll buy you a house and some land for you to cultivate, and you can choose where.”
“I have chosen.”
“Well?”
“To serve you,” he replied, earnestly.
“You must think a heap of me in that case,” I laughed.
“I do,” he said, in just the same grave, decided tone.
“I’m afraid you won’t like the city life, Karasch.”
“If I don’t I can leave it. But I’ve lived in one.”
“Where?”
“Belgrade.”
“Are you a Serb then? Georgev said you were Bosnian.”
“I am a Serb; and Georgev is a fool.”
“So you’ve lived in Belgrade, have you?” I said as a thought occurred to me. Did he know who Gatrina was? “How did you come to change so toward—toward Mademoiselle?”
“She told me something about herself when you got that crack on the head.”
“You didn’t tell me?”
“She made me promise not to speak.”
I had been pretty blind, it seemed.
“Do you know who she is?”
“No. Only that she’s a great lady in Belgrade.”
“Did she tell you how she fell into the hands of those men?”
“No; she does not know. She was carried off and believed she was in the hands of the brigands, and that they would hold her for a ransom. But I could find out.”
“How?”
“I know Belgrade and I know the friends of the men with her.”
“How would you get the information?”
“Quickest to buy it.”
Money was to talk again. “How much?” I asked.
“They were to have three thousand gulden if they got her to Maglai. Not getting a kreutzer, they’ll be ready to sell the whole scheme for less than half.”
“Would you go to Belgrade?”
“I’ll go anywhere you send me.”
“You shall go there at once and wait for me. I shall be there in about a week. I am going first to Vienna; and you must use the interval to get this information for me. Lose no time and pay whatever is necessary. I’ll give you some money and send you more. But, mind, we must have the truth—whatever it costs.”
“They know me too well to deceive me,” he answered. “I shall have it all in less than a week; and have the men as well, at your service, if you want them.” And so it was settled.
Money had talked when we reached Samac, and the special was ready for us. I took Karasch with me as far as Maria-Theresiopel, where I was to catch the mail to Vienna, and he to get the train to Belgrade; and on the journey I discussed the matter with him fully and gave him such directions as were necessary.
“Mind, not a word about me until we meet in Belgrade,” was my last parting injunction; and for the rest of the journey I slept almost until Vienna was reached.
A very full week was the week that followed; and money was talking every minute of it, while I gathered the information I needed and pieced it together for the campaign I had before me.
It was just a big bluff I put up about that Servian loan; and played it well enough to convince all who came near me that I meant it right along. It was easy to prove that I and those who were behind me in the States had the dollars and could put them on the table. That was true; but the bluff was to make folks believe me soft enough to accept the security and vouch for it to others.
My attitude was that of the typical Missouri man. “Show me” was my one text. “Prove to me the thing is sound, and I’ll find the money right now;” and the very strenuousness of the efforts to persuade me was in itself enough to have made even a plunger suspicious.
But I kept a very stiff upper lip; and when I raised difficulties, hinted at concessions that should be made, and asked for facts in regard to other matters, I was at last referred to Belgrade direct. This was what I wanted; and I consented to go there; but not without making a show of reluctance.
In the meantime I heard from Father Michel that he had been successful in arranging all the difficulties in connection with the affair at the camp. The Austrian official had exaggerated matters to me that night in declaring there were dying men there. No one had died; and the injured men had first been so frightened with the threat of prosecution for their part in the abduction that the money I had left for them had been accepted with very grateful surprise.
Captain Hanske had very naturally resented his rough handling, and, breathing many threats of what his government would do, had forwarded a very furious report to Vienna.
His superior was dining with me the day after the report was received, and had done himself very well indeed when he referred to the matter.
“You know a priest named Father Michel in Poabja, an out-of-the-way hole in Bosnia, don’t you, Mr. Bergwyn?” he said with a very suggestive smile.
I affected to think. “Poabja? Poabja? Whereabouts is it?”
“A few miles from Samac—the point on the frontier where the line ends; and where one might at a pinch get a special train; if for instance one was in a hurry to leave the district.”
He intended me to know by that, of course, that my movements had been traced.
“I think I had a friend who once went there,” I replied.
“This may be about him;” and he pulled out the report and gave it me and took another cigar and a fresh drink, as I glanced through the paper. It was a duly garbled official misdescription of what had occurred that night and represented the captain as having fought valiantly against great odds until he had been overpowered.
“He seems to be a valiant fellow, this agent of yours,” I said. “And this—how is he called? Burgwan, is it?—must be a desperate character?”
He laughed. “Singular name, isn’t it? Very much like yours.”
“Now you mention it, so it is. But, of course, it isn’t my name;” and I smiled in my turn.
“Of course not. A strange story, though. Do you think your—friend would know anything about it?”
“I shouldn’t be in the least surprised. I’ll find out. By the way, your man seems to have been roughly handled. Don’t you think he ought to be promoted in some way?”
“Promotion is slow, you see. Do you think you could do anything for him?” he asked, as if the idea had just occurred to him; and smiled again slyly.
“I don’t see how it affects me. Wait, I have an idea. I can tell you how you can do it, and make a pile for yourself at the same time. This camp on the hills he speaks of must be the spot where my friend went prospecting about some mine deposits. He told me there was a fortune waiting there for the man who developed the thing; but he knows the difficulty which a foreigner would have in working it, and has given it up. Why not get hold of the concessions yourself; they can be had for a song; and put this man in charge to carry on the work?”
“It would take money.”
“Oh, there would be no difficulty about that if the thing had official influence behind it—such for instance as yours. The thing’s right. The ore’s there, I know that.”
“You know it?” he put in quickly.
“I’d trust my friend’s judgment as freely as my own.”
“You say a fortune? How much?”
“Oh, anything from half a million gulden upwards.” I spoke airily, as though a few hundred thousand gulden were a matter of comparative insignificance.
He smoked for a while in silence, his brows knitted thoughtfully:
“Would your friend go into it?” he asked.
“It’s the sort of thing I should take up myself right now if I had your influence with me,” I replied.
“You Americans are a wonderful people, Mr. Bergwyn. We’ll speak of this to-morrow. I’ll think it over.”
“It’s worth doing, not only thinking over;” and as I returned him his report I added: “And this man really deserves some sort of compensation.”
He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “He shall have an official letter praising his zeal; and we shall hear no more of that part of it.”
We did talk it over the next day and we fixed up a working arrangement. Then he spoke to me about the Servian loan.
“You’re not going into it, are you?”
“They promise some valuable concessions.”
He paused and said deliberately: “If you’ll take my advice, it is—don’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s too risky.”
“You’ve another reason. What is it?”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand Balkan politics.”
“You mean your government are against the loan?”
“Servia might buy arms, or build railways with the money—neither course to our interests, you know.”
“A bit rough on Servia, isn’t it?”
“We have to think of ourselves, you see. Besides, it isn’t safe for a little country like that to develop too quickly. There’s Russia, too. Two big powers, both closely concerned. Take my advice—don’t.”
“I’m going to Belgrade,” I answered.
“By all means go. You’ll see things then for yourself.”
“What would happen if she got the loan?”
“She won’t get it, Mr. Bergwyn. The government is tottering now—and perhaps the throne. Anything can happen in Belgrade at any time—except the floating of a loan.”
“I shall go to Belgrade. We’re ready to carry risks, you know, when a thing’s right.”
“Oh, yes, by all means go, as I said. They’ll make much of you; but remember when you’re there what I’ve said, in confidence, and—don’t.”
I could judge by the insistence upon this advice that he thought I was still undecided; and as that was just the impression I wished to leave, I said no more.
Two days later I left for Belgrade, where, as my friend the minister had told me, I found them quite ready to make much of me, as a sort of possible financial saviour of the country. I soon saw the influence which I could wield even in regard to the real purpose which took me to the capital.
But even within a few hours of my arrival, and while I was disposed to shake hands with myself for the adroit course which I was managing to steer, I met with an ugly check—most unwelcome and disconcerting.
A large house had been placed at my disposal, and I had breakfasted on the morning after my arrival and was planning my movements for the day, when my man, Buller, brought me a card.
“The Baroness von Tulken.”
I remembered the name. It had been given me as that of a woman of much influence at the court who was said to be taking an important part in political affairs. But I could think of no reason why she should flounce down on me almost at the moment of my arrival. I hesitated therefore whether to see her. But I decided I would. If time is not too pressing, it is generally best to see people at once and get at the kernel of their business in a couple of minutes, instead of letting them worry you with correspondence.
There was the chance, too, that under the circumstances she might have some information to give or sell; and I was speculating who she might be and what she wanted, as I went to her.
But I knew her the moment my eyes fell on her, before I saw her face; and I started and caught my breath in surprise and some dismay. I could have wished her anywhere in the world except in Belgrade at that particular juncture.
She was looking out of the window as I entered, and when she turned gave me one quick glance.
“Ah, then it is you, Chase,” she cried, as she came toward me both hands extended and uttered my Christian name, with a smile on her handsome face, as though the meeting were just the loveliest thing that ever happened for us both.