‘It is an expensive thing to buy information from the Council of State,’ he grumbled. ‘You are right, sire. And the higher one goes, the more expensive it becomes. It is clear that this move has been engineered by persons who are able to manage the Tsar himself, and such persons are not likely to sell their own game for much less than a million roubles.’ Abdul Hamid quivered at the mention of this sum as though I had demanded one of the eyes out of his head. ‘Why should I go to this expense?’ he objected. ‘I have already told you that I am not going to disarm.’ ‘The question is whether you are willing to see Germany and Austria disarm, leaving you to face Russia single-handed. Surely it is worth a hundred thousand pounds to Turkey to prevent her allies from falling into such a trap.’ The Sultan still hesitated. ‘How do I know that I shall get anything in return, if I trust you with this money?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘Your Majesty must judge me by what I have done already. Two days ago you had never heard my name. Now I am here alone with you, with a loaded revolver in my pocket’--the Sultan started violently--‘discussing the secrets of your foreign policy. Does that look as though I were a fool?’ The Commander of the Faithful sat silent, attentively regarding me for some minutes. Finally he dismissed me, promising to consider my proposal. [Illustration: “‘Your Majesty must judge me by what I have done already. Two days you had never heard my name. Now I am here, alone with you, with a loaded revolver in my pocket.’ The Sultan started violently.”] I withdrew, confident that Abdul would consult his all-powerful favourite, and that Muzaffir would see that I got my way. A week later I was back in Paris, with an autograph letter from the Sultan to his Ambassador in Russia, and a draft on the Ottoman Bank which I took the precaution to exchange for a letter of credit from a private Parisian banking firm to the Ephrussis of Petersburg. My intention was to go to Russia in the character of a French financial agent, the representative of a syndicate of Paris bankers, on the look-out for profitable concessions from the Government of the Tsar. In this way I hoped to be able to approach influential persons without exciting suspicion, and to ascertain their corruptibility before exposing my secret object. In order to play this part it was not necessary for me to indulge in any actual deceit. As a matter of fact the demand for foreign capital to develop Russian properties is a steadily increasing one, and I had no difficulty in meeting with financiers willing to constitute me their agent, to inquire into the character of some of the undertakings submitted to them. The only person I proposed to take into my confidence was the Turkish Ambassador in Petersburg, on whom I relied for information as to the personal influences at work in the Russian Court.