"I held my silence, and spent a dull and thoughtful Sunday in the great London hotel. Had I remained in Bucharest, as was my duty, and handed the document in Petkoff's handwriting to the King's Messenger, who was due to pass in the Orient express, the dainty Olga could never have obtained sight of it. This she knew, and for that reason had told me the story of her torture in the prison at Riga and urged me to save her. Zekki, knowing that I constantly carried the secret declaration of Bulgaria in the belt beneath my clothes, saw that only by my unconsciousness, or death, could they obtain sight of it. Hence the dastardly plot to kill me, frustrated by the utterance of the password of the Turkish spies themselves. "It is useless for a man to cross swords with a pretty woman where it is a matter of ingenuity and double-dealing. With the chiefs of the Foreign Office absent, I could only exist in anxiety and dread, and when I acted it was, alas! too late. "Inquiries subsequently made in Constantinople showed that the house in which Zekki had received me, situated near the konak of Ali Saib Pasha, was the headquarters of the Turkish Secret Service, of which the sallow-faced scoundrel was a well-known member, and that on the evening of the day of my return to London the body of Nicholas, the Montenegrin _kavass_ who saved my life, had been found floating in the Bosphorus. Death had been his reward for warning me! "Readers of the newspapers are well aware how, two months later, as a result of Turkish intrigue in Sofia, my poor friend Dimitri Petkoff, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, was shot through the heart while walking with me in the Boris Garden. "Both Bulgarian and Turkish Governments have, however, been very careful to suppress intelligence of a dramatic incident which occurred in Constantinople only a few weeks ago. Olga Steinkoff, the secret agent employed by the Sublime Porte, was, at her house in the Sarmaschik quarter, handed by her maid a beautiful basket of fruit that had been sent by an admirer. The dainty woman with the childlike face cut the string, when, lo! there darted forth four hissing, venomous vipers. Two of the reptiles struck, biting her white wrist ere she could withdraw, and an hour later, her face swollen out of all recognition, she died in terrible agony. "The betrayal of Bulgaria and the assassination of Petkoff, the patriot, have, indeed, been swiftly avenged." CHAPTER SEVEN. THE SIGN OF THE CAT'S-PAW. Another part which the Prince played in the present-day drama now being enacted in Eastern Europe brought him in touch with "The Sign of the Cat's-Paw," a sign hitherto unknown to our Foreign Office, or to readers of the daily newspapers. At the same time, however, it very nearly cost him his own life.