By midnight all details had been completed, and the truculent corps of more or less intoxicated officers moved stealthily toward the palace gates. After overwhelming a suspiciously weak and pitiful resistance on the part of the guards they tramped across the garden and lawn, burst through the unlocked doors of the _konak_ and scrambled pell-mell up the broad stairs in search of the royal apartments. An officer encountered in the hallway was killed instantly, and a private who offered some slight resistance suffered a like fate. General Petrowitch, loaded revolver in hand, was the next victim, although he endeavoured to conceal the exact whereabouts of the royal couple by leading the crowd to another part of the palace. Needless to say, the King and Queen were awakened by the shots on the stairs and the loud curses of the frantic criminals. How they endeavoured to conceal themselves in their helplessness must have been pathetic indeed. Hurrying from their bed, and still clothed in night attire, they secreted themselves in an adjoining closet which was used as a wardrobe-room by Queen Draga. Here they crouched together, trembling in prayer, while their conspirators raged through room after room, demolishing _bric-à-brac_, overturning tables and chairs, tearing pictures from the walls and looting the palace from top to bottom. Through a window in this closet the luckless King and Queen saw, by the dim, flickering light of the street lamps, a great crowd collect outside the palace gates. They were unable to comprehend why this crowd stood motionless and silent—why they did not rise up, like the devoted and loyal subjects they were supposed to be, and offer assistance. At seven minutes past two a stick of dynamite was applied to the door of the bedchamber, the explosion of which burst the barrier to atoms and stopped a clock which stood upon a mantel in the room. One report has it that the Queen, thinking the officers had departed, owing to a sudden lull in the noise in the bedchamber, foolishly raised the window in the closet and cried to the crowd outside in the street, “You will save your King and Queen.” This action is said to have disclosed to the men the hiding-place of their victims. At all events the latter were discovered cowering in a corner of the closet, praying and pleading for mercy. The Queen was fired upon and killed instantly, and the King, in trying to shield her, fell a victim to the volley of shots hardly a moment later. Not to shrink from fulfilling an oath previously taken by many of the officers, that each would bury the point of his sword in the corpse of the Queen, they mutilated and hacked the bodies beyond recognition. It was found later that the body of Queen Draga bore no less than fifty-seven sword wounds.