Belgrade and everybody in it pride
themselves on their up-to-date Parisian style. Everybody lives in the
Parisian way. Army officers, whose pay is infinitesimal, all live
like Russian Grand Dukes. How they are able to manage this on the
official Servian army salaries of 65 cents a day would naturally
puzzle an outsider. The answer is, Russian gold. It buys anything
and everything south of Budapest. It cannot buy in Montenegro where
patriotism is supreme, nor can it buy what it wants among the Osmans.
To be sure it can buy the Turk; but there is a vast difference between
an Osmanly and a Turk.
Through my lavish expenditure of money, I soon was a marked person and
courted by all the gay officers of the capital. One of their number
was a Major Schuvealoff. A _bon vivant_ and gambler, was Major
Schuvealoff, with the tastes of a Grand Duke. On a mission of this
kind a secret agent always likes to find a man who is "fast." I knew
the Major to be in the Russian pay. Kowalsky tipped me off to that.
I knew that it was from him I could get everything I wanted, even
though he was taking the Czar's gold.
Into the gay life of Belgrade I plunged a-hunting, the Major the
quarry. I gave a series of dinners at the Hotel de Paris. After the
dinners there was gambling. I always lost to the Major. He lost to
others but I was careful never to win from him. He fell into the way
of dropping around at my quarters.
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