Busy city, noisy night.

At the famous Vienna State Opera, new plays are premiered and celebrities from all over the city gather here.

After the lights dimmed, the noisy hall suddenly fell silent, and the melancholy music sounded in people's ears, so it seemed that tonight would be a tragedy.

The most ornate box on the second floor was still vacant, a special box for the Austrian Emperor, but as usual, His Majesty the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I still did not arrive.

In the luxurious box adjacent to the emperor's box, a thin old man was breaking off with relish.

His attendant whispered, "Lord Count, Colonel Borg has important information to report to you!" ”

The old man was still looking at the stage, his face did not change at all, he just ordered: "Take him in!" ”

After a while, the attendant led a man in a dark blue military uniform into the box. He walked up to the old man, bent down, and whispered: "Your Excellency Count, according to accurate information, the leader of the Hungarian family, Damen Ferenc, has personally held a meeting with the visiting German envoy today, and the participants are his grandson Ferenc!" ”

"What's so strange about this, the Germans didn't just send envoys to them!" The old man said disapprovingly that, as far as he knew, Germany and the Duchy of Bohemia had exchanged envoys, and that the Germans had been as active in Vienna in the last two days as the Russians.

In order to show his concern, the comer accentuated his tone: "But my lord, the envoy sent by Berlin is Lieutenant General Olge, the commander of the East Prussian cluster!" ”

After hearing this, the old man's attention completely shifted from the stage to the colonel beside him, "Are you sure?" ”

"Yes, this is what our people saw with their own eyes! This afternoon, Gitaffe Lenz also led General Olg around Budapest! After speaking of these circumstances, the Colonel stood aside and waited for the old man's judgment.

The old man hung his head, his eyelids unblinking. The eyeballs were rolling back and forth in their sockets. What kind of person is Olge, the Kaiser appointed him as a special envoy to Budapest, and he also traveled with the grandson of the head of the Hungarian nobility and the candidate for the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the hidden thing in this is naturally not taken lightly by the old man.

After a while, the old man raised his head again, "Send additional people to investigate this matter, I want to know the every move of this henchman of the Kaiserdi in Budapest, and." Report anything unusual to me immediately! ”

"Yes, Lord Count!" The colonel was about to salute and leave, but the old man suddenly asked, "Does the Earl of Parr know about this?" ”

The colonel didn't know how to answer at once, Count Pal is the most trusted attendant of the Emperor, and if he knows, it means that the Emperor knows, so the information of this earl should be quite sensitive, but this is just his own speculation, maybe Count Pal has not heard of this matter at all.

Seeing that his intelligence officer was a little hesitant, the old man had to wake him up: "Find a way to let the earl know, understand?" ”

The poor colonel suddenly realized. "It's the ground. Lord Earl! ”

After this, the old man's eyes returned to the stage, where the plot was getting better.

More than an hour later. At the end of the performance, the lights in the hall were lit up, and the audience stood up and applauded. At this moment, several gunshots rang out from the second floor, and the lights in the theater suddenly dimmed, and the whole theater was suddenly in chaos. By the time the police entered the theater, the theater was empty, and they found the bodies of Count Albert and two bodyguards, a thin old man who was at the heart of the Austrian family, in a luxurious box on the second floor. He was shot in the head and his bodyguards were killed by fatal gunshot wounds.

"Oh God! The Count has been assassinated! The sergeant who led the team was suddenly at a loss for what to do, and when he came back to his senses and asked his subordinates to block the news and report to their superiors, it was too late!

As soon as the news of Count Albert's death broke, the whole of Vienna was shaken!

The assassination of Count Albert, the head of the Austrian family, at this sensitive moment when the royal heir was about to be decided, is reminiscent of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

It was a world war, and what will it bring this time?

The members of the Earl's family were the most angry about this incident, and they immediately expressed their demands to the Austrian government and the central government of Austria-Hungary to severely punish the murderers. Since it is the Austrian family in power. Their influence in Austria is unparalleled, and even the current Austro-Hungarian Emperor is from this family, and the government departments naturally dare not slack off.

Not only that, but Emperor Franz Joseph I, who lived in the deep palace, also learned of the Count's assassination just an hour later, and he immediately ordered the Viennese police department, city defense forces, and the Royal Guard to immediately track down the murderer throughout the city.

Following the orders of the Austrian Emperor, martial law and curfews were imposed in Vienna, which had not been seen since the end of the war.

For a time, the capital of music and civilization became panicked, and all kinds of gossip spread at supersonic speeds, and many different versions evolved as they spread.

Soon after thousands of police officers began to move, groups of neatly dressed soldiers appeared on the streets of Vienna, with dark military hats, tawny rifles and shiny leather boots, the only difference being that there was no such thing as the usual pace of military parades, and only the rapid and more rapid pace and slogans in people's ears.

Soon, the cavalry of the Royal Guard, riding tall horses, also joined the ranks of maintaining law and order and searching for the murderers, but the usually crisp sound of horses' hooves made people feel frightened at this time, and the streets and alleys were filled with a suffocating atmosphere.

Midnight has passed, but the city-wide search is in full swing, and many are destined to spend a sleepless night.

As dawn approached, the government was still clueless about the assassination, and some people began to panic over their black hats.

The sun is rising, police, police dogs, soldiers, and military dogs can be seen everywhere, but no news of solving the case has come

A reward of 1,000,000 CZK for the pursuit of the killer!

After a night of family meetings, the main members of Earl Albert's family rejected Adamas's offer to be the head of the family from now on, but the nobles unanimously agreed to offer a huge reward for the culprit!

For these wealthy aristocrats, 1,000,000 kroner was a small expense, but it was a wealth that a Viennese working class could hardly accumulate in the course of a lifetime. It can be used to buy a nice apartment in the Vienna city or a big farm in the countryside, of course. Ultimately, it is important to be able to make some people sell their personality and dignity.

Just after noon, the person who provided the clue appeared. After confirming that the situation was generally reliable, the Vienna police chief personally led a team to the villa area near the Floritzdorf Bridge, where, according to informed sources, they then targeted a small two-story cottage suspected of being the location of the murderer's hideout.

With a wave of the chief's hand, dozens of policemen quietly gathered around the house, and for the Viennese police, it seemed that the first act of arresting the murderer had broken through the silent air that had enveloped Vienna for nearly 20 hours.

The first to fall was the Viennese policemen, who ended their raid attempt with accurate fire from a distance of 300 meters. In just half a minute, the police killed two and injured two, but they didn't even see the suspect.

After giving up the idea of raiding, the police immediately turned to the attack, and after entering the range of the opponent's pistol, these policemen, who rarely even touched their guns, were knocked down one by one by the opponent's more violent and accurate bullets, and after dropping more than a dozen corpses, the police retreated in embarrassment to the opponent's shooting corner or out of range.

At this time, the police chief also changed his previous tough attitude, and he ordered someone to report to the higher authorities and ask for help from the city defense force. On the one hand, he actively mobilized troops to surround the villa.

Before the arrival of the city defense troops and the Guards. The police who surrounded the suspect lost three more people, and the chief caused most of them to retreat further back, essentially forming a circular encirclement centered on the house with a radius of more than 300 meters. Anyone who enters this area is likely to be fatally sniped by the other side, so a large number of police officers can only watch from afar.

When the Vienna City Defense Commander arrived at the scene, the police were shouting at each other with microphones, but they were still responded to only by cold guns from time to time.

It was cold, but the police chief's face was flushed.

The commander of the city defense took a telescope and glanced at it, and then gave his adjutant the battle order. Five minutes later, soldiers from an infantry battalion charged from the front of the villa, this time for only three or four minutes, after three not-so-loud explosions. The area was completely silent.

The commander of the city defense looked arrogant, and the chief of police was embarrassed.

Soon, the officer who commanded the attack came to report with news of minor injuries and victories, and his soldiers also had a seriously wounded suspect in their pocket. The commander of the city defense didn't say much, but told his soldiers to return with the only living mouth and the bodies of the other four suspects, while the mess was left to the police chief and his men to clean up.

After the city defense troops left, the police chief's behavior was a little confusing, and instead of scolding his subordinates for their incompetence, he asked his subordinates to comfort the families of the deceased.

It was less than half an hour after the end of the arrest operation. The news of the arrest of the murderer spread throughout Vienna. Suspiciously, the citizens cheered when they saw the withdrawal of the troops, as if a decisive victory had been won. But what happened next was far from as simple as one might think – trial, hanging, and then punishing those behind it.

After the arrest of the suspects, martial law in Vienna was temporarily lifted, but the main road to the outside world was still closely monitored by the city guards and the Royal Guard, and those entering and leaving Vienna had to be subjected to very strict checks, as well as all trains entering Vienna before entering the city.

The surprise interrogation took place in the afternoon of the Vienna City Defense Command, and after a rough bandage of the suspect's wounds, the city defense commander asked his men to bring a large number of tortured instruments.

The whip served, and the man's teeth gritted.

The soldering iron was punished, and the man was unconscious for a while.

Tempted by money, the man hesitated again and again, and gave in!

Before dusk, the city defense commander happily entered the palace with the results of the interrogation to meet the Emperor Ao. At eight o'clock in the evening, however, he came out of the palace with a serious face, and then returned directly to his city defense headquarters, after which he refused to meet with anyone on official pretexts, even the nobles of the Albert family who had come to celebrate his exploits were politely declined.

That night, intelligence officers from Germany, Russia, and other countries noticed a movement of the Imperial Army stationed in northern Austria on a certain scale, with about 10 infantry divisions moving from their positions to Bohemia, and finally camping five kilometers from the borders of the principality. The Austro-Hungarian government did not make any statement in connection with this transfer.

At the same time, the main barracks of the Imperial Army in Hungary and Bohemia were suddenly under secret martial law, with officers and enlisted men on call at all times, and no one was allowed to enter or leave the barracks.

It was night, Vienna was calm all night, but the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire was hiding murderous intentions everywhere.

Early the next morning, the central government of Austria-Hungary announced the results of yesterday's investigation and announced that the only surviving murderer had died last night because of his injuries, and that as far as the information was known, the assassin was suspected to be a Serbian regent, and that Austria-Hungary would investigate and arrest the Serbian-occupied territories in an effort to catch the mastermind behind the scenes as soon as possible.

In the morning, the Austro-Hungarian Inspectorate received a report that the head of the Hungarian aristocracy, Damen Ferenc, had accepted foreign political bribes totaling 20 million marks from the German Central Bank to a private account in a Swiss bank, which belonged to the head of the Hungarian nobility, Damen Ferenc.

After a secret investigation, the Imperial Inspectorate quickly verified the situation and soon reported it to the Viennese court.

In addition, the Austro-Hungarian secret police department monitored that the envoy who had arrived in Prague three days earlier had returned to Berlin, while Lieutenant General Ögg of the German Army was still touring around Budapest and was accompanied by Damen Ferenc's cronies, and this information was reported to the Viennese court authorities as soon as possible.

On January 21, 1916, the day before the Austro-Hungarian Empire voted for the crown prince, the heads of Hungary, Bohemia and other states gathered in Vienna, and everyone was looking forward to the next day's vote, but they did not expect that the night before dawn would be extremely strange.

That night, the Austro-Hungarian 77th and 81st Light Infantry Regiments and the Skoop Cavalry Regiment stationed on the outskirts of Prague jointly stormed the Bohemian Palace in the city of Prague, and the main family members, except for the Grand Duke of Bohemia and his eldest son, who had left for Vienna, were placed under house arrest. By daybreak, all of Bohemia was under the control of the Imperial Army, loyal to the Austrian Emperor.

On the same night, five senior Hungarian army generals, including General Noland, General Lassnik, and Lieutenant General Steinfest, suddenly disappeared, and the Hungarian army fell into a leaderless situation for a while. Under these circumstances, no one in the whole of Hungary could lift the secret martial law imposed on the various barracks the day before, and until an order signed by the Austrian Emperor himself, these troops would remain in a state where officers and soldiers were not allowed to go out and outsiders were not allowed to enter.

On the morning of 22 January, martial law was again declared in Vienna.