Passengers for Kürschdorf by the Orient Express change cars at Munich, which, if the train is on time, is reached at 12.24 on the day following the departure from Paris. On this particular Monday the express was nearly forty minutes late, and, as the connecting train was timed to start at 1.02, the transfer was of necessity accomplished with somewhat undignified expedition. That it was accomplished at all, however, and that the quartet, of which Carey Grey was one, was so fortunate as to secure a compartment to itself, were subjects for mutual congratulation.
The journey from the French to the Bavarian capital had been rife with explanations. To Hope Van Tuyl, Grey had made the entire situation most clear, though he considerately refrained from revealing any feature or incident that would tend to alarm her. In his interview with Minna von Altdorf he had brought to bear all the tact of which209 he was possessed. It was no easy matter for him, in view of his duplicity that day at Versailles, to make her a completely veracious statement of the facts; and it was especially difficult because of her veneration for her great-uncle, the late Herr Schlippenbach, whom Grey could not but regard as an egregious knave.
She had been startled, surprised, pained, and bewildered by turns as he told her the story, but she never once questioned the truth nor doubted the honesty of the narrator.
“I simply can’t understand it,” she said, with distress in her pathetic eyes. “Why should Great-uncle Schlippenbach do such a thing? Why should he? How could he?”
“And I am just as much in the dark as you are,” Grey answered, soothingly. “I have thought it over continually, and I can’t arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. I don’t remember ever having seen him, and why he should have selected me for this great honour—for, after all, it is an honour to be elevated to the throne, isn’t it?” he laughed—“I can’t imagine.”
“We always knew he was eccentric,” the Fraü210lein went on. “He had most marvellous ideas on certain subjects, but I won’t believe he was criminal. He must have been just a little bit insane.”
And then Grey asked her how it came that she joined the little party in London.
“You see, Great-uncle Schlippenbach wrote me that he was going to Budavia and asked me if I would like to go with him and see my sister in Kürschdorf,” she explained. “That was reasonable enough—there was nothing insane about that, was there? My school term had just ended, and it was a question whether I should make my home with my sister over here or return to America with him.”
“And he told you I was your uncle?”
“Oh, yes. You know I have an uncle in New York. His name is Max Arndt. That is true. And he told me that you were he.”
Grey shook his head in token of his perplexity.
“What became of your Great-uncle Schlippenbach’s luggage?” he asked, suddenly, after a pause.
“I have it with me,” the girl answered, frankly. “I shall take it to my sister’s.”
211 “Have you opened it?”
“No. I thought that she and I would open it together.”
“It is possible, you know, that it may contain something that will give us a hint as to his motive in this matter,” Grey said, in explanation of his interest.
“Oh, I do hope so,” the Fr?ulein returned. “I am so anxious about it.”
Grey was on the point of leaving the compartment, when he felt a hand holding the hem of his coat.
“I have just one question to ask,” said the girl as he turned. She was not looking at him, but she still retained her hold.
“Well?” he queried, laconically; and his voice was kindly inviting.
“Would you mind very much if I—that is to say, may I, still, although you are not really, but—may I go on calling you Uncle Max?” The hesitating embarrassment of the first part of her utterance was followed by a nervous blurting of the question in conclusion.
“I shall feel very much hurt, Minna,” Grey212 answered, “if you call me anything else.” And he took the little hand from his coat and pressed it affectionately.
* * * * *
When the train for Kürschdorf arrived at Anslingen, on the Budavian border, there was more than the ordinary delay. There was, moreover, evidence of something unusual in the throng upon the platform and the suppressed excitement of those composing it. Johann, who had sprung out instantly from the third-class carriage in which he and Marcelle were travelling—his object being to secure the passage of the party’s luggage through the Custom House—was at once recognised and besieged by a horde of questioners.
“The Prince!” they cried with one accord. “You are with him, are you not? Where is he? In which carriage? What is he like?” And he had no little difficulty in shaking them off and attending to the business in hand.
By some mysterious means the report had spread, and what was at first mere rumour had later found substantial confirmation in the discovered presence at the station of two distinguished213 personages: General Roederer, Commander of the Budavian army, and Prince von Eisenthal, conservative leader of the Budavian Assembly; each accompanied by a more or less gorgeously uniformed retinue.
Grey, looking from the carriage window, noted the crowd with some little apprehension. He glanced at O’Hara and saw that he too suspected the cause. To the two ladies of the party nothing had been said of the telegram addressed to the name appended to the Lindenwald despatch, and they consequently saw less of significance in the demonstration, though they noted the gathering as extraordinary.
As Grey peered at the constantly increasing throng he wondered whether his message had been ill-considered. He had, in a way, sent it blindly, not knowing whether Ritter was an ally or a dupe of the conspirators, and he had sent it knowing that, in either event, Lindenwald was on the spot to take whatever ground he chose and to use whatever argument he deemed most fitting. If the Captain so fancied he could have him arrested on the charge of being a pretender to the214 throne, and would, armed with that strong-box left by old Schlippenbach, have small difficulty in proving his allegation. For exoneration he himself might appeal to his Government, but as an absconding defaulter he could look for meagre assistance from that quarter. O’Hara had told him it was dangerous business, but he had spurned advice, and now he was face to face with the consequences, whatever they might be. He was a trifle nervous, his heart was beating faster than its wont, and there was a red spot in each cheek; but even while looking on the darkest side of the picture he regretted nothing. This crisis had to be faced in one form or another, and he was glad the moment for facing it had arrived.
There was a movement in the crowd a few yards down the platform. The police were ordering the people back and clearing a lane beside the railway carriages. Grey thrust his head from the window and saw coming down this lane, in company with the train conductor, an army officer in olive green uniform and black helmet. Upon his breast was pinned a rosette of crepe, the insignia of mourning for the dead monarch.
215 At the door of each first-class compartment the two men halted for a second, asked a question and came on. But before they reached the carriage in which Grey was waiting, Johann, who had discerned their object, overtook them and led the way. Meanwhile, though Grey had not spoken, his companions had, intuitively, or by some other occult means, become aware of what was impending, and sat in breathless expectation.
And then, suddenly, before anticipation had been quite dethroned by realization, the officer was saluting, was being joined by his superiors and the rest of their retinues, and Grey was standing erect and dignified, listening to a little formal speech of welcome from the bearded lips of Prince von Eisenthal.
The crowd cheered lustily, of course, and cried: “God save Prince Max!” And a band played the Budavian national anthem. After which, or rather in the midst of which, the Prince and General Roederer entered the compartment with Grey and his friends, their suites finding places as best they could elsewhere, and the train, with much ringing of bells and blowing of whistles, moved216 off into the valley of the Weisswasser, its locomotive now gay with many Budavian flags and streamers of red and white bunting—colours of the royal house of Kronfeld.
Grey’s relief from the tension of uncertainty found expression in an interested animation that impressed Prince von Eisenthal most favourably. He asked many questions concerning the affairs of the little kingdom, both political and commercial, and exhibited a concern over the conservative policy of the late King that was especially pleasing to the leader of the conservative forces. General Roederer, meanwhile, addressed himself to the ladies and Lieutenant O’Hara. He was a bluff but gallant old fellow, with ruddy complexion and iron-grey hair, and he possessed a quaint humour that kept the little company in gay spirits throughout the hour of the trip from the frontier to the capital.
“I am deeply regretful, your Royal Highness,” he said to Grey, as the towers and spires of Kürschdorf came into view, “that we are not at liberty to offer you such a demonstration on your arrival as I should have liked. But His Majesty,217 the late King, you understand, is still above sod, the Court is in mourning, and the Prince Regent deemed it unfitting to give you more than the most informal of welcomes.”
Grey bowed his acknowledgment.
“I am glad,” he said, tactfully, “though I do not fail to appreciate the expression of good will in your desire. The Prince Regent’s views and mine, in this matter, are in perfect accord.”
But, however well the ideas of the supposed heir and the Prince Regent may have coincided, the populace was by no means of the same mind. It is not every day that a Prince of Kronfeld arrives in Kürschdorf—not every day that a new King comes from across the sea to take his place as ruler of his people—and the loyal townsfolk, despite the brevity of time between announcement and arrival, and the expressed opposition of their temporary ruler to anything in the nature of an ovation, hung gay banners amid the mourning drapery of their house fronts, closed their offices and shops and turned out in gala dress and mood to crowd the streets, the squares and the cafés.
218 As the train drew slowly into the railway station Grey leaned over and took Hope’s hand.
“I’ll probably have to leave you for a little,” he said, regretfully, “but O’Hara will see that you get to the hotel, and I’ll try to look in this evening.”
Outside the station a landau, its panels decorated with the royal arms and drawn by six cream-white Arabian horses in glittering, gold-mounted harness, stood in waiting, with coachman, footman and postillions in the purple and scarlet livery of the Court; while thirty yards away, in line along the opposite side of the Bahnhof Platz, was a troop of the King’s Cuirassiers, their breastplates and helmets of silver and gold glinting fiery red in the glow of the sunset.
Cheer after cheer rang out as Grey, with the Prince on his right and the General on his left, passed through the station, followed by the welcoming company that had escorted him from Anslingen, and took his place in the waiting carriage. And, as the little procession of which he was the dominating feature wound through the boulevards and streets of the new town and across the beautiful219 Charlemagne bridge over the turbulent Weisswasser into the more ancient and picturesque quarter of the city, the cheering, it seemed to him, grew louder and more continuous. At one point a group of young girls in white frocks and red ribbons ran out into the roadway to spread flowers in the path of his equipage, and at another a chorus of a hundred students, crowded on the balconies of a Brauerei, greeted his coming with a patriotic glee, sung as only male voices of Teutonic breeding and training can sing choruses.
Grey’s emotions during this drive were novel and complex. There were moments when he almost felt that he was indeed the Prince—not that any marvellous transubstantiation had taken place, but that he had always been so—and that all this homage, this enthusiastic applause and adulation were his by right; and there were moments when his heart grew sick at the fraud, the imposition, the error, and he knit his brows and reproached himself for letting the deception go so far.
The magnitude the affair had suddenly assumed appalled him. Heretofore he had regarded it as a mere personal matter. He had been outraged,220 his honour sullied, his life threatened, and he was justified, he had told himself, in using every means within his power to bring his enemies to book. But he had not perceived the possibilities of permitting this line of investigation to run on unchecked. In a single moment the adventure had become a matter of national import. He was guilty now of masquerading as heir to the throne of a European monarchy. Hitherto the crime lay at the doors of a few conspirators, who, to serve certain nefarious ends of which he knew nothing, had striven to secure for him the crown. In that plot he had personally had no part. Everything had been done without his cognisance or consent; but now it was not they alone who were forcing the scheme to a consummation. He had, practically, for the time being at least, joined hands with them and was passively allowing their plans to be carried out, though fully aware of the impious character of the whole proceeding.
And the enormity of his thoughtless offence was at each foot of the way made more and more apparent by these cheering masses of people. When they should learn that they had been tricked, what221 explanation would serve to assuage their resentment? Love and homage would be turned to hatred and vengeance, and no excuse that he could offer would have any weight against their sense of outraged loyalty.
Then his thoughts took a new trend, and he asked himself how it was possible that old Schlippenbach and his fellow-plotters had been able thus to fool the conservative leaders of a great nation regarding a matter so vital to the very existence of their most cherished institutions as the legitimate succession to the regal sceptre. What incontrovertible proofs had it been possible to offer in order to bring about this ready acceptance of a man whom the Budavian people had never seen to rule over their nation’s destinies? After all, there was where the blame must lie. The preposterousness of the proposition, it seemed to him, should have been apparent to the most simple-minded.
And, as he thought, the landau, with the flashing cuirassiers galloping ahead and behind and on either side, began the tortuous ascent of the Wartburg by the wide, wooded avenues that wind from the palace gates through the sumptuous222 royal gardens up to the imposing Residenz Schloss on the mountain’s apex. Now and then, through rifts in the foliage, Grey got glimpses of the vast, formidable, castle-like pile of sombre stone perched far above him, the outline of its battlemented towers showing sharp and clear against the pink of the sunset-tinted sky; and it seemed to frown forbiddingly, resembling more a great fortress at this distance than the magnificent palace it is.
Twenty minutes later, to a musical fanfare of bugles, a clinking of bit chains and a rattle of steel-shod hoofs on stone paving, the carriage swept in under the great grey porte-cochère; the massive oaken doors of the Schloss swung impressively inward, and Chancellor von Ritter, in his robes of office, with a dozen attendants at his back, stood in token of formal welcome on the threshold.
To Grey’s immense relief, however, the ensuing formalities were of the briefest description, and almost immediately he found himself proceeding under the Chancellor’s guidance and direction toward a suite of rooms in the Flag Tower that had been prepared against his coming.
The Grand Hotel K?nigin Anna at Kürschdorf is much like the Schweitzerhof at Lucerne. It stretches its long, yellow front, bordered by a stone terrace, along the wide Schloss Strasse, on the other side of which, shaded by four rows of leafy linden trees, is the K?nigin Quai, skirting the fast-flowing Weisswasser. At one end of the Quai is the Wartburg Brücke, and at the other the Kursaal.
At about ten o’clock on the morning following his arrival in Kürschdorf, O’Hara appeared on the terrace with a troubled expression on his usually care-free face and a newspaper in his hand. The events of the previous evening had filled him with an apprehension greater even than that which had beset his friend. Being himself a subject of monarchical rule, and appreciating by reason of his breeding and environment the very serious nature224 of the affair, he viewed these late developments with less leniency than would naturally temper the consideration of a citizen of a republic, whose knowledge of the ethics of dynasties had been gleaned chiefly from books.
Grey, in allowing himself to be invested with royal honours, had cut loose from O’Hara’s counsel. The Crown Prince was no longer travelling incognito. He was now within the very shadow of the throne that awaited him, and was consequently hedged in by all the formalities of the Court. Yesterday they were able to consult as man to man on an equal footing. Today a gulf divided them. It would be possible, of course, for O’Hara to present himself at the Palace and crave an audience, but it was doubtful whether anything approaching a private consultation could be managed. The American now, oddly enough, was not his own master. Otherwise he would have come to the hotel the evening before, as he had planned. He belonged to the state, and, if rumour spoke truly, he was, and had been since his arrival at the Residenz Schloss, under the strictest surveillance.
There was a hint of this in the paper that225 O’Hara carried, and the very air was pregnant with more or less detailed gossip, sensational in the extreme. At breakfast the Irishman had overheard a conversation at the next table to the effect that the Crown Prince was quite mad and had been locked in a dungeon under the Palace in the care of a half-dozen burly wardens. Everyone was talking on the same subject. An officer in uniform, connected with the Royal Horse Guards, was reported to have said that Prince Max had attempted suicide on his way from Paris, and O’Hara, knowing this to be untrue, discounted most of the other tales as equally baseless. Nevertheless, he was very considerably disturbed. He longed to act, but realised that his hands were tied. All that was left for him to do was to wait with what patience he could command until something further developed. And so he lighted a cigar and strolled forth across the Schlosse Strasse to the Quai, where, presently, he was joined by Miss Van Tuyl and the Fr?ulein von Altdorf.
They, too, had heard the rumours with which the very atmosphere was vibrant, and they came to him with long faces seeking reassurance.
226 “Isn’t it possible to find out something definite?” Hope asked, plaintively. “Surely there must be some authority somewhere. You are his friend and you have a right to know. Why not go to see General Roederer? Let us get a carriage and we will all three go.”
“I should be only too glad, Miss Van Tuyl,” O’Hara replied, “if I thought anything was to be gained by it; but the truth of the matter is, you are unnecessarily alarmed. Carey is all right. Don’t you pay any attention to these cock-and-bull stories. He has done this thing with his eyes open, and if we go interfering we may upset all his plans. We shall hear from him some time during the day, I feel certain. But if we don’t I’ll see that you have the facts before you sleep tonight. By the way, have you heard from your father?”
“Oh, yes. I had a telegram late last night. He is on his way. He will be here this evening.”
“Good. Two heads are better than one, and when he arrives we’ll find out what we want to know if we have to blow up the palace to do it. But I really feel that we shall have tidings from227 His Royal Highness before many hours.” And he laughed in his characteristic rollicking fashion.
“It all seems just like a dream to me,” said Minna, soberly. “I’m completely dazed. So much has happened in the last week that I hardly know what I’m doing. And now I shouldn’t stop here another minute, for I’m sure my sister will be at the hotel and those stupid people will not know where to tell her to find me.”
“We’ll all go over and sit on the terrace,” suggested O’Hara. “The band will be playing before long, and they tell me it is a very good one.”
On the journey from Paris the Irishman and the Fr?ulein had been much in each other’s company, and the growth of their mutual interest had been more than once remarked by both Grey and Miss Van Tuyl. Now, as he gazed at her fresh young beauty, there was a tenderness in his eyes, the meaning of which there was no mistaking. Hope saw it, and when the terrace was reached she excused herself and went inside, leaving them together.
“You will be going to your sister’s today, then, I suppose,” said the soldier, when they had found228 places under the shade of an awning not too close to the band stand and well away from the other loungers; in his tone was regret.
“Yes,” Minna answered, and her accent, too, was regretful. “Her house is to be my home after this, you know.”
“And there’ll be somebody that will miss you very much,” O’Hara ventured. His eyes had grown worshipful, and the girl’s colour deepened as she looked into them.
“And I shall miss somebody very much,” she returned, with a tincture of coquetry; adding, after a briefest moment, “Miss Van Tuyl is lovely. I feel as if I had known her always.”
“But I wasn’t speaking of her,” he protested, softly. “She’ll miss you, I dare say; but there’s a man who’ll miss you a whole lot more—miss you as he never thought it would be possible for him to miss anyone.”
The girl’s eyes drooped under the ardour of his gaze, and her cheeks flushed pinker still at his words. Her heart fluttered with an emotion that was new to it, and that she did not quite understand. She had experienced it once or twice before,229 in lesser degree, on the train when this big, hearty, boyish fellow had—not altogether by chance—touched her hand. It made her mute then, and now her tongue was again for the moment tied.
“But I am not going far,” she replied, when utterance returned; “my sister’s place is only a mile or two out of town, and the man has told me that he is very fond of walking.”
“And may he come?” he pleaded, eagerly, his face suddenly alight with the smile she had grown to regard as not the least of his attractions. “May he?”
“Why not?” she asked, laughing lightly.
“Yes, why not?” he repeated, joyously. “Since he will want to see her very much, and since she has not denied him.”
Frau Fahler, Minna’s sister, was much older than she; a woman of thirty-four at least, short, stout and fair-haired, but with eyes of that deep pansy blue which was a family characteristic. She arrived about eleven o’clock in a rather quaint-looking country wagon, and she carried off the Fr?ulein almost immediately, in spite of the urging of Hope and O’Hara that she would230 stop for luncheon and delay the parting until afternoon.
Minna was naturally loth to leave until some tidings had been received from the Palace, but her sister had a dozen reasons for her haste, and so it was arranged that when towards evening her luggage was sent for, the messenger should be given whatever news had arrived.
Hope’s anxiety meanwhile had grown with every passing minute. O’Hara’s assurances were well intentioned, but, backed only by surmise, they were by no means satisfying.
“I don’t suppose he can come himself, or he would be here,” she said, in reply to his oft-repeated explanation that a Crown Prince is not wholly his own master, “but he certainly could send Johann or some one with a note.”
But the afternoon wore away without any message. On the other hand, the rumours of the morning grew more ominous. A special session of the Budavian Assembly had been called for that very evening. A question, it was said, had arisen as to the legitimacy of the alleged heir apparent. Certain members of the Royal household were reported231 under arrest, charged with no less a crime than treason. The adherents of Prince Hugo were in the highest feather. Already the more optimistic were speaking of him as His Majesty. In the crowded cafés, the Brauerei and the beer gardens but the one subject was discussed; and the newspapers got out special extras, which hinted guardedly at the mystery, but gave absolutely no facts.
At seven o’clock Hope Van Tuyl drove to the railway station and met her father. She was nervously excited to the verge of hysteria, and Nicholas Van Tuyl had some difficulty in piecing together her somewhat disconnected and, it seemed to him at times, irrational statements. Eventually, however, by dint of careful questioning he became acquainted with the salient points of the situation; and later, at dinner, the Irishman supplied what was lacking in important detail.
“I agree with Lieutenant O’Hara,” said Mr. Van Tuyl, in a tone that smacked of the judicial; “it is a very delicate problem, and one that must be handled with the utmost care. At the same time, my dear child, your anxiety is natural, and,232 though I think you have exaggerated the seriousness of the affair, I can well understand your impatience for facts. And facts we are going to have.”
He smiled confidently, and his daughter’s face brightened on the instant.
“All the time you have been telling me your story,” he went on, “I have been trying to think of the name of a man I met in Munich a few years ago. He holds some high position here, and would be just the chap to help us now. We were excellent friends, and when we parted he begged me to come to Kürschdorf and visit him. Strange I can’t think of his name.”
“What about the American Minister?” O’Hara suggested.
“I doubt that he would know. Besides, under the circumstances, there’s no use taking chances. If we told him the truth it would be a case of out of the frying-pan into the fire. Grey is extraditable, you know. I wonder if we could learn anything by attending this Parliament meeting?”
“We couldn’t get in. I thought of that at once and made inquiries. It’s an executive session.”
233 Van Tuyl was silent for a minute or more, evidently deep in thought.
“I don’t suppose you know the names of the high monkey-monks here, do you?” he asked, presently.
“I know a few,” O’Hara answered. “There’s Prince von Eisenthal, and Herr Marscheim, and Count von Ritter, and——”
“Aha!” cried the New York man, gleefully, “now you’ve hit it. Von Ritter—Count von Ritter. He is my Munich friend. What is he? What position does he hold?”
“He is what they call Chancellor, I believe; but in reality he’s a sort of Prime Minister.”
“That’s our man, by all that’s good!” Van Tuyl exclaimed. “We’ll find where he hangs out and call on him. And, girlie,” he added, turning to his daughter, “you’ll know all about it in a few hours.”
“He’ll be at the Assembly session, of course,” said O’Hara.
“Certainly. We’ll go there and send him in a message, and I’ll bet ten dollars to a cent he’ll come a-running. He owes me a debt of gratitude;234 I put him in the way of placing a government loan at very good figures when the Budavian credit wasn’t the best in all Europe by any means.”
Hope smiled her gratitude. She had great faith in her father. He was of the type of successful Americans that do things.
The apartment in the Flag Tower to which Carey Grey was conducted by Chancellor von Ritter was at the top of two flights of winding stone stairs, and the barred windows of its four rooms commanded a view of varied and picturesque loveliness. In the foreground were the Palace gardens, with their series of descending terraces, their fountains and statuary, their parterres of gay flowers, their gracefully curving driveways and gravelled walks, and their wonderful old trees of every shade of green leafage. Beyond the gardens were the red and grey roofs, the spires and steeples and domes and turrets of the city, divided by the sparkling silver-white waters of the rushing river, and beyond these stretched the fertile valley checkered with fields of ripening grain—yellow and orange and russet—and olive patches of woodland, and dotted with farm houses and cottages and barns and hayricks.
236 The rooms, themselves, were somewhat sombre. There was a small library, panelled and finished in black oak; a salon, long and high, with much tarnished gilt ornamentation and red upholstery; a tiny bare dressing-room, and a bedchamber with a great canopied bedstead, beside which stood a quaintly carved prie-dieu.
“Your Royal Highness will, I trust, be comfortable here,” said the Chancellor, when he had walked with Grey from one room to another and the two were standing together in the long salon.
The American hesitated a moment before replying. He was revolving mentally several alternatives of action. It was his duty, he knew, not to let this farce proceed further; and yet he had thus far learned absolutely nothing.
“I shall,” he said, at length, “be quite comfortable.”
“If there is anything your Royal Highness desires,” continued the Chancellor, “you have but to make it known.”
The invitation arrested the whirl of indecision and settled the course of procedure.
“If you will be so good as to answer me a few237 questions, Count,” Grey began, “I shall be indebted. Won’t you sit down?”
Count von Ritter found a place for his angular length upon a settee beside a pedestalled bust of King Oswald the First, and Grey sank into a chair near by.
“I am entirely at your Royal Highness’s disposal,” the Chancellor avowed, amiably; and the American, not without some trepidation, it must be confessed, began:
“You understand, of course, that events in my career have followed one another in the most rapid succession during the past few months; and regarding some of the most important details I am entirely uninformed. You will be surprised, perhaps, to learn, for instance, that I do not know with any degree of definiteness how my identity was established. Herr Schlippenbach was my discoverer, of course, but with whom did he consult here and by what means was it made clear that I am really the abducted heir of the Budavian crown?”
Count von Ritter listened to the question with growing suspicion. Here were, perhaps, the first238 indications of that insanity of which Lindenwald had spoken.
“It does seem hardly possible, your Royal Highness,” he replied, “that on such a vital matter you should have been left in ignorance. It was, I think, nearly a year ago that the first communication from the Herr Doctor Schlippenbach was brought to me by Herr Professor Trent.”
“And who is Herr Professor Trent?” Grey asked, quickly.
“The Herr Professor,” answered the Chancellor, “is the head of the University of Kürschdorf.”
“And his reputation is, of course, beyond reproach, eh?”
“Quite beyond reproach, your Royal Highness.”
“And what steps followed?” Grey pursued, inquisitorially, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair.
“I took up the matter personally,” the Count responded, with frankness. “I entered into correspondence with Schlippenbach at once, and after some months of writing back and forth he placed239 before me a very circumstantial story, which he afterward confirmed with documentary evidence—old letters, photographs, affidavits.”
“And then?”
“When I had thoroughly assured myself of the authenticity of all he claimed, I brought the subject to the attention of the Privy Council, and eventually it was laid before His Majesty. In the meantime the Budavian Minister at Washington had been investigating, and the Budavian Consul at New York as well. But all that, of course, you know.”
Grey nodded, dissembling. He was studying Count von Ritter as he spoke; noting every accent, every inflection, every expression, in an endeavour to decide whether he were innocent or guilty. Thus far he had been inclined to regard him as honest. It hardly seemed possible that one occupying his position could stoop to such chicanery. And the head of the university appeared likewise as too impregnably placed to be open to suspicion. The Budavian Minister and the Budavian Consul, however, he concluded could not be guiltless.
“And how did Captain Lindenwald chance to240 be chosen to meet me on my arrival in England?” he asked.
“Captain Lindenwald,” answered the Chancellor, “is an officer of the Royal household—he was the late King’s equerry—and he is, moreover, the brother of our Minister to the United States.”
Grey smiled in spite of himself. Of Lindenwald’s complicity he had had no doubt from the first. The fact that the Budavian Minister at Washington was his brother made it all the more probable that that dignitary was also criminally involved.
“Now, just one more matter, Count,” the American continued. “Can you tell me anything of this Baron von Einhard?”
The Chancellor shrugged his square shoulders.
“The Baron is a supporter of Prince Hugo,” he answered.
“That much I know,” Grey returned. “And in his loyalty to his leader he is apt to be unscrupulous to the Prince’s opponents?”
Count von Ritter smiled a trifle cynically.
“I have been led to understand so,” he answered.
241 “He would pay well, I suppose, to get Prince Max out of the way just at this juncture? Is it not so?”
“The price asked would probably not deter him.”
“And Captain Lindenwald—But no, of course not. It is silly of me to suggest such a possibility. You are satisfied of that officer’s fealty, I am sure?”
The Chancellor straightened in his seat and leaned forward with an exhibition of concern that had hitherto been lacking.
“You do not make yourself altogether clear, your Royal Highness,” he ventured. “Am I to understand that you have reason to suspect that Captain Lindenwald and the Baron von Einhard are——”
“Pardon me,” interrupted Grey, pleased nevertheless at the awakened interest of the Chancellor, “I did not say so. I merely asked a question. You are satisfied of Captain Lindenwald’s entire honesty and loyalty, are you not?”
“The Captain,” von Ritter replied, guardedly, “has not been as eager as I could have wished at times, but I have never regarded him as venal.”
242 “Then his explanation of why he left me in Paris, without so much as a word as to his going, and why that night an attempt was made to abduct me by persons in the employ of Baron von Einhard—I suppose he has made such an explanation—was entirely satisfactory to you?”
Grey sprung the question suddenly and noted scrutinisingly the effect.
The Chancellor’s usually immobile features gave perceptible token of his surprise. His bushy brows raised the merest trifle, and his keen black eyes widened.
“His story was, I must confess, not altogether satisfactory, your Royal Highness,” he answered, quietly; “it was, I may say, lacking in detail.”
“I would suggest,” continued Grey, in a tone equally repressed, “that you question him in the line I have indicated.”
The Chancellor bowed.
“I have to thank you,” he said, gravely. “I shall do so. That is very certain.”
Grey arose and Count von Ritter got to his feet instantly. The American stood for a moment in indecision, very tall, very erect. There was no243 denying that he looked every inch the Prince. Whether to declare that he was not he hurriedly debated. Meanwhile the Chancellor was still striving to detect the madness of which Lindenwald had spoken. To each question he had given the most searching mental scrutiny; to each gesture, to each intonation he had paid the closest heed, but he had discovered practically no indication of the malady charged. With Grey’s next utterance, however, all the fabric of his assurance fell crumbling.
“Count von Ritter,” he said—he had been for a moment gazing out through the window at the varied landscape now dimming with the dusk, but as he spoke he turned and faced the Chancellor—“Count von Ritter, I can delay no longer in confiding to you a matter so grave that I scarcely know how to frame it in words. May I ask you to again be seated?” And he waved his hand towards the settee from which the Count had risen.
The Chancellor seated himself without speaking, and Grey resumed his place in the chair near him.
244 “The reason I have asked you what I have,” continued he, speaking slowly and with more than his usual deliberation, “is that I have been—I was about to say astounded, but that is too weak a word—I have been stunned and dumfounded by the proved credulity of a nation which has the reputation, next to Russia, of possessing the most astute diplomats in all Europe. That a government so fortified could be tricked into placing its sceptre in the hands of an American citizen, whose ancestry shows no trace of Budavian blood and whose antecedents are an open book, seems out of all reason; and yet it is precisely what you and your confrères, Count, have, as is now conclusively evidenced, been led into.”
Upon the Chancellor’s face was an expression which Grey could not fathom. He was neither startled nor incensed. There was, indeed, just the faintest suspicion of amusement in his keen black eyes, mingled with a spirit of kindly indulgence.
“You mean,” he said, quietly, “that you are not the heir?”
“Most assuredly,” Grey answered, in amazement245 at his companion’s inscrutable manner, “I am no more the Prince of Kronfeld than I am the Prince of Wales. I am Carey Grey, of New York, an American born and bred, who was drugged, hypnotised, mesmerised or what you please; made unknowingly to commit a theft, made unknowingly to cross the Atlantic, to travel under a false name, to attempt to usurp a title and a throne.”
Count von Ritter’s foot tapped the floor nervously. He laced his long, knotted fingers and unlaced them again.
“This is a very grave matter,” he said, his voice low and steady, “and I shall lose no time in looking into it. As you say, such a thing would appear beyond the bounds of reason. Your Royal High—I beg your pardon! Mr. Grey, did I understand?” And there was a humouring leniency, not to say pity, in his tone—“you can imagine how much this statement of yours at this late hour will involve in the way of complications.”
“That you were not enlightened earlier, Count,” Grey continued, “was due to my desire to learn just how far the conspiracy had been carried.246 As a matter of fact, until I reached Anslingen this afternoon I had no positive assurance that the affair had gone further than Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald. Of their intentions I was well satisfied, but concerning the chances for the ultimate success of their plans I was in the dark.”
Again the two men stood up.
“And now,” said the Chancellor, “as to dinner. A state banquet has been prepared at which your—pardon me!—at which His Royal Highness was to have presided. Under the circumstances, however, I presume you would prefer not to attend. If I may be permitted,” he added, tactfully, “I will explain that His Royal Highness is indisposed.”
“Thank you,” Grey acquiesced, cheerily; “that’s the better course—the only course, in fact. Unless you can yourself join me—and I suppose that is impossible—I’ll dine alone here. And afterward I should like a conveyance to the Hotel K?nigin Anna. I have some friends there that I must see this evening.”
The Chancellor bowed. The next moment he247 was gone, and Grey crossed to the open window and stood for a long while lost in thought. Meanwhile the gloom deepened over the valley and the room behind him grew dark.
He was awakened from his reverie by a rapping on the door, and in response to his permission to enter Johann came in, followed by porters with his luggage. Then the candles were lighted, and a little later his dinner was served.
Afterward he got into his evening clothes, and when he was quite ready he sent Johann to see if the carriage he had ordered was in waiting. But the boy returned with dismay mantling his usually placid features.
“The carriage is not coming, your Royal Highness,” he said, with an accent of apology, as though the fault was his.
“Not coming?” Grey repeated in astonishment. “Why is it not coming?”
“None has been ordered, your Royal Highness.”
“Then order one at once.”
“I tried to, your Royal Highness; but I was not permitted.”
248 Grey’s customary calmness gave way to palpable irritation.
“What the devil do you mean?” he asked. “Am I a prisoner here?”
Johann’s distress increased.
“It is not I, your Royal Highness, on whom the blame lies. Outside this door is a guard. He will not let me pass. He will not let your Royal Highness pass. He has orders.”
The American strode angrily towards the door.
“We will see,” he said, determinedly.
Outside a soldier was standing.
“What does this mean?” he asked, in as repressed a tone as he could muster. “Why will you not let my man do as I bid him?”
The sentry saluted respectfully.
“I have been ordered by my commanding officer, your Royal Highness,” he answered.
“Ordered to what?” cried Grey.
“Ordered, your Royal Highness, to permit no one to leave the Flag Tower.”
And he saluted again.
The realisation that he was a prisoner aroused in Carey Grey a spirit of revolt. He thought that he had calculated the cost. He had foreseen that his confession would bring about complications, and had counted on perhaps a long and trying investigation, but he had not imagined that he would be deprived of his liberty pending the question’s settlement. The fact that he had been honest should of itself, he argued, have entitled him to consideration; but his frankness had been misjudged and his candour rewarded with punishment.
Smarting under the indignity, he wrote a witheringly sarcastic note to Count von Ritter, and demanded that the guard should see to its expeditious delivery. At the end of an hour he received a brief reply:
“The Chancellor,” it read, “regrets deeply that250 he is unable to aid Mr. Grey. The Chancellor repeated his interview of the early evening to His Highness, the Prince Regent, and it is by His Highness’s command that the present temporary restraint exists.”
Thereupon Grey set about devising some means of escape; but the barred windows and the armed guard, which, he learned from Johann, was not alone at his door but on the landings above and below and surrounding the Tower as well, were seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He thought of bribery, and as an entering wedge endeavoured to have a note taken to Miss Van Tuyl, offering a sum of money out of all proportion to the service, but the offer was phlegmatically declined.
It was very late before he threw himself upon the great high bed in the dingy bedchamber and tried to snatch a few hours’ sleep; and he was up again at dawn. But if his slumber had been brief, Johann’s had even been briefer. He had spent hours in conversation with the soldier in the passage, and he had gathered at least one fact of interest, if not of importance—there were other prisoners on the floor above. How many, he was251 unable to learn, and of the strength of the guard he was also uninformed. There would be a change, though, at seven o’clock, and then it would be possible to ascertain.
From the window of the library which was over the Tower door the approach of the relief and the departure of the night watch could be seen. The bars were too close to permit of a head being thrust between them, but the barracks were at some distance from the Palace, and the route, Johann said, lay diagonally across the uppermost terrace in full view of this particular window. There Grey watched, and promptly at seven, as the bell in the Bell Tower on another corner of the quadrangle clanged the hour, a cornet sounded and seven armed infantry men came marching over the stone pavement. That, he concluded, meant one man on each of the three landings and four men on guard below. Not counting the guard on the floor above, there were six against two, and escape under these conditions appeared hopeless. If, however, the prisoners on the floor above could be communicated with and a plan of concerted action agreed upon there might be a252 fighting chance of success. But the question was, how to reach them. The ceilings were high and the floors thick, and to invent and execute a code of signals by rapping would be a tedious and not at all promising undertaking. Nevertheless Grey was more than half inclined to try it. By piling one piece of furniture on another the ceiling could be reached readily enough, and by giving each letter of the alphabet its number it would be possible to hammer out words. Those above might not be able to hear or, hearing, might not be clever enough to understand, but the American was desperate, and, notwithstanding the odds against him, he determined after some little consideration to make the effort.
Upon a large table in the centre of the salon he and Johann lifted a smaller one which they brought from the library, and upon this in turn they placed a chair. To the top of this edifice Grey climbed, armed with a heavy walking-stick, with which he began a series of regular and irregular blows upon the heavy oaken panelling which ceiled the room. Having continued this for something like three minutes without intermission, he253 paused in the hope of some response. But none was forthcoming, and he repeated the signalling with increased vigour. When he halted again there was a distinct reply—an exact reproduction, in fact, of his rhythm—and the serious, anxious expression he had worn gave way to one of relief, if not indeed of triumph.
His next move was to repeat in strokes the entire alphabet, beginning with one for A, two for B, and so on. This was a long and rather laborious operation, but when he had finished he was given the prompt gratification of an alert understanding from those above, for immediately taking the cue, the answering thuds spelled out the word “window,” and turning his glance in the direction of the barred casement he saw hanging there, at the end of an improvised string made of torn and tied strips of linen, a fluttering piece of paper.
With a single bound he reached the floor, and the next instant he was reading with eager interest the pencilled words:
“Write what you wish to say, attach it, pull gently twice, and we will raise it.”
“Johann,” he cried, enthusiastically, “see this!254 If those fellows have as much nerve as they have wit we’ll soon be out of here, all right.”
And while Johann read and smiled his approval Grey sat down and wrote.
For an hour or more questions and answers, propositions and suggestions, went back and forth from floor to floor by means of this novel line of communication, and by the end of that time a complete scheme of escape with all its details had been arranged and was mutually understood.
There were two prisoners above—a gentleman and his man; just as there were two prisoners below—a gentleman and his man. Who the two gentlemen were was not asked by either. That they were guarded in the Flag Tower was proof that their offences were political merely. Nevertheless, the two gentlemen resented the indignity put upon them, and both were anxious to escape. The two men were loyal to their masters and could be depended upon to act with valour. The gentleman above was unarmed, but the gentleman below had a revolver. The time agreed upon for the delivery was two o’clock in the morning. As that hour sounded from the Bell Tower the guards on255 their respective floors were to be called in on some pretext, overpowered and stripped of their uniforms, which would be donned by the two gentlemen. Their weapons would be appropriated, likewise, and thus disguised and armed it would be comparatively easy to make captive the guard on the first landing. There would then remain but the four soldiers outside the Tower, and the chances of their subduing were largely in favour of the prisoners, three of whom would by this time be as well equipped as the watch, while the fourth would have Grey’s revolver. The advantage is invariably with the surprising party, and the plan was to take the guardsmen unawares and effect their capture before they were even conscious of attack.
All this having been definitely decided on there was nothing to do but wait, and the hours, for Grey at least, dragged interminably. Again and again at intervals he rehearsed the plan with Johann, so that there could be no possible chance of error, but this after a while grew monotonous and he looked about for something interesting to read. The books he found in the library, however, were256 not diverting. They were for the most part historical and written in the heaviest of German; nevertheless their very ponderousness was in a way an advantage. They provoked somnolence, and late in the afternoon the uninterested reader fell asleep and was so snugly wrapped in slumber when his dinner was brought in that Johann found it a rather difficult task to rouse him. He had slept but little the night before, and his rest on the train the night previous to that had been broken and fitful. His nerves needed just this repose, and when he finally awakened it was with a clearer eye and a steadier hand. He ate heartily of the distinctively Teutonic dishes that were provided, and when he finished he remarked to Johann on his general fitness, indulging in an Americanism which the valet vainly tried to interpret.
“I feel tonight, Johann,” he said, stretching himself with arms extended and fists doubled, “that I could lick my weight in wildcats and paint whole townships red.”
As the hours wore away he sat with one leg thrown over the arm of his chair, smoking placidly and with evident enjoyment. It was not until257 some time after the Bell Tower had bellowed its single note that Grey alluded to the business of the night.
“Everything is ready, is it, Johann?” he asked; “where are the thongs you made from the sheet?”
“Safe in my coat pockets, your Highness,” the youth answered.
“Now you may bring me my revolver,” the American continued; “it is on the cheffonier in my dressing-room.”
The revolver was brought, and Grey examined its chambers once again to make sure that it was fully loaded. Then, throwing the end of his cigar through an open window, he lighted a cigarette and continued in desultory talk with his valet.
A few minutes before two he rose and went into his dressing-room, which separated the salon from the bedchamber. In the latter candles were alight, but the dressing-room was in darkness. He stepped behind the curtains, close to the wall, and stood there, silent, hidden, and shortly from the Bell Tower solemnly sounded the hour. Simultaneously Johann tried the door which gave from258 the little library on to the landing. But it was locked and bolted from without. Then he hammered loudly, a little excitedly; and very promptly the bolt was drawn and the key turned.
“Quick!” he cried to the guard, who swung open the heavy oaken planking. “Quick! His Royal Highness is ill! I fear that he is dying! Come!” And he started off hurriedly, the soldier following unsuspectingly.
In a second the little comedy was played. At the entrance to the dressing-room Johann stepped back and the guardsman went in ahead, to find his arms caught in a flash from behind by Grey and held hard and fast in spite of his struggles, while Johann slung about his wrists the heavy linen thongs and knotted them with deft and muscular hands. Meanwhile the fellow was kicking and stamping viciously, but, barring a barked shin for Johann and a bruised toe for Grey, the effects were not material. And, once his arms were bound and the glittering barrel of the revolver brought to his attention, his rebellion ceased. Then Johann bound his feet as well, having first marched him into the bedchamber and compelled259 him, protesting, to stretch himself upon the high, old-fashioned bed.
Grey was in the act of unbuckling the captive’s belt when a pistol shot, muffled but unmistakable, echoed from overhead, and he stopped, breathless, just as a hoarse shriek split the silence which for an instant followed the report. The door from the library to the landing had been left open, and from that direction now came a scuffle of feet on stone, mingled with a succession of crashing, thumping, jolting noises, alarmed shouts and angry imprecations.
Through the three connecting rooms Grey dashed, revolver in hand and with Johann close at his heels. The lantern the guard had left on the landing had been knocked over and was out, but by the light from the open doorway they at once discovered the huddled, distorted body of a man, whose groans added to the bedlam of hurrying feet and excited voices from below and oaths, cries, and sounds of struggle from above.
And as they looked there came bounding down the stairs, by jumps of a half-dozen or more steps at a time, another figure, followed by futile shot260 after shot from rapidly belching revolver and rifle. The fugitive’s feet landed on the groaning, doubled heap on the landing, and that he did not stumble to his death was a miracle. But he kept his balance, flashed by down the next winding flight, and, striking the first of the ascending guards, toppled him backwards against his followers.
For the space of a heart-beat Grey and Johann paused, staring at each other. In that instant of his passing both had recognised the fleeing prisoner. It was Captain Lindenwald.
And then, as they stood inert, the guard from above, his rifle still smoking, reached the landing, tripped over the crumpled body and went staggering, lurching, clutching at the air, towards the confusion below.
The moment for action had now come; and Grey, calm and collected in spite of the flurry of events, motioning to Johann to follow, ran swiftly down the stone stairs, which, once they were out of the meagre glow from the library, grew dark as Erebus. The struggling, swearing, wriggling mass blocked the way at the next landing, but261 Grey and the lad, guided by the sounds, were not taken unawares. They were, moreover, for the moment on their feet, which no one of the others was; and though they were caught by desperate hands and more than once dragged to their knees, their clothing torn and ripped, their hands scratched, and their arms and legs wellnigh disjointed, they kept their wits and gained the last flight of steps without serious injury.
Down this they veritably hurled themselves, and with no further impediment to delay them reached the open door of the Tower and dashed out onto the stone flagging of the upper terrace, into the brilliant starlight of the early morning.
“So far, so good,” said Grey, inhaling deeply of the cool, clear air; and catching Johann’s sleeve he pulled him back into the shadow of the buttress. “But,” he added, “we are not free yet, are we? The gates of the Palace Gardens are locked at night, I suppose.”
“Yes, your Royal Highness,” the youth answered.
“Never mind that Royal Highness business now, Johann,” he directed; “Herr Arndt will do262 for the present. I’m no more a Royal Highness than you are.”
“Yes, Herr Arndt,” acquiesced Johann, imperturbably, without change of tone, “and the walls are very high.”
“Nevertheless, we had better move on in the direction of some exit,” Grey advised, in a whisper; “it won’t do to stop here. They may come rushing down on us at any minute. You know the way; you lead.”
Johann started off to the right, hugging the Tower walls, and Grey followed. At a distance of fifty yards they came to a clump of shrubbery, into which the younger man plunged with Grey still close behind. Through this a gravelled path led into a wood, under the trees of which they walked in silence for at least a quarter of an hour, their course one of gradual descent.
“Without our hats we’ll be suspicious figures in the streets of Kürschdorf,” Grey observed, despondently, as they came out upon a driveway, “and our recapture is certain. After all, I don’t see that we have gained a very great deal. The gates won’t be open till morning, and by that time,263 if we are not captured inside, every exit will be guarded against us. Are the walls too high to scale?”
“Yes, Herr Arndt,” answered Johann, respectfully, but he did not slacken his pace.
“What do you propose, then? Come, now, this is serious. You know every inch of ground here, don’t you? Is there no way we can get out?”
“Yes, Herr Arndt,” came the stereotyped answer.
“There is? Then why didn’t you say so? How? In God’s name, Johann, how?”
The youth halted and turned.
“At the head gardener’s is a long ladder,” he answered; “we are going to the head gardener’s, Herr Arndt.”
At the head gardener’s they very shortly arrived. Johann’s familiarity with the place was now more than ever evident. Without hesitation he entered one of the larger greenhouses, the door of which stood invitingly ajar, and, though it was quite dark within, he very promptly laid his hand upon a ladder which lay stretched against the wall264 to the right of the entrance. Having thus assured himself that it was in its usual place, he groped to the left and from a row of pegs there secured two hats; one of green felt and the other of dark straw, soiled and dilapidated, it is true, but in the present strait of the fugitives of inestimable value.
The high wall of the garden was, it subsequently developed, but a stone’s throw distant, and the work of carrying and placing the ladder, climbing to the coping and springing over onto the border of soft turf without was a matter of a very few minutes.
“And now,” said Grey, as with the faded and stained green hat upon his head he stood looking up and down the dark, silent street, “where are we to go? Our presence at a hotel would simply invite detection. It is too early for me to call on the American Minister. All of your usual haunts will be searched before sunrise.”
“The sister of the Fr?ulein von Altdorf,” suggested Johann, “to whom the Fr?ulein herself was going, lives in the country, about two miles away.”
265 “You know where?” cried Grey, delightedly; “you can find it?”
“I know it well,” answered the youth; “at the next farm I was born, Herr Arndt.”
“Then we will go there, by all means.”
And they set off walking rapidly through the narrow side streets of the old town to the bridge of Charlemagne, and thence across the river, and on through the wider avenue of the new city out into the silent lanes of the sweet-scented suburbs.
Both were busy with their thoughts and neither was inclined to conversation. After twenty minutes’ trudging, however, Grey asked:
“Do you suppose that fellow on the landing will die, Johann?”
“That fellow?” repeated the valet, “which, Herr Arndt? Do you mean Lutz?”
“Lutz!” exclaimed Grey, surprisedly, “was Lutz there?”
“Of a certainty, Herr Arndt. Did you not see his face? It was Lutz who lay outside our door.”
The rumoured meeting of the Budavian Assembly proved, like many other rumoured events, to be a canard, the only foundation for which was a hastily called session of the Privy Council. Before this august body, over which the Prince Regent presided, Chancellor von Ritter laid all the facts that had come into his possession; and very startling facts they were, including a confiscated letter from Baron von Einhard addressed to Captain Lindenwald, telling of the failure of the abduction plot and of the securing of that precious heirloom, the signet ring of the Prince of Kronfeld.
This communication gave indubitable proof that Lindenwald had been false to his trust, and it fully justified the Chancellor in having him placed under arrest. It did not tend, however, to throw any light on the mystifying main question. Was267 the man who had been welcomed with such acclaim on the previous evening really the Crown Prince, as every bit of evidence up to the time of his arrival tended to prove, or was he, as he claimed, simply the cat’s-paw of a company of conscienceless conspirators?
The von Einhard letter would in a way indicate that his title was clear and genuine, as, had it been otherwise, there would have been no necessity to conspire with Lindenwald to bring about his abduction. Yet, if Lindenwald knew him to be the Crown Prince, why should he run the risk of dickering with the Baron, seeing that greater good fortune than he could possibly hope to earn by such a course lay in the direction of his faithful carrying out of his mission?
Upon these points the Privy Council debated long and eagerly, if not altogether wisely. Men are slow to confess even to themselves that they have been imposed upon, and the State Council had months before by an overwhelming majority declared its faith in the integrity of the claimant. It was, therefore, no more than to be expected that the majority should still favour the theory268 that Prince Max, in his assertion that he was simply a plain American citizen, was labouring under an hallucination. There had been a strain of dementia in the ruling line for seven generations, and this exhibition of mental malady was to those who now recalled the fact but another evidence of legitimacy.
On the minority who were known to be partial to Prince Hugo the proof of von Einhard’s treachery served as an effective gag. They could not afford to imply sympathy for such conduct by opposition to the ruling notion; and so it happened that, while every phase of the question was discussed with much earnestness, there was ever an underlying sentiment that promised but one conclusion—the unqualified endorsement of the fancied unfortunately demented young Prince in the Flag Tower.
As the session was approaching its close, a card was brought to Count von Ritter. The Chancellor, however, deeply interested in the speech of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, which was then in progress, laid it on the table before him without adjusting his glasses to read it, and had it not been269 for the dullness of the speech of the Secretary of War which followed, the session would probably have come to a vote and adjourned before he gave it heed. But as it chanced, bored by the prosiness of the speaker, he took up the piece of pasteboard, placed his pince-nez on the bridge of his nose, and read the name: “Mr. Nicholas Van Tuyl,” with a pencil scrawl beneath: “Your friend of Munich and the Monterossan War Loan.” Whereupon he arose instantly and tip-toed from the Council Hall into the ante-room adjoining, where Van Tuyl and O’Hara were with some impatience waiting.
Their reception by Count von Ritter was cordial in the extreme. The sentiment of the Council had served to lift a load from his shoulders, and he was in fine good humour.
“Remember you!” he cried, wringing Van Tuyl’s hand, his small eyes alight, “of course I remember you; and my debt to you, too—Budavia’s debt to you. Why, my dear sir, you should have had a decoration. The late King was very remiss in not sending you one. But we will do what we can to make up for it.”
270 “Ah,” returned the New York banker, “you are very good indeed, Count, and I am going to hold you to your word. Lieutenant O’Hara and I have come for something this evening—something we want very much, and something I feel sure you can give us.”
The Chancellor bowed and stretched forth his hands with palms upturned and open, in signal of his willingness to give.
“What we desire,” continued Nicholas Van Tuyl, smiling his recognition, “is information. There are many sensational reports abroad, as you probably know; but we men of finance are in the habit of discounting unverified rumours. We are not credulous. We want facts with an authority to back them up. We want confirmation or denial.”
Von Ritter’s geniality was still fervent.
“You wish to know, for instance—” he invited.
“We wish to know, Count, whether there is any basis for the story that His Royal Highness, Prince Maximilian, is being restrained of his liberty.”
The Chancellor smiled a little patronisingly.
271 “Do they say that?” he asked.
“That is the least they say,” Van Tuyl returned.
For a moment Count von Ritter hesitated.
“May I, without discourtesy, inquire why you are interested?” he questioned.
“We are interested,” answered the New Yorker, promptly, “because he is our personal friend. I have known him for years, and Lieutenant O’Hara here has been with him, he tells me, continually from the day he left America.”
The three were still standing; but now the Chancellor motioned his visitors to be seated.
“You in turn interest me,” he said, as he took a chair and sat down facing them. “How long, Mr. Van Tuyl, have you known him? For how many years?”
“Ten at least,” was the answer. “He came down to the Street when he was twenty. He was with Dunscomb & Fiske in 1893, I remember.”
“The Street?” repeated the Count, questioningly.
“Yes, Wall Street. You knew he was a Wall Street stock broker, didn’t you?”
272 The Chancellor paled perceptibly, his eyes widened a trifle and the straight line of his lips narrowed under his close-cropped moustache.
“Yes,” he returned, diplomatically, after an instant’s pause. “Yes. His name, I think, was Grey, was it not?”
“Grey. Yes, Carey Grey.”
Count von Ritter cleared his throat and then for a moment he sat in silence, his lids half-closed, his mouth tight-drawn. When he spoke it was very seriously, with a changed demeanour.
“Budavia has still more for which to thank you, Mr. Van Tuyl,” he said, rising.
The New York banker and the Irish lieutenant also stood up. It was evident to both that a blunder had been made.
“I don’t just see for what,” said the older man, a little nervously. “I haven’t told you anything you didn’t know. I didn’t come here to tell you anything. I came to have you tell me something.”
“I think,” replied the Count, with an urbanity that was the acme of trained diplomacy, “that you said just now you came here to confirm a rumour, or words to that effect. You have, my dear sir,273 confirmed it. And now I must ask you to excuse me. You are at the K?nigin Anna, I suppose? I shall have the pleasure of calling upon you tomorrow.”
The Chancellor bowed, smiling, and before Van Tuyl could remonstrate had disappeared into the Hall of Council. And then it was that O’Hara for the first time found words.
“Well, I’m damned!” he said. And he said it with emphasis.
Meanwhile the Colonial Secretary had finished his wearying oration and the Prince Regent had suggested the advisability of adjournment. But the return of the Chancellor, craving the privilege of the floor, awakened a new interest. His usually immobile face was portentous in its marked gravity, and when he spoke every ear was alert.
“Your Highness,” he began, addressing the Prince Regent, “I am come to cry ‘Pause!’ I have listened to and taken part in a debate this evening the sole purpose of which, as I regard it now, has been to accomplish our own convincing. We constructed a theory upon a basis as unstable as the sands of the sea, and then marshalled arguments274 of straw to effect its establishment. In the whole history of Budavia I know of no incident of parallel puerility. We call ourselves statesmen, and we have acted with the confiding innocence of children. We gambolled like foolhardy lads blindfold upon the brink of a precipice, over which, had not a miracle intervened, we must have fallen into the slough of ignominious dishonour. Even as it is the smirch of its miasma is upon us, and we cannot escape the ridicule that is entailed.
“Our supposed mad Prince Maximilian of Kronfeld, now so carefully guarded in the Flag Tower, your Highness, is, I make bold to announce, a perfectly sane American gentleman and nothing more.”
The Prince Regent leaned suddenly forward, his hands clutching the arms of his chair. The other members of the Council stirred, changed their positions; two of them got onto their feet. But the Chancellor still standing, the Prince Regent motioned them back to their places, and the speaker continued:
“In the chain of evidence I have, within the275 past five minutes, found a broken link. The statements made to me by the supposed heir have, in one important particular, been verified to my entire satisfaction, and these statements were, as you know, at utter variance with what we had been led to believe was the truth—in direct contradiction to the alleged proofs of royal birth.”
“But, your Excellency,” protested the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, rising again, “is not this simply jumping from one conclusion to another?”
The Chancellor frowned grimly.
“At first glance,” he replied, resting the tips of his long, knotted fingers on the table between them, “it may appear so. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and this link, as I have stated, has been shattered into infinitesimal atoms.”
Count von Ritter spoke for fully an hour. He reviewed the affair from the beginning, detailing every step in the building up of the fabric and demonstrating with marked effect how a single pin-prick had brought about its total collapse. The pretender—if he could be so called in view276 of the fact that he personally had laid no claim to the throne, but, on the other hand, had of his own free will protested against the honour they would have forced upon him—should be quietly deported, and as expeditiously as possible arrangements effected for the coronation of Prince Hugo. The detection and punishment of those involved in the plot to steal the crown must be brought about with all the secrecy possible. Already two of the conspirators, he announced, were under arrest, and the apprehension of others would speedily follow.
It was long after midnight when the Council adjourned, and the Chancellor returned to his ancient mansion on the Graf Strasse. Rest for him, however, was not yet to come. Upon the writing table in his library were many State papers demanding his attention, and, aided by his secretary, who had been awaiting his home-coming, he went systematically to work to clear away the more important before retiring.
At a quarter past two he threw down his quill and leaned back in his chair with a yawn.
“That will do for tonight, Heinrich,” he said,277 kindly, “I’m sorry to have had to keep you up so long.”
And as he spoke the telephone rang long, loud and viciously. The secretary put the receiver to his ear, and answered into the mouthpiece. The Count rose and stretched himself. It was unusual for the telephone to ring at that hour, and he wondered, watching Heinrich’s face. He saw the young man’s chin drop and his eyes suddenly grow round.
“Your Excellency!” he exclaimed, excitement in his voice. “Your Excellency! Listen! The Crown Prince has escaped from the Flag Tower, together with his servant and Captain Lindenwald. And the Captain’s man has been shot, seriously—they think fatally. One of the guards was found bound in His Royal Highness’s apartment. Another guard has a broken leg, and three others are slightly injured.”
The following day was rife with revelations. Grey and Johann had arrived at the farmhouse of Herr Fahler before cock-crow and had been greeted first with a yelping of dogs and then by a cheery, if somewhat sleepy, welcome from the master of the house, to whom Minna had told the whole wonderful story. Johann he had recognised at once, and he had suspected the identity of his companion at sight. From a great cask in the corner of the big living-room he had drawn them foaming beakers of beer, and from a cupboard had produced for their further refreshment some cold meat and dark bread. And as they ate and drank, Frau Fahler had appeared to add her welcome to her husband’s, and a little later the Fraülein, with rosy cheeks fresh from slumber and wearing the most becoming of negligées, had enthusiastically thrown her arms about Grey’s279 neck and mingled tears of joy with her smiles over “Uncle Max’s” deliverance.
At daybreak the fugitive Crown Prince wrote a note to Hope, telling her of his flight and his place of refuge, and one of the farm hands was despatched with it to the town. Then Minna suggested that the two refugees needed rest, and was for sending them to bed for a few hours’ sleep, but Grey protested and Johann blankly refused.
In the American’s mind one desire was now dominant—to see the contents of the late Herr Schlippenbach’s luggage, among which, he was impressed, he would find some clue to the mystery—some evidence, perhaps, that would make clear what was still the most perplexing of enigmas. Whether this impression was born of hope, merely, or whether it was inspired by some psychic manifestation cannot be demonstrated and is not material; but, as the discoveries of the day proved, it was well founded.
After the family breakfast, which was served early, Minna took Grey to an upper room where were the three boxes of her great-uncle, and producing the keys a thorough search was made of280 the dead man’s effects. In one box were his clothes, in another relics of his family, and in the third a small library of books and manuscripts, with many bottles and jars and boxes, wrapped in straw and packed with consummate care to guard against breakage.
The books for the most part bore on one subject—phrenology. Nearly every known work treating of it was included in the collection. There were the early writings of Dr. Franz Joseph Gall and his pupil, Dr. Spurzheim; there were the discoveries of George and Andrew Coombs and of Dr. Elliotson, and the lectures of that earliest and ablest of American phrenologists, Dr. Charles Caldwell, and of the later disciple, Fowler. All of these bore many annotations, marked paragraphs, underlined sentences and marginal comments. Here and there were inserted pages of closely written manuscript, recording the results of Schlippenbach’s personal observation—cases that had come under his notice and to which he had given infinite study. From these it was very soon made apparent to Grey that the late Herr Doctor had ideas distinctively his own. While he accepted281 many of the conclusions of the earlier apostles of the creed he went a step further, and believed that character could be formed and developed by the systematic physical building up of certain portions of the mental structure and the depression of other portions. This, he claimed, was best accomplished by magnetic stimulation and absorption. Positive magnetic currents stimulated and nourished, while negative currents degenerated and destroyed.
He had conceived this theory, his writings made clear, while tutor at the Budavian Court, and had presumed to experiment on the infant Crown Prince. At that time he had kept a journal in which he made entry, briefly and roughly, not only of his scientific accomplishments, but of incidents bearing in any way on his career. This journal was secured by a lock, but Minna and her sister not merely consented to its breaking, but insisted upon it. And here was found the long and well-kept secret of the writer’s quarrel with Queen Anna and the abduction of the young heir apparent. Her Majesty having been informed of the tutor’s novel methods of mental development282 had commanded their cessation so far as her infant son was concerned; and the tutor’s departure from the Court was only a part of the outcome. The journal revealed the fact—though it was not stated in so many words, and to those unfamiliar with Budavian history the entries might have meant nothing—that the tutor was, if not personally the abductor of the young sprig of royalty, certainly an important factor in the abduction, his object being not so much to avenge himself on Queen Anna as to gather the results of the experiments he had been engaged in from the child’s earliest infancy. There was no direct mention, either, of the little fellow’s death, but the absence after a few months of entries concerning him was good ground for the belief that he did not long survive his arrival in America.
Package after package of letters from Professor Trent showed that from the time of Schlippenbach’s emigration up to almost the immediate present he had been in correspondence with the head of the University of Kürschdorf. In view of what Count von Ritter had told him, the more recent of these letters were to Grey of paramount283 interest, and he read them with careful attention, and especially one in which appeared the following paragraph:
You can fancy the surprise, not unmixed with joy, with which I read your letter of the twenty-fifth of August. The fact that the heir to our throne is still alive and where you can lay your hands upon him seems a wonderful dispensation of an all-wise Providence; for in the event of His Majesty’s death—and he has been for two years a terrible sufferer from an incurable ailment—the crown must otherwise go, as you know, to that prince of scapegraces, Hugo. I have given your communication to the Chancellor, and you will doubtless hear from him in the near future. Fancy our future King, all unmindful, serving in the capacity of a valet! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Subsequent letters gave hints here and there of the progress of the investigation, which, it seemed, was conducted with no little secrecy. From these it appeared that Schlippenbach had had many interviews with the Budavian Minister at Washington and the Budavian Consul at New York, but that the person of the pretended Crown Prince was not revealed to them until some time in March, by which date, or, in fact, as early as January, he had become a member of Schlippenbach’s household in Avenue A. Of his removal from where he284 was supposed to have been in service to the home of the old Herr Doctor, Professor Trent wrote:
And you have not told him yet, you say, of the honours that are his. All through this I can see the Divine Hand. The embezzlement and disappearance of his employer offered just the opportunity you desired to have him with you. You can now, by degrees, fit him—gradually prepare him, I mean—for the high estate which is his inheritance; whereas had he continued in his employment such a procedure would have been hedged around with difficulties. I am glad you set me right in the matter of names. I knew that he had gone by the name of Lutz; and I could not understand who this other Lutz was. You say he is his foster-brother, the son of the woman who reared him. I think it wise to have him take another name for the journey over here; and your idea of having him pose as your nephew, Arndt, is capital, provided, of course, there is none of your nephews’ friends or acquaintances coming on the same steamer.
The insight which these letters gave to Grey only served to whet his appetite for additional detail. Many of the revelations were startling, some of them in a way amusing, yet the general impression they made was not of the cleverness of the schemers but rather of their want of skill, their rash indiscretion, their apparently laboured complication of things, which by very reason of the resultant network offered unnecessary loopholes for discovery and frustration. In this he found285 proof of Schlippenbach’s lack of balance, which he was charitable enough to consider the result of mental derangement. He was not so much a knave, he told himself, as he was a maniac.
From Kürschdorf the news had come to him that the King was going to die. He remembered then, possibly with a stricken conscience, that he was partly if not wholly responsible for the fact that His Majesty would leave no son to succeed him. If at this juncture he were able to produce the heir, what might he not expect in the way of honours? But the Crown Prince was dead and therefore not producible.
Grey could read very clearly between the lines of the story as it was opened up to him, and he perceived the birth just here of the temptation to produce the heir to the throne by constructing a replica of the deceased Maximilian. Had he been going about such a business himself, he would probably have chosen some conscienceless fellow to personify the departed one. But with Schlippenbach his science was always pre-eminent. As, years before, he had endeavoured by means of this to build up from the real infant heir a prince that286 should meet his views of what a prince should be, so now he chose to make, from a young man possessed of certain fitting physical and mental attributes, a prince to order.
The raw material must be tall, erect and of dignified bearing, of intelligence and education. The Crown Prince had been dark-eyed, but flaxen-haired. To secure this latter natural combination was not easy. But while his knowledge of chemicals left him powerless to change blue eyes to brown, his familiarity with the potency of peroxide of hydrogen made it quite possible for him to change black hair to blond. And so he set about finding a gentleman of the desired type. Daily he must have passed hundreds on the street, but seeing them and getting them within the radius of his ministration were two different things. In his circle of acquaintances he knew of no one that would answer. But from one of his acquaintances, Lutz, the valet, he had heard much of the valet’s employer, and the valet’s employer evidently seemed to him to be very nearly what he required.
287 All this Grey gathered by the very simple process of logical reasoning from what he found in Herr Schlippenbach’s books and papers. But there was much still which by no method of inference could he satisfactorily explain.
In the examination of the contents of the boxes Minna was deeply interested, and with her Grey discussed each and every significant paragraph and passage. They were still busy exchanging views when, towards five o’clock in the afternoon, the sound of carriage wheels on the driveway below drew the Fraülein to the open window.
“Oh, dear,” she cried, joyously, “it’s Miss Van Tuyl and Mr. O’Hara and another gentleman. Come, we’ll go down and meet them.”
But Grey was not altogether pleased. In his note to Hope he had warned her that it would not be safe for her or anyone to visit or communicate with him until events shaped themselves one way or another. It being known that she and O’Hara had come to Kürschdorf with him they would probably be watched with a view to discovering his whereabouts. Seeing that he had sent this caution it was, he thought, most inconsiderate of288 them to disregard it. But he got up from his seat on the floor and went downstairs with Minna, nevertheless; and in spite of his momentary annoyance there was only gladness in his eyes when they fell upon the brown-eyed, white-clad girl in the victoria, whose face was radiant with the joy of seeing him again and the good news that she was bringing. For she had not disobeyed, after all. Events had already shaped themselves, as her father’s little speech—once introductions were over and they were all seated in the big square living-room—very definitely proved.
“I’m more than glad to see you, Carey, my boy,” Nicholas Van Tuyl had exclaimed, gripping Grey’s hand with a cordiality that was stimulating, “I’m delighted; and I’m happy to be the one to bring you the best news you have had in a long while.” This had been said outside, and it had filled Grey with delicious expectancy. What followed, however, was even better than he imagined.
“Not an hour ago,” began the New York banker, “I had a call from your friend, Chancellor von Ritter. I know him, met him in Munich years ago, and went to him last night to get the289 truth about your imprisonment. He wouldn’t tell me anything then, but I told him enough, it seems, to upset the whole Privy Council and put a scapegrace on the throne of Budavia. However, that’s only by way of introduction. This afternoon he called on me at the hotel, and told me a good many things that the great and glorious Budavian public will never know. He told me, for instance, how the Government had been fooled and how now it was going to get out of its predicament with as good a grace as possible. He told me all about your escape last night, and how you had done the very thing that he could have most wished. One of the problems that confronted him was how to get rid of you without revealing the Government’s error. Now that you have taken the matter in your own hands, that question is answered. All he hopes is that they’ll never be able to find you; and they won’t—because they are going to shut their eyes and not look.”
Grey laughed, and the rest of the party joined in.
“This diplomacy reminds me of a French farce,” remarked O’Hara. “The actors who290 really know it all better than anyone else are apparently the only ones who cannot see what is perfectly palpable to the audience.”
“If I were you,” Van Tuyl continued, “I’d shave off that beard and moustache at once; that will make their dissembling appear a little bit real. And then I’d get out of town just as soon as I could make it convenient. Not that there would be any danger from the Government as it now stands, but with Hugo and his followers in command you can’t tell what might happen overnight.”
Grey nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed, smiling, “I think you’re right. I won’t stop for the royal obsequies. It may seem disrespectful to my late sire, but now that I have my wings back I feel like using them.”
“I never did care much for funerals,” added Nicholas Van Tuyl, “and so Hope and I will go with you.”
O’Hara’s eyes were fixed on Minna, who was gazing pensively at the white-scrubbed floor.
“I think I’ll stop,” he said, a little seriously. “You won’t need me, Grey, and I’d like to look291 over the Budavian military, which will be out in force.”
The Fraülein’s gaze was lifted and her eyes for an instant met those of the Irish lieutenant. In them he read the answer he craved to the question his heart was asking.