CHAPTER 13

“Kürschdorf,” the guide-books will tell you, “is the Capital of the Kingdom of Budavia; 118 miles from Munich and forty-nine miles from Nuremberg. It stands on both banks of the Weisswasser, united by the Charlemagne and Wartberg bridges, 400 yards long. Surrounded by towering mountains its King’s Residenz Schloss, erected 1607–1642, rises like the Acropolis above the dwellings and other buildings of the city. The steep sides of the Wartberg (1,834 feet) rise directly from amid the houses of the town, and it is on one extremity of the elevation that the imposing royal palace is located, with its 365 rooms, frescoes and statues, a ‘Diana’ of Canova, a ‘Perseus’ of Schwanhaler, a ‘Sleeping Ariadne’ of Thorwaldsen,195 and casts. The palace gardens are two miles long, and consist of a series of terraces overlooking the Wartberg valley on one side and a fertile plain on the other.”

The guide-books, too, will tell you of the K?nigsbau, a quarter-mile long, containing a coffee house, the Bourse, and the Concert Hall; and of the Museum, where the chief treasures of Kürschdorf are on view daily (10 A. M. TO 4 P. M.); and of the Hof Theatre, and of the beer gardens. And they will give you a long and detailed description of the cathedral, completed in 1317, with its spire 452 feet high, ascended by 575 steps, its wonderful astronomical clock, and its great west window. They will even tell you that the best shops are in the Schloss Strasse, and that the Grand Hotel K?nigin Anna is a first-class and well-situated hostelry. But in no one of them will you find any mention of the most ancient dwelling house in all Kürschdorf, a quaint, dark stone building, on the Graf Strasse, only a stone’s throw from the Friedrich Platz and two blocks away from the Wartburg Brücke.

At the moment Carey Grey was sending his telegram196 from the railway station at Chateau-Thierry to Nicholas Van Tuyl, in Paris, Count Hermann von Ritter, Chancellor of Budavia, was standing at a rear window of this venerable Kürschdorf mansion, gazing out upon a spacious and orderly rose garden. He was very tall and very angular. From a fringe of silver-white hair rose a shining pink crown; from beneath bushy brows of only slightly darker grey appeared small, keen black eyes; and a moustache of the same colour, heavy but close-cropped, accentuated rather than hid a straight, thin-lipped, nervous mouth. His head was bent thoughtfully forward and his hands, long and sinewy, with sharply defined knuckles, were clasped behind his back.

The drawing-room in which he stood was large and square, with high walls hung with many splendid pictures in heavy gilded frames. The furniture was massive and richly carved. Rococo cabinets held a wealth of curios—odd vases and drinking cups of repoussé work in gold and silver; idols from the Orient, peculiar antique knives—bodkins and poniards, and carvings of jade and ivory and ebony. The polished floor was strewn197 with Eastern rugs of silken texture, and at the doors and windows were hangings of still softer fabric and less florid colour and ornamentation.

After a little the Count crossed to a table on which stood lighted candelabra, and taking out his watch glanced at it with some show of impatience. Almost at the same moment a bell jangled, and very soon after a portière was raised by a servant wearing the Court mourning livery.

“Herr Captain Lindenwald, your Excellency!” he announced. And the Captain entered, saluting.

He was flushed and somewhat ill at ease, and the Chancellor’s icy manner as he bade him be seated was not altogether reassuring.

“I am very much distressed over the news conveyed by your telegram,” began the older man, when he had taken a chair at a little distance from his visitor. “Any delay at this juncture, you must understand, is only calculated to result in complications. Was His Royal Highness so violent that to bring him with you was impracticable?”

Lindenwald hesitated for just the shade of a second, his fingers playing nervously with the arm of his chair.

198 “I regarded the risk as too great,” he ventured.

“That is no answer,” the Count returned, irritably. “I asked you if he was violent.”

“Yes, Count, he was,” replied the Captain, with sudden assurance. “He was very violent at intervals. It would have been impossible to get him here without his causing a scene at some stage of the journey and probably revealing his identity. Besides, it was most dangerous. He was liable to evade his watchers and throw himself from the train.”

The annoyance of the Chancellor increased.

“You have never heard, Captain,” he said with a sneer, “that there are such things as handcuffs and strait-jackets.”

“Ah, but Count,” pleaded the other, in a tone of conciliation. “His Royal Highness! Could I put the Crown Prince to such humiliation? You know yourself that I would not be justified. It was better, it seemed to me, to have him safely confined in a private hospital in Paris for the present. In a little while, perhaps, his mind will clear.”

“What is the form of his mania?”

199 “It is most peculiar,” explained the Herr Captain. “You understand, of course, that until five months ago he had no idea whatever that he was who he is. He was, as you have been told, a valet, but a very superior man of his class. It is most certainly true that blood counts. He had all the inherent dignity of birth. His mind was far above his assumed station. All this you know. You may not have heard, though, that he was employed by an American stock broker named Grey who one day embezzled four hundred thousand marks and ran away.”

“Yes,” put in the Count, “I was informed of that as well.”

“Just so. Well,” continued the Captain, “His Royal Highness now, strangely enough, imagines that he is Grey.”

“Imagines that he is an embezzler?” queried Ritter.

“Precisely. He even cabled to New York giving his Paris address, and the United States Embassy there was for arresting him and having him extradited.”

“And when did this mania develop?”

200 “After the death of the Herr Doctor Schlippenbach.”

The Chancellor sat thoughtfully rubbing together his long, virile hands.

“But I thought that this man Grey, this embezzler, committed suicide—was drowned or something.”

“He was,” Lindenwald assented, “at least he is supposed to be dead.”

“It will be possible, I presume,” the Count pursued, after another moment of meditation, “to have the present temporary regency continued by simply proving that Prince Maximilian, the heir apparent, is alive and mentally incapacitated, though to have had him here in the flesh would have been far better. And now as to these proofs—I am in possession of copies of the papers, but where are the originals?”

The Captain shifted uneasily in his chair, and his eyes refused to meet those of his interlocutor.

“That is a question, Count,” he replied.

“A question!” cried the other, surprised and annoyed. “Why a question? Surely you are in possession of them!”

201 “Alas, I am not!”

His Excellency, his face crimson, sprang to his feet.

“My God, Captain!” he exclaimed in a rage, “you exasperate me beyond all bearing.”

“I am deeply sorry, Count von Ritter,” returned Lindenwald, “but if you will hear me for one moment you will know that I am not to blame.”

“Excuses will not avail,” he retorted, glowering. “You are a bungler, sir, a bungler. You have been either criminally careless in this matter or intentionally—yes, Captain, intentionally criminal.”

“Your Excellency!” The Captain arose with a fine assumption of anger. “I permit no man, your Excellency——”

The Chancellor’s lips were close pressed. His beady eyes were two points of fire.

“Tut, tut,” he said, “this is neither the time nor place for that sort of thing. I am pained, distressed, mortified. From first to last your mission has been a series of blunders. Delay has followed delay; excuse has followed excuse; and202 now, at the crucial moment, comes the climax of your incapacity. A child could have done better. Knowing the importance of getting the Prince of Kronfeld here while His Majesty still lived you, on one pretext and another, dawdled away week after week in London and Paris; you permitted knowledge of the existence of the Prince to leak out; you could not even hide your stopping place from Hugo’s emissaries—ah, you see I am well posted—and finally you come here not only without the heir but without the documents that are absolutely essential to the continuance of the direct succession.”

Lindenwald listened, cowed and speechless. After a little, however, he spoke falteringly, while the Count, his hands behind him, strode excitedly up and down the large, square drawing-room.

“If you will but hear me,” he protested, sullenly, “I think—I am indeed almost certain, your Excellency, that I can show you I am at least not altogether to blame. The Herr Doctor was ill when he landed in England. He was, moreover, most eccentric and most self-willed. And His Royal Highness was of the Herr Doctor’s mind, always.203 For me to make a more expeditious journey was, under the circumstances, impossible. It appeared to me that it was the Herr Doctor’s object to delay our arrival until after the death of His Majesty. Then, as you know, Herr Doctor Schlippenbach died, somewhat suddenly, and the madness of the Prince ensued.”

“But the papers, the papers?” cried von Ritter, irritably, halting in his walk. “What of them?”

“The Herr Doctor never so much as showed them to me, Count. They were, I understand, in a strong-box, of which he and Prince Maximilian had duplicate keys. But the strong-box when we reached Paris was not brought to our hotel. Schlippenbach seemed to think it would be safer at the railway station. I argued with him, but to no avail. There was a fire, you remember, at our hotel in London, and that it and its contents were not destroyed was simply miraculous. It was that which frightened the Herr Doctor, and he refused to risk it in another hotel. Well, your Excellency, after his death we could find no trace of the box. The receipt for it had disappeared. I did my utmost to locate and secure it, but as yet I have been204 unsuccessful. I have tracers out, however, and it may be discovered any day.”

“Bah!” almost shrieked the Chancellor, irascibly, “and a throne hangs on the slender thread of that ‘may be.’ Unless the box is found, Captain, it will be well for you to—but it is needless for me to suggest. You yourself know that your life, henceforth, would be not only useless, but a burden.”

Lindenwald’s chin dropped and his eyes sought the floor.

“The box shall be found,” he said; but the assurance in his tone was meagre.

“And His Royal Highness,” continued von Ritter, “is in a sanitarium in Paris?”

“Yes, Count; the sanitarium of——”

But a rap on the door cut short his answer, and the name either was not pronounced or was drowned in the Chancellor’s stentorian:

“Herein!”

A footman handed His Excellency a telegram, and with a “Pardon me, Captain!” he opened it.

Years of diplomatic training had given the Count von Ritter a command of his facial muscles205 that was perfect. Not by so much even as the quiver of an eyelash did he signify the character of the tidings thus conveyed to him. Having read the message at a glance he refolded the paper with some deliberation, and then turning to Lindenwald again, asked:

“In whose sanitarium did you say?”

“Dr. De Cerveau’s.”

“You saw him there yourself?”

“Yes, Count.”

“And there is no possible chance of his escaping?”

“None whatever, Count.”

His Excellency took another turn to the window overlooking the rose garden, his head bowed meditatively. Lindenwald was still standing, his arm resting on the high back of the chair from which he had risen.

“You are quite sure,” His Excellency pursued, when he was again opposite the Captain, “that we need have no apprehension on that score?”

“Quite sure, Count von Ritter.”

Very slowly, and with a care and precision that emphasised the action, the Chancellor again unfolded206 the telegram he held and extended it towards Lindenwald.

“Then you will, perhaps, explain to me what that means?” he said, with a calmness that was portentous.

The face of the Herr Captain went ashen white. He caught his breath sharply, and his left hand gripped the chair back where a second before his arm had rested.

    “Am leaving this evening, Orient Express,” he read. “Have me met on arrival. Arndt.”

He made as if to speak, but his lips emitted no sound.

“Well? Well?” queried the Count, impatiently. “What is it? Explain it. That is from His Royal Highness, isn’t it?”

“I—I—you see, I—” stammered the Captain, dazed and affrighted, “I—I am not so sure. It may be a hoax—a trap.”

Von Ritter’s eyes poured out upon him their contempt.

“A hoax, a trap,” he sneered. “No, no, unless207 it be a trap in which to catch a certain officer of the Army who is not so very far away. I think, Captain, that it is useless to prolong this interview,” and he pressed an electric button in the table under his thumb.

Captain Lindenwald bowed, but said nothing.

At the same moment the footman reappeared and at a signal from the Chancellor lifted the portière, and the Captain went rather shamefacedly from the room.

When the Count heard the street door close he pressed the button in the table again, and to the footman who entered he said:

“Otto, I wish to speak to the Chief of Police. Call him up, and when you have him on the telephone let me know.”

He walked to the window again. The moon had risen, and the rose garden was clad in luminous white with trimmings of purplish grey and black shadows.