CHAPTER 15

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.