CHAPTER 19

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.