Part 12

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, 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 wall 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 Fräulein von Altdorf,” suggested Johann, “to whom the Fräulein herself was going, lives in the country, about two miles away.”

“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.”

XVIII

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. Was 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 theory 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 been 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.”

“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.

“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?”

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, confirmed it. And now I must ask you to excuse me. You are at the Königin 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 arguments 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 the 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 view 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, 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.”

XIX

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’s 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 of 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 accepted 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 development 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 paramount 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 he 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 found 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.