Part 13

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 that 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.

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 of 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 the 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 who 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 look 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.

XX

Grey had set apart the books and papers that had to do either directly or indirectly with his case, because he saw in them a circumstantial defence to the charges which were still hanging over him at home. To his use of them for this purpose Minna and her sister gladly consented, and so when that evening, after having been cropped and clean-shaven by Johann, he bade the little household good-bye and was driven into town to the Grand Hotel Königin Anna, he carried this evidence with him.

It was, as has been observed, a day rife with revelations. The discoveries of its daylight hours were of incalculable value, but the disclosures reserved for the night were of even more consequence. The train that afternoon had brought from Paris a large company of visitors intent upon viewing the pomp and panoply of a royal funeral, and among them were the remaining members of that gay little dinner party at Armenonville the week before.

The Van Tuyls ran into them at the hotel on their return from the Fahler farm, and Hope immediately had an inspiration.

“I’m going to give a dinner tonight,” she said, “just the most informal sort of a dinner in our _salon_. And I want you all to come. It doesn’t make any difference whether you have your trunks or not. You are not expected to dress. I’m going to treat you to a surprise.”

The women were all curiosity on the instant and showed it. The men accepted politely, but declared that the hostess was attraction sufficient.

Hope had made the proposition on impulse, and it was too late to draw back when she caught her father’s disapproving eye.

“I’m not at all sure,” he commented, once they were alone, “that this thing is wise. Carey isn’t yet out of the woods, and the story of his alleged embezzlement and all that is too fresh to have been forgotten. Explanations at a dinner party aren’t pleasant things. We know he is innocent, but you don’t want to put him on trial before a jury of your guests.”

But Hope was staunch in her loyalty.

“Our verdict will be sufficient,” she answered, bravely. “If I had stopped to think of all you say I probably shouldn’t have asked them, but as it is I’m glad I did it. It clears the situation at once. They must know from my having promised to be his wife and your having given your consent, that he is innocent.”

Nicholas Van Tuyl shrugged his shoulders.

“Perhaps,” he replied, a little doubtfully, “perhaps; but, my dear girl, don’t hint at the Prince business. The Fahlers will keep their mouths closed for the sake of their dead relative, but no injunction of secrecy would still the tongues of Mrs. Dickie and Lady Constance.”

Hope demurred.

“It’s such an interesting story,” she protested, “and I am a woman!”

“But the Government here does not want it to get out.”

“And I’d like to know what we owe to the Government,” the girl inquired. “I don’t want to be disobedient, father dear, but I can’t promise to control myself under provocation.”

Again Mr. Van Tuyl shrugged his shoulders. His daughter was his idol and he was as yarn in her hands.

When Grey arrived and was told of the plan, he received the tidings somewhat ruefully. He complained that his trunks were still at the Residenz Schloss, and that, in the torn and bedraggled raiment he was wearing, to pose as the object of interest at a dinner party, no matter how informal, was apt to be a little trying, to say the least. But O’Hara, who had driven into town with him, came to the rescue. He and Grey were very nearly of a size, and as he was the fortunate possessor of two evening suits he promptly placed one of them at Grey’s disposal.

Nevertheless, in spite of this satisfactory overcoming of a grave difficulty, Grey was not present when the party sat down to dinner; for, as he was about to join the company, Nicholas Van Tuyl broke in upon him, carrying in his hand a note which had just been delivered by an orderly from the Royal Hospital.

“You’ll have to go, won’t you?” he asked, as Grey ran his eye over the page.

It was from Chancellor von Ritter and was addressed to the banker.

“If you are in communication with Mr. Grey,” it read, “send him here with all speed. The man Lutz can last only a few hours. He is anxious to make an ante-mortem statement, but insists that Mr. Grey shall be present when he makes it.”

And so Grey rushed off in a cab, and as the dinner party took their places at table in the Van Tuyl _salon_, he was climbing the Royal Hospital stairs to the little white room in which lay dying the young man who had served him faithfully for over two years as valet, only to fall by reason of avarice into the rôle of villain in his life’s melodrama.

The eyes that looked up at him from dark, cavernous depths in a face pale as chalk had in them an appeal that touched a chord of his sympathy, and for the moment he forgot the injuries he had suffered and remembered only the services he had experienced at those hands, which lay limp and waxen-yellow against the spotless white of the coverlet.

The small room was somewhat crowded. Chancellor von Ritter was there with a notary and a stenographer; near the window stood a soldier, whose very presence seemed an irony, which he appeared to recognise in retiring as far as the limits of the tiny chamber would permit; and there, too, of course, was the inevitable nun-like nurse in significantly immaculate muslin and the great flaring headdress of her sisterhood.

“He seems a little stronger at the moment,” whispered the Chancellor; “you came at an opportune time. He has been asking for you all the afternoon.”

The nurse was moistening the sufferer’s lips. When she finished, Grey spoke to him.

“I am sorry to see you here, Lutz,” he said, simply.

His breathing, he noticed, was very short and laboured.

“I’m obliged to you for coming, sir,” he replied, and his voice was stronger than one would have expected. “I’ve got a lot to tell you; but it’s so late now I don’t know whether I’ll be able.” He paused between his sentences in an effort to husband his waning strength. “I was a good enough fellow once, Mr. Grey, wasn’t I?”

Grey nodded.

“Yes,” he agreed, with sincerity, “you were all right, Lutz.”

“I never really meant you any harm, sir,” he went on. “It seemed to me that it would be a good thing for you.”

The Chancellor motioned to the stenographer, who drew his chair closer to the bedside and took a note-book and pencil from his pocket.

“Afterwards,” Lutz continued, “after Dr. Schlippenbach died and I knew we couldn’t keep you under the spell any more, I got frightened; and then I drank a good deal, and I--yes, I was crazy at times. Absinthe, Mr. Grey. I wasn’t used to it, and it turned my head. I thought to save myself I must get rid of you. I tried to smother you with gas that night last week in Paris. Captain Lindenwald knew of it. He was afraid of you, too. He said suspicion would fall on Baron von Einhard; that we would never be suspected. And when I failed he went to Baron von Einhard and--how much he got I don’t know; but the Baron paid him to go away and leave you, agreeing that he would put you where you would never be heard of again. Then we came here, with a story about your being mad and being locked up in a Paris sanitarium. It was the only thing we could do. If the plan had worked we should have been in trouble for a while, maybe, but when Prince Hugo came to the throne we should have been rewarded. I sold the Baron the strong-box with all those manufactured proofs of your right to the crown; and I told him you had the Prince of Kronfeld ring. I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry. But I’m a coward, and I was in terror and more than half insane with that green stuff.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Grey interjected. “But tell me, Lutz, how this whole thing started, back in New York. Tell me about Schlippenbach and how you and he managed it together.”

The nurse, from her place by the pillow, leaned over and wiped her patient’s brow. Then she moistened his lips again, and his deep-sunken eyes looked his appreciation. For some minutes he was silent, endeavouring apparently by an effort of will to gather fresh energy; and to Grey’s mind recurred the picture of that darkened room in Paris, just six days ago, with the dying Herr Schlippenbach struggling to make himself understood.

“He was more devil than man,” Lutz resumed. “He was always working with strange drugs and experimenting with batteries on cats and dogs, and children, too. One day he asked me a great many questions about you, Mr. Grey, and then he asked me if I’d like to be rich--very rich, he said. ‘Everyone wants to be rich,’ I answered. ‘If you’ll do just as I tell you,’ he said, ‘you’ll have more money than you ever dreamed of.’ He told me he wanted me to put just one tiny pellet in your coffee each morning. It would not harm you, he said, but you would doze off for just ten minutes after you had taken it, and you would never know you had been dozing. ‘And while he is asleep,’ he said, ‘you can tell him to do anything you wish at any time in that day and he will do it. Tell him, for instance,’ he advised me, ‘to double your wages when he returns from his office in the evening, and he will do it.’ I laughed at the idea and had no faith in it; but I consented to try it. And it worked. You did double my wages, Mr. Grey, just as I asked you to, and you never knew I had asked you. Each day I gave you the pellet, as he directed, and each day I suggested that you do certain things at certain hours, and you always did them.”

“Hypnotic suggestion,” commented Grey, involuntarily.

“Something like it,” Lutz replied, “but he said it was not. At least, only in part. The pellet was the principal thing. He made the pellets himself. They were his secret. I gave you the last the day before he died; and I knew then that I could control you no more.”

“Yes,” Grey urged, “but after the first, what happened? After I raised your wages, what other things did you suggest?”

“Nothing of importance for a month or two. Just trifles--that you come home early and tell me you would not require me that night; or that you would give me a coat I wanted very much, and things of that sort. But one day Schlippenbach came to the rooms while you were down town. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said,’I am coming here early, before Mr. Grey is up. You must hide me somewhere until you have given him the pellet.’ He came and I hid him in your wardrobe; but when you had had your coffee with his drug in it he came out, and then I saw for the first time the power of this thing. He directed you very minutely and very exactly. Every minute in the day you were under his commands. You were to secure a hundred thousand dollars in cash and you were to bring it to his house on Avenue A at four o’clock in the afternoon. And at this house you were to remain. That evening I went there, and there you were. You did not know me. Your name had been changed to Arndt. I called you Mr. Grey to test the thing, and you appeared to think I was crazy. Schlippenbach told me you had brought the money. You never left his house until we sailed for this country.”

“What did I do there?”

“You did very little, but Schlippenbach did a great deal. Each day he had his batteries working on your head. He told me he was building up your self-esteem and that he was depleting your reverence. He was developing those cerebral organs which he thought would fit you for a throne and reducing those which he thought would unfit you. He said that in this way he could change you completely. After a few years of constant treatment, three or four years at most, you would, he told me, be no more Mr. Grey, the New York broker, than I would. You would be the King of Budavia and never know that you had not been born to it. And then there would be no further need of pellets or of galvanism. The transformation would have been accomplished.”

The dying man, becoming more and more interested in his subject, was speaking in clearer tones and with much less effort; and his auditors listened, spellbound, to his exposition of the marvellous methods of his mountebank master.

“And as the days went on it was wonderful how you did change, sir. You spoke differently and you acted differently. He made you grow a beard and moustache, which he bleached without your knowledge, as he did your hair, and your most intimate friend wouldn’t have recognised you, Mr. Grey. I don’t believe your mother would have known you, sir.”

“And the money?” Grey queried, fearing that in his enthusiasm Lutz would overtax his strength and leave this most important point uncovered. “What did Schlippenbach do with the hundred thousand dollars?”

“A good deal of it was spent,” the valet answered, “but some of it is still in the East River National Bank, and some with Graeff & Welbrock, the German bankers. When we came away we brought with us two letters of credit, one in his name and one in yours, for twenty thousand dollars each.”

Of these facts Grey made a mental note.

“Some of it you will get back, sir,” Lutz added, after a pause. “Perhaps most of it, for the old man owns some property on the East Side, and you can prove that he was responsible for the theft. And now, Mr. Grey”--and something in the nature of a smile flickered ghastly and distressful about the corners of his livid mouth--“I think I have told you all. But”--his yellow right hand slid slowly a few inches over the coverlet towards its edge--“I have in return a favour to ask. Maybe you’ll feel you can’t grant it. I’m going pretty fast, I imagine. They say I won’t last till daylight comes, and--I’d like, sir--if you don’t mind too much”--his sentences were very halt once more--“don’t mind too much----”

Grey leaned over and took the sliding hand in his own.

“All right, Lutz,” he said, with a tremour in his voice that he could not control, “all right, man. I don’t believe you were half to blame. He had you under a spell, too, I dare say. I forgive you freely, and God bless you!”

The flickering, vagrant smile merged into an expression of peace. Into the sunken eyes came resignation.

“Thank you, sir!” the grey lips murmured, “thank you! thank you!”

The notary mumbled a form of oath to which Lutz gave a voiceless assent. Then his lids fell, and when Grey and Count von Ritter left the room he was barely conscious.

“I’ll have a certified copy of the statement sent to you Mr. Grey,” the Chancellor volunteered. “In it you will have evidence that is beyond all dispute. I congratulate you on securing such a complete refutation of so baseless and yet so dangerous a slander.”

XXI

The contrast between the tiny white room in the hospital with the dire shadow of the Grim Reaper hovering over the narrow cot bed, and the spacious, brilliant _salon_ of the hotel, where life, assertive, aggressive, almost obtrusive, was dominant, had something of a dazzling effect on Carey Grey, and he paused a moment on the threshold, with blinking eyes, in an effort to adjust his vision to the sudden change of scene.

There was a momentary lull in the merriment that smote him as the door swung open in answer to his knock, and then the cannonade of voices--of cries of surprise, of welcoming greetings, of laughter--was resumed, and Nicholas Van Tuyl rose from his place at the round table, which, with its snowy damask dotted with pink-shaded candles and dappled with silver and crystal, seemed like the centre of some giant flower of which the men and women about it were the variegated petals.

“My friends,” cried the host, raising his voice and hand simultaneously for silence, “I have pleasure in presenting to you my future son-in-law, Mr. Carey Grey, of New York.”

The next instant everybody was shouting at once. The men were up and bearing down on the newcomer in a solid phalanx, and Lady Constance and Mrs. Dickie were waving their napkins and fairly shrieking their congratulations. When at length something like order reigned again, Frothingham found his champagne glass and proposed a toast:

“To the bride-elect,” he cried. “‘She moves a goddess and she looks a queen.’”

Grey’s response was brief but enthusiastic, and the significance of the quotation with which he closed it evoked an outburst of applause that must have been heard as far as the Kursaal, two blocks away.

“All yet seems well, and if it end so meet, The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet. The king’s a beggar now the play is done: All is well ended, if _this_ suit be won.”

He did not know it at the time, but prior to his coming the whole story of his adventure had been related and discussed, much to the entertainment of the party in general and to the intense edification and delight of young Edson in particular, who resolved to make to his chief, the Ambassador, a full report of the extraordinary affair, with a view to having it forwarded to Washington to be filed among the State archives, as indicative of a vulnerable point in Budavia’s boasted supremacy in statecraft. The aptness of the quotation, therefore, was more generally appreciated than Grey had any notion it would be, and the hilarious approbation of his auditors was consequently a good deal of a surprise.