CHAPTER XXVII THE MAN IN THE CLOAK SURPRISES EVERYBODY

Franz Joseph, the aged Emperor of Austria-Hungary--whose life history is one of the most tragic of all contemporary royalty--tossed uneasily as he slumbered on the great four-posted bed, around which heavy damask curtains had been drawn, shutting off all view of the bed chamber. The Emperor had fled here to his Chateau Schoenbrunn for at least a day or so of quiet and ease from the heavy cares of state.

“Go, your Imperial Highness, and sleep in peace,” his trusted friend the Grand Chancellor had told him. “For the time being I will take the burden from your shoulders.”

“There are couriers waiting there in the ante-room, from Plotz and the army at Lublin. There is a messenger from the routed army before Belgrade. There is yet another ultimatum from Bulgaria to be considered,” said the aged monarch doubtfully, passing a listless hand across his careworn brow.

“Highness, cannot I attend to all that?”

The Emperor, broken in spirit and body, acquiesced weakly.

“_Rest!_” he murmured, as if invoking a saint, “undisturbed slumbers and a few hours in which to forget a bleeding, beaten nation that cries out for the help I cannot give.”

Thus it was that Franz Joseph came to go to Schoenbrunn, but forgetfulness did not come to him with the darkening of the lights around his bed. The whole sad picture of his reign passed in review before him like a horrid nightmare--murdered relatives, degenerate heirs who had disgraced his name, and, finally, apparitions of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg, whose assassination by Serbs at Sarajevo had been used as the excuse for the war now convulsing the world.

There stood the ghastly shades of the Emperor’s dearly beloved son and his wife whom Franz Joseph never would recognize. They extended bloody, mutilated hands to the old man and seemed to say:

“See, we are come to take you with us to where countless thousands of our countrymen lately have gone. Come, Franz Joseph!”

With a strangling cry of terror, the aged Emperor awoke and half started up in his bed. At that instant there came quick, catlike footfalls in the outer rooms, a gurgling shout that ended in a groan from the halberdiers who kept watch by the door, and then the heavy curtains screening the bed were wrenched violently aside and a terrible figure towered over the palsied Emperor.

It was Black-beard, his huge, knotty hands working spasmodically as if already strangling the poor old man in imagination. Behind him appeared the villainous visage of the Twisted Mouth. A knife in his hand was stained red to the hilt with the life-blood of the door guard whom they had caught unawares. Behind the pair the window was open and the upper rungs of a ladder showed above the sill.

Fate was upon him. The Emperor knew that, and in that crucial moment when his life seemed worth but a farthing, the noble bearing of his forbears came suddenly to him, straightening the bowed shoulders, throwing back the bent head and putting the truly regal blaze of eleven generations of Hapsburgs into his watery eyes.

“Dogs! what do you here in our presence unannounced?” Franz Joseph thundered, and even the pajamas covering his wasted form did not detract from the impressiveness of his mien. “Begone!”

The Emperor pointed one long forefinger from the wretches to the door.

Neither assassin vouchsafed a word in reply. Black-beard crouched to hurl himself upon his defenseless victim when--

_Crash!_ the whip-like report of a revolver sounded from the doorway and through the drifting smoke the figure of him they had called the “count” was visible.

“Perdition!” groaned Black-beard, half-rising from the floor. “You have killed me, Polnychek!”

Twisted Mouth had dodged in amazed terror behind the table, whence he now flourished his knife uncertainly.

Pandemonium had broken loose below stairs. Cries of alarm, screams, curses, stentorian commands mingled with a thunderous fusillade of shots. The staircase resounded with the rush of many feet upon it. The treacherous Grand Chancellor burst wildly into the room. He took in the scene with one sweeping glance.

“What is the meaning of this, Polnychek?” he cried threateningly. “Are you playing us false?”

In answer, the “count” dramatically threw aside the familiar cape and hat which had up to this time concealed his face. A ferocious curse burst from the astounded Chancellor.

Instead of facing Count Polnychek, he was confronted by the glinting muzzle of a revolver in the hands of _Ned Napier_!

What followed thereafter happened far more swiftly than it can be told. Seeing the entire plot crumbling about him, and lacking the moral courage to fight it out, the Chancellor sprang to an open window and cast himself headlong down into space. They later found him lying with his neck broken in the gardens. Twisted Mouth threw up his hands and surrendered as Ned advanced upon him.

Meanwhile the sound of Ned’s shot had awakened the entire household downstairs. Weapons were quickly seized and haste was made to secure the safety of the Emperor. The faithless servants were among the loudest in proclaiming their horror of the attempted assassination.

Alan, Bob and Captain von Schleinitz had attacked the nine conspirators skulking down stairs the moment Ned’s shot rang out, and, although the trapped men fought with unparalleled ferocity, they were driven at bay against one wall of the building and forced to yield to their intrepid assailants who were by then reinforced by thirty or more domestics and imperial guardsmen.

Owing to the already disturbed conditions in Vienna it was the Emperor’s wish that all news of this dastardly attempt on his life be kept absolutely secret. He rode back along the Ring Strasse, the main boulevard encircling the city, in state the next morning and made it a point to rise up and bow frequently in acknowledgment of the cheering sidewalk crowds. This effectually counteracted any premature stories of his death which might have been circulated in preparation for the plotted revolution.

The Airship Boys were given a formal audience in his private reception chamber of the Hofburg on the following afternoon and Captain von Schleinitz also was ordered to be present. The grateful emperor conferred the Order of St. Stepan upon his faithful officer and promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Imperial Aviation Corps. To the smiling boys Franz Joseph said:

“It is a matter of difficulty for me to decide how best to acknowledge my life-long indebtedness to you young gentlemen. The fact that you are not of the nobility nor yet soldiers precludes my decorating you with any of the Orders of Merit in my power. So, gentlemen, I am going to leave it for you yourselves to say how I best may please you.”

Of course all of the boys blushed and were much embarrassed by such a gracious reception. None of them knew exactly what to say until Buck blurted out:

“Why, we wouldn’t think of taking any rewards ourselves for a thing that it was our plain duty to do, sir, but we have a favor that we’d like to ask for a friend who, by the way, happens to be a subject of yours.”

“Your request is already granted--even though the man be one of those implicated in the conspiracy,” said the Emperor kindly.

“While we were in Przemysl,” continued Buck, “we met an infantry officer, one Lieutenant Racoszky, who lay dying in the hospital for lack of proper attention to his wounds. He is one of your most devoted subjects.”

Then Buck went on to tell how the lieutenant had married above his station in life and of his subsequent misfortunes as a result of the old count’s brutal enmity.

“We want you to intercede with the count on Racoszky’s behalf and bring the young couple and their child together again,” Buck concluded.

“Mr. Stewart hasn’t told you the entire story yet, though,” Ned here interrupted. “It seems that Count Polnychek was one of the moving spirits in this plot. While trailing him down, I fell into his power and probably would have been murdered had it not been for his brave daughter, Racoszky’s wife, who forced him at a revolver’s muzzle to liberate me.

“Armed with the weapon she had given me, I forced him to reveal the full details of the conspiracy and now have him bound and locked there in his daughter’s room. She agreed to stand guard over him while I impersonated him at the conspirators’ rendezvous. The lady has asked that I beg leniency for her parent in view of her own great services on your behalf.”

The Emperor paced the room thoughtfully for a few moments. Then he said:

“Young gentlemen, you shall have both of your wishes. Lieutenant Racoszky need no longer dread separation from his family, and Count Polnychek shall not be accorded the sentence he so richly deserves. But he must leave Austria at once, and the first time that he ever again sets foot across our boundaries shall be the signal for his arrest.”

Thus the happiness of Racoszky was assured and the boys were left once more free to pursue their way.