Charles Stokes Wayne

“ All that is necessary is for you to sign your name.”
When O’Hara had gone Grey sat for a long time brooding over his extraordinary experience. His head was still aching, throbbingly, and his nerves were still a-tingle. Whatever treatment he had been subjected to its effects had not yet been entirely eliminated. He undressed, got into his pyjamas and went to bed; but sleep was coy and not to be won by wooing. He heard the clock strike two and three and four, and he saw the first gray sign of dawn between his curtains before he fell into a restless, troubled, unrefreshing slumber. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Zagaie again stepped forward, taking the place vacated by the priest. As he did so Herr Schlippenbach, who had been breathing softly, peacefully, with closed lids, opened his eyes wide with a look of sudden horror. There was a quick, convulsive movement38 that stirred the coverlet, a long deep-drawn sigh, and the aged man lay motionless.
Fraülein von Altdorf turned away, grief-stricken and horrified, from the spectacle of death, and Grey for the first time saw her face. It was more than pretty, he thought, with its big, sad blue eyes and its full, red-lipped mouth all a-quiver with emotion. ”

“ It was in this mood that Grey’s return from Versailles was accomplished; in this ill-temper with himself and this doubt of being able to undo what he looked on as a more dire menace to his happiness than all the charges of defalcation and embezzlement and all the dangers of extradition.
When at length he and Miss von Altdorf reached the Hôtel Grammont they found O’Hara awaiting them. He came running out to the fiacre and gave a hand to the young woman, assisting her to alight. ”

“ Through the three connecting rooms Grey dashed, revolver in hand and with Johann close at his heels. The lantern the guard had left on the landing had been knocked over and was out, but by the light from the open doorway they at once discovered the huddled, distorted body of a man, whose groans added to the bedlam of hurrying feet and excited voices from below and oaths, cries, and sounds of struggle from above. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I Grey’s awakening was as gradual as a clouded dawn. For a time dreams and realities intermingled. Then slowly a partial consciousness of his physical being obtruded: his fingers were clutching a silken coverlet; he turned on his side and the linen pillow-case was cool to his cheek; through half-open eyelids a sweep of pale blue became visible. Later he realised that he was in a curtained bed and that the blue was the colour of the draperies. He lay still for a long while—drowsy, inert, his sensibilities numb. Presently the ticking of a clock became audible, and then a rumble of street sounds. ”

“ She believed him guilty, of course. It would have been better to have let her, like the rest of the world, think him dead. What a trickster is the weaver of dreams! How real had seemed his vision, and yet how untrue! And he had thought of going to her as fast as the speediest ocean liner could take him. Oh, yes, he was awake now; wide, wide awake.
“I couldn’t get the box at the Gare du Nord,” O’Hara continued. “They’d given a brass or something for it and had no record of your name or Schlippenbach’s either. You had better ask Johann about it, or Lutz.”
“I will,” said Grey. ”

“ When at length they alighted at the Hôtel Grammont and entered the courtyard the portier informed the Captain that a gentleman was waiting for him in the reading-room. He went in, with Grey, who wished to look at a newspaper, closely following; and a tall, sallow-faced young man, faultlessly attired, rose and came towards them.
Grey turned aside to a table, but Lindenwald greeted the caller with no little suavity of manner.
“Ah, Monsieur Edson,” he said, affably, “this is indeed an honour. You have not, I hope, been waiting long?” ”

“ Grey said; and then he sat for a full minute in silence. He was impelled to make a clean breast of the whole astounding affair to this man and ask his aid. Though he was unacquainted even with his name he felt he could trust him. In this sudden and inexplicable faith his aversion for Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald found its antithesis. He nevertheless appreciated the importance of extreme caution, and his judgment warred for the moment with his impulse. Finally a truce was signed.
“Was yesterday’s tone an affectation or is today’s?” asked the Irishman jocularly. ”

“ And it was here, in this position, a minute later that Johann, who had after considerable deliberation decided to investigate the cause of the disturbance, found him pale and exhausted, with the remnants of his pyjamas spattered with blood from his bleeding finger.
“Oh, Herr Arndt,” he cried, in perturbation, “what has happened? Have you tried to kill yourself? Oh, it is suffocating here! The gas—the room is full of gas.” ”

“ Whether to this infraction Captain Lindenwald had been a party he had no means of knowing, but now it had turned out that another enemy was in the field—an aggressive foe seeking his life—and in this new battle Captain Lindenwald, strangely enough, was, it would seem, his staunch ally. He wondered whether any man had ever before been so harassed, so persecuted, so maligned, so humiliated through no fault of his own ”

“ Grey’s impulse was to follow, but at the first step he reeled dizzily and would have fallen had not Baptiste thrown an arm about him and aided him to a chair. His head was aching splittingly and his legs and arms were numb. For a little while he was lost to everything save the racking torture of physical pain. Then the voluble, excited clatter of the men about him recalled him to a sense of what had happened.
“What are you standing here for?” he cried, vexedly. “Get down to the street, every one of you. Monsieur O’Hara may need you. Off, I say. Be quick!” ”

“ Miss von Altdorf was apparently still grief-stricken over her great-uncle’s sudden death, and though she strove valiantly to smile at Lindenwald’s essays at wit and to respond with some animation to Grey’s less jocose but cheerful observations, it was with such palpable exertion as to rather discourage her would-be entertainers.
Her youth was a surprise to the American. ”

“ Grey perplexed her. Was he in another car or another compartment? And if she had so much to say to him why had she stood talking to another man until the train was on the point of leaving? and why was she sitting here now instead of being with him?
“American women are such fun,” O’Hara was saying, his cheery, ruddy face one broad smile. “I admire them awfully. They’re so superbly self-reliant.”
“You’re an American, Miss Van Tuyl?” the Fräulein ventured. “Oh, of course. It was in America, I suppose, you met Uncle Max?” ”

“ Into one café after another they wandered, but always without success. They encountered acquaintances by the dozen—men and women whom Grey and O’Hara had met since their arrival in Paris, and whom Grey had no recollection of ever having seen before—but the little, wiry, sallow-faced Italian-looking nobleman was nowhere in evidence.
It is never safe, however, to assume that a visitor to the French capital is abed and asleep simply because he cannot be found in any of the boulevard cafés around the hour of midnight. ”

“ He had sat for hours, it seemed, beside Hope Van Tuyl, gazing into the limpid depths of her sympathetic eyes, listening to the melody of her clear, full-toned voice. They were in a great garden with parterres of gay, sweet-scented flowers—roses and heliotrope and geraniums—and smooth terraces of greensward with marble nymphs and satyrs on mossy pedestals, and above them the kindly, protecting, leafy branches of an old oak. ”

“ The heraldic device was to Grey unfamiliar, but it would be a comparatively easy matter to learn to what family it belonged. Indeed, he had a vague recollection of having noticed a ring of this pattern on the little finger of Baron von Einhard’s ungloved hand the afternoon before in the hotel reading-room; but the pattern was not uncommon, and— but it was preposterous to fancy that a man of his position, no matter what Lindenwald had said, no matter what his reputation for chicanery, craft, and cunning, would personally undertake a deliberate attempt at homicide. ”

“ Grey, with difficulty, choked back an exclamation.
“Lutz!” he muttered to himself, in astonishment. “By all that’s good! Lutz! Here in Paris, and with me.”
“Yes,” the valet continued, “Herr Schlippenbach was necessary to Herr Arndt. Without Herr Schlippenbach, Herr Arndt is another man. He is mad, Johann, and filled with wild notions. He does not know his own people. He fancies he is someone else. Herr Schlippenbach was his balance wheel.”
“So!” murmured Johann. “So!”
“I have a great fear we shall never get him to Kürschdorf at all.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ He broke out in a torrent of rage, recounting his fancied wrongs and declaring that he had wasted the best years of his life in a hopeless effort to grow flowers of intellect from barren soil. The German Emperor would have had him behind the bars for lèse-majesté, but King Frederic only laughed and offered him a baronetcy. But Great-uncle Schlippenbach scorned the offer. Having spoken his mind, he packed his boxes and left the Court, left Kürschdorf, left Budavia, left Europe and went to America to begin life anew. ”

“ When O’Hara had run away to dress, promising to meet Grey and the Fraülein in a private room of the Café Riche at seven-thirty and dine with them, the American’s thoughts reverted to his resolution to see Hope Van Tuyl at all hazards. The disappearance of Lindenwald and the others, however, had again somewhat altered the situation. It was now more than ever necessary that he retain his freedom in order to track and run down the fugitives, and he recognised the risk he took in going to a hotel patronised largely by Americans and sending up a card bearing his real name. ”

“ This is a case, Herr Arndt, where caution is more advisable than valour.”
“And your advice is?” Grey queried.
“My advice is never to go out unaccompanied. Already he is setting his traps, arranging his pitfalls. You cannot conceive of his ingenuity. I am vexed because I feel myself unequal to combat his trickery. In fair fight I have no fear, but to fence with von Einhard is to be always in danger of the impalpable.”
When they had separated and Grey was alone in his room, he flung himself into a comfortable chair, lighted a cigarette and gave himself up to reflection. ”

“ O’Hara and the Fräulein had passed on, and he and the one woman in the world had drawn aside182 out of the hurry and scurry. A few steps away stood Marcelle, the maid, her interest decorously diverted.
“Oh, how good you are!” Grey was saying, his heart in his voice; “how very, very good you are!”
Her hand answered the ardent pressure of his.
“I just couldn’t let you go without seeing you,” she returned. “You cannot imagine what I have suffered. I tried to be brave—I tried so hard, dear; but I’m only a weak woman and my soul longed for you every minute.” ”

“ O’Hara ventured, after a pause. “Suppose he won’t believe you?”
“Oh, but he will,” the other insisted; “I’ll make it quite clear to him that I am an American and that I’m a victim and not an aspirant for kingly honours, except in so far as goes to set matters right and bring the guilty to justice.”
“It’s a risk that you take there, lad,” the Irishman argued; “the more I think of it the bigger it looks. He’s just as likely to fancy it’s only a game of yours to throw him off the scent and secure your own ends. ”

“ Resuming his stroll he had very nearly reached his hotel when a young man, pale and evidently much agitated, halted before him, and raising his hat, deferentially, said:
“A thousand pardons, Herr Arndt, but I beg you to make haste. Herr Schlippenbach—he is dying.”
He spoke in German, and Grey noted that in feature and manner he was Teutonic. For an instant the American imagined the youth had addressed him by mistake, but he had sufficient presence of mind to give no sign. A second later he was reassured. ”