"The truth will not be known, I promise you," he said, with a strange, evil grin. I knew that expression. It meant that he had devised some fresh and devilish plan. "The girl is defiant to-day, but she will not remain so long. I will take your order, but I may not have occasion to put it in force."
"Ah! You have perhaps devised something--eh? I hope so," said the Emperor. "You are usually ingenious in a crisis. Good! Here is the order; act just as you think fit."
"I was summoned, Your Majesty," I said, in order to remind him of my presence there.
"Ah! Yes. You know this Miss King, do you not?"
"I received her in Plymouth," was my reply.
"Ah! then you will again recognize her. Probably your services may be very urgently required within the next few hours. You may go," and His Majesty curtly dismissed me.
I waited in the corridor until His Imperial Highness came forth. When he did so he looked flushed and seemed agitated.
There had, I knew, occurred a violent scene between father and son, for to me it seemed as though "Willie" had again fallen beneath the influence of a pretty face.
He drove me in the big Mercedes over to Potsdam, where I had a quant.i.ty of military doc.u.ments awaiting attention, and, after a change of clothes, I tackled them.
Yet my mind kept constantly reverting to the mystery surrounding the golden b.u.t.terfly.
After dinner that night I returned again to my workroom, when, upon my blotting-pad, I found a note addressed to me in the Crown-Prince"s sprawling hand.
Opening it, I found that he had scribbled this message:
"_I have left. Tell Eckardt not to trouble. Come alone, and meet me to-morrow night at the Palast Hotel, in Hamburg. I shall call at seven o"clock and ask for Herr Richter. I shall also use that name.
Tell n.o.body of my journey, not even the Crown-Princess. Explain that I have gone to Berlin._--WILHELM, KRONPRINZ."
I read the note through a second time, and then burned it.
Next day I arrived at the Palast Hotel, facing the Binnenalster, in Hamburg, giving my name as Herr Richter.
At seven o"clock I awaited His Highness. Eight o"clock came--nine--ten--even eleven--midnight, but, though I sat in the private room I had engaged, no visitor arrived.
Just after twelve, however, a waiter brought up a note addressed to Herr Richter.
Believing it to be meant for me, I opened it. To my great surprise, I found that it was from the mysterious Miss King, and evidently intended for the Crown-Prince. It said:
"_My brother was released from the Altona Prison this evening--I presume, owing to your intervention--and we are now both safely on our way across to Harwich. You have evidently discovered at last that I am not the helpless girl you believed me to be. When your German police arrested my brother Walter in Bremen as a spy of Britain I think you will admit that they acted very injudiciously, in face of all that my brother and myself know to-day. At Plymouth you demanded, as the price of Walter"s liberty, that I should become attached to your secret service in America and betray the man who adopted me and brought me up as his own daughter. But you never dreamed the extent of my knowledge of your country"s vile intrigues; you did not know that, through my brother and the man who adopted me as his daughter, I know the full extent of your subtle propaganda. You were, I admit, extremely clever, Herr Richter, and I confess that I was quite charmed when you sent me, as souvenir, that golden b.u.t.terfly to the hotel in Frankenhausen--that pretty ornament which I returned to you as a mark of my refusal and defiance of the conditions you imposed upon me for the release of my brother from the sentence of fifteen years in a fortress. This time, Herr Richter, a woman wins! Further, I warn you that if you attempt any reprisal my brother will at once expose Germany"s machinations abroad. He has, I a.s.sure you, many good friends, both in Britain and America. Therefore if you desire silence you will make no effort to trace me further. At Frankenhausen you called me "the golden-haired b.u.t.terfly," but you regarded me merely as a moth! Adieu!_"
Twelve hours later I handed that letter to the Crown-Prince in Potsdam.
Where he had been in the meantime I did not know. He read it through; then, with a fierce curse upon his thin, curled lips, he crushed it in his hand and tossed it into the fire.
SECRET NUMBER EIGHT
HOW THE CROWN-PRINCE WAS BLACKMAILED
The Crown-Prince had accompanied the Emperor on board the _Hohenzollern_ on his annual cruise up the Norwegian fjords, and the Kaiserin and the Crown-Princess were of the party.
I had been left at home because I had not been feeling well, and with relief had gone south to the Lake of Garda, taking up my quarters in that long, white hotel which faces the blue lake at Gardone-Riviera. A truly beautiful spot, where the gardens of the hotel run down to the lake"s edge, with a long veranda covered with trailing roses and geraniums, peaceful indeed after the turmoil and glitter of our Court life in Germany.
One morning at luncheon, however, just as I had seated myself at my table set in the window overlooking the sunlit waters, a tall, rather thin-faced, bald-headed man entered, accompanied by an extremely pretty girl, with very fair hair and eyes of an unusual, child-like blue. The man I judged to be about fifty-five, whose blotchy face marked him as one addicted to strong liquors, and whose dress and bearing proclaimed him to be something of a roue. He walked jauntily to the empty table next mine, while his companion stared vacantly about her as she followed him to the place which the obsequious _maitre d"hotel_ had indicated.
The stranger"s eyes were dark, penetrating, and shifty, while there was something about the young girl"s demeanour that aroused my interest.
Her face, undeniably beautiful, was marred by a stare of complete vacancy. She glanced at me, but I saw that she did not see. It was as though her thoughts were far away, or else that she was under the spell of some weird fascination.
That strange, blank expression in her countenance caused me to watch her. On the one hand, the man had all the appearance of a person who had run the whole gamut of the vices; while the fair-haired, blue-eyed girl was the very incarnation of maiden innocence.
Perhaps it was because I kept my eyes upon her that the dark-eyed man knit his brows and stared at me in defiance. Instinctively I did not like the fellow, for as they started their meal I saw plainly the rough, almost uncouth, manner in which he treated her.
At first I believed that they might be father and daughter, but this suggestion was negatived when, on inquiry at the bureau, I was told that the man was Martinez Aranda, of Seville, and that his companion was his niece, Lola Serrano.
The latter always appeared exquisitely dressed, and the gay young men, Italian officers and others, were all eager to make her acquaintance.
Yet it seemed to me that the man Aranda forbade her to speak to anyone.
Indeed, I watched the pair closely during the days following, and could plainly discern that the girl went in mortal fear of him.
On the third day, while walking along the terrace facing the lake, I came across the Spaniard, who, in affable mood, started a conversation, and as we leaned upon the stone bal.u.s.trade, smoking and gossiping, the pretty girl with hair so fair even though she were a Southerner came up, and I was introduced.
She wore a cool white linen gown, a big sun-hat, and carried a pale blue sunshade. But my eye, expert where a woman"s gown is concerned, told me that that linen frock was the creation of one of the Paris men-dressmakers, whose lowest charge for such a garment is one thousand francs. Aranda and his pretty niece were certainly persons of considerable means.
"How very beautiful the lake always appears at any hour!" the girl exclaimed in French after her uncle had exchanged cards with me. "Truly Italy is delightful."
"Ah, Mademoiselle," I replied. "But your brilliant Spain is ever attractive."
"You know Spain?" inquired the bald-headed man at once.
"Yes, I know Spain, but only as a spring visitor," was my reply.
And from that conversation there grew in a few days quite an affable friendship. We went together on excursions, all three of us, once by the steamer up to Riva, where on landing and pa.s.sing through the Customs we sat at the cafe and sipped that delicious coffee topped by a foam of cream, the same as one got at the "Bristol" in Vienna, or the "Hungaria"
in Budapest. Then at evening, while the pretty Lola gossiped with a weedy old Italian Marchioness, whose acquaintance she had made, her uncle played billiards with me, and he was no bad player either!
As soon as the Spaniard learnt of my position as personal-adjutant of His Imperial Highness the Crown-Prince he became immediately interested, as most people were, and plied me with all sorts of questions regarding the truth of certain scandals that were at the moment afloat concerning "Willie." As you know, I am usually pretty discreet. Therefore, I do not think that he learned very much from me.
We were alone in the billiard-room, having a game after luncheon one day, when a curious conversation took place.
"Ah, Count! You must have a very intimate knowledge of life at the Berlin Court," he remarked quite suddenly, in French.
"Yes. But it is a strenuous life, I a.s.sure you," I declared, laughing.
"The Crown-Prince sometimes goes abroad incognito," he said, pausing and looking me straight in the face.
"Yes--sometimes," I admitted.
"He was in Rome in the first week of last December. He disappeared from Potsdam, and the Emperor and yourself were extremely anxious as to what had become of him. He had gone to Berlin alone, without any attendant, and completely disappeared. Yet, while you were all making secret inquiries, and fearing lest the truth should leak out to the Press, His Imperial Highness was living as plain Herr Wilhelm Nebelthau in an apartment at Number Seventeen, Lungtevere Mellini. Isn"t that so?"
I stared agape at the Spaniard.