"Yes," said the younger man. "He is passing as Monsieur Felix Reumont,
and is living at 114 bis, Avenue de Neuilly, close to the Pont."
I scribbled the name and address upon the back of an envelope, whereupon
His Majesty said:
"Carry my verbal orders to Steinmetz, and tell him to act upon the
orders I sent him by courier yesterday. And you will assist him. He will
explain matters fully when you arrive."
Then, crossing to the Crown-Prince's writing-table, His Majesty took a
large envelope, into which, with the same hand, he dexterously placed
the photograph with several papers, and sealed them with the
Crown-Prince's seal. At the moment the Crown-Princess entered, said some
words to her husband in a low voice, and went out again.
"Give this to Von Steinmetz from me," His Majesty said after she had
gone.
I bowed as I took it from His Majesty's hand, my curiosity now greatly
excited regarding Frau Breitenbach and her pretty daughter. What, I
wondered, was in the wind?
"And, Heltzendorff, please report to me," remarked the Heir, still
lounging lazily in the chair, his white, well-manicured hands clasped
behind his head. "Where shall you stay?"
"At the Hotel Chatham. I always stay there in preference to the larger
hotels."
"And not a bad judge," laughed His Majesty merrily. "I remember when I
used to go to Paris incognito one could dine at the 'Chatham' most
excellently--old-fashioned, but very good. Vian's, across the road, is
also good."
The Kaiser knows Paris well, though he has never visited the French
capital openly.
Bowing, I took leave of my Imperial master, and next morning at eight
o'clock, set out upon my mysterious mission.
I found the Baron von Steinmetz living in a good-sized house in the
leafy Avenue de Neuilly, not far from the bridge. One of the cleverest
and most astute officials that Germany possessed, and a man high in the
Kaiser's favour, he had, in the name of Felix Reumont, purchased, with
Government funds of course, a cinema theatre in the Rue Lafayette, and
ostensibly upon the proceeds of that establishment lived comfortably out
at Neuilly.
At eleven o'clock in the morning his valet, evidently a German, showed
me in.
"I quite understand, my dear Heltzendorff," he said, as in his cosy
little den he took from the Emperor's packet the picture of Fraeulein
Elise and stood gazing at it thoughtfully. "It is quite plain why you
should have been sent by His Majesty."
"Why. I don't understand. But His Majesty told me that you would
explain. The young lady and her mother are friends of mine."
"Exactly. That's just it!" exclaimed the round-faced, rather florid man
whom I had once met before. "You apparently know but little of
them--eh?--or you would not call them your friends!"
Those mysterious words surprised me, but I was the more astounded when
he continued:
"You of course know of those disgraceful anonymous letters which have
been continually arriving at Court--of the Emperor's fury concerning
them."
I replied in the affirmative, for, as a matter of fact, for the past
three months the whole Court had been flooded with most abusive and
disgraceful correspondence concerning the camarilla that had again
sprung up around the Kaiser. The Emperor, the Empress, the Crown-Prince
and Princess, Prince Eitel, Sophie Caroline, Prince Henry of Prussia and
others had received letters, most of them in typewriting, containing the
most intimate details of scandals concerning men and women around the
Emperor.
Fully a dozen of these letters addressed to the Crown-Prince he had
handed to me--letters denouncing in some cases perfectly innocent
people, destroying the reputations of honest men and women, and abusing
the Heir to the Throne in an outrageous manner.
On at least three occasions "Willie" had shown me letters addressed to
the Kaiser himself, and intercepted by the Kaiserin, who, in consequence
of this flood of anonymous epistles that had produced such a terrible
sensation at Potsdam, had ordered that all such letters found in the
Imperial post-bag should be handed at once to her.
The great War-Lord's feelings had been sorely wounded by the vitriolic
shafts, and his vanity much injured by the boldness of the unknown
letter-writer who had dared to speak his mind concerning the Eulenburg
scandals, which Maximilian Harden had some time before exposed in the
_Zukunft_.
All Berlin was gossiping about the scandal of the letters and the
horrible innuendoes contained in them. The _Allerhoechste Person_, though
boiling over with anger, blissfully believed that outside the Palaces
nothing was known of the contents of the correspondence. But the
Emperor, in his vanity, never accurately gauges the mind of his people.
"The identity of the writer is the point that is engaging my attention,"
the Baron said, as, seating himself at his big, carved-oak
writing-table, he opened a drawer and drew forth a bundle of quite a
hundred letters, adding: "All these that you see here have been
addressed either to the Emperor or the Empress," and he handed me one or
two, which on scanning I saw contained some outrageous statements,
allegations which would make the hair of the All-Highest One bristle
with rage.
"Well!" I exclaimed, aghast, looking up at the Baron after I had read
an abusive letter, which in cold, even lines of typewriting commenced
with the words: "You, a withered crook in spectacular uniform better
fitted for the stage of the Metropol Theatre, should, instead of
invoking the aid of Providence, clear out your own Augean stable. Its
smell is nauseous to the nostrils of decent people. Surely you should
blush to have feasted in the castle of Liebenberg with the poet, Prince
Philip, and your degenerate companions, Hohenau, Johannes Lynar, and
your dearly beloved Kuno!"
And the abusive missive proceeded to denounce two of my friends,
ladies-in-waiting at the Neues Palais, and to make some blackguardly
allegations concerning the idol. Von Hindenburg.
"Well," I exclaimed, "that certainly is a very interesting specimen of
anonymous correspondence."
"Yes, it is!" exclaimed the Baron. "In Berlin every inquiry has been
made to trace its author. Schunke, head of the detective police, was
charged by the Emperor to investigate. He did so, and both he and
Klewitz failed utterly. Now it has been given into my hands."
"Have you discovered any clue to the writer?" I asked anxiously, knowing
full well what a storm of indignation those letters had produced in our
own circle.
Presently, when I sat with the Baron at his table, he switched on an
intense electric light, even though it was day-time, and then spread out
some of the letters above a small, square mirror.
"You see they are on various kinds of note-paper, bearing all kinds of
watermarks, of French, English, and German manufacture. Some we have
here are upon English paper, because it is heavy and thick. Again, three
different makes of typewriter have been used--one a newly-invented
importation from America. The written letters are, you will see, mostly
in a man's hand."
"Yes, I see all that," I said. "But what have you discovered concerning
their author? The letter I received bore a French stamp and the postmark
of Angers."
He placed before me quite a dozen envelopes addressed to the Emperor and
Empress, all bearing the postmark of that town in the Maine-et-Loire.
Others had been posted in Leipzig, Wilhelmshaven, Tours, Antwerp,
Berlin-Wilmersdorf, and other places.
"The investigation is exceedingly difficult, I can assure you," he said.
"I have had the assistance of some of the best scientific brains of our
Empire in making comparisons and analyses. Indeed, Professor Harbge is
with me from Berlin."
As he uttered those words the Professor himself, an elderly, spectacled
man in grey tweeds, entered the room. I knew him and greeted him.
"We have been studying the writing-papers," the Professor said
presently, as he turned over the letters, some of which were upon
commercial typewriting paper, some on cheap thin paper from fashionable
"blocks," and others upon various tinted paper of certain mills, as
their watermarks showed. The papers were various, but the scurrilous
hand was the clever and evasive one of some person who certainly knew
the innermost secrets of the German Court.
"Sixteen different varieties of paper have been received at the Neues
and Marmor Palaces," the Baron remarked. "Well, I have worked for two
months, night and day, upon the inquiry, for, as you know, the tentacles
of our Teuton octopus are everywhere. I have discovered that eleven of
these varieties of paper can be purchased at a certain small stationer's
shop, Lancry's, in the Boulevard Haussmann, close to the 'Printemps.'
One paper especially is sold nowhere else in Paris. It is this."
And he held over a mirror a letter upon a small sheet of note-paper
bearing the watermark of a bull's head.
"That paper was made at a mill in the south of Devonshire, in England,
destroyed by fire five years ago. Paper of that make cannot be obtained
anywhere else in France," he declared.
I at once realized how much patience must have been expended upon the
inquiry, and said:
"Then you have actually fixed the shop where the writer purchased his
paper?"
"Yes," he replied. "And we know that the newly-invented typewriter, a
specimen one, was sold by the Maison Audibert, in Marseilles. The
purchaser of the typewriter in Marseilles purchases his paper and
envelopes at Lancry's, in the Boulevard Haussmann."
"Splendid!" I said enthusiastically, for it was clear that the Baron,
with the thousand-and-one secret agents at his beck and call, had been
able, with the Professor's aid, to fix the source of the stationery.
"But," I added, "what is wanted from me?" Why, I wondered, had His
Majesty sent the Baron that photograph of Elise Breitenbach?
"I want you to go with me to the central door of the 'Printemps' at four
o'clock this afternoon, and we will watch Lancry's shop across the way,"
the Baron replied.
This we did, and from four till six o'clock we stood, amid the bustle of
foot passengers, watching the small stationer's on the opposite side of
the boulevard, yet without result.
Next day and the next I accompanied the prosperous cinema proprietor
upon his daily vigil, but in vain, until his reluctance to tell me the
reason why I had been sent to Paris annoyed me considerably.
On the fifth afternoon, just before five o'clock, while we were
strolling together, smoking and chatting, the Baron's eyes being fixed
upon the door of the small single-fronted shop, I saw him suddenly
start, and then make pretence of utter indifference.
"Look!" he whispered beneath his breath.