Frau Reitschel, the young wife of the famous Anton Reitschel of
Constantinople, had, the journal reported, been seized by a sudden and
somewhat mysterious illness on the night prior to the Emperor's
departure from the Schloss Langenberg, and though His Majesty had
graciously left his own physician behind to attend her, the unfortunate
lady had developed insanity to such a hopeless degree that it had been
necessary to confine her in the Rosenau private asylum at Coburg.
In a second I realized how the dancing-mistress and the mental
specialist from Augsburg had been the tools of the Emperor. That
"mysterious illness," developing into madness, was surely not the result
of any natural cause, but had been deliberately planned and executed by
means of a hypodermic syringe, in order that the woman who had learnt
the secret of the Emperor's double cunning in the Near East should be
for ever immured in a madhouse.
Outside the trio responsible for the cruel and dastardly act, I alone
knew the truth how, by the Emperor's drastic action, he had prevented
the secret of his chicanery leaking out to the Powers.
Poor Madame Reitschel! She died early in 1913, a raving lunatic. Her
devoted husband, having served the Emperor's purpose, had been recalled
to Berlin, where, bereft of the Kaiser's favour, he predeceased her by
about six months, broken-hearted, but in utter ignorance of that foul
plot carried out under his very nose and in his own castle.