apex of his right whisker had become detached from the skin, and was
standing out half an inch aloof from his cheek! The sight sent a shiver
down my spine. It was certainly most unnatural. His eyes were bright,
his voice was soft, he spoke English like a man and a brother, and his
character seemed whimsical and open; but his beard, his dashing, black,
pointed beard—which I’m not sure I hadn’t been envying him a
little—was eerie, and, instinctively I felt for my watch. It was
safe in its place and so was my purse. Therefore, at the door of the
Bierhaus, in due time, we bade each other a friendly good-bye, he
promising to look me up one of these days at my hotel.
“I have enjoyed your society more than you can think,” he said.
“Some of these days I will drop in and see you, à limproviste.” III
That afternoon I again found myself in the Bischofsplatz, seated at one
of the open-air tables of the café, when a man passed me, clad in the
garb of a Franciscan monk. He had a pointed black beard, this monk, and
a pair of flashing dark eyes; and, though he quickly drew his head into
his cowl at our conjunction, I had no difficulty whatever in identifying
him with my queerly-hirsute prison mate, Sebastian Roch.
“Dear me! he has become a monk. It must have been a swift
conversion,” thought I, looking after him.
He marched straight across the Bischofsplatz and into the courtyard of
the Marmorhof, where he was lost to view.
“The beggar! He is one of Conrad’s spies,” I concluded: and
I searched my memory, to recall if I had said anything that might
compromise me in the course of our conversation.
A few hours later I sat down to my dinner in the coffee-room of the
Hôtel de Rome, and was about to fall to at the good things before
me, when I was arrested in the act by a noise of hurrying feet on the
pavement without, and a tumult of excited voices. Something clearly was
“up;” and, not to miss it, I hurried to the street-door of the inn.
There I discovered mine host and hostess, supported by the entire
personnel of their establishment, agape with astonishment, as a
loquacious citizen poured news into their ears.
“Otto is dead,” said he. “He died at six o’clock. And Conrad
has been assassinated. It was between four and five this afternoon.
A Franciscan monk presented himself at the Marmorhof, and demanded an
audience of the prince. The guard, of course, refused him admittance;
but he was determined, and at last the Prince’s Chamberlain gave him
a hearing. The upshot was he wrote a word or two upon a slip of paper,
sealed it with wax, and begged that it might be delivered to his
Highness forthwith, swearing that it contained information of the utmost
importance to his welfare. The chamberlain conveyed his paper to the
prince, who, directly he had read it, uttered a great oath, and ordered
that the monk be ushered into his presence, and that they be left alone
together. More than an hour passed. At a little after six arrived the
news of the death of the old duke. An officer entered the prince’s
chamber, to report it to him. There, if you please, he found his
Highness stretched out dead upon the floor, with a knife in his
heart. The monk had vanished. They could find no trace whatever of his
whereabouts. Also had vanished the paper he had sent in to the prince.
But, what the police regard as an important clue, he had left another
paper, twisted round the handle of the dagger, whereon was scrawled,
in a disguised hand: ‘In the country of the blind, it may be, the
one-eyed men are kings, but Conrad only squinted!’ And now the
grand point of it all is this,—shut up in an inner apartment of the
Marmorhof, they have found the Hereditary Grand Duchess Mathilde,
alive and well. Conrad has been keeping her a prisoner there these two
weeks.”
The tidings thus delivered proved to be correct. “The Duke is dead!
Long live the Duchess!” cried the populace.
It was like a dear old-fashioned blood-and-thunder opera, and I was
almost behind the scenes. But oh, that hypocritical young fiddler-monk,
Sebastian Roch! Would he make good his promise, after this, to look me
up? The police were said to be prosecuting a diligent endeavour to look
him up, but with, as yet, indifferent success.
Of course, upon the accession of the new ruler, the print shops of the
town displayed her Highness’s portraits for sale—photographs and
chromo-lithographs; you paid your money and you took your choice. These
represented her as a slight young woman, with a delicate, interesting
face, a somewhat sarcastic mouth, a great abundance of yellowish hair,
and in striking contrast to this, a pair of brilliant dark eyes—on
the whole, a picturesque and pleasing, if not conventionally a handsome,
person. I could not for the life of me have explained it, but there was
something in her face that annoyed me with a sense of having seen it
before, though I was sure I never had. In the course of a fortnight,
however, I did see her—caught a flying glimpse of her as she drove
through the Marktstrasse in her victoria, attended by all manner of
pomp and circumstance. She lay back upon her cushions, looking pale and
interesting, but sadly bored, and responded with a languid smile to
the hat-lifting of her subjects. I stared at her intently, and again
I experienced that exasperating sensation of having seen her
somewhere—where?—when?—in what circumstances?—before. IV
One night I was awakened from my slumbers by a violent banging at my
door.
“Who’s there?” I demanded. “What’s the matter?”
“Open—open in the name of the law!” commanded a deep bass voice.
“Good heavens! what can the row be now?” I wondered.
“Open, or we break in the door,” cried the voice.
“You must really give me time to put something on,” I protested, and
hurriedly wrapped myself in some clothes.
Then I opened the door.
A magnificently uniformed young officer stepped into the room, followed
by three gendarmes with drawn sabres. The officer inclined his head
slightly, and said: “Herr Veinricht, ich glaube?”
His was not the voice that I had heard through the door, gruff and
trombone-like, but a much softer voice, and much higher in pitch.
Somehow it did not seem altogether the voice of a stranger to me, and
yet the face of a stranger his face emphatically was—a very florid
face, surmounted by a growth of short red hair, and decorated by a
bristling red moustache. His eyes were overhung by bushy red eyebrows,
and, in the uncertain candlelight, I could not make out their colour.
“Yes, I am Herr Veinricht,” I admitted, resigning myself to this
German version of my name.
“English?” he questioned curtly.
“No, not English—American.”
“Macht nichts! I arrest you in the name of the Grand Duchess.”
“Arrest me! Will you be good enough to inform me upon what charge?”
“Upon the charge of consorting with dangerous characters, and being
an enemy to the tranquillity of the State. You will please to dress as
quickly as possible. A carriage awaits you below.”
“Good Lord! they have somehow connected me with Sebastian Roch,”
I groaned inwardly. And I began to put certain finishing touches to my
toilet.
“No, no,” cried the officer. “You must put on your dress-suit.
Can you be so ignorant of criminal etiquette as not to know that State
prisoners are required to wear their dress-suits?”
“It seems an absurd regulation,” said I, “but I will put on my
dress-suit.”
“We will await you outside your door; but let me warn you, should you
attempt to escape through your window, you will be shot in a hundred
places,” said the officer, and retired with his minions.
The whole population of the hotel were in the corridors through which I
had presently to pass with my custodians, and they pressed after us to
the street. A closed carriage stood there, with four horses attached,
each “near” horse bearing a postilion.
Three other horses, saddled, were tied to posts about the hotel
entrance. These the gendarmes mounted.
“Will you enter the carriage?” said the officer.
But my spirit rose in arms. “I insist upon knowing what I’m arrested
for. I want to understand the definite nature of the charge against
me.”
“I am not a magistrate. Will you kindly enter the carriage?”
“Oh, this is a downright outrage,” I declared, and entered the
carriage.
The officer leaped in after me, the door was slammed to, the postilions
yelled at their horses, off we drove, followed by the rhythmical
clank-clank of the gendarmes.
“I should like to get at the meaning of all this, you know,” I
informed my captor.
“My dear sir, you do not begin to appreciate the premises. One less
ignorant of military fashions would have perceived from my coat long
since that I am a provost-marshal.”
“Well, and what of that? I suppose you are none the less able to
explain my position to me.”
“Position, sir! This is trifling. But I must caution you that whatever
you say will be remembered, and, if incriminating, used against you.”
“It is a breach of international comity,” said I.
“Oh, we are the best of friends with England,” he said, lightly.
“But I am an American, I would have you to know.”
“Macht nichts!” said he.
“Macht nichts!” I echoed, angrily. “You think so! I shall bring
the case to the notice of the United States Legation, and you shall
see.”
“How? And precipitate a war between two friendly powers?”
“You laugh! but who laughs last laughs best, and I promise you the
Grand Duchy of X———shall be made to pay for this pleasantry with a
vengeance.”
“This is not the first time you have been arrested while in
these dominions,” he said, sternly, “and I must remind you that
lèse-majesté is a hanging matter.”
“Lèse-majesté!” I repeated, half in scorn, half in terror.
“Ya wohl, mein Herr,” he answered. “But, after all, I am simply
obeying orders,” he added, with an inflection almost apologetic.
Where had I heard of that curious soft voice before? A voice so soft
that his German sounded almost like Italian.
Meanwhile we had driven across the town, past the walls, and into the
open country.
“You are perhaps conducting me to the frontier?” I suggested,
deriving some relief from the fancy.
“Oh, hardly so far as that, let us hope,” he answered, with what
struck me as a suppressed chuckle.
“Far?” I cried. “Can you use the word in speaking of a
pocket-handkerchief?”
“It is small, but it is picturesque, it is paintable,” said he.
“And, what is more, by every syllable you utter against it you weave
a strand into your halter, and drive a nail into your coffin. Suicide is
imprudent, not to say immoral.”
“If I could meet you on equal terms,” I cried, “I would pay you
for your derision with a good sound Anglo-Saxon thrashing.”
“Oh, tiger’s heart wrapped in a painter’s hide,” he retorted,
laughing outright.
We drove on in silence for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer; then
at last our horses’ hoofs resounded upon stone, and we drew up. My
officer descended from the carriage; I followed him. We were standing
under a massive archway lighted by a hanging lantern. Before a small
door pierced in the stone wall fronting us a sentinel was posted, with
his musket presented in salute.
The three gendarmes sprang from their saddles.
“Farewell, Herr Veinricht,” said the provost-marshal. “I have
enjoyed our drive together more than I can tell you.” Then turning to
his subordinates, “Conduct this gentleman to the Tower chamber,” he
commanded.
One of the gendarmes preceding me, the other two coming behind, I was
conveyed up a winding stone staircase, into a big octagonal-shaped room.
The room was lighted by innumerable candles set in sconces round the
walls. It was comfortably, even richly furnished, and decorated with
a considerable degree of taste. A warm-hued Persian carpet covered the
stone floor; books, pictures, bibelots, were scattered discriminatingly
about; and in one corner there stood a grand piano, open, with a violin
and bow lying on it.
My gendarmes bowed themselves out, shutting the door behind them with an
ominous clangour.
“If this is my dungeon cell,” I thought, “I shall not be so
uncomfortable, after all. But how preposterous of them to force me to
wear my dress-suit.”
I threw myself into an easy-chair, buried my face in my hands, and tried
to reflect upon my situation.
I can’t tell how much time may have passed in this way; perhaps twenty
minutes or half an hour. Then, suddenly, I was disturbed by the sound of
a light little cough behind me, a discreet little “ahem.” I looked
up quickly. A lady had entered the apartment, and was standing in the
middle of it, smiling in contemplation of my desperate attitude.
“Good heavens!” I gasped, but not audibly, as her face grew clear to
my startled sight. “The Grand Duchess her self!”
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Wainwright,” her Highness began, in
English. “X——— is a dull little place—oh, believe me, the
dullest of its size in Christendom—and they tell me you are an amusing
man. I trust they tell the truth.”
Of course the reader has foreseen it from the outset; otherwise why
should I be detaining him with this anecdote? But upon me it came as
a thunderbolt; and in my emotion I forgot myself, and exclaimed aloud,
“Sebastian Roch!” The face of the Grand Duchess had haunted me
with a sense of familiarity; the voice of my redheaded officer in the
carriage had seemed not strange to me; but now that I saw the face, and
heard the voice, at one and the same time, all was clear—“Sebastian
Roch!”
“You said——?” the gracious lady questioned, arching her eyes.
“Nothing, madame. I was about to thank your Highness for her kindness,
but——”
“But your mind wandered, and you made some irrelevant military
observation about a bastion rock. It is, perhaps, aphasia.”
“Very probably,” I assented.
“But you are a man of honour, are you not?”
“I hope so.”
“The English generally are. You can keep a State secret, especially
when you happen to have learned it by a sort of accident, can you
not?”
“I am a tomb for such things, madame.”
“That is well. And besides, you must consider that not all homicide is
murder. Sometimes one is driven to kill in self-defence.”
“I have not a doubt of that.”
“I am only sorry it should, all have happened before you saw him.
His squint was a rarity; it would have pleased your sense of humour.
X———is the dullest little principality,” she went on, “oh, but
dull, dull, dull! I am sometimes forced in despair to perpetrate little
jokes. Yet you have actually stopped here five weeks. It must be as
they say, that the English people take their pleasures sadly. You are a
painter, I am told.”
“Yes, your Highness; I make a shift at painting.”
“And I at fiddling. But I lack a discriminating audience. I think
you had better paint my portrait. I will play my fiddle to you. Between
whiles we will talk. On occasions, I may tell you, I smoke cigarettes;
one must have some excitement. We will try to enliven things a little.
Do you think we shall succeed?”
“Oh, I should not despair of doing so.”
“That is nice of you. I have a most ridiculous High Chancellor; you
might draw caricatures of him. And my First Lady of the Chamber has a
preposterous lisp. I do hope I shall be amused.”
As she spoke, she extended her left hand towards me; I took it, and was
about to give it a friendly shake.
“No, no, not that,” said she. “Oh, I forgot, you are an American,
and the ABC of court etiquette is Sanskrit to you. Must I tell you what
to do?”
To cut a long story short, I thought my lines had fallen unto me in
extremely pleasant places; and so, indeed, they had—for a while. I
passed a merry summer at the Court of X———, alternating between
the Residenz in town, and the Schloss beyond the walls. I made a good
many preliminary studies for the princess’s portrait, whilst she
played her violin; and between times, as she had promised, we talked,
practised court etiquette, smoked cigarettes, and laughed at scandal.
But when I began upon the final canvas, I at least had to become a
little sober. I wanted to make a masterpiece of it. We had two or three
sittings, during which I worked away in grim silence, and the Grand
Duchess yawned.
Then one night I was again roused from the middle of my slumbers, taken
in custody by a colonel of dragoons, conducted to a closed carriage,
and driven abroad through the darkness. When our carriage came to a
standstill we found ourselves in the Austrian village of Z————,
beyond the X——— frontier There Colonel von Schlangewurtzel bade me
good-bye. At the same time he handed me a letter. I hastened to tear
it open. Upon a sheet of court paper, in a pretty feminine hand, I read
these words.
“You promised to amuse me. But it seems you take your droll British
art au grand sérieux. We have better portrait-painters among our
natives; and you will find models cheap and plentiful at Z————.
“Farewell!” THE END