Grey had set apart the books and papers that had to do either directly
or indirectly with his case, because he saw in them a circumstantial
defence to the charges which were still hanging over him at home. To
his use of them for this purpose Minna and her sister gladly consented,
and so when that evening, after having been cropped and clean-shaven by
Johann, he bade the little household good-bye and was driven into town
to the Grand Hotel Königin Anna, he carried this evidence with him.
It was, as has been observed, a day rife with revelations. The
discoveries of its daylight hours were of incalculable value, but the
disclosures reserved for the night were of even more consequence. The
train that afternoon had brought from Paris a large company of visitors
intent upon viewing the pomp and panoply of a royal funeral, and among
them were the remaining members of that gay little dinner party at
Armenonville the week before.
The Van Tuyls ran into them at the hotel on their return from the
Fahler farm, and Hope immediately had an inspiration.
“I’m going to give a dinner tonight,” she said, “just the most informal
sort of a dinner in our _salon_. And I want you all to come. It doesn’t
make any difference whether you have your trunks or not. You are not
expected to dress. I’m going to treat you to a surprise.”
The women were all curiosity on the instant and showed it. The men
accepted politely, but declared that the hostess was attraction
sufficient.
Hope had made the proposition on impulse, and it was too late to draw
back when she caught her father’s disapproving eye.
“I’m not at all sure,” he commented, once they were alone, “that this
thing is wise. Carey isn’t yet out of the woods, and the story of his
alleged embezzlement and all that is too fresh to have been forgotten.
Explanations at a dinner party aren’t pleasant things. We know he is
innocent, but you don’t want to put him on trial before a jury of your
guests.”
But Hope was staunch in her loyalty.
“Our verdict will be sufficient,” she answered, bravely. “If I had
stopped to think of all you say I probably shouldn’t have asked them,
but as it is I’m glad I did it. It clears the situation at once. They
must know from my having promised to be his wife and your having given
your consent, that he is innocent.”
Nicholas Van Tuyl shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps,” he replied, a little doubtfully, “perhaps; but, my dear
girl, don’t hint at the Prince business. The Fahlers will keep their
mouths closed for the sake of their dead relative, but no injunction of
secrecy would still the tongues of Mrs. Dickie and Lady Constance.”
Hope demurred.
“It’s such an interesting story,” she protested, “and I am a woman!”
“But the Government here does not want it to get out.”
“And I’d like to know what we owe to the Government,” the girl
inquired. “I don’t want to be disobedient, father dear, but I can’t
promise to control myself under provocation.”
Again Mr. Van Tuyl shrugged his shoulders. His daughter was his idol
and he was as yarn in her hands.
When Grey arrived and was told of the plan, he received the tidings
somewhat ruefully. He complained that his trunks were still at the
Residenz Schloss, and that, in the torn and bedraggled raiment he was
wearing, to pose as the object of interest at a dinner party, no matter
how informal, was apt to be a little trying, to say the least. But
O’Hara, who had driven into town with him, came to the rescue. He and
Grey were very nearly of a size, and as he was the fortunate possessor
of two evening suits he promptly placed one of them at Grey’s disposal.
Nevertheless, in spite of this satisfactory overcoming of a grave
difficulty, Grey was not present when the party sat down to dinner;
for, as he was about to join the company, Nicholas Van Tuyl broke in
upon him, carrying in his hand a note which had just been delivered by
an orderly from the Royal Hospital.
“You’ll have to go, won’t you?” he asked, as Grey ran his eye over the
page.
It was from Chancellor von Ritter and was addressed to the banker.
“If you are in communication with Mr. Grey,” it read, “send him here
with all speed. The man Lutz can last only a few hours. He is anxious
to make an ante-mortem statement, but insists that Mr. Grey shall be
present when he makes it.”
And so Grey rushed off in a cab, and as the dinner party took their
places at table in the Van Tuyl _salon_, he was climbing the Royal
Hospital stairs to the little white room in which lay dying the young
man who had served him faithfully for over two years as valet, only
to fall by reason of avarice into the rôle of villain in his life’s
melodrama.
The eyes that looked up at him from dark, cavernous depths in a face
pale as chalk had in them an appeal that touched a chord of his
sympathy, and for the moment he forgot the injuries he had suffered and
remembered only the services he had experienced at those hands, which
lay limp and waxen-yellow against the spotless white of the coverlet.
The small room was somewhat crowded. Chancellor von Ritter was there
with a notary and a stenographer; near the window stood a soldier,
whose very presence seemed an irony, which he appeared to recognise
in retiring as far as the limits of the tiny chamber would permit;
and there, too, of course, was the inevitable nun-like nurse in
significantly immaculate muslin and the great flaring headdress of her
sisterhood.
“He seems a little stronger at the moment,” whispered the Chancellor;
“you came at an opportune time. He has been asking for you all the
afternoon.”
The nurse was moistening the sufferer’s lips. When she finished, Grey
spoke to him.
“I am sorry to see you here, Lutz,” he said, simply.
His breathing, he noticed, was very short and laboured.
“I’m obliged to you for coming, sir,” he replied, and his voice was
stronger than one would have expected. “I’ve got a lot to tell you; but
it’s so late now I don’t know whether I’ll be able.” He paused between
his sentences in an effort to husband his waning strength. “I was a
good enough fellow once, Mr. Grey, wasn’t I?”
Grey nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed, with sincerity, “you were all right, Lutz.”
“I never really meant you any harm, sir,” he went on. “It seemed to me
that it would be a good thing for you.”
The Chancellor motioned to the stenographer, who drew his chair closer
to the bedside and took a note-book and pencil from his pocket.
“Afterwards,” Lutz continued, “after Dr. Schlippenbach died and I knew
we couldn’t keep you under the spell any more, I got frightened; and
then I drank a good deal, and I--yes, I was crazy at times. Absinthe,
Mr. Grey. I wasn’t used to it, and it turned my head. I thought to
save myself I must get rid of you. I tried to smother you with gas
that night last week in Paris. Captain Lindenwald knew of it. He was
afraid of you, too. He said suspicion would fall on Baron von Einhard;
that we would never be suspected. And when I failed he went to Baron
von Einhard and--how much he got I don’t know; but the Baron paid him
to go away and leave you, agreeing that he would put you where you
would never be heard of again. Then we came here, with a story about
your being mad and being locked up in a Paris sanitarium. It was the
only thing we could do. If the plan had worked we should have been in
trouble for a while, maybe, but when Prince Hugo came to the throne we
should have been rewarded. I sold the Baron the strong-box with all
those manufactured proofs of your right to the crown; and I told him
you had the Prince of Kronfeld ring. I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry. But I’m
a coward, and I was in terror and more than half insane with that green
stuff.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Grey interjected. “But tell me, Lutz, how this
whole thing started, back in New York. Tell me about Schlippenbach and
how you and he managed it together.”
The nurse, from her place by the pillow, leaned over and wiped her
patient’s brow. Then she moistened his lips again, and his deep-sunken
eyes looked his appreciation. For some minutes he was silent,
endeavouring apparently by an effort of will to gather fresh energy;
and to Grey’s mind recurred the picture of that darkened room in Paris,
just six days ago, with the dying Herr Schlippenbach struggling to make
himself understood.
“He was more devil than man,” Lutz resumed. “He was always working with
strange drugs and experimenting with batteries on cats and dogs, and
children, too. One day he asked me a great many questions about you,
Mr. Grey, and then he asked me if I’d like to be rich--very rich, he
said. ‘Everyone wants to be rich,’ I answered. ‘If you’ll do just as
I tell you,’ he said, ‘you’ll have more money than you ever dreamed
of.’ He told me he wanted me to put just one tiny pellet in your coffee
each morning. It would not harm you, he said, but you would doze off
for just ten minutes after you had taken it, and you would never know
you had been dozing. ‘And while he is asleep,’ he said, ‘you can tell
him to do anything you wish at any time in that day and he will do it.
Tell him, for instance,’ he advised me, ‘to double your wages when he
returns from his office in the evening, and he will do it.’ I laughed
at the idea and had no faith in it; but I consented to try it. And it
worked. You did double my wages, Mr. Grey, just as I asked you to, and
you never knew I had asked you. Each day I gave you the pellet, as
he directed, and each day I suggested that you do certain things at
certain hours, and you always did them.”
“Hypnotic suggestion,” commented Grey, involuntarily.
“Something like it,” Lutz replied, “but he said it was not. At least,
only in part. The pellet was the principal thing. He made the pellets
himself. They were his secret. I gave you the last the day before he
died; and I knew then that I could control you no more.”
“Yes,” Grey urged, “but after the first, what happened? After I raised
your wages, what other things did you suggest?”
“Nothing of importance for a month or two. Just trifles--that you come
home early and tell me you would not require me that night; or that
you would give me a coat I wanted very much, and things of that sort.
But one day Schlippenbach came to the rooms while you were down town.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said,’I am coming here early, before Mr. Grey is
up. You must hide me somewhere until you have given him the pellet.’ He
came and I hid him in your wardrobe; but when you had had your coffee
with his drug in it he came out, and then I saw for the first time the
power of this thing. He directed you very minutely and very exactly.
Every minute in the day you were under his commands. You were to secure
a hundred thousand dollars in cash and you were to bring it to his
house on Avenue A at four o’clock in the afternoon. And at this house
you were to remain. That evening I went there, and there you were. You
did not know me. Your name had been changed to Arndt. I called you
Mr. Grey to test the thing, and you appeared to think I was crazy.
Schlippenbach told me you had brought the money. You never left his
house until we sailed for this country.”
“What did I do there?”
“You did very little, but Schlippenbach did a great deal. Each day he
had his batteries working on your head. He told me he was building
up your self-esteem and that he was depleting your reverence. He was
developing those cerebral organs which he thought would fit you for a
throne and reducing those which he thought would unfit you. He said
that in this way he could change you completely. After a few years of
constant treatment, three or four years at most, you would, he told me,
be no more Mr. Grey, the New York broker, than I would. You would be
the King of Budavia and never know that you had not been born to it.
And then there would be no further need of pellets or of galvanism. The
transformation would have been accomplished.”
The dying man, becoming more and more interested in his subject, was
speaking in clearer tones and with much less effort; and his auditors
listened, spellbound, to his exposition of the marvellous methods of
his mountebank master.
“And as the days went on it was wonderful how you did change, sir. You
spoke differently and you acted differently. He made you grow a beard
and moustache, which he bleached without your knowledge, as he did your
hair, and your most intimate friend wouldn’t have recognised you, Mr.
Grey. I don’t believe your mother would have known you, sir.”
“And the money?” Grey queried, fearing that in his enthusiasm Lutz
would overtax his strength and leave this most important point
uncovered. “What did Schlippenbach do with the hundred thousand
dollars?”
“A good deal of it was spent,” the valet answered, “but some of it is
still in the East River National Bank, and some with Graeff & Welbrock,
the German bankers. When we came away we brought with us two letters of
credit, one in his name and one in yours, for twenty thousand dollars
each.”
Of these facts Grey made a mental note.
“Some of it you will get back, sir,” Lutz added, after a pause.
“Perhaps most of it, for the old man owns some property on the East
Side, and you can prove that he was responsible for the theft. And now,
Mr. Grey”--and something in the nature of a smile flickered ghastly and
distressful about the corners of his livid mouth--“I think I have told
you all. But”--his yellow right hand slid slowly a few inches over the
coverlet towards its edge--“I have in return a favour to ask. Maybe
you’ll feel you can’t grant it. I’m going pretty fast, I imagine. They
say I won’t last till daylight comes, and--I’d like, sir--if you don’t
mind too much”--his sentences were very halt once more--“don’t mind too
much----”
Grey leaned over and took the sliding hand in his own.
“All right, Lutz,” he said, with a tremour in his voice that he could
not control, “all right, man. I don’t believe you were half to blame.
He had you under a spell, too, I dare say. I forgive you freely, and
God bless you!”
The flickering, vagrant smile merged into an expression of peace. Into
the sunken eyes came resignation.
“Thank you, sir!” the grey lips murmured, “thank you! thank you!”
The notary mumbled a form of oath to which Lutz gave a voiceless
assent. Then his lids fell, and when Grey and Count von Ritter left the
room he was barely conscious.
“I’ll have a certified copy of the statement sent to you Mr. Grey,” the
Chancellor volunteered. “In it you will have evidence that is beyond
all dispute. I congratulate you on securing such a complete refutation
of so baseless and yet so dangerous a slander.”