Part 12 (1/2)
In silence I bowed, and then ventured to refer to what was uppermost in my mind.
”May I be permitted to speak to your Majesty upon a certain confidential subject?” I begged, standing against the table whereat I had been writing the greater part of that day.
”What subject?” snapped the All-Highest.
”Your Majesty's negotiations with the Sultan of Turkey. Frau Reitschel has learnt of them, but she is eager to come before you and take oath of entire secrecy.”
The Kaiser's eyes narrowed and glowed in sudden anger.
”A woman's oath!” he cried. ”Bah! Never have I believed in silence imposed upon any woman's tongue--more especially that of a born enemy! I appreciate your loyalty and ac.u.men, Von Heltzendorff, but I have, fortunately, known this for some little time, and in strictest secrecy have taken certain measures to combat it. Remember that these words have never been uttered to you! Remember that! You are adjutant, and I am Emperor. Understand! I fully appreciate and note your loyal report, but it is not woman's sphere to enter our diplomacy, except as a secret agent of our Fatherland. Let us say no more.”
Ten minutes later, being dismissed, I wandered back through the great, silent, echoing corridors of the ancient castle to my own room. A great human drama, greater than any ever placed upon the stage, was now being enacted. Throwing his loaded dice, the Emperor, with all his craft, cunning, and criminal unscrupulousness behind his mask of Christianity, and aided by his unprincipled son, the Crown-Prince, was actually plotting the downfall of the Turkish Empire and the overthrow of Islam in Europe. Between the All-Highest One and the realization of those dastardly plans for world-power so carefully and cleverly thought out in every detail night after night in the silence of that dull, faded green room upstairs at Potsdam, stood one frail little Parisienne, the vivacious, well-meaning Madame Reitschel!
Next day we left the Schloss Langenberg, but before doing so we heard with regret that our charming little hostess had been suddenly taken ill during the night, and the Kaiser, as a mark of favour, had ordered his doctor, Vollerthun, to remain behind to attend her. That Herr Reitschel was in great distress I saw from his face as he stood taking leave of his Imperial guest on the little platform at Ilmenau.
Back in Berlin, I wondered what was in progress in that far-off Schloss in Thuringia, but a week later the truth became vividly apparent when I read in the _Staats-Anzeiger_ an announcement which disclosed to me the terrible truth.
I held my breath as my eyes followed the printed lines.
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.
SECRET NUMBER FIVE
THE GIRL WHO KNEW THE CROWN-PRINCE'S SECRET
Late on the night of November 18th, 1912, I was busily at work in the Crown-Prince's room--that cosy apartment of which I possessed the key--at the Marble Palace at Potsdam.
I, as His Imperial Highness's personal-adjutant, had been travelling all day with him from Cologne to Berlin. We had done a tour of military inspections in Westphalia, and, as usual, ”Willie's” conduct, as became the heir-apparent of the psalm-singing All-Highest One, had not been exactly exemplary.
With his slant eyes and sarcastic grin he openly defied the Emperor, and frequently referred to him to his intimates as ”a h.o.a.ry old hypocrite”--the truth of which recent events have surely proved.
On the night in question, however, much had happened. The Emperor had, a month before, returned from a visit to England, where he had been engaged by speeches and hand-shakes, public and private, blowing a narcotic dust into the nostrils of your dear but, alas! too confiding nation.
You British were all dazzled--you dear English drank the Imperial sleeping-draught, prepared so cunningly for you and your Cabinet Ministers in what we in Berlin sometimes called ”the Downing-Stra.s.se.”
You lapped up the cream of German good-fellows.h.i.+p as a cat laps milk, even while agents of our Imperial War Staff had held Staff-rides in various parts of your island. All of you were blind, save those whom your own people denounced as scaremongers when they lifted their voices in warning.
We at Potsdam smiled daily at what seemed to us to be the slow but sure decline of your great nation from its military, naval, and commercial supremacy. The Kaiser had plotted for fourteen years, and now he was being actively aided by his eldest son, that shrewd, active agnostic with a criminal kink.
”Heltzendorff!” exclaimed the Crown-Prince, as he suddenly entered the room where I was busy attending to a pile of papers which had acc.u.mulated during our absence in Westphalia, and which had been sorted into three heaps by my a.s.sistant during our absence. ”Do get through all those letters and things. Burn them all if you can. What do they matter?”
”Many of them are matters of grave importance. Here, for instance, is a report from the Chief of Military Intelligence in Was.h.i.+ngton.”
”Oh, old Friesch! Tear it up! He is but an old fossil at best. And yet, Heltzendorff, he is designed to be of considerable use,” he added. ”His Majesty told me to-night that after his visit to England he has conceived the idea to establish an official movement for the improvement of better relations between Britain and Germany. The dear British are always ready to receive such movements with open arms. At Carlton House Terrace they strongly endorse the Emperor's ideas, and he tells me that the movement should first arise in commercial and s.h.i.+pping circles. Herr Ballin will generate the idea in his offices in London and the various British ports, while His Majesty has Von Gessler, the ex-Amba.s.sador at Was.h.i.+ngton, in view as the man to bring forth the suggestion publicly.