Part 21 (1/2)
”The truth will not be known, I promise you,” he said, with a strange, evil grin. I knew that expression. It meant that he had devised some fresh and devilish plan. ”The girl is defiant to-day, but she will not remain so long. I will take your order, but I may not have occasion to put it in force.”
”Ah! You have perhaps devised something--eh? I hope so,” said the Emperor. ”You are usually ingenious in a crisis. Good! Here is the order; act just as you think fit.”
”I was summoned, Your Majesty,” I said, in order to remind him of my presence there.
”Ah! Yes. You know this Miss King, do you not?”
”I received her in Plymouth,” was my reply.
”Ah! then you will again recognize her. Probably your services may be very urgently required within the next few hours. You may go,” and His Majesty curtly dismissed me.
I waited in the corridor until His Imperial Highness came forth. When he did so he looked flushed and seemed agitated.
There had, I knew, occurred a violent scene between father and son, for to me it seemed as though ”Willie” had again fallen beneath the influence of a pretty face.
He drove me in the big Mercedes over to Potsdam, where I had a quant.i.ty of military doc.u.ments awaiting attention, and, after a change of clothes, I tackled them.
Yet my mind kept constantly reverting to the mystery surrounding the golden b.u.t.terfly.
After dinner that night I returned again to my workroom, when, upon my blotting-pad, I found a note addressed to me in the Crown-Prince's sprawling hand.
Opening it, I found that he had scribbled this message:
”_I have left. Tell Eckardt not to trouble. Come alone, and meet me to-morrow night at the Palast Hotel, in Hamburg. I shall call at seven o'clock and ask for Herr Richter. I shall also use that name.
Tell n.o.body of my journey, not even the Crown-Princess. Explain that I have gone to Berlin._--WILHELM, KRONPRINZ.”
I read the note through a second time, and then burned it.
Next day I arrived at the Palast Hotel, facing the Binnenalster, in Hamburg, giving my name as Herr Richter.
At seven o'clock I awaited His Highness. Eight o'clock came--nine--ten--even eleven--midnight, but, though I sat in the private room I had engaged, no visitor arrived.
Just after twelve, however, a waiter brought up a note addressed to Herr Richter.
Believing it to be meant for me, I opened it. To my great surprise, I found that it was from the mysterious Miss King, and evidently intended for the Crown-Prince. It said:
”_My brother was released from the Altona Prison this evening--I presume, owing to your intervention--and we are now both safely on our way across to Harwich. You have evidently discovered at last that I am not the helpless girl you believed me to be. When your German police arrested my brother Walter in Bremen as a spy of Britain I think you will admit that they acted very injudiciously, in face of all that my brother and myself know to-day. At Plymouth you demanded, as the price of Walter's liberty, that I should become attached to your secret service in America and betray the man who adopted me and brought me up as his own daughter. But you never dreamed the extent of my knowledge of your country's vile intrigues; you did not know that, through my brother and the man who adopted me as his daughter, I know the full extent of your subtle propaganda. You were, I admit, extremely clever, Herr Richter, and I confess that I was quite charmed when you sent me, as souvenir, that golden b.u.t.terfly to the hotel in Frankenhausen--that pretty ornament which I returned to you as a mark of my refusal and defiance of the conditions you imposed upon me for the release of my brother from the sentence of fifteen years in a fortress. This time, Herr Richter, a woman wins! Further, I warn you that if you attempt any reprisal my brother will at once expose Germany's machinations abroad. He has, I a.s.sure you, many good friends, both in Britain and America. Therefore if you desire silence you will make no effort to trace me further. At Frankenhausen you called me 'the golden-haired b.u.t.terfly,' but you regarded me merely as a moth! Adieu!_”
Twelve hours later I handed that letter to the Crown-Prince in Potsdam.
Where he had been in the meantime I did not know. He read it through; then, with a fierce curse upon his thin, curled lips, he crushed it in his hand and tossed it into the fire.
SECRET NUMBER EIGHT
HOW THE CROWN-PRINCE WAS BLACKMAILED
The Crown-Prince had accompanied the Emperor on board the _Hohenzollern_ on his annual cruise up the Norwegian fjords, and the Kaiserin and the Crown-Princess were of the party.
I had been left at home because I had not been feeling well, and with relief had gone south to the Lake of Garda, taking up my quarters in that long, white hotel which faces the blue lake at Gardone-Riviera. A truly beautiful spot, where the gardens of the hotel run down to the lake's edge, with a long veranda covered with trailing roses and geraniums, peaceful indeed after the turmoil and glitter of our Court life in Germany.