“Kürschdorf,” the guide-books will tell you, “is the Capital of the Kingdom of Budavia; 118 miles from Munich and forty-nine miles from Nuremberg. It stands on both banks of the Weisswasser, united by the Charlemagne and Wartberg bridges, 400 yards long. Surrounded by towering mountains its King’s Residenz Schloss, erected 1607–1642, rises like the Acropolis above the dwellings and other buildings of the city. The steep sides of the Wartberg (1,834 feet) rise directly from amid the houses of the town, and it is on one extremity of the elevation that the imposing royal palace is located, with its 365 rooms, frescoes and statues, a ‘Diana’ of Canova, a ‘Perseus’ of Schwanhaler, a ‘Sleeping Ariadne’ of Thorwaldsen,195 and casts. The palace gardens are two miles long, and consist of a series of terraces overlooking the Wartberg valley on one side and a fertile plain on the other.”

The guide-books, too, will tell you of the K?nigsbau, a quarter-mile long, containing a coffee house, the Bourse, and the Concert Hall; and of the Museum, where the chief treasures of Kürschdorf are on view daily (10 A. M. TO 4 P. M.); and of the Hof Theatre, and of the beer gardens. And they will give you a long and detailed description of the cathedral, completed in 1317, with its spire 452 feet high, ascended by 575 steps, its wonderful astronomical clock, and its great west window. They will even tell you that the best shops are in the Schloss Strasse, and that the Grand Hotel K?nigin Anna is a first-class and well-situated hostelry. But in no one of them will you find any mention of the most ancient dwelling house in all Kürschdorf, a quaint, dark stone building, on the Graf Strasse, only a stone’s throw from the Friedrich Platz and two blocks away from the Wartburg Brücke.

At the moment Carey Grey was sending his telegram196 from the railway station at Chateau-Thierry to Nicholas Van Tuyl, in Paris, Count Hermann von Ritter, Chancellor of Budavia, was standing at a rear window of this venerable Kürschdorf mansion, gazing out upon a spacious and orderly rose garden. He was very tall and very angular. From a fringe of silver-white hair rose a shining pink crown; from beneath bushy brows of only slightly darker grey appeared small, keen black eyes; and a moustache of the same colour, heavy but close-cropped, accentuated rather than hid a straight, thin-lipped, nervous mouth. His head was bent thoughtfully forward and his hands, long and sinewy, with sharply defined knuckles, were clasped behind his back.

The drawing-room in which he stood was large and square, with high walls hung with many splendid pictures in heavy gilded frames. The furniture was massive and richly carved. Rococo cabinets held a wealth of curios—odd vases and drinking cups of repoussé work in gold and silver; idols from the Orient, peculiar antique knives—bodkins and poniards, and carvings of jade and ivory and ebony. The polished floor was strewn197 with Eastern rugs of silken texture, and at the doors and windows were hangings of still softer fabric and less florid colour and ornamentation.

After a little the Count crossed to a table on which stood lighted candelabra, and taking out his watch glanced at it with some show of impatience. Almost at the same moment a bell jangled, and very soon after a portière was raised by a servant wearing the Court mourning livery.

“Herr Captain Lindenwald, your Excellency!” he announced. And the Captain entered, saluting.

He was flushed and somewhat ill at ease, and the Chancellor’s icy manner as he bade him be seated was not altogether reassuring.

“I am very much distressed over the news conveyed by your telegram,” began the older man, when he had taken a chair at a little distance from his visitor. “Any delay at this juncture, you must understand, is only calculated to result in complications. Was His Royal Highness so violent that to bring him with you was impracticable?”

Lindenwald hesitated for just the shade of a second, his fingers playing nervously with the arm of his chair.

198 “I regarded the risk as too great,” he ventured.

“That is no answer,” the Count returned, irritably. “I asked you if he was violent.”

“Yes, Count, he was,” replied the Captain, with sudden assurance. “He was very violent at intervals. It would have been impossible to get him here without his causing a scene at some stage of the journey and probably revealing his identity. Besides, it was most dangerous. He was liable to evade his watchers and throw himself from the train.”

The annoyance of the Chancellor increased.

“You have never heard, Captain,” he said with a sneer, “that there are such things as handcuffs and strait-jackets.”

“Ah, but Count,” pleaded the other, in a tone of conciliation. “His Royal Highness! Could I put the Crown Prince to such humiliation? You know yourself that I would not be justified. It was better, it seemed to me, to have him safely confined in a private hospital in Paris for the present. In a little while, perhaps, his mind will clear.”

“What is the form of his mania?”

199 “It is most peculiar,” explained the Herr Captain. “You understand, of course, that until five months ago he had no idea whatever that he was who he is. He was, as you have been told, a valet, but a very superior man of his class. It is most certainly true that blood counts. He had all the inherent dignity of birth. His mind was far above his assumed station. All this you know. You may not have heard, though, that he was employed by an American stock broker named Grey who one day embezzled four hundred thousand marks and ran away.”

“Yes,” put in the Count, “I was informed of that as well.”

“Just so. Well,” continued the Captain, “His Royal Highness now, strangely enough, imagines that he is Grey.”

“Imagines that he is an embezzler?” queried Ritter.

“Precisely. He even cabled to New York giving his Paris address, and the United States Embassy there was for arresting him and having him extradited.”

“And when did this mania develop?”

200 “After the death of the Herr Doctor Schlippenbach.”

The Chancellor sat thoughtfully rubbing together his long, virile hands.

“But I thought that this man Grey, this embezzler, committed suicide—was drowned or something.”

“He was,” Lindenwald assented, “at least he is supposed to be dead.”

“It will be possible, I presume,” the Count pursued, after another moment of meditation, “to have the present temporary regency continued by simply proving that Prince Maximilian, the heir apparent, is alive and mentally incapacitated, though to have had him here in the flesh would have been far better. And now as to these proofs—I am in possession of copies of the papers, but where are the originals?”

The Captain shifted uneasily in his chair, and his eyes refused to meet those of his interlocutor.

“That is a question, Count,” he replied.

“A question!” cried the other, surprised and annoyed. “Why a question? Surely you are in possession of them!”

201 “Alas, I am not!&rd............