The apartment in the Flag Tower to which Carey Grey was conducted by Chancellor von Ritter was at the top of two flights of winding stone stairs, and the barred windows of its four rooms commanded a view of varied and picturesque loveliness. In the foreground were the Palace gardens, with their series of descending terraces, their fountains and statuary, their parterres of gay flowers, their gracefully curving driveways and gravelled walks, and their wonderful old trees of every shade of green leafage. Beyond the gardens were the red and grey roofs, the spires and steeples and domes and turrets of the city, divided by the sparkling silver-white waters of the rushing river, and beyond these stretched the fertile valley checkered with fields of ripening grain—yellow and orange and russet—and olive patches of woodland, and dotted with farm houses and cottages and barns and hayricks.

236 The rooms, themselves, were somewhat sombre. There was a small library, panelled and finished in black oak; a salon, long and high, with much tarnished gilt ornamentation and red upholstery; a tiny bare dressing-room, and a bedchamber with a great canopied bedstead, beside which stood a quaintly carved prie-dieu.

“Your Royal Highness will, I trust, be comfortable here,” said the Chancellor, when he had walked with Grey from one room to another and the two were standing together in the long salon.

The American hesitated a moment before replying. He was revolving mentally several alternatives of action. It was his duty, he knew, not to let this farce proceed further; and yet he had thus far learned absolutely nothing.

“I shall,” he said, at length, “be quite comfortable.”

“If there is anything your Royal Highness desires,” continued the Chancellor, “you have but to make it known.”

The invitation arrested the whirl of indecision and settled the course of procedure.

“If you will be so good as to answer me a few237 questions, Count,” Grey began, “I shall be indebted. Won’t you sit down?”

Count von Ritter found a place for his angular length upon a settee beside a pedestalled bust of King Oswald the First, and Grey sank into a chair near by.

“I am entirely at your Royal Highness’s disposal,” the Chancellor avowed, amiably; and the American, not without some trepidation, it must be confessed, began:

“You understand, of course, that events in my career have followed one another in the most rapid succession during the past few months; and regarding some of the most important details I am entirely uninformed. You will be surprised, perhaps, to learn, for instance, that I do not know with any degree of definiteness how my identity was established. Herr Schlippenbach was my discoverer, of course, but with whom did he consult here and by what means was it made clear that I am really the abducted heir of the Budavian crown?”

Count von Ritter listened to the question with growing suspicion. Here were, perhaps, the first238 indications of that insanity of which Lindenwald had spoken.

“It does seem hardly possible, your Royal Highness,” he replied, “that on such a vital matter you should have been left in ignorance. It was, I think, nearly a year ago that the first communication from the Herr Doctor Schlippenbach was brought to me by Herr Professor Trent.”

“And who is Herr Professor Trent?” Grey asked, quickly.

“The Herr Professor,” answered the Chancellor, “is the head of the University of Kürschdorf.”

“And his reputation is, of course, beyond reproach, eh?”

“Quite beyond reproach, your Royal Highness.”

“And what steps followed?” Grey pursued, inquisitorially, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair.

“I took up the matter personally,” the Count responded, with frankness. “I entered into correspondence with Schlippenbach at once, and after some months of writing back and forth he placed239 before me a very circumstantial story, which he afterward confirmed with documentary evidence—old letters, photographs, affidavits.”

“And then?”

“When I had thoroughly assured myself of the authenticity of all he claimed, I brought the subject to the attention of the Privy Council, and eventually it was laid before His Majesty. In the meantime the Budavian Minister at Washington had been investigating, and the Budavian Consul at New York as well. But all that, of course, you know.”

Grey nodded, dissembling. He was studying Count von Ritter as he spoke; noting every accent, every inflection, every expression, in an endeavour to decide whether he were innocent or guilty. Thus far he had been inclined to regard him as honest. It hardly seemed possible that one occupying his position could stoop to such chicanery. And the head of the university appeared likewise as too impregnably placed to be open to suspicion. The Budavian Minister and the Budavian Consul, however, he concluded could not be guiltless.

“And how did Captain Lindenwald chance to240 be chosen to meet me on my arrival in England?” he asked.

“Captain Lindenwald,” answered the Chancellor, “is an officer of the Royal household—he was the late King’s equerry—and he is, moreover, the brother of our Minister to the United States.”

Grey smiled in spite of himself. Of Lindenwald’s complicity he had had no doubt from the first. The fact that the Budavian Minister at Washington was his brother made it all the more probable that that dignitary was also criminally involved.

“Now, just one more matter, Count,” the American continued. “Can you tell me anything of this Baron von Einhard?”

The Chancellor shrugged his square shoulders.

“The Baron is a supporter of Prince Hugo,” he answered.

“That much I know,” Grey returned. “And in his loyalty to his leader he is apt to be unscrupulous to the Prince’s opponents?”

Count von Ritter smiled a trifle cynically.

“I have been led to understand so,” he answered.

241 “He would pay well, I suppose, to get Prince Max out of the way just at this juncture? Is it not so?”

“The price asked would probably not deter him.”

“And Captain Lindenwald—But no, of course not. It is silly of me to suggest such a possibility. You are satisfied of that officer’s fealty, I am sure?”

The Chancellor straightened in his seat and leaned forward with an exhibition of concern that had hitherto been lacking.

“You do not make yourself altogether clear, your Royal Highness,” he ventured. “Am I to understand that you have reason to suspect that Captain Lindenwald and the Baron von Einhard are——”

“Pardon me,” interrupted Grey, pleased nevertheless at the awakened interest of the Chancellor, “I did not say so. I merely asked a question. You are satisfied of Captain Lindenwald’s entire honesty and loyalty, are you not?”

“The Captain,” von Ritter replied, guardedly, “has not been as eager as I could have wished at times, but I have never regarded him as venal.”

242 “Then his explanation of why he left me in Paris, without so much as a wor............