The Secrets of Potsdam

But his mind was always obsessed by the coming war. Indeed, on that very evening of our arrival, as we strolled along the gaily-illuminated Digue towards the big, bright Kursaal, he turned to me suddenly and said:

"When the hour comes, and Prussia in her greatness strikes them, this place will soon become German territory. I shall make that building yonder my headquarters," and he jerked his thumb in the direction of the summer palace of the King of the Belgians.

The following day, about three o'clock, while the Crown-Prince was carelessly going through some letters brought by courier from Potsdam, a waiter came to me with a message that a Miss King desired to see Mr. Richter.

In surprise I received her, welcoming her to Ostend. From the neat dress of the pretty English girl I concluded that she had just crossed from Dover, and she seemed most anxious to see His Highness. I noted, too, that she still wore the beautiful golden butterfly.

When I entered his room to announce her his slant brows knit, and his thin lips compressed.

"H'm! More trouble for us, Heltzendorff, I suppose!" he whispered beneath his breath. "Very well, show her in."

The fair visitor was in the room for a long time – indeed, for over an hour. Their voices were raised, and now and then, curiously enough, I received the impression that, whatever might have been the argument, the pretty girl had gained her own point, for when she came out she smiled at me in triumph, and walked straight forth and down the stairs.

The Crown-Prince threw himself into a big arm-chair in undisguised dissatisfaction. Towards me he never wore a mask, though, like his father, he invariably did so in the presence of strangers.

"Those accursed women!" he cried. "Ah! Heltzendorff, when a woman is in love she will defy even Satan himself! And yet they are fools, these women, for they are in ignorance of the irresistible power of our Imperial house. The enemies of the Hohenzollerns are as a cloud of gnats on a summer's night. The dew comes, and they are no more. It is a pity," he added, with a sigh of regret. "But those who are either conscientious or defiant must suffer. Has not one of our greatest German philosophers written: 'It is no use breathing against the wind'?"

"True," I said. Then, hoping to learn something further, I added: "Surely it is a nuisance to be followed and worried by that little English girl!"

"Worried! Yes. You are quite right, my dear Heltzendorff," he said. "But I do not mind worry, if it is in the interests of Prussia, and of our House of Hohenzollern. I admit the girl, though distinctly pretty, is a most irritating person. She does not appeal to me, but I am compelled to humour her, because I have a certain object in view."

I could not go further, or I might have betrayed the knowledge I had gained by eavesdropping.

"I was surprised that she should turn up here, in Ostend," I said.

"I had written to her. I expected her."

"She does not know your real rank or station?"

"No. To her I am merely Herr Emil Richter, whom she first met away in the country. She was a tourist, and I was Captain Emil Richter, of the Prussian Guards. We met while you were away on holiday at Vienna."

I was anxious to learn something about Miss King's brother, but "Willie" was generally discreet, and at that moment unusually so. One fact was plain, however, that some secret report presented to the Emperor had been shown to her. Why? I wondered if His Highness had been successful in coercing her into acting as he desired.

Certainly the girl's attitude as she had left the hotel went to show that, in the contest, she had won by her woman's keen wit and foresight. I recollected, too, that she was British.

A fortnight afterwards we were back again at Potsdam.

About three months passed. The Crown-Prince had accompanied the Emperor to shoot on the Glatzer Gebirge, that wild mountainous district beyond Breslau. For a week we had been staying at a great, high-up, prison-like schloss, the ancestral home of Prince Ludwig Lichtenau, in the Wölfelsgrund.

The Emperor and his suite had left, and our host had been suddenly called to Berlin by telegram, his daughter having been taken ill. Therefore, the Crown-Prince and we of the suite had remained for some further sport.

On the day after the Emperor's departure I spent the afternoon in a small panelled room which overlooked a deep mountain gorge, and which had been given up to me for work. I was busy with correspondence when the courier from Potsdam entered and gave me the battered leather pouch containing the Crown-Prince's letters. Having unlocked it with my key, I found among the correspondence a small square packet addressed to His Imperial Highness, and marked "Private."

Now, fearing bombs or attempts by other means upon his son's precious life, the Emperor had commanded me always to open packets addressed to him. This one, however, being marked "Private," and, moreover, the inscription being in a feminine hand, I decided to await His Highness's return.

When at last he came in, wet and very muddy after a long day's sport, I showed him the packet. With a careless air he said:

"Oh, open it, Heltzendorff. Open all packets, whether marked private or not."

I obeyed, and to my surprise found within the paper a small leather-covered jewel-case, in which, reposing upon a bed of dark blue velvet, was the beautiful ornament which I had admired at the throat of the fair-haired British girl – the golden butterfly.

I handed it to His Highness just as he was taking a cigarette from the box on a side table.

The sight of it electrified him! He held his breath, standing for a few seconds staring wildly at it as though he were gazing upon some hideous spectre, sight of which had frozen his senses.

He stood rigid, his thin countenance as white as paper.

"When did that arrive?" he managed to ask, though in a hoarse voice, which showed how completely sight of it had upset him.

"This afternoon. It was in the courier's pouch from Potsdam."

He had grasped the back of a chair as though to steady himself, and for a few seconds stood there, with his left hand clapped over his eyes, endeavouring to collect his thoughts.

He seemed highly nervous, and at the same time extremely puzzled. Receipt of that unique and beautiful brooch was, I saw, some sign, but of its real significance I remained in entire ignorance.

That it had a serious meaning I quickly realized, for within half an hour the Crown-Prince and myself were in the train on our two-hundred-mile journey back to Berlin.

On arrival His Imperial Highness drove straight to the Berlin Schloss, and there had a long interview with the Emperor. At last I was called into the familiar pale-green room, the Kaiser's private cabinet, and at once saw that something untoward had occurred.

The Emperor's face was dark and thoughtful. Yet another of the black plots of the Hohenzollerns was in process of being carried out! Of that I felt only too confident. The Crown-Prince, in his badly-creased uniform, betraying a long journey – so unlike his usual spick-and-span appearance – stood nervously by as the Kaiser threw himself into his writing-chair with a deep grunt and distinctly evil grace.

"I suppose it must be done," he growled viciously to his son. "Did I not foresee that the girl would constitute a serious menace? When she was in Germany she might easily have been arrested upon some charge and her mouth closed. Bah! our political police service grows worse and worse. We will have it entirely reorganized. The Director, Laubach, is far too sentimental, far too chicken-hearted."

As he spoke he took up his pen and commenced to write rapidly, drawing a deep breath as his quill scratched upon the paper.

"You realize," he exclaimed angrily to his son, taking no notice of my presence there, because I was part and parcel of the great machinery of the Court, "you realize what this order means?" he added, as he appended his signature. "It is a blow struck against our cause – struck by a mere slip of a girl. Think, if the truth came out! Why, all our propaganda in the United States and Britain would be nullified in a single day, and the 'good relations' we are now extending on every hand throughout the world in order to mislead our enemies would be exposed in all their true meaning. We cannot afford that. It would be far cheaper to pay twenty million marks – the annual cost of the whole propaganda in America – than to allow the truth to be known."

Suddenly the Crown-Prince's face brightened, as though he had had some sudden inspiration.

"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 Mercédès over to Potsdam, where I had a quantity of military documents awaiting attention, and, after a change of clothes, I tackled them.

Yet my mind kept constantly reverting to the mystery surrounding the golden butterfly.

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 nobody 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 butterfly 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 assure 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 butterfly,' 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.

One morning at luncheon, however, just as I had seated myself at my table set in the window overlooking the sunlit waters, a tall, rather thin-faced, bald-headed man entered, accompanied by an extremely pretty girl, with very fair hair and eyes of an unusual, child-like blue. The man I judged to be about fifty-five, whose blotchy face marked him as one addicted to strong liquors, and whose dress and bearing proclaimed him to be something of a roué. He walked jauntily to the empty table next mine, while his companion stared vacantly about her as she followed him to the place which the obsequious maître d'hôtel had indicated.

The stranger's eyes were dark, penetrating, and shifty, while there was something about the young girl's demeanour that aroused my interest. Her face, undeniably beautiful, was marred by a stare of complete vacancy. She glanced at me, but I saw that she did not see. It was as though her thoughts were far away, or else that she was under the spell of some weird fascination.

That strange, blank expression in her countenance caused me to watch her. On the one hand, the man had all the appearance of a person who had run the whole gamut of the vices; while the fair-haired, blue-eyed girl was the very incarnation of maiden innocence.

Perhaps it was because I kept my eyes upon her that the dark-eyed man knit his brows and stared at me in defiance. Instinctively I did not like the fellow, for as they started their meal I saw plainly the rough, almost uncouth, manner in which he treated her.

At first I believed that they might be father and daughter, but this suggestion was negatived when, on inquiry at the bureau, I was told that the man was Martinez Aranda, of Seville, and that his companion was his niece, Lola Serrano.

The latter always appeared exquisitely dressed, and the gay young men, Italian officers and others, were all eager to make her acquaintance. Yet it seemed to me that the man Aranda forbade her to speak to anyone. Indeed, I watched the pair closely during the days following, and could plainly discern that the girl went in mortal fear of him.

On the third day, while walking along the terrace facing the lake, I came across the Spaniard, who, in affable mood, started a conversation, and as we leaned upon the stone balustrade, smoking and gossiping, the pretty girl with hair so fair even though she were a Southerner came up, and I was introduced.

She wore a cool white linen gown, a big sun-hat, and carried a pale blue sunshade. But my eye, expert where a woman's gown is concerned, told me that that linen frock was the creation of one of the Paris men-dressmakers, whose lowest charge for such a garment is one thousand francs. Aranda and his pretty niece were certainly persons of considerable means.

"How very beautiful the lake always appears at any hour!" the girl exclaimed in French after her uncle had exchanged cards with me. "Truly Italy is delightful."

"Ah, Mademoiselle," I replied. "But your brilliant Spain is ever attractive."

"You know Spain?" inquired the bald-headed man at once.

"Yes, I know Spain, but only as a spring visitor," was my reply.

And from that conversation there grew in a few days quite an affable friendship. We went together on excursions, all three of us, once by the steamer up to Riva, where on landing and passing through the Customs we sat at the café and sipped that delicious coffee topped by a foam of cream, the same as one got at the "Bristol" in Vienna, or the "Hungaria" in Budapest. Then at evening, while the pretty Lola gossiped with a weedy old Italian Marchioness, whose acquaintance she had made, her uncle played billiards with me, and he was no bad player either!

As soon as the Spaniard learnt of my position as personal-adjutant of His Imperial Highness the Crown-Prince he became immediately interested, as most people were, and plied me with all sorts of questions regarding the truth of certain scandals that were at the moment afloat concerning "Willie." As you know, I am usually pretty discreet. Therefore, I do not think that he learned very much from me.

We were alone in the billiard-room, having a game after luncheon one day, when a curious conversation took place.

"Ah, Count! You must have a very intimate knowledge of life at the Berlin Court," he remarked quite suddenly, in French.

"Yes. But it is a strenuous life, I assure you," I declared, laughing.

"The Crown-Prince sometimes goes abroad incognito," he said, pausing and looking me straight in the face.

"Yes – sometimes," I admitted.

"He was in Rome in the first week of last December. He disappeared from Potsdam, and the Emperor and yourself were extremely anxious as to what had become of him. He had gone to Berlin alone, without any attendant, and completely disappeared. Yet, while you were all making secret inquiries, and fearing lest the truth should leak out to the Press, His Imperial Highness was living as plain Herr Wilhelm Nebelthau in an apartment at Number Seventeen, Lungtevere Mellini. Isn't that so?"

I stared agape at the Spaniard.

I thought myself the only person who knew that fact – a fact which the Crown-Prince had revealed to me in the strictest secrecy.

Could this man Martinez Aranda be an agent of police? Yet that seemed quite impossible.

"You appear to have a more intimate knowledge of His Highness's movements than I have myself," I replied, utterly amazed at the extent of the man's information.

His dark, sallow face relaxed into a mysterious smile, and he bent to make another stroke without replying.

"His Highness should be very careful in the concealment of his movements when he is incognito," he remarked presently.

"You met him there, eh?" I asked, eager to ascertain the truth, for that secret visit to Rome had been a most mysterious one, even to me.

"I do not think I need reply to that question," he said. "All I can say is that the Crown-Prince kept rather queer company on that occasion."

Those words only served to confirm my suspicions. Whenever "Willie" disappeared alone from Potsdam I could afterwards always trace the disappearance to his penchant for the eternal feminine. How often, indeed, had I been present at scenes between the Crown-Princess and her husband, and how often I had heard the Emperor storm at his son in that high-pitched voice so peculiar to the Hohenzollerns when unduly excited.

The subject soon dropped, but his statements filled me with apprehension. It was quite plain that this well-dressed, bald-headed Spaniard was in possession of some secret of the Crown-Prince's, a secret which had not been revealed to me.

More than once in the course of the next few days, when we were alone together, I endeavoured to learn something of the nature of the secret which took his Highness to the Eternal City, but Aranda was very clever and discreet. In addition, the attitude of the girl Lola became more than ever strange. There was a blank look in those big, beautiful eyes of hers that betrayed something abnormal. But what it was I failed to decide.

One evening after dinner I saw her walking alone in the moonlight along the terrace by the lake, and joined her. So preoccupied she seemed that she scarcely replied to my remarks. Then suddenly she halted, and as though unable to restrain her feelings longer I heard a low sob escape her.

"Mademoiselle, what is the matter?" I asked in French. "Tell me."

"Oh, nothing, Monsieur, nothing," she declared in a low, broken voice. "I – I know I am very foolish, only – "

"Only what? Tell me. That you are in distress I know. Let me assist you."

She shook her handsome head mournfully.

"No, you cannot assist me," she declared in a tone that told me how desperate she had now become. "My uncle," she exclaimed, staring straight before her across the moonlit waters, whence the dark mountains rose from the opposite bank. "Count, be careful! Do – my – my uncle."

"I don't understand," I said, standing at her side and gazing at her pale countenance beneath the full light of the moon.

"My uncle – he knows something – be careful – warn the Crown-Prince."

"What does he know?"

"He has never told me."

"Are you in entire ignorance of the reason of the visit of His Highness to Rome? Try and remember all you know," I urged.

The girl put both her palms to her brow, and, shaking her head, said:

"I can remember nothing – nothing – oh! my poor head! Only warn the man who in Rome called himself Herr Nebelthau!"

She spoke in a low, nervous tone, and I could see that she was decidedly hysterical and much unstrung.

"Did you meet Herr Nebelthau?" I asked eagerly.

"Me? Ah, no. But I saw him, though he never saw me."

"But what is the secret that your uncle knows?" I demanded. "If I know, then I can warn the Crown-Prince."

"I do not know," she replied, again shaking her head. "Only – only – well, by some means my uncle knew that you had left Potsdam, and we travelled here on purpose to meet you to obtain from you some facts concerning the Crown-Prince's movements."

"To meet me?" I echoed in surprise. In a moment I saw that Aranda's intentions were evidently evil ones. But just at that juncture the Spaniard came forth in search of his niece.

"Why are you out here?" he asked her gruffly. "Go in. It is too cold for you."

"I came out with the Count to see the glorious panorama of the lake," explained the girl in strange humbleness, and then, turning reluctantly, she obeyed him.

"Come and have a hand at bridge," her uncle urged cheerfully. "The Signora Montalto and young Boileau are ready to make up the four."

To this I agreed, and we followed the girl into the big, white-panelled lounge of the hotel.

Two days later, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Aranda received a telegram, and an hour later left with his niece, who, as she parted from me, whispered:

"Warn the Crown-Prince, won't you?"

I promised, and as they drove off to the station I stood waving my hand to the departing visitors.

A week later I had word from Cuxhaven of the arrival of the Hohenzollern from Trondhjem, and at once returned to the Marmor Palace, where on the night of my arrival the Crown-Prince, wearing his Saxon Uhlan uniform, entered my room, gaily exclaiming:

"Well, Heltzendorff, how are things on the Lake of Garda, eh?"

I briefly explained where I had been, and then, as he lit a cigarette, standing astride near the fireplace, I asked permission to speak upon a confidential matter.

"More trouble, eh?" he asked, with a grin and a shrug of the shoulders.

"I do not know," I said seriously, and then, in brief, I related how the man Aranda had arrived with the girl Lola at the hotel, and what had followed.