The Puppet Crown - Harlod MacGrath (nice books to read TXT) 📗

please, only do not interrupt the prompter;" and with this the Colonel waved him an adieu.

Maurice began the journey through the mountain pass, thinking and planning and scheming. However he looked at the situation, the end was the same: the Osians were doomed. If he himself played false and retained the certificates until too late to be of benefit to the duchess, war would follow; and the kingdom would be soundly beaten. . . . Would Prince Frederick still hold to his agreement and marry her Royal Highness, however ill the fortunes of war fared? There was a swift current of blood to his heart. The Voiture-verse of a countess faded away. . . . Supposing Prince Frederick withdrew his claims? Some day her Highness would be free; free, without title or money or shelter. It was a wild dream. Was there not, when all was said, a faint hope for his own affairs in the fall of Fitzgerald?

She was lonely, friendless, personally known to few. Still, she would be an Osian princess for all her misfortunes. But an Osian princess was not so great that love might not possess her. Without royalty she would be only a woman. What would Austria do; what would Austria say? If Austria had placed Leopold on the throne, certainly it was to shut out the house of Auersperg.

And who was this man Beauvais, who served one house openly and another under the rose? Where had he met him before, and why did the thought of him cause unrest? To rescue her somehow, to win her love, to see the glory of the world light the heavens in her eyes! If the dream was mad, it was no less pleasant.

He was a commoner; he had nothing in the world but his brain and his arm. Fitzgerald, now, possessed a famous title and an ancient name. These kings and princes hereabout could boast of but little more than he; and there were millions to back him. He could dream of princesses and still be sane. Maurice did not envy the Englishman's riches, but he coveted his right of way.

How often had he indulged in vain but pleasant dreams! Even in the old days he was always succoring some proud beauty in distress. Sometimes it was at sea, sometimes in railroad wrecks, sometimes in the heart of flames; but he was ever there, like a guardian angel. It was never the same heroine, but that did not matter; she was always beautiful and rich, high placed and lovable, and he never failed to brush aside all obstacles that beset the path to the church door. He had dreamed of paladins, and here at last was his long-sought opportunity-but he could do nothing! He laughed. How many such romances lay beneath the banter and jest of those bald bachelor diplomat friends of his? Had fate reserved him for one of these?

It was noon when he entered the city of Bleiberg. He went directly to his hotel, where a bath and a change of clothes took the stiffness from his limbs. He was in no great hurry to go to the Grand Hotel; there was plenty of time. Happily there was no mail for him; he was not needed in Vienna.

At two o'clock he set out for the lower town. On the way he picked up odd ends of news. The king was rapidly sinking; he had suffered another stroke, and was now without voice. There was unusual activity in the barracks. The students of the university were committing mild depredations, such as building bonfires, holding flambeau processions, and breaking windows which contained the photographs of Prince Frederick of Carnavia, who, strangely enough, was still wrapt in obscurity. When Maurice entered the Grand Hotel he looked casually among the porters, but the round-faced one was missing. He approached the desk. The proprietor did not recognize him.

"No, my friend," said Maurice, affably, as a visitors' book was pushed forward, "I am not going to sign. Instead, I wish to ask a favor. A week ago a party of the king's troopers met upstairs."

The proprietor showed signs of returning memory, together with a strange agitation.

"There was a slight disturbance," went on Maurice, still using the affable tone. "Herr-ah- Hamilton, I believe-"

The proprietor grew limp and yellow. "I-I do not know where he is."

"I do," replied Maurice. "Don't you recognize me? Have I changed so since I came here to doctor a sprained ankle?"

"You?-Before God, Herr, I was helpless; I had nothing to do with it!" terrified at the peculiar smile of the victim.

"The key to this gentleman's room," was the demand.

"I-"

"The key, and be quick about it."

The key came forth. "You will say nothing, Herr; it would ruin my business. It was a police affair."

"Has any one been in this room since?"

"No, Herr; the key has been in my pocket."

"Where is the porter who brought me here?"

"He was not a porter; he was with the police."

Maurice passed up the stairs. He found the room in disorder, but a disorder rather familiar to his eyes. He had been the cause of most of it. Here was where he broke the baron's arm and thumped three others on the head. It had been a good fight. Here was a hole in the wall where one of the empty revolvers had gone- missing the Colonel's head by an inch.

There was a smudge on the carpet made by the falling candles. He saw Fitzgerald's pipe and picked it up. No; the chamber maid had not yet been there. He went over to the bed, stared at it and shrugged. He raised the mattress. There was the gun case. He drew it forth and took out the gun, not, however, without a twist of his nerves.

Four millions of crowns, a woman's love, the fall of one dynasty and the rise of another, all wadded in those innocent looking gun barrels! He hesitated for a space, then unlocked the breech and held the tubes toward the window. There was nothing in the barrels, nothing but the golden sunlight, which glinted along the polished steel.


CHAPTER XIV


QUI M'AIME, AIME MON CHIEN

On making this discovery Maurice was inclined to declaim in that vigorous vocabulary which is taboo. He had been tricked. He was no longer needed at the Red Chateau. Four millions in a gun barrel; hoax was written all over the face of it, and yet he had been as unsuspicious as a Highland gillie. Madame had tricked him; the countess had tricked him, the Colonel and Fitzgerald.

That Madame had tricked him created no surprise; what irritated him most was the conviction that Fitzgerald was laughing in his sleeve, and that he had misjudged the Englishman's capacity for dissimulation. Very well. He threw the gun on the bed; he took Fitzgerald's pipe from his pocket and cast it after the gun, and with a gesture which placed all the contents of the room under the ban of his anathema, he strode out into the corridor, thence to the office.

Here the message to Madame from Beauvais flashed back. The Colonel of the royal cuirassiers had lied; he had found the certificates. But still there was a cloud of mystery; to what use could Beauvais put them? He threw the key to the landlord.

"You lied to me when you said that no one had entered that room," he said.

"O, Herr, I told you that no one but the police had been in the room since your departure. They made a search the next morning. Herr Hamilton was suspected of being a spy of the duchy's. I could not interfere with the police."

Maurice saw that there was nothing to be got from the landlord, who was as much in the dark as he. He passed into the street and walked without any particular end in view. O, he would return to the Red Chateau, if only to deliver himself of the picturesque and opinionated address on Madame. Once he saw his reflection in a window glass, and he stopped and muttered at it.

"Eh, bien, as Madame herself says, we develop with crises, and certainly there is one not far distant. I never could write what I wish to say to Madame; I'll go back to-morrow morning."

Situated between the university and the Grand Hotel on the left hand side of the Konigstrasse, east, stood an historical relic of the days when Austria, together with the small independent states, strove to shake off the Napoleonic yoke. In those days students formed secret societies; societies full of strange ritual, which pushed devotion to fanaticism, which stopped at nothing, not even assassination. To exterminate the French, to regain their ancestral privileges, to rescue their country from its prostrate humiliation, many sacrificed their lives and their fortunes.

Napoleon found no means of reaching these patriots, for they could not be purchased. This convinced Napoleon of their earnestness, for he could buy kings and princes. The students were invisible, implacable, and many a brilliant officer of the imperial guard disappeared, never to return.

This historic relic of the Konigstrasse had been the headquarters of one of the branches of these numerous societies; and the students still held to those ancient traditions. But men and epochs pass swiftly; only the inanimate remain. This temple of patriotism is simply an inn to-day, owned by one Stuler, and is designated by those who patronize it as "Old Stuler's." It is the gathering place of the students. It consists of a hall and a garden, the one facing the street, the other walled in at the rear.

The hall is made of common stone, bald and unadorned save by four dingy windows and a tarnished sign, "Garten," which hangs obliquely over the entrance. At the curb stands a post with three lamps pendant; but these are never lit because Old Stuler can keep neither wicks nor glass beyond the reach of canes.

Old Stuler was well versed in the peculiarities of students. In America they paint statues; in Austria they create darkness. On warm, clear nights the students rioted in the garden; when it rained, chairs and tables were carried into the hall, which contained a small stage and a square gallery. Never a night passed without its animated scene.

Here it was that the evils of monarchical systems were discussed, the army service, the lack of proper amusement, the restrictions at the stage entrance to the opera; here it was that they concocted their exploits, fought their duels, and planned means of outwitting Old Stuler's slate.

Stuler was a good general; he could keep the students in order, watch his assistants draw beer, the Rhine wine, and the scum (dregs of the cask, muddy and strong), and eye the accumulating accounts on the slate. This slate was wiped out once the month; that is to say, when remittances came from home. The night following remittances was a glorious one both to Stuler and the students. There were new scars, new subjects for debate, and Stuler got rid of some of his prime tokayer. The politics of the students was socialism, which is to say they were always dissatisfied. Tourists seldom repeated their visits to Stuler's. There was too much spilling of beer in laps, dumping of pipe ash into uncovered steins, and knocking off of stiff hats.

It was in front of Old Stuler's that Maurice came to a pause. He had heard of the place and the praise of its Hofbrau and Munich beers. He entered. He found the interior dark and