A prince of lovers

COUNTESS MINNA VON CROY was a young lady of resource, of a ready wit and, when she was put to it, of considerable courage. But there was one person in the Court, perhaps the one person in the world, of whom she was horribly afraid. That was the Chancellor.

For the Duke—by himself, that is minus his wily old Minister—she did not care a straw. She could laugh at him as a weak, pompous figurehead, the mere stalking horse of the Chancellor, from whom he derived what terrors he possessed; a very marionette, which Rollmar’s skilful fingers made to strut and posture and frown as suited the purpose of the moment. She was never tired of reflecting, when in the royal presence, what a wonderful character the late Duchess must have possessed, since the Princess was so unlike and so vastly superior to her father. Yes, the Duke she could look on with a certain careless tolerant contempt. But the Chancellor? Ah, that was another matter. Countess Minna hated and despised herself for fearing him—for she was, under the laziness bred of court life, a girl of spirit—but, fight against it as she might, she could not get over the uncomfortable feeling of trepidation and nervousness with which the presence of that astute, inscrutable old schemer always inspired her. He seemed to carry with him an environment and an atmosphere of disquietude; a quiet terrorism radiated from him; he was power incarnate, the power of a mighty will and a resourceful brain, a quick tongue that would sting like a snake’s, and a trick of speech that always seemed to carry something behind its actual words. No wonder Minna was afraid of him; her sprightly sallies, when she nerved herself to stand up to him, fell blunted against the old man’s cynical condescension. He made her feel small, and that was why she so hated him and herself for her fear of him.

Just at this juncture, too, she might well have reason to regard him with an especial apprehension; consequently it was with a good deal of trepidation which defied her powers of self-command that she found herself invited to a private interview with the Chancellor, in what she was always pleased to call, the leopard’s den.

He received her with stern politeness which did not allay her tremors. She was not kept in suspense as to the object of the interview; the Chancellor was notably a man to come to the point, when there was no object in delaying the arrival.

“I am sorry, Countess, to have to charge you with a breach of confidence,” he began severely.

The challenge steadied Minna. “A breach of confidence, your Excellency?” she echoed in well-simulated surprise.

“An exceedingly serious one,” he rejoined, “an abuse of your position as maid of honour to the Princess.”

“Excellency!” she exclaimed in open-eyed astonishment. He held up his hand to check her till she should have heard him out.

“Your position as close companion to the Princess is pre-eminently a responsible one. It has come to my knowledge, Countess, that you have grossly abused it.”

“Tell me how, Excellency,” Minna said with compressed lips, fearing lest an unruly inflection should betray her.

“I am about to give you that superfluous information,” he replied with cutting emphasis, “although it is mere waste of time to do so. The Princess has lately formed an improper acquaintance; improper, that is, certainly so far as the nature of the acquaintanceship goes. You have abetted her in certain clandestine interviews. That is, precisely, what I mean by your abuse of the trust reposed in you.”

He spoke sharply, insistently, as giving a definite explanation which could admit of no quibbling. So, somehow or other, the meeting in the chapel had been discovered. Clearly, Minna thought, denial was useless. Her half paralysed wits must be set to work to make the best of the position.

“I am not aware,” she said cautiously, “that the Princess has done anything wrong or improper.”

“Indeed?” Rollmar’s face expressed contempt for a mental vision that could not see a thing so obvious. “You think, then, there is nothing wrong at any time, but especially now, on the eve of her betrothal to Prince Ludwig of Drax-Beroldstein, in the Princess indulging in a nocturnal interview with a man in the chapel?”

“The Princess,” Minna demurred, evading a direct answer and summoning her courage, “hates the idea of marrying Prince Ludwig.”

“That,” returned Rollmar coldly, “is a matter which I cannot discuss with you. It is entirely beside the question. What I have to say now merely touches the part you have played in this scandalous affair—and its consequences to you.”

There was an ugly hint in the last words which lost nothing in their pointed emphasis. Poor Minna abruptly ceased to wonder how much her tormentor knew and how he came to know it, in apprehending her own punishment.

“I have abetted nothing scandalous,” was all she could protest, and that feebly enough.

Rollmar gave a shrug. “I hold a different opinion, Countess. The affair would be disreputable enough in a private family; in connection with a Royal house it involves not only dishonour, but treason to the State. That is unquestionable. You probably know the penalty of treason?”

The wretched Minna knew it but too well, since many a case of ministerial vengeance had come under her notice. Such dark events were not of infrequent occurrence and were bound to be common talk, since it was policy not to hush them up too closely. Already she felt herself a dead woman, or at least one for whom liberty was to be but a recollection. It was manifest to her that, from the Minister’s point of view, at least, the affair was sufficiently serious to warrant the most dire measures. To do her justice, her feeling of abject despair was not confined to herself. What would be the result to her mistress of this discovery? Still, her own situation was the more perilous; she recalled a similar case in which all the possessors of a scandalous secret were removed from the face of the earth—how, could be only shudderingly conjectured.

She could but protest her innocence of all wrongful, all treasonable intention. Not a particularly cogent argument to move the stern old man, whose fierce, merciless eyes seemed to shrivel up her protests.

“Call it folly rather than treason, if you please,” he retorted with his pitiless logic; “folly, culpable folly, such as yours, is treason where the State is concerned. An assignation, innocent or otherwise, is common enough, its consequences would be purely domestic in every case but one, the highest. It has been your misfortune, Countess, to allow yourself to be mixed up in that one exception where the consequences might be imperial and widely disastrous.”

“Yes, but, Excellency,” she urged, pricked on by apprehension of what she dared not contemplate, “how could I know? How be to blame for a chance meeting?”

“A chance meeting? Really, Countess, it is best to be straightforward with me. A chance meeting? With the Princess visiting the chapel after dark, and a man hidden in the organ?”

“Let me explain, Excellency.”

“Ah! if you please.” He leaned back, slowly rubbing his white hands together as though feeling carelessly the talons that were ready to strike.

“The Princess had been playing the organ that afternoon in the chapel as is her habit,” Minna said, her voice dry with fear. “I was blowing the bellows for her as I always do, when this——this person came in and offered to take my place.”

“Ah! Just so. And this person was——?”

“The—the man who afterwards got inside the organ, Excellency, because——”

“No doubt. I ask you who he was.”

The name was on her lips; then, in the extremity of her distress, an idea, a desperate expedient flashed to her mind. She checked the answer and hesitated. Was this unfathomable old fox really ignorant of von Bertheim’s identity? The forlorn chance gave her courage and sharpened her wits. She could but try.

“Come!” Rollmar insisted.

“You know his name, Excellency,” she stammered.

“I ask you.”

She looked at him, but the crumpled parchment of his face told her nothing. Still, in her woeful plight chance was in her favour, since she had nothing to lose. “I—I cannot tell you,” she replied, “for I do not know.”

The cruel eyes shot forth a light which had struck despair in many a stouter heart than this girl’s; yet she was resolute to play her game through.

“If you are going to trifle with me, Countess, I shall hesitate no longer in signing the order for your arrest.”

“Excellency!” she cried, trembling with a terror that was not all simulated. “I cannot tell you that. It is impossible. I will help you in every way to find out, I will do all I can to atone for my fault, but I cannot tell you this man’s name.”

“You will not?”

“I cannot. It is easy for you to find out.”

“Quite,” he assented dryly. “Go on with your story.”

“Someone came into the chapel. Fearing I had done wrong to let him remain, even to blow the organ, I opened the door and made him get in. The Princess and I went out into the Park for a few minutes and when I ran back to release him I found the chapel locked up for the night.”

“So you came down and let him out after dark?” Rollmar suggested with an incredulous smile.

“Yes, Excellency. I could not let him stay there all night.”

“It would have been too bad, certainly. I am waiting to hear, Countess, why it was necessary for the Princess to accompany you on this errand of relief.”

“The Princess was distressed at the idea of the poor fellow being boxed up in the organ.”

“So distressed that she was obliged to kiss him on his release?”

Minna threw up her hands in horror. She was beginning to feel at home in her part now. “Kiss! Excellency, you have been grossly misinformed. Someone has been maligning the Princess to you. It is abominable!”

“It is,” he agreed with a grim smile. “So there was no kiss, eh?”

“Most assuredly not My dear Princess kiss a man like that! You don’t know her, Excellency.”

He gave a shrug and a look which suggested that if he could not read the Princess he was at least able to decipher her maid of honour without trouble. “We shall see, my Countess,” he observed significantly. “And let me tell you at once that you are very foolish if you think to hoodwink me. Now, take care. Do I understand you to suggest that the Princess is engaged in no love affair?”

“A love affair? Perhaps. With the love on one side and that not the Princess’s. And a kiss! It is preposterous. I take upon myself to deny the kiss.”

“Never mind the kiss.” Rollmar softened his expression into one of vulpine humour, and continued almost pleasantly, “I fancy you know more than you choose to tell, Countess. Never mind”—he silenced her protest with a gesture—“it makes but the difference of an hour or two. Now, your one chance of escape from the consequences of your—indiscretion is to make amends by giving me assistance in this affair.”

This proposal had been precisely what Minna had been aiming at for the furtherance of her delusive expedient, but she was careful not to show eagerness. Her courage rose with the realisation that at last she had a chance of measuring her wits successfully against her cunning old bugbear.

“But the Princess?” she objected with the suggestion of a scruple. “You ask me to do her an ill turn.”

“On the contrary,” was the natural retort. “I employ you to do her a good turn, to be loyal to her best interests. You will not help the affair by refusing, while it is obviously desirable that the secret should be confined to ourselves. Still,” he gave one of his ominous shrugs—“you are at liberty to refuse, but I am afraid it is the only liberty you can count on.”

The threat appeared to decide her. After a moment’s hesitation she said: “Your Excellency wishes to discover the man who courts the Princess?” He nodded. “Then if I may be so bold as to suggest a plan you might make an unexpected visit to the Royal Chapel at about five o’clock to-day, in the meantime giving no hint of your suspicions to any one.”

He looked at her keenly, and under those searching eyes it was all she could do to keep an expression of ingenuousness.

“Very well,” he said curtly, rising to end the interview. “I need hardly warn you, Countess, not to attempt to deceive me.”

“I could not hope to do so, Excellency, even if I wished,” she replied humbly. “And you will soon see that I have no wish.”

He held open the door, and she passed out, hiding with one of her demurest looks the exultant relief at her heart.

That afternoon, close upon the appointed hour, the Chancellor came quietly into the Royal Chapel—not so quietly, however, but that Minna, cunningly on the watch, detected the first signal of his arrival.

There was hurried whispering, a scramble and a hiding away, with a momentary giving out of the wind supply in the organ. The Chancellor came in quiet, fox-like and confident, ostensibly listening to the music, but having eyes for every movement round him. He stood by the screen overlooking the player till the Princess turned and saw him.

“Ah, Baron!” she said, with some show of composure, “how you startled me.”

“Do not let me interrupt you, Princess,” he protested grimly.

“Oh, I have finished playing,” and she left the keyboard. “I did not know you cared for music, Baron.”

“I was a player in my youth,” he replied readily, “before the business of state-craft left me no time for the pleasures of mere sound. Ah,” he went on blandly, “this old organ has a history; it would be a pity to have it removed. I came in to examine it.”

“The organ, Baron?” the Princess exclaimed incredulously and, it seemed to him, with trepidation, making allowance for her power of self-control.

“This organ,” he repeated. “There is a question of replacing it.”

“You are going to try it, Baron,” the Princess laughed, making way for him to reach the player’s seat.

“My fingers have long ago lost their cunning,” he returned with a gesture of protest, and a half-veiled look which suggested that their cunning had migrated to another part of his anatomy. “But at least I know something of instruments and will look at this.”

He affected to make a cursory examination of the manuals, the stops and pedals, counted the pipes, and so worked round to the door giving access to the interior. A look of intelligence had passed between him and Minna, and he felt confident that he had trapped his prey. “Now let me take a look inside,” he said casually.

“You, Excellency? It is impossible,” Minna affected to protest. “It is frightfully dusty, no one but a mechanic can go inside.”

But he waved her aside with a smile at her objection.

Then the Princess gave a forced laugh.

“Really, Baron, apart from the dust it is hardly dignified for our Chancellor to creep into the inside of the organ. You really will consult your dignity by delegating that inspection to the mechanic.”

He turned and eyed her uncompromisingly. “If I have served your father well, Princess, it is because I have made a rule to look with my own eyes into everything that concerned his welfare and that of the State.”

“But, surely the organ, Baron——?”

“May include a question of greater importance and delicacy than one would suppose,” he rejoined significantly. “Therefore, in pursuance of my rule I am going to look inside.”

There was clearly no more protest to be made in view of that stern resolve. Minna stood aside with anxiety on her face. The Baron turned the latch and pulled open the narrow door. The sharp eyes instantly detected a pair of legs in military boots, the upper part of the owner’s body being hidden behind the heavy framework.

The Chancellor turned round to the Princess with a triumphant glitter in his eyes. “What did I tell you, Princess? You see the wisdom of my rule. And how unwise it would have been to have delegated this examination. The organ does contain superfluous matter which I am better fitted than a mechanic to remove. No wonder, Princess, the instrument is liable to be out of order. I think we must have one built for you in your private apartments where your playing will be less open to be interfered with. Now, sir,” he changed to a loud peremptory tone—“have the goodness to come out at once!”

He stepped back from the door. The man inside, thus summoned, was heard moving. The Baron put a silver whistle to his lips, and, as it sounded, Captain von Ompertz, alert and business-like, entered the chapel by the outer door. As he did so the hider in the organ appeared and sprang down to the floor. At sight of him the expression on the Baron’s face changed from malicious anticipation to chagrined astonishment, as on those of the Princess and Minna pretended anxiety gave way to amused triumph. For the man who stood before him, whom he was there to arrest and send off to secret execution, was his own son, Udo Rollmar.