A Dash .. .. .. For a Throne.

by Arthur W. Marchmont.

CHAPTER I

MY DEATH

"To a man who has been dead nearly five years everything would be forgiven, probably--except his resurrection."

This half-cynical thought was suggested by the extraordinary change which a few hours of one memorable July day had wrought in my circ.u.mstances and position.

As the thought occurred to me I was standing in the library of Gramberg Castle, my hands plunged deep in my pockets, deliberately dallying with my fate, as I watched the black dress of the Prince's beautiful daughter moving slowly among the gayly colored flower-beds in the warm sunshine, like a soothing shadow in the brilliant glare.

I was face to face with a temptation which I found infinitely alluring and immeasurably difficult to resist.

For five years I had been enduring an existence of monotonous emptiness, that depressed me till my heart ached and my spirit wearied; and now a chance of change had been thrust upon me, all against my seeking, at which my pulses were beating high with the bound of hope, my blood running once again with the old quick tingling of excitement, and, through the reopened portals of a life akin to that from which I had been thrust, desire, ambition, pleasure, hazard, were all beckoning to me with fascinating invitation.

I turned from the window and threw myself into a deep easy-chair to think.

Five years before I had pa.s.sed in a moment from a position of Royal favor, with limitless ambition and opportunities, to one where death was avowedly the only alternate.

And no one had recognized this more readily than I myself.

I am half English by birth. My mother was an English woman, and went to the Prussian Court in the small suite of the bride whom "Unser Fritz"

carried from England. My father rose very high in Royal favor, and, as a consequence, I was thrown early in life in the company of the young Princes. We grew up close and intimate companions; and when I chose the navy for my profession every facility was employed to insure my advancement. I had been about five years in the navy, and was already a flag-lieutenant, when the smash came. Happily my father and mother were both dead then.

We were not puritans in those days, and there were some wild times. The last of these in which I took a part finished up on the Imperial yacht; and a wild enough time it was.

I had drunk much more freely than the rest--there were only some half-dozen of us altogether--and then, being a quarrelsome, hot-headed fool, I took fire at some words that fell from the Prince, and I gave him the lie direct. Exactly what happened I don't clearly remember; but I know that he flung his wine right at my face, and I, forgetting entirely that he was at once my future Emperor and my commanding officer, clenched my fist and struck him a violent blow in the face which knocked him down. He hit his head in falling, and lay still as death. We thought at first he was dead. What followed can be imagined. I cannot describe it. It sobered the lot of us; and our relief when we found he was not dead, but only stunned, cannot be put in words.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE FLUNG HIS WINE RIGHT AT MY FACE]

He was lifted up and laid on the table, his face all ghastly gray-white, save where the mark of my blow on the cheek stood out red and livid--a sight I shall never forget.

When the doctor came we told him the Prince had had an ugly fall, and, as soon as he showed signs of coming round, I left and went off to my ship, in a condition of pitiable consternation and remorse.

I nearly shot myself that night. I took out my revolver twice and laid it between my teeth, and was only stopped by the consideration that, if I did it, my suicide would be connected with the affair, and some garbled account of the brawl and of what was behind it would leak out.

The next day old Count von Augener, who had been telegraphed for, came to my cabin. He hated me as he had hated my father, and I knew it.

The interview was brief enough, and he sounded the keynote in the sentence with which he opened it.

"You are still alive, lieutenant?" he said, bending on me a piercing look from under his s.h.a.ggy, beetling brows.

"Say what you have to say, and be good enough to keep from taunts," I answered, and then told him the thought that alone had stopped me from shooting myself.

He listened in silence, and at the close nodded.

"You have enough wit when the wine's out, and you understand what you have done. Were you other than you are, you would be tried by court-martial and shot. But your act is worse than that of a mutineer--you are a coward"--I started to my feet--"because you have struck a man you know cannot demand satisfaction."

I sank again into my chair and covered my face in shame, for the taunt was true. But to have it thus flung at me ruthlessly was worse than a red-hot brand plunged into my flesh.

The old man stopped and looked at me, pleased that he had thus tortured me.

"There is but one course open to you. You know that?"

"I know it," I answered sullenly.

"Only one reparation you can make. Your death can appear to be either accidental or natural--anyhow, provided that it is at once. You can have a week; after that, if you are alive, you will die an infamous death."

"I understand," I replied, rising as he rose. "Will you give my a.s.surance to the Prince and the Emperor that ..."

"I am no tale-bearer, sir," he answered sternly. "The one desire now is to forget that you ever lived." And flinging these harsh words at me, he left me humiliated, ashamed, angry, and impotently remorseful.

Not another word should pa.s.s my lips. How should I die? It was not so easy as it seemed. A fatal accident to appear genuine called for clever stage-management, and I did not see how to arrange matters.

I applied for leave, and went to Berlin. There was one man there who could help me--old Dr. Mein. He was a bachelor recluse, an Englishman who had been naturalized, and in the old days he had been in love with my mother. It was she who told me the tale just before her death, when urging me to trust him should I ever find myself in need of an absolutely reliable, level-headed friend. I knew that he loved me for the English blood in my veins. I told him what I had to do; but at first did not mention the cause. He listened intently, questioned me shrewdly, and then stopped to think.

"You want me to murder you, or at least give you the means of murdering yourself?" he said bluntly.

"If you don't help me, I shall do it without you, that's all," I returned.

He paused again to think, pursing up his lips, and fixing his keen blue eyes upon me.

"I have loved you like my own son, and you ask me to kill you?"

"My mother would have had me come to you, because I am in trouble."

"You have no right to be in trouble. You are no fool. You have all your father's wealth--millions of marks; you have your mother's English blood--which is much better; you have her brains--which is best of all; you have a n.o.ble profession--the sea; you enjoy the Imperial favor and friendship--a slippery honor, maybe; and you are certain of rapid promotion to almost any height you please. Why, then, should you want to die?"

"Because I have sacrificed everything by my reckless temper," I answered, and told him what had happened. "I have no option but to die,"

I concluded. "If you will not help me----" I broke the sentence and got up to go.

"I didn't say I wouldn't help you--I will." I sat down again. "You don't care how you die, so long as it's quickly?" I shook my head. "Very well.

I have in my laboratory the bacilli of a deadly fever. I will inject the virus into your veins. In three days you will be in the fever's grip, and in less than a week you will be dead." I took off my coat and bared my arms to show my readiness. "I make only one condition. You must be ill here; I must watch the progress of the experiment."

"Nothing will suit me better," I returned.

He made the injection there and then, and gave me two days to be away and wind up my affairs; and when I returned to him he made another injection and put me to bed. That night I was in a raging fever. All the paraphernalia of a sick-bed were soon in evidence, and the following day it was known all over Berlin that the wealthy young Count von Rudloff was down in the grip of a fever at the house of a once well-known physician, Dr. Mein. The little house was besieged with callers. A few only were admitted. Von Augener was one, and he brought with him the Court physician.

I grew worse rapidly, and only in intermittent gleams of intelligence was I conscious of the lean, grizzled face and watchful blue eyes of the doctor bending over me, a.s.suring me that I was a most interesting case, and rapidly growing worse. For three days this continued, until in a moment of consciousness I heard him say to the nurse:

"He cannot last through the night," and the woman turned and looked sympathetically toward the bed.

I tried to speak, but could not. I could scarcely move; but they noticed my restlessness, and the doctor came and bent over me.

"Am I dying?" I whispered.