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Dash for a Throne

<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> <h3>PRAGA'S STORY</h3> My thoughts as I walked with my devil-may-care companion to his rooms were busy enough. How could I get out of him what he knew without compromising myself, and how explain that I was no longer Heinrich Fischer, the actor, but the Prince von Gramberg, without starting his suspicions? My hasty exclamation that I could help him to his revenge had been exceedingly foolish, and I was at a loss to know how far I could trust him to keep any secret. He took me to his rooms, and very comfortable quarters they were. I noticed, too, that he was far better dressed than I had ever seen him in Frankfort. He was a dark, swarthy, lean-faced, lithe fellow, and his black eyes, keen and daring, noticed my look of questioning surprise, and he laughed, showing his gleaming white teeth in the lamplight. "Not the first time I owe my life to that little fellow," he said, laying his sword-stick, an ordinary-looking stout malacca cane, on the table. "A workman should never travel without his tools, remember that, my friend. And so you are surprised to see me so comfortably placed, eh? Well, I am a man of means, and live at my ease—at least I was. But shall I tell you?" "By all means," said I, throwing myself into a chair, anxious to get him to talk freely. "First let us drink; and I may thank the Holy Virgin and you—but especially you, I think—that my throat is still sound enough to swallow good liquor—the one thing in life the loss of which makes one think of death regretfully." And he tossed off a glass of wine. "Are you wounded?" I asked. "A scratch somewhere on my arm—may God blight the hand that dealt it!" He changed in a moment from a light tone to one of vehement passion, and then as quickly back again to one of cheery chatter. "If He doesn't, I will; so that's settled. Let's see to the scratch, though." He took off his coat, examined the hurt, and I bathed it and bound it up carefully. "A mere nothing," he said, "for me, that is—not for him." For a moment or two he moved about the room as if occupied, and then he turned to me, and with a light laugh, but a piercing look from his dark, glittering eyes, he asked: "And now, tell me, who are you?" "The Prince von Gramberg," I answered instantly. I was, indeed, half prepared for the question, for I had been studying him carefully. The answer pleased him. "Good. You are not afraid to tell me the truth. But I knew it. You had been pointed out to me here in Munich—pointed out, do you understand, for a purpose. And I said to myself, the Prince von Gramberg and Heinrich Fischer are the same person. Why? And when I could not answer the question I thought to myself: I will wait. Here is a secret. It may pay me to keep my tongue still. So you see I know you." "You were going to tell me about yourself. That will interest me more than your speculations as to my reasons for turning actor for a year or two." I spoke with an air of indifference. "The canaille!" he exclaimed angrily, with a bitter scowl. "They were sick of me. I know too much. I am dangerous. I will no longer do their work; and so, by the fires of hell, they think to get rid of me! Wait, wait, my masters, and you shall see what you have done." He threw his right arm up, and clenched his fist with a most dramatic gesture. "It was surely their evil genius sent you my way just now. Do you know how near death you are at this moment?" he asked; "or you would be, if I had taken up their cursed work." "I shall know a great deal better if you will speak clearly," I replied, not letting him see how his question surprised me. "I will. I don't know whether you wish me to regard you as a Prince or play-actor; but, whichever it is, you saved my life to-night, and if I turn against you may I go to hell straightway." "You can please yourself what you call me. I am the Prince von Gramberg in fact, whatever I may have seemed formerly." "And I am Juan Praga, the Corsican. Not French, or Italian, or German, or any of the dozen different damned parts I have played; but Juan Praga, the Corsican. I left Frankfort before you did—about eighteen months ago—and I wandered about the country till my reputation as a fencer, and my lack of it in other things, first set me up as a master in Berlin, and then brought these devils to me. They approached me slyly, stealthily, like cats, flattering my skill, and saying there was good work for my sword. And with lies they brought me here to Munich. I knew nothing except that there was money to be made, and the life of a man of pleasure to lead. I suspected nothing; even when one of them came and told me my skill as a swordsman had been called in question, my honor impeached, and myself charged with being an impostor, and that if I could not clear myself I must be off for a rogue." "I begin to see," I exclaimed when he paused. "Yes, yes, you will guess what it meant," he replied, nodding his head vigorously. "But I could not then. And it came out gradually that the man who had dared to say this was young Count Gustav von Gramberg. I demanded to meet him face to face and give him the lie. Reluctantly, as it seemed—by the nails of the Cross! it was the reluctance of infernal traitors—they agreed and promised that we should meet. Then they fired him with wine, and fed him with a lie about me; and when we met we were like two tigers thirsting to be at one another's throats. You know what happened!" he exclaimed, throwing up his hand again. "We quarrelled, I struck him, he challenged me; and when we met I ran him through the heart." "It was murder for you to fight a man like that with swords," I cried sternly. "It was murder, Prince," he answered slowly. Then he added, with voluble passion, "Deep, deliberate, cold-blooded, damnable murder; but I was not the murderer. Mine was the hand, but theirs was the plot; and I never realized it till they came to me and told me that they had planned its every detail and step, that I was in their power; and that if I dared to falter in any order they gave me, they would have me charged openly as a murderer, and swear to such a story as would have me on the scaffold in a trice. What could I do? I was powerless. I raged and swore, and cursed for an hour; but they had me fast in their clutches, with never a chance of escape. But they did not know me." He broke off and chuckled with demoniacal cunning, filled himself another bumper of wine, and drained the glass at a gulp. "What did you do? And who are the men?" He looked round at me with a leer of triumph, and, spreading out his hands with a wide sweeping gesture, he laughed and said: "I spread a net, wide and fine and strong, and when all was right I baited it for a coward—a thin-blooded, hellish coward—and I caught him. You know him well enough; and if you saved my life just now, I can save yours in return. I snared him here to these rooms with a lie that I was ill and dying and wanted to make my peace with Heaven and confess; and he came running here in white-livered fear of what I should tell. That was ten days ago; and in the mean time, for weeks and months I had been probing and digging, and spying and discovering, till I had such knowledge of their doings as made a tale worth one's telling to any inquisitive old fool of a priest—and I let my lord the count have an inkling of this." He leant back, laughed, and swore with glee. "He came. I was in bed all white and shaking," and he illustrated the words with many gestures; "and my voice was feeble and quavering, like a dying pantaloon's, as I gurgled out what I meant, and said, 'I have written everything in a paper.' You should have seen his eyes glint at this. He urged me to be careful, not to speak too freely; and he asked to see the paper. I told him it was in a desk, and when he went to get it and his back was to me I was out of bed and upon him in a trice. I thrust him back into a chair and stood over him with my drawn sword, vowing by all the calendar that I would drive it into his bowels if he dared to so much as utter a squeak; and, by the Holy Ghost! I meant it too." "Well?" I cried impatiently when he paused. "Ho, but your white-livered, pigeon-hearted, sheepish coward is a pretty sight when his flesh goes gray, and his haggard eyes, drawn with fear, stare up at you from under a brow all flecked with fright-sweat. I wish you could have seen him. Well, I held him thus, told him all I knew, and made him write out a confession of the true means by which the young count had been lured to his death, the object of it all, and the story of the double plot this treacherous villain is carrying on. I had found out much, guessed more, and made him fill in what I didn't know. More than that, too, I made him promise me certain definite rewards when the plot succeeded, and to take me in with the rest as one of them—to work with them now and share with them afterward." "You are one of them?" I cried. "You saw the answer to that to-night by the old church. They played the game shrewdly enough. When I had let him go, one or two of the others came to me and wished me to attend a meeting. I promised; but I am not a lunatic, if their fool of a King is. No, no; I would not. Then they changed and said there was another quarrel to be picked with you, my friend; to send you to call on the young Count Gustav. But I said no; that you were a great swordsman, better than myself, which was a lie of course—but lies are everywhere in this Munich—and that I would not meet you. So they will find some other end for you. Then the next little friendly attention for me was the interview which you interrupted to-night." The effect of this recital upon me, so quaintly and so dramatically told, may be conceived; and I sat turning it over and over and judging it by the light of what I myself already knew. "And what are you going to do now?" I asked at length. "Sell what I know to the best purchaser—unless you can do what you said, help me to my revenge. I know you are in this; though you little guess the part they have cast for you." "What's your price? I can take care of myself," I answered. "Revenge is my chief point. I am a Corsican; and, by the Holy Tomb! I'll never stay my hand till I've dragged the chief villain down." "You mean?" I asked. "That snake von Nauheim—the Count von Nauheim. The Honorable Count, a member of the aristocracy. A lily-livered maggot." He changed from irony to vehement, ungovernable rage with swift, tempestuous suddenness. "To whom will you sell your secret? The Ostenburgs?" At the mention of the name he turned and looked at me intently, the light of the lamp throwing up the strong shadows of the face; and he stood staring thus for a full minute. Then he laughed. "So you haven't guessed the riddle yet, eh? You're a deal simpler than I thought." He came close to me, sat down, and put his face right into mine, turning his head on one side and closing one eye with a gesture of indescribable suggestion. "Have you never asked yourself how it was that with all these people so dead set on putting a Gramberg on the throne they should take the trouble to get the heir of that renowned family killed?" "Yes, it was because the Ostenburg agents got wind of the plot." "Pouf!" He laughed in my face and threw his hand up, and then rose and filled himself another glass of wine, tossing it off like the rest. "You can play a good game, no doubt, Prince, but you don't know the cards you hold. If your young relative was killed by the Ostenburgs, what the devil's hoofs was von Nauheim doing in that boat? And what the devil's tail does he want to set me on to you for? Does he think the Gramberg chances are to be improved by first killing off the heir and then getting rid of you, the girl's chief protection? I know all about Minna von Gramberg, and the plot to put her on the throne. I know this, too, that she has no more chance of sitting on that throne than I have of eating it. Body of Bacchus, man, these are foul fiends you are leagued with and want knowing." I began to see everything now, and my pulses quickened up with excitement; and I guessed what was coming. "What is your aim in all this?" he asked suddenly. "I have come to Munich to see exactly how matters stand." "And nicely they've fooled you, maybe—or at least they might have done so if you hadn't been lucky enough to be within sound of my shout to-night. I'll give you the key to the whole thing. There's a plot within a plot, and all the Grambergs are being fooled. This type of innocence, von Nauheim, is the tool of the Ostenburg interest. The indignation against the King is all genuine enough; the people would welcome his abdication to-morrow, and wouldn't seriously concern themselves even if the abdication came by way of a dagger-thrust or a pistol bullet. But the Ostenburg faction dare not force the abdication for two reasons: because, in the first place, the people on your side are strong enough to make a fight of it; and, in the second, if a fight did come, no one can say what line the people at Berlin would take. It is quite possible that they would swoop down and clear both sides out. What these precious Ostenburgs have to do, therefore, is to get the Crown without a suspicion of treachery." He broke off with another of his sardonic laughs, and took more wine. I did not interrupt, and a moment later he continued: "Then came your old Prince as a stalking-horse. He wanted to make a grab for the throne, fostered the discontent and rebellion, put his son forward, and sounded the people here as to his chances. The Ostenburgs knew of it directly, of course, and laid a clever, devilish plot to profit by it. A large number of the wealthiest and most influential supporters appeared to favor your Gustav; they warmed, made indirect overtures, and then went over in a body, making it a condition that the man they put forward as one of their leaders, von Nauheim, should marry your old Prince's daughter. By the bag of Iscariot, a shrewd stroke! The Prince saw nothing, and agreed, and that's the reason of that love-match." "A damnable scheme!" I exclaimed, between my teeth. "Wait, wait," he said calmly, laying a hand on my arm. "Your Gustav was in the way, and it is a canon of the Ostenburg code that there shall be no Gramberg claimant to the throne alive, or, at any rate, fit to claim it. So the quarrel and the duel were engineered, and there remained only the Countess Minna. Then they had a stroke of luck. The old Prince died, and the girl alone remained, helpless and friendless, except for you. Your turn will therefore come, and then this is the plan: The plot to place the Countess Minna on the throne will go forward gayly, is going forward now, in point of fact. But—and mark this carefully—at the critical moment your Countess Minna will have vanished, and then see the position. The mad King will be gone, the throne will be vacant, the cry of the conspirators and of Munich will be for the new Queen, and there will be no Queen to answer. What next? Why, that the thoughts of all men will turn to the Ostenburgs—the loyal, faithful, true, innocent, do-nothing Ostenburgs—and the Duke Marx, their heir, will consent, when the matter is forced upon him by the united populace, to mount the throne. No taint of suspicion against him, no thought of treachery, actually an opponent of the movement against this mad royalty, a stanch upholder of the right divine of monarchs—he will be hailed by all as the only possible successor to a King who cannot be found, and Berlin will rejoice to see an ugly trouble got over in this easy fashion. Now!" he exclaimed, with a grin full of meaning, "you can see much where before you could see nothing at all." "And what of the Countess Minna?" He paused, and then answered in a low, guttural voice, and with a look of deep, suggestive meaning: "Von Nauheim will see to that. There is something in regard to him I do not know; but I do know that, married to him, she would be impossible for a Queen, for he is of the scum of the gutter, and there is worse behind, I believe. But von Nauheim is no stickler for ceremonies. He may not marry her at all; and, ruined by him, you may guess what her chances of the throne would be." "Hell!" I cried, leaping to my feet in fury. He had got inside my impassiveness now, and I was like a madman at the thoughts he had raised. "I must see you to-morrow. Ride ten miles out on the Linden road, and wait for me at noon. I shall go mad if I stay here longer." And with that I rushed away. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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