Chapter XVII Diamond Cut Diamond
The War Lord’s Secret Staircase—Some Outspoken Opinions—Royal Fisticuffs—Otto of Bavaria—A Secret Service Man—More Dreams
The reports of two meetings between exalted personages, held on the eve of the day memorable for the conference at the General Staff building, would furnish a clever editor with “deadly parallels” of vast interest.
Dramatis personæ of one meeting: The War Lord and Bülow. Scene: The library of the Frederick Leopold Palace, nearly opposite the Chancellory.
Meeting number two: Franz von Este and Lorenz Schlauch, Cardinal Archbishop of Gross Wardein, Hungary. Scene: A private parlour in the Hôtel de Rome, near the Schloss.
The pall of secrecy hung over both trysting places. Cardinal Schlauch, of his Hungarian Majesty’s most obnoxious Opposition, would have lost caste with his followers if seen with the “Habsburg Nero,” and the latter would have had a strenuous quart d’heure with Francis Joseph had “Uncle” known of his intimacy with Schlauch. Hence the room at the hotel, and Adolph Muehling, guard of honour, outside the door.
Why press the old proprietor into service, when a word to the Commandant of Berlin would have brought sentinels galore?
Because Count Udo von Wedell, head of the German Secret Service, occasionally unloads a uniformed stenographer on an unsuspecting, but suspected, visitor to Berlin; and, Udo failing, Captain von Tappken, his right-hand man, might be tempted to do so. Spy mistrusts spy, you know.
On his part the War Lord was as anxious to keep his conference with Bülow from Franz, as Este was to invent excuses for wishing a night free from social duties or official business. Accordingly Wilhelm had twice changed the programme.
His first idea was to receive Bülow at the Schloss. No; Franz might hear of it. His valet (Father Bauer) was singularly well supplied with money, and royal lackeys (confound them!) prefer trinkgeld to medals, even. Again, he might drive to the Wilhelmstrasse himself, if it were not for those penny-a-liners at the Kaiserhof, a whole contingent of them, bent on getting coin out of nothing. Already vague hints at an incognito royal visitor had appeared in one or two gutter journals.
“Augustus tells me that Frederick Leopold had his Berlin house thoroughly overhauled. Nothing unusual about inspecting the renovated lair of the Prussian Croesus?” suggested Prince Phili Eulenburg. He referred, of course, to the Grand Master of Ceremony and the Lord of Klein-Glenicke, the War Lord’s cousin and brother-in-law.
“By Jove, you are almost too smart for an ambassador, Phili,” cried Majesty; “you deserve a wider field, the Wilhelmstrasse or the Governorship of Klein-Popo should be yours. Meanwhile, and until one of those posts becomes vacant, ’phone Bülow to meet me in Leopold’s library at nine sharp. Moltke shall send six men of the First Guards to investigate garden and all, and they will remain for corridor duty. Augustus, of course, must communicate with Leopold’s maître d’hôtel.”
At 8.55 P.M. the War Lord, in mufti, fur collar of his great-coat hugging the tops of his ears, slipped down the secret staircase leading from his apartments to a side door, and into Count von Wedell’s quiet coupé. The Secret Service man who acted as groom had mapped out a circuitous route, avoiding the Linden and Charlottenstrasse.
When the carriage passed the Kaiserhof the War Lord could not resist the temptation to bend forward. “Udo,” he said, “are you not ashamed of yourself, robbing these poor devils at the journalists’ table? If they knew how I am suffering in your springless cab—oh, but it does hurt!—it would mean at least ten marks in their pocket.”
“Confound their impudence,” said Count von Wedell. “But Your Majesty’s criticism of the coupé is most à propos—just in time to insert the item for a new one in the appropriation.”
“The devil!” cried the War Lord. “I thought this ramshackle chariot your personal property.”
Wilhelm likes to spend other people’s money, but with State funds it is different, for every pfennig spent for administration reduces the total His Majesty “acquires.”
True, Prussia spells despotism tempered by Parliament, but her kings can never forget the good old times when appropriations for the Court were only limited by the State’s utmost resources.
“My own!” gasped Wedell. “Would I dare worry Your Majesty’s sacred bones in an ark like this?”
The carriage entered the palace stableyard, the gates of which opened noiselessly in obedience to a significant crack of the whip.
Sentinels posted inside and out, civil service men in frock-coats and top-hats, who muttered numbers to their chief, replying in kind!
“Everything all right, Bülow upstairs,” whispered Udo in Russian. He went ahead of the War Lord through lines of his men, posted at intervals of three paces in the courtyard and at the entrance. The vestibule was splendid with electric light for the first time in the history of the old palace.
As the suspicious War Lord observed, Marshal Augustus had been busy indeed. Heavy portières everywhere, over doors, windows, and oeils-de-boeuf; to passers-by the Leopold Palace was as dead and forlorn as during the past several years.
Up the newly carpeted grand stairway the War Lord rushed. The smiling Bülow stood at the library door. Wilhelm merely extended his hand; he was too full of his subject to reply to Bülow’s respectful greetings and inquiries after his health.
“Wedell will stay,” he said, “for our talk will concern his department no less than yours.”
Bülow had arranged arm-chairs about the blazing fireplace, but the War Lord was in no mood to sit down.
“Here’s a devil of a mess,” he said, “just discovered it in time. That confounded Este is too much of a blackleg to be trusted.”
“Too deeply steeped in clericalism,” suggested Bülow.
“That and Jesuitism, Romanism, Papism and every other sableism. Found him out in our first confab, and to-day’s meeting with Haeseler confirmed it. He will never consent to a Roman Empire of German nationality. Wants all Italy for himself and Rome for his Church. Intolerable!” cried the War Lord, as he strode up and down. “Twenty marks if Otto were in his place.”
The War Lord’s joke drew tears of appreciative hilarity from the obsequious eyes of the two courtier-politicians.
“Your Majesty’s remark reminds me of a patriotic speech made by the Prince of Bueckeberg at the beginning of the railway age: ‘We must have a railway in Lippe, even if it costs five thousand thalers,’ said His Transparency, amid thunderous applause.”
This from the Chancellor, who, like Talleyrand, delights in quotations and has a knack of introducing other people’s witty, or stupid, sayings when desiring to remain uncommittal on his own part. In this instance he would rather exhaust Bartlett and his German confrère Hertslet than discuss that Prince of mauvais sujets, Otto of Austria.
At the time of the discussion (it was in 1903—three years before the royal degenerate died) the father of the present heir to the Dual Monarchy was on the apex of his ill-fame.
He beat his wife and his creditors, he disgraced his rank, his manhood, and, though thirty-eight years of age, was frightened from committing the worst excesses at home only by the threat of corporal punishment at the hands of his uncle, the Emperor. For Francis Joseph, most Olympian of monarchs, according to the upholders of Spanish etiquette at the Hofburg, is very apt indeed to give a good imitation of the petty household tyrant when roused. For this reason, probably, his late consort, the Empress Elisabeth, used to liken him to a cobbler.
Francis Joseph’s most recent fistic exploit at Otto’s expense was still, at that time, the talk of the European Courts. It appears that His Imperial Highness, at dinner with boon companions, had emptied a dish of spinach over the head of uncle’s marble statue, and prolonged the fun by firing over-ripe tomatoes, pimentos, spaghetti and other dainties at the already abundantly decorated effigy.
When finally he ordered Count Salm, his Court marshal, to send for a “mandel”—fifteen pieces—of ancient eggs to vary the bombardment, Salm refusing, of course, he assaulted the Excellency, sword in hand, and a general medley ensued, in which considerable blue blood was spilt. No lives lost, yet the innocent bit of passe-temps brought the Emperor’s fist and cane into play again.
But our mutton is getting cold.
“Unfortunately,” said von Bülow, “Franz Ferdinand is a particularly healthy specimen of humanity.”
“And even should he die like a Balkan royalty——” suggested von Wedell.
“I thought you had been unable definitely to trace Russia’s fine Italian hand in the Belgrade murders?” demanded the War Lord sharply.
“For which many thanks,” murmured Bülow.
“With Your Majesty’s permission, I referred to the older generation of Balkan assassins,” said Udo.
“Well, let it pass, Monsieur le Duc d’Otrante.” The War Lord frequently addressed his Minister of Police by Fouché’s title, while commenting upon Napoleon’s bad taste in raising that functionary to so high an estate. “After all,” he used to say, “he was nothing but a spy, and as treacherous as the Corsican himself.”
This, it will be observed, came with peculiar ill grace from Wilhelm, who, like the first Emperor of the French, demeaned himself to direct personally his Secret Service, and to associate with the cashiered army officers, agents provocateurs, etc., of this branch of government.
“What if Otto, as Emperor of the Slavs, sets up a claim for all Poland, Your Majesty’s with the rest?” Bülow had asked.
“I would rather see my sixty millions of people dead on the battle-field than give up an inch of ground gained by Frederick the Great and the rest of my ancestors!” cried the War Lord, as if he were haranguing a mob. “Besides, why should Otto, more than Franz, covet my patrimony?”
“Because of his relationship with the Saxon Court through her Imperial Highness Josepha.”
“Pipe-dreams——” snarled the War Lord contemptuously. Then, seeing Bülow redden, he added: “On Otto’s part, I mean.”
“I beg Majesty’s pardon—not entirely,” quoth Wedell. “Dresden is still making sheep’s eyes at Warsaw, and when Your Majesty spoke about a grand Imperial palace to be built in Posen, King George remarked: ‘Suits me to the ground. I hope he’ll make it after the kind American multimillionaires boast of.’ This on the authority of a Saxon noble whose family established itself in the kingdom long before Albert the Bold.”
“Children and disgruntled aristocrats tell the truth,” commented the War Lord; “sometimes, at least,” he added after a while. Then suddenly facing Bülow, he continued in an angry tone: “That black baggage, wherever one turns. Unless there be a Lutheran Pope, Monsieur l’Abée de Rome will try and catholicise Prussia, even as Benedict XIV. tried to do through Maria Theresa.”
“It was another Benedict, was it not, who offered public prayers that Heaven be graciously pleased to foment quarrels between the heretic Powers?” suggested Bülow, pulling a volume on historic dates from the shelf as if to verify his authority.
“What of it?” demanded the War Lord impatiently.
“One of the heretic Powers prayed against was England, Your Majesty.”
“And you want to insinuate that I must pocket all the insults Edward may find it expedient to heap upon me?”
“Nothing is farther from my mind, of course. I merely meant to point to the historic fact that the Catholics always pool their interests, always fight back to back, while the disunity and open rivalries among non-Catholic Powers——”
“I know the litany,” interrupted the War Lord rudely; “but let’s return to Este. What do you intend to do with that chap?”
“Make him work for us tooth and nail,” said Bülow, “and as for any extra dances with the Saxon or His Holiness—well, Udo will keep an eye on him. From this hour on he must be kept under constant observation, whether at home or abroad, in his family circle or the army mess, at manoeuvre or the chase, at the Hradschin or at Konopischt.”
The War Lord, visibly impressed, laid his massive right hand on Count von Wedell’s shoulder.
“Where is Este now?” looking at the clock.
“Suite eighteen, Hôtel de Rome.”
“With whom?”
“Cardinal Schlauch.”
“Bishop Tank of Gross-Wardein? And who is watching them?”
“Number 103, garlic and bartwichse to the backbone.”
“Under the bed?”
“No, Your Majesty; in it. I varied the programme for His Highness’s sake. Like an old maid who persists in the hope of catching a man sometime, he never misses looking under the bed.”
“I will examine ‘103’ in Königgrätzerstrasse at 9 A.M. to-morrow,” commanded the War Lord; “and, Udo, if you love me, have him well aired. An hour or two of goose-step would do the garlic-eater the world of good.”
The number, of course, referred to a Secret Service man. They have no names so far as the Government knows, or wants to know, and, despite their usefulness, are looked upon as mauvais sujets. To make up for this their pay is rather better than that of the average German official. They get a little less than the equivalent of £4 a week and 10s. a day for expenses. These sums constitute the retaining fee; their main income depends on the jobs they are able to pull off. They get paid for all business transacted, in accordance with its importance. When on a foreign mission, they may send in bills up to £2 per day for personal expenses, but in all ordinary circumstances the 10s. per diem must suffice.
The War Lord turned once more to Bülow. “You said: ‘Make him work for us.’ I would willingly sentence him for life to the treadmill. What’s your idea of work for Franz?”
“I refer to Your Majesty’s complaint that the Austrian army is in a state of unreadiness, of unpreparedness for war. Now, while I have no opinion whatever as to Herr von Este’s capacity as a general, I do know that organisation and discipline are ruling passions with him.”
“He would rather beat a recruit than go to Mass,” interpolated Udo.
“The right spirit,” approved the War Lord, “and it shall serve my purposes. I taught the Bavarians to out-Prussian the Prussian; the Austrians shall follow suit, or Franz will know the reason why.
“A drill-ground bully by nature and inclination, he will know how to make an end to Blue Danube saloperie; and if strap and rod won’t do, he will use scorpions, like that ancient King of Judea—or did he hail from Mecklenburg, Bülow?” Autocratically ruled Mecklenburg is Bülow’s own particular fatherland.
“I am sure the riding-whip always sufficed in our domains,” smiled the Chancellor; “but Your Majesty is right: rose water wouldn’t make much impression on Slovaks and Croatians.”
“Well then,” said the War Lord, “here is the programme: No more about Lutheran popeship, Holy Roman Empire of German nationality, future of the Holy See and so forth. Nauseate him, on the other hand, with Austrian military schweinerei (piggishness), which ought to disappear from the face of the earth in the shortest possible order to make room for the glories of Prussian drill, discipline and efficiency.
“With von der Goltz knocking the Turk into shape and Franz Este driving the devil of irresolution and maniana out of the Dual Monarchy, we will be in a position to defy the world—and to fight it, too.”