Then, turning to the Crown-Prince, he said: "You have his address."
"Yes," said the younger man. "He is passing as Monsieur Felix Reumont, and is living at 114 bis, Avenue de Neuilly, close to the Pont."
I scribbled the name and address upon the back of an envelope, whereupon His Majesty said:
"Carry my verbal orders to Steinmetz, and tell him to act upon the orders I sent him by courier yesterday. And you will assist him. He will explain matters fully when you arrive."
Then, crossing to the Crown-Prince's writing-table, His Majesty took a large envelope, into which, with the same hand, he dexterously placed the photograph with several papers, and sealed them with the Crown-Prince's seal. At the moment the Crown-Princess entered, said some words to her husband in a low voice, and went out again.
"Give this to Von Steinmetz from me," His Majesty said after she had gone.
I bowed as I took it from His Majesty's hand, my curiosity now greatly excited regarding Frau Breitenbach and her pretty daughter. What, I wondered, was in the wind?
"And, Heltzendorff, please report to me," remarked the Heir, still lounging lazily in the chair, his white, well-manicured hands clasped behind his head. "Where shall you stay?"
"At the Hôtel Chatham. I always stay there in preference to the larger hotels."
"And not a bad judge," laughed His Majesty merrily. "I remember when I used to go to Paris incognito one could dine at the 'Chatham' most excellently – old-fashioned, but very good. Vian's, across the road, is also good."
The Kaiser knows Paris well, though he has never visited the French capital openly.
Bowing, I took leave of my Imperial master, and next morning at eight o'clock, set out upon my mysterious mission.
I found the Baron von Steinmetz living in a good-sized house in the leafy Avenue de Neuilly, not far from the bridge. One of the cleverest and most astute officials that Germany possessed, and a man high in the Kaiser's favour, he had, in the name of Felix Reumont, purchased, with Government funds of course, a cinema theatre in the Rue Lafayette, and ostensibly upon the proceeds of that establishment lived comfortably out at Neuilly.
At eleven o'clock in the morning his valet, evidently a German, showed me in.
"I quite understand, my dear Heltzendorff," he said, as in his cosy little den he took from the Emperor's packet the picture of Fräulein Elise and stood gazing at it thoughtfully. "It is quite plain why you should have been sent by His Majesty."
"Why. I don't understand. But His Majesty told me that you would explain. The young lady and her mother are friends of mine."
"Exactly. That's just it!" exclaimed the round-faced, rather florid man whom I had once met before. "You apparently know but little of them – eh? – or you would not call them your friends!"
Those mysterious words surprised me, but I was the more astounded when he continued:
"You of course know of those disgraceful anonymous letters which have been continually arriving at Court – of the Emperor's fury concerning them."
I replied in the affirmative, for, as a matter of fact, for the past three months the whole Court had been flooded with most abusive and disgraceful correspondence concerning the camarilla that had again sprung up around the Kaiser. The Emperor, the Empress, the Crown-Prince and Princess, Prince Eitel, Sophie Caroline, Prince Henry of Prussia and others had received letters, most of them in typewriting, containing the most intimate details of scandals concerning men and women around the Emperor.
Fully a dozen of these letters addressed to the Crown-Prince he had handed to me – letters denouncing in some cases perfectly innocent people, destroying the reputations of honest men and women, and abusing the Heir to the Throne in an outrageous manner.
On at least three occasions "Willie" had shown me letters addressed to the Kaiser himself, and intercepted by the Kaiserin, who, in consequence of this flood of anonymous epistles that had produced such a terrible sensation at Potsdam, had ordered that all such letters found in the Imperial post-bag should be handed at once to her.
The great War-Lord's feelings had been sorely wounded by the vitriolic shafts, and his vanity much injured by the boldness of the unknown letter-writer who had dared to speak his mind concerning the Eulenburg scandals, which Maximilian Harden had some time before exposed in the Zukunft.
All Berlin was gossiping about the scandal of the letters and the horrible innuendoes contained in them. The Allerhöchste Person, though boiling over with anger, blissfully believed that outside the Palaces nothing was known of the contents of the correspondence. But the Emperor, in his vanity, never accurately gauges the mind of his people.
"The identity of the writer is the point that is engaging my attention," the Baron said, as, seating himself at his big, carved-oak writing-table, he opened a drawer and drew forth a bundle of quite a hundred letters, adding: "All these that you see here have been addressed either to the Emperor or the Empress," and he handed me one or two, which on scanning I saw contained some outrageous statements, allegations which would make the hair of the All-Highest One bristle with rage.
"Well!" I exclaimed, aghast, looking up at the Baron after I had read an abusive letter, which in cold, even lines of typewriting commenced with the words: "You, a withered crook in spectacular uniform better fitted for the stage of the Metropol Theatre, should, instead of invoking the aid of Providence, clear out your own Augean stable. Its smell is nauseous to the nostrils of decent people. Surely you should blush to have feasted in the castle of Liebenberg with the poet, Prince Philip, and your degenerate companions, Hohenau, Johannes Lynar, and your dearly beloved Kuno!"
And the abusive missive proceeded to denounce two of my friends, ladies-in-waiting at the Neues Palais, and to make some blackguardly allegations concerning the idol. Von Hindenburg.
"Well," I exclaimed, "that certainly is a very interesting specimen of anonymous correspondence."
"Yes, it is!" exclaimed the Baron. "In Berlin every inquiry has been made to trace its author. Schunke, head of the detective police, was charged by the Emperor to investigate. He did so, and both he and Klewitz failed utterly. Now it has been given into my hands."
"Have you discovered any clue to the writer?" I asked anxiously, knowing full well what a storm of indignation those letters had produced in our own circle.
Presently, when I sat with the Baron at his table, he switched on an intense electric light, even though it was day-time, and then spread out some of the letters above a small, square mirror.
"You see they are on various kinds of note-paper, bearing all kinds of watermarks, of French, English, and German manufacture. Some we have here are upon English paper, because it is heavy and thick. Again, three different makes of typewriter have been used – one a newly-invented importation from America. The written letters are, you will see, mostly in a man's hand."
"Yes, I see all that," I said. "But what have you discovered concerning their author? The letter I received bore a French stamp and the postmark of Angers."
He placed before me quite a dozen envelopes addressed to the Emperor and Empress, all bearing the postmark of that town in the Maine-et-Loire. Others had been posted in Leipzig, Wilhelmshaven, Tours, Antwerp, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, and other places.
"The investigation is exceedingly difficult, I can assure you," he said. "I have had the assistance of some of the best scientific brains of our Empire in making comparisons and analyses. Indeed, Professor Harbge is with me from Berlin."
As he uttered those words the Professor himself, an elderly, spectacled man in grey tweeds, entered the room. I knew him and greeted him.
"We have been studying the writing-papers," the Professor said presently, as he turned over the letters, some of which were upon commercial typewriting paper, some on cheap thin paper from fashionable "blocks," and others upon various tinted paper of certain mills, as their watermarks showed. The papers were various, but the scurrilous hand was the clever and evasive one of some person who certainly knew the innermost secrets of the