A Crown of Straw

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE QUEEN AGAINST OWEN. Crown 8vo, cloth, with Frontispiece, 3-r. 6_/. ; post 8vo, boards, zs. "An unmistakable success. Regarded simply as a story, we have not for a long while read anything more intensely dramatic. It would compel notice for the mere manner of its telling There is high quality in this book, with its vivid glimpses of life, and its clever characterization. . . . Altogether, a notable book ; and if its popularity be at all commensurate with its merits, it will have a great vogue." — Sun. " The narrative never flags. ... A realistic representation of a criminal trial." — Athenæum. " Loversof exciting fiction, powerful, original, and dramatic, should read 'The Queen against Owen.' Narrative after narrative, somewhat in the Wilkie Collins manner, draws you on until the mystery that surrounds the crime — which remains a mystery almost to the very end — disappears, and then you draw a breath of relief: but not before." — Sporting Life.

THE PRINCE OF BALKISTAN. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. (id. " The author of ' The Queen against Owen ' has produced in his second novel, 'The Prince of Balkistan,' a brilliant work of fiction, which is also something more. This strange dramatic story, compact of romantic incidents ... is quite fascinating. Prince Rodolph of Balkistan is a prince indeed: there is nothing of the prosaic about him ; tie conspirators are all charming — real in the sense of Balzac and Dumas, and yet latter day ; and the wretched internal life of the Court of Russia, the hopeless protest of the civilized and humane wife of Iskander III. against the system . . . are drawn with vigour and picturesqueness of a rare order. Tataroff is either a marvellous portrait or a great creation ; probably he is both."— World. " Mr. Upward's story is exciting and varied enough.

It is a combination of court intrigue, conspiracy, assassinations, Nihilism, and British detective work. . . . The story is pieced together with some ingenuity, and with a mixture of correct information and wild invention which certainly makes the romance piquant." — Athenæum. " The interest of the book — a powerful and cleverly sustained interest — is secured by keeping the reader on the tenter-hooks of hopeful curiosity. . . . The book is a very clever and amusing romance." — Scotsman. " A clever bit of invention, in which many European notabilities are sketched under names that scarcely hide their identity." — Globe. "It makes what is now called 'a record' in the indiscretion which is the better part of valour in the contemporary historical novel. ... A rattling and very readable romance." — St. James's Gazette.

Prologue

. I.— THE LOADING OF THE PISTOL. In the inner room of a small, dimly lighted house, half hidden behind the dark walls of the arsenal of Stuttgart, a group of three men were occupied in loading a pistol. They were seated at a small deal table which stood at the far end of the room from the door. On the table was a small open lamp, and the dirty yellow flame which struggled upwards from its untrimmed wick flared upon the faces of the three, and brought them into pallid relief against the surrounding shadow. As the sickly light wandered off into the corners of the bare, gloomy room, it revealed the obscure form of a fourth man, younger than any of the first three, who sat by himself on a bench next to the door. The group engaged in loading the pistol were pro ceeding with strange formality. Absorbed in their task, they took no notice of their comrade, who watched them <6 with brooding eyes as they bent their heads together across the table, or spoke to each other in low whispers from time to time.

Once or twice he turned his head and gazed abstractedly at the door. It was locked ; and the high, narrow window at the opposite end of the chamber was closely shuttered and barred. The leader of the party, a man whose grey hairs and deeply wrinkled face showed him to be by many years the eldest of the four, had commenced the ceremony by opening a small wooden case which lay on the table between the three, and taking out the pistol, which he first carefully examined, and then handed silently to the man seated next to him. This man, a burly giant, with tremendous red whiskers and beard, in which his face was almost concealed, caught at the pistol with a grunt of satisfaction. In his huge grasp the weapon looked like a toy, as he held it up to the light, glanced down the barrel, and snapped the trigger.

At this sound the youth by the door started ever so slightly. Then the red-bearded giant passed on the pistol to the last of the three. "Here, Johann," he remarked in low tones, '"see if you can find an) thing wrong with it." The man addressed as Johann, who was much younger than either of his companions, received the pistol in silence, as silently turned it over, and passed it back to the old man. The pistol was of old-fashioned make, and had but a single barrel. It was only meant to fire one shot. While the others were handling it, the leader had gone on with his preparations. From the same wooden

PROLOGUE.

. 3 case he had taken out a small powder-flask, a wad, a short steel ramrod, and a bullet. To these he added an ordinary percussion cap, and last of all came a bar of black sealing-wax, and a curious narrow stick tipped with a steel button, on which a cipher of some kind appeared to be engraved. Having ranged these articles on the table before him self and his comrades, the old man received back the pistol, and proceeded to load it at the muzzle from the powder-flask. Slowly the stream of black salt trickled out, sprinkling its course with tiny sparks of light, as the sharp-edged particles caught and flashed back the glow from the sputtering lamp. Then the weapon again changed hands, and the man with the red beard fitted in the wad, and vigorously rammed it home. This done, he handed the pistol again to Johann, with the whispered exclamation, " Now for the sugar-plum !

" His younger comrade took it from him as quietly as before, dropped in the bullet, and returned the weapon once more to the senior of the three. All this time the young man by the door had neither moved nor spoken. A faint shiver which passed through his frame when the bullet tinkled against the edge of the barrel alone told that he was keenly alive to what was going forward. Now came the remarkable part of the ceremony. As soon as the old man got possession of the pistol for the third time, he rose solemnly to his feet, and taking up the bar of sealing-wax, ignited it over the naked flame of the lamp. As the wax hissed and flared up, he brought it directly over the upright muzzle of the pistol, allowing the burning drops to fall right down the barrel. The next moment he dropped the bar of sealing-wax, and seizing the narrow rod already described, plunged it down the barrel, and sealed the bullet firmly in its place.

The giant, who had watched this operation with the closest attention, now took the pistol once more, and completed the work of preparation by fitting on the percussion-cap, over which he allowed the hammer to close down. All being ready, Johann received the loaded weapon in his hands, while the fourth member of the party rose from his seat beside the door, and advanced at a given signal towards the others. "Don't be afraid, Karl," said the big man good naturedly, as he caught sight of his young comrade's face. " The pistol has not been loaded for you." The two others frowned at this remark, and the elder man held up his hand in rebuke. "Hush! Our brother is right to feel afraid— afraid lest the sealed bullet should fail to reach its mark." And he thoughtfully scanned the young man's features, now looking almost livid in the wan glow of the lamp.

Meanwhile the other young man had risen to his feet. Holding the mysterious weapon in his hand, he put the following question to his comrade : — " Brother, the lot has chosen you to fire this pistol. Are you ready to take it, and carry out the instructions you will receive ? " " I am," came in husky tones from the youth. He put out a shaking hand, and received the pistol from Johann.

PROLOGUE.

. 5 Then the elder man pulled out a drawer in the table, took out a piece of paper, wrote on it a single word of seven letters, and handed it to the man with the red beard. He glanced at it amid a dead silence, nodded his head, and passed it on to Johann, who by this time had sat down again. He read the word with a grim smile, and returned the paper to the leader of the party. The old man solemnly folded up the paper, sealed it with the cipher already used for the bullet, and placed it in the hands ofthe giant. It was now his turn to rise and address the agitated Karl. " Here are your instructions. Do you undertake to return here, if you are alive and free, at the end of three months, and give an account of your mission ? " "I do." This time it was little more than a hoarse whisper which came from the young man.

The others appeared satisfied. The old man arose, and moving out from behind the table, went up to the youth and gave him a solemn embrace. The good-natured giant followed, and took advantage of the opportunity to whisper in his comrade's ear — " Keep up a good heart, my boy ; and if you want help, rely on us." Then Johann made a step forward, but stopped short. He was interrupted by an unexpected sound, The noise of hurrying feet was heard in the passage outside, and was instantly followed by a succession of low distinct taps on the bottom panel of the door. The four men simultaneously raised their heads and exchanged glances of inquiry and alarm. Only on the face of one of them, he who held the sealed weapon beneath his dress, was the look of dread chequered by a faint expression of relief.

The next moment Johann moved towards the door. II.— THE SEALED INSTRUCTIONS. The word written inside the sealed paper was a name. The name was Leopold. Who was this Leopold — and for what cause had his name come to figure so ominously in those surroundings ? To-day he is forgotten ; the whole of Europe rang then with the name of Leopold IX., the wicked King of Franconia. A few words as to this personage will serve to throw light on the more recent events with which this story is concerned. The race from which he sprang has long held an evil renown upon the Continent. For more than a century a dark cloud has overshadowed the royal line of Astolf. A mysterious taint in the blood has broken out time after time in the Franconian princes, betraying itself in wild freaks and excesses, which are rather whispered of than named. A monotonous chronicle of madness and crime makes up the gloomy annals of the House.

PROLOGUE.

. 7 Something of this doubtless has been due to the peculiar character of their sovereignty. While smaller kingdoms, with narrower resources, have played an independent part on the European stage, Franconia, hampered by its position in the great Germanic body, has remained a petty State, compelled to be a mere satellite in the train of one of the two great monarchies which have contended for the dominion of Germany. To-day, closely enswathed in the iron bonds of Prussia's military empire, the Franconian kingdom has ceased to have an international existence. In the eyes of diplomacy she is no better than a province of the Kaiser's dominions, and in the council of nations her voice is no longer heard. Yet within their own borders the Kings of Franconia continue to be supreme. Deprived of their authority in the great questions of peace and war, in all matters of internal interest they rule their kingdom with an independent sway.

It would even seem as though the peculiar relations between them and the Imperial Government had added to the security of their throne. It would require no ordinary degree of misgovernment to provoke a rebellion whose success must mean the extinction of Franconian nationality, and its final sub jection to the formidable Prussian yoke. Their situation resembles that of those satraps who reign with absolute power over the provinces of Oriental empires. The difference is that they are irremovable, and hand on their dominion to their heirs. To the intoxication of despotism add the intoxication of security. The strongest brain will reel under such pressure. History recalls the line of maniacs who slew and wantoned in Imperial Rome. In modern Europe a bloodthirsty despot has become an impossibility.

A king no longer dares to kill his subjects for the pleasure of it. All that has been put an end to by a glorious invention of the physicians. They have invented the word monomania, a tremendous exorcism, the mere utterance of which reduces the most powerful monarch to impotence, scares awayhis courtiers, paralyzes the arms of his guards, and tears him from his throne to bury him behind iron doors. It was with this spell that their bewildered subjects had fought the kings of Franconia for the last two generations. There was only one man in the kingdom more powerful than the monarch. This was the Court physician. He glided in and out among the brightly dressed throng of courtiers, wrapped in his black cloak, with his finger on his lips, and watched everything. It was like the mummy at the Egyptian feast, only more terrible, as if it had been a mummy which might at any instant start to life, and bid the giver of the feast take its place in the sarcophagus. , When the time came, the physician unclosed his lips and pronounced the fatal word.

Then the king disappeared silently from view, and a new ruler took his place. This was the new Vehmgericht. Like the ancient Venetian doges, the kings of Franconia walked everywhere, surrounded by an atmo sphere of mysterious dread. Secret eyes were upon

PROLOGUE.

. 9 them always. Oubliettes were prepared under their feet, into which they never knew the moment when they might not be cast. And from these oubliettes there was no chance of escape. The dooms of science are more relentless than the dooms of superstition. In the bosom of a Grand Inquisitor there might lurk mercy as much as a grain of mustard seed. Mercy is a word which science is unable to comprehend. Its judgments are merely con clusions. Mathematical reasoning cannot be bent aside by emotional considerations. Leopold IX. was the worst king of this line. This was because he was the most sane. He was selfish, ignorant, utterly heartless, grasping, cruel, lustful, a glutton, and a bad son and father. But he was neither a drunkard nor a spendthrift. To such a man science had nothing to say.

The secret in quisitor was powerless. Leopold IX. had broken the curse. He was too much like the average man to be mad. His younger brother Otto had been an easier victim. Within a year of his marriage with the beautiful Hermengarde of Schwerin-Strelitz, he had disappeared. Men whispered that the stately, cold-looking bride had given her approval to this consummation. Be that as it may, Otto passed the years till his death plaiting straw, like many another of the Astolf princes. Some of them plaited crowns ; they were light and easy to wear. Leopold reigned on. His people had to suffer a great deal. A few of his exploits are on record. A jeweller in the capital had made his fortune. He was getting old, and meant to retire. The last trans action he undertook was a heavy purchase of diamonds.

The stones were lying in his safe, when one night a troop of masked burglars broke in and carried off everything. The police of the capital were under the royal control, and on this particular night they had left that quarter of the city deserted. The robbers got off in perfect safety, and the old jeweller was ruined. Shortly afterwards he left the city. It was rumoured that he had retired to Stuttgart. A sergeant in the royal bodyguard had been im prisoned for a few months, and then banished, shortly before this event. This punishment had been awarded for certain angry expressions which he had been heard to use about his royal master. The fellow had been let off lightly, as his mind was supposed to be affected by a family trouble. His daughter, a very beautiful young girl, had taken her own life and that of her unborn infant.

The name of its father had not transpired. This sergeant was a man remarkable for his size and for the redness of his beard. Riding out in the royal park one day, Leopold met a forester's boy, a lad of seventeen. He gave him a cut across the face with his whip, which drew blood. This boy, too, had not been seen for some time. His name was Karl Fink. Leopold had a wise dread of education. The schools which he found existing in his kingdom he would have put down if he dared. His anger was roused when he learned that some of the young artisans in his capital

PROLOGUE.

. 11 had started night classes in which they studied draughts manship, mathematics, and engineering. He ordered his police to break up these schools, and prosecute the ringleaders of the movement. They were afterwards discharged, but those of them who were still bent on acquiring knowledge had to turn their steps abroad. The chief of these young men was one Johann Mark, a journeyman printer. Of late Leopold had begun to show himself more cruel. His own son Maximilian, it was said, had to endure a good deal at his father's hands. Maximilian was a shy, delicate youth, with a passion for art and music. He resembled his mother, a gentle princess of Spanish birth, who was commonly believed to have died of a broken heart. Some there were who spoke of direct acts of violence, but history cannot dwell on the gossip of chamberwomen.

Leopold had sought a fresh alliance abroad without success, and was now living in morganatic relations with an ugly countess of fifty. She was the only person in his dominions who was not afraid of him. It was known that she exerted her influence with his father on behalf of Maximilian, and saved him from much ill-usage. Very likely she did this with an eye to her suture interest. Maximilian thought it was sheer good nature, and liked the woman. Leopold hated her. For the rest he was a short, squat man, with a red face, and prominent eyes like marbles, of some colour between blue and green ; and he had a habit, when excited, of pressing his forefinger lengthways against his upper lip. He was forty-eight years of age, and had reigned since he was twenty-nine. III. — THE FIRING OF THE PISTOL.

Johann stepped cautiously towards the door. Arrived before the keyhole, he put his eye to it. All was dark outside. " Who are you ? " he whispered after a moment's pause. The answer came also in a whisper. It seemed to satisfy him. Nodding to his comrades inside to signify that all was right, he quietly unlocked the door. The man who entered was not a particularly striking figure in himself, but there was that in his appearance which instantly aroused the interest of the four inmates of the room, and caused them to gather eagerly around him. His clothes were disordered, his face was flushed and bedewed with perspiration, and his short, quick breaths bore witness to the exertion he had made in getting there. But it was not this which arrested the attention of the others. They perceived a nervous excitement in his bearing, and an eager light in his eye, which warned them that he was the bearer of extraordinary tidings. His first act on entering was to look round and number with a glance the men who stood inside. This done, a sigh of relief escaped him.

PROLOGUE.

. 13 " Thank Heaven, I am in time ! " he exclaimed. " Why, what is it ? " demanded the old man. The new-comer dropped on to the bench beside the door before answering. Then, assuming a more solemn expression, he said in impressive tones — "Your work has been done. This morning King Leopold went mad and cut his throat. He died at noon." As soon as he had finished speaking the young man who had been entrusted with the sealed weapon gave a loud cry, and tottered as though he would fall. The giant rushed to his assistance, and, taking the pistol from his nerveless clasp, handed it to the leader. He took it, and pointed it downwards. " You have spoken truth," he said gravely. " God has done our work." And he fired the pistol. He was about to throw away the smoking weapon when Johann stepped forward and laid his hand upon it.

" Stay. It may be wanted yet," he observed quietly. " For whom ? " the old man asked, with astonishment. " For Maximilian." The other four men recoiled. Half an hour after the house was empty. The comrades had dispersed, some of them never to meet again.

Chapter I. The Garden Of Eden

"Can you see him, father?" The old forester looked round, and saw his daughter coming down the narrow path, bordered with dwarf apple trees, which led from the front door of the cottage to the garden gate. Answering by a slight shake of the head, he turned round again, and leant over the gate, resuming his occupation of drawing long slow puffs at a huge pipe which he held in one hand. The pipe had a long cherry wood stem, ending in a deep china bowl, which was capped with a lid of copper. From the holes in this lid came thin blue spirals of smoke, which floated away till they were lost to view against the green background of forest. Dorothea ran forward lightly, her white muslin skirts just touching the espaliers as she passed, and, coming up to the gate, leant over it beside her father. She rested her soft cheek against his arm, and gazed with dreamy eyes at the smoke-rings, trying to follow them till they dissolved in the surrounding atmosphere.

The summer heat lay like a film over the afternoon. The hush of the landscape was not even disturbed by the call of a bird or the dry chirp of a cricket. In front of the gateway at which they stood stretched a clear space of rolling turf for one or two hundred paces, at the end of which the grass began to go out of sight beneath short undergrowth and scattered trees, the fringe of a stately woodland. To the right and left of the forester's lodge the trees gathered in again. Behind, it was approached by a footpath over a widening tract of fields, a tongue of meadow-land thrust into the forest. Far away over the fields, had they looked, rose the faint tower of a church and the signs of a peopled land. "It is more than two months since he first began coming here," murmured the young girl, presently.

" I wonder who he can be ? " The forester turned his head and smiled, as though there were something in his daughter's words which caused him secret amusement. Then he took another deep puff at his pipe, and answered — " It is best not to ask. If he wished us to know he would tell us himself. Take care to please him, without being too curious." " I know he comes from the Castle, so he must be one of the gentlemen of the Court," said Dorothea, speaking slowly, as if to herself. " Who knows ? perhaps he is a count." As she uttered the word Castle, she raised her eyes, and turned them on an opening in the forest in front, between which and the cottage gate there ran a beaten path. For, a mile and more away through that forest, there rose the royal castle of Neustadt ; and old Franz Gitten was a forester in the service of King Maximilian.

This time Franz spoke more roughly, as if ill pleased with Dorothea's words. " It is no business of ours who he is. As long as he likes to come here and drink our cider he is welcome. I tell you not to trouble your head about it." Checked in this direction, the girl let a few minutes pass before speaking again. " I wonder why he comes here so often," was her next remark. " Surely the wines at the Castle must be better than our cider." Again the forester smiled to himself, as he went on smoking without any response. Dorothea continued — " The King is at Neustadt now. Will you take me over, some time, father ? I have never seen the King." Old Franz interrupted her. He raised himself up, with a grunt of satisfaction, and stood looking at the opening in the wood. Dorothea followed the direction of his glance, and uttered an exclamation.

Two men had just emerged from the forest, and were walking through the sheet of sunlight towards the forester's lodge. The ages of these two men differed by a good many years. The elder of the two was a man of over forty, tall, with auburn hair, and restless eyes which glanced perpetually from side to side as he walked alon°\ His dress was easy — a knickerbocker suit of brown velveteen with a loose open collar, and crimson tie, and a hat of soft black felt with a wide brim. This brim he pulled down over his face as soon as the sunlight struck upon it, and thus partly screened his features from the curious gaze of Dorothea. " Whom is he bringing with him ? " she whispered to her father. "This is the first time he has not come alone." The forester took no notice of the question. His attention, after the first brief look, was engaged by the other of the two companions.

In itself the younger man's figure was not striking. He was short, and yet too slender for symmetry. It was his face which aroused interest, and, with the long straight nose and pointed chin, conveyed the curious suggestion of a younger and handsomer Don Quixote. The delicate contour of the features was like a woman's, and there was something at once strange and fascinating in the colour of the eyes, which glowed in the bright sunshine with that pale green flame only seen in the field of a rich sunset or in the hollow of certain shells of the Indian seas. But an almost uncanny note was that struck by the young man's costume. He wore a close-sitting suit of a shade of green exactly matching the grass across which he was walking, so that it was nearly as difficult for the eye to follow the outline of his figure as it is to pick out a green caterpillar against a leaf.

This affectation was carried out even to the green acacia stick which swung between his fingers. Only his hat and boots were black, the former similar to his companion's, but enriched by the addition of a tiny band of gold lacework round the edge. c As the two drew near the entrance to the lodge, Franz took his pipe from his mouth, and held the gate open for them to pass. At the same time he removed his hat and greeted the younger one, who entered first, with a deep bow. "Good day, Herr Maurice," he said, in respectful tones. "Good day, Franz," responded the other carelessly. " I have brought my friend, Herr Auguste, to taste your cider. And how is my little Dorothea ? " He went up to her as he spoke, took her in his arms, and kissed her on the forehead. The young girl sub mitted to the embrace with an unconsciousness which was more innocent than any show of bashfulness.

Then he turned to his companion. " Here, Auguste, let me present you to the Fraulein." The elder man gravely lifted his hat and bowed. Dorothea returned a deep curtsey, and then made a movement towards the door of the cottage. " I will go into the house and get another glass for Herr Auguste," she said to the one who was called Maurice. He nodded, and, beckoning his friend to follow, led the way to a corner of the garden, where a quaint, old fashioned arbour made a pleasant nook to shelter in from the glare of the sun outside. In the arbour stood a rustic table, formed out of a broad slice sawn off the trunk of an oak tree, and still retaining the bark round its uneven edge. It was supported by an upright loo cut, perhaps, from a branch of the same tree. The table was set out with a tall silver flagon of antique workmanship, and a long narrow goblet of dark green glass of a manufacture peculiar to the district.