From that moment for months afterwards the Kaiser was constantly talking of aviation. He commanded photographs of various types of aeroplanes, together with all literature on the subject, to be placed before him. Indeed, he sent over to Britain, in secret, two officers to attend the aeroplane meetings held at Doncaster and Blackpool, where a large number of photographs were secretly taken, and duly found their way to his table.
Indeed, it would greatly surprise your English friends, my dear Le Queux, if they had only seen the many secret reports and secret photographs of all kinds regarding Britain's military, naval, and social life, which I have found upon the Emperor's table.
During my appointment I had through my hands many amazing reports concerning the financial and social position of well-known English politicians and officials, reports made with one ulterior motive – that of attempted bribery. The Emperor meant war, and he knew that before he could hope for success he must thoroughly "Germanize" Great Britain – with what result we all now know.
I have recalled the Emperor's first sight of an aeroplane in flight, in company with Herr Anton Reitschel and Professor Vambéry, because of an incident which occurred that same day. Just before midnight the Emperor, seated in his room in the Berlin Schloss, was giving me certain instructions to be sent to Carlton House Terrace, when the door opened without any knock of permission, and upon the threshold there stood that arch-intriguer, Frau Kleist, in her stiff black silk gown, and wearing a gleaming diamond brooch, the glitter of which was cold as her own steely eyes.
"Have I Your Majesty's permission to enter?" she asked, in her high-pitched voice.
"Of course, of course," replied the Emperor, turning in his chair. "Come in and close the door. It has turned quite cold to-night. Well?" he asked, looking at her inquiringly.
The Emperor is a man of very few words, except when he tells a story.
The Court dancing-mistress hesitated for a second. Their eyes met, and in that glance I saw complete understanding.
"May I speak in confidence with Your Majesty?" she asked, advancing into the room, her stiff, wide skirts rustling. Except the Court ladies she was the only female at Court whom the sentries stationed at the end of the corridor allowed to pass to His Majesty's private cabinet.
But Frau Kleist had access everywhere. Her eyes were the eyes of the Emperor. Many a diplomat, financier, military or naval commander has been raised to position of favourite because he first secured – by payment, of course, according to his means – the good graces of the ex-ballerina. And, alas! many a good, honest man has been cast out of the Potsdam circle into oblivion, and even to death, because of the poisonous declaration of that smiling, bejewelled old hag.
"Of what do you wish to speak?" inquired the Emperor, who, truth to tell, was very busy upon a most important matter concerning the building of new submarines, and was perhaps a little annoyed by the intrusion, though he did not betray it, so clever was he.
"Of the Reitschel affair," was the old woman's low reply.
At her words the Kaiser frowned slightly, and dismissed me. I bowed myself out, and closed the door upon the Emperor and his clever female spy.
That she should have at that late hour come from Potsdam – for, looking down into the courtyard, I saw the lights of her big Mercédès – showed that some underhand work was in progress.
Only a week before I had been discussing Anton Reitschel and his position with my intimate friend, old Von Donaustauf, Master of Ceremonies, who was supposed to control the ex-dancer, but who in reality was in a subordinate position to her, because she had the ear of the Emperor at any hour. Petty jealousies, dastardly plots, and constant intrigues make up the daily life around the Throne. Half the orders given in the Emperor's name are issued without his knowledge, and many an order transmitted to the provinces without his authority.
By handling, as I did, hundreds of those secret reports which reached the Emperor I had learned much concerning Herr Anton Reitschel, and from old Von Donaustauf I had also been able to obtain certain missing links concerning the intrigue.
Reitschel, a burly, round-faced, fair-haired Prussian of quite superior type, held the position of Chief Director of the German-Ottoman Bank in Constantinople. His duty for the past three years had been to conciliate the Sultan and to lend German money to any industrial enterprise in which any grain of merit could possibly be discovered. He had been singled out, taken from the Dresdner Bank, and sent to Constantinople by the Kaiser in order to play Germany's secret game in Turkey – especially that of the Bagdad Railway – and to combat with German gold Great Britain's diplomacy with Tewfik Pasha and old Abdul Hamid, in view of "The Day," which the Emperor had long ago determined should soon dawn. Was he not the War-Lord? And must not a War-Lord make war?
As old Von Donaustauf had put it, between the whiffs of one of those exquisite cigarettes, a consignment of the Sultan's own which came from the Yildiz Kiosk to Potsdam weekly:
"Our Emperor intends that, notwithstanding Britain's policy in the Near East, Germany shall soon rule from Berlin to Bagdad. Herr Reitschel is in reality charged with the work of "Germanizing" the Ottoman Empire."
That I already knew by the many secret reports of his which arrived so constantly from Constantinople, reports which showed quite plainly that though the great German Embassy, with its huge eagles of stone set at each end, might have been built for the purpose of impressing the Turks, yet the shrewd, farseeing Herr Anton, as head of that big financial corporation, held greater sway at that rickety set of offices known to us as the Sublime Porte than did his Excellency the Ambassador, with all his beribboned crowd of underlings.
Truly the game which the Emperor was playing in secret against the other Powers of Europe was a crooked and desperate one. On the one hand the Kaiser was making pretence of fair dealing with Great Britain and France, yet on the other his agent, Herr Reitschel, was ever busy lending money in all directions, and bribing Turkish officials in order to secure their favour in Germany's interest.
Yet a further game was being played – one that, in addition to the Imperial Chancellor, I alone knew – namely, that while the Kaiser was making pretence of being the best friend of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, visiting Constantinople and Palestine, building fountains, endowing institutes, and bestowing his Imperial grace in so many ways, yet he was also secretly supporting the Young Turk party so as to effect the Sultan's downfall as part of his sly, Machiavellian policy – a plot which, as you know, ultimately succeeded, for poor old Abdul the Damned and his harem were eventually packed off, bag and baggage, to Salonika, notwithstanding His Majesty's wild entreaty to Berlin for protection.
I happened to be with the Emperor on the Imperial yacht at Tromsö when he received by telegram the personal appeal addressed to him from his miserable dupe, and I well recollect how grimly he smiled as he remarked to me that it needed no response.
Well, at the period of which I am making the present disclosure, Herr Anton had been paying a number of flying visits to Berlin, and had had many private audiences of both Kaiser and Sultan, and had on several occasions been invited informally to the Imperial luncheon table, a mark of esteem bestowed by the Kaiser upon those who may at the moment be serving his interests particularly well.
Suddenly all of us were surprised by the announcement that the Kaiser's favoured civilian in Turkey had married Mademoiselle Julie de Lagarenne, daughter of Paul de Lagarenne, son of the great French sugar refiner, and secretary of the French Embassy at Rome. We heard also that, having married in Italy, he was bringing his wife to Berlin. Indeed, a week after that news was spread I met them both in Kranzler's in Unter den Linden, and there he introduced me to a pretty, dark-haired, vivacious young Frenchwoman, who spoke German well, and who told me that her husband had already given in her name for presentation at the next Court.
That was about a month prior to Orville Wright's flight and the midnight visit of Frau Kleist to the Emperor.
Truth to tell, the old woman's mention of Herr Reitschel's name caused me considerable misgivings, because three weeks before I had gathered certain strange facts from a secret report of a spy who in Constantinople had been set to watch Herr Reitschel's doings. That spy was Frau Kleist's son.
The Kaiser trusts nobody. Even his favourites and most intimate cronies are spied upon, and reports upon those familiar blue papers are furnished regularly. In view of what I had read in that report from Karl Kleist, I stood amazed when, at the grand Court a week later, I had witnessed Herr Reitschel's French wife bow before the Emperor and Empress and noticed how graciously the Kaiser had smiled upon her. Truly the Emperor is sphinx-like and imperturbable. Outside the privacy of his own room, that chamber of cunning plots and fierce revenge, he never allows his sardonic countenance to betray his inner thoughts, and will grasp the hand of his most hated enemy with the hearty warmth of friendship, a Satanic volte-face in which danger and evil lurk always, a trait inherited to its full degree by the Crown-Prince.
The days that followed Frau Kleist's midnight visit were indeed busy, eventful days. Certain diplomatic negotiations with Washington had been unsuccessful; Von Holleben, the Ambassador, had been recalled, and given an extremely bad half-hour by both Kaiser and Chancellor. In addition, some wily American journalist had fathomed the amazing duplicity of Prince Henry's visit to the States and Germany's Press Bureau in America, while the Yellow Press of New York had published a ghastly array of facts and figures concerning the latter, together with facsimile documents, all of which had sent His Majesty half-crazy with anger.
Nearly three months passed.
Herr Reitschel often came from Constantinople, and frequently brought his handsome young wife with him, for he was persona grata at Court. To me this was indeed strange in view of the reports of the ex-opera dancer's son – who, by the way, lived in Constantinople in the unsuspicious guise of a carpet-dealer, and unknown to the bank director.
The latter had, assisted by his wife's fortune, inherited from her grandmother, purchased the Schloss Langenberg, the splendid ancestral castle and estates of the Princes of Langenberg, situate on a rock between Ilmenau and Zella, in the beautiful Thuringian Forest, and acknowledged to be one of the most famous shooting estates in the Empire. It was not, therefore, surprising that the Emperor, to mark his favour, should express a desire to shoot capercailzie there – a desire which, of course, delighted Herr Reitschel, who had only a few days before been decorated with the Order of the Black Eagle.
One afternoon in mid-autumn the Emperor, accompanied by the Crown-Prince and myself, together with the suite, arrived by the Imperial train at the little station of Ilmenau, where, of course, Reitschel and his pretty wife, with the land-rats, head and under foresters, and all sorts of civil officials in black coats and white ties bowed low as the All-Highest stepped from his saloon. The Kaiser was most gracious to his host and hostess, while the schloss, we found, was almost equal in beauty and extent to that of Prince Max Egon zu Fürstenberg at Donau-Eschingen, which place we always visited once, if not twice, each year.
The Emperor had complained of a slight cold, and in consequence, just before we left Berlin, I had been instructed to summon by telegraph a certain Dr. Vollerthun from Augsburg, who was a perfect stranger to us all, but who had, I supposed, been recommended to the Emperor by somebody who, for some consideration, wished to advance him in his profession.
While the Emperor and his host were out shooting, the Crown-Prince and several of the suite being of the party, I remained alone in a big, circular, old-world room in one of the towers of the Castle, where the long, narrow windows overlooked the forest, dealing with a flood of important State papers which a courier had brought from Berlin two hours before. Papers followed us daily wherever we might be, even when yachting at Cowes or in the Norwegian fjords.
About midday Dr. Vollerthun was ushered in to me – a short, stout, guttural-speaking man of about sixty, rather bald, and wearing big, round, gold-rimmed spectacles. I quickly handed him over to the major-domo. He was a stranger, and no doubt one who sought the Emperor's favour, therefore as such I took but little interest in him.
About three o'clock that same afternoon, however, a light tap came at the door, and on looking round, I saw my hostess standing upon the threshold.
She was quietly but elegantly dressed, presenting the true type of the smart Parisienne, but in an instant I realized that she was very pale and agitated. Indeed her voice trembled when she asked permission to enter.
Since her marriage I had many times chatted with her, for she often came to the Palace when her husband visited Berlin, as he did so frequently. I had danced with her; I had taken her in to dinner at various houses where we met, always finding her a bright and very intellectual companion.
She quietly closed the door, and, crossing the room with uneven steps, advanced to the table from which I had risen.
"Count von Heltzendorff!" she exclaimed in a low, strained voice. "I – I have come to seek your aid because – well, because I'm distracted, and I know that you are my husband's friend," she exclaimed in French.
"And yours also, Madame," I said earnestly, bowing and pulling forward a chair for her.
"My husband is out with the Emperor!" she gasped in a curious, unnerved tone. "And I fear; oh, I fear that we are in great peril – deadly peril every hour – every moment!"
"Really, Madame, I hardly follow you," I said, standing before the dark-haired, handsome French girl – for she was little more than a girl – who had inherited the whole fortune of the biggest sugar refinery in Europe, the great factory out at St. Denis which supplied nearly one-sixth of the refined sugar of the world.
"My husband, whom I love devotedly, has done his best in the interests of his Emperor. You, Count, know – for you are in a position to know – the real aims of the Kaiser in Turkey. These last six months I have watched, and have learned the truth! I know how, when the Emperor went to Constantinople five months ago in pretence of friendship towards the Sultan, with Professor Vambéry as interpreter, he practically compelled Abdul Hamid to give him, in return for certain financial advances, those wonderful jewels which the Empress Catherine, wife of Peter the Great, gave in secret to the Grand Vizier to secure the escape of the Russian Army across the Pruth. I know how the Emperor seized those wonderful emeralds, and, carrying them back to Potsdam, has given them to the Empress. I know, too, how he laughed with my husband at the cleverness by which he is fooling the too trustful Turks. I – "
"Pardon, Madame," I said, interrupting her, and speaking in French, "but is it really wise to speak thus of the Emperor's secrets? Your husband is, I fear, guilty of great indiscretion in mentioning such matters."
"I am his wife, Count, and he conceals little, if anything, from me."
I looked the pretty young woman straight in the face in fear and regret.
Possession of those ancient jewels which, with reluctance, Abdul Hamid had brought out from his treasury, was one of the Kaiser's greatest secrets, a secret of Potsdam known to no more than three people, including myself. The Emperor had specially imposed silence upon me, because he did not wish the Powers to suspect his true Eastern policy of bribery and double-dealing, blackmail and plunder.
And yet she, the daughter of a French diplomat, knew the truth!
Instantly I realized the serious danger of the secret being betrayed to France.
"Madame," I said, leaning against the writing-table as I spoke in deepest earnestness. "If I may be permitted, I would urge that the Emperor's diplomacy neither concerns your husband, as an official, nor yourself. It is his own private affair, and should neither be discussed nor betrayed."
"I know," she said. "That is just why I have ventured to come here to consult you, M'sieur! You have been my good friend as well as my husband's, and here to-day, while the Emperor is our guest beneath our roof, I feel that I am in greatest peril!"
"Why?" I asked with considerable surprise.
"The Emperor has already learnt that I know the truth regarding his secret," was her slow reply. "By what means His Majesty has discovered it, I, alas! know not. But I do know from a confidential quarter that I have incurred the Emperor's gravest displeasure and hatred."
"Who is your informant?" I inquired sternly, eager to further investigate the great intrigue.
"A certain person who must be nameless."
"Have you spoken to anybody of the Emperor's secret plans in Turkey, or of his possession of the Empress Catherine's jewels?"
"I have not uttered a word to a single soul except my husband. I swear it."
"Your husband was extremely indiscreet in revealing anything," I declared again quite frankly.
"I fully admit that. But what can I do? How shall I act?" she asked in a low, tense voice. "Advise me, do."
For some moments I remained silent. The situation, with a pretty woman seeking my aid in such circumstances, was difficult.
"Well, Madame," I replied after reflection, "if you are really ready to promise the strictest secrecy and leave the matter to me, I will endeavour to find a way out of the difficulty – providing you – good German that you are by marriage – will take, before the Emperor himself, an oath of complete secrecy?"
"I am ready to do anything – anything for my dear husband's sake," the handsome young woman assured me, tears welling in her fine dark eyes.
"In that case, then, please leave the matter entirely in my hands," I said. And later on she left.
That same night, about ten o'clock, the Emperor, in the dark-green uniform which he always wears at dinner after hunting or shooting, entered the room to which I had just returned to work.
"Send Frau Kleist to me," he snapped. "And I will summon you later when I want you, Heltzendorff."
Frau Kleist! I had no idea the woman had arrived at the castle. But I dispatched one of the servants to search for her, and afterwards heard her high-pitched voice as she ascended the stairs to hold secret and, no doubt, evil counsel with His Majesty.
Below I found the fat, fair-haired little doctor from Augsburg, who was still an enigma, but eager to see his Imperial patient, and with him I smoked a cigarette to while away the time. I was anxious to return to His Majesty, and, as became my duty as his adjutant, to explain what I had learnt from the lips of our French hostess.
Suddenly one of the Imperial flunkeys bowed at the door, commanding the doctor to the Royal presence, and he left me, hot and flurried, as all become who are unused to the Court atmosphere, its rigid etiquette, and its constant bows.
Had the Emperor called the unknown doctor into consultation with Frau Kleist?
Inquiries I had made concerning the doctor from Augsburg showed that he was quite a well-known specialist on mental diseases, and he had also written a text-book upon bacteriology and the brain. Why had the Kaiser summoned him? He required no brain specialist.
"We leave to-morrow at noon," the Emperor exclaimed brusquely when, an hour later, I was summoned to his room. This amazed me, for our arrangements were to remain three days longer. I recollected Madame Reitschel's words.
"I do not feel at all well," His Majesty added, "and this Dr. Vollerthun orders me rest at Potsdam."
In silence I bowed, and then ventured to refer to what was uppermost in my mind.
"May I be permitted to speak to your Majesty upon a certain confidential subject?" I begged, standing against the table whereat I had been writing the greater part of that day.
"What subject?" snapped the All-Highest.
"Your Majesty's negotiations with the Sultan of Turkey. Frau Reitschel has learnt of them, but she is eager to come before you and take oath of entire secrecy."
The Kaiser's eyes narrowed and glowed in sudden anger.
"A woman's oath!" he cried. "Bah! Never have I believed in silence imposed upon any woman's tongue – more especially that of a born enemy! I appreciate your loyalty and acumen, Von Heltzendorff, but I have, fortunately, known this for some little time, and in strictest secrecy have taken certain measures to combat it. Remember that these words have never been uttered to you! Remember that! You are adjutant, and I am Emperor. Understand! I fully appreciate and note your loyal report, but it is not woman's sphere to enter our diplomacy, except as a secret agent of our Fatherland. Let us say no more."
Ten minutes later, being dismissed, I wandered back through the great, silent, echoing corridors of the ancient castle to my own room. A great human drama, greater than any ever placed upon the stage, was now being enacted. Throwing his loaded dice, the Emperor, with all his craft, cunning, and criminal unscrupulousness behind his mask of Christianity, and aided by his unprincipled son, the Crown-Prince, was actually plotting the downfall of the Turkish Empire and the overthrow of Islam in Europe. Between the All-Highest One and the realization of those dastardly plans for world-power so carefully and cleverly thought out in every detail night after night in the silence of that dull, faded green room upstairs at Potsdam, stood one frail little Parisienne, the vivacious, well-meaning Madame Reitschel!
Next day we left the Schloss Langenberg, but before doing so we heard with regret that our charming little hostess had been suddenly taken ill during the night, and the Kaiser, as a mark of favour, had ordered his doctor, Vollerthun, to remain behind to attend her. That Herr Reitschel was in great distress I saw from his face as he stood taking leave of his Imperial guest on the little platform at Ilmenau.
Back in Berlin, I wondered what was in progress in that far-off Schloss in Thuringia, but a week later the truth became vividly apparent when I read in the Staats-Anzeiger an announcement which disclosed to me the terrible truth.
I held my breath as my eyes followed the printed lines.
Frau Reitschel, the young wife of the famous Anton Reitschel of Constantinople, had, the journal reported, been seized by a sudden and somewhat mysterious illness on the night prior to the Emperor's departure from the Schloss Langenberg, and though His Majesty had graciously left his own physician behind to attend her, the unfortunate lady had developed insanity to such a hopeless degree that it had been necessary to confine her in the Rosenau private asylum at Coburg.
In a second I realized how the dancing-mistress and the mental specialist from Augsburg had been the tools of the Emperor. That "mysterious illness," developing into madness, was surely not the result of any natural cause, but had been deliberately planned and executed by means of a hypodermic syringe, in order that the woman who had learnt the secret of the Emperor's double cunning in the Near East should be for ever immured in a madhouse.
Outside the trio responsible for the cruel and dastardly act, I alone knew the truth how, by the Emperor's drastic action, he had prevented the secret of his chicanery leaking out to the Powers.
Poor Madame Reitschel! She died early in 1913, a raving lunatic. Her devoted husband, having served the Emperor's purpose, had been recalled to Berlin, where, bereft of the Kaiser's favour, he predeceased her by about six months, broken-hearted, but in utter ignorance of that foul plot carried out under his very nose and in his own castle.