A Dash for a Throne

by Arthur W. Marchmont

"You forget the quarrel is of your making," I answered coolly. "The moment you entered this room you insulted me by saying I had come here for what I could get, and sneered that I was too late to induce the Prince to alter the will leaving his property to his daughter. In my view that will is perfectly just and right. Then for some object, I know not what as yet, you tried to frighten me into running away from the place altogether. You have mistaken your man, sir. I have no hankering for the late Prince's wealth; but what you have said of yourself is more than enough to prove that the honor of my family is not in safe keeping when left in your hands. As there is nothing but that honor, I will accept that part of the inheritance."

Rage, hate, threats, and baffled malice were in the look he turned on me at this.

"You wish to make me your enemy?"

"At least I have no wish to make you my friend," I retorted.

"You will live to repent this bitterly!" he cried, with an oath. "We will have no meddlers here in the path of our purpose," and, still more enraged by the smile which the threat evoked from me, he went hurriedly out of the room.

Truly my years of self-repression had wrought a great change in me. Five years before his hot insolence would have so fired me that I would have made him answer for it on the spot; but now I could hold my anger in check and wait for my revenge. But this little conflict was my first live experience for five years, and the sense of it pleased me.

When the man had left me I had no longer any scruples about going forward with my new character. There was no one to be robbed of a fortune, no one to be supplanted in a coveted position—nothing but an overpawned castle to be gained. There was apparently a dangerous intrigue to be faced, and a sweet girl's honor to be saved, and a treacherous villain to be exposed and punished—not the kind of inheritance which many men would covet. But then few men were ever placed in my situation.

I was thinking hard over all this when my two captors came back into the room hurriedly, both very angry. Von Nauheim had seen them after leaving me, and had vented his anger on them. They asked me now excitedly if it was my wish that they should leave the castle immediately after the Prince's funeral. I listened to them very quietly. I had already had pretty strong evidence of the lengths to which their zeal for the family's affairs would induce them to go; and von Nauheim's hostility to them was a powerful recommendation in my eyes.

"I beg you to be calm, gentlemen," I said, "and to bear in mind that I know very little of the position of affairs here. I have understood from you that you were both largely in the late Prince's confidence—indeed, you have given me pretty good proof of that since yesterday. But beyond that I do not know what your relations here have been in the past."

"We have been for years in the Prince's confidential service; I myself enjoyed his closest confidence," answered Captain von Krugen. "But my allegiance is to the head of the house. I recognize no one else."