A Dash for a Throne

by Arthur W. Marchmont

I spoke with an air of indifference.

"The canaille!" he exclaimed angrily, with a bitter scowl. "They were sick of me. I know too much. I am dangerous. I will no longer do their work; and so, by the fires of hell, they think to get rid of me! Wait, wait, my masters, and you shall see what you have done." He threw his right arm up, and clenched his fist with a most dramatic gesture. "It was surely their evil genius sent you my way just now. Do you know how near death you are at this moment?" he asked; "or you would be, if I had taken up their cursed work."

"I shall know a great deal better if you will speak clearly," I replied, not letting him see how his question surprised me.

"I will. I don't know whether you wish me to regard you as a Prince or play-actor; but, whichever it is, you saved my life to-night, and if I turn against you may I go to hell straightway."

"You can please yourself what you call me. I am the Prince von Gramberg in fact, whatever I may have seemed formerly."

"And I am Juan Praga, the Corsican. Not French, or Italian, or German, or any of the dozen different damned parts I have played; but Juan Praga, the Corsican. I left Frankfort before you did—about eighteen months ago—and I wandered about the country till my reputation as a fencer, and my lack of it in other things, first set me up as a master in Berlin, and then brought these devils to me. They approached me slyly, stealthily, like cats, flattering my skill, and saying there was good work for my sword. And with lies they brought me here to Munich. I knew nothing except that there was money to be made, and the life of a man of pleasure to lead. I suspected nothing; even when one of them came and told me my skill as a swordsman had been called in question, my honor impeached, and myself charged with being an impostor, and that if I could not clear myself I must be off for a rogue."

"I begin to see," I exclaimed when he paused.

"Yes, yes, you will guess what it meant," he replied, nodding his head vigorously. "But I could not then. And it came out gradually that the man who had dared to say this was young Count Gustav von Gramberg. I demanded to meet him face to face and give him the lie. Reluctantly, as it seemed—by the nails of the Cross! it was the reluctance of infernal traitors—they agreed and promised that we should meet. Then they fired him with wine, and fed him with a lie about me; and when we met we were like two tigers thirsting to be at one another's throats. You know what happened!" he exclaimed, throwing up his hand again. "We quarrelled, I struck him, he challenged me; and when we met I ran him through the heart."

"It was murder for you to fight a man like that with swords," I cried sternly.

"It was murder, Prince," he answered slowly. Then he added, with voluble passion, "Deep, deliberate, cold-blooded, damnable murder; but I was not the murderer. Mine was the hand, but theirs was the plot; and I never realized it till they came to me and told me that they had planned its every detail and step, that I was in their power; and that if I dared to falter in any order they gave me, they would have me charged openly as a murderer, and swear to such a story as would have me on the scaffold in a trice. What could I do? I was powerless. I raged and swore, and cursed for an hour; but they had me fast in their clutches, with never a chance of escape. But they did not know me."