“Your Excellency!” he exclaimed, excitement in his voice. “Your Excellency! Listen! The Crown Prince has escaped from the Flag Tower, together with his servant and Captain Lindenwald. And the Captain’s man has been shot, seriously—they think fatally. One of the guards was found bound in His Royal Highness’s apartment. Another guard has a broken leg, and three others are slightly injured.”
XIX
The following day was rife with revelations. Grey and Johann had arrived at the farmhouse of Herr Fahler before cock-crow and had been greeted first with a yelping of dogs and then by a cheery, if somewhat sleepy, welcome from the master of the house, to whom Minna had told the whole wonderful story. Johann he had recognised at once, and he had suspected the identity of his companion at sight. From a great cask in the corner of the big living-room he had drawn them foaming beakers of beer, and from a cupboard had produced for their further refreshment some cold meat and dark bread. And as they ate and drank, Frau Fahler had appeared to add her welcome to her husband’s, and a little later the Fraülein, with rosy cheeks fresh from slumber and wearing the most becoming of negligées, had enthusiastically thrown her arms about Grey’s neck and mingled tears of joy with her smiles over “Uncle Max’s” deliverance.
At daybreak the fugitive Crown Prince wrote a note to Hope, telling her of his flight and his place of refuge, and one of the farm hands was despatched with it to the town. Then Minna suggested that the two refugees needed rest, and was for sending them to bed for a few hours’ sleep, but Grey protested and Johann blankly refused.
In the American’s mind one desire was now dominant—to see the contents of the late Herr Schlippenbach’s luggage, among which, he was impressed, he would find some clue to the mystery—some evidence, perhaps, that would make clear what was still the most perplexing of enigmas. Whether this impression was born of hope, merely, or whether it was inspired by some psychic manifestation cannot be demonstrated and is not material; but, as the discoveries of the day proved, it was well founded.
After the family breakfast, which was served early, Minna took Grey to an upper room where were the three boxes of her great-uncle, and producing the keys a thorough search was made of the dead man’s effects. In one box were his clothes, in another relics of his family, and in the third a small library of books and manuscripts, with many bottles and jars and boxes, wrapped in straw and packed with consummate care to guard against breakage.
The books for the most part bore on one subject—phrenology. Nearly every known work treating of it was included in the collection. There were the early writings of Dr. Franz Joseph Gall and his pupil, Dr. Spurzheim; there were the discoveries of George and Andrew Coombs and of Dr. Elliotson, and the lectures of that earliest and ablest of American phrenologists, Dr. Charles Caldwell, and of the later disciple, Fowler. All of these bore many annotations, marked paragraphs, underlined sentences and marginal comments. Here and there were inserted pages of closely written manuscript, recording the results of Schlippenbach’s personal observation—cases that had come under his notice and to which he had given infinite study. From these it was very soon made apparent to Grey that the late Herr Doctor had ideas distinctively his own. While he accepted many of the conclusions of the earlier apostles of the creed he went a step further, and believed that character could be formed and developed by the systematic physical building up of certain portions of the mental structure and the depression of other portions. This, he claimed, was best accomplished by magnetic stimulation and absorption. Positive magnetic currents stimulated and nourished, while negative currents degenerated and destroyed.
He had conceived this theory, his writings made clear, while tutor at the Budavian Court, and had presumed to experiment on the infant Crown Prince. At that time he had kept a journal in which he made entry, briefly and roughly, not only of his scientific accomplishments, but of incidents bearing in any way on his career. This journal was secured by a lock, but Minna and her sister not merely consented to its breaking, but insisted upon it. And here was found the long and well-kept secret of the writer’s quarrel with Queen Anna and the abduction of the young heir apparent. Her Majesty having been informed of the tutor’s novel methods of mental development had commanded their cessation so far as her infant son was concerned; and the tutor’s departure from the Court was only a part of the outcome. The journal revealed the fact—though it was not stated in so many words, and to those unfamiliar with Budavian history the entries might have meant nothing—that the tutor was, if not personally the abductor of the young sprig of royalty, certainly an important factor in the abduction, his object being not so much to avenge himself on Queen Anna as to gather the results of the experiments he had been engaged in from the child’s earliest infancy. There was no direct mention, either, of the little fellow’s death, but the absence after a few months of entries concerning him was good ground for the belief that he did not long survive his arrival in America.