“He seems a little stronger at the moment,” whispered the Chancellor; “you came at an opportune time. He has been asking for you all the afternoon.”
The nurse was moistening the sufferer’s lips. When she finished, Grey spoke to him.
“I am sorry to see you here, Lutz,” he said, simply.
His breathing, he noticed, was very short and laboured.
“I’m obliged to you for coming, sir,” he replied, and his voice was stronger than one would have expected. “I’ve got a lot to tell you; but it’s so late now I don’t know whether I’ll be able.” He paused between his sentences in an effort to husband his waning strength. “I was a good enough fellow once, Mr. Grey, wasn’t I?”
Grey nodded.
“Yes,” he agreed, with sincerity, “you were all right, Lutz.”
“I never really meant you any harm, sir,” he went on. “It seemed to me that it would be a good thing for you.”
The Chancellor motioned to the stenographer, who drew his chair closer to the bedside and took a note-book and pencil from his pocket.
“Afterwards,” Lutz continued, “after Dr. Schlippenbach died and I knew we couldn’t keep you under the spell any more, I got frightened; and then I drank a good deal, and I—yes, I was crazy at times. Absinthe, Mr. Grey. I wasn’t used to it, and it turned my head. I thought to save myself I must get rid of you. I tried to smother you with gas that night last week in Paris. Captain Lindenwald knew of it. He was afraid of you, too. He said suspicion would fall on Baron von Einhard; that we would never be suspected. And when I failed he went to Baron von Einhard and—how much he got I don’t know; but the Baron paid him to go away and leave you, agreeing that he would put you where you would never be heard of again. Then we came here, with a story about your being mad and being locked up in a Paris sanitarium. It was the only thing we could do. If the plan had worked we should have been in trouble for a while, maybe, but when Prince Hugo came to the throne we should have been rewarded. I sold the Baron the strong-box with all those manufactured proofs of your right to the crown; and I told him you had the Prince of Kronfeld ring. I’m sorry, sir, I’m sorry. But I’m a coward, and I was in terror and more than half insane with that green stuff.”