A Prince to Order

by Charles Stokes Wayne

“Yes, yes, I know,” Grey interjected. “But tell me, Lutz, how this whole thing started, back in New York. Tell me about Schlippenbach and how you and he managed it together.”

The nurse, from her place by the pillow, leaned over and wiped her patient’s brow. Then she moistened his lips again, and his deep-sunken eyes looked his appreciation. For some minutes he was silent, endeavouring apparently by an effort of will to gather fresh energy; and to Grey’s mind recurred the picture of that darkened room in Paris, just six days ago, with the dying Herr Schlippenbach struggling to make himself understood.

“He was more devil than man,” Lutz resumed. “He was always working with strange drugs and experimenting with batteries on cats and dogs, and children, too. One day he asked me a great many questions about you, Mr. Grey, and then he asked me if I’d like to be rich—very rich, he said. ‘Everyone wants to be rich,’ I answered. ‘If you’ll do just as I tell you,’ he said, ‘you’ll have more money than you ever dreamed of.’ He told me he wanted me to put just one tiny pellet in your coffee each morning. It would not harm you, he said, but you would doze off for just ten minutes after you had taken it, and you would never know you had been dozing. ‘And while he is asleep,’ he said, ‘you can tell him to do anything you wish at any time in that day and he will do it. Tell him, for instance,’ he advised me, ‘to double your wages when he returns from his office in the evening, and he will do it.’ I laughed at the idea and had no faith in it; but I consented to try it. And it worked. You did double my wages, Mr. Grey, just as I asked you to, and you never knew I had asked you. Each day I gave you the pellet, as he directed, and each day I suggested that you do certain things at certain hours, and you always did them.”

“Hypnotic suggestion,” commented Grey, involuntarily.

“Something like it,” Lutz replied, “but he said it was not. At least, only in part. The pellet was the principal thing. He made the pellets himself. They were his secret. I gave you the last the day before he died; and I knew then that I could control you no more.”

“Yes,” Grey urged, “but after the first, what happened? After I raised your wages, what other things did you suggest?”

“Nothing of importance for a month or two. Just trifles—that you come home early and tell me you would not require me that night; or that you would give me a coat I wanted very much, and things of that sort. But one day Schlippenbach came to the rooms while you were down town. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said,’I am coming here early, before Mr. Grey is up. You must hide me somewhere until you have given him the pellet.’ He came and I hid him in your wardrobe; but when you had had your coffee with his drug in it he came out, and then I saw for the first time the power of this thing. He directed you very minutely and very exactly. Every minute in the day you were under his commands. You were to secure a hundred thousand dollars in cash and you were to bring it to his house on Avenue A at four o’clock in the afternoon. And at this house you were to remain. That evening I went there, and there you were. You did not know me. Your name had been changed to Arndt. I called you Mr. Grey to test the thing, and you appeared to think I was crazy. Schlippenbach told me you had brought the money. You never left his house until we sailed for this country.”

“What did I do there?”

“You did very little, but Schlippenbach did a great deal. Each day he had his batteries working on your head. He told me he was building up your self-esteem and that he was depleting your reverence. He was developing those cerebral organs which he thought would fit you for a throne and reducing those which he thought would unfit you. He said that in this way he could change you completely. After a few years of constant treatment, three or four years at most, you would, he told me, be no more Mr. Grey, the New York broker, than I would. You would be the King of Budavia and never know that you had not been born to it. And then there would be no further need of pellets or of galvanism. The transformation would have been accomplished.”

The dying man, becoming more and more interested in his subject, was speaking in clearer tones and with much less effort; and his auditors listened, spellbound, to his exposition of the marvellous methods of his mountebank master.