Travel-stained, and without changing his tunic, "Willie" went to the telephone and ordered Knof to bring back the car. And in it he drove across to the Neues Palais to see the Emperor.
I had an important appointment in Berlin that night, and waited until quite late for "Willie's" return. As he did not come I left for the capital, and on arrival at my rooms rang up Wolff's Agency, and gave out a paragraph to the Press that His Imperial Highness the Crown-Prince had been compelled to abandon his journey to Thorn, owing to having contracted a chill. His wife "Cilli"—the contraction for Cecilia—had, however, gone to visit Princess Henry of Rohnstock at Fürstenstein.
Several weeks went by, and one day we were at the ancient schloss at Oels, in far Silesia, the great estate which the Crown-Prince inherited on coming of age. The castle is a big, prison-like place, surrounded by wide lands and dense forests, lying between the town of Breslau and the Polish frontier, a remote, rural place to which "Willie" loved sometimes to retire with a few kindred spirits in order to look over the estate and to shoot.
The guests included old Count von Reisenach, Court Chamberlain, of the Prince of Schombourg-Lippe, who was a noted raconteur and bon-vivant, with Major von Heidkämper, of the 4th Bavarian Light Cavalry, a constant companion of "Willie's," and Karl von Pappenheim, a captain of the Prussian Guard, who had been educated at Oxford, and who was so English that it was often difficult for people from London to believe that he was a Prussian.
Von Pappenheim, a tall, good-looking, fair-moustached man under thirty, was one of "Willie's" new friends. He was the son of a great landowner of Erfurt, and the pair had for the past month been inseparable. He was a shrewd, keen-eyed man, who seemed ever on the alert, but, of course, obsessed by military dignity, and as full of swagger as any Prussian officer could be. He had a sister, Margarete, a pretty girl, a year or so his junior, who had been to the Marmor Palace on one occasion. The Crown-Princess had received her, but from the fact that she was not invited a second time I concluded that the inevitable jealousy had arisen, because in my presence "Willie" had more than once referred to her beauty.
I sometimes suspected that "Willie's" sudden and close friendship with Von Pappenheim had some connection with his intense admiration of the latter's sister. I, however, learnt the truth concerning their intimacy in a curious way while at the Schloss Oels.
One day I had accompanied the party out after stag, for, being a fair shot, I frequently snatched a day's sport. Soon after luncheon, which we took at a forester's house, we went forth again, and I concealed myself at a point of vantage, lying behind a screen of ferns and branches specially constructed as cover.
I was alone, at some considerable distance from the others, and had been there waiting for nearly an hour with my gun in readiness when suddenly I heard the cracking of dried wood not far away.
Something was moving. I raised my gun in breathless eagerness.
Next moment, however, I heard the voices of two men.—"Willie" and his friend, Von Pappenheim. They were approaching me, speaking in low, confidential tones.