Imposing the strictest silence upon me, the Crown-Prince then revealed how utterly he and the Crown-Princess had been misled, and how very narrowly he had escaped being the victim of a cunning plot to effect his death.
The little old Countess von Kienitz had, it seemed, sworn to avenge the degradation and dismissal of her son, who had been in the famous Death's Head Hussars. She had secretly traced the Crown-Prince as author of a subtle conspiracy against him, the underlying motive being jealousy. With that end in view she had slowly wormed her way into His Highness's confidence, and introduced to him Karl Krahl, a neurotic young Saxon who lived in London, and who pretended he had unearthed a plot against the Kaiser himself.
"It was to tell me the truth concerning the conspiracy that Krahl came to me in secret at Ballenstedt. He remained with me for half an hour, when, to my great surprise, we were joined by the Countess. The story they told me of the plot against the Emperor was a very alarming one, and I intended to return at once to Berlin. The Countess had left to walk back to the schloss, when presently we heard a woman's scream—her voice—and we both went forth to discover what was in progress. As I ran along a little distance behind Krahl, suddenly what seemed like a thin glass globe struck me in the chest and burst before my face. It had been thrown by an unknown hand, and, on breaking, must have emitted some poisonous gas which was intended to kill me, but which happily failed. Until yesterday the whole affair was a complete mystery, but Krahl has now confessed that the Countess conceived the plot, and that the hand that had thrown the glass bomb was that of her son, who had concealed himself in the bushes for that purpose."
Though, of course, I hastened to congratulate His Highness upon his fortunate escape, yet I now often wonder whether, if the plot had succeeded, the present world-conflict would ever have occurred.
SECRET NUMBER SEVEN
THE BRITISH GIRL WHO BAULKED THE KAISER
"How completely we have put to sleep these very dear cousins of ours, the British!" His Imperial Highness the Crown-Prince made this remark to me as he sat in the corner of a first-class compartment of an express that had ten minutes before left Paddington Station for the West of England—that much-advertised train known as the Cornish-Riviera Express.
The Crown-Prince, though not generally known, frequently visited England and Scotland incognito, usually travelling as Count von Grünau, and we were upon one of these flying visits on that bright summer's morning as the express tore through your delightful English scenery of the Thames Valley, with the first stopping-place at Plymouth, our destination.
The real reason for the visit of my young hotheaded Imperial Master was concealed from me.