“You!” he gasped. “Viper!”
Clara von Platen held her candlestick so that the light shone upon his white face.
“You are dying, Philip,” and the tip of her tongue came out from her mouth and wetted her lips. “Confess your crime! You have come hot from the Princess’s bed to die for your treachery—”
And in spite of his pain and the cords which bound him, he raised himself upon an elbow. Yes, the four soldiers were about him, one with a bandaged arm. To them he spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“The Princess is innocent. I charge you to bear witness—”
Clara von Platen wanted no dying statement of that kind.
“Liar!”
She spat the word at him and pointing a shaking finger loaded with diamonds at him she screamed to the guards.
“Gag the liar’s mouth. At once, you brutes! You, Luders, kneel and obey me!”
Luders kneeled, but whilst he was still stretching down a hand to tear the neckcloth from Königsmark’s neck, Clara von Platen cried again in a startled voice: “Wait! Listen!”
Philip’s head had fallen back upon the floor. Beads of sweat were standing on his forehead, his face was the colour of wax, his eyes were glazing. All the soldiers stood like statues. And in the silence which held them as though the witch with the candle in her hand had bound them in a spell, a faint and distant sound was heard. It grew louder as they listened. Someone was running — running with swift pattering feet — running in the darkness. For there was the sound of furniture being overturned. Someone was blundering against tables, against doors in a desperate haste. Now the runner fell to the floor and with a sobbing cry got up again and ran again.
“Close the door! Hurry! Are you lumps of earth? Close it quietly! Now lock it! So!”
The door shut the lobby from the Rittersaal and the grim tragic scene which in agony and blood was drawing towards its end there. But it was to be an end more pitiful and more packed with horror than even Madame von Platen had conceived.
“Once more not a word, not a movement.”
The four guardsmen were clustered about the door. Madame von Platen stood alone, the candlestick shaking in her hand, the wax dropping now upon the floor, now upon the body of Philip as he lay bleeding at her feet.
The sound of the footsteps had ceased. Perhaps the runner had turned back, or swooned, or lost the way. There was not even a flickering blue flame outside to make a guiding light. Suddenly the silence was broken in a fashion so unexpected that all those standing in the room shook. A pair of small clenched fists was hammering and clattering on the thick door as if it would break it down and a young and desperate voice was crying: “Open! Open! Open!”
The sound of that voice, distraught and passionate, brought Königsmark back from the black gate of death. His eyes opened, he listened, a smile curved his parched lips even before he was conscious that it was Sophia Dorothea who bade them let her in. but the voice changed. It lost its imperative note. It became an appeal gentle and most pitiful.
“Philip! Philip! Philip!”
And now Philip knew who called to him and called to him in vain and why. Two small clenched fists, bruised and bleeding and almost as helpless as he was, were battering upon that inexorable door. The prayer was repeated, a wail, a moan broken by a sob.
“Philip! Philip! Philip!”
The carriage waiting at the corner of the market- place — the safe refuge in Brunswick — the dream cottage in Arcadia — the lovely years unspoilt by fears or jealousies — were never to be. He knew that his wound was mortal and his hopes had narrowed down to one. But never in his life, in the thrust of battle or the urgency of passion, had he longed for anything so much as the fulfilment of this one last hope — a voice strong enough to carry through the barrier of that thick door a message of farewell: “I am dying, dearest, with your face in my heart and your name on my lips.”
If she could but hear those words, he argued with the divine selfishness of lovers, she would have a talisman against disdain and a solace in all unhappiness. Slowly he gathered up all that was left to him of nerve and strength and when that husbandry was done he lifted his head. But Clara von Platen was watching him. She had read the hope which suddenly gleamed in his eyes and quite transfigured his face.
“No!” she hissed, “No!”
And whilst he opened his mouth to shout, she lifted her foot and drove the high red heel of her shoe between his teeth. With all her weight she trod his mouth down.
“Philip! Philip! Philip!” Sophia was pleading, her voice broken by her sobs and the tears raining down her face.
“Philip! Philip! Philip!”
Philip struggled but the blood only burst afresh through lawn and velvet, and no answer even faint as a whisper from the grave could reach to his beloved’s ears. Clara Platen held the candle lower, watching with a monstrous glee the death-changes on her prisoner’s face.
“Listen, Philip!” she whispered with an atrocious mimicry of the young rival beyond the door. “You can still hear, can you? She shall never know how you died — never — nor what dog’s burial I shall give you — no, nor in what ignominious grave your body shall rot until eternity.”
And as she talked she worked her foot to mar the beauty of the face which had lured her and cheated her. But Philip was not listening to her. He was listening to the cry of the unhappy lady beyond the door.
“Philip! Philip! Answer me! Let me in!”
Folies d’Espagne! That was the tune he used to whistle beneath the window of his mistress. There would be no whistling of it now, with this witch’s heel tearing his mouth and throat, and the sole of her foot trying to break down his teeth. If he could die there now, in a puff of the breath, easily, as old men die. But Count Philip von Königsmark was to be spared not one fraction of his atonement. For as he listened to the dear voice growing fainter and more distant, as though she was being carried far from the reach of his hands and the sight of his eyes, her cry halted and broke.
“Oh, Philip!” she moaned in the most utter disappointment. “Oh, Philip,” and the voice died away, and the crash of someone falling to the floor shook the room. The sound of his beloved mistress dropping in a swoon with her piteous call to him unanswered, was the last sound her lover was to hear on earth. When Clara von Platen turned her eyes from the door to the tortured prisoner at her feet, her face took on a sullen discontent. Philip was out of her reach and dead.
XXXV. CLARA SEES IT THROUGH
MADAME VON PLATEN stepped back.
“He is dead,” she declared, and taking a wax taper from the mantelshelf, she lit all the candles within her reach on the mantelshelf itself and in the gilt candelabra on the walls. She needed light for the work which must be done and quickly done. But to the four soldiers muttering uneasily together by the door, she seemed to be making in some spirit of devilry a chapelle ardente of the Hall of the Knights for the body of the man she had murdered. Luders, indeed, who would have been hard put to it to name the denomination to which he belonged, crossed himself devoutly. Clara von Platen noticed the movement and laughed. But Luders was the last of the four to endure ridicule easily. He stepped forward, he waited until Madame had lit all the candles she could reach. Then he said sturdily: “Yes. Count Philip von Königsmark, my Colonel, is dead. But what is coming to each of us for this night’s bad work? Tell us that, Madame!”
“A farm is coming to each of you,” she answered, “and money to stock it with if you hold your tongues. But let one of you breathe a word of what has happened in this Rittersaal, to his wife or his children or his priest — and I pity him. He had better not have been born.”
She seized a torch from a bracket by the chimney and lighted it at a candle. She was so calm, she moved to so precise a plan that all the four took a little heart. She walked to the door, unlocked and opened it. In a crumpled heap Sophia Dorothea lay upon the ground. Madame von Platen held the flaming torch about her, but the Princess did not stir. Her eyes were closed,
she hardly seemed to breathe. Madame von Platen said: “Good! You, Luders, and Sachs, carry Her Highness to her apartment and lock her in. Sachs will stand on guard at the door and let no one enter or go out until he is relieved.”
She handed the torch to Sachs and Luders picked up the Princess from the floor. Clara von Platen watched them go softly away into the dark cavern of the Palace. The torch flaming and smoking cast its shadows and its glare over the tiny procession. The Princess in her white gown was like a sleeping child in the great arms of Luders. The figures grew small and vanished and only the red heart of the torch shone far away like a jewel. Then that too vanished.
Clara turned briskly to the two soldiers who were left. Bushmann was sent to fetch cloths and water, Marten to Lieutenant Hansen in the Elector’s ante-room.
“His Highness must be told,” she commanded. “He must be awakened and told. Lieutenant Hansen must post a sentry at the Princess’s door. I need Sachs here.”
It was half an hour before the Elector came wrapped in a dressing-gown and leaning heavily on his Lieutenant’s arm. He found his soldiers washing the floor and Königsmark’s body covered with cloths which had been used.
“Good God, Clara,” he cried horror-struck by the sight of the still body under the blood-stained cloths. “You promised me no — no hurt should be done. He was to be arrested, not destroyed.”
“And so he would have been, sir,” Clara answered contritely. “But he drew his sword. He attacked. He was as dangerous as a boar at bay. And in the darkness a thrust miscarried. See, sir, he wounded Marten.”
Certainly Marten was standing there with his arm in a sling. As for the pretty bauble of a sword which had wounded him, its shattered blade was hidden with Königsmark’s body under the cloths and the richly jewelled hilt under Madame von Platen’s cloak. One could trust Clara not to let a valuable thing like that escape her.
But old Ernst Augustus was not to be appeased by her excuses.
“A Königsmark,” he insisted. “A man of a great family with friends in every country in Europe! The scandal of it! The disgrace! A Königsmark killed secretly in the dead of the night in the Royal Palace of Hanover.”
The Elector had lost all of his dignity and importance. He had his nightcap on his head, a flowered dressing-gown about his gross fat body and his legs were naked. He was any old man with pendulous heavy cheeks, shocked out of his wits by a shameful crime which must forever dishonour his house. He dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
Clara von Platen crossed the room to him.
“Listen, Sir,” she said. “There are seven people here, Your Highness, myself, Lieutenant Hansen and the four soldiers. Outside these seven no one will ever know the truth of what has happened here tonight.”
She spoke with so much assurance that Ernst Augustus lifted up his head hopefully.
“Philip Königsmark came from Dresden to Hanover yesterday. He visited the Princess in her apartment in the Leine Castle tonight. When he left her, he disappeared,” she continued. “That is all that will be known. Whatever questions are asked, none will be answered. He disappeared.”
With a wave of his hand the Elector brushed the story aside.
“But that” — and he pointed a shaking finger at the body underneath the cloths and the word not yet spoken sprang from his mouth and struck Clara von Platen like a blow in the face— “that murdered thing won’t disappear.”
“It will,” said Clara.
She called Luders towards her. And Lieutenant Hansen learned now why she had named Luders as one of the four soldiers she needed. Luders had been a mason, a layer of bricks, before he had been called up into the Duke of Hanover’s army. He had even been employed at Monplaisir in other days.
Clara von Platen gave him his instructions. The repairing of the chimney in the Rittersaal had been a lucky chance of which she had been quick to make her profit. She would have found another way, no doubt, had this one been closed. But it was to her hand. Luders, under the eyes of the Elector, set himself to work. The body of Philip Königsmark wrapped in its blood-stained cloths was thrust far back into the broken recess. With the help of his three companions, he laid the bricks one upon the other, morticed and shaped, in front of it and built in the great iron fireplace at the last.
It was three o’clock in the morning when the work was completed and the day was beginning to dawn. All the four soldiers were to be sent to their homes in the morning, sworn to secrecy and rewarded with grants of land. A guard was placed over the great fireplace to make sure that none should approach it until the mortar was set. There was not a stain of blood left upon the floor of the Hall of the Knights in the Leine Palace. There was not one atom of evidence forgotten which could bring any one of the five guilty of murder before the bar of justice.
“I will write to my son in Berlin tomorrow,” said the Elector when all as done. “He must return at once. Until he comes the Princess will remain under arrest in her apartment.”
But Clara von Platen had not completed her night’s work. As Ernst Augustus turned to go back to his private rooms, she said respectfully: “When Your Highness has retired, I shall need Lieutenant Hansen and two of these soldiers.”
The Elector turned upon her gloomily. “God in Heaven, Clara, haven’t you brought me trouble enough for one night? What would you do?”
“Lighten the trouble, Sir. There will be letters in Königsmark’s house which the world must never read.”
“Letters!” cried the Elector. “Letters from Sophia?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“He will have burned them.”
Clara shook her head.
“Women burn letters. Men keep them.”
She had a reason beyond her hatred of the Princess for her eagerness. It was likely enough that in any correspondence between Königsmark and his beloved lady, her name would appear too often for her comfort. She must have the first sifting of those letters before they were submitted to the Elector’s eyes. She had her way in the end, and as soon as His Highness was brought to his rooms, she drove away in her coach with Lieutenant Hansen at her side, as unwilling an assistant as could have been found in Hanover, and Luders and Bushmann on the dickey behind.
It was clear daylight now, but the streets were still empty and the houses shuttered. Lieutenant Hansen beat upon the door of Philip’s house until a head was pushed out from an upper window.
“In the name of His Highness, the Elector,” said Hansen and with a gasp the head was withdrawn.
“There is a yellow box bound with a ribbon—” Clara began, but the young Lieutenant cut her short.
“Madame, you must do your own searching,” he said shortly. “I am a Lieutenant of the Guard not an agent of police.”
Clare turned upon him with a baleful face, but the bolts within the door were already being withdrawn. She could not quarrel with Lieutenant Hansen in the open street, even if the sun was hardly up and not a neighbour awake to hear. She was suddenly aware with a pang of regret that she could not now quarrel with Lieutenant Hansen anywhere or at any time. He knew too much. The door was opened and taking Luders and Bushmann with her she entered the house. The yellow casket was soon discovered in a drawer in Königsmark’s bedroom. His other papers were left as she found them, and dismissing her escort she drove away with the casket to Monplaisir.
It was now four o’clock in the morning and the day bright. But Madame von Platen felt the chill of that long night deep in her bones. She had a great fire lit in her private sitting-room and breaking upon the box began her examination. The box contained nothing but letters written by the Princess recently to Philip — passionate letters for the most part, recalling hours packed to the brim with bliss and dreaming with delight of untroubled years to come. Clara von Platen laughed with pleasure as she read. Here was the ruin of the Princess under her hand. She made them up into a package for the Elector.
But there were some amongst the number which dealt in plain rough wo
rds with Madame von Platen, her vulgarity and her armours and her violent jealousies. Every one of these Madame von Platen burned there and then in her strong fire. But she made a third division. There were letters, foolish letters written in a temper, denouncing her father. Sophia recalled a word she had uttered to her mother when the two of them were studying Monsieur Racine’s Iphigenia.
“My papa would never treat me as Agamemnon treated his daughter,” she had said: yet that was exactly how he had treated her. Sophia quoted that old saying of hers and complained of her father bitterly, deploring his servility to that rogue Bernstorff. She used, moreover, one hard phrase difficult to forgive. She was writing of her failure to obtain from him a separate settlement so that she could free herself from her husband George Louis.
“My father’s affection for me turns out to be une amitié de singe.”
Madame von Platen gleefully made up a second package of these particular letters.
“Poison! Rank poison,” she declared; and she directed them to be carried by Heinrich Muller the next day to Bernstorff at Celle for Duke George William’s perusal. “Let that once get into the good George William’s blood, there isn’t a doctor in the world who’ll cleanse him of it.”
Then she had done. It was seven o’clock in the morning. She took her coffee and went to bed very well contented with that night of July the first. George Louis would seek and obtain a divorce. The Princess would be punished. Her lover was dead and the mystery of his death would never be revealed.
But all the world knows the story of his death nevertheless. One of the seven broke the oath of secrecy. Who? Who but Clara von Platen herself? Years afterwards, when Ernst Augustus was dead and George Louis was King of England, and she herself an aged blind hag with a face eaten by disease and the flames of Hell roaring in her ears, she told the story to her confessor and bade him publish it to the world. Later still there were more repairs needed for that chimney, and the skeleton behind the bricks bore testimony to the truth of her confession.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 726