The Vienna Melody (15 page)

She reached the piano factory in Wiedner Hauptstrasse almost in time. Foedermayer, the head clerk, told her that Herr Alt had been called away on urgent business and had left word for her ladyship to wait. When Franz finally crossed the threshold of the glass door which divided his private office from the showroom his excitement and the change in him were immediately obvious. “Where have you been?” he asked before he had walked into the room. “You weren't at your father's! He doesn't even know you're in town!”

How exhausted she was by all this questioning! She was unspeakably exhausted. If only she did not have to be questioned! If only she need not think! Once more she made an effort to find at all cost some alibi, but how long could this go on? One cannot think up alibis indefinitely! “I was taken up all morning by the matter I told you about,” she answered when nothing else occurred to her.

“I want you to realize that there's no point in trying to hoodwink me!” he retorted threateningly. “Do you know where I've just been? With Otto Eberhard at his office. He sent for me. He is conducting the investigation concerning the death of the Crown Prince.”

All right. One more threat. When you are so deadly tired it makes little difference. “Really?” she said apathetically.

“Yes! I know everything! That telegram was from the Privy Chancellery. So you did see the Crown Prince in the palace? Answer me at least!”

If it were not for Jarescu it would have made no vestige of difference what she answered now. Indeed, she would not have needed to answer at all. And not Mary Vetsera, but she herself, would be with him now. It wasn't really cowardice. It was Jarescu. “Yes, I went there,” she admitted.

“And you kept that from me!”

If she lost her nerve now the Jarescu matter would be hopeless. “I wasn't able to tell you,” she declared. How many pianos could she see in there beyond the glass door? She counted two boudoir grands, three drawing-room grands, two concert grands. Seven. A lucky number.

“It must have been something extraordinary that you weren't able to confide to your husband!”

Now would he go on to say, “You were the mistress of the Crown Prince?” Her ears rang. All she knew was that she answered, “I have nothing to conceal from you,” but she did not hear her own words.

He made some reply, but she did not hear that either, and then the glass door went black and her wish not to have to think was fulfilled for a quarter of an hour.

“Nothing but romantic sentimentalities! Sentimental considerations are of no consequence here! I understand perfectly what's going on inside you, but you simply owe it to our name!”

“You mean I owe it to your position as a lawyer?”

“What I mean is we are good Austrians! I am. You are. Every one in our house has been, since it was built. That is why our sainted grandfather allowed only members of the family to live there. It is unthinkable that we should include anyone in our family has aroused displeasure in the highest circles!”

“Oh, shut up! Our sister Pauline aroused displeasure in the highest circles when she was only five years old.”

“I'm really in no mood for jokes, Franz. Yours is no private matter. It doesn't depend on you. One can't entertain relations subversive elements!”

“What then?”

“One politely arranges for an absolute and final severance of ties.”

“As politely as they treated the Vetseras? Under cover of night girl was dumped into the ground like a dog in Heiligenkreuz Covent and her family chased across the frontier like gypsies!”

“Considerations of State sometimes impose hardships. In the case of your wife, however, you can't possibly assert that there is the slightest ground for clemency. Self-aggrandizement, coquetry, and frivolity were her only motives. And you have no choice but to draw your own conclusions. And do it immediately.”

“But we've only been married six days!”

“Then the divorce will have even less significance later on, when sentiment will no longer be in the picture.”

Franz stood up. “Don't give yourself any trouble. I shall not get a divorce,” he said curtly.

His brother followed him to the door and laid a hand on his shoulder. “In all the thirty-seven years you have known me have I ever done you a bad turn, Franzl?”

The question was without sentiment, yet Franz could not ignore it. “No,” he answered. “I'm convinced that no one could mean better by me. Nevertheless, you must leave to me my choice of the person with whom I want to spend my life.”

Otto Eberhard made a gesture of regret. “I really have no right to show you this,” he said, returning to his desk and handing Franz an official file. “It's a breach of state secrecy. But in this case I take full responsibility for my act.”

On the official gray cover of the file were the words: “Imperial and Royal Police Headquarters, Vienna. Inquiry Proceedings re: Henriette Stein.” The “Henriette Stein” had been corrected to read “Henriette Alt, née Stein.” Inside the covers were reports, each of which was stamped “Strictly confidential.”

“Henriette Stein,” read the first report, “21, Roman Catholic, daughter of Ludwig Stein, professor at the University, address, Fourth District, Number 9 Karolinerigasse, accompanied His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince yesterday, November 8, 1887, on a drive to Baden, near Vienna. The couple left Vienna at 11 A.M., arrived at their destination at 12:45 P.M., lunched at the Gasthof Zur Stadt Wien, and returned to Vienna at 3 P.M.” A second report revealed that Henriette Stein had gone on another drive with the Crown Prince up the Helenental—“total time elapsed, there and back, 2 hours and 40 minutes.” A third report mentioned a “
dejeuner dinatoîre
” at Mayerling, on November 19, at which the Crown Prince, “the aforesaid Stein,” Prince Philip of Coburg, Count Joseph Hoyos, and Count Leopold Traun were present. And, pedantically enough, it included the menu: “
Consommé en tasse
,
truite bleue
,
viande froide assortie
,
salade verte
,
petits fours
,
vin de Tokaye
, 1848, Grinzinger Auslese, 1876, Pomméry
extra sec
, 1861,” and added the time of the departures and arrivals: Dep. Vienna, South Station 10:05 A.M. Arr. Mayerling 12:15 P.M. Dep. Mayerling 1:40 P.M. Arr. Vienna, South Station, 3:50 P.M.” A number of sheets contained brief notes such as: “Meeting at the Second Rondeau in the Prater: the Stein woman was waiting there. His Imperial Highness, however, did not get out but waved to her from the carriage and drove on immediately because Herr Andor von Péchy came into sight at that moment from the direction of the Krieau Restaurant.” Or: “H.I.H. waited in vain for the Stein from 2:30 to 4:15 in the afternoon in front of the Passecker millinery shop on the Kohlmarkt, where she was trying on spring hats.” Or: “At the opening of the Hans Makart Exhibition His Imperial Highness engaged the Stein woman in conversation at such that Her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess stamped her foot with impatience and displeasure.” The informer's report on the “visit in the palace” took up more space. After an exact statement of time and the route taken, it went on: “The Stein woman's one-hour visit with the Crown Prince was interrupted only once, for five minutes, by Vice-Admiral Count Bombelles. According to the depositions of Captain of the Guard Ferdinand Kirschner, who during the entire time was stationed in the antechamber, the voice the Crown Prince was constantly audible and sounded excited and extremely angry, as though he were violently reproaching the Stein woman. Captain Kirschner recalled having distinctly heard such words as ‘torture' and ‘anyone who is so absolutely devoid of understanding!' Puechel, groom of the chambers, made a deposition to the effect that for many minutes after the departure of the Stein woman His Imperial Highness remained seated motionless at his desk with a distorted expression on his face.”

Besides all this the gray file contained the following official entry: “Henriette Stein married to Franz Alt, member of the board of the Chamber of Commerce, owner of the C. Alt piano factory,” and concluded with a “comment” from the Privy Chancellery addressed to Police Headquarters under date of February 1, 1889: “Frau Alt, née Stein, conforming to telegraph request, called at this office this morning. She gave rise to the impression that she belongs to certain circles which, under cover of liberal views, harbour anti-dynastic, unpatriotic, and revolutionary sentiments. She remained inaccessible to the representations made to her in this connection. Since the aforesaid Stein woman, through her relationship to His Imperial Highness the late Crown Prince, has come into possession of knowledge of certain circumstances which, if made known, would have most regrettable political repercussions, and since above all it might put the tragic demise of his said Highness in a light calculated to cause unrest among the people, consequently it is respectfully recommended that appropriate measures to deal with this matter be weighed.” To this comment the chief of police had added a note his own handwriting: “To be laid before the first district attorney for consideration of official inquiry along lines of Paragraph 58 of the Penal Code.”

Franz handed the file of documents back to his brother. “What is Paragraph 58?” he asked.

“High treason,” Otto Eberhard explained in the same suave tone he used to such effect when scoring some deadly point in a drawing room or in court.

“And what do you propose to do, Mr. Public Prosecutor?”

“That's what I should like to hear first from you,” said the elder brother. “But I can't believe you can have any remaining doubts after reading that file!”

“Quite right,” replied the younger one, and his face, so clouded with the cares of the last few days, now brightened for the first time. “I feel now there's no doubt at all.”

“Go to Dr. Winiwarter. He is the best lawyer for divorces.”

“I have no need of him,” Franz said. “The one thing I don't understand is how you have built up your reputation as a lawyer. In that whole filthy little file there's nothing except that Hetti is a wonderful girl! Thanks for the proof. So long!”

He closed the office door firmly behind him, and once in the long stone-paved corridor of the County Criminal Courthouse, his face grew even brighter, until he began to whistle. It was a tune from
The Gypsy Baron.

 

The remarkable thing about Herr Jarescu was that he did not consider himself an ordinary blackmailer, and at that a rather coarse and stupid one, but a writer of some stature. Yet he was a regular blackmail journalist, whose paper,
Vienna Signals
,
 
which he published weekly himself, was a typical scandal sheet, obtaining readers by what it printed and money by what it left unprinted.

Jarescu, according to his own assertions, came from Romania—from Bucharest, the capital. He had been a resident of Vienna for nearly twenty years, and whoever considered himself in society there read his paper, which devoted its attention more to private lives than to politics and provided both with flowery comments—which was why Daniel Spitzer, the witty journalist, spoke of it in his “Vienna Strolls” as the “hotbed of Vienna journalism.”

Nevertheless, Jarescu's sources were splendid. He scorned denials, and his “honor as a journalist,” which he maintained he possessed, he based on the literal exactitude of all that was disparaging, spiteful, and detrimental in his little weekly. His column was called “The Reverse of the Medal,” and every Friday fresh victims looked forward with terror to its appearance.

When, ten months earlier, a person who remained anonymous called to Henriette's attention an impending article in which her mother's life and death were dragged in the mud she had not been clearly aware of Jarescu's motives. Yet they were so simple. His eldest son, a law student, had had the bad luck to be failed by Professor Stein in his oral examinations for his doctor's degree. As soon as the Romanian gentleman began to look round he always found things, and in the case of this unaccommodating professor he had discovered enough to break his very backbone—five letters. These proved that his wife—whom, as every one in Vienna knew, he had put on a pedestal of adoration—had been the mistress of the director of the opera throughout her married life. A few quotations from a few love letters, and the professor's life illusion would fall about his head like a house of cards, and with such finality that there could be no restoration.

At least, that was what Jarescu had explained to Henriette. “You understand, my dear young lady,” he had said to her in his affected Viennese dialect, from which he was still unable to exclude his original habits of speech, “that all this is extremely painful for me. But put yourself in my place. I came into possession of certain documents by purest chance, as I emphasized to you earlier. If your father were a private individual, well and good; we should draw a veil over the whole matter. But alas, he's not that. An entire younger generation is studying civil law under him, marriage laws! Now it's important, as you will admit, Miss Henriette, that the public should be properly informed about such a man. I have that authentic information, and consequently my honor as a journalist requires that I should publish it.”

It was because of this conversation that Henriette's life had taken such an extreme and dangerous turn and had continued so since then. Thanks to her conviction that with sufficient will one can achieve any end, she had simply said: “Those letters may not be published.” This had also been discussed, and it became apparent what an accommodating gentleman Jarescu was. In return for a certain sum—shall we say ten thousand florins? (he was the one who suggested it)—he would abstain from publicity. Anyone else would have seen through Jarescu's scheme, and would have told himself: “In the first place, those five letters don't mean much; in the second place, it can't be altogether difficult to dispose of a blackmailer. A simple call on the chief of police will do.” It would not have occurred to anyone else even to consider buying off a Jarescu for ten thousand florins. Henriette, however, who was “the most unpractical creature in the world” (her father's indulgent way of describing her definite inability to take things at their proper value), delighted to find a path out of this horrible labyrinth, said: “Agreed.” Now all she had to solve was the mere trifle of the problem: who would pay the ten thousand florins? She would do it, she maintained. Meanwhile, easy as Jarescu was to talk to, it was extremely difficult to make him believe anything.