Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

it approached, spent night and day in its preparation. The son's extravagances were not altogether unknown to the mother; but when she saw him stalwart and confident as Hercules after his twelve labours, her maternal fears were set at rest. Curious to relate, neither his débuts nor his labours in the forensic career, which he at first embraced, were of a kind to inspire much hope in her who cherished such great expectations.

Meanwhile the financial circumstances of the Bismarcks had become much impaired, partly owing to the sumptuous life when in Berlin during the winter; also to the expensive yearly excursions to Ems and elsewhere; but most of all to the agricultural experiments introduced on their estates. In 1838, therefore, the sons proposed that the parents should leave them not only the reversions, but grant to them the present possessions of the demesne in Pomerania, and that they (the elders) should return to Schönhausen. They intended, by a more careful supervision and management of the land, to make it more remunerative, and by this means to ward off the total ruin which threatened the family; see

ing that Schönhausen, thanks to the care bestowed upon it for several years already by a conscientious and business-like relative, was yielding a substantial revenue. The plan was carried out. The illness of Frau von Bismarck, increased of late, obliged her to repair to Berlin to consult the most eminent physicians. But her disease, hopeless and incurable, terminated fatally in the capital on the 1st of November 1839, when she had not quite reached fifty.

The old friends of the family, to whom the mother's ambition for and estimate of her younger son were no secret, have often said to the chancellor, while he was as yet but an ambassador in St. Petersburg and Paris, Bismarck, if your mother could have but witnessed this!'

[ocr errors][merged small]

A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM.

[ocr errors]

BY THE AUTHOR OF A STRANGE WITNESS,'HANDS AND HEARTS,' etc.

Ir was a lovely July morning in the year 1821. The Baron von Hoheneck, the wealthy owner of the charming villa of Rosenau Park, about half way between Leipzig and Gohlis, had started at early dawn on a ramble through the woods. A little after seven, Martin Krause, the baron's valet, was sent into the road by the baroness, to watch for his master's return. He soon saw him come out of the wood, and walk briskly on to a small pavilion, a few hundred yards away from the mansion.

In this pavilion the baron had his study in the summer season, where it was his wont to pass half an hour or so every morning before breakfast. Martin reported to the baroness that his master had returned from his ramble, and the lady gave orders accordingly for the morning meal to be got ready at once. But a full hour passed, and the baron came not. Hoheneck was a good man and a kind master; yet he was a little self-willed, and those about him were well aware that he was apt to resent the least semblance even of an attempted interference with his occasionally slightly eccentric ways. So the

baroness was reluctant to send for him. However, when another hour had passed without bringing her husband, she began to feel uneasy, and at last despatched Martin in search of him.

The valet gave a discreet knock at the door of the baron's study in the pavilion. There was no answer. He knocked once more and a third

VOL. XXI.

time, with the same negative result. At last he got a little frightened. He ventured to turn the handle, and he gently drew the door open to look in.

There sat the baron in his large armchair, his head hanging over on the left side, with the mouth wide open, and the eyes fixed in a glassy stare.

Martin, who had served with the baron in the war of Liberation, and had thus had ample occasion to become familiar with death in many forms, took in the true state of affairs at a glance: the Baron von Hoheneck was dead.

There was an extensive fearful contusion on the right temple, evidently the effect of a heavy blow dealt with some formidable blunt weapon: the Baron von Hoheneck had been foully murdered.

There were deep consternation and bitterest grief in the pleasant. villa. The bereaved widow, struck to the innermost life by the awfully sudden blow, fell from one hysteric fit into another, until Death, lingering still about the place where he had wrought this blasting desolation, remorsefully pitying, beckoned her on to follow her beloved consort. There was only one child, now doubly-orphaned, Philip, a boy barely three years old, and thus happily unconscious yet of life's last and supremest mystery. was truly heartrending to see this little innocent strive to climb on his dead father's knee, and draw his attention to the new top and

KK

It

whip which his mamma had given him this very morning.

Martin Krause had served the baron through many years with all the warm loyal affection and veneration of the glorious old type of family retainers abounding in the days of yore. The fearful calamity nearly crushed him; still the old soldier remained calm and collected in the midst of the general consternation of the household. He promptly despatched mounted messengers to the Leipzig and Gohlis authorities, and to the nearest physicians. So the chief commissary of the Leipzig police was soon on the spot, attended by a dozen subordinates. Half a score of doctors also speedily gathered, and many old friends of the family came up.

A careful investigation was at once entered upon. The merest cursory examination of the dead man's head showed unmistakably that the temporal bone on the right had been literally smashed in by a tremendous blow with the broad end of a heavy hammer. The murderer was presumably a strong man, then, and most likely a man of tall stature. Considering the powerful frame and the notorious Herculean strength of the late baron, coupled with the fact that his dagger was found lying bare on the table before him, whilst his double-barrelled fowling piece was resting quite handy against the right arm of the chair, with both barrels loaded, it was evident that the unhappy man must have been taken altogether unawares, and assailed suddenly by the cowardly

assassin.

Nowhere in or about the pavilion was the least trace of a struggle discernible. The entrance gate to the park, through which the baron had passed in, was found locked, and the key to it in the baron's pocket.

The murdered man evidently had just begun writing a letter when the fatal blow was struck, for the fingers of the right hand still firmly retained, even in death, their hold upon the pen. 'Dear old boy,' were the few words traced on the paper, 'the bearer of this, my good old—' Here the writing had evidently been brought to an end suddenly by the murderous assault. There was clearly nothing whatever in these few words to afford the police the least clue or guidance.

The pavilion stood quite close to the wood, with no more than a clear width of about ten feet interposed between the large bow window of the study and the foremost row of trees. The window was wide open; but as the servants stated that the baron had always had it kept open from morning to night in summer time, this was not much to go by; besides, no footprints could be detected outside the pavilion.

There were, indeed, some faint traces of steps discernible here and there on the grass at a short distance from the window; but it was quite clear that these could only have been left by the light pressure of women's or boys' boots or shoes, which certainly could not, by the widest stretch of imagination, be drawn into association with the indisputably large and heavy feet of the burly perpetrator of the crime.

The wood, as indeed the whole neighbourhood about Gohlis, was then, as it continues to be at the present day, a favourite resort for botanists. This very morning there had been several professors and numbers of students from the University of Leipzig rambling through the wood, some of whom had seen the baron and conversed with him; but none could remember having met a powerfully-built man, likely to have struck that tre

mendous blow. Nor had the ranger seen any suspicious characters lurking about.

What could have been the motive of the crime? Was it enmity, revenge, robbery? This looked the most mysterious part of the whole affair. No one knew the murdered man to have an enemy in the world. He certainly could never have given to man or woman such mortal offence as would even in the remotest way account for such fierce and dastardly retaliation. Robbery, then, seemed the only possible motive left. But here again it could not but strike the officers of the law as most strange that a case with some thirty thousand thalers value in negotiable paper was left intact in the strong box, which was found standing wide open at the other end of the table at which the unhappy man had been seated when he received the fatal blow. A casket with precious stones was also left untouched. No attempt seemed to have been made to take the baron's watch or his purse, or the large valuable brilliant which he wore on the middle finger of his right hand, or the two costly hoops of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds worn by him on the ring finger of the right hand and on the ring finger of the left hand. His diamond studs and sleeve-buttons had also been left untouched.

About forty louis d'or were found in the purse, and some two hundred thalers in silver in a drawer of the safe.

Now, indeed, Martin Krause had an impression that the baron had a short time previously kept in his safe a sum of from four to five thousand thalers in louis d'or and double louis. On the other hand it was known that the baron had quite recently invested largely in city bonds, for which he certainly might have paid in gold.

His

books threw no light upon this matter: the poor man had kept them rather like a captain of dragoons than like a man of business. The only person who might have been able to clear up this and some other important points in the inquiry, the baroness, had unhappily herself been hurried out of life by the same fatal blow that had struck down her beloved husband.

The only additional scrap of evidence which had the least bearing upon the case was given in the course of the afternoon by Professor Tauber, one of the oldest and dearest friends of the murdered

man.

The professor had been botanising in the wood, when the baron had accidentally met him. They had had a chat together. The professor, it would appear, had just heard that Count Seebach, an old war-comrade of the baron's, who was living on his estates near the Saxon capital, had in his possession a fine collection of rare Elzevirs, which he, not much given to books, would not feel disinclined to part with on reasonable terms. So the professor had asked the baron for a few words of introduction to his friend, which Hoheneck had cheerfully promised to bring personally to the professor in Leipzig in the course of the afternoon. This explained the letter which the unhappy man had just begun writing when the assassin struck his foul blow.

The professor, unconscious of his friend's sad fate, had returned to his modest bachelor's dwelling in the Katharinen Strasse at about nine. At one in the afternoon he had gone, as was his daily wont, to drink his chopin of wine in the famous old Rathswage Cellar at the corner of Catherine Street. Here he had heard the first of the fearful news, and had at once hastened to Rosenau Park.

Professor Tauber had known the baron from childhood. At a later period young Hoheneck had been one of the most eager and attentive auditors at the professor's far-famed lectures on natural philosophy. To the Baroness Maria von Hoheneck Tauber had been godfather he had loved both of them with the warm affection of a childless old man; and now they were both dead, carried off suddenly by a startling, overwhelming calamity.

No wonder the old man was well-nigh crushed with grief. It was affecting to see him literally throw himself upon the murdered body of his dear friend, which he held in a close embrace, sobbing convulsively all the while, and almost bitterly charging God that He had permitted the perpetration of this foul deed. When the first fierce spasm of his grief had calmed down a little, he fondly patted the cold cheeks and kissed the pale lips of the man who in life had been so near his heart. O my beloved George,' he murmured at last, in a semi-conscious state and half dreamingly, as one slowly awakening from a frightful nightmare, to find himself face to face with a still more frightful reality, 'dearest and most cherished of all my pupils, this is bitter, most bitter to bear; but it must have been the will of the Almighty, and we can only humbly submit. He knoweth that if all the blood in my old veins could bring back thy dear life, I would joyfully shed the last drop of it. But, alas, alas, the past is irretrievably gone from us, and there thou, only just now so full of vigour, liest stark before me, never to rise again on this earth, whilst I, decrepit old man, am left standing sad and desolate to mourn thee! Bitter, ay, bitter indeed! Oh, how gladly would I change places with thee! And my darling little Maria also swept away mer

cilessly!-No, no!-God forgive me! not mercilessly, but mercifully most mercifully! For what agony would have been hers to suffer, and mine to see her suffer it!' This in a fierce burst of passionate grief. Nay, nay, thank God, this has been spared me !'

Then, by a most sudden transition, the man of science, the calm student of Nature, the impassive wielder of the searching scalpel, took the place of the tender, acutely suffering, bitterly bereaved friend. He curiously examined the place where the smashing blow had fallen; then, turning to the professors and physicians around, he exclaimed, almost exultingly, 'This is a great consolation indeed! He could not have suffered even one brief instant's pain. Before the startled nerves could possibly have carried the feeling of the fatal blow to the great centre of consciousness, that centre itself must have been dead to all impression from without. You see, gentlemen, this is a blow such as I have long been endeavouring to recommend for all purposes of slaying when slaying is absolutely needed. You may see here how much more merciful such a life-annihilating lightning blow as this must be than even decapitation by the guillotine, where there is always the horrid reflection that the brain may continue to feel and to suffer until the last drops of the fluid of life have run out of the severed veins. Our own method of execution by axe or sword is simply horrible, and hanging is positively beastly. No, no; the hammer for me, my own broad-faced hammer, which I decidedly must again petition the town council to adopt in the city slaughter-house.'

It was ghastly to listen to the man now set off riding at full speed on his hobby; but every one present felt that it was a merciful thing for him, as it obliterated, for the

« ForrigeFortsæt »