The Ludwig Conspiracy(29)

Finally I reached the more salubrious Maxvorstadt district again, turned left down Schellingstrasse, and stopped outside the Schelling Salon, which had opened a few years earlier. The restaurant was built entirely in the Viennese coffeehouse style, with tall, bright windows and a pretty garden where a few chestnut trees grew, providing shade. Von Strelitz and Pfaffinger got out.

“You wait here,” the agent told me, and then they disappeared into the restaurant.

I had spent around ten minutes biting my nails on the driver’s box of my cab, when a second cab suddenly approached. The door at the back opened, and a small, elderly gentleman with a gray, full beard appeared. He was carrying a walking stick and wore a dark suit of fine fabric; clever eyes shone behind his pince-nez. I was sure I had seen the man somewhere before, but try as I might, I couldn’t place the occasion. It must have been at the court at some time or another.

The elderly gentleman went straight into the Schelling Salon, leaving me alone with my gloomy thoughts. What was I to do? So far all I had found out was that Prussia and the team of Bavarian ministers were planning to make some move against the king, which we already suspected. I cursed quietly, because I couldn’t place the gray-bearded man’s name.

Finally I could stand it no longer. In defiance of all caution, I got down from the driver’s box, walked over to the restaurant, and tentatively opened the door. Most of the customers were sitting out in the beer garden because of the fine September weather; indoors, gentlemen reading newspapers and smoking occupied only a few tables. At the back of the room, several billiard tables were visible through the haze of tobacco smoke, but no one was playing at them. From there, an opaque glass door led to a private room.

I smiled at the waitress and ordered a small beer, then went over to the billiard tables. The closed glass door was not far away, and I could in fact hear the quiet murmur of voices beyond it. Hoping to be inconspicuous, I picked up a billiard cue and acted as if I were about to practice a few shots, while my attention was entirely devoted to the conversation in the private room. If I concentrated, I could hear the voices behind the glass fairly clearly.

“. . . Must not delay a day longer,” Secretary Pfaffinger was saying. “New craftsmen whom the king can’t pay off are turning up every week. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.”

“You mean all his little delusions?” interrupted von Strelitz. “Bismarck has already told me about those.”

“He converses at the table with Louis Quatorze and the lovely Marie Antoinette,” said Pfaffinger. “With the dead. If he speaks at all, that is. Generally he gets up at five in the afternoon and rides all night. Then the rooms have to be darkened during the day because His Majesty is asleep or reading. And all that fancy dress. In Linderhof, the footmen have to go around in fur costumes and dance with him. While on Mount Schachen, he takes himself for the caliph of Baghdad. He is intolerable—a disgrace to our country.”

“Is it true that one of his servants may approach him only if wearing a black mask?” asked von Strelitz. “And another has to wear a seal on his forehead as a sign of punishment?” He laughed quietly. “Not a bad notion. Sometimes I’d like to brand my own seal into my officials’ foreheads.”

“All very well for you to talk,” said Pfaffinger with a sigh. “You don’t have to live with his crazy notions. What do you think, Doctor? Isn’t the man an outright lunatic?”

These last remarks were obviously addressed to the third man, who now cleared his throat and spoke for the first time.

“It does indeed all suggest paranoia. And it wouldn’t be the first case in his family. However, I ought to have a rather longer conversation with the king first.”

“We can’t risk that,” hissed Pfaffinger. “If Ludwig gets wind of our intention to have him declared insane, he’ll put us all up against the wall.”

I froze. The cue almost slipped from my hands as the full import of what I had just heard dawned on me. The ministers wanted to certify Ludwig insane and then depose him! They were not plotting an assassination, then, but a more insidious kind of murder. And now I remembered how it was that I knew the third man. He was no less than the famous psychiatrist Dr. Bernhard von Gudden, who had already certified Ludwig’s brother, Otto, insane. I had seen him once or twice in Fürstenried Castle. What the three gentlemen in that room were planning was nothing short of high treason.

The waitress at the counter cast me a suspicious look. I must have been getting paler and paler, and it obviously hadn’t escaped her notice. Nervously, I sipped my beer so as not to attract any more attention. When the girl turned to other customers, I crept very close to the glass door to go on eavesdropping on their secret conversation.