"By the way he rides I should say it was his Satanic Majesty," declared the other, a country recruit.
"You're not far wrong, maybe; but, all the same, it is His Majesty our Emperor," replied the first.
The hands on the big, white clock-face looking down from the Bahnhof tower pointed at five minutes to one, when Maximilian reined up the mare before the main entrance, and bade a _dienstmann_ hold his horse, as if he had been a common townsman. Something the fellow shouted about being there to carry luggage, not to hold horses (for he did not know the Emperor by sight), but Maximilian waited neither to hear nor argue. He sprang up the broad stone stairway, three steps at a time.
"Has the Orient express gone yet?" he demanded of the man at the door of the departure platform.
"Five minutes ago," returned the official, not troubling to look up.
An unreasoning fury against fate raged in Maximilian's breast. He ruled this country, yet everything in it seemed to combine in a plot to thwart his dearest desire. For a moment he felt as if he had come up against a blank wall and saw no present way of getting round it; but that was only for an instant, since the Emperor was not a man of slow decisions. His first step was to inquire what was the earliest stop made by the Orient express. In three hours, he learned, it would reach Wandeck, the last station on the Rhaetian side of the frontier. What was the next train, then, leaving Salzbrück for Wandeck? In twenty minutes, a _personenzug_ would go out. After that, there would be no other train for two hours. The _personenzug_ would arrive at Wandeck only fifty minutes earlier than the _schnellzug_ following so much later, therefore most people preferred to wait. But Maximilian, having gathered this intelligence, was not of the majority; he chose the fifty minutes in Wandeck, for even if he courted publicity by engaging a special, so long a time must pass before it could be ready that he would gain no advantage.
Before taking his ticket, however, he telephoned the Hohenburgerhof, to satisfy himself beyond doubt that the De Courcys had actually gone. There was a delay of a few minutes before the answer came; but presently he was informed that the ladies had left the hotel. This decided his plan of action once for all, and the short remaining interval before the departure of the slow train he snatched for writing out two telegrams, one to Baroness von Lynar, the other to a person more important.