Plot Summery of Crown Prince Rudolph book # 1

Report Number 1: The Report Of Mr. Janus The Two Faced Assassin of Gen. Charles Gordon And the Mystery Of The Werewolf Of The Water Mill.

Read all about Rudolph’s exciting childhood adventure with the Werewolf of the Water Mill, the Ghost In The Closet, and his first meeting with the genius of electricity Tesla. Then follow Rudolph to Trieste for a chance meeting with General Charles Gordon and their exciting adventure in the famous Skocjan Caves which climaxes with a dangerous rendevous with secret agents and assassins of the Black Hand.

Report Number 2: The Mystery Of The Haunted Hofburg And A Pair Of Screaming Skulls.

Let the child Rudolph lead you by the hand through the ghostly haunted rooms of the Imperial Hofburg Palace. Meet the Screaming Skull anointed to protect the Habsburg Dynasty. Then meet the Brutal Colonel, the Bogeyman, and the ghost of Mozart. Then rendevous for a midnight meeting with a raven, an owl, and a Strigoi Vampire before finishing up with the affair of the Screaming Skull stolen by Archduke Otto.

Report Number 3: The Mystery Of The Time Slip And The Scandal Of The Brighton Bombing.

Take an aeronautic flight in a hot air balloon with Rudolph and the Prince of Wales before visiting to a mysterious village lost in a slip in time. Then arrive in Brighton just in time for a bombing right in the middle of a top secret conference with all of the usual suspects: Fenian Irish Revolutionaries, Russian Nihilists, Anarchists from the suspicious Autonamic Club, Italian spies, Trieste agents of the Black Hand, Prussian agents, agents from Diogenes House (Military Intelligence London), a suspected double agent, and an American Buccaneer (heiress) from New York City.

 

Report Number 4:The Cataclysm That Was Koniggratz. And The Last Train Out Of Vienna.

Follow Rudolph’s adventures as a boy telegrapher in General Benedek’s Army during the Prussian Invasion and the siege of Vienna. Then take the last refugee train out of Vienna to meet the dashing Hungarian Andrassy

Report Number 5:The Prague Mystery Of The Turk, The Automaton, And The Dybbuk .

Discover Prague with young Rudolph. Be seduced by the infamous Helen Vetsera the mother of the soon to be infamous Mary Vetsera. Meet Golem the sentient Indian created Automaton Robot. Then help Rudolph foil a conspiracy to trigger a tragic pogrom of the Jews of Prague aided and abetted by Golem, a Rabbi, his beautiful daughter Rosa, Baron ‘Turkish’ Hirsch, the newspaper syndicate owner Moriz Szeps aided and abetted by the infamous chess playing Automaton known as The Turk. And make sure to follow Crown Prince Rudolph’s future adventures in this continuing series which will document his amazing life and tragic death.

 

Book 2

Prologue: The Banner With The Strange Device.

Report Number 1: The Robbery Of Balmoral

Report Number 2: Rockefeller’s Worst Nightmare.

Discover the mystery behind the bastion of London’s most anti-social club the Diogenes House. Then witness a technological ghost entrapping a merchant of death as MC gloriously reappears in Rudolph’s life — along with the shadowy Doctor Watson! Then visit the high tech bastion called Prince Albert’s Keeping constructed deep below Balmoral Castle where the late Prince Albert, the Victorian genius Brunel, and Lady Lovelace finally constructed the Babbage Divergence Engine. The first computer. A computer that is haunted! Rudolph and MC must help Wales and Queen Victoria ferret out where a ray gun has been misplaced. Or has it been stolen by Willy of the Withered Hand?

Then follow Rudolph through the terrifying siege of the Austro Hungarian Embassy in Istanbul! After surviving the siege Rudolph explores an archeological dig in Mesopotamia with a misplaced cowboy from Yale named Guy Fawkes. The Junkers are illegally exploring for oil in the ancient ruins of the City of the Drakon. Rudolph suspects that Prof. Salz is plotting to salt the dismal ruins with a bogus treasure. A pilfered treasure bought from black-marketeers! The same black-marketeers which sold Schliemann his supposed Treasure of Priam.

A mysterious Colonel Hamid is also there. But he is not interested in forged provenances by crooked archaeologists. Hamid is following a trail of corpses from the Black Sea through Athens to the City of the Drakon. Black-marketeers turning on each other? Crooked archaeologists killing anyone who can reveal their frauds? Or are the corpses a trail of carnage left by curst loot from a forgotten tomb? And is the cursed loot about to bring a Draugr back to life along with a murderous demon called Stheno! Then follow Rudolph back to London where he must save the British Museum from a murderous fiend and a robbery of the museum’s most famous gold and silver of Classical Greece and Rome!

Book Three

Scandal Of The London Scalper And The Return Of John Watson To What He Does Best. Is the latest installment of the exciting e-book series The Secret Reports Concerning Crown Prince Rudolph.

A series of gruesome murders are occurring in foggy London during a conference being hosted by the London School of Economics which Crown Prince Rudolph is attending. People are being scalped! And terrified witnesses report that each crime scene is haunted by a ghostly Banshee of Hell in her billowing black veils. And as every Irishman will tell you, the Banshee is the Harbinger forewarning each victim of their coming doom!

And there have also been an escalating series of bombings. Are they the work of Fenians? Anarchists? Nihilists? Or some new terror organization? And how do the bombings connect to an obscure cabal in the depths of the Foreign Office known as the Banner With The Strange Device and an equally mysterious plot concerning Mr. Hempher, Gentleman Spy, which the Ottoman Turks are pursuing?

Meanwhile, Rudolph and his clique of economists decide to investigate a series of derringer murders of esoteric forgers who specialize in obscure Eighteenth Century academia, arcane memoirs, and provenances. Why is a derringer welding killer killing off such obscure petty criminals? And how does this connect to a mysterious death by spontaneous combustion?

At the same time the Ottoman Embassy announces an auction for oil exploration bids in Mesopotamia. But the bloody rampage of the Mad Mahdi of the Sudan is scaring away even Rockefeller. If Khartoum falls then no oil contract will be worth the paper it is written on.

Will Charles Gordon agree to go to Khartoum? Will Rudolph and his clique of stodgy economists track down the Derringer Killer? Will Scotland Yard Special Branch stop the bombings? Will Mr. Hempher be unmasked? And will Doctor Watson and Lestrade hunt down The Scalper and his shadowing Harbinger of Doom the Banshee of Hell before he strikes again?

Book Four

Book 4:

Rudolph meets the infamous ghost of Hackelnberg the Hunter who rode as the gillie to the wild Valkyries “May I hunt with my gods forever and a day! Until the end of days! Until the Judgement Day itself! And so I cursed myself! Beware er you be curst as well!”

Then Rudolph takes his vindictive bride Stephanie to the sinister haunted fairytale castle of Laxenburg where by ancient tradition the newly married royals must procreate. Of this the Rubber Princess would later write “I would die of my disillusion.”

Meanwhile Rudolph explores the mystery of the Black Curiosity Box, The Worm, and the Monster of the Laxenburg. Then Rudolph must confront the original magic mirror of ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?’ before discovering the most terrible secret of the sinister fairytale castle: the Prehistoric Horse Sacrifice!

Then Rudolph must help his old friend Tesla the genius of electricity who has been entrapped by an Ouija Board ghost! This is followed by the very mysterious events at the Electricity Exhibit in Vienna including an unexpected appearance by no less than Tesla!

During the premiere of the Prague Tech Steam Powered Elephant the guest of honor is the famous French author Jules Verne. Verne is arriving by his famous airship ‘The Twentieth Century’! But who commands the sinister black military airship which unleashes the towering robotic ‘Golemesque’ War Machine? Can Golem the Robotic Protector of the Jews of Prague become Prague’s protector and save the city?

Then follow Rudolph’s adventure in the far away Croatian town infested with Maxim Machine Gun Warlords, Spies, Seducers, Cons, Cheats, Double Agents, and Doctor Watson. Then Vienna is gripped by riots led by Anarchists, Marxists, Revolutionaries, Pan Germans, and Double Agents working for the notorious Camarilla! And Rudolph is taken hostage!

After barely escaping with his life Rudolph and his reluctant wife Stephanie take a tour of the dangerous Balkans. “Thou has slain The Scion of the Moon!” the terrified natives tell Rudolph. “Does not thy lady know she rides in a wagon with the pelts of werewolves?”

“No” Rudolph said. “She only cares that I tossed 27 pieces of matching luggage down river.”

Then Rudolph and Stephanie travel to Istanbul where they enter the infamous ‘Golden Cage’.There they meet the mad Sultan as he plays devious mind games on his two vulnerable royal guests. The Sultan offers a tantalizing deal to Rudolph. If Rudolph wins the chess game the Sultan will sign the contract to allow the completion of the Transcontinental Orient Express Railroad Corridor to Istanbul and beyond. But each chess piece the Sultan slays symbolically on the chess board he will then slay very precisely in real life. “Let us play with the fate of the Orient Railroad Scheme reckoned against the fate of human lives! If you lose you may offer up one life as a human sacrifice. The choice of that life will be yours to make. But that life must be paid tomorrow at exactly high noon!”

Then Rudolph visits Romania. “The historic trauma lives on as if echos of night terrors that cloud the mind at dawn” King Carol warns Rudolph. “We are building a modern railroad across a prehistoric land that is still haunted by primaeval nightmares!”

Then Rudolph stumbles across a mysterious grave: Countess Elizabeth von Gratz of The Order of the Black Veil. ‘The Dead Travel Fast’.This leads to a terrifying discovery at a ruined nunnery which has been converted into a nightmare scene of high tech horror! Countess Elizabeth von Gratz is no less than the infamous Elizabeth Bathory! The most murderous female vampire in history! Her reign of terror was the inspiration for Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein! And she is back at work! “I found one of Mother’s magic mirrors and I beheld a ghostly double reflection of Sisi overlapping another image staring out at me! I did not realize it at the time but I saw Bathory! And Bathory’s accomplice is no less than Dr. Ruthven! Who is treating my mother Empress Sisi in Geneva at his mysterious spa and retreat as we speak! Bathory is plotting to murder Empress Sisi!”

 

Book Five

Report number 1:Beware The Bat! Stryria! And No More Damn Red Wallpaper!

“The handwriting of the notes is the same handwriting on the front page of this notebook! Look!” Rudolph said. Then Stoker opened the mysterious antique notebook to the front page. “‘Write in ME if you dare! But beware! The Memory’s dream perchance! There will be no second chance! Nor mercy to undo the scribble! Nor cross through or quibble! Nor erase the mistake! Or cross out the ache! Once written is the deed done! Once conceived it cannot be undone! So write in ME if you dare! But beware!’” Then Stoker fanned the pages filled with scribbled notes in his own handwriting.

“What! Do you mean that as I wrote down ideas for my next penny dreadful in this notebook my ideas actually came to life?”

“Yes!” Rudolph replied.

“I am almost afraid to ask!” the policeman asked Stoker. “What is your penny dreadful about Mr. Stoker?”

“Vampires!”

Report Number 2: 2:Countdown To Gotterdammerung! The Twilight Of The Gods!

1886 is a dire year for Crown Prince Rudolph. First he almost dies of a bout of gonorrhea which is aggravated by the disastrous decision of Supreme Commander Albrecht and Emperor Francis Joseph to order a revolutionary state of the repeater rifle to fire obsolete ammo. Can Rudolph and General Archduke Leopold salvage the disastrous 11 mm Blunder which becomes the 11 mm Debacle after the French unveil their own 8 mm full metal jacket bullet filled with nitro which immediately renders every other nation’s weaponry obsolete?

Then Rudolph attends an important diplomatic event in Berlin. The capital city of the Imperial Second Reich is giddy over rumors of war with France. Meanwhile Willy invites Rudolph to have his photograph taken by the amazing Herr Doppel. Herr Doppel’s amazing camera takes such remarkable photographs it is as if the bit of the soul of each sitter is ensnared within the magic silver tintype!

“What sort of camera is this Bismarck to be so complex indeed?” Rudolph asks as he surveys the mysterious electric powered camera. “What sort of machine ? Does it suck out the pranic energy of a body’s aura? Or does it suck out the psychic energy of the soul? Is it like a psychic machine vampire?”

“Don’t be silly” Bismarck shouted in that oddly nasal high voice he possessed which clashed with his towering and beefy body. He yanked the mysterious machine away from Rudolph. “It is just an experimental prototype camera!”

Then Ludwig of Bavaria dies very mysteriously. Is it the suicide of a madman? Murder? Shot in the back? So make that murder and assassination! Or is it a coup deposing a poor king who knows something about Bismarck which the ruthless Chancellor cannot allow to be revealed? And how does that connect with a mysterious convention of Merchants of Death who are bidding on the ultimate weapon of mass destruction called the Spear of Wotan Cannon concealed somewhere inside of Ludwig’s fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein?

Report Number 3: Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, The Green Park Murders, And The Mystery Of Wellus House International!

“….Clever Brigadier!” the muffled voice replied. “So you figured out how we stun our prey. I suppose you have figured out the whole mystery eh? The role of the Green Park specimens? Our master plan of world conquest? And how our master plan is being financed? By your own infantile wars!” Then the Morlock shot Rudolph! “You are going to be our special guest Crown Prince Rudolph! Welcome to the London branch of Wellus House International!”

Then discover why Otto’s pure white horse balked when he took a bet to jump his mount over a peasant’s funeral coffin.”Only my horse balked” Otto told Rudolph. “And I am a damn good rider! It was my bet in fact! The villagers saw us coming and set down the coffin in the road. It was a piece of cake. Even Crazy Sisi could have jumped it. It was nothing at all. Technically speaking that is. Bad taste. Sure. Bad taste is my speciality. But my horse point blank balked.”

“What color was your horse Otto?” Rudolph asked softly.

“White” Otto replied. “Pure white.” He looked quietly at Rudolph who sighed and pulled off his brigadier cap to rub his forehead.

“The joke was on me eh? That coffin held a vampire didn’t it?” Otto asked.

Rudolph nodded. “Yeah! The joke is on you Otto!”

Then discover the mystery of the messages of deadly warning which magically appear on the walls of Godollo the Imperial Hunting Retreat!

“Rip off these damn messages besmirching my imperial retreat!” Francis Joseph shouted. He would have done it himself but Francis Joseph literally did not know how to open or close a door or gate. So he certainly did not know how to rip off offending wallpaper. So the Majordomo rushed up and ripped at one of the bloody messages. He ripped a ream of expensive silk wallpaper savagely off the wall —- only to reveal ‘Someone is going to die’ scribbled BELOW the offending wallpaper. He gasped and ripped that paper off —- only to reveal yet another offensive scribble ‘Someone is going to die’ BELOW AND UNDERNEATH. So he pulled out his pocket knife and attacked the layers of very old wallpaper, ripping each layer away as if a layer of an onion, only to reveal yet more bloody red scribbles of ‘Someone is going to die’. Finally he ripped off the last layer of wallpaper to revealed the original bare wall. And as everyone watched terrified, a bloody but invisible finger wrote ‘Someone is going to die’ on the original bare wall…..

The Secret Reports Concerning Crown Prince Rudolph

Adopted from misfiled reports by and about Crown Prince Rudolph

Part 6

By J. E. F. Rose

Report Number 1:If It Is Destined Then What Good Are Cassandra’s Visions?

It is January of 1888 and it is also carnival. Intrigues are copulating with conspiracies to procreate machinations as the net tightens around Crown Prince Rudolph. Rudolph also receives a mysterious telegram: ‘It is you. Justify yourself. Tonight. Midnight. The carriage will await from without.’

Then Bubbles confronts Rudolph about his increasing reliance on morphine which his careless Hofburg doctor and spiteful Stephanie are encouraging. And during Rudolph’s struggles to kick the habit Bubbles proves that Rudolph has been poisoned! Arsenic!

Report Number 2:The Great Game Becomes The Great Race While The Ghost Of The White Lady Haunts The Black Ebony Box.

As General Archduke Leopold and Rudolph struggle to salvage the 11 mm Debacle which threatened to derail the army’s weaponry modernization program Schonerer and his Pan German thugs decide to take law into their own hands. They attack Szeps’ Tagblatt. Now the violent and antisemitic Prequel to the violent and antisemitic Nazis burst into the Jewish newspaper offices welding bludgeons and axes. And among the howling mob are a husband and wife boasting the last name of Hitler….

During the state funeral of Wilhelm I Rudolph overhears Herbert Bismarck whispering to The Gravedigger of the Habsburgs, Archduke Albrecht. “We are getting rid of our problem. When will you get rid of your problem? One of our nation’s worst enemies knows everything about our troubled roll out of our nation’s ultra modern weaponry! Therefore Rudolph is a problem! Therefore Rudolph is your problem! And we expect you to deal with your problem! Or else we will deal with it! Rudolph will be right smack in the middle of the telescopic cross-hairs of a sniper’s gun!….”

Meanwhile the dying Frederick and Vicky shows Rudolph a most strange and mysterious black ebony box of obviously ancient pedigree and mysterious engravings. “This box holds all of the darkest secrets of the House of Hohenzollern.”

“Is this related to the White Ghost who is the Bane of the Hohenzollerns? And the mysterious White Stag which is her living outer form?” Rudolph asked the dying man.

“Yes!” the dying man gasped. “And it is tied to the Decline And Fall of the House of Hohenzollern!…”

Then be regaled by the horrifying —-comic —– misadventure of the ‘Sinking’ of the Great Ship Greif! Meanwhile the seedy double agent Koinoff reveals the sinister plan of von Holstein the Spy Master of Berlin to assassinate Rudolph! Fritsche the gentleman spy spins a cunning counter plot. He drafts the famous opera star Inga Christiana Stromberg to trick Willy’s love besotted brother Henry into revealing incriminating evidence of Bismarck’s upcoming war, the mysterious ‘September Program’ , and the equally sinister ‘Lebensraum Project’. All the while spies including Doctor Watson play out devious gambits of the Great Game during a point to point automobile race which is climaxed by a female spy vanishing from a state of the art Zeppelin soaring high up over Prussia!

Meanwhile in London double agents exchange intelligence. “Where do these fashionable cruising parties cruise to?” Potocki asked. “These oh so fashionable parties the suddenly oh so sociable Junkers are holding for the naive elite of this gullible Island called Britain?”

“Just along the coastline. A way to yacht and indulge in this year’s fad. Photography!”

“What coastline? Whose coastline?”

“The local coastline” Kinsky replied “England. And picturesque Scotland. The obscure fords and locks. Why are you laughing Sir?”

The double agent laughed as he drank his champagne. “Marvelous! So clink by clink by clink and snap by snap by snap every angle of the crucial coastlines of England and Scotland are being photographed by junior Prussian officers helping bored English amateurs photograph their coastline! And so the German Admiralty assembles a montage of the entire coastline of England and Scotland! Especially cute little harbors and accidentally needful ports and those wonderful obscure Scottish locks and fords which U-Boats can cruise about in! Ha!”

Kinsky’ face fell as his handler laughed. “I did not think of that!”

“So how do we get ourselves invited on board one of these cruising parties?…..”

At the same time in Berlin Doctor Watson confronts Fritsche. “We are both after the same forgery which is being developed to trick the Austro Poles into betraying the Habsburgs for the Hohenzollerns! I suggest we work together!”

“Why?” Fritsche asked suspiciously. “We are genteel enemies!”

“But the enemy of my enemy is my temporary friend…..”

Report Number 3: The Crisis Rachets Upward As The Balkans Beckon.

“….So don’t push me Stephanie! You can see what I can do!” Rudolph shouted. “I already have the gun happy Serbs who want to kill me! I don’t need you to kill me! I already have your arsenic inside my bowels and guts and intestines killing me! Why can’t you at least let me risk my life in the Balkans in peace?”

“Francis Joseph told me rumors have reached him that your life has been threatened! That is why he wants me to come along!” Stephanie spat out. “To be your supporting wife! At the very least I can watch some anarchist or Serb nutter shoot you dead!”

So starts the happy second Balkans trip of Rudolph and Stephanie as Rudolph inspects the finished Transcontinental Orient Express Railroad Corridor. But The Serbs live up to everyone’s worse fears as Bubbles and Rudolph are kidnaped. But are the kidnappers Serbs? Anarchists? Russians? Or Agent Provocateurs of von Holstein? And who would want to trigger a Balkans War by assassinating Crown Prince Rudolph?

And indeed the screws are being racketed down ever tighter as Albrecht, Bismarck, and Willy find convincing reasons to want Rudolph dead. And Bubbles is struggling with another threat to Rudolph life beside Stephanie’s attempt to poison Rudolph in order to marry her gigolo Lonyay. Mary Vetsera has just delivered a life size nude oil painting of herself au natural to Rudolph’s digs which he shares with MC and her mother Mrs. Caspar. The Caspars are shocked and Rudolph is horrified. That means the seventeen year old stalker knows where Rudolph lives! And who he is living with! MC! And as Bubbles warns the Caspars, a teenaged stalker might start out as ‘cute’ but she will either end up at a crime scene or else an insane asylum.

Report Number 4: The First Murder On The First Transcontinental Orient Express —- Not Counting Anarchists, Fenians, Bombers, The Curse Of The Screaming Mummy, An Egyptian Criminal Mastermind, Doctor Watson,  And Mr. Carnegie.

The plot says it all!

The Secret Reports Concerning Crown Prince Rudolph

Adopted from misfiled reports by and about Crown Prince Rudolph

Part 7

By J. E. F. Rose

Table of Contents:

Report Number 1 September 1888 The Devil’s Pawnshop Of Fatal Gifts.

“……Last night! 2:45 AM! I heard a most strange message on my experimental radio. ‘I know what you need. Come to me. 53.16.85.’ Rudolph held up the sheet from the notepad to his train guest the Prince of Wales.

“What does it mean?” Wales said as he lit a cigarette and smoked it while studying the mysterious message. “Are the numbers map coordinates or railroad coordinates?”

“Yes! And here is the location!” Rudolph said as he pointed to a dot drawn on the map. “Our train is passing by it! Tomorrow in fact! Apparently a small village just off the main railroad route!”

“Intriguing mystery!” Wales said. “To be investigated?”

“Why not?” Rudolph laughed.

“Indeed! A mystery to be explored!”

And so Rudolph and Wales discover the sinister mystery of The Devil’s Pawnshop of Herr Acheronian. Pawnbroker Extraordinare. Have you lost your needful thing? “I know where it is. It is here. Your most secret of things. It is here. Come inside. We accept every currency as well as barter. Tell me what you have lost or else what you need and I will help you find it. Whatever your particular thing. I have it here. Let me help you find it….”

Meanwhile in another part of Vienna a dark shadow met another shadow hovering the shadows. “So we meet at last?” Koinoff whispered to the shadow behind the ‘sinister spidery handwriting’.

“Yes. We meet at last my dear Koinoff” a velvety voice whispered. “Secret agent. Double agent. Triple agent. Or have you lost track of all of the people you claim to serve?”

“Oh have no fear” the seedy Pole whispered to the shadow in the shadows. “I know exactly who I serve. Me….” So as Rudolph entertains Wales in the Devil’s pawnshop diverse plots and schemes and machinations unfold which will climax at Mayerling.

Report Number 2 October 1888 Damned Whatever The Choice.

Despite presiding over a successful war games which premiered the best Mannlicher repeater rifle and all-but-the-best Steyr 1610 fps 8 mm full metal jacket ammunition in the world Rudolph finds himself accused of incompetence and treason. The Gravedigger and his sycophant Beck Rzikwsky back demands by Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II to terminate Rudolph one way or the other. Francis Joseph orders Rudolph to resign in disgrace. But Rudolph refuses to fall on his sword like Leopold and Benedek before him. Instead, Rudolph dares Francis Joseph and Albrecht to court martial him which is the only way to remove Inspector General Rudolph per military protocols. It is a double dare because if Rudolph defends himself in open court he could reveal embarrassing facts and state secrets about four powerful men. Thus starts the Mexican Standoff. The fall of grace to disgrace will last months and end at the crash site which becomes the infamous crime scene of Mayerling.

After a frightening flood and mud slide which almost washes away the Midnight Run of an imperiled train, Rudolph arrives at the Imperial Hunting Lodge where Willy and Francis Joseph are hunting in sleet and snow flurries.

“What is the danger? ” Rudolph asked.

“What danger Your Highness?” the servants replied fearfully. “Nay! Nay! There is no danger!”

“I am referring to the Ice Princess!” Rudolph said. “And the missing children!”

The servants blanched. “Nay! Nay! The villagers are just being superstitious Sir! A child has been lost in the first ice storm and another child has just been lost in a snow storm. And their bodies have not been found and likely will not be found until Spring. But these things happen. And when tragedies happen the villagers gibber about superstition Sir.”

“That is not what I have heard! And I think you had better tell me before anyone else dies!”

Meanwhile the hunt is on to find Rudolph’s Achilles Heel: his Jewish bastard. More newspapers reported the conspiracy by the American General Longstreet to conceal Rudolph’s Jewish son in America. And Rudolph sustains a serious fall from a horse in the distance hinterland of the Empire —- caused by an air rifle! “God! This is an attempted assassination! And how the hell do we move a badly wounded Crown Prince?…..”

Report Number 3 November 1888 Anxiety And Angst.

Bismark descends uninvited on Rudolph at one thirty in the morning. It is a terrifying meeting which history ignores for another meeting which lasts all of ten minutes where Larish and Mary Vetsera demand 25,000 gulden. So starts a terrifying game of extortion and blackmail under the guise of Love & Death!

“Francis Joseph will consider both your refusal to resign and your refusal to take the fall to be high treason” Bubbles warns Rudolph.

“Yes” Rudolph said as he buttoned his miliary great coat over his painfully thin frame. “Technically it is treason. Not high treason. But it will be treason. It is treason to refuse to obey my Emperor when he says ‘I command to be obeyed’. So it has come down to this: do I commit treason or else go whole hog and also commit high treason?…..

Report Number 4 December 1888: : I Fear We Are About To Run Out Of Time.

As December unfolds Rudolph faces a relentless exercise in terror as Mary Vetsera rachets up her stalking with threats and poison. Helen Vetsera is trying to implicate Rudolph in a scheme to blackmail Francis Joseph. Larisch is contacting agents of von Holstein in the ‘Nest of Vipers’. And Christmas is dire as well.

“Oh no!…..” Rudolph said softly. “It is……. Countess Dagmar!” And indeed strolling down the high street was the Agent Second Class for the Order Of The Dragon run by King Carol of Romania. The blond slayer of all things evil strolled up to Rudolph and MC as if expecting them.

“How did you get my message so fast about the Case of the Devil’s Christmas Shopping List?” Countess Dagmar asked.

“Message?” Rudolph said.

“The Case of the Devil’s Christmas Shopping List?” MC asked.

“The mysterious deaths on the high street of Christmas shoppers!” the Slayer said.

“What mysterious deaths on the high street?” Rudolph asked.

“Um…… like that mysterious death on the high street?” MC asked as she gestured to a gruesome corpse surrounded by police and bystanders.

“Yea! Like that mysterious death on the high street!” Countess Dagmar replied.

After Christmas Rudolph and Doctor Watson both investigate the mystery of the crash of the Zeppelin X prototype. “It was not just chance that the prototype war airship crashed five minutes after this mysterious sound was transmitted across the wireless airwaves! What really caused the Zeppelin X prototype to crash so spectacularly?” Meanwhile Sherlock Holmes breaks a mysterious cipher while Watson pursues rumors of an ultra secret U-boat base linked to the mysterious crash.

“So the airship crash was staged! Why manufacture an embarrassing crash?”

“That is the intriguing question!” Watson mused. “To divert attention? To confuse? Deceive? Lull us into thinking the Reich is having technical difficulties with their latest war airship prototypes? To test out new gizmos like …… self destruct? Or wireless beams that can act like death rays to blow up airships?”

Report Number 5 January 1889 Twilight And Chopin.

Relentlessly the plot to assassinate Crown Prince Rudolph unfolds as the days of January ebb away. Either the Mary Love Affair is the most famous secret love affair of the century or else the Mary Love Affair never existed except in Mad Mary’s imagination and the venal machinations of Helen Vetsera and Marie Larisch and Smutty Petri and von Holstein. It is like the famous definition of stalking: a romantic stroll in the park between two persons which only one person knows about and savors. This is the most romantic love affair of the century between two persons which only one person knows about and savors.

Meanwhile Bubbles Bombelles confronts one of the ruthless blackmailers. Bubbles gestured with his checkbook. Helen Vetsera smiles in reply. If she could score Rudolph’s name on the dotted line of blackmail it would imply there was some sort of ‘relationship’ between him and Mary. Then she could play her trump card and claim Rudolph committed incest with his half sister to blackmail Francis Joseph. “I want a quarter of a million gulden!…”

At the same time Rudolph confronts the other blackmailer as he waved the wad of bills before Larisch. “Are you the only insider working with Berlin besides Stephanie or is there another female insider working toward my misfortune?”

“How the hell should I know?” Larisch snarled. “You are a dead man walking Howl! Everyone wants you dead! Don’t you know that? Everyone! Including your own family who cannot endure the sight of you! You are trapped in a snare not even you cannot break! An iron trap! So twist and writhe all you want! Chew off your leg! You can’t escape! So just do everyone a favor and die! Just die!” And indeed Stephanie has signed out poison for the assassination while telling her lover Lonyay to take an all expenses paid vacation in Egypt while something bad happens on January 30th…..

As Rudolph is propelled into the death trap called Mayerling he fights a duel in the snow with one of von Holstein’s assassins: Ehrenkrug. Fritsche trails Mary as she departs from Wimpffen’s carriage while clutching a muff badly concealing a revolver and poison. Conrad Bratfisch trails Coburg The Sinister who is the triggerman for the assassination. And Taafe banally does absolutely nothing as the Crown Prince of Austro Hungary is about to be assassinated……

 

 

Plot Line of the book:

The Secret Reports Concerning The Conspiracy To Cover Up The Murder Of Crown Prince Rudolph

Including The Facts Behind The Crime Of The Fin De Siecle.

By J. E. F. Rose

Prologue: The Rendevous Of A Spy And A Bee Keeper.

Go back in time to 1916 as the aged Holmes tells the spy Hamil Grant about the most sinister murder investigation of his professional career: the suspicious death of Crown Prince Rudolph.

Chapter 1: The Crime Scene Of Mayerling.

Then go back in time to January 30th of 1889 as Sherlock Holmes, Dr John Watson, Louis Maurice of the Belgium Police, and a mysterious local policeman investigate the shocking crime scene of Mayerling.

Chapter 2: The Cover Up Of the Assassination Of Crown Prince Rudolph.

Follow Count Fritsche as he struggles to stop the foul conspiracy to cover up the assassination of the Shining Prince and discover why Francis Joseph colluded in the conspiracy and murder of his own son.

Epilogue: The Rendevous Of Nemeses At The Reichenbach Falls.

As a horrified Holmes and Hamil Grant watch three Zeppelin War Airships bomb 1916 London Colonel Watson is facing a firing squad in Vienna, captured as a spy. While waiting to be shot at dawn Colonel Watson faces a final showdown with the architect behind the assassination of Crown Prince Rudolph.

Chapter 3: The Facts Behind The Crime Of The Fin De Siecle.

Then discover all of the true facts behind the crime scene of Mayerling and why Francis Joseph conspired to conceal the terrible truth: the assassination of his son Crown Prince Rudolph!