A COURT MYSTERY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 293, 3 May 1913, Page 5

A COURT MYSTERY

I LOVE OR AMBITION ? ' AN ILL-FATED ENTERPRISE. By Cable—Press Association —Copyright. London, May 1. The Countess Larisch seeks in her memoirs, which are being published today, to prove that lier cousin, the Crown Prince Rudolph, in committing suicide in 1889, after killing the Baroness Mary Vetedero, was not simply the victim of a guilty love. She endeavors to show that Prince Rudolph was involved in an attempt to separate Hungary from Austria and to seize the Austrian crown. The Countess says that two clays hefore the Meycrling tragedy the Crown Prince entrusted her with a steel box, enjoining secrecy and bidding her deliver it only to one man who was aware of the secret. She begged him to confide his difficulties to the Emperor, but Prince Rudolph replied that it would be signing his death warrant. The Archduke John, who afterwards went to sea and disappeared, gave the | prescribed password, and obtained the box the day after the tragedy, saying that had the Countess surrendered it to the Empress, Prince Rudolph would have been tried at the Emperor Joseph's in-, stance and shot as a traitor. She asked, was Prince Rudolph thinking of the : Crown of Hungary ? The Archduke John nodded in assent, and added that fear of discovery might have impelled Prince Rudolph to commit suicide. He concluded: "I am going to die without dying."

Some reviewers are dissatisfied with the slender evidence thus presented of an alleged political aspect to the tragedy. Others attach the chiefest interest to the Countess's intimate study of the character of the enigmatical and ill-fated enterprise.