The Secret Reports Concerning Crown Prince Rudolph

These books document the adventures of Crown Prince Rudolph. Each book will cover a historic part of his life as well as uncover undisclosed adventures never before revealed including exciting steampunk and paranormal adventures.

View illustrations from the Crown Prince Rudolph Series here

Book One

Enjoy the exciting adventures in this first of a series of biographical fiction novels about the amazing life and mysterious death of Crown Prince Rudolph. Follow the young Rudolph as he meets Charles Gordon and an English spy named Doctor Watson. Then take an exciting aeronautic adventure in a hot air balloon with the Prince of Wales. Follow Rudolph’s adventure in Brighton during a top secret conference threatened by Fenians, Anarchists, Nihilists, and an American Buccaneer heiress. Then follow Rudolph’s childhood adventures in the Haunted Hofburg and as a bonus boy telegrapher with General Benedek. Finally follow Rudolph’s adventure in Prague as he tries to stop a pogrom with the help of the Infamous Turk Automaton and Golem the Robot.

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 rendezvous 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 rendezvous 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 Two

Prologue: The Banner With The Strange Device.

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?

Report Number 1: The Robbery Of Balmoral

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.

Report Number 2: Rockefeller’s Worst Nightmare.

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.

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 of a forger by spontaneous combustion?

Meanwhile the Ottoman Embassy has announced 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? 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

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 or you be cursed 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: 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?

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? Or is it 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! ‘Someone is going to die!’

Book Six

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, And Mr. Carnegie

The plot says it all!

Book Seven

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……

Book Eight

……The man stood at the edge of the towering cliffs which formed the infamous Reichenbach Falls of Switzerland. His dark silhouette was framed by the light of dusk dancing off the myriad diamond-like spray of the powerful overflow of cascading waters tumbling down to the stony depths far below. He stared down bemused into the fatal cascades. “I trailed him here! He has to be here! I followed his trail! Here! He has to be here! Isn’t this the very fatal spot where Sherlock Holmes confronted his nemesis Moriarty? He has to be here! I have lured him here! For is he not my Moriarty? And am I not his Holmes? Isn’t this our final fatal confrontation? For are we not each other’s Nemesis? And it is the nature of Nemesis for one to slay the other! Or else be slain by the other!” Suddenly there was a sound behind him. A clink of a safety of a revolver. The man gestured to pull out his own shoulder hoister bound Luger. Then a pistol jabbed into his back.

“Pull out your Luger very slowly and toss it into the falls old chap! Be a good fellow! Then turn around —- slowly!” The silhouette very slowly pulled out the Luger in his shoulder hoister inside his winter coat. His hand clinched it firmly. “Don’t bother to even try my dear fellow! My gun is pressed against your back! You don’t have a chance! Be a sensible fellow! Toss the gun very slowly into the falls!” The silhouette paused and then very slightly sagged as he slowly tossed the Luger into the towering falls. Then he slowly turned around to face Dr. Watson holding a matching issue Luger almost point blank at him. “Dr. Watson I presume?” Count Bertram von Ehrenkrug said ironically. “Or is it Colonel Watson of Diogenes House?”

Watson smiled a wintery smile as the cold air of dusk blew off the icy falls to chill their faces and frost their breathes despite their winter’s coats and hats. Watson’s Luger felt cold in his gloved hand. “I have a wartime licence to kill you issued by Queen Victoria and further signed off by King Edward and now King George as well as the Spy Master of British Intelligence. As long as you were safe in your lair in Berlin that licence to kill could not be executed. In six months America will vote to enter the war. In one year your Imperial Second Reich will be dismal history! So I had to lure you out of your lair while my licence to kill was valid and the war allowed that licence to kill to be executed! So I lured you out of your lair by dangling bait in Vienna! Myself!

For the sake of the genteel aide de camp officers of the late Crown Prince Rudolph I agreed to lure you here to neutral Switzerland to do the actual hit. I thought the Reichenbach Falls would indeed be an appropriate spot considering we are mortal adversaries. The firing squad farce was a cover to protect the late Crown Prince Rudolph’s most loyal ‘Raven’, ‘Rook’, and ‘Crow’ from any repercussions. The firing squad all believed their rifle held the traditional blank. In fact all seven rifles held blanks to allow honorable soldiers of the non-commission staff to the late Crown Prince Rudolph to aid a collective pursuit for justice too long denied! I hope you approve of your death scene Count von Ehrenkrug! I certainly do!”

Ehrenkrug flinched. “What do you mean? About the mongrel Yankees? About the Yankees entering the war? They are not entering the war! They are criminal thugs! Irish drunks! Scottish drunks! English drunks! And every sort of hyphenated mongrel from every muddy blood country all over the world! A crazy quilt of muddy blood! A nation of self made commercial thugs too engrossed in profiting from this war, selling to both sides no less, to conceive of risking their sordid lives in war! Cowards one and all! Capitalistic thugs who would sell the very rope to hang themselves with!”

“But during their civil war they wounded, terrorized, or killed almost three million souls” Watson replied with a wintery smile. “Such a blood letting as no modern industrial western nation has ever witnessed before or since! Their capacity to wage merciless war when roused is blood chilling! America is a sleeping grizzly bear! Once roused the bloodiness of their rage will be fearsome!”

“But they have cowered cravenly for two years! They don’t have the guts for war! They are a nation of cheap shop keepers and petty mercantile nonentities! Ruled by Irish criminals! Masterminded by filthy Jews and Freemasons! A nation founded by Freemasons no less! Godless! Hell bound! Deviant! And cursed! Only God blesses us! For only the Imperial Second Reich has been chosen by God!”

“Do try to keep your scornful insults correct my good fellow!” Watson retorted. “We English are the nation of cheap shop keepers and petty mercantile nonentities! The Yanks are the godless Freemason World Conspiracy!”

“What are you talking about?” the Prussian shouted, suddenly agitated. “The Yankees won’t enter the war! Our experts have all assured us we could wage war on both fronts with complete success and even unleash our glorious wolf packs! Our U boats! Until the oceans of the world run red with blood! Belgium will crumble like cow bone jelly! And the Frogs will capitulate before Christmas….. I mean….. and……. and America won’t fight back! That gutless eunuch Wilson will never dare declare war! And our loyal 5th column of Pan Germans will keep the criminal classes on their knees! We are winning the war! Don’t you understand you damn Freemason! We are winning the war!”

“Alas, we are apparently either too dense or else too stubborn to realize it yet my good fellow” Watson laughed. “But yes. Your dossier on me is correct on one point only: I am a Freemason! I joined simply to piss you Junkers off! You do foam at the mouth about Jews and Freemasons! It is quite amusing! Like waving a red flag at a mad bull!”

“America won’t enter the war!” the Junker bellowed. Apparently there was something about the mere idea of America entering the war that utterly terrified the Junker.

“Oh …. well …..” Watson smiled his wintery smile as he carefully observed the effect of a potential entry of America had on the suddenly unnerved Junker. Apparently Berlin was crunching numbers about all potential scenarios including the American scenario. That was the penchant of the German mind to crunch the numbers to calculate all conceivable scenarios. And apparently the scenario of America entering the war was unnerving, even alarming. Watson filed the reaction away in his mind to report to his Spy Master Mycroft Holmes back at Diogenes House London.

“Yes. Well” Watson replied in his deceptively soft voice. “But we did not have time for your U boats to play ‘Russian Roulette’ and sink a civilian passenger steamer sooner or later which was full of famous Americans. So Diogenes House has arranged for Von Holstein to deliver a proposal to Mexico to sponsor an attack along the Mexico Border to reclaim lost Mexican territories from Texas to California! The Mexican Government is being seduced by the charm of the proposal as we speak! Of course being in the middle of a perpetual civil war they won’t be able to actually take the bait and attack America. Some of the calmer heads in Mexico City have even called it ‘delusional’. But our spies are about to deliver copies to the American Embassy in Mexico City as we speak! With copies leaked to several newspapers including Hearst of course! President Wilson will finally be forced to climb off that fence he has been precariously balancing upon and vote for war! Hearst does love to sell newspapers and war hysteria about a Mexican Invasion will sell his newspapers like hot cakes —– to use a Yank expression!”

“It is a forgery! Not even the Kaiser is that stupid!” Ehrenkrug bellowed. “No one will believe it!”

“Everyone knows von Holstein has fabricated wars before with just such forgeries! And yes! Everyone believes that Kaiser Willy in fact is that stupid!” Watson replied in his soft, bland voice of a middle class public school boy turned genteel if rather bored Harley Street doctor. “And like I said, Wilson has copies of the September Plan and drafts how to bomb and/or invade Boston and New York. Also the West Indies! Also Cuba! You chaps really must control your penchant for calculating endless scenarios! So yes! Everyone in America will believe it! Even the Mexican authorities have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker! So in six months America will enter the war. In one year the war will be over. The Imperial Second Reich will be swept up and tossed into the ash can of history! Garbage! Like you my dear chap! The personal back stabber of Kaiser Willy! You and your family have spent centuries hauling away the garbage and corpses of the Hohenzollerns! Concealing their crimes and misdemeanors! Making yourselves so very essential as the Rubbish Haulers of the Hohenzollerns! And of course using that intimate knowledge into the filth of the Hohenzollerns to blackmail them! Today your service as the Garbage Collector and Hatchet Man of the Hohenzollerns ends! Jump!”

“No! You can not forge such a thing to trick the Yankees into joining the war! That is too despicable even for Diogenes House!”

“What is good for the gander is good for the goose!” Watson replied in his deceptively soft voice. “You did not bellow when von Holstein and his rodent Smutty Petri used such foul tricks to manufacture wars on Denmark, the Habsburg Empire, Belgium, and France! Attacking one minute past midnight! Or else to assassinate fine statesmen in every country! Including Crown Prince Rudolph! Why bellow now that the shoe is on the other foot?”

“No!” the Prussian screamed. “You will have to shot me! And you will be prosecuted! The Swiss won’t recognize your wartime licence to kill! If I die! You will hang for it!”

“Oh really?” Watson replied in that bland voice he possessed. His hazel eyes twinkled. “Matching Luger such as you buy so both Lugers will wash down the falls to be found or not —– and it will be assumed to be yours as you committed suicide. For one way or another you will fall down the Reichenback Falls! A cowardly suicide! And your mangled corpse will be dragged up much battered and broken like a rotten fish! Befitting the rotter you are!”

“With a bullet inside! A suicide jumping to his death with a bullet wound? That is a crime any idiot will spot!” Ehrenkrug shouted as his eyes scanned the dense forest which encircled one side of the towering falls for help. But it was dusk and the forest and ring of mountains appeared empty of life except for the life and death drama being played out between two mortal enemies. “It won’t even be point blank! It won’t even be the correct barrel tattoo or gunpowder tattoo! It won’t even be through the correct temple! Or inside the mouth! How can a murder be ruled suicide?”

“Why not? You did! You and yours crafted Mayerling to be the most foul murder which was ruled a most foul suicide!” Watson told the arrogant Junker.

“You can’t replay Mayerling here! Unlike those damn fool Viennese! The Swiss are not so moronic! Haven’t you learned anything from your association with that fool Sherlock Holmes!”

“Well …… yes ….. actually” Watson purred. “Holmes has explained a most ingenious theory for a perfect murder. Not published of course! One must not encourage the criminal elements! But Holmes has theorized about the use of an ice bullet….. So shall we try it my dear Junker? Shall we test Sherlock Holmes’ theory of the perfect murder? With you as the test case corpse…..”

Addendum: A Ricardo Detour Through Arabia

This addendum covers the present events occurring in Rudolph’s beloved Europe and Great Britain in the face of uncontrollable migration from Islamic failed states. Will the Great Displacement lead to the extinction of Europeans which Rudolph incarnated and will the Great Replacement lead to the extinction of Europe as we know it? Will Eurabia be a paradise on earth or else a future nightmare failed state or else as many Millennials believe, the latest bloody chapter in a very long war called the ‘Clash of Civilizations? And what would Rudolph think about the apparent collective suicide of Western Europe which is unfolding? Would Rudolph agree with the Millennials of Generation Identity that ‘If you ask us why we died it is because our fathers lied’?

Excerpt

Europe is bleeding! The screams of the raped and the violated are crying out for justice. But Liberal Media is stonewalling their screams. Concealing their anguish. And covering up their mangled flesh and blood. The past of Europe is weeping as it is erased. Deliberately distorted and besmirched and eradicated. And the Future is screaming as it is sold to the highest bidder. The ancient ideals of the Greco Roman World are being smashed. The beauty of the Renaissance is being vandalized. The ideals of the Enlightenment are being betrayed. The wonders and the paradoxes of the Nineteenth Century are being ridiculed. The grace and refinement of the Beau Epoch are being trashed. The tragedy and the triumph of the Twentieth Century are being violated. The Freedoms and the Prosperity of the Twenty First Century are being destroyed. The history and legacy of Europe are being mangled and butchered.

The Light that is Europe is going out! Deliberately extinguished! Two thousand years of living and fighting and bleeding and dying by the ancestors of every European are being betrayed. And there is not one Westerner who is not indebted one way or the other to our collective ancestors: the Europeans! And every loyal migrant from the far flung corners of the world who proudly embrace the West and everything it represents is the inheritor of the Europeans who first created that beau thing: The West. But now the West is being betrayed. And their collective sacrifices and their dreams and their hopes and their achievements are being betrayed. The Great Displacement is rapidly ushering in the Great Replacement. And the first modern Advanced World of Europe is turning into the Third World nightmare failed state of Eurabia. Don’t let Merkel’s favorite bed side reading ‘Visions Of 2050′ , become the future of Europe!

Join the fight! Join the Generation Identity Millennials! Help them fight for their rightful future! A future they deserve! A future they are entitled to! A future the corrupt are conspiring to deny them! Join Generation Identity!

The Complete Edition (Books 1-8 + Addendum)

This edition contains everything written about Crown Prince Rudolph by J.E.F. Rose

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