TO BLACKMAIL AN EMPEROR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10365, 13 February 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

TO BLACKMAIL AN EMPEROR.

REVIVAL OF AN OLD SCANDAL. New York, December 29.—A special from Budapest says The Austro ■ Hungarian Imperial court has been shaken to its core by a threatened blackmail scandal which reaches to the very throne. Everybody remembers the tragic circumstances which surrounded tho death of Crown Prince Rudolph. That unfortunate personage, involved in an affair which promised ruin to himself, selected what, to him, seemed the easiest way out of the difficulty, and shot himself and the woman who had blasted his life.

This fact itself was a ghastly one for his Imperial relatives to live down, but they bravely faced the dread consequence?, and did their utmost to make the exposure— for really such it was—as short-lived as possible. Facts surrounding the death of tho Crown Prince were suppressed, so far as they could be; and the Austrian public was induced, by systematic silence on the part of tho press, almost to forget that His Imperial Highness had not died a natural (loath. Now, however, all the circumstances uvo to be revived, and by "circumstances" which impel the membeis of the Imperial house to call " blackmail," and the cry is echoed by the press. One of the whilom friends of Crown Prince Rudolph was a journalist, Julius Futtaky, who, by reason of his utter lack of sensitiveness, managed to make himself a person very useful to His Highness. To this person Prince Rudolph confided his amatory difficulties, and apparently often wroto to him with reference to the complications in which his unfortunate affection had involved him.

In 1894 Futtaky, himself involved in matrimonial difficulties, deposited with his attorneys a sealed package marked, "Only to bo opened when I am dead," He was then suing fur a divorce, and, obtaining a decree shortly after, remarried. Within a few weeks of his second marriage, however, he died, ami the package he had left with his attorneys was then opened. lc proved to be simply a package of ninety letters which had bean written to him by tho Crown Prince. Dr. Alexander Fraenkel, the attorney, recognised the importance to tho Court of the suppression of these communications, and with commendable loyalty ho promptly laid them before the Austrian Emperor. That personage seemed touched by this example of derotion, and he not only thanked the attorney for his action, but rewarded him with gifts of costly jewellery. But now the letters, or photographic duplicates of them, have turned up again, and Emperor Franz Josef is askorl to pay a trifle of £20,000 to secure their suppression. A few weeks ago a Cabinet otGcer received the proofs of a book soon to be published which contained all these ninet.y letters, with the announcement that the abovementioned sum would secure its suppression. The strange thing about this attempt at Imperial blackmailing is that no cluo was given as to its perpetrator. The book is in print, ail well enough, but even when the proofs were sent to tho Cabinet officer 110 clue was given by which tho author cuuid be known.

Tho whole force of the Budapest and Vienna detective corps is engaged in an effort to discover tho culprits, but so far have been absolutely unsuccessful, The writer of the pamphlet containing these letters declared that unless the sum demanded was at once forthcoming the publication would bo made in January, 1897. As the sum has not been paid, and there seems 110 way of reaching tho blackmailer, all Austrian society is looking forward with impatient curiosity.