A ROYAL MYSTERY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144085, 2 May 1913, Page 3

A ROYAL MYSTERY.

DEATH OF PiUNCE RUDOLPH. A NEW EXPLANATION. By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. (Received May 2.; 10.25 a.m.) LONDON, May 1. The Countess Larisch seeks in her memoirs, which are being published today, to prove that her 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. Sho endeavours to show that Prince Rudoloh was involved in an attempt to separate Hungary from Austria and to seize the Hungarian crown. The Countess says that two days before the Moyerling tragedy 1 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, wlio afterwards went to sea and disappeared, gave the prescribed password, and obtauied the

box tlie day after the tragedy, saying

that bad the'pountess surrendered it to the Empress,; Prince Rudolph would have been tried -at the Emperor Joseph’s; instance and shot as a traitor. She asked, was Prince Rudolph thinking of tho Crown of Hungary? The Archduke John nodded assent, and/adaed that fear of discovery might have impelled Prince Rudolph to commit suicide. Ho concluded; "I am going to die without dying.” Some reviewers are dissatisfied witli the slender evidence thus presented of an alleged political aspect to the tragedy. Others attach the chiefest interest to- the Countess’ intimate study of the character of the enigmatical and ill-fated enterprise.