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Show l COPY? SOW BY THE" iSJTlFR ffEKSWPe? syHDICATe I i i THE LOST GRAND DUKE 'TUIOSE familiar with the pomp and ceremony which hedged In the former court of Austria have always maintained that the tragic disappearance disappear-ance of Jobunn Salvator, archduke of Austria, prince of Hungary and grand ducal prince of Tuscany, cousin of Francis Joseph and son of Leopold II, was due as much to his radical tendencies tend-encies and the fact that he persisted !n airing his views in print as to his Infatuation for Ludmllla Stubel, the beautiful daughter of a Vienna shopkeeper. shop-keeper. In furtherance of this opinion, opin-ion, they advance the unassailable evidence evi-dence that Kaiser Wllhelm insisted upon the punishment of Archduke Johnnn when the lutter urged an alliance alli-ance between Russia and Austria in order to curb the threatened dominance domi-nance of Germany in European poll-tics. poll-tics. Whatever the cause, the young archduke's arch-duke's reaction to the discipline Inflicted In-flicted by his royal cousin was to resign re-sign all his honors, strip himself of his titles, convert a large portion of his estate into cash, and, as the crowning crown-ing Insult to his relatives, to elope with Ludmllla Stubel, whom he had met incognito some months before. According to all avalluble reports, there was no doubt of Ludmllla's beauty, but a marriage between an archduke of the royal blood and the daughter of a poor shopkeeper was too much for the high-spirited Haps-burgs Haps-burgs to swallow without a struggle. Johann, however, Informed all who brought him messages from his titled kinsmen that he was no longer of the royal house that he had renounced all his claims to the honors which were his by right of birth, and that henceforth he could be nothing more than Johann Salvator, a private citizen citi-zen of the world. When it became known that he really intended carrying through his wild plan, even force was resorted to In order to prevent him from contracting contract-ing what was recognized as a mesalliance, mesalli-ance, but he concealed his Identity under un-der the name of John Orth the name which he had used In courting Ludmllla Lud-mllla Stubel and the pair were hastily has-tily married, and then escaped to London. Lon-don. Here, still retaining his adopted name, the archduke chartered the bark Margharltn, signed up a captain and crew and sailed for South America, where the ship had formerly been engaged en-gaged in the nitrate trade. The Margharita's usual course was between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso, and, after making several successful trips, she finally left the former port on July 13, 1S90 and vanished as completely as If the sea had opened and swallowed her. Despite the most diligent searches, undertaken at the Instigation In-stigation of the Austrian government, nothing definite was ever heard of the ship or the members of the crew, though rumors that Archduke Johann had been seen at many times and in many places have been current from that day to this. The most credible of these reports is that made by an official offi-cial investigator of the Uruguay government, gov-ernment, who secured affidavits to the effect that the Margharita had put In at a lonely place on the coast of that country, where the name had been painted out and she had then nailed up the Uruguay river. "Orth," the report stated, had then paid off his crew, and with the help of two or three of his Intimate companions had set sail further inland but here the trail was lost, never to be refound. During the Chilean war Archduke Johann was reported to be fighting on the side of the congressional ists, and, some ten years later, the son of the president of Argentina stated that he had made the trip from Buenos Aires to Cherbourg with a man who was none other than the former archduke of Austria. In addition the lost grand duke has been "located" in California, has been identified" as Admiral Yama-gata Yama-gata of the Japanese navy, and was "recognized" by reputable witnesses in several engagements of the World war. Evident!' Hie emperor of Austria never placed full credence In the story of his death, for in Francis Joseph's will was a clause to the effect that the archduke's estate of some $10,000,000 was to be held intact until something definite was learned about his fate a point upon which the memoirs of the former kaiser may eventually throw some light. Until this the mystery of the lost grand duke must remain as rne of the unsolved riddles of history. |