The door banged. Alfred Haine who runs a little inn in the village of Marche-les-Dames looked up just at dinner time to see a man in tweeds, very pale, very breathless, but despite his nervousness, very polite.
"Please may I use your telephone?" he asked. "My friend, my friend was climbing the cliffs. He seems to be lost. Perhaps he has had an accident. Please, I must telephone at once to Brussels."
"But of course," said M. Haine. The man in tweeds put through his call and darted out into the night again. An hour and a half later he was back, with his knees muddy and his jacket torn.
"Has my friend come back? A tall gentleman, red cheeks, curly hair, a white mustache?" He dove to the telephone again, then went off to continue his search, this time with several helpers. Alfred Haine was told to stay in his inn. At ten o'clock a heavy automobile roared up and then Alfred Haine knew that something dreadful had happened. Out stepped two of King Albert's personal aides, Count Xavier de Grunne and General Baron Jacques de Dixmunde with a doctor. They joined the searching parties crawling over the cliffs, shouting to each other, their flashlights flickering like wintry fireflies.
There are more carillons and bell towers in Belgium than in any other country in Europe. Next morning in every village and town the deepest bell in every tower began to toll. The last time they had sounded like that was 1914. This was not the next war, but the passing of one of the greatest heroes of the last. Albert King of the Belgians was dead.
Early that afternoon in Brussels King Albert, eager for exercise, had slipped into his dressing room and put on an old pair of riding breeches and hobnail boots. His son, Crown Prince Leopold, was where he himself longed to be, at Adelbogen, high in the Swiss Alps. For a passionate Alpinist most of Belgium is as flat as a hand but lusty Albert thought he knew a place. Only a few days earlier the Belgian Cabinet had set aside the cliffs near Marche-les-Dames as a national park. Marche-les-Dames—"The Walk of the Ladies"— got its name from 139 Noble Widows of Crusaders who in 1101 pooled their resources, built an abbey above those cliffs and retired there to spend the rest of their lives. King Albert knew that the cliffs were nearly 600 feet high, full of exciting chimneys, crevasses and pinnacles. With only his valet, van Dyck, he jumped in a little car and drove over. At the foot of the cliffs he looked at his watch, recalled that he had an engagement at the Palais des Sports in Brussels that evening. Then he took a rope, a canvas knapsack and a climbing ax out of the rear of the car and started up the cliffs.
At two in the morning, when the search seemed most hopeless, Baron de Dixmunde atop the cliff, tripped over a rope caught round the limb of a tree. The end was broken. Twenty feet below were the King's broken glasses and his cap. There were traces of blood on the rocks. At the foot of the cliff lay the body of Albert. He was quite dead. There was a great hole in the back of his skull.