“Look after everything, Dawson,” Willy said to the butler. “You know His Grace relies on you.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” the butler replied, “and I’ll pray that His Grace is not as bad as he looks!”
“He will be all right once we get him to a doctor who knows how to treat this particular complaint,” Willy replied.
They drove off and Solita looking at the Duke was suddenly aware that he did look very ill.
His face was very pale, his eyes were closed, and shrouded in blankets, he appeared to be a real invalid.
Then, as they passed down the drive, the Duke opened his eyes.
“I am suffocating in these infernal blankets!” he said. “Can I take them off now?”
“Not until we are on the train,” Willy replied. “You know how servants talk. Your servants must relay to everybody at The Castle how ill you looked.”
The way he spoke was so funny that the Duke gave a little chuckle.
“I wonder how you would like being trussed up like an old hen?” he asked.
“You know I loathe discomfort, as I told you, when we were perishing with cold on that mountain with two dozen ferocious tribesmen wanting to take potshots at us!”
“This time the enemy is female,” the Duke remarked caustically.
Solita bent towards him.
“You must tell me what you have planned. I have been worrying all night in case the Princess was suspicious.”
“She certainly would be suspicious,” the Duke replied, “if she had any idea where we were going. That is why we have to be very very careful!”
Now he spoke in a serious tone which made Solita aware that they were still in danger.
As if Willy was thinking the same thing, he said,
“Let’s talk about it on the train. It is safer there. Shut your eyes, Hugo, and look half-dead!”
“That is what I feel in this heat!”
He did not speak again until they reached the station. There were two of the Duke’s senior servants to supervise getting him on the platform and into his private coach.
He was placed very gently on a large sofa and a few minutes later a goods train arrived to which the coach was attached.
The Duke’s servants arranged everything and it was only a little more than ten minutes before the train moved off.
They were on their way to London.
It was then, when the halt was out of sight that the Duke threw off his blankets. Solita saw that underneath them he was dressed in his everyday clothes, except for his coat.
“That was a good performance!” Willy cried, “and I commend you, Hugo on not having lost your skill!”
“Keep your fingers crossed!” the Duke replied. “We are not out of the wood yet by any means!”
As he spoke, Higgins came in from the pantry with their breakfast.
Solita realised that it had been brought abroad the train in hay baskets to keep it as hot as was the coffee which they all drank thirstily.
When Higgins had left, Willy said,
“Come on, Hugo, tell us what plans you have made.”
The Duke had finished his eggs and bacon and Solita thought it was excellent.
He was now spreading a pat of thick golden Jersey butter on a piece of freshly baked bread and he added some honeycomb before he replied,
“I have been up most of the night writing letters – the first of course to Kimberley.”
“Did you tell him what you had discovered?” Willy asked.
“I told him everything and that it was extremely important that the Russians should have no idea that we were going to India.”
“Do you think he will be able to keep it quiet?” Willy asked.
“The servants at the house will be told that on doctors’ orders I have to go to a spa in France which treats oriental diseases.”
“I hope the Russians believe that!” Willy said a little doubtfully. “What did you tell the Princess?”
“I wrote her a very affectionate letter begging her to help me by acting as hostess to the house party and keeping them amused. I also told her there was no reason for her or her brother to leave until later in the week.”
“Do you think she will stay as long as that?”
“I think,” the Duke said slowly, “she will be quite busy planning what alterations she will make to The Castle once she is my wife!”
Solita gave a stifled little cry of protest and he added,
“It’s all right. You warned me and by the time we return to England I think the Princess will have left the country for good!”
“Why should she do that?” Willy asked curiously.
“I told Kimberley what Solita had discovered, that Prince Ivan is not her brother, but her lover.”
“What do you think he will do with that information?” Willy asked.
“Kimberley is very clever at that sort of thing,” the Duke said complacently. “He will drop just a suspicion into the ears of the best known gossips. You know how easy it is – ”
The Duke spoke in a slightly affected voice, as he went on,
“I was told the other day, but of course it is absolute nonsense that the beautiful Princess Zenka, whom they had known since she was a young girl, never had a brother! Naturally, it is a ridiculous idea!”
Willy laughed.
“No one could resist repeating that!”
“It will be repeated and repeated,” the Duke added with satisfaction, “until you know as well as I do that the doors of Mayfair will all close, one after another. Woman always suspect that women who are too beautiful cannot be trusted!”
Willy laughed again, and Solita thought it was very clever of the Duke.
She had heard the gossip that took place in France and Italy amongst the most influential hostesses.
They would never tolerate anyone whose reputation was in the least questionable.
She knew that the Duke was right and any rumour would spread like wildfire.
Whether or not anybody troubled to verify the story, the Princess would be ostracised.
“What do you want me to do?” Willy asked as if he had just thought of it.
“I want you to come with Solita and me to India!”
Willy looked at him in surprise.
“You really want me?”
“I need a chaperone,” the Duke said. “I am Solita’s Guardian. At the same time she is far too pretty to travel around the world with a man unless he was old enough to be her grandfather!”
“You are getting on that way!” Willy joked, “but I suppose I must sacrifice myself to help you!”
“I do need you,” the Duke said quietly, “in case things get rough!”
Solita clasped her hands together.
She knew without him elaborating the point that they were still in grave danger.
If the Russians suspected for one single moment what they were doing, they would undoubtedly try to destroy them all before they reached Calcutta
“I suppose you warned Kimberley not to send anything about us by cable?”
“Of course I did,” the Duke said sharply, “even though I was sure it is unnecessary.”
He paused, then went on as if he was thinking it out,
“We will arrive as ordinary tourists. The Viceroy is a distant relative of mine and, if we appear unexpectedly, he will be quite pleased to see us.”
“I hope so,” Willy said a little doubtfully. “I would not relish a number of Russian spies waiting to kill us as we step ashore!”
“You are not to scare Solita!” the Duke admonished him.
She smiled at him, because she thought it was so kind of him to think of her.
At the same time she knew that they would be travelling for a long time.
Any of the spies might become aware that the Duke was not having treatment in France as he was supposed to be doing.
‘Please God – don’t let – them find out,’ she prayed.
*
When th
ey reached London, and it did not take long, the Duke was carried from the train by his servants who were waiting on the platform.
Solita learnt that a messenger had been sent from The Castle to London on an earlier train to inform the Duke’s secretary that His Grace would be arriving. He also carried a letter of instructions.
Solita was therefore not surprised when almost as soon as they had arrived at Calverleigh House, they were off again.
They drove to Victoria Station to take the train to Dover.
She just had time to collect what trunks she wished to take with her.
Some of those she had brought with her from Italy were filled with books and these she left behind and there was no time to sort out the others and they were placed as they were with the Duke’s luggage and left with Higgins to attend to.
The Duke’s clothes had been packed before they arrived.
Willy went to collect his belongings from his flat in Half Moon Street.
It was, Solita thought, an excellent example of the Duke’s genius for organisation that they were able to catch a morning train to Dover.
They were actually moving into the Channel in the Duke’s private yacht by luncheon time.
Because he had to continue acting his part as an invalid, the Duke had luncheon in his own cabin, whilst Solita and Willy ate in the Saloon.
“I can hardly believe this is happening!” she sighed when they were alone.
“I always feel like that when I am working with Hugo,” Willy added.
“Having you done this sort of thing before often?” Solita enquired.
She was a little shy of asking questions and she knew that if, as she suspected, the Duke had been involved in The Great Game he would never speak of it.
Willy smiled at her.
“When you get to know your Guardian better,” he volunteered, “you will realise that he is the most fantastic person. He has two personalities – the one he shows to the world, and the one which is known only to his closest friends, like myself.”
“I never suspected – I never imagined for – one moment,” Solita said, “that he was – anything but an – ordinary Englishman.”
Willy smiled again.
“That is exactly what he would want people to think. What interests me, however, is how you can have been so intelligent as to have saved him, as he says you have done.”
“It was simply because I know Russian.”
She paused for a moment before she continued,
“I suppose it is Fate or perhaps Papa guiding me, which made me realise when I was at school with girls of so many different nationalities, that although I loathed and detested the Russians, it might be useful to know their language.”
“It has certainly proved very useful where Hugo is concerned!” Willy remarked.
“He has told you what the Princess intended?”
“To marry him?” Willy asked in a hard voice. “I am eternally grateful to you, Solita, for saving him from that!”
“I think something much greater than myself, perhaps the Power Mama believed in, was guiding me.”
“I am sure of that,” Willy remarked quietly.
Only when they had boarded the train at Calais which was to carry them to Marseilles did the Duke feel he could relax.
He discarded his blankets and washed the powder from his face that had made him look so white.
“Unless they are clairvoyant, I should be able to relax,” he joked.
Solita gave a little cry.
“But that is exactly what they are!” she said. “So do, please, take care!”
The Duke looked at his watch.
“By this time,” he said complacently, “the Princess will be decking herself out to go down to dinner and eclipse every other woman at The Castle!”
“You don’t think that she and the Prince will have left?” Willy asked.
The Duke smiled.
“I cannot believe any woman could resist staying for as long as possible in the position as chatelaine and hostess.”
Willy laughed.
“I expect you are right.”
“It will be a rehearsal for the time when she believes she will reign there as my wife!”
As he spoke, he saw a strained expression on Solita’s face and asked,
“What is wrong? I have a feeling you dislike me speaking like that.”
“I remember someone once saying, I think when I was in Italy,” Solita replied, “that the real art of deception is to think one’s self into the part.”
The Duke looked at her in surprise, as she went on,
“The man said, ‘if I wish to pretend to be the Prime Minister, I would say to myself over and over again, I am the Prime Minister, I am the Prime Minister! and those who were sensitive to my thoughts would say, I am sure that is the Prime Minister over there!’”
The Duke looked at her.
“What you are really doing, Solita, is rebuking me for thinking of the Princess, which may make her think of me.”
“Yes – that was in my mind.”
“And you are right,” he said. “Of course you are right! Willy, take a lesson from my newest and certainly most intelligent recruit!”
“She is not only right,” Willy said, “but she is also very remarkable and I am very proud to know her.”
He spoke so sincerely that Solita blushed.
Then, as she realised that the Duke’s eyes were on her, she blushed again and said,
“I want to talk about India. Please, tell me some of your experiences of the country that to me has always been El Dorado.”
“I doubt if you will feel that once you get there,” Willy teased. “It is terribly hot. The food and the water will upset you and you will be harrowed by the poverty of its inhabitants!”
“You will also be enthralled by the beauty of everything,” the Duke interposed, “not only the Palaces, the Princes and the saris, but everywhere you look there are children with huge eyes whose slim coffee-coloured bodies are entrancing.”
Solita clasped her hands together.
“That is what I want you to tell me.”
“And what you will soon see for yourself, Solita.”
At Marseilles they boarded a P & O liner which was on its way to India.
The Duke’s secretary who was the only person to know the truth of where they were going, had engaged four of the best State cabins.
They were booked in the name of ‘Lord Durham’ which was one of the Duke’s minor titles.
It was one, Solita learned, which he usually used when he was travelling and had a passport made out in that name.
They were welcomed aboard with the respect accorded to a member of the British Nobility.
Only when Higgins was unpacking for them did Solita understand why four State rooms had been booked. There were no suites in the ships except for the luxury liners which crossed the Atlantic.
Because the Duke was prepared to pay, one of the State bedrooms was quickly changed into a sitting room, where they could be alone and also take their meals.
“I don’t want the other people aboard to be too curious about us,” the Duke explained, “so the less questions we are asked the better.”
The way he spoke made Solita aware that it would be disastrous if when they arrived in Calcutta the Russian spies were aware of it.
It would prevent the Duke from finding out how the messages from England were intercepted on the submarine cable.
They learnt the ship had had a rough passage in the Bay of Biscay after it had left England.
While Solita believed herself to be a good sailor, she had no wish to put it to the test.
She knew also that by going overland they had shortened the time it would take them to reach Calcutta. The P & O liners, now that the Suez Canal was opened, took between seventeen and twenty days to reach India.
Allowing for the three days that must have been lost in coming through the Bay of Biscay, she reckoned that they would be in Calc
utta in perhaps sixteen days’ time.
When she went to bed at night she prayed that nothing would delay them and for their safety.
It was a very strange voyage in some ways.
Willy and the Duke would exercise themselves by walking around the top deck very late at night or very early in the morning.
Because the Duke thought Solita would create curiosity amongst the older passengers, she would go on the top deck in the morning.
She would do so again in the afternoon when most of the ladies aboard were having English tea in the Saloon. The rest of the time she was able to listen to the Duke and Willy being interesting, amusing and witty.
Just sometimes she was alone with the Duke.
They had passed through the Suez Canal and were reaching the end of the Red Sea when Willy said after dinner one evening,
“I am going to have a game of cards. There is a man aboard who is an acknowledged expert at bridge, in fact he is one of the best players in the world and I want to pit my wits against him.”
“You will lose your money!” the Duke remarked.
“One always has to pay for experience,” Willy quipped.
He went from the cabin and the Duke, sitting comfortably in an armchair, asked Solita,
“What do you want to do?”
“Talk to you.”
“I am afraid this is all rather dull for you,” he said. “You really ought to be dancing with the young soldiers who are on board or playing deck tennis with them.”
“I have a feeling,” Solita replied, “that because so much has happened I am very much older than they are!”
The Duke laughed.
Then he said,
“Of course you are right. It is not the years that count. It is what you think and feel that makes you older.”
“I am sure that being frightened has done that. In fact I am surprised that my hair has not turned grey!”
“I am sorry,” the Duke said. “This should not be happening to anyone as young and lovely as you.”
“I don’t think it should happen to anyone, whatever their age!” Solita replied, thinking of the Princess.
The Duke must have read her thoughts, for after a moment he said,
“You are right, but remember – for every dangerous and frightening Russian there are millions of nice friendly ordinary people who would not frighten a mouse!”
Solita and the Spies Page 11
