The Countess of Prague

by Stephen Weeks

  “I doubt he has laid on them,” I commented.

  Chapter Twelve

  Taken for a Ride

  It was quite charming. Amidst pine trees, but near the summit of the hill — the perfect retreat. A wooden construction in the Alpine Style with plenty of ornamental, fretted work to gables, stairs, galleries — that warmth of pine wood, glowing in the light from the open fire and from the hundreds of candles all alight when we arrived. Oak may be the robust timber of the British Navy, but give me pinewood any day for conviviality.

  Sir Emile was at the door to greet us. I couldn’t say he wasn’t the same Sir Emile I had met in London and of course amidst this great company he hardly had a moment to speak to me — in fact, other than a hearty “hello,” not a word.

  Dinner progressed pleasantly, if a little noisily. The women who were, shall I say, of slightly dubious ancestry, became very merry on the wine which followed several more glasses of the excellent champagne.

  The King and the Kaiser sat beside each other, both now in ordinary dinner suits — no decorations. The Kaiser seemed to be drinking even faster than the King.

  “Do you know our host?” the King asked Willy during the sorbets after the meat.

  “Of course I know Sir Emile,” said the Kaiser — a certain sparkle in his eye. “We’ve done business together over the years, haven’t we?”

  Sir Emile looked a little surprised this had been mentioned, but not as surprised as the King.

  “Business, Brodsky?” he asked.

  “Naturally, I serve Your Majesty, but it must not be forgotten that I am…I am — shall I say? — like a chef. I make concoctions for whoever asks me.”

  “Whoever pays you, you mean?” said the King, a little more aggressively.

  “Naturally.”

  “So what are you up to with my scientist, Willy?” The King turned on his nephew.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing really. A little invention.”

  “Willy…”

  “Well, tomorrow it will all be concluded. So convenient, your invitation.”

  “We hope you will forgive us, Willy — but we would like a few words with our host, if you don’t mind.”

  The Kaiser seemed to turn his attention to the well-upholstered Austrian widow at his other side. The King virtually hauled Sir Emile to his feet and took him to a corner of the room. I felt it very necessary to hear this conversation and stood up to warm myself a little nearer the fire. This was not impolite as our host and the King were both on their feet as well.

  “So what are you selling them, Brodsky?” I heard the King shout, although he was trying to keep it to a whisper.

  “It’s a new weapon. Only like ones I have sold to the War Department — just an improved version.”

  “What kind of new weapon?”

  “Your Majesty, I am really not at liberty to say.”

  “Not to your Sovereign!?”

  “I am actually French, Your Majesty.”

  “Knighted — by us — for loyalty to Britain, where you live, remember.” Then the King changed tactics. “And how much are they paying you?”

  “Two million marks. So you can see it is important to me. It represents some years of work,” Sir Emile said calmly.

  “Then why in God’s name was it not offered to us?”

  “Oh, but it was. But your generals, they do not understand that modern warfare will no longer be fought with cavalry or even infantry. In fact my weapon is so deadly that it may never be unleashed at all — the mere threat of its use will bring enemies to book.” Suddenly he stopped, then added: “But I have already said too much. I am afraid I must conclude the arrangement tomorrow. It is merely a matter of business.”

  The King left Sir Emile standing near the corner and lurched angrily back to his seat.

  “Willy — so what kind of weapon are you poaching from under my nose then?”

  “Something quite terrifying if used, but I believe it will bring peace in the end,” he replied.

  “Yes, but peace on the terms of whoever has this thing, whatever it is.”

  There was a look of triumph on the Kaiser’s face: “A deadly gas — so deadly it can kill tens of thousands of troops almost instantaneously.”

  The King stood up again and returned to Sir Emile.

  “If the British Government matches the offer by tomorrow morning, where will your loyalties be then? Or does the great chef want a custard pie fight too?”

  Sir Emile then said quietly: “Say nothing now, but I’ll do it. I should have consulted Your Majesty when the War Department first rejected the idea.”

  The King was slightly soothed by this, and was returning to the table when Sir Emile added, “The German Government is paying half in cash and half by banker’s draught. My solicitor is in Marienbad and I have the formula and one of the test phials.”

  I couldn’t see whether the King was actually flabbergasted or just seemed to be so. I resumed my place and — heart in my mouth — at last took matters into my own hands.

  This would be the biggest risk I should undertake in my life (or thus it felt), my throat felt suddenly dry.

  I managed to catch the Kaiser’s eye. I looked straight at him for a moment, then winked.

  He was suddenly still. Not shocked — just frozen for a second. I knew I had my man, now I had to find the courage to speak. I found my voice, thank Heavens.

  “Nice try, Mr. Grübbe,” I said.

  “What the?” said Sir Emile. The King looked confused. Already this little incident had raised his blood pressure — he was as red as a beetroot.

  The Kaiser was silent, then suddenly that wild-eyed look of his just disappeared, like someone turning off an electric light. Even those pig-sticking upturned points of his moustache seemed less fierce.

  “This is not your nephew Willy, Sir,” I said to the King — loudly enough for it to still the entire party. “He is an impostor. He is an actor by the name of Hans Grübbe.”

  “And what is this, Brodsky? Some kind of joke? We really don’t take kindly to…”

  “If the game’s up, then I am not Emile Brodsky either,” the man looking and sounding so much like him said. “I am Jules Lefèvre — also an actor. Look, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just playing a part here. I think it’s time for us to go.”

  Grübbe and Lefèvre made for the door. Northcott nodded and instantly four plainclothes men were ready to take them. Two other men who accompanied the fake Kaiser, his “equerries,” also rose to leave.

  For a moment the King was still looking confused; it was as if everybody was not who they should be. “Countess — then who the devil are you?” he called out.

  “I am me. Please do not worry. We have the impostors now.”

  “So you mean,” said the King, turning on the poor actor who had played his nephew Willy so perfectly, “that this fellow is not the Kaiser of Germany?”

  “Correct. He is not,” I said.

  King Edward suddenly stepped back and then lunged forward, hurling his fist at the astonished actor. As he fell back, the look of astonishment continued frozen on his bruised face. He was out cold.

  “We’ve been wanting to do that for years and years,” the King said proudly. “We just wish we had the courage to do it to the real McCoy.”

  There was a ripple of laughter amongst the shocked guests, some of whom hadn’t yet realised that the Kaiser was not the Kaiser.

  “But then where the devil is our nephew?” the King asked.

  Northcott looked blank. The Honourable Oliver Montague, the one equerry who had been invited to the dinner, also suddenly looked at a loss. It was my turn again. In a flash I had seen the entire fraud paraded before my inner senses for the first time.

  “I believe I know exactly where he is, Sir,” I said. “I will have to go and rescue him
immediately. He may be in danger. Especially now…if Colonel Northcott can accompany me — ?”

  “You can count us in,” said the King in strong tones — the kind one doesn’t disobey too easily.

  “But Sir,” pleaded Northcott.

  “Where’s that motor?” shouted the King as he strode from the warm, candlelit glow and into the cold, hilltop air with the lights of Marienbad spread out below, over the tops of the breeze-stirred pines.

  ***

  “Do you think this is wise, Your Majesty?” pleaded Northcott. “We could leave Your Majesty at the Weimar, which we will be passing.” The motor was speeding down the winding hill road.

  “We’ve told you before. We’re just a Duke for the duration. And do you think we’d want to miss this? We are enjoying every minute, especially as now we know Willy isn’t buying a deadly gas to wipe us all out.”

  “So tell us, Trixie — I mean, Beatrice — no, Countess, what is this fraud?” Northcott had quite forgotten himself in the heat of the moment.

  “Trixie! We like that. We had a filly called Trixie once. Damned good ride,” the King called out from his front seat position next to the chauffeur. His Majesty’s somewhat bawdy laugh was fortunately stifled by his cough.

  “I think it’s like this,” I began. “There is not one fraud going on this evening, but two. At the very moment this ‘Sir Emile’ was convincing the Duke of Lancaster to put up two million marks to match some fictitious German offer, so another Sir Emile was convincing the real Kaiser to match a British offer for — shall we say? — half a million pounds. It was a brilliant idea, so nearly came off too. Can you imagine the weeks of careful planning?”

  “But don’t be too impressed. We have to catch them and rescue poor Willy safely first. Where did you say they were?” said the King.

  “There’s an old tobacco factory behind the Haupt-Strasse. We might find them there.”

  “Might?”

  “Yes, Sir. Might. This mystery has never been that simple.”

  The motorcar behind us had two of Northcott’s men on board, and as we passed up the lane towards the old convent that had housed the tobacco factory, out of the shadows stepped Schneider with three or four of his own men from the Austrian police.

  Our force burst into the place and we followed quickly behind. The entrance way was now without its covering tarpaulin. It had pillars and two hanging flower baskets, which I had seen somewhere else today…and then the interior: it had been transformed. It had become a replica of the ballroom of the Hotel Weimar, perfectly made in every detail, although behind it were probably timber struts and iron stage-weights to hold them in place — just as I had seen at the Fenix Theatre.

  The music which had been playing suddenly stopped. The small orchestra was still standing with instruments in their hands. Emmy Destinnova was sitting with her legs crossed, smoking. Even I was fooled for a moment, but it can’t have been her real self. The crowd which was in the place — dressed to the nines as the aristocracy who were their masters — suddenly was quiet. Into the centre of the room strode the King, wheezing asthmatically. I didn’t think he was used to this kind of exercise, but nevertheless he was impressive when his blood was up. Perhaps that’s why so many women had succumbed to being chased around his bedroom.

  The King noticed on the floor several empty bottles of 1885 champagne. “Waste of a precious vintage,” he scowled.

  “Hardly, Your Grace,” said a familiar voice. Out of the crowd stepped Müller, my Müller. “We had lemonade from those bottles until His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser left at seven-forty-five. Then they brought out the beer — but no shortage of that, I might add.”

  A closer look round at the fakes in their grand attire showed that they were a little the worse for wear. The men had loosened their collars. The duchesses and countesses sitting by the wall had their shoes off. Some were smoking cigarettes. These women, God forbid, were also drinking beer! None of them seemed surprised to see someone looking remarkably like King Edward VII of Great Britain. I doubt whether they would have batted an eyelid this evening if Julius Caesar himself in full battle gear had marched in.

  “This is my butler, Müller, Your Grace,” I said, introducing the King — Müller having reminded me of the correct form of address for an English Duke (trust him to have done so!), but should that have been a Royal Duke? — Oh, hang protocol! “He will tell us what has been happening, Sir.”

  “We are just interested to know what has become of our nephew, nothing more.”

  “As I said, they left at seven-forty-five on the dot. They said they were going to a dinner party at the Gratzen,” Müller stated.

  “But that’s impossible,” the King stated emphatically.

  “No, a replica Gratzen. An exact duplicate, I shouldn’t wonder.” I said, then turned to Müller: “Was there any mention of a Grand Duke?”

  “I did hear a mention of a Grand Duke this evening. Grand Duke Mikhailovich — could that be the name? They were speaking of the Grand Duke’s residence.”

  “Thank you, Müller.” I turned back to the King: “Then I believe I do know exactly where they are.”

  At that moment Northcott and Schneider emerged from a small room made in this theatre set at the far end. Over Northcott’s arm was what I took to be the full-dress uniform of a British Field-Marshal, just as our fake Kaiser had been wearing at the Weimar.

  “We hope to God we find more of him than that,” the King muttered.

  Only a moment later we were on the road to Tepl — the colder evening air blowing through our hair as the Praga picked up speed. We now had an extra two passengers, Müller and Schneider. Although they gave us some intriguing new details, there was still no information on the whereabouts of Pilipenko or, for that matter, the real Sir Emile Brodsky — for I was now convinced that at our duplicate dinner party we would find only another hapless actor playing Brodsky.

  I couldn’t help admiring the delightful simplicity of it all. “You see,” I told anyone who was listening, “the next morning neither King nor Kaiser would mention anything to do with having done another deal with Brodsky. It was in their interests to say absolutely nothing. And as for trusting Brodsky on his word about the invention, it wasn’t just Brodsky’s word that was being relied on — but that of either the King or the Kaiser in person. A brilliant touch, don’t you think?”

  “But — Trixie, we hope you don’t mind us calling you that — it is late. These situations breed familiarity, don’t you think?” said the King, looking back over his shoulder at me. If only he knew that my hair streaming so romantically in the wind was only a wig!

  “Trixie, Your Grace, Sir, is fine.”

  “But Trixie — how did the fake Kaiser and his suite manage to avoid all the police?”

  “Again, brilliantly simple. You remember our Kaiser was five minutes early at the Weimar? Well, all the police were waiting for him to emerge from the Hotel Klinger. Our man — and his “suite” — came in through the back door, out by the front, ahead of the real Kaiser, and is then shadowed all the way to the Weimar. If the police had waited another five minutes, they would have caught the real Kaiser stepping into a motor-car which would take him to the old tobacco factory.”

  “We see what you mean. Simple! Intriguingly simple!”

  We had crossed the silent cobbled square at Tepl, the distant baroque onion-domed spires of the Abbey silhouetted against the only slightly paler sky. Soon we were passing the long stone estate wall of Grand Duke Mikhailovich’s castle. The gates between the lodges stood open. The drive wound its way up and over a low hill. In the faint light we could see stately trees spreading their moon shadows on this “English” parkland and on a crag rising up ahead was the dark shape of a castle, towered and turreted. A single light was burning in a single window high up in a battlemented wall.

  Before we got to the castle, however,
the driveway divided into two. The right fork would take us directly to the castle entrance — so it appeared — while the left fork led to a building nestling in some trees. There seemed to be lights over there, and the sounds of music and people laughing and shouting. Of course — the Summer House. I knew immediately what we would find inside.

  Outside were two station-wagons — the kind pulled by two horses each and seating up to ten or twelve persons. The horses looked up surprised at hearing the motors. The noise from the interior continued, drowning out the sound of our arrival. As before, we had a second car following with Northcott’s men in it.

  The door to the Garden House was not locked. The wall on this side of the building had been clad in fretted pine boards to resemble the Gratzen shooting box. Inside, the replica was more complete. We found ourselves disturbing a scene of considerable debauchery.

  The King let out a gasp of astonishment and gripped my arm. However, I was certain he had seen all this — and much worse — before and his strong emotion was more to justify gripping my slim, satin-clad arm than to register any genuine alarm.

  The women employed by the fraudsters were somewhat looser than those attracted by the bigger fish at the real Glatzen event. Several of them were in a state of undress. One of them, I noticed, was wearing the very latest American stays, in white. I knew the shop in Prague, and I would call there; they were quite fetching, apart from the ungainly metal suspender clips — six of those frightful things which must have very fractionally increased Mr. Pinkerstein’s fortune.

  Candles were guttering, some nearly burned down to their holders. The male guests at this — well, it had started out as a dinner, quite obviously — were fairly nondescript. Only one was immediately recognizable. Together, as they now came to each other, one couldn’t tell the two King Edwards apart.

  The King marched straight up to his counterfeit: “You, sir, are a scoundrel.”

  “Then God made two of them!” the impostor shouted back. Drink does make one reckless!