Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07

by The Second Seal

  A glance at the map showed that Sarajevo lay some 120 miles to the south-west of Belgrade, as the crow flies. That was no great distance but, unfortunately, no railway connected the two. The main Vienna-Orient line ran south-east from Belgrade, through Nish to Salonika and Constantinople. From it, branch lines twisted through the hill country in a westerly direction, but they ended some distance from the Drina river or Tara mountains, and only on the far side of these other branch lines wound down to Sarajevo. Užice on the east, and Yardiste on the west of the divide, were the terminal stations of the two branches, and about thirty miles lay between them, via Mladenovac, on the main line, to Užice was about 150 miles, and from Yardiste to Sarajevo about 70. So altogether it meant a journey of 250 miles, mainly in slow local trains and with 30 miles of it on horseback.

  He wondered for a moment if it would not be quicker to save a hundred miles by going by road; but automobiles were very liable to break down, particularly on the rough going he would be certain to encounter, while a ride of 150 miles or more would be a gruelling experience and, with essential halts for rest and sleep, could hardly be accomplished under thirty-six hours. Having consulted the time-tables, he found that was just about the time it would take him by rail, and if he could catch a train that left Mladenovac at mid-day he should be in Sarajevo by Saturday night. So he decided on the less exhausting method of travel, then went to bed.

  Owing to the long break in the middle of the day for siesta, the Serbian War Office opened early, and work began at half past eight. De Richleau was quick to realize that if he did not appear in his office at the usual hour Militchevitch would come round to the hotel to find out what had happened to him, and his disappearance would be discovered almost at once; so he decided to go there as usual and make some excuse to leave again, which would give him a longer start.

  He thought it wise to abandon most of his belongings, but made up a parcel of his shaving tackle and night things, went downstairs, ordered a dinner for four that night, then went out. The parcel he left at a tobacco kiosk round the corner, where he usually bought his cigarettes, and on the way to the War Office sent off his telegram to Sir Pellinore. In his office he spent half an hour with Militchevitch going through some papers; then he said that he had arranged to spend the morning going over the Arsenal, so he would not be back until after the siesta.

  That morning it had occurred to him that in a small place like Belgrade he might quite possibly be recognized at the station by some officer of his acquaintance. If he were seen leaving by train the hue and cry after him might be raised precipitately; so, on leaving his office, he went to the better of the only two garages in the town. He told the proprietor that he wanted to hire a car to drive himself for the day, and after a little haggling, was fixed up with a Renault. While the man prepared it for the road, the Duke collected his parcel from the kiosk, then went into a clothing store, where he bought a cheap ready-made suit, flashy tie, celluloid collar, and a flat, round hat like a toque, of the type most frequently worn by the Balkan trading classes. At the same store he also bought a portmanteau made of basket work. Into it he packed all his purchases and the parcel, then he returned to the garage and drove off in the car.

  By twenty past eleven he had covered thirty miles and was approaching Mladenovac. Half a mile outside the market town he drove the car off the road in among a group of trees, got out and changed into the clothes he had bought. Having packed his own in the basket, he abandoned the car and walked into the town. As Mladenovac was the junction from which the branch line train started, it was already in the station. He had decided against the more complete disguise that would have been afforded by a peasant costume, because he would then have had to travel with real peasants. They would at once have tumbled to it that he was not what he appeared to be, and, suspecting him to be an escaped criminal, might have drawn the attention of the railway officials to him. But dressed as he was, he could pass himself off among second class passengers as a Greek travelling salesman, The train consisted of only four coaches, one of which was divided into an equal number of first and second class compartments. Having bought some food at the buffet, he made himself comfortable in one of the latter, which had in it only an elderly couple.

  They proved to be a retired pig merchant and his wife. The old man had become almost stone deaf, and the old woman was not of a garrulous type: so, after exchanging the few remarks required by courtesy on first meeting, they fell into silence. No one else entered their carriage, and a quarter of an hour later the train moved out.

  It was very hot, and as the little train chugged its way across the Serbian plain its speed was barely sufficient for any appreciable breeze to be felt through the window. Every quarter of an hour or so it halted at wayside stations for at least ten minutes, while livestock and farm produce were unhurriedly unloaded and loaded into it. During these halts the heat was positively grilling, and De Richleau, who had been attempting to doze, was kept wakeful and irritated by hordes of flies.

  By half past three they had covered about forty miles, and pulled up at the little town of Lazarevac. As it was a somewhat larger place than any they had so far passed, it did not surprise the Duke that the halt was longer than usual; but when nearly half an hour had elapsed some of the other passengers began to get a little restless. When they asked the guard, he could give no reason for the delay, but said that perhaps there was a blockage on the line further on. Sticky with the heat and pestered by the flies, De Richleau got out and began to walk up and down the platform. Another half-hour passed, and still there were no signs of the train moving on. Being accustomed to the unforeseen delays of Balkan travel, De Richleau knew that another hour or so might quite well elapse before they were on their way again. But, feeling that he had stretched his legs for long enough, he turned to re-enter his carriage.

  Suddenly a commotion at the barrier attracted his attention. A second later he saw Tankosić and Ciganović hurrying through it. They were within twenty yards of where he was standing, and saw him at the same instant as he saw them. With a shout they drew their pistols and ran straight at him.

  He knew Tankosić’s ability as a marksman too well to ask for death by making a dive for the carriage. He knew too, now, why the train had been held up. With grim foreboding, he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

  CHAPTER XVI - THE WINGS OF THE ANGEL OF DEATH

  Ten minutes later, seated between his two captors, De Richleau was in Dimitriyevitch’s Rolls speeding back to Belgrade. He had refused all explanations of his conduct, saying that he was prepared to give his reasons for quitting his post without leave only to their Chief. By that move he managed to win a little time in which to decide on the least dangerous line to take. But, as he thought about it now, it seemed that whatever line he took, his danger would be acute when he was brought face to face with the fanatical Chief of the Black Hand.

  He was further intensely worried at having been prevented from getting to Sarajevo. Should anything prevent his letter reaching Sir Maurice de Bunsen the following morning, the Austrian Government would know nothing of the plot until they were informed of it by London, and it was unlikely that would occur until Saturday evening. A whole day would have been lost and only one night left in which to locate the Archduke in the Bosnian wilds and warn him. The Duke tried to comfort himself with the thought that if the Chargé d’affaires in Belgrade had any sense he would not only communicate with London, as he had been asked to do, but also repeat to Sir Maurice in Vienna, as the matter so urgently concerned his colleague in Austria. All things considered, he felt that by one means or another warning would be got to Franz Ferdinand in time, and that he would still be alive on Monday. But, with a nasty qualm in the pit of the stomach, De Richleau realized that should Dimitriyevitch discover that he had sent a warning to the Archduke, he would not be alive on Monday himself.

  In their delight at having caught him, his captors made no secret of the circumstances which had enabled them to do so
. Owing to his pre-occupation with the plot, he had completely forgotten that he had an appointment that morning at ten o’clock to meet the Montenegrin military attaché, and Militchevitch had failed to remind him of it.

  Montenegro meant very little to De Richleau—hence his lapse of memory—but it meant a great deal to the Serbian General Staff. This small, mountainous territory on the shores of the Adriatic had originally been a part of the old Serbian Kingdom. Alone among the Balkan peoples, the Montenegrins had managed to resist the Ottoman invasion; and although, through the centuries, their country had on numerous occasions been over-run during fresh efforts to conquer them, they had always succeeded in expelling the Turks and regaining their independence. When Serbia proper had thrown off the Turkish yoke, the two territories had still remained separated, until quite recently, by the Sanjak of Novibazar but, in 1912, Montenegro had been the first member of the Balkan League to declare war on Turkey and, after the victory, she and Serbia had divided the Sanjak between them, so they were now neighbours.

  King Peter of Serbia had married the daughter of King Nicholas of Montenegro, which further strengthened the tie of these already consanguineous peoples; and since the beginning of the present year discussion had been going forward between the two countries for a customs union and a fusion of their armies. But the Montenegrins were an arrogant and difficult lot, so nothing had been definitely settled yet, and Dimitriyevitch had the best possible reasons for wishing to hurry the agreement through. He needed the Montenegrins to attack the Austrian armies in Bosnia from the south, and so outflank them; and had asked De Richleau to do his utmost to further matters with their military attaché.

  It so happened that this Montenegrin officer was a nephew of King Nicholas, so regarded himself as a person of considerable importance. Had anyone else had an appointment with De Richleau that morning doubtless Militchevitch would have apologized for the Duke’s absence and arranged another for the following day. But, overawed by the indignant visitor, and knowing the importance of placating him, the A.D.C. had immediately tried to get in touch with his master. Inquiries at the Arsenal disclosed that De Richleau was not there and, stranger still, had never been expected; nor had he gone back to his hotel, been seen in the Senior Officers’ Club, or received at the hospital as a result of a street accident. Much perturbed, Militchevitch had then reported his disappearance to Dimitriyevitch, and the hue and cry had begun.

  No one answering the Duke’s description had been seen at the railway station, so the proprietors of the two garages were questioned, and his hiring of the Renault brought to light. Motor cyclist scouts had been sent out along all the roads from Belgrade and his trail picked up on that leading to Mladenovac. As motors were then few and far between, and still objects of interest to rural populations, it was soon ascertained beyond dispute that the car had not passed through the town; so his pursuers were convinced that he was either somewhere in the neighbourhood, or had left it by rail. The latter field was narrowed by the fact that no main line train going south halted at Mladenovac between ten in the morning and six in the evening, so a wire had been sent to hold the branch line train at Lazarevac while Tankosić and Ciganović drove on to search it.

  As Mladenovac lay south-east of Belgrade and Lazarevac to the south-west of it, there was no great difference in the distance between the two towns and the capital. So in well under an hour from the time of his capture De Richleau was being handed over to the Chief Warder of the State Prison. At this, gloomy about his prospect as he was, he felt considerable relief; since he believed Dimitriyevitch’s thugs to be quite capable of murder, whereas by becoming an official prisoner it seemed much more likely that he would at least be given a proper trial.

  In a bare room he was searched. His money and a small automatic, which he was carrying in a webbing holster under his arm-pit and had hoped to have a chance to use later, were taken from him. Then he was conducted to a cell and its iron door was slammed upon him.

  Sitting down on the truckle bed he continued his anxious speculations. One small comfort was that neither among the things that had just been taken from him, nor among the belongings he had left at the hotel, was there anything in the least incriminating. All the same, it would be futile to deny that he had left Belgrade clandestinely, as the clothes he was wearing gave that away beyond any shadow of doubt. As he had left the capital only that morning, no charge more serious than being absent without leave could be legally brought against him. But the devil of it was that the Black Hand might consider that he had broken his oath, and it was a hundred to one that they had little mercy on defaulters.

  After a while, since no amount of worrying could improve his situation, he began to think about Ilona. He had promised her that he would be back in Vienna and let her hear from him before the end of the month. He had made that promise in good faith, believing that either he would have nipped Dimitriyevitch’s plot in the bud, or it would have come to a head by the 25th. As things had turned out, his estimate had been three days short of the actual schedule, but even with the 28th as the fatal day, had he not belatedly discovered the Black Hand’s intentions, he could still have been back in Vienna by the morning of the 30th and sent her a message through Adam Grünne.

  Now his poor darling would look forward to hearing from him in vain, for it was quite certain that Dimitriyevitch would keep him under lock and key for a considerable time to come, even if no more than suspicion suggested that his flight had been inspired by his finding out the truth. He wished desperately that he could send her some ray of comfort, and at least let her know that his failure to return to her was through no fault of his own. As things were, he could only hope that she would not think too hardly of him. His firm mouth broke into a tender smile as he recalled her sweet face, all wet with rain but starry eyed, as he had held her in his arms on the balcony at Königstein. Then his mouth hardened as he thought of almost her last words to him during their tragically difficult talk during the ball at Schönbrunn. Her words had been to the effect that they must make the utmost of the little time they had, as new plans to marry her off might soon be initiated. Although he knew that he could never possess her himself, the idea of her being possessed by another, and, above all, against her will by some stranger arbitrarily selected for her, filled him with horror and despair. And now she was not even to have the solace of anything but the opening phase of her only romance to look back upon. In desperation he forced himself to stop thinking of her—it hurt too much.

  He had not been in the cell much more than an hour when a warder brought him his evening meal. The man was a rough but decent fellow, who spoke kindly and said that if money had been taken from the Duke, or some could be sent by friends, he would be pleased to buy him any little comforts he required. De Richleau thanked him and replied that he would be glad if to-morrow he could be supplied with cigarettes, a few bottles of drinkable wine, paper and writing materials. The warder agreed and left him. As he slowly ate the vegetable stew and coarse bread which had been brought to him, he again thanked his stars that he at least had the protection of a proper and not ill-run prison, instead of having been carried off to some private dungeon run by the Black Hand.

  But he had counted his chickens too soon. Shortly after seven o’clock the warder appeared again and beckoned him out of his cell. He was taken upstairs and, to his consternation, handed over to Tankosić. With a sinking heart, De Richleau realized that he had been put into the State Prison only as a temporary measure, until it was convenient for the plotters of assassination to take him elsewhere.

  The burly Major tapped his gun significantly, and said, “No tricks, now!” as he led him outside. A Peugeot was waiting there with Ciganović in the driver’s seat. As soon as De Richleau and Tankosić were inside, the car drove off, taking the road towards the châlet.

  When they pulled up in the clearing, the Rolls could be seen through the open doors of the garage beside the house. Its presence indicated that Dimitriyevitch had already a
rrived; so, as the Duke got out of the Peugeot he braced himself, feeling that he would soon know his fate. With some uneasiness he noticed that, although it was only about eight o’clock, there was no servant in the hall, as usual, to take their hats. Ciganović opened the door of the big room and motioned him to go in. As he stepped over the threshold, he saw that the Colonel was seated at a small desk, going through some papers.

  Dimitriyevitch looked up and gave the prisoner a cold, penetrating glance; then, without a word, went on with what he was doing. Tankosić and Ciganović came in, closed the door, and stood just behind De Richleau. For nearly ten minutes there was no sound except the occasional rustle of the Colonel’s papers. The long silence was calculated to be most unnerving; but the Duke was rather glad of it, as it gave him an opportunity to look round the room for possible weapons that he might snatch at if, later, a situation arose which would give him a sporting chance of fighting his way out. On a nearby table there was a nine inch statuette of Napoleon in bronze, with a three inch square marble base. Used as a club it was easily heavy enough to kill a man at a blow; but he would have much preferred one of the Turkish scimitars which were arranged in a decorative fan against the wall over the mantelpiece.

  At length Dimitriyevitch, finished with his papers, fixed his piercing eyes on De Richleau, and said:

  “Well! What have you to say?”

  “Very little,” replied the Duke quietly. “I must apologize for the trouble and inconvenience to which I have put you. It was stupid of me to go off like that. I ought to have come to see you, and asked for a week’s leave of absence. The trouble was I feared you might refuse to grant it.”

  “Why should you wish to leave Belgrade?”