Galvanized into instant action by renewed fear for his life, the Duke sprang to his feet. Only the table and its debris of dessert lay between them, and the chinless Captain Ciganović’s pinkish eyes glared murder into his. He knew that he could expect no mercy. Like a glimpse of one of the new motion pictures, he saw himself being chased, with the big chopper-like sword flashing within an inch of his back. Cursing himself for having failed to secure one of the pistols while he had the chance, he saw that he must seize some weapon in the next second or die yet in that room, slashed to pieces within a few feet of where he stood. His glance flickered to the chimney-piece. He was three feet nearer to it than his enemy. In one bound he reached it and grabbed the hilt of another of the scimitars. At the same instant Ciganović struck.
De Richleau had underestimated the tall man’s reach. Only the body of Dimitriyevitch saved him from being cleft from skull to chin. As he leapt, his eyes were riveted on the weapon he meant to seize. He had no chance to watch his step. His right foot landed on the dead man’s thigh, slipped, and precipitated him violently forward. But for his grasp on the hilt of the scimitar he would have pitched head down between the legs of the table. As it was, his head and shoulders curved in a dive below the level of the mantel. Above them Ciganović’s blade bit into the wood of the mantel-shelf. He had to exert all his strength to wrench it free. In that moment of grace, the Duke ducked back from under the blade and pulled the one he held from its fastening.
As though by mutual consent, they both withdrew a pace and skirted the legs of the table to get out into the open. Like duellists, as they had now become, they took one another’s measure and cautiously began to manœvre for the best ground.
Had they been armed with rapiers De Richleau would have felt reasonably confident about the outcome, as he was one of the finest swordsmen in Europe; but the weapons chance had forced upon them filled him with misgiving. The nearest thing to them he had ever handled was a sabre; and, since he regarded sabre-play as uncouth compared with the finesse of the straight blade, he had given little time to it. And even the sabre had comparatively little in common with these terrible weapons. They were barely two feet long, but from the hilt they widened out in a graceful curve to nearly six inches in width towards their ends. Their blades graduated from razor-sharp edges to backs half an inch in thickness, so that their weight gave them a far greater cutting power than that of a long flat-bladed sword. On both sides they were beautifully damascened with an inlay of arabesques in gold; and it was with just such a weapon that Haroun al Raschid’s executioner, the negro Mansour, had struck off the heads of standing men at a single blow.
There was little to choose between the physical state of the combatants. De Richleau had a bullet wound in his left shoulder, from which he had lost some blood, and his right shin ached badly where Dimitriyevitch had kicked him. Ciganović had a bump the size of a duck’s egg above the left ear, where the Duke’s boot had landed, and blood was still oozing from it; while water was already gathering painfully under his right knee-cap from the first kick he had received. Both felt groggy and uncertain of themselves; and both were aware that one slip of the treacherous mats on which they stood would lead to a swift death. Yet neither thought of attempting flight.
Suddenly Ciganović sprang forward, aiming a blow at the Duke’s head. He parried it easily, but failed to get in under the other’s guard. The thickness and awkwardness of the weapon prevented him from turning the Serbian’s blade and seizing the advantage which he would have gained had they been fighting with swords. Moreover, to his renewed apprehension, De Richleau discovered that his opponent’s height and length of arm gave him an even greater advantage in reach than he had at first supposed.
The scimitars clashed again, and again, Ciganović attacking all the time and the Duke on the defensive. He had observed one thing that heartened him a little. The Serbian was suffering great pain from his right knee every time he moved. So, by treading warily in a circle, and giving back a little each time he was attacked, De Richleau forced him to keep shifting his position.
Their eyes never left one another, each knowing that his life depended onl anticipating the other’s next stroke. As they fought, the room was deadly still. Even the sound of the trees outside rustling in the night breeze seemed to have died away. The tense silence was broken only by the rasp of their breathing and the slither of steel on steel.
Sweat was streaming from them both. De Richleau’s arm was tiring from wielding the heavy weapon; but he could now detect a look of fear in the albino’s eyes, and believed him to be nearer to exhaustion than himself. Hoping to end it before his arm had become too weak to deal a mortal stroke, he suddenly stepped in and slashed at the Serbian’s neck. Ciganović succeeded in partially parrying the sideways cut, but the Duke’s scimitar slid along his and its razor edge nicked an inch deep cut in the ugly dewlap that sloped back where his chin should have been.
Blood welled from the wound and poured down on to his prominent Adam’s apple. He let out an oath and slashed again at De Richleau’s head. To avoid the flailing scimitar, the Duke sprang back. The silk rug on which he landed slid from under him as though he had jumped in smooth-soled shoes on to a skating rink. His feet flew forward, his head flew back, and in a second he was full length on the floor.
With a yell of triumph Ciganović ran in. Using all his remaining strength, he slashed down at his prostrate enemy. The flashing blade missed the Duke by only a fraction of an inch. Just in time he heaved himself aside and rolled over and over towards the door. Again he was given a moment of grace. The power of Ciganović’s stroke had driven the sharp steel he wielded through the mat and into the floor. By the time he had freed it, De Richleau was stumbling to his feet.
As he scrambled to his knees he found himself near the little table on which stood the bronze statuette of Napoleon. The second his glance fell on it, he snatched it up in his left hand. At a limping run, Ciganović came charging in again. The Duke hurled the bronze figure at his head. It took him between the eyes, halting him in his tracks. His arms flew wide and he nearly overbalanced backwards from the force with which the statuette had hit him. De Richleau took one step forward, raised his terrible weapon, and brought it down with a sickening crunch in the side of the tall Serbian’s neck. Blood spouted from the jugular vein as from a fountain. For a moment he stood swaying there. Then his knees folded under him and he crashed to the floor, the blade fast in the ghastly wound dragging De Richleau down on top of him.
Letting go the hilt of the scimitar, the Duke rose slowly to his feet and stood for a moment, panting beside the still-twitching body. Then he began to look round the floor for one of the pistols. Tankosić had given no sign of life from the cellar, but he might not be dead, and De Richleau did not mean to be caught napping twice.
After a short search he found Dimitriyevitch’s gun. The kick had sent it from the hearth into a dark corner behind the log basket. The Duke picked it up gingerly, knowing that its safety catch must be off. He found that it had one bullet in the chamber and five left in the magazine. Now that he was properly armed, he could allow fatigue to have its way with him, at least for a short spell. Holding the pistol on his knee, he sat down in the arm-chair on which he had previously rested his head.
A glance at the grandfather clock on the far side of the room showed it to be twenty-five past ten, and the pendulum of the clock was still swinging. It seemed incredible that so short a time should have elapsed since the arrival of the messenger with the letters that had betrayed him; but the only pause of more than seconds during the frightful scene of violence which had just taken place, had been after he had choked the life out of Dimitriyevitch.
As his muscles relaxed and his breathing came more regularly, his brain became capable again of considering matters beyond the immediate present. He had told Dimitriyevitch that his plot had failed and that the Archduke would be warned in time. Such an incarnation of Satan on earth had deserved that, and even had D
e Richleau not sent a telegram to Sir Pellinore he would have made up some such story for his victim to carry down to hell. But, unfortunately, the statement as a whole was probably very far from the truth.
The Duke had counted on Sir Maurice de Bunsen doing the trick in Vienna, or, failing that, the Chargé d’affaires in Belgrade sending a cipher telegram to the Foreign Office, the contents of which would immediately be relayed to the Austrian capital. But both those lines had been blocked, and Sir Pellinore was a private individual. As De Richleau knew, telegrams from the Balkans often took twenty-four hours or more to reach London. His had been sent first thing that morning, not overnight at the same time as the letters, as he had led Dimitriyevitch to suppose. So it was unlikely that it would be delivered at Carlton House Terrace until to-morrow, Saturday morning. What if Sir Pellinore were away for the week-end, as well he might be? It might be sent on to him in the country. If not, it would lie on a silver salver in his front hall till Monday, by which time the Archduke would be dead. If it were sent on to him in the country, the odds were that it would not reach him till the afternoon. Telephones were still unreliable things for discussing such matters at long distance, and it was pretty certain that only junior officials would be available at the Foreign Office over a week-end. Sir Pellinore would have to hurry back to London, and further time would be lost while he ran to earth anyone of sufficient standing to cope with such a situation. If they failed to get a message off before the evening, by the time it reached Vienna it would almost certainly be too late to find and warn Franz Ferdinand. And even at best, if Sir Pellinore did get the wire on Saturday morning, the margin was going to be extremely narrow.
It took little thought for De Richleau to see that, where his first attempt to get to Sarajevo had been no more than a proper precaution, it was now absolutely imperative that he should succeed in doing so.
Although his wound was bound to hamper him badly, and the crosscountry journey would be a hideous one, he still had two nights and a day in which to make it; and now that he could get away with a clear start in Dimitriyevitch’s Rolls, he felt that he ought to be able to reach the Bosnian capital by his deadline of Sunday morning.
The thought of getting a clear start reminded him about Tankosić. After that mighty swipe with the bottle, it seemed probable that the third member of the unholy triumvirate was lying at the bottom of the cellar steps with a cracked skull, and so badly concussed that he would not recover consciousness for some days. But if he did prove capable of talking when the servants found him in the morning, the Duke would be a hunted man long before he could get out of Serbia. In view of the now vital importance of his reaching Sarajevo, De Richleau felt that he ought to go down to the cellar and finish the Serbian off.
But he did not at all relish the idea. He had always loathed the business of having to shoot horses when they were wounded in action, and the thought of blowing out the brains of a helpless but still living man, however brutal his character, was much more horrible. The only alternative seemed to be to take Tankosić with him. If he did not die from a haemorrhage brought on by the bumping of the car over rough roads, he could be put out at some village just over the frontier and the peasants there told that his head wound was the result of his having been run over.
Getting up, De Richleau walked over to the cellar door and listened. There was not a sound, so he took it that he had nothing to fear from that direction. Slipping the safety catch of the pistol on, he put it in his pocket, then took from its bracket on the wall, one of the six oil lamps that lit the big room, and crossed the hall to a small pantry on its far side, where he knew that the drinks were kept. There, he mixed himself a stiff brandy and soda and drank it slowly.
By the time he had finished it his head was much clearer and he felt altogether better. Going upstairs to the only bathroom in the house, he eased himself painfully out of his jacket and shirt, and examined his wound in the mirror. It was a small, neat hole not far from his arm-pit and just below the collar bone. The wound had stopped bleeding, but was slightly inflamed round its edges, and the bullet had not come out at the back, which meant that later it must be probed for and extracted. Still, he felt he had been very lucky that it had not either penetrated his lung or smashed his shoulder joint; and he knew the latter was all right as, although it pained him to lift his arm, he could still do so without the agony he would have suffered had the bone been splintered.
After washing the wound thoroughly with soap and water, he found an antiseptic ointment among the pots in the bathroom cupboard, also cotton wool and sticking plaster, so he was able to make a rough dressing for it. He would have given a lot to lie soaking for a while in a hot bath but, apart from the fact that time was precious, there was always the risk that some unforeseen circumstance might bring another messenger out to the châlet: so he decided not to risk it.
When he had finished dressing his wound, he went into Dimitriyevitch’s bedroom and opened the wardrobe. In it, in addition to several sets of uniform, there was a variety of civilian clothes for use when the Colonel travelled abroad. Selecting an undress uniform, De Richleau took off the rest of his blood-stained clothes and got into it. The tunic did not fit him at all badly, but the breeches were a good bit too short, so he had to put up with the waist-line making a thick flap round his hips and leaving their two top buttons undone. Then, to his great annoyance, when he came to try the Colonel’s riding boots, he found that he could not possibly get into them. However, he decided to get over that by using Ciganović’s, as they would certainly be large enough. Taking a suitcase from on top of the wardrobe, he packed some of Dimitriyevitch’s civilian clothes into it, then went downstairs in his stockinged feet.
Leaving the suitcase in the hall, he stepped over to the door of the big room. His approach had been noiseless and, as he reached the door, which was standing ajar, he heard a sound inside. Getting out his gun, he slipped off the catch, and peered cautiously through the narrow opening. There, at the far end of the room, his head and face all bloody, stood Tankosić.
Evidently he had just recovered consciousness, made his way unaided up the cellar steps, and was now taking stock of the situation. He was leaning with one hand against the wall, but his bloody head moved swiftly from side to side as he took in the details of the awful scene, showing that he was fully compos mentis.
As De Richleau watched him his glance fell, and remained fixed for a moment on something on the floor at the far end of the sofa. Following his glance, the Duke saw it too: a dark object that was under the sofa end, but protruding a few inches from it. Next second he realized that it was the butt of the pistol which Ciganović had dropped as he pitched head foremost through the cellar door.
Tankosić left the wall and took two firm steps towards it. The Duke pushed the door open, levelled his pistol, and cried: “Hands up!”
The Serbian halted in his tracks, let out an oath, and turned to stare at De Richleau. But he made no move to surrender.
They were thirty-five feet apart, and the Duke could guess the thoughts that were racing through Tankosić’s mind. He was thinking of their shooting match and what a much better shot he was than the man who was trying to hold him up. He had only to duck to get the full cover of the sofa; then, by thrusting his arm under it, he could reach the pistol. Once he had that, he would back himself any day to exact vengeance for his dead Chief and comrade. For him, the all-important question was, in the one second it would take him to duck behind the sofa, could the Duke shoot him at thirty-five feet?
De Richleau waited patiently, a grim little smile twitching the corners of his mouth. Suddenly Tankosić decided to chance it, and dived for the floor. The Duke’s gun cracked and spurted flame. Its bullet smacked through the Serbian’s skull while he still had a foot to drop to reach cover.
A faint wisp of smoke still trailing from his pistol, De Richleau walked the length of the room to make quite certain that he had killed the last of his three enemies. He had. There was no doubt
about that. From a rent in Tankosić’s skull, the grey matter that had been his brains was seeping. The Duke stared down at the body for a moment, admiring its depth of chest and splendid width of shoulder. It occurred to him that had he been compelled to grapple with that torso, instead of with the less powerful one of Dimitriyevitch, he would be dead by now. He was far from sorry that Tankosić had regained consciousness and, out of insolent self-confidence, invited a bullet. His death was going to save a lot of trouble. Turning away, De Richleau secured the two letters that had betrayed him, then set about his grim task of robbing the dead.
First, with some difficulty he got off Ciganović’s boots. They were a bit large, but served their purpose. Next, he deprived Dimitriyevitch of his wrist watch. Lastly, he went through the pockets of all three and took all the money they had on them. It was more than enough to get him to Sarajevo.
The room now reeked with the sickly-sweet stench of human blood, tinged faintly with the forge-like smell of Dimitriyevitch’s singed hair; and the Duke was extremely glad when he had finished his ghoulish operations. In the hall he took a torch from the table and another automatic and several spare clips of bullets from the armoury chest. Then, from the pantry he collected the ullaged bottle of brandy and another of Slivowitz, which he packed in the suitcase. The grandfather clock was chiming eleven when he left the house.
Out in the garage he tried the engine of the Rolls to make certain that she was in perfect running order. Then he looked to her tyres, oil and petrol. The tank was nearly full, but there were a number of spare cans stacked in a corner, so he filled her up from two and wedged the others in on the floor at the back. To his great satisfaction he found in one of her pockets a set of large scale military maps, and he was just about to drive off when he remembered the Peugeot in which he had been brought out to the châlet that evening.
Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 Page 32
