Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07

by The Second Seal

  During the five days and nights since his killings on the train his mind had been so fully occupied with his own urgent problems that he had managed to keep it fairly free from the memory of his terrible deed, and thought of it only at odd moments with a shudder of repulsion. Now, in total darkness, and with the nightmare fresh upon him, he strove once more to reassure himself that it had been absolutely necessary. Cold logic told him that it was no worse than having shot two enemies from an ambush. In war time no soldier needed any excuse for that; and he had been impelled to it by a stupendous issue that made two human lives a bagatelle. If justification were needed, he had it a thousand times over in the French and British lives he had saved by influencing the removal of six German Corps from the Western Front. But, all the same, he knew that, should he escape, it would be months, if not years, before he could entirely free his mind of that midnight journey from Wartenburg to Berlin.

  In an effort to do so now, he began to think of Ilona. It was well over a fortnight since she had left for Hohenembs. The mountain air, rest and proper treatment under Bruckner should already be having its effect. She had promised him that she would stay there until she was really well. Franz Ferdinand and other members of her family had been cured of consumption, so there was every hope that she would be, too. Now that all the main armies were locked in a death struggle, the war situation should soon clarify. They could not continue such all-out efforts for very long without exhaustion setting in. One side or the other must soon achieve major victories, and that might lead to peace negotiations. Most people were convinced that the war would be over by Christmas. If it were, in another four months or so he could be with her again, and by that time she might be cured.

  He began to wonder how the war would affect them in other respects. As long as she remained in Austria her royalty would always debar them from being much together, on account of scandal; but once the war was over she might travel again. That would make things easier, although they would still have to be very circumspect. Perhaps she could use her illness as an excuse for a long convalescence in Switzerland. She would be out of the public eye there and could probably arrange for him to occupy a position in her household. That would be marvellous—as long as it lasted. But how long would it last?

  There was the question of her marriage. It had been postponed so often already and could not be put off indefinitely. Again and again he had been tempted by the glorious dream of persuading her to marry him, but had refrained from any attempt to do so on account of her having told him that to marry morganatically would bring disgrace on any woman of her rank. The war would alter many things, and perhaps it would alter her views on that. But such happiness seemed too much to hope for. He must be content to consider himself blessed in her love, and with the prospect that once the war was over they could at least snatch joyous hours together from time to time.

  Then, as he lay there in the darkness, the grimness of his present situation seized upon him again. By Monday death would assuredly be waiting for him on the other side of the frontier, and his sole hope now of evading being taken back there under escort lay in provoking some change of attitude in the British Legation, with which he was not allowed to communicate.

  On Saturday, at mid-day, after two almost sleepless nights, his prison sentenced ended; but he was not given his liberty. Instead, he was taken in the Black Maria back to the police station, and confined there in a cell to await the hearing of his case on Monday.

  However, as a prisoner awaiting trial, he was allowed certain privileges that he had not enjoyed while in prison. He was permitted to send out for better food, wine, newspapers, and to have back his belongings, minus the pistols. His warders also chatted freely with him, and he soon discovered that, from fear that at any time Holland might suffer the same fate as Belgium, they were bitterly hostile to Germany.

  One elderly man who had lived for a long time in Malaya, and spoke English, proved especially sympathetic. He obviously believed the Duke’s story that he was a Briton escaped from Germany and, if he could do so without risking his job, seemed prepared to help him.

  De Richleau still had a considerable amount of money on him; so he made up a wad of twenty-mark notes equivalent to £25 and, when the sympathetic warder came to escort him to the lavatory in the evening, he asked him in a whisper if he would accept it as the price of carrying a letter to the Hague for him.

  To his disappointment the man shook his head. “No. I tare nod. If it contained information useful to the Pridish an’ it afterwards discovered was thad I act as your messenger der Shermans would never rest until they got me pud in brison for it.”

  On the way back to his cell De Richleau thought again. As the warder was about to lock him in, he said: “All right then. Never mind about the letter. But I have two things here which could not possibly incriminate you, and if they can be got to the British Minister at the Hague in time they may enable him to save my life. The money is beside the point. You are welcome to that anyway, for your sympathy.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the warder asked: “What are der dings?”

  De Richleau produced the photograph of Ilona and the Austrian decoration. “Here they are,” he said; “and I propose to write on a slip of paper to go with them, ‘In the event of my being sent back to Germany please deliver to Ninety-nine Carlton House Terrace’. Then, should you be caught with them, you cannot be accused of more than taking charge of some things having a sentimental value for me, that I am anxious should reach my family safely.”

  The warder nodded. “Very goot. If I am found out I cannod be greatly plamed for agreeing to such a request. I am off duty until tomorrow evening. I can easily travel to der Hague an’ back in the early part of der day.”

  The Duke wrote the brief message on a piece of paper that the warder provided, thanked him from the bottom of his heart, and promised to treble the reward if the ruse procured him his liberty. When the man had put the things under his coat, locked him in and gone, he sat down on his truckle bed with a sigh of thankfulness.

  It was much too early yet to count on his release, but at least he could now hope. Ninety-nine Carlton House Terrace was Sir Pellinore’s address. When the Minister received the things he would surely be sufficiently intrigued to look the address up and, finding it to be Sir Pellinore’s, begin to wonder who the false Sir Pellinore—who was sending a photograph and a decoration to the real Sir Pellinore—could be. Surely that would result in a telegram to London describing the prisoner and the things. Sir Pellinore knew the Duke’s Austrian title to be Count Königstein, and that name was on the back of the decoration. Even if the people at the Legation missed that, any doubt about the identity of his impersonator should be removed from Sir Pellinore’s mind by the portrait of the Archduchess whom the Duke had kissed at Dorchester House. The clues could hardly have been better, and if only the Minister sent Sir Pellinore a full description of them, it was a certainty that he would act. Yes, if—.

  For the first time for several nights De Richleau got a fairly sound sleep; but all Sunday he was plagued by the awful suspicion that the warder might have betrayed him. In the wars in which he had fought he had often heard of cases in which the guards of prisoner-of-war camps had deliberately made up to captives, taken heavy bribes to help them to escape, and then done nothing about it. But evening brought reassurance. When the warder came on duty at eight o’clock he gave a friendly wink, and later said in a quick whisper:

  “I did not tare say who I was or where I come from. But I gave them to a young Herr who seem quite pright, and told him that der barcel for der Minister was, an’ most urgent.”

  Much heartened, but still in awful suspense as to whether the description of his clues would reach Sir Pellinore in time for the Foreign Office to instruct the Legation to come to his assistance, the Duke managed, somehow, to get through Sunday night and the early hours of Monday morning.

  At ten o’clock he was again taken to the Law Courts, but this time he had
not so long to wait on the hard bench with the other anxious prisoners, as his case was early on the list. At twenty-five past ten he was led into court and put in the dock. As he stepped on to the platform a stocky, red-haired young man stood up in the well of the court and came over to him. With a friendly smile, the young man said:

  “Hallo! Sir Pellinore. I never expected to meet you in a place like this. You remember me, don’t you—Jack McEwan?”

  “Of course I do,” smiled the Duke. “And I couldn’t be more delighted to see you.”

  The rest was merely a matter of formalities, and ten minutes later De Richleau was in his rescuer’s car on the way to the Hague.

  The car was a brand new Rover, and a sports model that its owner drove himself with all the flair of a born motoring enthusiast: so they sped at a fine pace along the flat, sunny roads of Holland, while the Duke learned that the arrival of his parcel had caused no small stir in the accustomed quiet of a Sunday afternoon at the Legation. Sir Pellinore had been telegraphed to at once, a reply had come in from him giving the facts, that evening; and it had been followed by another, from the Foreign Office, urging that everything possible should be done to secure the release of the prisoner and expedite his safe transit to London.

  They lunched at Pilburg, and over the meal discovered an affinity of interests in Gibbon and the great civilization of Rome, which added to the pleasure of the latter part of the journey. The Duke would have revelled in his freedom even if he had had to travel with a Basuto in an ox cart, but the erudite wit of his companion added just that touch needed to restore the serenity of his mind after the ordeal he had been through, and make the sunny afternoon perfection for him.

  Over tea at the Legation he met the British Minister, Sir Alan Johnstone, a courtly diplomat of the old school, who congratulated him on his escape but showed a tactful restraint about inquiring into his activities while in Germany. They naturally discussed the general situation and, Holland being a neutral country into which first hand news was coming from all quarters, Sir Alan was in a position to give a very full and up-to-date picture of the whole vast conflict. It was just over a week since De Richleau had left Wartenburg and during it, although he had been aware that the most gigantic battles were raging on every front, he had been in no situation to gather anything but a rough idea how things were going. Now, to his distress, he learned that the Allies were in a far worse plight than he had thought.

  The only bright spots were on the most distant Austrian fronts; and both, as the Duke’s special knowledge enabled him to realize at once, were mainly due to the original blunder over the dispatch of the Austrian 2nd Army to the Danube. On its withdrawal, General Potiorek had proved quite incapable of standing up to the Voyvode Putnik and his hardy Serbians. The Austrians had been thrown back across the Drina with heavy losses, and not one of them now remained on Serbian soil. But the 2nd Army had failed to reach its proper station at the southern end of the Russian front in time to avert an Austrian disaster there. When von Hötzendorf’s 3rd Army had struck eastward from Lemberg, unsupported by the 2nd, it had come up against two Russian Armies and, overwhelmed by numbers, suffered a severe defeat. The front of one Corps had completely given way, and the whole 3rd Army was now reported to be in full retreat on Lemberg.

  As an offset in von Hötzendorf’s favour, his 1st and 4th Armies, attacking to the north and north-east, had, respectively, captured Krasnik and Zamosc, and both had dealt heavy blows at the two remaining Russian Armies in General Ivanov’s group.

  But this success of von Hötzendorf’s two northern Armies was of small significance compared with that of his German allies on the far side of the Polish salient. The battle of Tannenberg had been fought and won; and the Germans were so cock-a-hoop with their victory that they made no secret of the manner in which it had been achieved— except that Ludendorff had suppressed the fact that it was General Hoffmann, and not himself, who had planned it.

  The battle had opened on the 26th with General Samsonov believing that he was opposed only by General Schlotz’s XXth Corps, which had been in that neighbourhood from the opening of hostilities. But Below’s 1st Reserve Corps was moving down to join up with it, farther east von Mackensen’s XVIIth Corps was descending on his right flank and, after its long circuitous railway journey, von François’ 1st Corps was just assembling on his left. For three days the battle raged. The German centre held, von Mackensen pressed in from the north and von François from the south, so that the German 8th Army took the form of a horse-shoe, almost encircling the Russians. General Samsonov attempted to pull out. But it was too late. General von François—against Ludendorff’s orders as it afterwards transpired—drove his crack 1st Corps on due cast to Willenberg, thus greatly lengthening the right wing of the encircling movement. On the 29th von Mackensen’s troops, thrusting south, met him there and closed the circle. Two-thirds of Samsonov’s Army were caught within it, and the remaining third escaped only with great losses. The following day, the bulk of the Russians, compressed into a small, thickly wooded area, which prevented them from massing for a co-ordinated break-out,

  were shot down in droves and surrendered by the thousand. That Sunday afternoon, as Sir Alan Johnstone and the Duke sat over their tea cups, the latest German report stated that General Samsonov’s Army had ceased to exist as a fighting force.

  In France a similar disaster, on a far greater scale, now threatened. During the past week the right wing of the German Army had been swinging inexorably forward. Valenciennes, Cambrai, Avesnes, Hirson, Mezieres, St. Quentin, Laon, Rethel—all were gone. Only the great fortress line of Verdun-Toul-Belfort on the eastern half of the front still held. Paris was now directly menaced. The French troops had fought well but were reported to be exhausted. Under Sir Horace Smith Dorrien, the IInd Corps of the small British Army had made a splendid stand at Le Cateau, but it had then been compelled to conform to the general retirement. It was now feared that nothing short of a miracle could save the French and British from annihilation.

  Greatly depressed by these awful portents of things to come, the Duke took such solace as he could from a welcome hot bath in luxurious surroundings, and later joined Sir Alan in an equally luxurious dinner. His Britannic Majesty’s representative in the Netherlands held the belief that his duty lay in keeping a good and hospitable table in the country where he was stationed, and arranging for its notables to engage in golf tournaments with their British equivalents; and that if he did that, the negotiation of rather dreary affairs, such as trade pacts, would prove a simple matter for people who understood them better than he did. The success of his missions proved that there was much to be said for this policy; and it was to it that De Richleau owed the best dinner that he had eaten for a considerable time. At its end the old brandy was so superlatively good that he took occasion to compliment his host upon it. Sir Alan gracefully acknowledged his remarks, but refrained from mentioning one of his own idiosyncrasies. As his friends rarely gave him brandy half as good when he dined out, it was his habit to take some of his own with him in his overcoat pocket in a medicine bottle. Then, when coffee was served, he asked the footman who was waiting on him to fetch his ‘Medicine’.

  At a quarter to eleven De Richleau took leave of his admirable host and was driven by young Mr. McEwan the ten miles that separated the Hague from the Hook of Holland. With them came his wife, a lovely green-eyed girl of eighteen, to whom he had been married only a few months. She had been present at dinner and had volunteered to give her assistance should any trouble arise about the Duke leaving the country.

  That morning the German Consul at Maastricht had made no protest at De Richleau’s release, but, all the same, the Duke knew that he would not be really safe until he was on the ship and it had actually sailed. By this time it was certain that the Germans would be hunting high and low for him. If, during the day, he had been linked up with the deserter who had crossed into Holland six nights earlier, the German Minister in the Hague would have been instr
ucted to apply for his extradition on a charge of murder. As neutrals, the Dutch could not ignore such a demand; so it was possible that, knowing him to be British, the police might be waiting to arrest him if he attempted to leave by the ship that was sailing for England at midnight.

  Their plan was to drive the car up as close to the ship as possible. De Richleau and Jack McEwan would then get out, leaving Mrs. McEwan in it. If she saw that the police were preventing the Duke from boarding the ship, she was to scream, and later say that a wharf-rat had sneaked up to the car and tried to snatch her pearls. Her screams would provide an excuse for the two men to run back to the car. McEwan was to get in the way of anyone who attempted pursuit while De Richleau dashed straight for it. The car was technically a part of the Legation, so British soil; and, once in it, the Duke could not be arrested. They would then drive him back to the Hague and he could remain unmolested at the Legation until a new plan had been worked out for him to cross to England in disguise.

  The thought that there is ‘many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip’ made De Richleau rather silent during the drive, but when they reached the dock nothing occurred to alarm them. The Duke had been furnished with a diplomatic laissez-passer, and the officials let him through with a polite greeting. At the foot of the gangway he thanked Jack McEwan again for his help and said good-bye to him; then went on board and claimed a cabin that had been booked for him in the name of ‘Rogers’. Returning to the rail, he stood there anxiously for a quarter of an hour, while his friends in the car a hundred yards away kept watch on him.