Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (17 page)

No head was poked from a
window as the train drew out, so he knew that by loitering he had achieved his
object and made certain of leaving it unobserved. If his shadow missed him
during the next few hours and made inquiries of the train personnel, he might
learn that his quarry had got out at Munich; but that would do him little good,
as by the time he got back there De Richleau intended to be in Vienna, so his
trail would be irretrievably lost.

He took a mid-day train
on, and arrived at the Austrian capital in time for dinner. From the station he
drove straight to Sacher’s Hotel. It was very old-fashioned, and not very
large, but extremely comfortable and maintained a small restaurant of about
twenty tables which was world-famous. In the rooms upstairs the sheets and
towels were of the finest linen, and the furniture of a rich Victorian
solidity. A valet at once appeared to unpack the Duke’s belongings, as though
he were in a private house, and he took his tub in a marble bath the size of a
Roman sarcophagus. Spick and span in a single-breasted dinner jacket, he went
down to the restaurant, where he dined on
Ecrevisses Anet
and saddle of roe-buck, washed down
with a bottle of
Rupertsberger Hoheberg.
Then he went to the office and inquired for Frau Sacher.

The elderly proprietress
of the hotel was an old friend of his and a great personality. She prided
herself on having had as her guests at one time or another, every crowned head
in Europe who, in her younger days, had visited Vienna incognito; and counted
all the leading nobility of Austria among her friends. For her special guests
she kept a most unusual visitors’ book: they were asked to sign their names in
pencil on a large table cloth, and she afterwards embroidered their signatures
into it. Its centre-piece was the autograph of the Emperor, who had started it
for her, and from that radiated those of Grand Dukes, Princes, Counts and
Barons by the score. Among them was that of Count K
ö
nigstein,
De Richleau’s Austrian title, which he always used when in the Dual Monarchy.

After a few minutes he was
ushered into her sitting-room. It was a fitting setting for her, as she was now
a woman of another age, and hated change. The furniture was of heavy carved
oak, the red velvet curtains were fringed with bobbles, there were
anti-macassars on the backs of the arm-chairs, pots with ferns on high,
spindle-legged stools, and many photographs in silver frames, mostly of young
men with flowing moustaches and side-whiskers. She was sitting bolt upright in
a stiff-backed chair sideways on to the table, her left elbow resting on it.
Many yards of black silk billowed out round her lower limbs, passed smoothly
over her tightly corseted waist, then rose over an ample bosom to end at chin
and wrists in goffered frills of white lawn. Her grey hair was parted in the
centre and looped back in a number of complicated flat plaits to form a bun on
the crown of her head. She was smoking, as she often did when walking about the
public rooms of her hotel, a large Havana cigar. Altogether she made an
impressive, almost formidable, figure; but there was in her eyes that quick,
friendly look which in all ages denotes one of life’s enjoyers.

As De Richleau bowed to
her, she said: “It must be nearly three years since you stayed with us, Count.
After such a long absence from Vienna it is most kind of you to give part of
your first evening to calling on an old woman.”

“You will never be old,
Madame,” he told her gallantly. “And how could I better attune myself again to
the atmosphere of your lovely city than by coming to talk to you about it?”

“You have not changed,” she
smiled, “and are as much a flatterer as was your handsome father. Vienna has
not changed either. The young ones grow up and are as naughty as their parents
used to be. Perhaps our music is not quite up to the old standard, but maybe
that is only my imagination, and just that I still prefer the airs of Liszt,
Mendelssohn and the older Strauss because they remind me of my youth.”

As she was speaking a
white-haired waiter came in carrying a bottle in an ice-bucket and a dish, on
which was a shallow basket containing little cakes: they were the delicious
Sacher torte,
light as a feather and stuffed with
cream, for which the hotel was famous. When the wine was poured into the
shallow champagne glasses, De Richleau immediately noticed that its froth was
pink and, raising his eyebrows, said:

“Madame, this is a great
compliment you pay me—to open a bottle of Cliquot Ros
é
.”

“My memory is still good,”
she shrugged. “I keep it for my own drinking now, as I have not much left and
one rarely sees wines in these days to compare with the old private cuvées of
the Widow. But I recall how you always used to insist on having it when you
entertained that pretty opera singer to supper. What was her name? Zara
something?”

“You mean Zara J
ó
kai, the little, dark Hungarian.
Yes, I remember. How gay she was, and how we laughed together!”

“And I suppose you still
expect me to turn a blind eye when you find another pretty Viennese to your
taste, and wish to give her good advice up in your suite over oysters and
champagne?”

“Madame, I promise you
that I will give you no reason to complain of my discretion.”

Frau Sacher chuckled and
broke off a piece of the rim of the cake basket, which was made of marzipan. “No,
you have never done that, Count; and I should be sad indeed if I did not feel
that life and laughter were still going on around me. How long do you intend to
remain with us?”

“It all depends. It is a
long time since I have visited my estates at K
ö
nigstein
and they are overdue for a thorough inspection. I have instructed my steward to
let me know when the castle is ready for my reception. When it is, I shall go
there; but as soon as my business is done I hope to return to Vienna.” De
Richleau felt that, when the time came, this excuse would afford excellent
cover for his move to Serbia, and went on almost at once to inquire after the
Emperor.

“God be praised! His
Majesty keeps in excellent health,” Frau Sacher replied. “Of course, he now
appears in public very seldom, but he is still hale and hearty.”

“And the good Frau
Schratt?” asked De Richleau.

“She, too, keeps very
well, and continues to be a great support to His Majesty. He still maintains
his custom of walking across the gardens to breakfast with her in her little
house every morning. You know he never looks at a newspaper, and relies on her
to give him the news of the town.”

“I have never met her,
and I should much like to do so. You are well known to be one of her oldest
friends, and I should consider it a great kindness if you could arrange it.”

Frau Sacher looked a
little dubious. “I am very fond of Katharina. She is a fine and good person,
and she comes to see me quite frequently. But she lives a very retired life and
does not much care for meeting strangers.”

“I could probably get the
Aulendorfs and a few other people who she must know,” suggested the Duke. “Then
perhaps you could persuade her to be my guest at a private luncheon party here.”

It was not idle curiosity
that made him anxious to meet Katharina Schratt. No responsible person ever
inferred that she was the Emperor’s mistress, as her relations with him had
always been open and most decorous; but she was probably more intimate with the
old man than anyone else in his empire. She had made her name as an actress at
the Burgtheater in 1883, and two years later had been presented to the Emperor
and Empress. Both of them had taken a great liking to her, and from ’88 onwards
had frequently invited her to visit them. By the following year she had become
such an accepted member of the family circle that it had fallen to her, more
than anyone else, to attempt to console them both at the time of the tragic
death of their son, the Crown Prince Rudolph. During the Empress Elizabeth’s
long absences abroad the Emperor had continued to delight in the actress’
company, but they made frequent mention of her in the affectionate
correspondence that formed a life-long bond between them, always referring to
her as
die
Freundin.
And after the Empress’ death in 1898 Frau Schratt
remained ‘the friend’, and the only woman, other than his wife and mother, who
had ever enjoyed the Emperor’s confidence. So, in view of his mission, De
Richleau felt that it would be very well worth his while to go to some pains in
order to make her acquaintance.

“I will see what I can do,”
Frau Sacher promised him, “but she was here only this morning, so it may be
some days before I see her again.”

They then spent an hour
or more gossiping about some of the leading figures in Viennese society, and by
the time the Duke went to bed he felt that, with the up-to-date information he
had obtained about ‘who was now who’ in the Austrian capital, he had spent a
very profitable evening.

Next morning he was up
and out soon after the shops were open, as convention greatly circumscribed his
actions until he could leave visiting cards upon his old friends and new
acquaintances. Sacher’s faced on to a small square, immediately behind the
State Opera House, and on turning left as he came out of the hotel a few steps
took him into Vienna’s Bond Street, the Kerntner Strasse. Like its London
equivalent every shop held a temptation for either women or men: huge hats
crowned with ostrich feathers or Paradise plumes, costing up to fifty guineas;
cloaks of ermine or sable; cedar cabinets holding a thousand Havana cigars
apiece. Perfumeries offered genuine Attar of Roses from the Balkans at £5 an
ounce; patisseries displayed confections of an unbelievable richness;
jewellers; florists; haberdashers; and antique dealers: all competed for their
share of the vast wealth accumulated over centuries by the upper classes in a
nation of nearly sixty million people, occupying one of the most highly
developed areas in the world.

Half way down the street,
De Richleau turned into a stationers displaying crested and coroneted letter
papers of every hue. They had there the engraved plate for his cards as Count K
ö
nigstein,
and as he had always stayed at Sacher’s on his previous visits to Vienna, it
needed no alteration. It was soon unearthed and the assistant promised to have
some cards printed from it at once on the hand press at the back of the shop.
They could be delivered as soon as they were dry, and were promised for not
later than two o’clock that afternoon.

A little further down,
the street merged into a square, from which rose the immense but graceful
edifice of the Stefanskirche. As De Richleau approached the cathedral, he
craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the tip of the magnificent Gothic spire
which rose skywards four hundred and fifty feet above him. Then he crossed the
road to admire the colossal west door, with its wealth of carving in which,
every time he had seen it, he had found new beauties.

He was now in the very
heart of Vienna where, over two thousand years before, a Roman fortress had
protected civilization from the inroads of the barbaric tribes north of the
Danube. The city had since been besieged many times, and once in the thirteenth
century almost totally destroyed by fire; but through every calamity it had
survived to become greater and more beautiful. In the Stefanskirche the
chivalry of all Europe had gathered to give thanks to God for the breaking of
the heathen Turk before its walls, and for close on a thousand years it had
been the greatest centre of wealth and culture between the Baltic and the Black
Sea, the Arctic Ocean and the Adriatic.

By medieval times it had
grown to a warren of narrow streets, forming a rough circle based on the Danube
canal, which ran some distance south-west of the main river, and extending
nearly a mile in radius. But the old fortifications had long since been
replaced by a splendid boulevard called The Ring, which encircled the old
palaces and churches and the finest hotels and shops. Immediately outside The
Ring lay the newer Government buildings, several public gardens ornamented with
fine statuary, and the streets and squares of the wealthiest residential
districts. Then, beyond them, lay the suburbs and the parks, of which Vienna
boasted a greater number than any other city. Yet the Dual Monarchy contained so
many other rich and ancient cities that its glittering metropolis had not
outgrown itself with miles of slums and sprawling jerry-built dormitory
districts, as had London and New York. A tram ride could still take any of its
one million eight hundred thousand citizens out into the open country; to
picnic in the Wienerwald, or enjoy the lovely view of the Danube from the
Kobenzl. It was indeed a city of enchantment and delight.