Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (42 page)

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.

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 attach
é
,
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 Sch
ö
nbrunn.
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
arrived; 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.