Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (91 page)

A few hundred yards
inland he came upon a tin-roofed shed. It lay at the bottom of the garden of a
house in the village of Albach, which was nearer to the river than Hohenembs
and about three miles from it. There he sat down to hide until the village was
astir. Soon after seven, he left the shed, skirted the north of the village,
and reached the road. An hour’s walk up a series of gradual slopes and across
the railway line brought him to Hohenembs.

It was quite a small
place, with only one inn and half a dozen shops; but one of them was a barber’s.
Although it was a Sunday morning, like most hairdresser’s on the Continent, it
had opened for a few hours to smarten up its patrons before they went to Mass;
so he went into it and had himself shaved. Then he went to the inn for
breakfast.

Only one table in the
little coffee room was occupied. At it sat two Austrian officers: a Major with
a large fluffed-out red moustache and prawn-like eyebrows, and a dark little
Captain. With them were two young women whose smart clothes suggested Vienna.
De Richleau soon decided that the officers were probably stationed in the
locality and had imported two good-looking
demi-mondaines
to amuse them over the week-end.
Not wishing to embarrass the party by appearing to be listening to their
conversation, he asked the elderly waiter to bring him a paper, and the old boy
shuffled back with the previous day’s
Innsbrucker Zeitung.
Propping it up against the coffee
pot, the Duke glanced through its principal news items, while eating a ham
omelette he had ordered.

The Austrian communiqué
admitted that the German invasion of France had been brought to a halt, but
stated that the check was merely temporary, and that their invincible allies
would soon be in Paris. The big news came from East Prussia, and they were now
able to give a full account of a second great German victory there.

Between August 28th and
31st, during the battle of Tannenberg, the Germans had killed or taken prisoner
three and a half out of the five Corps of which General Samsonov’s Army had
consisted: but the Hindenburg-Ludendorff-Hoffmann combination had not been
content to rest upon its laurels. From September 1st they had begun to redeploy
their forces against Rennenkampf; who, on learning of his colleague’s defeat,
began to withdraw his troops, and ordered them to entrench themselves along the
Insterberg Line—a position of great strength, as its right flank was protected
by the Baltic and its left by the northern end of the Masurian Lakes.

By that time the first
two of the Army Corps dispatched by von Moltke had arrived from the Western
Front; so Hindenburg had six Corps to dispose of. Four had been directed north
to make a frontal attack on the Insterberg Line: von Fran
ç
ois
was to bring his Corps and all the cavalry right round the southern end of the lake
chain, and von Mackensen to push his Corps through the Lötzen gap in its
centre.

The brilliant and
indefatigable von François had been given charge of the whole outflanking
movement, and by September the 4th he was already thrusting into Russian-held territory
south and east of the lakes. By the 9th the rest of the army was in position
and general battle was joined. The German assault failed to break the
Insterberg Line, and von Mackensen found himself unable to force his way out of
the Lötzen gap, as the Russians had its exit held too strongly. But in the past
four days von François had worked his way right round behind them. Falling upon
the four divisions opposed to von Mackensen, he cut them to pieces, thus
opening the way for his colleague. Then the two Corps Commanders had hurled
their troops north-eastwards against the flank of the main Russian Army. But
Rennenkampf had had enough. He had given orders for a general retirement during
the night, leaving two of his divisions to protect his retreat by a desperate
rearguard action on the 10th. Both of them had stood with great gallantry, but
been wiped out. That day Hindenburg had driven the last Russian from German
soil, and his whole army was in full pursuit of the flying Rennenkampf. The
paper De Richleau was reading concluded its account with the statement that the
Germans had captured many thousands of prisoners, and vast quantities of booty,
as the spoils of victory; and that the pursuit of the Russians was still
continuing.

It was clear to the Duke
that there was nothing more to be hoped for on the East Prussian front for a
considerable time to come. Both General Jilinski’s Armies had been decisively
defeated, and he would be hard put to it to re-form the remnants of his fifteen
Army Corps on the line of the Nieman. But this Russian disaster, serious as it
was, had not the awful finality which would have crowned a similar German
victory in France. Russia had territory to give—hundreds of miles of it—before
any of her principal cities would be menaced; and her Siberian Army-should now
be arriving to fill the gaps in her torn front. Besides, on her southern front
she had been more than holding her own against the Austrians.

As De Richleau re-folded
the paper to read the latest reports on von Hötzendorf’s doings, he heard a
motor car drive up outside. He had caught enough of the conversation of the
group near him to gather that they were about to set out for a Sunday picnic.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a soldier-servant enter the room, and heard
him report to the Major that the baskets had been put in the car. The two
officers and their girls stood up and, laughing together, went out into the
passage.

There was not much in the
paper about the Austrian Army’s recent activities; but the Duke thought the
brief communiqué significant. After announcing that the stalemate on the
Serbian front continued with only sporadic fighting, it added that General von
Hötzendorf had made a strategic withdrawal from Lemberg. As De Richleau knew
well, the little Austrian
C. in C.
was the last man to make strategic withdrawals unless positively forced to it;
so it looked as if von Hötzendorf must now be in a pretty bad way.

De Richleau was not
seriously thinking about the war. More than half his mind was occupied with the
thought that within an hour or so now he would be with his beloved Ilona. His
vague speculations about von Hötzendorf having got into serious difficulties
were engendered only by the fact of having the newspaper there in front of him.
He had just stretched out his hand for a plum, with which to round off his
breakfast before starting for the châlet, when the two officers re-entered the
room followed by the orderly.

As the Duke looked up his
glance chanced to fall on the orderly’s face. Like so many men with nondescript
features, when put into uniform he looked like thousands of other soldiers, and
entirely lacking in any marked individuality. De Richleau had scarcely noticed
him when he had come into the room a few minutes earlier; now he found himself staring
full at the man across the Major’s shoulder. His face was white and excited. It
was also suddenly and horribly familiar. Instinctively the Duke half rose to
his feet.

At the same instant the
officers drew their pistols and the Major snapped, “Put your hands up!”

Less than an hour later
the Duke was locked in a prison cell. For the rest of the day—the day that had
started so well, with only a walk up a hillside separating him from Ilona—he
was left to brood over his misfortune. For it, no blame attached to himself. He
had been guilty of no stupid oversights like those which had betrayed him in
Holland. His detection had come about through a piece of sheer bad luck. But
that was immaterial. The fact remained that he had been caught; and not merely
caught entering the country illegally, but definitely identified.

As he sat on the wooden
bench with his hands clasped between his knees, seeking a ray of hope where
there was none, he knew what that meant. Within twenty-four hours he would be
handed over to the K.S., and that would be the end of him.

While in Serbia, Austria
and Germany, he had skated on thin ice for days on end, several times
deliberately prolonging periods of peril which might have landed him in the
same situation as he was in at present; and he had got away. But that was
little consolation now. However marvellous the long run of luck he had enjoyed
in places where at any moment he might have run up against someone who knew the
truth about him, it was a bitter pill that here, in a tiny village where he had
every reason to consider himself free from any risk of recognition, a man who
could denounce him as a spy and murderer should have come upon the scene.

He had fallen a victim to
one of those strange strokes of fate which appear to occur only through blind
coincidence; yet, all the same, so often have a subtle connecting link with an
evil action done in the past. The soldier-servant who had recognized him was
the peace-time valet of the late Baron Lanzelin Ungash-Wallersee.

The Duke had left him
three weeks ago on the platform of the railway junction outside Berlin, with
his dead master’s body and baggage, and had never expected to set eyes on him
again. But the explanation of his appearance in Hohenembs was quite simple. The
Major with the fierce red moustache and prawn-like eyebrows was a Count
Zelltin, and Lanzi’s nephew. The depot of his regiment was at Dornbirn, a small
town about seven miles from Hohenembs; and, on hearing of his uncle’s death, he
had applied for this admirable personal servant to be transferred to him.

In spite of De Richleau’s
civilian clothes, the soldier had recognized him at once, but had had the sense
to wait to tell his officers, until they came out to their car, that the Duke
was a British spy, about whom he had been questioned at great length by the
German police. Then, all three of them had returned to the coffee room fully
prepared to overcome the Duke by force, or shoot him if need be. But he had
been taken
entirely by surprise.
Before he had
a
chance to
get at a
weapon they had him covered, and threatened to kill him there and then
if
he moved. The ex-valet had searched him and removed
the two pistols he was carrying. The picnic had been postponed, and the two
glamorous young women left round-eyed with excitement, while their swains ran
the prisoner into Dornbirn. They had taken him to the barracks, at which, as
the regiment was on active service, Count Zelltin was the Commandant. There,
the Duke had been put in one of the defaulters’ cells, placed under double
guard, and left to contemplate his impending fate.

He had as yet no idea how
much the K.S. knew about him; but, as nearly three weeks had elapsed since he
had escaped from Germany, it was a fair assumption that by now Nicolai and
Ronge between them would have completed a dossier containing all there was to
know. Even if there remained a blank in it here and there, it was certain that
they would have collected enough evidence to have him shot on at least
one
charge if not several.

His thoughts naturally turned
to Ilona as his one possible life line. As a prisoner awaiting trial he
considered it unlikely that he would be allowed to communicate with her, or
anyone else, by letter; and as his money and belongings had been taken from
him, he had no means of bribing one of his guards to carry a message to
Hohenembs. But, as soon as he had had time to think matters over, he decided
that it would be not only futile, but wrong, to attempt either.

She had herself confirmed
what Major Ronge had said in Vienna: that although a member of the Imperial
Family she had no official status. So obviously she had no power to make the
Commandant release a prisoner about to be charged with serious crimes; and it
was equally clear that she was in no position to help him break prison.

Had he felt that there
was the remotest chance that she would be able to save him, he would have
strained his wits to the utmost in seeking some way of getting in touch with
her; but, since she was powerless to do so, to involve her at all would be both
cowardly and wicked. The burden she had to bear was great enough already,
without his adding to it. The thought of his trial and execution would
immensely increase the suffering of her last days, and to inflict that upon her
when she could do nothing to assist him was unthinkable.

He had wanted so much to
give her the small consolation of their love ending on a high romantic note,
and to prove how deeply he loved her by risking death himself to see her again
before she died. But now a last meeting was to be denied them, he could only
hope that she would remain in ignorance of his plight until, if fate proved
adamant, a firing squad had removed all possibility of her torturing herself
with vain prayers for his release.

On Monday he was again
kept in solitary confinement, and no one came to interrogate him. His guards
were evidently under orders not to enter into conversation; as, when they
brought him his food, they simply thrust it into his cell and ignored his
attempts to get them to talk. However, at mid-day he asked if he could have
something to read, and one of them brought him a Bible, a few other books, and
a newspaper.