The Man who Missed the War (36 page)

The weather remained good, except for one heavy fall of snow that compelled them to camp early on their fourth afternoon, and, as they were not near any sheltered spot, drove the hardy Russian into sharing Philip’s bivvy, but by the fifth morning they had reached the foothills, and by sunset they were almost through the rock-strewn gorge that led up to the plateau. It was no more than half a mile away, so only the crossing of it and the descent to the valley remained to be accomplished, and after a last halt they expected to reach the Palace in time for late dinner.

They had their ten minutes’ rest, and it was Philip, now burning with impatience to see Gloria, who said: ‘Come along! Last lap—let’s get it over.’

To his surprise, the Russian looked at him rather sadly, and shook his head. Then he said:

‘No, Philip. I’m afraid this is where we part.’

‘What on earth d’you mean?’ Philip asked in amazement.

The Prince was sitting on a flat-topped rock some fifteen paces distant, and his repeating rifle was lying across his knees. Unobtrusively he slipped off the safety catch as he replied: ‘For various reasons, my poor Philip, we have become allergic to each other. To start with, there is this crazy idea of yours that you must get home to fight the Germans, so you are determined to go in search of the whaling station on the MacKenzie Sea. Of course, you are right about that. There is one there, and I was stationed at it when I decided to make the little trip inland which resulted in my discovery of the valley.’

‘I thought as much,’ muttered Philip; ‘but what’s all this leading up to?’

‘First to the point that I cannot allow anyone who has been in my kingdom to leave it. You see, when I failed to return to the whaling station last February my shipmates must naturally have assumed that I had fallen down a crevasse or met my death
in some other way. For reasons which I will not go into, that suits me very well. I am sorry to appear distrustful, but I cannot risk anyone who knows that I am still alive communicating with the outside world, because some day I might get bored and wish to return to it myself under another name; and I can do that in safety only so long as it is believed that I died here.’

Philip had begun to feel apprehensive. He was holding a two-pound tin of toffee that he had brought from the raft, and he shifted it nervously back and forth from one hand to the other, as he said: ‘Look here, what are you driving at?’

Ignoring the interruption, the Russian went on smoothly: ‘Secondly, there is the question of the girl. You are in love with her, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am, but what about it?’

‘Only that I have never allowed any man to come between me and a woman I desired. I am not in love with her myself, but she amuses me, and I am determined to have her. By disposing of you I shall spare myself the scenes you would certainly make and achieve my object more easily.’

Philip took two strides forward, but the Russian raised his rifle and snapped: ‘Stay where you are! I have little more to say. I have given you two very good reasons why by your own attitude you have left me no option but to kill you. I could have shot you from behind a dozen times in the past few days, but I preferred to pay you the compliment of allowing you to face your death like the brave man I believe you to be.’

The thoughts in Philip’s brain raced like a mill-stream. The whole situation was fantastic, impossible. No one could murder another person for their own selfish ends and in cold blood like this. Yet he knew that was precisely what the blackbearded Prince meant to do. He was mad, of course, a megalomaniac; but that did not alter the fact that he had decided to inflict death and had the means to do it. A bullet fired by him would be just as effective as one fired by a sane man—and he was a crack shot.

Philip tried frantically to think of something to say, some argument which would appeal to the Russian’s vanity or sense of humour, but he could think of nothing. For a second he contemplated hurling himself forward, but the distance was too great
for him to cover it in time. Before he was half-way across the space between him and his self-appointed executioner his chest would be riddled with bullets. Beside him there was a high rock screening the entrance to a side gully. If he could slip behind that he might have a slender, a very slender, chance of getting away and behind other cover before the Prince could reach the entrance of the gully. But, even for a sideways jump into the fleeting security offered by the big rock, it was necessary to distract his would-be killer’s attention for ten seconds. He was still nervously juggling with the tin of toffee. As Solgorukin lifted his rifle to his shoulder to take aim, Philip suddenly threw back his arm and flung the tin at the Prince’s head.

The tin was still hurtling through the air as Philip sprang for the entrance of the gully. As he landed behind the tall rock he stumbled and almost fell, but he regained his balance and dashed on. The gully proved be to a narrow defile almost blocked by one great slab of rock some twenty yards down it. Running for his life, Philip spurted towards the narrow fissure between the block and the cliff-face. He felt that he might squeeze his way through where the Prince with his greater bulk and thick furs would find it much more difficult. If that proved the case he might win sufficient lead to find a hiding-place further up the gully where he could lie concealed until full night had fallen. Then, later, under cover of it, he would make his way down into the valley, and when his murderous enemy was asleep find some way of overpowering him.

Solgorukin had fired his rifle, but the tin of toffee had come flying towards him before he had taken proper aim, so his bullet ricochetted harmlessly down the valley, but he felt confident that he could soon get his victim at his mercy again.

Lowering his rifle with a chuckle at the unexpected sport that the Englishman now looked like giving him, he started in swift pursuit.

Philip was squeezing himself through the narrow fissure when he heard the clink of stones struck sharply aside by the Russian’s swift-moving boots. The noise spurred him to fresh exertions. The close, dark cleft was about twelve feet deep, and he was two-thirds of the way along it. With an effort that almost tore his coat off his back, he burst his way out at the other end and
began to run again. The gully was now a mass of broken, tumbled rock, over which it was difficult to travel fast, but offering good cover further on.

Suddenly the rifle cracked. Philip felt as though someone had hit him with a hammer on the back of his right calf. He had never before been wounded, and, as he felt no pain, he did not realise for a second that it was a bullet which had struck him; but at his next step his leg collapsed under him, and he went crashing down among the rocks.

Scrambling to his knees, he tried to get up, but his injured leg was now only a dull, useless appendage which refused its service and dangled grotesquely below his still sound knee. As he fell again he came down on his back, and for the first time saw how his enemy had managed to catch him so quickly. The Prince had not attempted to force his way through the narrow cleft. Instead, he had climbed the great ten-foot-high lump of rock that nearly blocked the gully. He was standing there on top of it silhouetted against the evening sky, a dominating, satanically grinning figure.

‘So you thought you could get away from me, eh?’ he laughed down at Philip. ‘Did I not tell you when we first met that I am a marvellous shot? I could have winged you at half a mile had I wished. But it’s getting late and I didn’t want to have to follow you too far up into the mountains to administer the
coup de grâce
. By the bye, this brief postponement of your end enables me to rectify a slight omission which you may have noticed in my good manners. I forgot to thank you for helping me to bring all those things from the raft.’

‘Damn your eyes!’ snarled Philip, striving to rise again. As he did so he thought he heard some stones tinkle somewhere beyond the Prince, but he knew it must have been his imagination.

The Russian went down on one knee, brought his rifle up to his shoulder and pointed it at Philip; but he did not seem to be in any hurry to fire and went on conversationally: ‘As a matter of fact, fetching those stores prolonged your life for ten days. If it hadn’t been that I wanted your help to bring them as far as the entrance to the plateau I could have shot you the evening you had the impertinence to interrupt me when I was making
love to Gloria. Anyhow, nothing is going to stop me making love to her tonight—not even Gloria herself!’

‘ ’Tis wrong you are there!’ came a voice from the far side of the rock, and Philip’s heart leapt.

‘Gloria!’ he shouted.

At the same second the Prince half-turned and rose to his feet. Two shots followed each other in rapid succession. The Prince staggered, dropped his rifle and fell to his knees.

For a moment he remained there breathing heavily, then he seemed to make a great effort, and picking up his rifle raised it slowly to his shoulder.

‘Gloria!’ yelled Philip again. ‘Look out! He’s going to shoot! For God’s sake, get under cover!’

A third shot rang out, but not from the rifle. The Prince flinched again just before he squeezed his trigger.

The rifle cracked. There was a piercing scream, followed by another sound, a weird choking cackle. The Prince was laughing.

For a moment the noise of the last shots echoed and reechoed round the valley, then the Russian seemed to slide forward so that he was hidden from Philip’s view.

In an agony of fear Philip began to shout again: ‘Gloria! Are you all right? Oh, Gloria, for God’s sake, answer me!’

But not even a whisper came in reply. Night was now falling fast, and an utter silence enveloped the rock-strewn valley.

Not a whisper of sound broke the stillness until Philip began to drag himself over the rocks. In his mind an intuitive flash had already given him the explanation of what had taken place. Gloria had known that he and the Prince might arrive back any time from the tenth day after their departure. Carrying the pistol that he had left with her, she must have walked up to the plateau and across it to the edge of the gorge that afternoon in the hope of meeting them if they returned before nightfall. She was probably sitting up there wondering how much longer to give them before abandoning her vigil for the night, when the Russian’s first shot had brought her hurrying to the scene.

Philip needed no telling that her opportune arrival had saved his life, but he was in desperate fear that she had paid for it with her own. Her first shots could only have wounded the Prince. At all events they had left him the strength to turn and take careful aim at her—and he was a crack shot. The awful silence seemed to confirm Philip’s worst forebodings.

Dragging his injured leg behind him, he began to haul himself as quickly as he could towards the narrow passage between the cliff-face and the great slab of rock on the top of which Solgorukin lay. He wondered anxiously if the Prince were dead. Even Gloria’s third shot might not have proved fatal to him. He was a big, strong, vital man of the type that takes a great deal of killing. There came into Philip’s mind an account he had read of the death of another black-bearded Russian—the evil monk Rasputin; and he remembered how extraordinarily hard it had proved to kill him.

The conspirators who had determined to murder Rasputin
from patriotic motives had invited him to a musical entertainment. They put enough strychnine in the monk’s coffee to kill ten ordinary men, but it left him completely unaffected. One of them shot him through the chest with a revolver, but he did not fall, and as he strode towards the door his astonished attackers made way for him, believing that the superstition that he could not be killed by mortal hand must be correct. As he passed through the door a servant seized a big hunting-knife from the wall and drove it through the monk’s back; only then did he stagger and collapse. They got him into a car and drove him down to the bank of the frozen Neva. Having broken a hole in the ice, they pushed him in; but he was still living and tried to struggle out, so they had to hold his head under until he drowned.

With a pistol it had been good shooting on Gloria’s part to hit the Prince at all, so it was very possible that none of her bullets had wounded him in a vital part. Philip hoped desperately that his enemy was dead, but knew that he might only be shamming death or have fainted from loss of blood.

As he struggled forward, in spite of his urgency, he felt very tired and strangely feeble; but it was not until he had begun to worm his way through the cleft that he understood the reason. In lifting his dead leg over a ridge of rock at the entrance of the passage his hands became covered with something warm and sticky, and he knew then that he must be bleeding copiously.

He was now faced with the alternative of losing more blood if he pressed on or saving his ebbing strength by stopping at once to bind up his wound; but his anxiety about Gloria was such that, even had he known his life to hang upon it, he could not have brought himself to halt for a single moment.

Tearing his nails upon the rock, he pulled himself through the cleft and, panting from his exertions, lay still an instant while he fished in his pocket for his torch. He had good reason to thank his gods that on his visit to the raft he had thought of fitting it out with a new battery, as it was now dark in the little gorge; all the tumbled rocks were chunks of blackness, and the entrance could only be seen as a patch of grey. Flashing the bright beam round he searched the heavy black shadows with it till it lit upon something white. Next second he saw that it was
Gloria’s face and that her huddled body was lying deathly still.

Squirming forward again across the rocks, he flopped down beside her then after two sharp-drawn breaths he braced himself to shine the torch full upon her and learn the extent of her injuries. To shoot at the Prince she had evidently climbed part of the way up the big rock and, when he had shot her, fallen backwards down it, as one of her legs was twisted under her. Her face was untouched, but there was blood on the rock beside her, and it was falling drop by drop into a little pool from a dark patch in her side.