Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07

I
n
April, 1914, the
Dorchester Hotel was still unbuilt, unplanned, undreamed of. Instead, its fine
triangular corner site, half-way up Park Lane, was occupied by Dorchester
House, the London residence of Colonel Sir George and Lady Holford. A great,
square, grey, Georgian mansion, it stood well back at the base of the triangle,
its privacy secured by two low, curving wings, running outward from it, which
contained stabling for forty horses and enclosed a spacious courtyard.

The London season had not
yet begun, and in most of the Mayfair mansions nearby the covers that shrouded
the furniture would not be removed till the first week in May; yet on this
evening in mid-April every window in Dorchester House was ablaze with light.
The Holfords had come up from the country early in order to entertain a Royal
visitor. Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Ilona Theresa, granddaughter of
old Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria, was making a short stay in England, and
in her honour they were giving a masked ball.

By a quarter to ten the
courtyard in front of the house was a constantly moving medley of high-sprung
motors and darkly gleaming private carriages. On the box of almost every
vehicle a footman with folded arms sat beside the driver, and as they sprang
down to fling open the doors of car or brougham the light glinted on their
colourful liveries and cockaded top hats.

Inside the hall of the
house a double line of flunkeys, with powdered hair, striped waistcoats and
satin knee-breeches, were rapidly relieving the men of their coats, and
conducting the women to the cloak-rooms, where they could put the finishing
touches to their toilets and receive the black masks which would conceal their
identities from all but those who knew them fairly intimately.

The men were in sober
black and white, but the women rivalled the proverbial rainbow. Their gleaming
necks and shoulders were set off by ropes of pearls and parures of diamonds:
their many-hued dresses of silk, satin, and lace, fell smoothly to short
trains. Hair was dressed high that season and crowned with sparkling tiaras,
jewelled aigrets or paradise plumes. A king’s ransom in gems scintillated on
arms and corsage.

At a few minutes to ten a
vehicle, strangely in contrast to its opulent companions in the queue, pulled
up before the porch. It was one of the
taxis
that were rapidly replacing the hansoms and growlers on London streets, but the
man who stepped from it showed no sign of embarrassment at having arrived in
such a mediocre conveyance. Unhurriedly he paid off the driver, adding a
generous tip: then, with the unconscious self-assurance that is the hallmark of
good breeding, walked lightly up the steps.

He was in his
middle thirties, somewhat above medium height, and a slim, delicate looking
man; but the fragility of his appearance was deceptive. His nose was aquiline,
his mouth a hard line, redeemed only by the suggestion of a humorous lift at
its corners, and his aristocratic features had a slightly foreign cast. As he
took off the glossy topper that he had been wearing at a somewhat rakish angle,
the gesture disclosed dark hair and ‘devil’s’ eyebrows that slanted upwards
towards the temples of his broad forehead. Beneath them were grey eyes flecked
with yellow: the directness of their glance indicated their mesmeric qualities,
and at times they could flash with an almost piercing brilliance. He was known
to both the police and crowned heads of several countries: his name was Jean
Armand Duplessis, and he was the tenth Duc de Richleau.

On leaving the
cloak-rooms the little parties of guests, now masked, were meeting again in the
wide hall and passing slowly up one or other of the wings of the splendid
horseshoe staircase, for which Dorchester House was famous, to be received by
Sir George and Lady Holford on the first landing. As De Richleau joined the
right hand queue he was wondering if, after all, he had not been a little
foolish to go there.

He had arrived
in London only the day before, and received the invitation solely because he
had happened to run into Sir George, who was an old but not very intimate
acquaintance of his, that morning at the Travellers’ Club. It was some years
since the Duke had been in England and to attend this big reception had seemed,
at the time of Sir George’s hospitable bidding, an excellent way to meet again
a number of his old friends in London society who were almost certain to be
present.

He realized now
that he had paid insufficient attention to the fact that the party was to be a
masked ball, and so would defeat his main object in attending it. The masking
was no serious attempt to preserve the incognito of the guests, as there was no
question of their wearing dominoes to conceal their clothes and figures, and
they were even being announced by name as they were received at the top of the stairs:
it was simply a device to dispense with formal introductions and thus add to
the gaiety of the evening. But, while friends could easily recognize one
another, De Richleau saw that it was going to be far from easy for him to
identify people whom he had not met for several years.

Having greeted
his host and hostess, he consoled himself with the thought that masks would be
removed at midnight. So, reconciled to seeking such amusement as he could find
till then, he passed into the ballroom. The band was playing one of the new
ragtime tunes recently imported from America and, being conservative in his
taste for dancing, he decided to let the number finish while he took his time
in selecting a promising partner for the next.

After an
interval the band swung into a waltz, and by that time the Duke had fixed upon
a slender dark-haired young woman who made one of a group of three seated on a
long Louis Quinze settee. She proved to be the wife of a South American
diplomat recently arrived in Europe, and could speak very little English. As De
Richleau spoke several languages, including Spanish, with great fluency, that
proved no bar to conversation; but she had been married only a few months
earlier, straight from a convent, so he found her abysmally ignorant of the
great world, and almost tongue-tied.

His next venture
proved even less to his taste. A somewhat Junoesque girl, with a head of
flaming red hair, had caught his eye, and he invited her to polka. Polka she
did, but mainly on his feet and, although he was a fine horseman himself, he
found the lady’s conversation—which consisted entirely of her equine
exploits—boring in the extreme.

Feeling that his
luck was not in, for the time being at least, he made his way downstairs to the
buffet on the ground floor, where he whiled away twenty minutes eating some
foie
gras
sandwiches, and washing them down with a couple of glasses
of Pommery 1906. There was still well over an hour until midnight, and he had
not yet seen among the masked company anyone with whom he could definitely
claim acquaintance. So he then decided, rather reluctantly, to try his fortune
again up in the ballroom.

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