Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (16 page)

De Richleau began to
review the little he knew about her. She had been telling the truth when she
had told him at the masked ball that her mother was a Belgian, but she had said
nothing of her father, except that he was dead: and the manner of his death was
probably a subject that she never talked about. In fact, it was doubtful if she
had ever heard the full details of the tragedy herself. As she had been born
posthumously it would have been already half-buried in the past by the time she
was old enough to be told about it, and then it had probably been thought
desirable to spare her all but the bare facts.

Her father had been the
ill-fated Crown Prince Rudolph, only son of the Emperor Franz Joseph and the
Empress Elizabeth. All accounts agreed that he had been a handsome and
intelligent young man, but much given to secretiveness and introspection. His
young wife, the Archduchess Stephanie, was devoted to him, and he returned her
affection, although guilty of those temporary infidelities, the temptation to
indulge in which is offered to good-looking young princes far more frequently
than to other men. Such a state of affairs being by no means unusual in royal
circles, neither his parents nor his friends had any reason to feel
particularly concerned on his account until it was too late and the tragedy had
come, like a bolt from the blue, upon them.

From the letters he left
for his family, and the evidence of the servants whom he had made his only
confidants, it emerged that from about the age of twenty-eight he had been
beset by an uncontrollable urge to indulge his passions with low-class women of
evil repute. Yet, in between these lapses, so disgusted did he feel with himself
at conduct so disgraceful in an Emperor’s son, that he contemplated taking his
own life. For a little over two years he continued alternatively to follow his
secret pursuit of vice and brood morbidly on suicide; but he had a terrible
fear of death and could not bring himself to face the great unknown alone.

He then met the Baroness
Marie Vetsera, a beautiful and romantic young girl of seventeen, who fell
passionately in love with him and became his mistress. It was supposed that he
had confided his desperate thoughts to her, and out of her great love for him
she had agreed to face death at his side. In any case, he had excused himself
from a family dinner party on the plea of illness, in order to take her to his
hunting lodge at Mayerling. On the following morning his valet could get no
reply when he knocked on the bedroom door. The man called the Crown Prince’s
equerry and together they broke the door down. Inside, they found the girl
lying dead on the bed, with a bullet through her head and a rose clasped in her
folded hands. Rudolph was seated on a chair beside her, and on the floor nearby
lay the revolver with which he had blown out his brains.

De Richleau wondered how
much the morbid mentality of the Empress Elizabeth had contributed to the
derangement of her son; and if Ilona Theresa had in turn inherited these
terrible tendencies. But there seemed nothing in the least morbid about her,
and perhaps she had escaped the strain of madness that had so often proved the
curse of those in whose veins ran the blood of the Wittlesbachs. He fervently
hoped so; for he knew already that he was in love with her.

He knew that it was
absurd that, after only two brief meetings, a man of his experience should feel
as he did about a girl to whom passion was still a closed book. But there it
was! There was no accounting for the genesis of such emotions: like a thief in
the night, they stole upon one unawares. On one day one did not even know of
the existence of some person of the opposite sex, or had known them for half a
lifetime without seeing any particular quality in them: and the next, one’s
every thought was coloured by the desire to please and be near them. Lack of
serious concern for their well-being was insensibly transformed overnight into
an imperative urge to protect them from all harm and bring them joy: to
squander one’s money and neglect one’s work sooner than see them unhappy: if
need be, to risk one’s health, position, reputation and ties with family and
friends rather than sacrifice all hope of union with this one being who, out of
all the millions that swarmed upon the surface of the earth, now seemed unique.

The Duke sighed, gave a
little shrug of his shoulders, then smiled. Of course he would seek a meeting
with her in Vienna. He had known that from the very moment she suggested he
might do so.

Now, he admitted to
himself, he felt much happier in his mind. The fact that he would be entering
on a difficult and dangerous game began to intrigue him. He was used to taking
risks, and more serious ones than the possibility of landing in a fortress. It
would be fun to pit his wits against the guardians of the gilded cage that held
the beautiful Ilona. But he would have to go warily—very warily: on her account
even more than on his own.

There was, too, his
mission to be thought of. He must not allow a love affair to prejudice his
chances of succeeding in that. Therefore, there must be no climbing of the
walls of Imperial gardens in the middle of the night. In fact, no act which
could result in worse than his expulsion from Vienna—at least until he had got
all he could out of Dimitriyevitch.

In any case he had
intended to pay a visit to Vienna as soon as he had had a chance to assess the
general lie of the land in the Serbian capital. It took two to make a quarrel,
and it was Austria whom the conspirators of the Black Hand planned to provoke.
Therefore he thought it very important to form an appreciation of what Austrian
reactions were likely to be.

Everyone agreed that the
ancient Dual Monarchy, weakened as it was by the separatist aspirations of the
numerous races who composed its population, would run a certain risk of
disintegrating should it become involved in a major war. If the Austrians
believed that Russia would support Serbian demands by force of arms, they might
well hesitate before accepting a Serbian challenge. Unless they could count
with absolute certainty on German backing, they might consider that it would
prove cheaper in the long run to surrender Bosnia to the Serbs, and also let
them have a port on the Adriatic. In that case it was probable that the Black
Hand’s next move would be against Greece, with the object of seizing Salonika,
and thus securing a second outlet, to the East. If so, the next war would be no
more than another Balkan squabble, and the hopes of preserving the general
peace of Europe be good. On the other hand, Austrian pride would certainly be
ruffled by the insolence of her small neighbour, and that might lead to a
public demand for instant chastisement. In the event, the issue would depend on
the mentalities of the few men who controlled the destinies of Austria. Were
they far-sighted? And were they strong enough to resist a popular outcry? These
were matters which, from the beginning, De Richleau had felt it incumbent on
him to find out.

As he thought about it,
he realized that his second meeting with Ilona Theresa would greatly facilitate
his investigation in Vienna. He already had several acquaintances with houses
there, but some of them might be abroad, or on their country estates. Anyway,
it would have taken some little time before their introductions could have
gained him access to Court circles, whereas now he could call upon the Count
and Countess Aulendorf, who, in view of their appointment, must be
persona grata
with all the members of the
Imperial family; and Count Adam Gr
ü
nne
who, he had learned at lunch, was the grandson of General Count Gr
ü
nne,
the Comptroller of the Emperor’s Household in the days when Franz Joseph was
still a young man.

Soon after the train
crossed the German frontier, the Duke went along to the restaurant car for
dinner. The attendant showed a crop-headed Prussian to the seat opposite him,
and that led his thoughts back to his encounter with Herr Kronauer. The more he
considered the matter, the more fantastic seemed the surmise that German
espionage should have penetrated sufficiently far into British secrets to have
grounds for taking an interest in his own activities. In fact, he did not
believe it possible. It was, of course, on the cards that their agent, if
Kronauer really was one, had mistaken him for someone else: or that Kronauer
was not acting under orders from his government, and had been employed by a
private firm to watch him for some reason, at which he could not even make a
guess. Still, there was no getting away from it that he had been spied upon,
and it was at least a possibility that someone had got on the train at Victoria
with instructions to follow him to his destination.

If that were so, whatever
their object in keeping him under observation, the very fact that his movements
were being recorded might later prove, not merely embarrassing, but dangerous.
That would certainly be the case if at any time his work made it necessary for
him to break the law, as anyone who had been spying on him while he did so
would be in a position to give him away to the police, or, if it suited their
book better, use their knowledge in an attempt to blackmail him.

It seemed, therefore, a
situation in which, by taking a little trouble now, he might save himself from
the possibility of meeting with a great deal later on. Anyone who had boarded
the train for the purpose of dogging him would certainly have learned by this
time, from the labels on his luggage, that he was on his way to Belgrade. The
Serbian capital was not a very big place and, once there, it would be almost
impossible to move about its centre without proving an easy quarry for a
tracker. But if he got off the train before it reached Belgrade, that would
offer an excellent chance of escaping such unwelcome attention altogether.

De Richleau chuckled to
himself at the thought of how his theoretical opponent’s mind would almost
certainly work in such circumstances. On arriving in Belgrade and finding that
his man had left the train somewhere along the route, he would naturally assume
that the labels on the baggage had been stuck on deliberately to fool him, and
that from the first his quarry had never intended to go there. He might work
back again along the line, but by then the trail would be cold; and as the
express stopped at half a dozen places he would not even know at which to start
his inquiries. The man he was after might have got out at Cologne, Mayence,
Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Munich, Salzburg, Linz, Vienna, Budapest or Szeged and,
by the time he discovered how he had been out-witted, might have gone on to
Berlin, Rome, Trieste or Prague. So, short of having the co-operation of half
the police forces in Europe, to locate him again would be virtually impossible.

Accordingly, the Duke
swiftly began to formulate a new plan of campaign. He knew that the train was
due to reach Munich early in the morning, when the majority of its occupants
would still be asleep, so to get off there offered the best chance of leaving
it without being spotted. It would be pleasant to see Munich again, and after
spending twenty-four hours there, he could catch the next day’s express on to
Belgrade.

But no! If he was being
watched there was a chance that his shadow might not be put off the scent quite
so easily. He might think that he had been noticed on the train, which had led
to his quarry taking emergency measures to evade him. In that case he would
probably remain in Belgrade for several days, in the belief that his man would
turn up there before the week was out.

Another idea then came to
the Duke. Why should he not make his inquiries in Vienna before, instead of
after, his visit to Belgrade. If he put in a week or ten days in the Austrian
capital all the odds were that his shadow would have decided by then that he
was wasting his time, and have left Serbia with the conviction that, after all,
his quarry had never intended to go there.

For a few minutes De
Richleau did some serious heart-searching, as he wondered if he was not being
influenced to adopt this new plan by his desire to see Ilona Theresa again: but
he decided that, even had he never met her, his mind would have worked on the
same lines, as the plan was the logical outcome of the belief that he was quite
possibly being followed.

Having finished his
dinner, he returned to his sleeping berth and asked the attendant there to call
him half an hour before they were due to reach Munich, as he wished to hand a
letter to someone who would be waiting on the platform to receive it. Then he
turned in.

When he was called, as soon
as he had dressed, he made his way along the train to the baggage car, found
his luggage, and asked the guard how long the train would halt in Munich.

“Ten minutes,
mein Herr,”
replied the man; upon which the Duke
began a casual conversation with him about his duties and the way that train
conductors were often carried far from their homes.

As they pulled into
Munich, the early morning light showed the platform to be almost deserted,
except for a few porters and a refreshment trolley. A few passengers got out,
and after the guard had dealt with their luggage and the mails De Richleau
beckoned up the trolley, then offered him a cup of coffee. The guard gladly
accepted, and as they sipped the steaming brew they continued their friendly
chat. Only when the man picked up his flag to signal the train’s departure, did
the Duke suddenly say that he was getting out himself, and call a porter to
take his luggage. Then, as the whistle blew, he stepped down on to the
platform.