Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (43 page)

At length Dimitriyevitch,
finished with his papers, fixed his piercing eyes on De Richleau, and said:

“Well! What have you to
say?”

“Very little,” replied
the Duke quietly. “I must apologize for the trouble and inconvenience to which
I have put you. It was stupid of me to go off like that. I ought to have come
to see you, and asked for a week’s leave of absence. The trouble was I feared
you might refuse to grant it.”

“Why should you wish to
leave Belgrade?”

De Richleau had had ample
time to think things out. They had found his railway ticket to Užice on him.
That did not definitely give it away that he had been heading for Sarajevo, but
it was on the Bosnian frontier. He had thought for a moment of saying that he
had gone there with a view to making a personal reconnaissance of the country,
over which it was expected that they would be fighting in the next few weeks.
But to have undertaken such a trip, without making any previous arrangements,
or notifying anyone of his intention would, he decided, never be accepted as a
plausible excuse. The only course was to disclose his knowledge of the plot and
put all his hope in their taking his word for it that he had not intended to
betray them.

He shrugged his
shoulders. “I should have thought you would have guessed that. In the past week
I have naturally picked up quite a lot of information about your intentions. I
could hardly do otherwise, while constantly mixing, as I have been, with
officers ‘in the know’, who thought I was ‘in the know’, too.”

“You’re lying!” cut in Ciganović.
“You’ve been doing your damnedest to ferret things out. The night you took me
out to dinner, you did your utmost to pump me.”

“Oh, come!” protested De
Richleau mildly, as he turned to look at the tall, light-eyed, albino. “In my
position as Chief Military Liaison Officer with your Foreign Office, it was
natural enough that I should want to get some idea of how you intended to
rupture relations with Austria. I expected some diplomatic demarche over
Bosnia, and saw no reason then why you should wish to conceal your opening move
from me.”

“I told you to mind your
own business!” snapped Dimitriyevitch.

“Whether I had or hadn’t
would have made little difference. I received unsolicited hints of your
intentions from several people; then, through just one more, all the rest fell
into place. I am a professional soldier, and I was perfectly willing to kill as
many Austrians as I possibly could for you in an orthodox manner. But it was no
part of my contract to participate in an assassination.”

“No one asked you to.”

“Perhaps. But if it leaks
out afterwards that the murder of the Archduke was plotted by officers of the
Serbian General Staff, every member of it will be suspected of having known
something of the plot.”

“If
it leaks out: but it will not—unless there are traitors among us.”

De Richleau knew that his
life might hang upon his tact, so he put the matter as inoffensively as he
could. “Such things have a habit of doing so, sooner or later. And while you,
Colonel, in your devotion to Serbia may be prepared to accept such obloquy for
your country’s sake, I have no similar inducement.”

“You forget your oath to
the Brotherhood of Union or Death.”

This was dangerous
ground. The Duke was very far from having forgotten it, and again he honeyed
his reply: “On the contrary, I considered it most carefully before I acted; and
I came to the conclusion that by absenting myself from Belgrade for the next
few days I could protect my reputation without in any way breaking my oath.”

Suddenly Dimitriyevitch
sprang to his feet, and pointed an accusing finger. “You lie! You intended to
make your way to Sarajevo and betray us.”

The Duke’s eyebrows shot
up and his mouth fell open, as though in blank amazement; then he exclaimed
angrily: “How dare you accuse me of such perfidy! Such a thought never entered
my head.”

“Explain then why you
left Belgrade in disguise, and took so many precautions against your departure
being discovered.”

“Put yourself in my
place. Had you held an appointment on the Turkish General Staff, and discovered
that the Turks intended to do something with which you did not wish to be
associated, would you have walked out openly? Of course not. You would have
assumed, as I did, that if your associates learned of your departure they would
have feared you meant to betray their secret, and immediately have taken steps
to have you brought back.”

“The argument is
plausible,” Dimitriyevitch admitted with a grim smile, “but it does not explain
why you took a ticket to Užice—the nearest point on the railway to Sarajevo.”

“I selected it as the
point which will become our most important railhead in the event of operations
against Bosnia. I felt that, instead of wasting my time lying up in some market
town, by putting in a week there I should be able to carry out a valuable
reconnaissance of the frontier in person, before returning to Belgrade.”

“Do you expect me to
believe that you meant to return?” the Colonel asked acidly.

De Richleau stiffened. “I
regard the doubt you appear to entertain about that as in the highest degree
offensive. The fact that you have planned a cold-blooded murder lies between
you and your conscience. I consider I had every right to take such steps as I
could to prevent my name being associated with it, by absenting myself from
Headquarters during its final preparation and execution. But that does not
affect the oath that I have taken, or my obligation to place my military
ability at the disposal of Serbia. Naturally, I intended to return. Why,
otherwise, should I have been on my way to a Serbian town, when instead, had I
wished, I could have taken a main-line train and by now have been in Sofia or
Budapest?”

“There is something in
that,” admitted the Colonel, “unless you really meant to go to Sarajevo. If I
become convinced that was your intention, I shall have you shot out of hand. As
things are, I must consider the matter further. At the moment my police are
working on the case and may bring something fresh to light. In the meantime, I
shall naturally continue to keep you under close arrest.”

Dimitriyevitch signed to
the other two, and added: “Take him down to the cellar. We’ll keep him there
for the night.”

Ciganović stepped
forward and opened a narrow door in the wainscoting of the wall, which De
Richleau had not previously noticed. Tankosić prodded him in the back with
his pistol, and he walked through the opening. The light from the room was
sufficient to show him, to his left, a short flight of steps and, dimly, as he
went down them, stone flags that stretched away to bin-lined walls. When he was
half-way down, the door slammed behind him, plunging him in darkness.

Having reached the
bottom, he paused there a moment. His matches had been taken from him at the
prison, so he had no means of creating even a glimmer in the Stygian blackness.
But, after a moment, he saw a faint, misty radiance to one side of him.
Cautiously, with hands outstretched, he went forward. As he advanced, the
radiance increased to the degree of pale moonlight, and took shape as an oblong
about shoulder high. Then he saw that it came from an opening in the wall, and
beyond that there was a small, square pit, the top of which was covered with a
grille on a level with the ground outside. It was evidently the means by which
the cellar was ventilated, but he soon found that it offered no prospect of
escape. Across the oblong were thick iron bars concreted into the wall, and
exerting all his strength on one failed to make the least impression on it. So
he could not even get out into the little pit.

The light was the last
glow of evening and, now that his eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness,
it was enough to illuminate faintly the cellar for a few feet round the
opening, but no more. However, it at least gave him a fixed point to which he
could glance back, and so keep his direction as he set out to explore the rest
of the cellar.

He felt certain that
there must be a door somewhere, other than the one by which he had entered, as
it would hardly be convenient to have the servants always going through the
main room to bin away, or bring up, the wine. So he struck out along it
lengthwise, hoping to find a door at the far end, under the hall. When he had
gone a few yards he tripped against a scantling, barked his shin badly, and
swore. Moving crabwise a few paces, his hands felt a row of three casks, but
beyond them nothing, so he cautiously moved forward again. Another half dozen
shuffling steps brought him right up against the door he had expected.

But five minutes’
fumbling over its surface convinced him that he could not get out that way. It
was of heavy oak, with a stout lock, and was quite immovable.

Shuffling sideways again,
he felt his way right round the cellar. It was a large place and evidently the
same size as the big room above it. Apart from the door, the ventilation aperture,
and the flight of steps, its walls were solid tiers of bins from floor to
ceiling, and there was no other exit. Making his way back to the scantling, he
sat down upon it. He felt he might have known that Dimitriyevitch was not the
sort of man to put a prisoner in a place from which there was much likelihood
of his being able to escape.

For a few moments his
heart beat so fast that he felt quite suffocated with apprehension.
Dimitriyevitch had said plainly that if he became convinced that his prisoner had
intended to go to Sarajevo, he would have him shot out of hand. As that had
been the Duke’s intention, he could not help a nightmare foreboding that some
little thing he had overlooked would reveal it to his captors. And he had no
doubt at all that, if ordered to, Tankosić and Ciganović would not
hesitate about emptying the contents of their pistols into him. He wondered if
they would take him outside to do it, or murder him down there in the cellar.
He shivered at the thought of the bullets crashing their way through his flesh
and bone. If they were content to fire at his body, that would not be quite so
bad; but the idea of his face and head being smashed and rent to a hideous pulp
horrified him. His mouth went dry and his hands became clammy.

De Richleau was very far
from being a coward. He had been shot at many times in battles and skirmishes
and had, on occasion, deliberately exposed himself in order to encourage his
men. He had been wounded too, and knew that the first effect was generally no
more than a burning sensation, followed by numbness—the pain came later.

After a bit he got a grip
on himself and tried to regard his position objectively, as though he were
entirely outside it and looking on at a situation in a thriller play. So far he
had played his cards well. He had told a great many lies with all the
conviction he could muster, and none of them had contradicted another. As he
looked back, he was a little surprised to find how easily he had slipped into
habitually lying since he had taken up this unpleasant game of espionage. But
this evening, of course, he had had a special impetus to distort the truth with
complete unscrupulousness. His life had hung, and still hung, on his ability to
deceive his captors. No doubt that had lent an extra keenness to his wits and
glibness of his tongue.

Anyhow, black as the case
had looked against him, he felt sure that he had succeeded in shaking
Dimitriyevitch’s well-founded assumption of his guilt. So, unless some fresh
and damning piece of evidence did turn up, why should the Colonel have him
murdered? The scruples he had urged, about later having his name associated
with the Sarajevo plot, were far from unreasonable. A temporary absence from
Belgrade could not entirely have saved him from that, but would have gone a
long way towards it, particularly as he was a foreigner in the service of
Serbia. People would be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, or even
think that the Serbians had deliberately got rid of him, so that he should not
be aware of their complicity and they would be able to give free rein to their
elation when the news of their abominable coup came through. Dimitriyevitch was
no fool, and would realize all that. Besides, he was no use to the Serbians
dead; whereas he could be of very considerable value to them alive.

In a slightly more
cheerful frame of mind, he decided that the odds were that Dimitriyevitch would
send him back to the State Prison next morning, keep him there as a precaution
until the blow had been struck, then let him out and expect him to resume his
duties. But what of the Archduke?

Well, there again,
perhaps the picture was not so black. Full particulars of the plot had been
sent out in three directions. The only real danger was that it might be found
impossible to locate him while on manœvres. But surely, with the wires buzzing
from three directions, someone would be certain to find and warn him in time.
The urge to set out for Sarajevo had seized the Duke owing to his realization
that such an infinity of woe, destruction, misery and death, might follow the
assassination that, quite apart from any desire to save Franz Ferdinand’s life,
no possible chance must be neglected which might add to the certainty of
preventing the crime. But he saw, now that he had more time to think over the
matter, that the warnings he had sent out must prove sufficient; that his
attempt to supplement them had been quite redundant, and had, quite needlessly,
landed him in this grim personal mess.