Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (46 page)

Galvanized into instant
action by renewed fear for his life, the Duke sprang to his feet. Only the
table and its debris of dessert lay between them, and the chinless Captain Ciganović’s
pinkish eyes glared murder into his. He knew that he could expect no mercy.
Like a glimpse of one of the new motion pictures, he saw himself being chased,
with the big chopper-like sword flashing within an inch of his back. Cursing
himself for having failed to secure one of the pistols while he had the chance,
he saw that he must seize some weapon in the next second or die yet in that
room, slashed to pieces within a few feet of where he stood. His glance
flickered to the chimney-piece. He was three feet nearer to it than his enemy.
In one bound he reached it and grabbed the hilt of another of the scimitars. At
the same instant Ciganović struck.

De Richleau had
underestimated the tall man’s reach. Only the body of Dimitriyevitch saved him
from being cleft from skull to chin. As he leapt, his eyes were riveted on the
weapon he meant to seize. He had no chance to watch his step. His right foot
landed on the dead man’s thigh, slipped, and precipitated him violently
forward. But for his grasp on the hilt of the scimitar he would have pitched
head down between the legs of the table. As it was, his head and shoulders
curved in a dive below the level of the mantel. Above them Ciganović’s
blade bit into the wood of the mantel-shelf. He had to exert all his strength
to wrench it free. In that moment of grace, the Duke ducked back from under the
blade and pulled the one he held from its fastening.

As though by mutual
consent, they both withdrew a pace and skirted the legs of the table to get out
into the open. Like duellists, as they had now become, they took one another’s
measure and cautiously began to manœvre for the best ground.

Had they been armed with
rapiers De Richleau would have felt reasonably confident about the outcome, as
he was one of the finest swordsmen in Europe; but the weapons chance had forced
upon them filled him with misgiving. The nearest thing to them he had ever
handled was a sabre; and, since he regarded sabre-play as uncouth compared with
the finesse of the straight blade, he had given little time to it. And even the
sabre had comparatively little in common with these terrible weapons. They were
barely two feet long, but from the hilt they widened out in a graceful curve to
nearly six inches in width towards their ends. Their blades graduated from
razor-sharp edges to backs half an inch in thickness, so that their weight gave
them a far greater cutting power than that of a long flat-bladed sword. On both
sides they were beautifully damascened with an inlay of arabesques in gold; and
it was with just such a weapon that Haroun al Raschid’s executioner, the negro
Mansour, had struck off the heads of standing men at a single blow.

There was little to
choose between the physical state of the combatants. De Richleau had a bullet
wound in his left shoulder, from which he had lost some blood, and his right
shin ached badly where Dimitriyevitch had kicked him. Ciganović had a bump
the size of a duck’s egg above the left ear, where the Duke’s boot had landed,
and blood was still oozing from it; while water was already gathering painfully
under his right knee-cap from the first kick he had received. Both felt
groggy
and uncertain of themselves; and both were aware that
one slip of the treacherous mats on which they stood would lead to a swift
death. Yet neither thought of attempting flight.

Suddenly Ciganović
sprang forward, aiming a blow at the Duke’s head. He parried it easily, but
failed to get in under the other’s guard. The thickness and awkwardness of the
weapon prevented him from turning the Serbian’s blade and seizing the advantage
which he would have gained had they been fighting with swords. Moreover, to his
renewed apprehension, De Richleau discovered that his opponent’s height and
length of arm gave him an even greater advantage in reach than he had at first
supposed.

The scimitars clashed
again, and again, Ciganović attacking all the time and the Duke on the
defensive. He had observed one thing that heartened him a little. The Serbian
was suffering great pain from his right knee every time he moved. So, by
treading warily in a circle, and giving back a little each time he was
attacked, De Richleau forced him to keep shifting his position.

Their eyes never left one
another, each knowing that his life depended onl anticipating the other’s next
stroke. As they fought, the room was deadly still. Even the sound of the trees
outside rustling in the night breeze seemed to have died away. The tense
silence was broken only by the rasp of their breathing and the slither of steel
on steel.

Sweat was streaming from
them both. De Richleau’s arm was tiring from wielding the heavy weapon; but he
could now detect a look of fear in the albino’s eyes, and believed him to be
nearer to exhaustion than himself. Hoping to end it before his arm had become
too weak to deal a mortal stroke, he suddenly stepped in and slashed at the
Serbian’s neck. Ciganović succeeded in partially parrying the sideways
cut, but the Duke’s scimitar slid along his and its razor edge nicked an inch
deep cut in the ugly dewlap that sloped back where his chin should have been.

Blood welled from the
wound and poured down on to his prominent Adam’s apple. He let out an oath and
slashed again at De Richleau’s head. To avoid the flailing scimitar, the Duke
sprang back. The silk rug on which he landed slid from under him as though he
had jumped in smooth-soled shoes on to a skating rink. His feet flew forward,
his head flew back, and in a second he was full length on the floor.

With a yell of triumph Ciganović
ran in. Using all his remaining strength, he slashed down at his prostrate
enemy. The flashing blade missed the Duke by only a fraction of an inch. Just
in time he heaved himself aside and rolled over and over towards the door.
Again he was given a moment of grace. The power of Ciganović’s stroke had
driven the sharp steel he wielded through the mat and into the floor. By the
time he had freed it, De Richleau was stumbling to his feet.

As he scrambled to his
knees he found himself near the little table on which stood the bronze
statuette of Napoleon. The second his glance fell on it, he snatched it up in
his left hand. At a limping run, Ciganović came charging in again. The
Duke hurled the bronze figure at his head. It took him between the eyes,
halting him in his tracks. His arms flew wide and he nearly overbalanced
backwards from the force with which the statuette had hit him. De Richleau took
one step forward, raised his terrible weapon, and brought it down with a
sickening crunch in the side of the tall Serbian’s neck. Blood spouted from the
jugular vein as from a fountain. For a moment he stood swaying there. Then his
knees folded under him and he crashed to the floor, the blade fast in the
ghastly wound dragging De Richleau down on top of him.

Letting go the hilt of
the scimitar, the Duke rose slowly to his feet and stood for a moment, panting
beside the still-twitching body. Then he began to look round the floor for one
of the pistols. Tankosić had given no sign of life from the cellar, but he
might not be dead, and De Richleau did not mean to be caught napping twice.

After a short search he
found Dimitriyevitch’s gun. The kick had sent it from the hearth into a dark
corner behind the log basket. The Duke picked it up gingerly, knowing that its
safety catch must be off. He found that it had one bullet in the chamber and
five left in the magazine. Now that he was properly armed, he could allow
fatigue to have its way with him, at least for a short spell. Holding the
pistol on his knee, he sat down in the arm-chair on which he had previously
rested his head.

A glance at the
grandfather clock on the far side of the room showed it to be twenty-five past
ten, and the pendulum of the clock was still swinging. It seemed incredible
that so short a time should have elapsed since the arrival of the messenger
with the letters that had betrayed him; but the only pause of more than seconds
during the frightful scene of violence which had just taken place, had been
after he had choked the life out of Dimitriyevitch.

As his muscles relaxed
and his breathing came more regularly, his brain became capable again of
considering matters beyond the immediate present. He had told Dimitriyevitch
that his plot had failed and that the Archduke would be warned in time. Such an
incarnation of Satan on earth had deserved that, and even had De Richleau not
sent a telegram to Sir Pellinore he would have made up some such story for his
victim to carry down to hell. But, unfortunately, the statement as a whole was
probably very far from the truth.

The Duke had counted on
Sir Maurice de Bunsen doing the trick in Vienna, or, failing that, the Chargé
d’affaires in Belgrade sending a cipher telegram to the Foreign Office, the
contents of which would immediately be relayed to the Austrian capital. But
both those lines had been blocked, and Sir Pellinore was a private individual.
As De Richleau knew, telegrams from the Balkans often took twenty-four hours or
more to reach London. His had been sent first thing that morning, not overnight
at the same time as the letters, as he had led Dimitriyevitch to suppose. So it
was unlikely that it would be delivered at Carlton House Terrace until
to-morrow, Saturday morning. What if Sir Pellinore were away for the week-end,
as well he might be? It might be sent on to him in the country. If not, it
would lie on a silver salver in his front hall till Monday, by which time the
Archduke would be dead. If it were sent on to him in the country, the odds were
that it would not reach him till the afternoon. Telephones were still
unreliable things for discussing such matters at long distance, and it was
pretty certain that only junior officials would be available at the Foreign
Office over a week-end. Sir Pellinore would have to hurry back to London, and
further time would be lost while he ran to earth anyone of sufficient standing
to cope with such a situation. If they failed to get a message off before the
evening, by the time it reached Vienna it would almost certainly be too late to
find and warn Franz Ferdinand. And even at best, if Sir Pellinore did get the
wire on Saturday morning, the margin was going to be extremely narrow.

It took little thought
for De Richleau to see that, where his first attempt to get to Sarajevo had
been no more than a proper precaution, it was now absolutely imperative that he
should succeed in doing so.

Although his wound was
bound to hamper him badly, and the crosscountry journey would be a hideous one,
he still had two nights and a day in which to make it; and now that he could
get away with a clear start in Dimitriyevitch’s Rolls, he felt that he ought to
be able to reach the Bosnian capital by his deadline of Sunday morning.

The thought of getting a
clear start reminded him about Tankosić. After that mighty swipe with the
bottle, it seemed probable that the third member of the unholy triumvirate was
lying at the bottom of the cellar steps with a cracked skull, and so badly
concussed that he would not recover consciousness for some days. But if he did
prove capable of talking when the servants found him in the morning, the Duke
would be a hunted man long before he could get out of Serbia. In view of the
now vital importance of his reaching Sarajevo, De Richleau felt that he ought
to go down to the cellar and finish the Serbian off.

But he did not at all
relish the idea. He had always loathed the business of having to shoot horses
when they were wounded in action, and the thought of blowing out the brains of
a helpless but still living man, however brutal his character, was much more
horrible. The only alternative seemed to be to take Tankosić with him. If
he did not die from a haemorrhage brought on by the bumping of the car over
rough roads, he could be put out at some village just over the frontier and the
peasants there told that his head wound was the result of his having been run
over.

Getting up, De Richleau
walked over to the cellar door and listened. There was not a sound, so he took
it that he had nothing to fear from that direction. Slipping the safety catch
of the pistol on, he put it in his pocket, then took from its bracket on the
wall, one of the six oil lamps that lit the big room, and crossed the hall to a
small pantry on its far side, where he knew that the drinks were kept. There,
he mixed himself a stiff brandy and soda and drank it slowly.

By the time he had
finished it his head was much clearer and he felt altogether better. Going
upstairs to the only bathroom in the house, he eased himself painfully out of
his jacket and shirt, and examined his wound in the mirror. It was a small,
neat hole not far from his arm-pit and just below the collar bone. The wound
had stopped bleeding, but was slightly inflamed round its edges, and the bullet
had not come out at the back, which meant that later it must be probed for and
extracted. Still, he felt he had been very lucky that it had not either
penetrated his lung or smashed his shoulder joint; and he knew the latter was
all right as, although it pained him to lift his arm, he could still do so
without the agony he would have suffered had the bone been splintered.