Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (78 page)

With a terrific effort he
saved himself, pitched forward, and seized two tufts of coarse grass.

The train’s whistle blew.
In frantic haste he scrambled up the last few feet of the embankment. Hardly
two minutes had elapsed since he had left the bridge, but he was panting as
though his lungs would burst.

The train began to move.
He hurled himself forward at the last door in it. In one spring he was on the
moving foot-board, but his clutching fingers missed the handle of the door. He
lost his balance and fell heavily. Lying there on the track, he saw the rear
light receding. Picking himself up, he ran after it. The speed of the train
increased. He knew now that he would never catch it, but he still ran on.
Suddenly he tripped on a sleeper and measured his length on the ground.

Sprawled there with the
remaining wind dashed from his body, he watched the light steadily moving away
from him. Only now that he had failed to get on the train did he fully realize
how much it would have meant for him to do so. No one at Wartenburg could
possibly suspect his presence on it. Within an hour or so it would have carried
him beyond all danger of pursuit. To have caught it would have meant safety and
life. Having lost it meant that, long before he could reach the Dutch border,
he would be hunted like a hare—and he had thrown away his only chance of
getting clear of the district while darkness lasted.

Scrambling to his feet,
he rubbed his bruised knees. As he looked up from doing so he could still see
the rear light of the train. It was no longer moving. The train had halted
again about two hundred yards down the line.

In a second he was racing
after it. Gasping, panting, he leapt from sleeper to sleeper along the track.
His mouth wide, his eyes staring, he forced himself forward at the utmost speed
of which he was capable. His heart leaping with exaltation, he flashed past the
rear buffers of the train, sprang again upon the foot-board of the last coach
and, this time, seized the handle of the door. Frantically he wrenched it,
first one way, then the other. It was locked.

Jumping down, he dashed
along the side of the unlit rear coach, leapt on to the foot-board of the next,
and seized the handle of the door there. It turned under his pressure, and
swung open. Levering himself up, he lurched inside, slamming the door shut
behind him. Opposite him, as he stood fighting for breath, was the door of a
lavatory. Pushing it open, he staggered inside, thrust back the bolt and
collapsed on the seat.

For every second of the
time since he had heaved the motor-bike over the parapet of the bridge, his
exertions had been of the utmost violence, but the whole episode had occupied
less than two minutes, so his exhaustion was purely temporary. The moment he
got his wind back he was ready for anything. His brain began to race again,
exploring the possibilities of this entirely unexpected situation.

As he washed the dirt off
his hands in the lavatory basin, he smiled at his reflection in the mirror.
There was a good chance that Messrs. Nicolai and Steinhauer would not be found
till the following morning and, even if they were, he considered it improbable
that they would be in any state to tell what had happened to them for many
hours to come. The sentry had seen him take the motor-cycle, but he had passed
him at well over fifty yards’ distance, and in the uncertain light it was
unlikely that the man would have seen his features, or even noticed that he was
wearing an Austrian uniform. The bike had been sunk without trace, so inquiries
about it would lead nowhere. When the doctors did succeed in getting some sense
out of his concussed victims the hue and cry would start with a vengeance; but
even then the very last place that anyone would look for him was on the train.
He recalled the saying that ‘God helps those who help themselves’, and, while
his escape from immediate peril was due to his own wits and resolution, he
gratefully acknowledged that he owed to Providence this splendid chance of
getting clean away.

He began to consider if
it would be better to remain hidden for the night, then drop off the train when
it had carried him several hundred miles to the west, which offered the
prospect of being able to disappear entirely; or face his fellow travellers and
give them some plausible explanation for his sudden appearance on it.

From Wartenburg to
Aix-la-Chapelle by rail was, he knew, between seven and eight hundred miles.
The train was a special, but as it did not carry a
C. in C.
it was unlikely to have the highest
grade of priority, and the war had caused an enormous increase in railway
traffic, so he thought it probable that it would not average much more than
forty-five miles an hour. If so, it should reach Berlin about seven o’clock in
the morning, and Aix at about five the following afternoon.

As it was nearly empty he
thought his chances of remaining hidden on it good while darkness lasted. But
he could not stay in the lavatory indefinitely, and if he concealed himself in
one of the empty sleeping berths there was a big risk that the train attendants
might carry out a routine clean up in the morning, which would lead to his
discovery. To explain his presence then would be extremely difficult, so if he
hid at all he must drop off the train when it slowed up somewhere before
reaching Berlin. That would mean losing many precious hours before he could
hope to reach Holland.

And there was another
thing. Having got on the train, he once more had the chance of carrying out his
plan for attempting to influence von Moltke. That could be done only if he
arrived at Aix in the special as an officer on official business from the
Eastern Front. If, as he believed, he had managed to disappear from Wartenburg
without leaving a single trace, the attempt he meditated entailed no more risk
than it would have done had Nicolai never become suspicious of him. On the
other hand, to have any considerable hope of swaying the mind of the Chief of
the German General Staff, he must first somehow get rid of Major Tauber.

That was going to prove a
very difficult business, and must once more involve him in the gravest dangers.
But France’s need was desperate. Ever since he had joined von Hötzendorf’s
staff, he had regarded himself as a soldier on active service in the midst of
the enemy. His life had been in constant jeopardy and, if the worst came to the
worst, he had been prepared to sell it as dearly as possible at any moment. If
he lost it in this attempt, that would be no worse than having done so had he failed
to escape from Nicolai. And the prize was tremendous. If he could succeed in
getting troops withdrawn from the Western Front at this critical hour, the
value of such an action might prove incalculable. Few of the ten million men
now under arms would ever be given an opportunity to risk their lives for such
a great result. Almost instantly he decided that he could not possibly ignore
it.

The train was still at a
standstill. He had been in the lavatory for about three minutes. He had not as
yet the faintest idea how he was going to eliminate Major Tauber, but he
realized that if he were to make his presence known at all he must not linger
where he was any longer. Taking his little automatic from its hiding place
under his arm, he put it in the right hand pocket of his tunic, so that he had
only to slip his hand in and could fire with it through the cloth. Then, after
giving himself a final brush down, he opened the door and went boldly out into
the corridor.

Walking along it, he
passed an empty coupe and went through the door to the main pullman. Lanzi and
Major Tauber were sitting at a table half-way down it. The train was staffed by
special railway troops, and an orderly stood near the table, holding -a tray,
from which he was in the act of putting glasses and a bottle in front of the
two officers. As De Richleau appeared, the orderly showed his surprise and
Lanzi sat back with a gasp.

“Gott in Himmel,
Duke! Where have you sprung from?”

De Richleau frowned. “It
is no thanks to you, Baron, that I did not miss the train altogether.”

Lanzi spread out his
hands. “I’m terribly sorry. It wasn’t our fault. There was some silly muddle.
The moment the Major and I got aboard, the darned thing started. I pulled the
cord and it came to a halt. The engine driver said he had been told that only
two officers were travelling, and that as soon as they were on the train he was
to move off. By the time it pulled up we had covered a few hundred yards, but
it didn’t seem worth shunting back, as we had your baggage on board and you
could easily have seen the rear lights from the siding. We waited nearly twenty
minutes; then the driver said we must push on or he would be held up all along
the line, and be in the devil of a mess from goods trains having got in ahead
of him. That’s what is hanging us up now, I expect. We thought by that time
that you must have been detained by something very important, and couldn’t be
coming at all; so we told him he could go ahead. What the devil kept you?”

“It was that idiot,
Nicolai,” muttered the Duke angrily. “He kept me hanging about for nearly ten
minutes while he added a postscript to the letter he wanted me to take to Main
Headquarters. When I got to the siding the train had gone. I saw the rear
lights, but thought they belonged to the train on the other siding that is kept
in readiness for General Hindenburg.”

“How did you manage to
catch us then?”

“Colonel Nicolai was with
me. He said that the train was almost certain to be held up for a few minutes
going through the junction. So we nipped into a car, and he drove me down to
the station. My luck was in, as it had only just passed, and we saw it pull up
on the far side of the level crossing. I ran along the line and hopped on to
it. What did you do with my baggage?”

It was Major Tauber who
replied. “We thought of putting it out,
Herr
Oberste.
But we were afraid that, if we did, you might not find
it in the wood, there; or it might be stolen. We thought it certain that you
would be coming on to Main Headquarters to-morrow, so I volunteered to take
charge of it till you arrived. It is still where it was stowed, in one of the
sleeping compartments.”

“Thank goodness for that!”
sighed De Richleau, sitting down. He noticed that the bottle on the table
contained liqueur brandy but he felt like a long drink. Glancing at the
orderly, who was still standing there, he said: “Bring me a large glass and
some mineral water.”

As the man clicked his
heels and turned away, it occurred to the Duke that his having been present
during the recent explanation was a piece of luck. It was certain he would
repeat what he had heard to his companions, so the train staff would now have
no cause to wonder at the mysterious appearance of a third officer. A few
minutes later, he returned with a tumbler and a pint of Apollinaris. With a nod
of thanks, De Richleau took them and mixed himself the drink of which he was
much in need.

It did not take him long
to realize that Lanzi and the Major had not been getting on exactly like a
house on fire. They were, in fact, oil and water.

Lanzi was just a simple
person who happened to have been blessed with a great name and immense riches.
He considered it right and proper that anyone in the station to which God had
called him should enjoy the pleasures which, all his life, had spread as a long
and happy vista easily within his grasp. But he was not in the least a selfish
man. He liked everybody about him to enjoy themselves, too. He even gave time
and thought, as well as a great deal of money, to providing his wife and
children with every material thing which might help to make their lives as
enjoyable as his own.

Major Tauber, on the
other hand, had had a hard life; and now that he had reached a position in
which he exerted a certain authority over others, he thought it right that they
too should have a hard life. He was a gross, thick-necked Prussian, with a
nature that lacked both humour and generosity. But he had brains—of a kind.
Although he had neither private money nor influence, he had worked his way up
to that Mecca of the German Army, a
Stabs Corps
appointment. He was no puritan and indulged
his lusts occasionally without a qualm of conscience, but quickly, like an
animal, so that he could get back to his work and help to increase the
efficiency of the Army, which was the only thing he lived for. But his fat,
overworked wife trembled before him, and his sons stood rigidly to attention
when he addressed them. He was tactful to the point of servility when in the
presence of his superiors, but, as he held the entire Austrian army in great
contempt, he did not regard an
Austrian
Colonel as his superior.

Evidently Lanzi had
innocently disclosed his reason for going to Berlin and the Major had shown his
frigid disapproval of the very idea that any officer, even an Austrian, should
contemplate neglecting his duty to visit a kept woman. Lanzi did not understand
this point of view, and thought it extremely bad manners on the Major’s part to
propound it. Being too polite himself to say so, he merely laughed the matter
off, but he made no attempt to conceal his pleasure that, by joining them so
unexpectedly, De Richleau had relieved him of the necessity to spend several
hours in the sole company of such an uncouth companion.