Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (79 page)

The Duke came in only for
the tail end of the argument, and while he agreed with the Major in principle,
he felt a sneaking sympathy for Lanzi; so he thought it served the Major right
when his old travelling companion, rather pointedly, engaged him in a
conversation about Viennese society, of which the German knew nothing. For some
moments Tauber sat looking at them in silence with a tight-lipped uncomfortable
stare, then he took a quadruple set of miniature cards out of his valise and
began an incredibly complicated game of patience.

As Lanzi rambled
cheerfully on with stories of Archdukes, partridge drives in Hungary and the
more spicy episodes in the lives of well known ballerinas, it was easy enough
for the Duke to think about the private problem to which, within the next hour
or so, he had to find a solution. How was he going to deal with Major Tauber?

On one thing he had already
made up his mind. Major Tauber was not going to arrive at Main Headquarters
next day—or any other day. He was never again going to arrive at any
Headquarters. He was going to die.

Yes
!
Major Tauber had got to die. But how? That was the question. Since he was on
duty, and the type of man he was, there was no conceivable way of getting him
to leave the train of his own free will. If it had been going to stop at
several stations it might have been possible to trick him into doing so, then
leave him behind. But it was not. Therefore the first problem was, should he be
pushed off, or left to continue on it as a corpse?

In either case the deed
had to be done before they reached Berlin. That was a pity, as Lanzi would
still be on the train, and his presence might result in complications which
could obviously not arise after he had left it. However, Lanzi was a simple
soul, so it should not be difficult to pull the wool over his eyes, and the
advantages of doing the job during the night, while the servants and train
attendants were either asleep or dozing, were so self evident that it would
have been positive madness to delay it until daylight.

As De Richleau considered
the matter, he saw that, even if he could have tricked the Major into getting
off the train, that would be no guarantee against his upsetting the apple cart
later. He would take the next train on to Main Headquarters and undo any
success that his predecessor might have had in influencing General von Moltke.
Again, to entice him to a door and push him out while the train was in motion
would not necessarily prove one hundred per cent effective. If he were only
injured he might reach the nearest house, or be found in the morning, and
telephone to Aix a report of the murderous attack that had been made upon him.
That would never do. Therefore, he had to die
on
the train, and the impression be given that he had
committed suicide.

But why? What reason
could possibly be suggested for his having done so? De Richleau knew nothing of
the Major’s private life, so for a moment he was at a complete loss to provide
any plausible reason why he should take his own life.

Then, in a flash, it came
to him. It could be inferred that the Major had been the bearer of ill tidings
from the Eastern Front; that he regarded the situation there as so grave that
he believed a major defeat to be inevitable. It could be said that a few days
before he had seen von Mackensen’s Corps break at Gumbinnen; had actually
witnessed soldiers of the invincible German Army running for their lives before
the Russians. The shame of having to convey such news to his Emperor had proved
too much for him. He had preferred death.

‘That,’ thought the Duke,
‘was a really artistic touch, and it would add enormous weight to the story he
meant to tell.’

He greatly disliked the
horrible task that he had decided to undertake; yet he was not troubled by any
moral scruples. Tauber was not only an enemy, but a dangerous enemy—a man who,
if he lived, would prove very useful to the German General Staff. Such men were
very necessary for the less spectacular, but absolutely essential skilled
routine work of planning battles. In the final analysis their conscientious
labours would cost the Allies many thousands of lives. Moreover, he carried a
pistol, so was an armed combatant. If, without danger to himself, while lurking
behind a bush, he could have shot dead a Frenchman, an Englishman or a Russian,
he would undoubtedly have done so. In this case De Richleau proposed to be the
man behind the bush. All the same, he was extremely glad that the Major had not
proved to be a likable fellow.

It was close on midnight
when Lanzi yawned and said: “I think I’ll get to bed.”

“Do,” replied the Duke. “I
shall follow you shortly. But I want to see, first, whether the Major manages
to get out his game of patience.”

“Oh well!” Lanzi shrugged
good-naturedly. “In that case I’ll keep you company for a bit longer.”

De Richleau had the
horrible business before him very much in mind, and was now anxious to get it
over. Concealing his annoyance, he said with a smile: “Don’t bother about me.
You’ve got be up by six, so I should get all the sleep you can. You want to be
on the top of your form for to-morrow night.”

Lanzi thought for a
moment, grinned and stood up. “That’s true. All right; I’ll be off then.”

When he had ambled away,
the Duke turned his attention to the table and made a pretence of being
interested in the Major’s game. With some disquiet he saw that it looked like
ending sooner than he had expected. That was unfortunate, as he had wanted to
give Lanzi time to get to bed before he acted. On the other hand, he could not
afford to allow Tauber to pack up and go to his sleeping birth. It was certain
that the three of them had been put in adjacent compartments. To kill him in
his would entail a risk that Lanzi might hear sounds which it would be
difficult to explain afterwards. The job must be done here, at the table.

When Lanzi had been gone
about four minutes, the Major had only three more cards left to turn up. De
Richleau decided that he dared wait no longer. Getting to his feet, he said:

“I see you are going to
get out all right.”

“I will if the last card
is the ace,” muttered Tauber.

They had taken off their
belts before sitting down and put them up in the rack. Stretching over Tauber’s
bullet head, De Richleau took the Major’s belt instead of his own. Then, just
as he was about to put it on, he exclaimed: “How silly of me. I’ve taken your
belt by mistake.”

Tauber was still immersed
in his game. “No matter,
Herr Oberste,”
he
replied, without looking up. “Put it on the seat. I shall want it in a minute.”

Instead of putting it on
the seat, the Duke laid it on the end of the table, and remarked: “You use a different
make of pistol from us, don’t you?”

“Yes. The German pattern
is the better. Its ejector is less liable to jam.”

“May I look?” asked De
Richleau, and without waiting for an answer he took the Mauser from its
holster. By its weight he knew at once that it was loaded, and on pretence of
examining it he clicked a bullet up into the chamber.

The Major gave a throaty
chuckle, and made several quick moves. He knew now that the last card was the
ace, so he was going to get out.

De Richleau said quietly:
“How stupid it is that we staff officers, who rarely come within miles of the
enemy, should have to carry loaded weapons.”

“It is an order,” replied
the Major sententiously. “We are at war.”

“Yes,” murmured the Duke.
“We are at war.” As he spoke, he thrust the pistol to within an inch of the
Major’s temple and pulled the trigger.

Had the train been at a
standstill, the crack of the weapon might have been heard beyond the pullman,
but the special was moving at sixty miles an hour, and De Richleau was confident
that its roar would have drowned the sound of the shot. For a moment he stood
there contemplating his awful handiwork.

The bullet had entered
the Major’s head just above the ear, making only a neat little hole in the
closely shaven scalp, from which a trickle of blood was issuing. But after
passing through his brain it had smashed open the far side of his skull.
Without a sound, he had slumped forward on to the table, scattering the
patience cards in all directions, and from the horrible wound a mess of blood
and brains was now seeping over them.

Suddenly the Duke heard a
sound. Jerking his head round, he saw to his horror that Lanzi had re-entered
the pullman.

Advancing between the
tables with a smile on his face, the Baron said: “I forgot my cigar case. I —”

The sentence was never
finished. At that instant he had approached near enough to see round the back
of an intervening arm-chair. As he caught sight of the Major’s body beyond it,
the smile froze on his lips.

“Gott im Himmel!”
he exclaimed. “What has been happening here?”

“He—he shot himself,” replied
De Richleau quickly. “It was—an accident. He was showing me his gun—explaining
how much better the German weapon is than ours. There must have been a bullet
in the chamber. It went off.”

Frantically he sought in
his mind for further explanations. Lanzi’s damnably ill-timed arrival on the
scene had ruled out the suicide story. The Major would never have taken his own
life with someone looking on, and he had been contentedly immersed in his game
of patience when Lanzi had left them barely five minutes earlier. But would the
accident story be believed?

Lanzi’s eyes fell upon
the pistol that the Duke still held in his hand: then they switched to the
Major’s body.

De Richleau followed his
glance. Even in experienced hands accidents can easily happen with loaded
weapons, but when a pistol goes off by mistake the person handling the weapon
is hardly likely to be holding it with the barrel pointed at the side of his
own head.

Lanzi’s eyes lifted.
Suspicion dawned in them as they met the Duke’s. Then a question issued from
the moustached and bearded lips:

“How could he have shot
himself with his arm doubled under him like that?”

The Duke sighed. He liked
old Lanzi. He had even become quite fond of him. But he, too, was an enemy
soldier. For all his self-indulgence and casual disregard of his
responsibilities as an officer, he was not the man to allow himself to be made
an accessory to murder. Neither threats nor promises would avail to make him
hold his tongue. His life must not be allowed to weigh against the chance of
being able to bring help to France in her dire need. Slowly, De Richleau said:

“You’ve had a wonderful
life, haven’t you? If I were you I should have no regrets about not living on
to experience the pains and frustrations of old age.”

For a second Lanzi’s blue
eyes bulged. There was a look of horror in them. Automatically he clasped his
hand to his side, but he was not wearing his gun. Then the look faded. One of
sudden comprehension replaced it, and he smiled.

“So
Monsieur le Duc de Richleau
is at heart a Frenchman
after all.”

“I am British by
nationality,” replied the Duke. “But in this I act for France. I shall always
regret what I am about to do; but I am compelled to it by issues that far transcend
all personal sentiment.”

Suddenly he jerked up the
pistol so that it pointed at the Colonel Baron Lanzelin Ungash-Wallersee’s
heart, and squeezed the trigger.

The Baron had his left
hand on the high back of an arm-chair. For a moment he supported his weight by
it. His blue eyes bulged again. Almost instantly sweat started out on his
forehead. A trickle of saliva issued from his lips and ran down his carefully
parted grey beard. The train roared on through the night. It rocked slightly.
He coughed, blood welled from his mouth, and he fell dead at the Duke’s feet.

De Richleau closed his
eyes. Beads of sweat were gathering on his own forehead. His hands were
trembling.

After a moment he pulled
himself together. It was unlikely that one of the train staff would enter the
pullman before morning. But there was no guarantee of that, so he felt that he
must not waste a second. And he now had a plausible explanation for two deaths
to think out.

Hastily seizing the dead
Major’s arm, he pulled it from beneath his chest, opened the hand and closed it
round the butt of the Mauser. Taking up his belt and pistol holster from the
table, he laid them on the chair beside him. Then he heaved up Lanzi’s body and
propped it in the arm-chair facing Tauber’s corpse.