Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (92 page)

From the latter he saw
that the cat was out of the bag about von Hötzendorf. The communiqué gave the
situation in carefully guarded phrases, so as not to cause alarm; but certain
place names were mentioned, and it was obvious to the Duke that a disaster had
overtaken the Austrian Armies on the Russian Front, of such magnitude that it
could no longer entirely be concealed.

Apparently von Hötzendorf
had suffered from genuine ill-fortune in his great offensive to the north and
east. After initial encouraging successes during the latter part of August,
early in September he had all but encircled and destroyed an entire Russian
Army; but false reconnaissance reports on the critical day had caused both
wings of his enveloping force to believe they were about to be attacked in
rear: both had faced about, and thus given the Russians just time to slip away
before the jaws of the pincers closed upon them. Meanwhile it emerged that the
bulk of General Ivanov’s Southern Army Group was concentrated against much
weaker Austrian forces farther south. Von Hötzendorf had shown great courage in
holding on there till the last possible moment, and sending everything he could
spare north to the front that promised him a brilliant victory; and, even when
it became apparent that ill luck had robbed him of it, he had re-deployed his
forces in a series of brilliant moves that might yet have spelled disaster to the
Russians. But the enemy’s weight had proved too much for him. After a final
effort on the 9th, involving a whole day of battle from one end of his two
hundred miles long front to the other, he had, on the 11th, ordered a general
withdrawal to behind the line of the river San.

That much was clear from
the communiqué. What it did not reveal was that, with a determination
unequalled by any other Commander-in-Chief, von Hötzendorf had kept the great
majority of his troops marching and fighting for twenty consecutive days. Had
he had better luck and better material at his disposal he might well have
achieved victories comparable with those of Hindenburg. As it was, he gave up
only because what was left of his forces was in no condition to continue the
struggle an hour longer. They had suffered appalling losses, many of his Army
Corps having been reduced to less than the normal strength of a Division. In
three weeks he had lost 600,000 men. The remnants of his four Armies were dead
beat. They no longer had the strength to carry out the movements ordered by
their Commanders, and thousands of them were dropping in their tracks from
exhaustion. As the Russian pressure increased, the whole front had collapsed.
For the past four days the Austrians had been streaming back in hopeless
dejection and inextricable confusion; and many days were to pass yet before
they could be finally halted and re-formed on the fine of the Carpathians,
nearly a hundred miles to the rear of the area in which they had sustained
their terrible defeat.

So ended the last and
longest of the opening battles of the great war; and as De Richleau laid down
the paper he knew that the final outcome had now been decided. On four fronts
the great Armies had clashed and fought themselves to a standstill. The carnage
had been unbelievably appalling. In a little over three weeks not less than 2,000,000
men had been killed, captured or seriously wounded. Battles of such magnitude
could never take place simultaneously on several fronts again. The manpower of
the nations did not permit it. Either the war-mongers had learnt their ghastly
lesson and there would be peace by Christmas or, if an evil pride kept them
obdurate, a new kind of war must emerge. In it, from time to time great
offensives might be launched with appalling losses to the attacker, but in the
main the combatants must be reduced to endeavouring to wear one another down.
And in such a contest the Central Powers must prove the weaker.

In a prolonged struggle
the effects of the Allies’ blockade would gradually become apparent. Cut off
from the outer world by mighty Fleets that they could have no hope of
defeating, Germany and Austria would be deprived of all but a trickle of many
of the commodities vital to their war economy. Now that the Austrian bolt was
shot, Russia would be able to concentrate her efforts against East Prussia. The
rickety Dual Monarchy might be able to maintain armies in the field, but
Germany would have to shoulder the main burden, and wage a desperate,
long-drawn-out war on two fronts. Her only real hope had lain in putting France
out of the war by a swift overwhelming victory, so that she had both hands free
to assist Austria against Russia. That hope had been the key to everything—and
it was gone.

The Duke smiled at the
thought that he had been instrumental in influencing the German High Command
into taking a decision that had robbed Germany of victory in the West. It was
not much consolation to him now; but he felt that it would be a comforting
thought on which to die.

Any lingering hopes he
had of being able to escape the final penalty were dissipated on the Tuesday
afternoon. At half past five he was taken from his cell to an office on the
ground floor of the barracks. The Commandant was there, and with him was Major
Ronge.

It was soon clear that,
from the moment of his leaving Vienna to that of his having been released from
prison in Maastricht, the bread outline of his activities was fully known.
Ronge did most of the talking, while the Count eyed the prisoner with a
malevolent stare. Not much was said about the deaths on the train, but the
fiery-moustached Commandant made it abundantly clear that he believed De
Richleau to be responsible for his uncle’s murder. To all specific charges the
Duke replied only with a shrug, and a statement that he reserved his defence;
as, although it was futile to argue, he saw no reason why he should make a
gratuitous admission of anything.

They questioned him with
great persistence as to why, having succeeded in escaping, he should have given
himself up as a hostage to fortune by re-crossing the Rhine into enemy
territory; but they got no satisfaction from him.

At length Count Zelltin
informed him that he would be tried by court martial on the following afternoon
at three o’clock, and that in the morning a Prisoner’s Friend would be sent to
help him to prepare any defence he cared to put before the court. Then he was
taken back to his cell.

Next morning a pink-faced
Lieutenant, who was limping from a wound received on the Serbian front, arrived
and offered his services as an advocate. Obviously he did not like the task for
which he had been detailed, but he courteously endeavoured to hide his
distaste, and produced all the materials requisite for making copious notes. De
Richleau swiftly relieved him of his embarrassment by saying that he would
prefer to conduct his own defence.

At three o’clock
punctually, he was marched from his cell between soldiers with fixed bayonets
to a large cheerless room. On the wall opposite the door hung a picture of the
aged Emperor, in his white Field Marshal’s tunic, gold braid and ribbons. At a
table beneath it the court was already sitting. It consisted of Major Count
Zelltin as President, an elderly, red-faced Captain who looked like an
ex-Quartermaster sergeant, and a monocled Lieutenant. There were two side
tables. At one sat another Captain; a dark little man wearing gold spectacles,
who was acting as Prosecutor and, opposite him, at the other, the pink-faced
Prisoner’s Friend; the presence of the latter, whether he uttered or not, being
required by the court as a formality which technically guaranteed the prisoner
a fair trial.

As the Duke had often sat
on courts martial himself, he knew well that in war time such trials were
rarely conducted with the scrupulous fairness usual in the administration of
civil justice. The members of such courts were not qualified to go deeply into
legal technicalities, nor expected to give time to examining the finer points
of evidence. In a spy case they were usually pre-disposed against the prisoner,
and
it
was accepted that spies should be given short shrift in war time; so unless the
accused had ample means of proving his innocence he had little chance of an
acquittal.

In view of the blackness
of the case against him, and the fact that Lanzi’s nephew was President of the
court, De Richleau felt that he had none at all; but he was most strongly in
favour of the admirable dictum that ‘while there is life there is hope’; so he
was determined to do his utmost to procure a postponement of sentence; for, if
he could gain a week or two, or even a few days, there was always the
possibility that he might manage to escape.

In consequence, at the
very opening of the proceedings, he challenged the court’s right to try him at
all. He pointed out that in the Austrian Army he held the rank of Colonel, and
therefore could not be tried by officers of lesser rank.

The President was
obviously somewhat shaken by this, and called over the Prosecutor, with whom he
held a whispered conversation. He then ruled that as the rank given had been an
honorary one, it did not carry any seniority for the purpose of a trial such as
the present.

A long list of charges
was read out, to all of which the Duke pleaded not guilty.

The Prosecutor asked
baldly why he should attempt to waste the court’s time by denying the obvious;
but at that the Prisoner’s Friend intervened, and said that the accused had a
right to assert his innocence.

With a grim smile the
Prosecutor produced a sheaf of affidavits, and started to read out one that had
been made by Colonel Nicolai.

As soon as he had
finished, the Duke said that he wished to cross-examine this witness; but the
President replied that in time of war it was not practicable to bring officers
engaged on important duties many hundreds of miles to testify in person,
therefore the court was prepared to accept sworn statements as evidence.

The next statement read
out was by Herr Steinhauer. There followed those of the Sergeant-Conductor of
the train; Colonel Tappen; the garage proprietor in Aix-la-Chapelle from whom
De Richleau had hired the car he had abandoned near the frontier; and a score
more by orderlies and other people. It was clear to the Duke that the material
from which the Prosecutor was reading must be the dossier of the case compiled
by Colonel Nicolai, and that Ronge had had it forwarded from Germany during the
past two days. When the reading was finished, he said:

“I submit to the court
that all this is irrelevant because it is not supported by the personal appearance
of the witnesses. Even if those statements are accurate about a certain person,
it does not follow that the person referred to is myself.”

“I am fortunately in a
position to satisfy the court upon that,” replied the Prosecutor; and he called
his first witness,
Soldat
Johan Weber, Lanzi’s ex-valet.

Soldat
Weber definitely identified the accused as the officer who had accompanied
Colonel Baron Ungash-Wallersee from Przemysl to Wartenburg and, with Major
Tauber, on the train from Wartenburg to Berlin. Prompted by questions from the
Prosecutor, he recounted the whole story as he knew it, and his testimony
occupied nearly three quarters of an hour.

De Richleau knew that it
was futile to attempt to shake him, but at least he had the satisfaction of
learning that the manner in which Lanzi and Tauber had met their deaths was
still in doubt. Obviously everyone believed that he had killed them, but his
efforts to destroy any evidence against himself had been so successful that the
German police had failed to make out a prima facie case against him.

He stoutly maintained
that
Soldat
Weber’s testimony proved nothing at all, except that he had accompanied Baron
Ungash-Wallersee from Przemsyl to Berlin, and there was nothing criminal about
that.

Major Ronge was then
called. It was the first time that the Duke had seen the fat Secret Service
Chief in uniform, but he proved a no less shrewd and formidable antagonist on
that account. He recounted what was known of De Richleau’s activities in
Serbia, told the story of his arrest, and release owing to the intervention of
Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Ilona Theresa, and of his obtaining an
appointment on General von Hötzendorf’s operations’ staff under false
pretences.

In cross examination the
Duke forced him to make the following admissions: that there was no proof of
his having committed any act of espionage while in Belgrade, or in Vienna: that
he had been about to leave Austria before war was declared, whereas a spy would
normally have gone into hiding there with the object of continuing to learn all
he could: that he had been prevented from leaving by arbitrary arrest: and that
the Archduchess had procured his release because there was not a shred of
evidence to support any charge against him. But the two things he could not
disprove were that he had deceived General von Hötzendorf concerning his
nationality, and had left Vienna clandestinely when he had been warned by the
police that, as an enemy alien, he must remain there.