Dennis Wheatley - Duke de Richleau 07 (95 page)

Ilona gave her lover a
puzzled look. “Why did you ask him that?”

“That was just what he
asked,” smiled the Duke. “My reply was, ‘Because mercy is a thing of God’s, and
it should lie in the hearts of all true priests. Since you refuse it me, I must
take the things that are Caesar’s—the outward show by which you pass yourself
off as a priest.’ As I spoke I moved round behind him. Under my coat I had been
holding a small hand towel. I whipped it over his face and tied it firmly to
stifle his cries, pulled off his soutane, tied his hands and feet, stuffed my
handkerchief into his mouth as a gag, put him in the cot with his face to the
wall, pulled the sheets up over his back, put on the things I had taken from
him, and rapped on the door for the guard to let me out. As I passed him I
murmured a blessing, and raised the priest’s hat to the level of my face to
hide it from him for a moment before putting the hat on. Then I walked off down
the corridor with bent shoulders and my hands clasped behind my back, as though
in deep thought. It was still dark outside, but I didn’t dare take a chance
with another guard on the main gate of the barracks, so I came out over the
wall of the Commandant’s garden.”

Ilona kissed him, and
murmured with a smile: “You are the most thrilling man. And that horrid priest
deserved it. How dare he refuse a condemned man’s last request. I have my own
chaplain living in the house, and he is a darling. I am sure he will absolve
you from what you did, before you go. But, Armand, you should never have come
here.

“I had to see you,
beloved.”

“Oh, my love! I know! But
you shouldn’t have. You should never have allowed that to weigh against your
life. You should have swum the river while darkness lasted. You would have been
safe then. Now it is daylight; you have thrown away that chance, and are in
mortal peril again.”

Her lovely face now
filled with alarm, she hurried on: “We must hide you, and provide you with
different clothes. Uncle Otto used to come here quite often, and there is a
whole wardrobe of his things upstairs. I am sure they would fit you. We’ll hide
you in the cellar for the day, then you must get across the river to-night.”

De Richleau shook his
head. “I fear they’ll not give me much chance to do that. I hadn’t the time to
make a detour and climb the mountain, so I had to come through the village to
get here. It was daylight then, and a dozen people saw me. They are certain to
have remarked the presence of a strange priest in a small place like Hohenembs.
To start with, Ronge will probably assume that I got across the river; but he’s
too much of a born bloodhound to take that for granted, and he knows I regard
you as my protectress. As soon as he has made inquiries along the river bank,
he will come out to Hohenembs. Someone who saw me come up here will give him
the good news. He will ask you to surrender me, and if you say I have left he
won’t believe you. He’ll picket the river to-night and put a ring of troops
round the châlet, and keep them there till he gets me. I wouldn’t have a hope
of getting through.”

The tears started to her
eyes. “Oh, Armand, you were mad to come! It will kill me if they re-arrest you.
What are we going to do?”

“I’ve still got a life
line left,” he smiled, and produced his letter to her from his pocket. “This,
my sweet Princess, is a petition to you. It gives particulars of my court
martial, and on reading them I think any lawyer would agree that I have been
condemned on insufficient evidence. It humbly begs you to request Count Zelltin
to stay the execution of the sentence until further investigations have been
made. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I can do that;
but I have no authority in legal matters. I cannot force him to. He may refuse.”

“I hardly think he is
likely to do that. No officer would deliberately go out of his way to offend a
member of the Imperial Family.”

“But if he agrees: to
what will it lead?”

“To my re-trial in Vienna.”

“How can that benefit
you?”

“It will give me time. I
may get a chance to escape again. At a second trial I might be acquitted on the
capital charges, and get off with only a spell of prison for having crossed the
frontier illegally.”

“No!” she shuddered. “No!
The risk is too great. From what Adam said, the case is terribly black against
you. There are those two Germans that you hit on the head and left half-dead in
East Prussia. You can’t possibly escape conviction for that. And they will
never forgive you. Even if I asked the Emperor for a pardon for you, he couldn’t
grant it in a case like this. We are terribly dependent on Germany now, and
dare not give offence to the German Ambassador. A re-trial could only lead to
your being condemned again, and—and shot.”

De Richleau knew that she
was right. He had hatched his scheme when in dire extremity, with the object of
securing a postponement of his sentence. It could still serve for that, but no
more. He felt now that his other thoughts about Count Tisza coming to his
rescue had been only wishful thinking.

Ilona threw a bare arm
round his neck. “Your idea of a petition is no good, darling. It means that I
should have to give you up to them when they come for you. Once Ronge has got
you back into his clutches he will make very certain that you do not escape
again. You are free now, and you must stay free. That is your only chance. How
long do you think it will be before they come here?”

“They
might
arrive at any moment. My escape will have been
discovered soon after five, when they went to my cell to get me. But I think it
unlikely that they will come straight here. It is much more probable that Ronge
and Count Zelltin have sent out all the men they can muster to make inquiries,
and are sitting in the middle of the spider’s web, waiting for reports to come
in. Sooner or later one of their men will telephone that I was seen in
Hohenembs, then they will jump in a car and drive out to question you. But that
may not happen for an hour or two yet.”

“I must get you more
time, somehow.” Ilona beat a fist desperately on her knee. “If only they can be
put off from coming for a few hours, you could get away into the mountains
before they put a cordon of troops round the house.”

For a moment they sat
deep in thought; then she exclaimed, “I have it! I will telephone them myself.
I will say that you tried to break in on me, and that my people seized you—and
that when we found out who you were Adam had you locked up in the cellar. I’ll
say that he had already told me all Ronge had told him about you, and I was horrified
to think that you should have expected me to protect you. So I want them to
come out here and take you back to prison. But not until half past ten; as I
want to hear more about your case from them, and my doctor does not allow me to
get up till then.”

De Richleau smiled. “My
own, you are a wonder. It is barely half past six yet, so if I can get away by
seven your plan will give me three and a half hours’ clear start.”

She stood up, shaking
back her long chestnut curls again. “We must not lose a moment. I’ll telephone
at once, before they have a chance to learn that you were seen in Hohenembs.
Then I’ll wake Adam and Sárolta. He’ll get you Uncle Otto’s clothes and provide
you with a map of the district. Sárolta can have some food got ready for you while
I dress. And I’ll send for my chaplain to absolve you for having laid hands on
that horrid priest.”

As she made a move
towards the door he checked her. “Even if it costs me my life, I must snatch a
few moments to hold you in my arms.”

She abandoned herself to
his embrace, and they clung desperately together. Then she burst into tears and
cried, “Oh, my dear one, my dear one! Why didn’t you cross the river when you
had the chance? Why did you have to come here and risk your life again?”

“For the same reason that
I left France and crossed the Rhine on Saturday night. You look so beautiful
that I can’t believe it’s true. But I had to see you again before—before—”

She jerked her face away
from his and stared into his eyes. “What do you mean, Armand? Tell me what you
mean?”

“I was in Paris,” he
faltered. “I went to a lunch in aid of a tuberculosis charity. A friend of mine
who was running it cited your case as an example of how swiftly the disease can
strike down a young and healthy woman. She had seen Bruckner only a few days
before, and he had told her that—that you had only—not long to live.”

“Bruckner!” Ilona
exclaimed. Then she gave a queer laugh. “What Bruckner said isn’t true,
darling. It isn’t true! I’ve a new doctor now— another Swiss, named Kutz, has
been attending me since the beginning of the month. He has been working for
years on a wonderful serum. I shall never be strong. I won’t live to be an old
woman. I’ve let things go too far. But he swears that he can check the disease.
I’m not going to die, darling! I’m not going to die. He has promised me at
least a few more years of life.”

De Richleau was near to
tears as he murmured, “Oh, my heart! How I thank God for this!”

Ilona kissed him again,
violently upon the mouth. Then she sighed. “If only you can get away, we may be
happy yet. This morning, just before you arrived, I was making marvellous
plans. Dr. Kutz wants me to take a ch
â
let
in Switzerland near his clinic. If I went there you could come to see me. Even
if you are a soldier, you could spend your leaves with me.”

He nodded, his grey eyes
shining. “Yes! Yes! I asked for a month before I left Paris. If only I can get
over the river to-night, you could join me in St. Gall to-morrow. I’ve got to
get away now! I’ve got to!”

“But you said it was
certain that Ronge would have all the men he can get out picketing the river
to-night.”

“True! I fear he will.
Then, much as I shall grudge them, perhaps I had better wait for a few nights
before making the attempt to cross.”

“You can’t live for long
alone in the mountains; and if you go to one of the farms the people might
betray you.”

“If you can get me a good
start I’ll manage somehow. The very fact of having seen you again, and hearing
your wonderful news, will give me fresh courage and endurance.”

Ilona stood away from
him, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked deep into his eyes. “Is it
really true, Armand, that you came back to Austria and risked your life only to
see me?”

“Of course!” he replied,
his devil’s eyebrows going up in surprise. “Why else should I do so? I could
not let you die without making the attempt to reach your bedside.”

“Oh, but I love you for
that,” she whispered. “And how much I want to prove to you that I am worthy of
the love you’ve shown me. Perhaps I can. I mean to try.”

He smiled. “You have no
need to prove your love for me. I have never doubted it. And if they get me,
somewhere up there in the mountains, I beg you not to grieve too much. Think
only of the happy times we have had together, and how infinitely poorer we would
have been without them.”

* * * * *

At half past ten, Ilona
received Count Zelltin and Major Ronge in a small sitting-room. As they bowed
before her, they endeavoured to hide their astonishment. She was now fully
dressed, but very strangely for such an hour in the morning. Both her costume
and her manner suggested that she was about to go to a fancy dress dance as
Ophelia in the mad act of
Hamlet.

Her chestnut hair still
rippled freely down her back, but on top of her head blazed a diamond tiara.
Beneath it her full red mouth made a splash of violent colour in her dead-white
face. She was wearing a ball dress of oyster satin with a short train. Across
her breast ran the broad ribbon of the order of Maria Theresa, and with nervous
fingers she kept tugging at its ends. Her blue eyes sparkled with a hectic,
unnatural light.

They knew that she had
been very ill, and as she waved them to chairs, they wondered uneasily if her
illness had affected her brain. When she began to address them in short,
excited, sentences, they felt it must be so. Smiling brightly at them, she
said:

“Do you like my dress? I
hope you do. I so rarely get a chance these days to put on nice clothes for
anyone. I hardly ever have visitors. And this is quite an occasion. First the
escaped prisoner, then yourselves. He saw me in my night things. Wasn’t that
shocking? But I owe you an apology, gentlemen. I ought to have received you
earlier, to tell you all about him. It’s been such a busy morning, though. And
such an exciting one! I have been ill, you know. They say excitement is bad for
me. But I like it! You see, on top of everything else, I am going on a journey.
That’s terribly exciting, isn’t it? After lunch to-day I’m going to
Switzerland. I expect to remain there for the duration of the war. In fact I
shall probably never come back. The doctors say that I shall never again be
strong enough to resume my royal duties. I can’t honestly say that I am sorry
about that. Dressing up like this now and then is fun; but not dressing up day
after day to talk with a fixed grin to endless people one has never seen
before, and never wants to see again. In Switzerland I think I shall buy a
dirndl
costume and go about like a gay little peasant girl. I
am sure it will do me a lot of good to be there. As I am no longer strong
enough to be of any use to my own country, I might just as well live in one
where my health will be better. Don’t you agree? Yes, I can see you do.”