The Forbidden Territory (15 page)

“Brute,” Simon murmured.

“Brute’s the word,” Rex nodded. “Well, I don’t stand for that sort of thing, and I’ll not say Ford isn’t a big man, but he hasn’t turned out a car yet that can give the dust to a Bentley. I was after that guy as though I’d been a speed cop looking for promotion. In
half a mile he’d got to take the sidewalk and the nearest light standard, or stop and have a word with me. He stopped all right, and started to jabber in Spanish, but that cut no ice with me at all! I just happen to have been born a foot too tall for most people to try any monkeying, so I didn’t have much trouble with this little rat. When we got back they were picking up the old man.”

“Was he badly hurt?” the Duke inquired.

“Nothing serious; more shock and bruises than broken bones, but he was considerably upset, so we propped him up in the Bentley and I ran him down to the hospital. The driver I passed over to a real speed cop.”

De Richleau had been burrowing in his rucksack, and now produced a flat tin box, in which were packed a couple of layers of his famous cigars.

“Hoyo de Monterrey’s, by all that’s marvellous!” exclaimed Rex. “Well, I’ll say I never expected to smoke one of those sitting in the snow!”

“Unfortunately I had to leave most of them in Moscow,” said the Duke, “but I thought we would bring a few, and this—if ever—is an occasion!”

Simon chuckled as he carefully pinched the end of the long cigar which the Duke held out to him. “Thanks—d’you know, I believe if I meet you in the other world you’ll still have a box of Hoyos!”

“If I have not,” said De Richleau, puffing contentedly, “I shall send for my bill and move elsewhere!”

“Well, the whole party would have ended there,” Rex went on, “if it hadn’t been that I was bored fit to bust myself. So next afternoon, just to get away from all the sugar babies and card sharps in the hotel, I thought I’d go take a look at the old man.

“There he was, propped up in bed in the hospital, as wicked-looking an old sinner as ever you set eyes on; he spoke English better than I do, but he was a foreigner, of course; and, without being smarmy about it, he was
grateful for what I’d done. You’ll have guessed, maybe, that he was the old Prince Shulimoff.”

Simon nodded. “I thought as much.”

“Yes, that’s who he was, tho’ he didn’t let on about it that first meeting. Just said he was a Russian émigré, down and out. We talked a bit, mainly as to what sort of damages he’d get out of our Dago friend. He was a gentleman all right—got all het up ’cause he couldn’t offer me any hospitality when I called. Well, then, you know how it is when you’ve done a chap a sort of kindness; you feel he’s your baby, in a way, and you’ve got to go on. So I saw the American representative about getting his case pushed on, and of course I had to call again to tell him what I’d done.”

“Was the Dago worth going for?” inquired the cautious Simon.

Rex shrugged his broad shoulders. “He wasn’t what you’d call a fat wad, but he was agent for some fruit firm. I thought we might sting him for a thousand bucks. Anyhow, in the meantime, I became great friends with old wicked face—used to go to the hospital every afternoon for a yarn with the old man. Not that I really cottoned to him, but I was fascinated in a kind of way. He was as evil as they make ’em, and a lecherous old brute, but I’ll say he had charm all right.”

“Surely,” remarked the Duke, “Shulimoff must have had investments outside Russia before the Revolution. How did he come to be in such a state?”

“He’d blown every cent; got no sense of money. If he’d got a grand out of the fruit merchant he’d have spent it next day. But money or no money, he’d got personality all right; that hospital was just run for him while he was there. He tipped me off he was pretending to be a Catholic; all those places are run by nuns, and he knew enough about the drill to spoof them all; they fairly ran round the old crook! After I’d been there a few times he told me his real name, and
then
the fun started. He wouldn’t open his mouth if anyone who could speak a word of English was within fifty yards; but, bit by bit, he told me how he’d cheated the Bolshies.”

“Are you sure he was not amusing himself at your expense?” asked the Duke. “He seems just the sort of man who would.”

“Not on your life. He was in deadly earnest, and he’d only tell a bit at a time, then he’d get kind of nervous, and dry up—say he’d thought better of it—if the goods stayed where they were the Bolshies would never find them till the crack of doom; but if he told me, maybe I’d get done in after I’d got ’em, and then the Bolsheviks would get them after all.”

“And where had he hidden this famous hoard?” De Richleau asked with a smile.

“You’ve hit it.” Rex threw up his hands with a sudden shout of mirth.“
Where?
I’m damned if I know myself!”

“But, Rex—I mean,” Simon protested. “You—er—wouldn’t risk getting into all this trouble without knowing where they were?”

“I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea,” Rex admitted. “They’re at Romanovsk all right, and I was getting right down to the details with the old prince, when—”

“What happened? Did he refuse at last to tell you?” The Duke’s shrewd grey eyes were fixed intently on Rex’s face.

“No, the old tough just died on me! Rotten luck, wasn’t it? He seemed all right, getting better every day; but you know what old men are like. I blew in one morning and they told me he was dead. That’s all there was to it!”

“Surely, my friend,” De Richleau raised his slanting eyebrows, “you hardly expected to find the jewels at Romanovsk on so little information. Remember, many people have been seeking this treasure on all the Shulimoff estates for years.”

“No, it’s not all that bad,” Rex shook his head
“When things blew up in Leningrad in 1917, Shulimoff didn’t wait to see the fun; he cleared out to this place here, bringing the goods with him. He thought he’d be safe this side of the Urals till things quietened down, or if they got real bad, he meant to go farther East. What he forgot was that he was the most hated man in Russia. The Reds sent a special mission to hang him to the nearest tree, and they did—as near as dammit! Took the old fox entirely by surprise. He’d have been a dead man then if some bright boy hadn’t cut him down for the fun of hanging him again the next day! It was the old man’s cellar that saved him. The bunch got tight that night, and they’d locked him in the foundry without any guards outside.”

“The foundry? In the village was this?” asked the Duke.

“Lord, no, in his own house. He seems to have been a bit of a metallurgist—made locks, like Louis XVI, in his spare time, when he wasn’t out beating peasants or hitting it up with chorus girls from the
Folies Bergère.

“This foundry was a kind of laboratory and study all in one. I reckon they chose it as his prison because it was one of the only rooms that had strong iron bars to the windows. That let them all out for the drunk! All being equal in the Red Army, no one wanted to miss a party to do sentry-go.”

“How did he get out, then,” Simon asked, “if the windows were barred?”

“Easy; he had all his gear in the foundry, so he cut those bars like bits of cheese with an oxy-acetylene lamp. But the old man kept his head—as luck would have it, the jewels were in the foundry. He wouldn’t risk taking them with him, in case he was caught, so he occupied the time while the Reds were getting tight in making something at his forge to hide ’em in.”

“What was it?” came Simon’s eager question.

“Now you’ve got me,” Rex shook his head. “That’s just what I never squeezed out of the old fox before he went and died on me.

“It was some sort of metal container, and he put the stones inside. It was something that’d look like part of the fittings of the foundry, and something that nobody would trouble to take away. He soldered it in, too, I gathered, so that nobody could shift it without breaking the plant. You should have heard that wicked old devil chuckle when he thought how clever he’d been!”

“I can hardly imagine that it can still be there,” said De Richleau, thoughtfully; “the place must have been ransacked a dozen times. They would not have overlooked the plant in the foundry, especially a portion which had been newly forged!”

“Old Shulimoff was an artist. I’ll bet it’s there to this day among a mass of rusty machinery. He realised they’d spot the new bit, so he had to make it all look alike. What d’you think he did?”

“Don’t know,” said Simon.

“Set fire to the house, and then legged it through the snow. That foundry can’t have been much to look at, even if there were any Reds left to look at it next day. He reckoned that he’d get back there when things were quieter, but he never did. He was lucky in falling in with a party of ‘White’ officers, and later they all got over the Persian frontier together. I’ll bet—”

But they were never to know what Van Ryn meant to bet. The crack of a whip brought them scrambling to their feet. Twenty yards away the sleigh had leapt into motion. They had all been so interested in listening to Rex that they had forgotten to keep an eye on their prisoner. He had stealthily harnessed the horses while their backs were turned. The Duke drew his automatic and fired over Simon’s shoulder; the bullet hit an intervening tree and ricocheted with a loud whine. He ran forward, firing again and again, but the sleigh was rounding the bend of the track at full gallop on the road to Tobolsk. Rex snatched up the prisoner’s rifle, but he threw it down again in disgust. Nobody could hit a moving target through those trees.

They looked at each other in real dismay. They were
now utterly helpless in the depths of the Siberian forests, an easy prey to the hunters who would soon be on their tracks. It could only be a matter of hours until they were captured, or dead of cold and exhaustion in the wastes of these eternal snows.

It was Rex who broke the unhappy silence. “If we’re not the world’s prize suckers,” he declared bitterly, “I’d like to know who are!” And he began to roar with such hearty laughter that the Duke and Simon could not forbear joining in.

“This is no laughing matter.” De Richleau shook his head. “What the devil are we to do now?”

“Walk,” said Simon, the ever practical, and in truth it was the only thing they could do.

“Good for you,” Van Ryn exclaimed, patting him on the shoulder with one large hand while with the other he picked up the rifle and the strap of Simon’s rucksack. His cheerful face showed no hint of his quick realisation that the pace of the party must be that of the slowest member, or his anxiety as to how many hours it would be before Simon’s frail physique gave out under the strain. He only added: “Come on, let’s beat it.”

De Richleau collected his things more slowly. “Yes,” he agreed, “we must walk—at least, until we can buy or steal horses. But which way?”

“To Romanovsk,” said Rex. “That way’s as easy as any other, and I’d sure like to have a cut at those jewels before I go back home.”

“As you wish.” The Duke gently removed the ash from his cigar. “We have had no time to tell you our own adventures, Rex, but there is one little episode which makes me particularly anxious to avoid capture.”

“Give me that sack and let’s hear the worst,” Rex remarked casually, as he slung the Duke’s rucksack over his shoulder next to Simon’s.

“My dear fellow, you can’t carry two!” De Richleau
protested, “particularly after having driven all night.”

“I certainly can,” Rex assured him. “I’d carry a grand piano if I felt that way, but I’ll give ’em back quick enough if I get tired, don’t you worry. Let’s hear just how you blotted your copybook!”

“An agent of the Ogpu followed us as far as Sverdlovsk. If his body should chance to be discovered, and we are captured, it might prove a little difficult to explain,” said the Duke mildly.

Rex whistled. “You gave him the works, eh? Great stuff; but if that’s so, they’ll not be content to put us behind bars this time; it’ll be we three for the high jump!”

“We—er—hid the body,” Simon remarked; “if we’re lucky they won’t find it till the spring.”

Side by side they walked down the cart-track, and turning into the road set their faces to the north. “I’ll say we’re lucky today anyhow,” Van Ryn threw out; “if it had snowed last night we’d not make a mile an hour without snowshoes, as it is the going won’t be too bad on the frozen crust.”

They trudged on for a long time in silence; there was no traffic on the long, empty road, and the intense stillness was only broken by a hissing thud, as a load of snow slid from the weighted branches of the firs, and the steady drip, drip, as the hot sun melted the icicles hanging from the trees.

It must have been about half past nine when Rex suddenly stopped in his tracks—he gripped the others tightly, each by an arm, as he exclaimed: “Listen—what’s that?”

A faint hum came to their ears from the westward. “ ’Plane,” said Simon, quickly. Even as he spoke Rex had run them both into the cover of the trees at the roadside.

“It’s a ’plane all right,” he agreed, “but that engine’s like no other that I’ve ever heard—and I know quite a considerable piece about aeroplane engines.”

All three craned their necks to the sky from the
cover of the larches—the deep, booming note grew louder, and a moment later the ’plane came in sight, It was a small, beetle-shaped affair, flying low and at very high speed; it turned north when it was over the road, and passed over their heads with a great roar of engines. In a few seconds it was out of sight, and in a few minutes out of hearing.

“The hunt is up, my friends,” laughed the Duke, a little grimly. “These will be more difficult to throw off the trail than bloodhounds.”

“Somehow, I never thought of being chased with ’planes,” Rex admitted. “That certainly puts us in some predicament!”

“We must stick to the forest,” Simon answered. “Follow the road as long as there are trees, and leave it when there aren’t.”

As they journeyed on other ’planes came over; that it was not the same one going backwards and forwards was certain—since the numbers on each were different. Each time one came over Rex strained to catch a glimpse of the design, so different to anything he had seen before. The others cursed the necessity of stopping every twenty minutes, and often having to make long detours to keep under cover when the trees left the road.