The Sword of Fate (25 page)

During the Libyan campaign we had had little time or opportunity to follow the progress of the war on other fronts. Days later we learned of the complicated diplomatic moves by which Hitler was systematically strengthening his hand for a great spring offensive. Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were all played off against each other with consummate skill. Marshall Pétain sacked the arch-traitor Laval, but Admiral Darlan’s growing power increased the Nazi grip on France.

The German Army remained sinisterly inactive while Britain and Greece slogged Mussolini until he was punch-drunk. Milan, Genoa, Brindisi, Turin and Naples were all heavily raided by the R.A.F., and there was even a hope that Italy might be forced out of the war, until the Germans began to take over in the peninsula, and by mid-January they had transferred an entire air fleet to the Sicilian bases of Catania and Comiso.

The R.A.F. also consistently hammered the invasion ports and submarine bases at Brest and Lorient, but the Luftwaffe hit back at many English towns and on December the 29th London had a frightful pasting, in which the Guildhall and eight Wren churches were destroyed.

Lord Lothian’s sudden death earlier in the month was a sad blow, and it was followed by the loss of General Metaxas and another great servant of the British Crown, Lord Lloyd.

At the end of January a new campaign was launched in Abyssinia. Kassala, on the Sudan frontier, was recaptured, and by a swift advance into Eritrea we took Agordat and Barentu in the first days of February. But these bits of news only trickled through to us.

With the fall of Benghazi, however, we had been able to get more regular news. On the day that I reached the Cyrenaic capital it had come through that the United States Senate had passed the Lease and Lend Bill, and everyone had been immensely cheered by the thought that the Americans were now really as good as in with us; but Hitler was getting very active in the Balkans.

On February the 13th he summoned the Yugoslav Prime Minister to Berchtesgaden. He was pumping German troops into Rumania as hard as he could go and hundreds of German ‘tourists’ were already infiltrating into Bulgaria. Turkey was still standing firm, but now that her western frontier was directly threatened through Bulgaria it looked doubtful if she would go to Greece’s aid if the Nazis decided to pull the Italians out of the mess they had got themselves into in Albania.

It was on the night of the 16th-17th that London suffered one of the worst raids of the war. On the 18th we were all depressed by rumours that a great part of the city had been entirely burnt out, but it happened that on the 19th I had been so busy that I had missed every one of the B.B.C. bulletins. In consequence, on getting back to the Cecil a little after eleven o’clock, instead of going straight up to my room I went into the lounge to see if there was any further news of the damage done to the dear old city.

A man and woman were sitting at a small table near the door. I got a vague impression that he was tall and dark and that she was a peroxided, smart-looking woman, possibly French; but I paid no special attention to them as I passed, and paused at a large table in the centre of the room where a number of newspapers and periodicals were always left for the use of the guests.

There were very few other people in the lounge so it was quiet there, and although I now had my back turned to the couple near the door I heard the man speak quite distinctly. There was nothing in what he said to attract my attention, but I stiffened where I stood. The voice was unmistakable. It was that of the man who had been with Daphnis in the garden.

I knew now why I had felt such instinctive hatred and dread on hearing that voice before. Then, strive as I would I could not recall who its owner might be, but now one glimpse of that dark, sleek head had been enough to give me a cue.

Very cautiously I turned and looked over my shoulder. I could see the man three-quarter face now: his high forehead, his aristocratic Roman nose, and his full-lipped cruel mouth. I was right. It was the Portuguese, Count Emilo de Mondragora, one of the seven devils who had brought about poor Carruthers’ suicide and wrecked my own career.

All the seething anger that I had felt at the time of the tragedy, all the bitterness of my wasted years, surged up in me. Those seven men who were responsible for my friend’s death and my own downfall had amassed so much money that without ever lifting a finger again they could have lived in affluence for the rest of their lives. It was through sheer greed and a perverted pleasure in sin that they continued to operate their vast criminal organisation which, by espionage, dope-running, white-slaving and blackmail, battened upon the follies and miseries of mankind. They were utterly pitiless, and without pity I had sworn to hunt them down.

In the early months of 1939 I had got on their track again and dealt with two of them. O’Kieff, when I had last seen him, had been on foot without transport, water, or supplies, and in the midst of a violent sandstorm somewhere south-east of the oasis of Siwa. I had left him to his fate in the desert a hundred miles or more from the nearest well, and it was outside the bounds of all probability that he had been able to remain alive for more than a matter of hours. Zakri Bey I had no doubts about at all, as I had strangled him with my own hands; but I had never succeeded in getting on the track of the other five, and six months after my first kill I had been absorbed into the war.

Now I had happened upon another of that unholy crew, but the grim satisfaction which I should normally have felt was tinged with fear. This man knew Daphnis. It was he of all people who had been with her that first night in the garden before my arrival.

Those horrible little whispering doubts which I had striven
with such resolution to put away from me, yet which for all that had refused to be smothered ever since my interview with Major Cozelli, became in one moment certainties.

In time of war first place in the activities of these aristocrats of crime would unquestionably go to big-scale espionage. The Portuguese was a neutral, so he could move freely still in any country. Had I come across him in German-occupied territory I should have considered it a possibility that he was spying for us, Britain having proved the highest bidder, but in Alexandria there were no secrets which he could learn other than those which would be useful to the Axis. Then, too, there were Daphnis’ Italian sympathies and the fact that at that time she had been engaged to Paolo. Everything was terrifyingly clear now in my shocked and agonised mind; since it was Count Emilo de Mondragora who had been with Daphnis there was but one explanation: he had come there to collect her report. She had been—perhaps was still—spying for Italy.

During the seconds that the full implications of this shattering revelation raced through my brain I made a great effort to control my physical reactions. I felt that, although my back was turned to him, even an abrupt or awkward movement might attract the attention of that saturnine devil, and if he once recognised me any advantage which I might have over him would be gone.

Actually the only time that we had ever come face to face had been at that dinner-party when poor Carruthers and I had met the Big Seven in Brussels. It was quite on the cards that, even if he saw me, he would not know me again, but first-class brains usually have long memories, and I could not be too careful.

Having held the paper in front of my face for the space of about a minute without having absorbed one word that was printed on it, I folded it neatly, laid it down carefully on the top of the others, and walked out of a glass-panelled door at the far end of the lounge.

It wasn’t until I was outside that I even dared to breathe freely, and to my surprise I found that I was sweating. Small beads of perspiration had broken out all over my forehead.

As I mopped them up with my handkerchief I realised that I had ample cause for the acute anxiety that I was feeling. A cruel fate had ordained that my adorable Daphnis should be mixed up with this monster whose outward elegance of appearance I knew to conceal the mentality of a rattlesnake combined with that of a carrion crow.

I lit a cigarette and drew heavily upon it as I wondered
agitatedly if Daphnis had given up spying for Italy when she became engaged to me, or if she was still playing that dangerous, and now treacherous, game. Since she had worked for Mondragora, and I now considered that to be as good as an established fact, I feared it was extremely unlikely that she had been able to break away from him, even if she had tried to. Men like the Portuguese are adepts at ‘framing’ their helpers so that they can hold the threat of blackmail over them should they at any time wish to give up the work.

If he had got something on her it might prove the devil of a job to get her out.

For a moment I thought of going straight back to the house and charging her with being Mondragora’s associate, or at least demanding to know what she had been up to that night with him in the garden, and when she had last seen him; but I was quick to realise that any idea of a showdown must wait for the time being.

If I left the hotel I might lose touch with the Portuguese, and one thing stood out a mile—whatever part Daphnis might be playing in this affair, the fact remained that I was his sworn enemy. I had no intention of hanging for his murder if I could possibly avoid it, but, given the chance, I was determined to kill him with as little scruple as I would have crushed a poisonous scorpion under the heel of my boot.

I felt confident, too, that whatever Daphnis might have done in the past, once she became engaged to me she would never willingly have done anything that might harm my country; but if Mondragora had some threat which he could hold over her he might now be compelling her to carry on against her will and she must be suffering the most frightful mental torture from the dread that I might find her out. If that was so I had a double motive for eliminating Mondragora.

Through the glass panel of the door behind which I was now standing I could keep watch upon the Portuguese, but the distance was sufficient to prevent his recognising me should he chance to glance in my direction. After about ten minutes he and the peroxide blonde got up and went out through the far door of the lounge. I immediately walked back through it and emerged cautiously after them into the hall. He was getting himself into a big overcoat and I waited for a minute until he and the woman went out of the front door.

It was dark outside, but as I followed there was just enough light for me to see that he put the woman into one taxi before
getting into another himself. Directly he had driven off I slipped the negro night-porter, who had held the cab doors for them, ten piastres and asked him what address the gentleman had given.

He knew me well enough to recognise me by my shape and voice in the semi-darkness, and he replied without hesitation:

“Ambassador Court, sah. Dat’s ’em beeg block ob flats along da waterfront, jus’ on da corner ob da Sharia Nur-El-Din.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go there tomorrow morning and see if he’s the fellow I think he is. I didn’t like to go up and speak to him while he was with a lady, but he looked just like a man I used to know—a Major Robinson.”

“No, sah, youse all wrong ‘bout dat,” laughed the big negro genially. “Ah dunno da gentleman’s name, but he ain’t no English gentleman. Ah’s as sure ob dat as ma own name’s Abdullah.”

“Oh,” I said in a disappointed tone. “Well, in that case I must have been mistaken.” And I turned back into the hotel.

Having nodded good night I went up in the lift to my room, where I pulled a big cabin trunk from under the bed. Most of my pre-war possessions were being stored for me in the baggage room of the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo, but when my battalion had first been ordered to Mersa Matruh I had packed one trunk with things such as flannels, bathing-suits, etc., which I might need on short leave and deposited it with the management of the Cecil in Alex. From the trunk I took a dark-blue lounge suit and the things to go with it, my Mauser pistol, and the rubber goloshes which I had brought ten months before with the idea of surprising Daphnis the night of my first clandestine visit to her garden. Getting out of my uniform I changed into the civilian clothes, put on the goloshes and slipped the loaded gun into my pocket.

Opening the door cautiously, I peered out into the corridor. Nobody was about so I walked swiftly along it and tiptoed down the service stairs. On the ground floor I had to wait for a moment while two sleepy Arab servants grumbled to each other about having been kept at their work so late they would now miss the last bus and have to walk home. They shambled side by side along a passage which led to the back entrance of the hotel. Having given them a moment to get clear, I followed them outside. A quarter of an hour’s quick walk along the front brought me to the Sharia Nur-El-Din, and on one corner there was a big block of flats which I knew must be Ambassador Court.

A flight of steps led up to its entrance, and a uniformed porter was standing in the hall. I had to wait there in the shadows for
twenty minutes until a taxi drove up and some people went in. The porter took them up in the lift, leaving the hall empty. That was the opportunity for which I had been waiting, and I slipped inside.

I had had to take a chance on Mondragora’s having a flat at Ambassador Court and living there under his own name, but I had felt that if I temporarily lost him there was a good chance of my picking up his trail again or finding out if he had rented a flat under some alias by describing him to the porter. One glance at a big board bearing the names of the occupants of the flats in gilt letters showed me that my luck was in. Count Emilo de Mondragora’s name appeared opposite Flat 42 on the top floor. Delaying no longer, I started swiftly up the stairs.

As I reached the second landing the lift shot down again, so I knew that I could proceed in safety at a more leisurely pace, and I mounted to the top of the building. So far fortune and cautious planning had proved extraordinarily favourable to my project—and my project was murder.