Thomas Ochiltree (18 page)

And with this he turned and left. Von Falkenburg almost quivered with the effort required to keep himself from kicking the man down stairs. But that would just play into Rogge’s hands, in the way that punching his face would have.

As it was, von Falkenburg realized, he had already done plenty of harm to himself in the last five minutes. He should have kept calm, pretended he did not have the faintest idea of what Rogge was driving at, drawn him out. Instead, he had shown how tense he was, and Rogge would assume that that tension was the result of Rogge having “struck a little close to home” with the suggestion that Lasky had tried to blackmail him.

Worst of all, von Falkenburg knew, was the fact that he had squandered an opportunity to find out something about how much Rogge thought he (Rogge) knew. The frame which his enemies were constructing around him was easy enough to see: Lasky had tried to blackmail him, and he had killed Lasky to shut his mouth for good.

But had his enemies dared let Rogge know anything about the espionage charges? Or fearing any further inquiry into that subject, had they fabricated some completely different wrongdoing to hang about his neck as his reason for murdering a blackmailing Lasky?

One thing, he knew, was certain. Rogge was telling the truth when he told him that interesting new things were being added to his dossier every day.

But how many things – fed to an unsuspecting Rogge by von Falkenburg’s enemies – were in there now? And how many more would be needed before Rogge had decided the time had come to act? Perhaps the only reason he had not done so yet was that he did indeed like playing the smirking, self-satisfied cat to his victim’s mouse.

There was, however, one consolation for von Falkenburg. Even though his time was running out very fast, he knew that he was on the right track in his own investigation. Whatever the original motives his enemies had had for constructing the espionage case against him, the trouble they were going to with Rogge suggested another motive was now present: fear.

Fear. His enemies were beginning to fear him, he decided. They knew that he had not accepted his fate passively, that he was on their trail, and that step by step he was coming closer. With their connections at Court, how could they fail to? He could imagine one of the gossipy women Helena had talked to remarking in company something to the effect of, “how inquisitive that lovely Princess von Rauffenstein has become; it seems she can’t ask enough questions about Putzi and the Archduke Karl-Maria.”

Helena! If they knew that she was helping him…!

“Schmidt, the gentleman who just left…what time did he come last night?”

“I report most obediently, he was here about a quarter to ten,” Schmidt replied.

Von Falkenburg was out the door and running down the staircase almost before Schmidt knew he was gone.

Rogge had called for him at his quarters at a quarter to ten last evening. But having set a man to tail him, it was inconceivable that he would have gone to von Falkenburg’s rooms without having been informed by the latter that von Falkenburg was there – and at the time Rogge called, von Falkenburg was with Helena.

Inconceivable…
if Rogge was the man’s chief!”

What had Helena said last night? “If that man who followed you really
was
a policeman….”

At the Ring, von Falkenburg glanced around desperately for a cab, but sure enough, none was to be found. He set off across the Inner City at as fast a walk as he could manage. He would have run except for the chance that he would be stopped by a superior officer for non-regulation behavior was too great, for that would cost him more time than he could afford to waste.

He tried to tell himself that there was no reason for the hollow feeling in his stomach; that it was just a supposition he was working on. But he knew that
they
never did anything without purpose.

It seemed as if he knocked for an interminable time at Helena’s front door before Alphonse opened.

“Is your mistress in, Alphonse?”

“I regret, Captain, Her Highness left about an hour ago with two gentlemen.”

Alphonse pronounced the word “gentlemen” in a way that made clear how little he felt it really applied to the persons in question.

“Do you know who the gentlemen were, Alphonse?”

“No, Captain.”

“Can you describe them? It is most important.”

“One of them was wearing a derby hat.”

“Did he have on a rather loud check suit?”

“Yes sir.”

“Thank you, Alphonse.” Habit obliged von Falkenburg to keep up the forms even in the face of disaster. It was not difficult for him to guess in whose hands Helena was now.

“Did your mistress say anything about where she was going. Alphonse?”

“No, Captain, but she did leave a note for you. I found it on top of her writing desk after she left.”

“Very well, Alphonse, bring it to me, please,” von Falkenburg said, just barely restraining the urge to snap, “get it at once, imbecile!”

Alphonse vanished and returned shortly bearing a white envelope on a delicate silver salver. The note on which Helena’s life possibly depended lay there as if it were nothing more than an invitation to tea.

“Thank you Alphonse,” he said, pocketing the note casually. Almost everything in his world had vanished but his habit of adhering to certain forms of behavior, and he suspected that at present they alone were what kept him from disintegrating.

“I don’t think the Princess would mind my making use of her writing room, Alphonse.”

“Very good, sir.”

But once the door of that little chamber closed behind him, von Falkenburg’s self restraint could hold out no longer, and he tore open the envelope almost ravenously and read:

“My Dearest Ernst!

“Our ‘friends’ from the police say that if I can give them a few minutes of my time, they can be of help to you. I don’t at all trust them, but I hope I may learn something of what they want from you. Perhaps I can convince them that you are the last person in the world they should suspect of any wrongdoing. At first I wondered if they really were from the police, but they showed me their papers.

“Even so, my suspicions are not entirely stilled. But I feel that even if I were to refuse to go with them I would be compelled to do so. Please believe me, Ernst, when I say that as far as I am concerned, my fate is of no importance compared to yours.

“With all the love of

“Your Helena”

Von Falkenburg struggled to contain himself, but this time he did not succeed. His fist clenched, he raised it, and then brought it down on the desk so hard that the lid of the bronze inkwell flew off.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” he repeated aloud through clenched teeth, pounding the delicate little writing table harder with each “damn!” until it seemed its graceful legs would have to snap if he hit it much harder.

Anger, despair, self-contempt – all surged within him. A fine man he was, he told himself. Two people had tried to help him, and the first was dead and the second abducted and quite possibly in line for the same fate.

And the second one was Helena, the only woman he had ever been capable of really loving, the woman who meant every word of it when she hastily scribbled that as far as she was concerned, her own fate meant nothing compared to his.

He looked around him at the exquisite little writing room he was in. Like everything else that was associated with her, it was in impeccable taste. Before he had blundered into her life she had had everything. What right had he had to engage her emotions and her concerns?

And if little Lasky had not come across his case and taken an interest in it,
he
would still be alive.

But Oh! Helena!

Logically, Helena had chosen to associate her life with his, just as, for different reasons, Lasky had decided to pursue his search for the truth. But von Falkenburg could see how little logic meant now.

Those bastards
…

Prince Robert von Lipprecht, with his rank, his fortune and his grotesque preference for being called by the childish name of “Putzi”; Archduke Karl-Maria, who probably had so many inherited titles it would take an hour to recite them all, and who still wasn’t satisfied. And their lackey von Lauderstein, the wastrel and compulsive gambler, the parasite who was all too willing to hitch his wagon to their evil, ascending stars.

And their total, unhesitating willingness to use and destroy other people for their own convenience.

That, von Falkenburg realized, was of all things the one that most effectively disarmed him in his battle with them. To him, taking other people’s legitimate interests into account was such second nature that it was literally almost impossible for him to visualize people for whom the lives of other human beings, weighed against their own desires, counted quite literally for nothing.

And suddenly it was not just for himself, but for all the von Falkenburgs who had gone before, that he felt contempt. What was it, he thought, six hundred years of unstinting loyalty to the Habsburg family? Six hundred years of unstinting service, with almost nothing asked in return except that each generation be allowed to continue serving in turn.

Great battles are sometimes decided by single events, and it was a historical fact that the whole Allied left was starting to waver under French pressure at Leipzig when his great grandfather, disobeying orders and risking everything, cried to his men, “the 23rd Dragoons, follow me!” and led them in a frantic charge against the French right that gave a breathing space which made all the difference. And so his great grandfather had been praised for his action. And praise and glory notwithstanding, two years after the war many of the Falkenburg estates had finally been lost to the creditors, and the remainder were now mortgaged to the hilt. That, he reflected, was what loyalty to the Emperor had gotten his family, and he, its last male representative, was going to have to die a suicide in order to escape the disgrace of being convicted for treason he had not committed.

Which, he decided, was fair enough, because he could not even protect the woman he loved. He was going to have to die, while the
real
traitors – Putzi, who was probably a personal friend of the Emperor, and the Archduke Karl-Maria, who was of Imperial blood, were going to have everything.
Everything!

But they were wrong, he suddenly realized. Even if they won, they would have nothing, because they
were
nothing.

Von Falkenburg leaned back in the ridiculous little chair he was seated in, emotionally exhausted, panting for breath, but
certain….

He knew that for nothing on earth would he care to change places with Putzi, or the young archduke. Not to save his life. Not even to save Helena’s, for he knew that she would not want it saved at that price. It had nothing to do with ancestry, with hundreds of years of service, or with cavalry charges against Napoleon’s Guard.

No, it was something far more precious than all those things that he possessed and that his enemies did not: human decency.

Little Lasky, who had been shoved around all his life by people who did not know how much better he was than they, had it.

And the old matrons who had doubtless clucked their tongues and whispered the word “adventuress” when Helena, the operetta singer from Budapest, had married an elderly prince, had not understood that she would never have taken advantage of the prince if her life depended on it. Because she had decency too.

And although he had made many mistakes in life, von Falkenburg knew that in this regard he could claim kinship with Helena, and Lasky, and little Annie, and Endrödy.

For they were all on one side, the side of the decent human beings. And on the other side were von Lauderstein, and Putzi, and the traitorous young relative of the Emperor.

But worthless or not, his foes now had Helena, and he knew that there was literally no step they would hesitate to take which they thought was in their self-interest.

There was no time to waste, he told himself. He must immediately set about finding her.

But how?

She had managed to scribble a note and leave it where Alphonse would notice it. That in itself was nearly miraculous, but presumably she had asked for a minute alone to get ready, and her abductors had seen no way of refusing such a reasonable request without revealing that they were not policemen requesting her to voluntarily come along with them.

But her note told him almost none of the things he needed to know.

Should he go to the police himself, he wondered? He rejected the idea almost at once. Von Falkenburg had not lived his life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire for nothing. He knew how a bureaucratic mind such as Rogge’s worked. The man had worked out – or rather, unknown to him, had been handed – a theory of Lasky’s murder that although totally false was not inherently implausible: that Lasky had discovered some compromising fact about von Falkenburg and had tried to blackmail him at the cost of his own life.

Now precisely because the theory was not inherently implausible, von Falkenburg told himself, Rogge would be very loath indeed to abandon it and start once again from scratch. If von Falkenburg went to the police and told them of Helena’s disappearance, Rogge would do everything he could to tie it in his mind to what he supposed was von Falkenburg’s murder of Lasky.

Worse, to try to explain the truth to Rogge would require a reference to the false espionage charges, which Rogge would of course imagine to be fully justified and the basis for Lasky’s supposed blackmail.

Von Falkenburg would be perfectly willing to accept the consequences for himself of such a development if doing so would help Helena. But as Rogge’s number one suspect, there was no way he could get the man to believe a word he said about who her abductors were. If he reported Helena’s kidnapping to the police, the latter would simply go off completely in the wrong direction and achieve nothing…if by their thrashing around they did not lead his enemies to the conclusion that Helena would be harder to find dead than alive.

So he would have to save her alone. And doing so would have to take precedence utterly over saving his own life and honor, whatever she said to the contrary in the last line of her note.