Codeword Golden Fleece (2 page)

She sadly shook her golden head. ‘You are wrong, dearest. The war is over but there is more misery in Spain than there has ever been before. As the last of the Cordoba y Coralles it is my job to help lead my people towards better times. All of you here helped me save my millions when they were in jeaopardy; now is the time when I must use them to the best advantage.’

‘But not yet,’ pleaded Marie Lou. ‘A few months can make little difference, and the longer rest will make you so much fitter to tackle your task when you do get back there.’ She was pleading not only for Lucretia herself but also for the Duke, since, although it was never openly admitted, they all knew that the Spaniard was his illegitimate daughter, born of a great romance in the distant days before Spain lost her King, and that her well-being meant far more to him than his own.

Lucretia shrugged the beautiful shoulders which rose bare above a corsage of white sequined satin. ‘Anyhow, I have agreed to go to Poland for a month or so. After that—we will see.’

De Richleau waved the slender hand that held his long cigar in a faintly foreign gesture. ‘In a month much may happen. If I am not careful I shall lose you to one of those handsome Poles, who, if my memory serves me, are terrific lovers!’

For a moment there was silence round the highly polished table, the rich surface of which set off so splendidly the Georgian silver, big bowls of fruit and fine glass. They all knew that Lucretia had never fully recovered from the tragic ending of her
love affair with Cristoval Ventura, but they also knew that Monseigneur le Duc de Richleau was as wily an old fox as any that had ever stalked a chicken-run, and that he would never have made such an apparent gaffe had he not deliberately intended to plant the idea in Lucretia’s mind with that half-humorous lightness which can only be achieved when other people are present.

Simon, the quick-brained, was as ever first into the breach. With a little nervous gesture that he often affected, he stooped his bird-like head and tittered into his hand, as he uttered the curious negative which was habitual to him.

‘Ner, it’s much more likely we’ll lose you to some Polish beauty.’

Almost simultaneously Marie Lou had caught Lucretia’s eye, and as they stood up the men rose with them.

‘Five minutes—no more,’ Marie Lou smiled. ‘Then you can bring your drinks into the other room, as I’m certain you won’t have finished them.’

‘Never a truer word spoken in jest,’ grinned Rex, as he held open the door.

When the men were seated again, Simon’s dark eyes flickered towards the Duke. ‘Happy about going to Poland at the present time?’ he enquired.

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Oh, just wondered, that’s all.’

‘Simon, what do you know?’ de Richleau asked quietly.

‘Nothing much. Money market’s in a peculiar state these days and er—well, it might be difficult to get home.’

‘You think Hitler is really out for trouble?’

‘Hitler my foot!’ Rex cut in. ‘He may have the guns, but he’s got no butter. It was the blockade that brought Germany to her knees last time, and now she couldn’t hold out against it for three months.’

‘You don’t believe in the theory of the Blitzkrieg then?’ Richard smiled.

‘No.’ The big American shook his dark, curly head. ‘I lay four to one that if it ever comes to a showdown and Britain antes up to see Hitler’s hand it’ll be found that he’s been bluffing.’

‘Taken in hundreds, if that suits you!’ said the Duke quietly.

‘O.K.!’ laughed Rex. ‘And make it pounds, not dollars, if you like.’

Richard sat forward quickly, his brown eyes suddenly alert
as he addressed the Duke. ‘You really think we’re in for another war, then?’

‘Yes, sooner or later we’ve got to face up to this thing and kill it. Chamberlain got us a year to prepare at Munich, but the sands are running out. Hitler is well served by his intelligence. He knows that behind the scenes our Government is now straining every nerve to make up for these years of ostrich-like complacency, and that if he leaves his bid for world power much longer he will find a Britain, at least partially rearmed, barring his path. He cannot afford to risk that, so unless he is prepared to throw all his most cherished ambitions overboard he must strike soon.’

Simon nodded his head up and down like a china mandarin, then shot out: ‘Why’re you going to Poland, in that case?’

De Richleau shrugged. ‘Because my appreciation of the situation is that we have at least another month, and I should like to travel in Europe again before all that remains of the cultured and leisured ease which was customary among the upper classes in my youth is blotted out, perhaps for ever.’

The five minutes that Marie Lou had given them had already lengthened into ten, and she was a martinet in such matters. Max, the Duke’s man, appeared soft-footed behind his master and murmured: ‘Excellency, the ladies request the pleasure of your company.’

Still a little awed by de Richleau’s last words, they rose silently from the table and, carrying their glasses, moved into the big library.

It was not so much its size or decoration which made this room in the Curzon Street flat so memorable to those who had visited it as the unique collection of rare and beautiful objects that it contained: a Tibetan Buddha seated on the Lotus; bronze figurines from ancient Greece; beautifully chased rapiers of Toledo steel and Moorish pistols inlaid with turquoise and gold; ikons from Holy Russia set with semi-precious stones; and curiously carved ivories from the East. And these were not merely the properties of a wealthy collector, purchased in auction rooms and shops. Every one had a story behind it connected with some exploit in de Richleau’s long career as soldier, traveller and adventurer. The walls were lined shoulder-high with books, but above them hung fine old colour prints and maps.

Lucretia was looking very regal as she sat in a straight Jacobean
elbow chair, but the diminutive Marie Lou had curled herself up like a Persian kitten in a corner of the big sofa.

As the men came into the room she stiffened slightly, her quick instinct telling her at once that something was amiss.

‘What have you four been plotting?’ she asked, striving to conceal the agitation she already felt.

De Richleau took her small hand and, stooping, kissed it, as he murmured with a smile: ‘Nothing, Princess, perish the thought in your bewitching head.’

‘You haven’t got yourselves mixed up in some crazy business in which you’ll all have to risk your lives again?’

‘No, no. We haven’t as much as a fragment of a map of a “Forbidden Territory” between us, or a sniff of the Devil’s brimstone.’

‘You swear that, Greyeyes?’

‘I do indeed. We are all, as ever, the playthings of the Gods, and none of us can say what our tomorrows may bring; but tonight there’s not a thing to prevent us from giving our thoughts to how best we can enjoy our holidays.’

Richard had come up behind his wife, and gazing down fondly on her chestnut curls he placed his two hands on her bare shoulders, as he said: ‘Just think of it, my sweet. In three weeks’ time we’ll be in Vienna again. Vienna—where I first showed you what luxury and gaiety and love could mean.’

‘Richard, my love!’ She quickly clasped one of his hands and turned her face up to him. ‘Of course, it was stupid of me. Just a silly feeling like someone walking over my grave. Forget it, please.’

Rex had turned on the radio and twiddled the knob until he got a band. Then he pulled Lucretia up out of her chair and made her dance a few turns with him in the middle of the big room.

Soon they were all laughing again as gaily as they had during dinner. De Richleau ordered up two magnums of champagne. They were all connoisseurs enough to know that the wine was exceptionally mature and fine, but only Simon noticed that it was Veuve Cliquot, Dry England, 1906, a wine that would almost certainly have been dead from its great age had it been in bottles; and he knew it to be the Duke’s very finest, of which he had only half a dozen magnums left.

It was one o’clock before they broke up, Rex and Simon leaving together, and Richard, Marie Lou and Lucretia, who were staying with the Duke, going to their rooms.

When they had left him de Richleau drew wide the curtains of one of the windows, opened it and stepped out on to the shallow balcony. The dance was still in progress further up the street. The music of the band came faintly to him. The street lamps shone with a warm friendly glow on the pavements, where a few young couples, who had left the ballroom for a breath of air, were strolling up and down.

For a few moments he remained there, looking down upon those young, carefree people, yet with unseeing eyes. He had laughed as gaily as any of his guests all the evening, but now he was a sober and sadly troubled man. He was wondering desperately if all six of them would ever meet again. For a second he had an absurd impulse to rush downstairs, and out into the street after Rex and Simon; to call them back so that he might at least make certain of looking upon their well-loved faces just once more. But it was too late now, even for that.

With a little sigh he turned back into the room and put out the lights, still heavy with the grim foreboding that, if they ever did come together again, it could only be in a world gone mad. In what circumstances of distress, and perhaps terror and despair, they might meet, he knew that time alone could show.

Lubieszow was a long, low house set in a clearing of the forest. It had no garden as the English think of gardens, but shady walks wound among the trees and flowering shrubs bordered its drive, while, at the back, a wide terrace with a pleasant view looked out over the meadows to a great lake into which ran the river Stachod.

It was very peaceful there as the countryside of Russian Poland is sparsely populated, and Pinsk, the only town of any
size, lay a good thirty-five miles away to the north-eastward across the desolate Pripet Marshes.

De Richleau was enjoying his stay with the fat, jovial Baron Lubieszow, mainly because it was such a contrast to his normal life of a round of engagements among his many friends in the great cities and fashionable holiday resorts. The placid, orderly life of the Polish landowner, with its talk of crops, livestock and horses, carried him back to those more restful and contented days when he had often made one of a house-party on some great estate. The Baron’s conversation was strictly limited, but he was shrewd enough in a way that is common among those whose life is devoted to the soil. His table groaned under the good, plain, succulent fare that came from his farms; his cellar was adequate; and if one wished to talk politics or literature there was always his wife, Clotilde.

She was a thin, ailing woman with a sardonic humour, who took little interest in her husband’s activities and spent most of her time with Count Ignac Krasinski, their nearest neighbour and a daily visitor to the house. De Richleau suspected that the Count either was or had been her lover. In any case, he was her constant companion and supplied her with the gossip for which she was so avid, about the international situation, which the Count got from Warsaw, with which he seemed able to keep in remarkably close touch through his own channels.

Nearly a month had passed since the Duke and Lucretia had left London. On their way they had spent a few nights in Prague, and a week in Warsaw; the remaining fifteen days at Lubieszow had gone all too quickly, and soon they would be returning to England.

While showing little more than polite interest, de Richleau took in all that the Baroness and Count Ignac had to say about the dispute that was already raging over Danzig. He knew that Europe was a seething pot, on which a few weak, inept statesmen were vainly trying to hold down the lid, in spite of their awareness that the scalding Nazi steam inside must soon blow it off. But, like a condemned man lingering over his last meal, the Duke was determined to savour to the full such little time as might remain far from the excited, propaganda-maddened crowds which waited breathless for each radio bulletin and scare headline.

Besides, Lucretia was enjoying herself, and that meant a great deal to him. Her golden hair had become brighter from the August sun, there was more colour in her cheeks, and she
no longer checked her impulses to laugh in the half-guilty, nervous way she had done when fresh from the horrors that she had witnessed in Spain.

Young Stanislas, the son of the house, was largely responsible for that. He was a nineteen-year-old subaltern in a crack regiment of Polish Lancers, now spending some weeks of his summer leave with his parents. No brighter, more irresponsible young blackguard had ever thrown a leg over a horse. Although Lucretia was considerably older than himself, he had fallen for her at once and made open love to her on every possible occasion. She refused to treat him seriously, but his laughing, tempestuous wooing was just the elixir of life she needed to restore her temporarily lost youth; and, as they both adored riding, they spent a good part of each day together cantering through the forest glades on the higher land to the south of the house.

Jan Lubieszow; the Baron’s nephew, who had arrived in his own plane some six days before, had also had some share in taking Lucretia’s mind off her own problems. He was a thickset, square-faced, determined-looking fellow in his early thirties, and, although he lacked the carefree charm of his young cousin, he could talk well upon a great variety of subjects, and possessed a most melodious voice in which he could croon the latest American torch songs or, with equal ease, sing the old hunting songs of his beloved Poland. The Duke suspected that he, too, was considerably attracted by Lucretia, but, if so, he hid it with some skill, and in any case Stanislas left him little opportunity of being alone with her.

Four other guests had come and gone in the past fortnight, and more were expected that evening, so there was little excuse for any member of the party becoming bored from lack of congenial companionship. The Baron had said little to the Duke about the newcomers he was expecting, except that one of them was called General Mack and that he and the brother officers he was bringing were really friends of Count Ignac, who lived in too small a house to entertain them and had asked that they should be put up.