Codeword Golden Fleece (55 page)

And the driver of the Ford was not even trying to get away from them. He would have pulled up to see what they wanted if only they could have got close enough to attract his attention by their shouts. Yet they could only sit there watching the Ford draw away from them in a little cloud of dust.

It was now nearly a mile ahead, but they could still see it down the long stretch of flat almost empty road. It was just approaching a solitary building standing on a corner where a side-road branched off up a slight rise in the plain.

As they watched, their eyes glued to the Ford, its pace seemed to slacken.

‘My God!’ cried Richard. ‘He’s slowing down!’

Rex jumped in his seat. ‘Holy Michael! You’ve said it. That place is a service station, and he’s pulling up for gas.’

On tenterhooks now, they craned still further forward. The Ford was pulling up. There was not a doubt about it. It had stopped now in front of the roadside garage. A man came out to speak to the driver.

Their taxi-man shouted something and crouched over his wheel, striving to get the last ounce out of his aged engine. They had decreased the mile that separated them from the Ford by a quarter; by a half.

The garage man turned and walked back towards the house. It looked as if he was going in to get something. Only a quarter of a mile now lay between them and the Ford.

Suddenly, with an awful sinking feeling, they saw it start to move again. It had not, after all, pulled up for petrol, oil, air or water, but only that its driver might ask some question.

It was moving quite slowly. They were within two hundred yards of it. Rex was leaning out of the taxi window and shouting at the top of his voice; Richard and the taxi-driver joined in. But their voices were drowned for the driver of the Ford by the sound of his own engine, and the garage hand had disappeared into the building.

As they rattled past the garage they were still only two hundred yards behind the Ford, but now it began to draw ahead again. Rex waved frantically to the driver of an oncoming lorry, but in vain, as the man did not understand what he wanted.

The Ford was steadily increasing its lead; a quarter of a mile, half a mile, three-quarters. Richard and Rex sat back glumly staring at the little cloud of dust which half obscured their quarry. They were now leaving the desolate oil country behind
and entering the northern fringe of the farm lands that spread right over the rich Wallachian plain. Trees, hedges and isolated homesteads broke the horizon, and the broad road began to wind its way between the cornfields and meadows so that from time to time the Ford disappeared from view.

Suddenly the taxi began to lose speed and crawled to a halt at the side of the road.

Rex swore and leaned forward to ask the driver what had happened.

The game old chap replied in halting German: ‘I have run out of petrol. I knew we were getting low, but we would have had no hope at all of catching him if I had stopped at that garage for more.’

He had done his best for his passengers, so they could not possibly grumble at him; and they both felt now that even if the petrol had not given out the odds would have been all against their catching the Ford on the open road.

There was no place of importance on the road between Ploesti and the Rumanian capital, so the Ford was obviously on its way there, and Rex asked: ‘When we get more petrol, can you take us on to Bucharest?’

The driver shook his head. ‘No. It is another twenty miles, at least; and I am far outside my limit already.’

‘We’ll make it well worth your while,’ uiged Richard. ‘It is terribly important to us that we should speak to the man who was driving that Ford, at the earliest possible moment.’

But the taxi-man was adamant. To oblige them he had taken a risk as it was in going so far outside the limits of his own town. If he took them to Bucharest it was certain that the police would have him up for contravening the regulations under which licences to ply for hire were issued to taxi-drivers.

‘Then we must get back to Ploesti just as soon as we can,’ said Rex, ‘and go on to Bucharest by train.’

After pulling up several passing cars and lorries in the hope of being able to buy a spare tin of petrol off one of them, they at last got a ‘bidon’ from a furniture van. The taxi then drove them the eight miles or so that they had covered in their chase, back to Ploesti; taking them straight to the station.

It was now a quarter past ten, and the next train out for Bucharest left at twenty minutes to twelve, so for an hour and a half they had to kill time in the station buffet. In due course the train came in, and on arriving in the capital, without giving
a thought to lunch, they left their bags in the cloakroom and took a taxi straight to the Polish Legation.

The anxiety and frustration which had nearly driven Rex silly during the past few weeks had now given place to a feeling of intense excitement. Evidently the information that had sent Simon hurrying off to Cernauti had been ill-founded, and Serzeski had stayed with another friend, or perhaps some woman that he had picked up in the town, for an extra night in Ploesti. But, by sheer good luck, they had spotted his car and knew it to have been heading for Bucharest only that morning. Within a few moments now there was every probability that they would be face to face with him, or at least learn quite definitely where they could find him.

With ill-concealed impatience they made their enquiry of two elderly and seemingly slow-witted clerks in the Legation Office. Both of them knew Major Serzeski, but neither had seen him for at least a week.

When Rex insisted that the Major had arrived back in Bucharest a few hours ago, one of the clerks went off to consult Serzeski’s chief, a Brigadier Molikinski. He returned to say that the Brigadier had gone out to lunch and would be back about three o’clock. If they would call again then, no doubt he would see them.

Temporarily baffled but still full of optimism, Rex and Richard went to the nearest
grădină
and lunched. As they were paying their bill, Richard said:

‘Now we’re back in Bucharest we must, er—find out about Greyeyes. There are certain things we ought to do.’

Rex nodded gloomily. He remembered the job that he and Simon had undertaken of buying a good plot in the cemetery for poor Jan Lubieszow and making certain that he was buried with all the decencies available. The thought that their splendid friend might be lying in some untended graveyard where unclaimed bodies were sent from the Bucharest morgue was quite unbearable.

‘Yes. We’ll certainly do that,’ he agreed. ‘The fact that Grey-eyes always said he’d be much too busy to worry what happened to his body once he’d left it makes no difference as far as we’re concerned. I’ve a feeling he was right about our bodies only being new suits of clothes in a wardrobe full of all sorts and colours that we’ve worn and shed through the long centuries, but one doesn’t throw the cast-off uniforms of the great upon a
dunghill, and our Duke was a great man if ever there was one.’

On this sober note they left the
grădină
and drove back to the Polish Legation, where they learned that Brigadier Molikinski had now returned.

They found him to be a thin, good-looking man with greying hair. He received them most courteously, and in reply to their enquiry said at once:

‘No. Serzeski is not in Bucharest. He was in Ploesti for some days, and I spoke to him on the telephone—let me see, yes, on Wednesday; and I asked him to go up to Cernauti for us, so he would have left Ploesti yesterday morning for the north.’

‘I think you must be mistaken,’ Richard smiled disarmingly. ‘We didn’t actually see him face to face, but we saw his car in Ploesti this morning; and it took the road to Bucharest. We tried to catch him but our taxi wasn’t fast enough, and we ran out of petrol some eight miles outside the town.’

‘May I ask why you are so anxious to contact Serzeski?’ enquired the Brigadier.

‘I’m wanting to get back some private papers that I left with him for safe keeping during the recent excitement up on the Polish border,’ replied Rex with a substratum of truth.

‘I see. Well, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’m sure Serzeski would not have ignored my order to proceed to Cernauti, and if he did go there he could not possibly have got back to Ploesti so soon. I think it must have been someone else’s car that you mistook for his.’

‘No, sir,’ Rex insisted. ‘It was his number, UCZ827. It was his car all right.’

‘Perhaps he left it there and went north by train,’ the Brigadier suggested. ‘He might have lent it to somebody while he was away.’

‘That certainly is a plausible explanation,’ agreed Rex, with a swift glance at Richard. Both of them were thinking that, as Simon’s information tallied with the Brigadier’s positive statement that Serzeski had gone to Cernauti, that must really be the case, and therefore it could not have been he who was driving the Ford that morning.

‘Can you tell us when Serzeski will be back?’ Richard asked.

‘Some time tomorrow, I expect. I sent him to Cernauti on a matter that required one personal interview, and there is no reason why he should remain there longer than a day.’

Having thanked the Brigadier, they left the Legation. Immediately they were outside, Richard said: ‘I believe that chap was right. Serzeski is a regular officer, so he wouldn’t flagrantly disobey his orders. If for some private reason he had felt it absolutely imperative to return to Bucharest, he would at least have let his Chief know. He must have lent his car to somebody or, perhaps, sold it.’

‘That’s the way it looks,’ Rex nodded. ‘Now, how in heck are we going to trace that god-darned car?’

‘We should be able to find out from Serzeski himself tomorrow whom he sold or lent it to. But that means wasting the best part of another day, and it’s now the 13th.’

‘Holy mackerel! So it is. Then we’ve only a week left and we haven’t even got the Golden Fleece back yet. If we don’t get a good break soon I’ll go crazy.’

‘We’ve had a good break already today—spotting the Ford this morning. If we hadn’t we’d still be on the train going north to Cernauti. At least we are in the same city as we have every reason to suppose the car to be. I had been hoping to get round some of the hospitals this afternoon to make enquiries about Greyeyes, but it looks as if I’ll have to spend it questioning garage hands instead.’

‘You’ve said it,’ agreed Rex.

Having discussed various ways of setting about their new project, they decided that the best would be to go to the Bucharest Automobile Club and seek the assistance of its secretary.

A French-speaking assistant in a Post Office gave them the address of the Club, and when they got there they found the secretary almost too helpful. On their telling him that they had left some valuables in a borrowed car which they wanted his help to trace, he immediately suggested that he should ring up the police and ask them to broadcast for it.

The last thing they wanted was police interference, as they had never borrowed the car at all, and, once the police were involved, they would probably have to enter into endless explanations before the packet, if it were still in the car, was handed over to them.

Richard managed to slide gracefully out of the offer on the grounds that no broadcast could be made until the next news bulletin was issued, and, in the meantime, they might trace the car by ringing up all the largest garages in the city; and it was
the secretary’s help in securing a list of these with their telephone numbers that they really wanted.

The secretary then turned them over to his clerk with suitable instructions, and they succeeded in borrowing for the evening a trade journal that had a complete list of Bucharest’s motor establishments in it.

They next collected their bags from the station. In choosing an hotel to stay at, the Anthenée Palace was ruled out on account of the poignant memories of de Richleau, so they took rooms at the Ritz.

Immediately they had been installed in their private suite Richard set about telephoning the garages that had the largest advertisements in the journal they had borrowed; but, after twenty minutes’ exasperating cross-talk in a mixture of English, French, German and Italian he gave up, and Rex went downstairs to see if he could find someone to do the job for them.

He returned with a courier that he had hired from the hotel management, and, having explained what they wanted, they sat the man down to say to each garage he rang up: ‘Are you garaging a blue Ford V8 number UCZ827, or has one of your men serviced such a car today?’

They had dinner served upstairs in their sitting-room, so that they should hear without the least delay if the courier got an affirmative reply, and, sustaining the man with almost hourly relays of sandwiches and drinks, they kept him at it until one o’clock in the morning; but they had no luck. As the man pointed out, although he had rung up all the largest garages in Bucharest there were hundreds of little places, and it might quite well be that the car was housed in a private garage or that it had only passed through the city on its way to some destination in the west, south or east.

When he had gone Rex announced his intention of meeting the night train from Cernauti that got in at six in the morning in the hope that Serzeski would return by it, and rang through to the office to have himself called at five.

Richard volunteered to go too, but Rex would not let him, maintaining that he was still an invalid and exerting himself much more than was good for him already.

Rex duly met the train, but Serzeski was not on it. The only other express from Cernauti left there at six in the morning and got into Bucharest at eight in the evening.

After breakfast they got hold of the courier again, and Richard
supervised a continuation of their systematic search while Rex put in some extra sleep. All through the day the monotonous enquiry continued without success; but when Rex went out to meet the eight o’clock train he was filled with an exasperated confidence that Serezeski must be on it, and his renewed optimism was justified.

He had taken up a position near the ticket-collector where a strong light shone on the faces of the emerging passengers, and after the first half hundred people had squeezed through he suddenly caught sight of the Polish Major.