Codeword Golden Fleece (61 page)

De Richleau made no remark. He turned his face away from them and lay with it towards the wall.

They sat there in the most frightful silence, as though the bottom had dropped out of the world. The Duke’s head was shaking slightly and he gave a kind of sobbing cough, so that they all thought he was crying until Marie Lou suddenly exclaimed:

‘Greyeyes! You’re laughing. How can you be so unkind?’

He turned his face back to them, and two tears were running from the corners of his eyes; but they could see now that he was shaking through difficulty in controlling his mirth.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘and I mustn’t laugh. It’s bad for me. But your woebegone faces were so comic. I imagine you’ve been through a most devilish time, and I’m certain you did everything that courage and human ingenuity could devise. It was most frightfully bad luck to be beaten by a few hours like that.’

‘I see nothing about it to laugh at, anyhow, darling,’ said Lucretia, voicing the thoughts of the rest.

‘Forgive me,’ smiled the Duke. ‘I couldn’t help it, and there is a funny side to the situation. I wasn’t thinking of you that night when I saw Jan in hospital. I was too ill to think of anything except the Golden Fleece, and we hardly exchanged ten words before I collapsed. I knew that all Polish airmen were being evacuated from Rumania to England by the Allies, so that as soon as he was fit enough he would be sent there. I made him swear not to say a single word to anyone and gave him the Golden Fleece to take to London for us.’

‘You what!’ exclaimed Rex, jumping up. ‘You couldn’t have! We were trailing it through Rumania for a month, and we got it back. Simon’s got it in his pocket still.’

‘Yes, the original,’ de Richleau breathed, with an effort now. ‘It will be nice to have that as a souvenir. It was a copy that I gave to Jan. I had three made. One I put in the post on the off chance that it might get through to Sir Reginald, another I left in a secondhand bag that I bought for the purpose, in the cloakroom at the railway station, in case we needed it later, and the third I gave to Jan.’

Jan himself took up the story with a broad grin. ‘I was evacuated from Rumania on the 2nd. They sent us by rail to Athens and then by ship to England. I got there on the 13th. The Duke had written Sir Pellinore Gwain Cust’s name and address on the back of the option, so I took it to him. The British Government completed the deal by taking the option up on the 16th. Sir Pellinore was kind enough to get me an air passage out to Istanbul on a plane leaving that night. But as the Duke had sworn me to secrecy I didn’t feel that I could tell even the girls anything, except that, having been evacuated with the Polish Air Force, I’d had to go on a pretty long round trip before I could rejoin them.’

‘Then we’ve pulled it off after all!’ exclaimed Richard.

‘Yes,’ nodded Jan. ‘Ninety per cent of Hitler’s oil will be cut off now unless he decides to invade Rumania, or there is after all a
coup d’état
and a new Rumanian Government decide to hand their country over to him. They would commandeer the barges then, but as long as Rumania remains free and neutral we have enabled the British Government to stop all the traffic going up the Danube.’

‘But—er—these copies of the option.’ Simon stared at the Duke. ‘How did you get hold of them? When were they made?’

The nurse opened the door of the sitting-room and looked in. ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to go now,’ she said. ‘You’ve had much more than your five minutes.’

As they stood up the Duke gave a little chuckle. ‘That was the thing I had in mind when I sent you back to the Peppercorn to get some sleep, Simon. I had no chance to tell you about it the following morning, but I had taken the precaution of digging a photographer out of bed and making him photostat the Golden Fleece for us.

‘It’s so good that all six of us—no, we’re seven now—should be safe and together again. Blessings on you all. Good night.’

Discover books by Dennis Wheatley published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/DennisWheatley

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The Forbidden Territory
The Devil Rides Out
The Golden Spaniard
Three Inquisitive People
Strange Conflict
Codeword Golden Fleece
The Second Seal
The Prisoner in the Mask
Vendetta in Spain
Dangerous Inheritance
Gateway to Hell

Gregory Sallust
Black August
Contraband
The Scarlet Impostor
Faked Passports
The Black Baroness
V for Vengeance
Come into My Parlour
The Island Where Time Stands Still
Traitors’ Gate
They Used Dark Forces
The White Witch of the South Seas

Julian Day
The Quest of Julian Day
The Sword of Fate
Bill for the Use of a Body

Roger Brook
The Launching of Roger Brook
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree
The Rising Storm
The Man Who Killed the King
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The Rape of Venice
The Sultan’s Daughter
The Wanton Princess
Evil in a Mask
The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware
The Irish Witch
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The Satanist

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They Found Atlantis
Uncharted Seas
The Man Who Missed the War

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The Fabulous Valley
The Strange Story of Linda Lee
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Star of Ill-Omen

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DENNIS WHEATLEY

Dennis Wheatley (1897 – 1977) was an English author whose prolific output of stylish thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world’s best-selling writers from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Wheatley was the eldest of three children, and his parents were the owners of Wheatley & Son of Mayfair, a wine business. He admitted to little aptitude for schooling, and was expelled from Dulwich College, London. In 1919 he assumed management of the family wine business but in 1931, after a decline in business due to the depression, he began writing.

His first book,
The Forbidden Territory
, became a bestseller overnight, and since then his books have sold over 50 million copies worldwide. During the 1960s, his publishers sold one million copies of Wheatley titles per year, and his Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories.

During the Second World War, Wheatley was a member of the London Controlling Section, which secretly coordinated strategic military deception and cover plans. His literary talents gained him employment with planning staffs for the War Office. He wrote numerous papers for the War Office, including suggestions for dealing with a German invasion of Britain.

Dennis Wheatley died on 11th November 1977. During his life he wrote over 70 books and sold over 50 million copies.

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP

First published in 1946 by Hutchinson & Co. Ltd.

Copyright © 1946 Dennis Wheatley

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eISBN: 9781448212606

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