Читать книгу Tales of Mystery & Espionage: 21 Spy Thrillers in One Edition - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 94

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“That’s trick number one for us,” Blute declared, springing lightly down on to the permanent way. “Two of you fellows come down here and the others pass the caskets to us.”

They promptly obeyed. Afterwards they found the gate leading from the railway line to the road opened with a latch and the gate up the avenue to the chateau was easily flung back. One by one they dragged the caskets and then the three cases across the rails, the bordering roadway and into a place of security behind some shrubs in the chateau park.

“It’s trick number one for us, all right,” Blute repeated, pausing to wipe his forehead, “but we’re not quite out of the wood yet. How many men did you say you have up there, Mr. Mildenhall?”

“Well, I haven’t been there for over twelve months,” Charles reflected. “There was an old housekeeper who looked after things—I took her over from the last proprietor. Then there were two indoor menservants, a youth who looked after the electricity and telephone—we’ve always done a lot of long-distance telephoning from here—three men in the garden and a woodman.”

“Any weapons?”

“Not much in that way, I’m afraid. There are two or three sporting guns. A number five shot from a highly charged cartridge out of a Purdy gun is not to be sneezed at! No rifles, I’m afraid, but I’m sure there are a couple of revolvers. The servants are mostly Swiss but a pretty decent lot as far as I can remember. Needham, the butler, is really in charge. I’m afraid they get very slack when I’m away for a time. I couldn’t get hold of any of the servants whom I remembered when I rang up but the chauffeur’s voice was familiar and he told me he knew all about the plane and would see that it was got ready. He promised, too, to have the cars looked over. I suggest that we three go straight on up to the chateau and leave the cases here for the present. We can send down some more men to help bring them up. I know we have one lorry at least and a large car which should carry the lot. You can start off when you like.”

Blute hesitated for a moment.

“We must have transport,” he reflected. “The only thing I’m bothered about is supposing the Three G’s get the train stopped and hurry back here.”

Charles pointed to the range of mountains ahead.

“They’ve got to get to the other side of those before they come to a town of any size,” he confided. “Even if they got the train stopped, there would be nothing to bring them back. It’s nothing but rough mountain country for fifty or sixty kilometres. There’s one military post but that wouldn’t do them any good.”

“We’ll do as you propose then,” Blute agreed. “Wait just a moment while I have a few words with the men.”

“It’s a lovely old place,” Patricia remarked as they drew nearer to the house on their upward climb. “I love the towers at the corner and the long sweep of the front.”

“It’s more French than Swiss, I’m glad to say,” Charles pointed out. “I don’t altogether like the look of the place, though,” he went on, glancing disparagingly around. “The grounds look very neglected and I can’t see a single gardener about. I fancy I can hear someone in the flying field, though, and there’s smoke enough from the chimneys. As soon as we’ve got our luggage up we must see what Madame can do for luncheon.”

“Have you a very good cook?” Patricia asked wistfully.

“Pretty fair so far as they go,” he answered. “I have never done a great deal of entertaining here. It was a very useful headquarters to write reports from and it is quite near several frontiers. Here we are!”

They crossed the paved courtyard; Charles pulled the huge iron bell chain, turned the great handle of the front door and pushed it open. There was a large but silent and gloomy hall. A man issued from the back regions and made his way towards them. He was dressed in dark livery but Charles looked at him puzzled.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man stared at him for a moment, then he smiled a little superciliously.

“I was about to ask you the same question,” he confided. “Whom do you want to see?”

“I want to see Needham, my butler,” Charles replied. “My name is Mildenhall. The chateau belongs to me. I telephoned to say that I was coming.”

The man looked at him for a moment in blank astonishment, then he moved across the hall and threw open the door of a large reception room.

“Some visitors for you, sir,” he announced. “The younger gentleman says that his name is Mildenhall and that he owns the chateau.”

The man who had been seated at the writing-table rose to his feet. He was dark, tall, his figure was slim, even elegant, he was well and carefully dressed although in markedly foreign fashion. His grey eyes had a peculiarly chilling effect. The smile upon his lips, however, was a perfectly genuine affair. He appeared to find the situation a little unexpected but amusing.

“Really?” he exclaimed. “Mr. Mildenhall! I was hoping to make your acquaintance but not quite in this fashion. I am afraid before I ask you to be seated—the young lady will excuse me?—I must ask you, both of you, please, without any hesitation—quickly in fact—to raise your arms towards the ceiling and keep them there.”

Almost before he realized it Charles found himself looking into the barrel of a revolver held in the speaker’s right hand and Blute felt himself covered by a second weapon held in his left. It was certainly no time for argument. Charles’s first impulsive move forward and the lowering of his right hand had sent his opponent’s finger swiftly and without the slightest hesitation to the trigger of his weapon. Mildenhall raised his arms in approved fashion. Blute had already done the same.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Now, will you kindly explain this unexpected visit?”

“I don’t see that any other explanation is necessary than to tell you that this is my chateau and I am asking you what the devil right you have here,” Charles replied.

“The right of possession.”

“And your name?”

“Ah, you are beginning to be inquisitive,” the other observed. “I have special names for most of the countries I visit and they are many. In Switzerland I am known nowadays as Count Gervaise Gunther. That is when I am addressed formally, which rarely happens.”

“Of the Three G’s!” Blute groaned.

The Count smiled.

“You are a man of the world, I perceive, sir,” he remarked, bowing slightly to the speaker. “You have heard of me.”

This was, as he instantly realized, the bitterest moment of Charles Mildenhall’s life. He was conscious of a sensation which produced in him a feeling of deadly sickness. In his own vanity, in his own self-confidence, he had brought the girl whom he loved and the man with whom he was working into this mortal danger. He had taken a risk, not only on his own account but for them also. It was a horrible thought. If ever he passed out of this ghastly room alive, a possibility which he was inclined to doubt, he would still never forget the agony of these moments.

“Yes,” Blute admitted after a brief pause, “I have heard of you. I sometimes wondered if the time would ever come when we should meet face to face. I did not think that it would be here, though, or in this fashion.”

“You have brought to a successful conclusion, Mr. Blute,” the Count observed, reseating himself in his chair but keeping the little dark brown gun with its almost violet-coloured barrel in his right hand, “so many of your schemes in life that I imagine you have forgotten the possibility of failure. I have been one of your admirers, you know. I always felt that if I could have come across a man with a genius for finance, as brilliant in his way as I am in mine, we might have done great things in Europe. We might have become king-makers. We might even have occupied thrones of our own.”

“You flatter me,” Blute said bluntly.

“Not in the least. By the by, young lady, will you not honour this poor abode by taking a chair? It is really more your friend Mr. Mildenhall’s than mine, you know, although I am doing the honours just now. Do sit down. The small orange-coloured couch behind you would go with your complexion and hair.”

“Thank you. I’ll try it,” Patricia assented.

The Count smiled in approval.

“I was about to allude, Mr. Blute,” he went on, “to the amazing coup you have brought off which has preserved for Mr. Leopold Benjamin his great fortune. In nearly every country you have not only preserved his wealth but you have added to it. You will be proud to know, I am sure, that even in my own country, Switzerland, your name is as famous even as my own.”

“It is an honour,” Blute murmured with gentle sarcasm.

“This present enterprise of yours, though, Mr. Blute, seems scarcely likely to redound so much to your credit,” the Count continued. “I am inclined to fear that you have been a little indiscreet in your choice of an ally.”

“That,” was the calm reply, “seems to be my affair. If I may be pardoned for saying so, I am not a young man and I cannot support the weight of my two arms held in a vertical position very much longer.”

“Reasonable,” the other acknowledged. “Let me see—what can we do? Strauss, this way a moment.”

The man who had admitted them came from the shadows of a further apartment. His master reflected.

“Let me see if this would work,” he suggested. “Hold Mr. Blute’s right wrist firmly in your fingers, Strauss, and place your hand upon the muzzle of his weapon. If he is willing to relinquish it bring it to me.”

Blute was not the man to make an effort which was foredoomed to failure. He yielded the revolver.

“The same course of action with my younger friend, Mr. Mildenhall…Excellent. Both weapons I will keep on the table by my side, gentlemen, until we have arrived at an understanding. By the by, Mr. Mildenhall, we have turned your rackets court temporarily into an execution ground. We have found it very well adapted for the purpose.”

“I shall be happy to sample it,” Charles observed grimly.

“It seems to me highly probable,” the Count continued, “that you will have an opportunity. I am not a jealous husband but I do not like young men whose flirtations with my wife become too obvious. There was that hideous-looking Hessian lieutenant, for instance, who has probably saved his skin by going off to Poland. I had no fancy for that young man. Of course, when it comes to the great ones of the world—with the same Christian name as your own,” he reflected with a smile, “a husband may regard the affair with greater leniency. A very charming man, the Archduke.”

“Do you know, I don’t want to be rude,” Charles ventured, “but I’m getting very bored, and I am sure Mr. Blute is too, with your monologue. What the hell does all this talk about your wife mean?”

“My wife. I forgot you knew her by her later name, the Baroness von Ballinstrode. She was really a very pretty young woman years ago when she became the Countess Gunther.”

There was a brief acute silence.

“Are you telling me,” Charles demanded, “that Beatrice von Ballinstrode is your wife?”

The Count sighed.

“Do you mean to tell me that you have never heard of that dear lady’s disreputable connection?”

“I will answer for it that he did not,” Blute intervened. “Mr. Mildenhall knew only that the Baroness had made an unfortunate marriage with a man who ruined her life and from whom she was divorced.”

“Ah, but that is where my wife was wrong,” the Count protested calmly. “I never consented to the divorce. If my wife had been a little more reasonable she might have been very useful to me. At any rate, I never had any idea of letting her go. I have not been quite satisfied with her behaviour lately—in fact, my displeasure went so far as to relieve her of her passport—but…”

“Get on with the matter in hand,” Blute insisted.

“I am talking to save time,” the Count confided. “I am coming to the point now, though. In this bungled enterprise of yours, Mr. Blute, what have you done with the—er—loot?”

“It lies at the bottom of the avenue on the left-hand side coming up,” Blute replied without hesitation.

“Right to my door!” Gunther exclaimed with a gesture of gratitude. “Well, you really are the most accommodating interlopers I ever knew. To realize that I might have gone to the trouble of bringing all these things down here from Vienna myself and then very likely made a mess of it—as you have done! I really am indebted to you both—and to the young lady, too,” he added with a little bow.

“Nothing to thank me for,” Patricia remarked with a slight yawn. “I have been rather in the way.”

“Fancy, the bottom of the avenue here!” the Count repeated. “Really! We’ll say nothing about the freight but I think that I ought to pay something towards the Customs. What do you think, Mr. Blute?”

“Go to hell!”

The Count looked at the speaker gravely.

“Mr. Blute,” he remonstrated, “there is a young lady present. However, as it seems to irritate you I will make no more comments upon this dismal failure of yours. Under the circumstances perhaps it was to be expected. There is one question, however, I would like to ask. What has become of the guard you brought with you whose instructions were to remain with the caskets in the luggage van?”

“They are still guarding our property,” Blute replied. “They will go on doing that, you know, for the present.”

“I judged that they might be,” the other observed. “To tell you the truth, when Mr. Mildenhall complained just now of what he called my monologue I was perfectly truthful in my reply. I was talking to save time. It occurred to me that if those four men of yours were to march up here I should have been obliged to get rid of you two in order to have made our numbers a little more even.”

“How should you have got rid of us?” Patricia asked.

“I should have left you out of the affair entirely, young lady,” he assured her. “I have a great fancy for red hair and those queer greenish eyes that go with it sometimes. I admire a slim figure, too. That is why I could not get on so well with my own wife lately. She is just a little too much inclined to put on flesh. Don’t you think so, Mr. Mildenhall? Ah, I see you agree with me. You, young lady, as I was saying, I should reserve for a different fate, as they say in the pictures, but I should have been compelled to take Mr. Mildenhall and Mr. Blute up to the—er—rackets court. Sounds better than execution ground.”

“I’d rather go with them than listen to you talk,” she declared boldly. “I think that you are a most annoying person. Couldn’t they have done something about it while you were young?”

“My mother and father,” he assured her, “loved to listen to my childish prattle. However—finished. I’ve gained all the time I wanted. I am going to shoot you two—you, Blute, because you have already cut into one or two of my little affairs and I’m getting tired of it. If it hadn’t been for a stroke of good luck you’d have spoilt this one for me—and that would have meant,” he went on, leaning forward, “something like four million pounds. The Leopold Benjamin collection is worth quite that.”

“I believe it is,” Blute agreed.

“Well, you say you have four men guarding it down there. Now, I have eleven men who will hurry back here when they find that I am not at the rendezvous because they will know that I have taken this little affair over and they will want to know where the treasure is. In a very few minutes they will no doubt be here. They will fight it out with your four brave warriors. What do you say, my divinity with the red hair? Will you come up with me to the tower and look out through my telescope and watch the Struggle or will you come and watch a little diversion on the rackets court first?”

“I would go anywhere for the pleasure of seeing you shot!” she retorted.

“Bad manners,” he sighed.

“In any case, if ever you laid a finger on me,” she assured him, “I would shoot you before you did so if I could, but I would shoot you afterwards if I had to wait a dozen years. That’s my red hair, you see. Bad temper it means.”

Her inquisitor smiled. It was one of the most unpleasant smiles that ever parted a man’s lips.

“I foresee that there might be difficulties in my original scheme,” he remarked. “Strauss, move those two revolvers I have left upon the table. We are excellently placed here. Unless I am very much mistaken the diversion down below is about to commence.”

Charles suddenly caught up the chair by his side and held it over his head.

“I’ve had enough of this! Get out of the way, Patricia. Let the fellow shoot.”

He smashed the window in front of them into a dozen pieces. He was poised for the spring through what was left of it when Patricia’s shriek rang through the room.

“Stop, Charles!” she cried. “These aren’t his men at all!”

A lorry had turned in at the bottom of the drive and was being driven furiously towards the chateau. It was packed with soldiers in an unfamiliar uniform. Behind was another and smaller car, and then a limousine. The Count stood like a man turned to stone. He watched the approaching cavalcade with blank amazement. His upraised hand which had been clutching the revolver fell to his side. Patricia made a lightning-like dash at the weapon and snatched it from his loosened fingers. She tossed it across to Charles.

“Catch!” she cried.

Charles caught it.