Mediterranean Nights Read online

  DENNIS WHEATLEY

  MEDITERRANEAN

  NIGHTS

  A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES

  DEDICATION

  For Aunt Nell, my cousin Laurie, Joan, Diana, Amy, Dick ‘Hitch’ and all those other friends and Editors who by the help, encouragement and opportunity they gave me, contributed something to this collection of stories.

  DENNIS WHEATLEY

  Contents

  Introduction

  MEDITERRANEAN NIGHTS

  I

  Espionage

  II

  Bollinger—Very Dry

  IV

  Borrowed Money

  VI

  The Notorious Madame Ribereau

  IX

  The Secret Sign

  X

  Death at Three-Thirty

  XII

  The Golden Spaniard

  XIV

  Athenian Gold

  XVII

  These Women

  XIX

  A Deal in Cyprus Wine

  XXIII

  ‘A Little Knowledge…’

  XXVII

  Vendetta

  THE MAN WITH THE GIRLISH FACE

  V

  The Crippled Lady

  XIII

  Death in the Flag

  XV

  Night Patrol

  XVIII

  Channel Crossing

  XXII

  The Biter Bit

  XXIV

  Two Birds with one Stone

  OUT OF SERIES

  III

  The Worm that Turned

  VII

  The Last Card

  VIII

  The Snake with the Diamond Eyes

  XI

  A Bowler Hat for Michael

  XVI

  The Suspect

  XX

  Murder in the Pentagon

  XXI

  Thyroid (A One-act Play)

  XXV

  The Pick-up

  XXVI

  The Terrorist (A story for the Talking Screen)

  A Note on the Author

  Introduction

  Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

  As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

  There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

  There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

  He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ‘all his books’.

  Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

  He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

  He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.

  The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

  Dominic Wheatley, 2013

  STORY I

  THIS story certainly has no claim to be included in a volume called Mediterranean Nights. But wait a minute! It is set in Paris, and most of us normally set out by way of Paris for those sunbaked romantic shores. What a thrill it was to board the Pullman at Victoria on a cheerless winter day, luggage registered, passport, tickets, money all safe in one’s wallet, armed with books and magazines that one never had time to read, cumbered with rugs and flasks and chocolates that seemed to fill every seat; then the supreme moment as the train moved out, ensuring escape from work and worries, bills and badgering, bound for Paris—and beyond.

  What is more, the hero of this story was actually on his way to St. Tropez in the South of France and it’s hardly his fault that he never got there. Had he done so there would have been no story to tell, and his sole justification for appearing in this book is the ghastly adventure in which he became involved while still on the train.

  Incidentally, the episode of the lovely German girl on the train who, although so weak from a recent operation that she could hardly stand, was prevented from catching her proper connection through the petty malice of the French, is taken from real life. I forget her name; but she was a film star who had just met with a spectacular success in England as the result of the Elstree production, ‘Sunshine Susie’, in which she had played the leading role. I fed her occasional sips of brandy from my flask most of the way to Paris.

  The story was originally called ‘Old Soldiers Never Die’, a very favourite theme of mine; but Dick Mealand, the charming and very able American who edited Nash’s for several years over here, changed it. He was a grand fellow and did much to encourage my early efforts, but he made me cut this story by some two thousand w
ords before he would buy it for publication. Afterwards he told me that his imagination had been caught by the curve of the girl’s eyebrows and that he would have bought the darn story anyhow—even if he’d had to cut it himself.

  The discerning reader will, I think, agree with me that it would have been a better yarn had it not been so severely cut; but ‘Old Soldiers’ ran to over 7,000 words and Mealand’s normal limit was about 5,500. That is the curse of having to write to space—a job that I have always loathed and one of the reasons why I early abandoned short-story writing. Every tale has a perfect length which is governed by the simplicity or complexity of its plot. Nearly every tale will still be improved by cutting up to 10 per cent after it first leaves its author’s hands in what he considers to be its finished state. Editors know that and are therefore absolutely right to insist on cutting. But if the cutting goes much beyond 10 per cent then something—background, characterisation or suspense—is bound to suffer. In this case it was the suspense, since, had another sentence out of the last 3,000 words been sacrificed, the story would no longer have made sense. Still, even as it stands, I’ve read worse stories, and its best feature remains—the twist at the end.

  ESPIONAGE

  I REALLY went down to Wimplehays to see the roses. Roses are a bit of a passion with me, and Rowley Thornton’s garden has a reputation. It was after lunch, as we were sauntering along the flower-bordered paths, with the blue haze of our cigar smoke circling about our heads in the sunshine, that the talk turned to espionage.

  ‘That army-officer case was incredible,’ I said. ‘I had no idea that such things still happened in these days.’

  ‘Hadn’t you?’ He turned to smile at me, the little wrinkles creasing up at the corners of his blue eyes. ‘Well, they do. I nearly lost my life in Paris less than a month ago—’

  ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you mean that—would it be—er—infringing the Official Secrets Act, or anything, to tell me about it?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered slowly. ‘You see, I left the service years ago, so in a sense this was a private venture—but I must change the names, of course.’

  I nodded, glancing at the tall, slim figure by my side with newly awakened interest. He paused a second to run his hand over the smoothly-brushed hair just greying at the temples, and then went on thoughtfully:

  I was on my way down to St. Tropez, and when I left London I hadn’t a thought in my head except the joys of a fortnight’s cruise round the Balearic Isles in Larry Hinchcliffe’s yacht. I got drawn into this wretched business only because fate decreed that I should choose one particular compartment on the Calais train.

  There was only one other fellow in it, a smallish man in a neat dark blue suit and a black slouch hat, and he was already working on a pile of invoices when I got in, so I took him for an ordinary business man. Then, just as the train was about to steam out for Paris, there was a terrific commotion in the corridor—train conductors, porters, Cook’s men, luggage, and a girl.

  I suppose I should say ‘woman’ really, since she couldn’t have been under thirty. She had on a little hat which showed off her hair to perfection—bronze gold with a tinge of red in it, but her eyebrows were her really striking feature—long, thin, and tapering, they curved up like the moustaches of a musketeer. I didn’t know then what had upset her, but she seemed to be in a towering rage and her face was as white as a sheet.

  She stood there in the doorway telling the crowd what she thought of them. Her French was appalling, and I doubt if they understood one-third of what she said. They seemed half apologetic and half surly as they stowed her baggage on the racks and seats.

  When they had gone she suddenly put one hand to her tummy and half closed her eyes. I thought she was going to faint and made a move to steady her, but she shook her head and sank into the other corner on the same side as myself.

  As the train moved off she sat up and turned a large pair of angry eyes on me. ‘You are not French?’ she said.

  ‘English,’ I answered, gazing back. Her eyes were a queer tawny colour flecked with green.

  Then she looked at the other fellow. ‘And you, monsieur?’

  ‘Norwegian,’ he told her with a little bow.

  ‘Ach, Gott sei danke—these French are horrible,’ she exclaimed.

  She was an unusual type and obviously intelligent, so I inquired her nationality, although it was already pretty certain what it was.

  ‘I am a German,’ she shot at me with an angry lift of her chin, ‘but I might be a leper from the way they treat me here. You speak German perhaps?’

  I nodded and she broke into a violent diatribe in her own tongue. She was on her way back to Germany apparently and should have caught the train that left ten minutes earlier than mine. On account of her nationality the French had put her passport aside to be dealt with last, and gone through her luggage with a tooth-comb. In consequence she’d missed her train and, worse, her sleeper on the Berlin express. That meant she’d have to spend a quite unnecessary night in Paris, and her long tapering eyebrows went up into her bronze-gold hair as she scowled over the iniquities of the French. To crown it all, she said, she was only just recovering from an operation and hardly fit to travel—yet, in spite of that, they’d kept her standing on the platform in agony for over half an hour.

  The Norwegian had been busy with his papers all the time, and when she suddenly swung on him and asked: ‘Do you not also think it is disgraceful of them?’ he looked up with a puzzled stare.

  ‘Excuse please, Fräulein—my German is not much.’ So she turned back to me exclaiming: ‘Ach! I feel so ill.’

  I suggested that she might like to put her feet up, and moved over to the other side of the compartment to give her room; for the first time her face broke into a smile.

  ‘What about a little cognac?’ I went on. ‘I’ve got some in my bag—it will do you good.’

  Those curious eyes lit up her face in an extraordinary manner as she thanked me, and I got out my flask. Then she gave me another little smile—said she would try to rest a little, and wriggled down to her full length.

  After that I sat staring out of the window for a bit—somehow I’d lost all interest in my book. Then I began to study the Norwegian in an idle way.

  I had been facing him before, but now that I could see him in profile it struck me that there was something familiar about his face. It was his nose that reminded me of someone—a long, thin, knife-like affair, but for the life of me I couldn’t think where I’d seen a beak like that before.

  ‘Ein bischen nehr Branntwein bitte?’

  It was the girl speaking of course, and I fumbled for my flask. ‘More brandy?’ I asked stupidly. ‘Oh yes, of course—here you are.’ I gave her the cup, but my mind had flashed back fifteen years to a hovel in the slums of Cairo. Those very words had been spoken then by a man whose nose was the twin of the ugly proboscis in the corner.

  The girl closed her eyes and I was free to regard the pictures in my brain. Essenbach had given us endless trouble in the old days, fermenting discontent all over the Levant. Towards the end of the war a chap, whom we’ll call Manning, and I had run him to earth in Cairo. He fought like a devil when we cornered him, but Manning broke an earthenware pitcher over his head, and it was while we were bringing him round that he asked for more brandy.

  He broke prison, and got away—the Armistice came soon after and I hadn’t heard a word about him since.

  I took another look at the ‘Norwegian’. His build was right. Then I glanced at his hands—and that settled the matter. Hands are a marvellous index to character, and almost impossible to disguise—this bird was Essenbach all right.

  I should have assumed him to have been out of the game for years—just like myself, but the story about his being a Norwegian set me thinking. He had come from England—and he couldn’t have been up to any good.

  In the hope of a line I looked up at his luggage and I saw ‘Felixstowe’ on a railway label at
one end of his bag.

  Well, Felixstowe is only just across the water from Harwich, you know, but somehow there didn’t seem much to interest a German of Essenbach’s standing there. Then I got another idea: what about Martlesham, the R.A.F. experimental station?—a much more likely spot than Harwich for picking up really important information.

  The woman with the intriguing eyebrows sat up as we passed through Amiens. She was looking better for her nap, and after powdering her nose settled herself in her corner and started to chat.

  I soon found that we had certain friends in common, mostly among the old ex-officer class in Berlin, and I began to wonder who she could be, but I couldn’t lead her on to talk about herself at all.

  We had slowed down and were rumbling through Asnières before I realised how time had flown, and in another few minutes we were all collecting our things.

  I don’t mind confessing that I should have liked to follow up my acquaintance with that interesting young woman, but I couldn’t even offer to see her to a taxi—I had Essenbach to attend to.

  I passed the barrier a good twenty yards ahead of him, and got under cover in a taxi before he appeared in the station yard.

  He had a good look round before he jumped into a cab. I tapped on my man’s window, and we set off after him down the Rue Lafayette. We nearly lost him at the Opéra, but spotted him again in the Rue de la Paix. As we entered the Place Vendôme I saw that he had pulled up at the Ritz.

  I made my chap drive on through the square and then round to the back of the hotel—the entrance to the bar. I paid him off and walked slowly down that endless corridor lined with show cases. I wanted to give Essenbach time to register before I appeared. As I poked my nose round the corner a page was leading him to the lift. I went over to the desk and asked for a room, but I’d hardly spoken to the clerk when I heard a soft voice behind me, and there was the lady of the tawny eyes and intriguing eyebrows.