Codeword Golden Fleece Page 22

  The maid insisted on serving them with coffee and biscuits, although these were already becoming luxuries in the half-devastated city. They partook of them on a verandah at the back of the house, and when they had finished the Duke asked Borki if he could arrange for him to have a very badly needed bath, on which the major-domo left them to see about it. Quite apart from the fact that he really wanted a bath, de Richleau had deliberately raised the matter because he also wanted as soon as possible to have a word alone with Marie Lou.

  Having led her out into the small but pleasant garden, directly they were out of earshot of the house, he asked:

  ‘What jewels have you got with you, Princess?’

  ‘Not very many. My pearls are not real ones, they’re copies I had made some years ago to take on our trips abroad. I have the sapphire clasps Richard gave me, a diamond brooch, two bracelets and three rings. Most of the Schulimoff jewels are in the bank at home.’

  ‘Which would it distress you to part with least?’

  ‘Why, are you in need of a big sum of money?’

  ‘I need two or three hundred pounds, at least. It is, of course, to help us get safely out of the country. Communications have now broken down so badly that I don’t think Mack will find any means of cancelling the laisser-passers that I forced him to sign; so once we are clear of Warsaw we ought to be all right, as long as we are in territory still held by the Poles. But the Russian invasion of Eastern Poland may complicate things for us further south as the Russians may have occupied the territory adjacent to the Rumanian frontier by the time we get there.’

  ‘Then you have been thinking up some way to get us through the Russian lines?’

  De Richleau smiled ruefully. ‘I haven’t had much time to think about it so far. The Russian invasion only started this morning, and I’ve been pretty fully occupied this afternoon. Still, before Mack set the mob on to me I had been considering it in a mild sort of way. Of course, it did not seem a matter of any urgency then, so I didn’t get very far. Anyhow, the only line that occurred to me required a fair sum of money, or its equivalent, so, much as I hate to do it, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to part with some of your jewels.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, dearest,’ Marie Lou smiled up at him. ‘I’m far better off for trinkets than most women. You can have the lot if it will help to get us home; but I’d like to keep the clasps that Richard gave me, unless you need them very badly.’

  ‘Of course. One of your bracelets should be quite sufficient, but I had better take the diamond brooch as well to be on the safe side.’

  Marie Lou believed in always carrying her jewels on her person when she travelled, and, lifting her tweed skirt, she slid her hand into a specially constructed pocket beneath it. After a little fumbling, she produced the two articles and handed them over. Then they went back to the house.

  Borki appeared, to say that the Duke’s bath was ready. Upstairs, in undressing, he found that he was scraped and bruised in a dozen different places. But his hurts were only superficial, and the hot water did much to lessen the ache in them. As soon as he was dressed he went with Marie Lou round to the garage to see Richard and, after telling them that he hoped to be back in three to four hours, set out towards central Warsaw.

  He had some distance to cover, but his thoughts were now moving rapidly again, and his steps kept pace with them. As he was still wearing the priest’s cassock and biretta he had little fear of being recognised, unless he was unfortunate enough to come face to face with Mack; so he took the shortest route and contented himself with giving the occupants of the few cars that approached him a keen scrutiny while they were still some way away.

  On reaching the Zamek he walked down a street on the opposite side to the direction in which Jan’s mansion lay, and soon afterwards entered the region where most of the Foreign Embassies and Legations were situated. The majority of those that had not suffered severely from bomb damage now had their shutters closed, and he knew that all their principal personnel would have departed from Warsaw with the Government a week before, or very soon afterwards. However, he felt reasonably confident that in some of them junior officials would have been left behind to clear up.

  He had decided that his first bet should be the Turks. They had long had close relations with the Poles, even continuing to recognise Polish sovereignty long after the partitions had expunged from the map an autonomous Polish State, and their Embassy was one of the largest in Warsaw. Moreover, they were one of the few peoples who could be said to have reasonably good relations with the Russians.

  But at the Turkish Embassy he drew blank. A wooden-faced porter who had been left in charge informed him that the Ambassador had departed with all his staff on the previous Monday.

  His next bet was the Bulgarians, as they were also on good terms with Moscow, but when he reached their Legation he found that it had been reduced to an empty shell. It then occurred to him to try one of the small Baltic States that bordered on Russia, and the first of their Legations that he came to being that of the Esthonians he rang the front-door bell.

  As no one came to the door he rang again and, after waiting for a few minutes, had just decided that the house must be empty when it was opened by a fair, square-faced man of about forty, with masses of tiny wrinkles round his bright blue eyes.

  ‘Well? What can I do for you, Father?’ he asked in Polish, naturally assuming from the Duke’s garb that he was a priest.

  ‘May I know whom I have the pleasure of addressing?’ enquired the Duke blandly.

  ‘My name is Fincks, and I am the Second Secretary here.’

  ‘Then, Monsieur Fincks, I should like to discuss a very urgent matter with you; so I trust that you are not too busy to grant me a few moments of your time?’

  The wrinkles round the blue eyes gathered in a quick smile. ‘I am not in the least busy, Father. I only wish I were; but the moment my Chief and the rest of his staff drove away to join the Government our routine here came to a dead stop, and, of course, all sensible Esthonians left Warsaw days ago. I remained here myself only because my wife is in hospital and cannot be moved. Come in, and I will help you in any way I can.’

  The Esthonian led de Richleau upstairs to a pleasant, book-lined room on the first floor, and when they were seated he said: ‘Well, Father? Tell me about this urgent affair of yours.’

  ‘I have come,’ said the Duke calmly, ‘to buy your car.’

  ‘Really!’ Monsieur Fincks’ eyebrows shot up as he replied somewhat coldly: ‘I’m afraid my car is not for sale.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Duke. ‘But I only require a very small piece of it, and, having taken that, I propose to return the car itself to you as a free gift.’

  The Secretary sat back and crossed his legs. De Richleau could almost read the thoughts flickering through his mind. ‘This poor priest is not all there. Bomb-shock perhaps? Anyhow, he seems quite a harmless sort of madman, and it would be best to humour him.’ After a moment he said:

  ‘How did you know that I had a car?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ the Duke admitted with perfect frankness, ‘but I am delighted to hear that my hopes are justified. How much will you take for it?’

  ‘Do you mean to say that you are prepared to buy it without even knowing what make it is? Perhaps the part that you want is not even fitted, or in the make I own quite unsuited to your requirements.’

  ‘Please don’t concern yourself on that score. It is there, and its removal will in no way interfere with the running of your car. I should have given you that assurance to start with.’

  ‘Really, Father. You intrigue me enormously. What is this mysterious part that you are so anxious to acquire?’

  ‘I want,’ said the Duke, ‘your Corps Diplomatique plates.’

  ‘Ho, ho!’ exclaimed Monsieur Finks, suddenly realising that he was not dealing with a madman after all, and jumping at once to another conclusion—that the Duke was not a priest at all, but a secret agent.

  ‘M
ay I ask, Father, he emphasised the last word, ‘if you obtained your cassock and biretta by the same means as you propose to acquire my number plates?’

  ‘No,’ smiled the Duke. ‘I didn’t pay anything for them at all; but you are quite right in your assumption that they are not mine and that I am not a priest.’

  Monsieur Fincks’ freckled hand stretched out instinctively towards the telephone. ‘I think,’ he said with sudden sharpness, ‘that I ought to hand you over to the police.’

  ‘I greatly doubt if that telephone is working,’ remarked the Duke pleasantly.

  ‘True. I’d forgotten. The line was severed days ago. However, I’ve still got a voice, and if you’re not out of this house inside two minutes I propose to use it.’

  ‘That,’ said the Duke in his mildest tone, ‘would be a very great pity; because if you did you would never use it again.’ As he spoke, he produced his gun from under his cassock and went on quietly: ‘I came in peace, and I trust that you will allow me to go in peace. In either case the Corps Diplomatique plates of your car are going with me, I have made up my mind about that, and here is the price I propose to pay you for them.’

  As he finished speaking he withdrew his left hand from his pocket and threw Marie Lou’s diamond bracelet on the desk-table behind which the astonished Esthonian was sitting.

  For a moment Fincks stared at the little pile of scintillating gems as they flashed and sparkled in the afternoon sunlight, then he picked up the bracelet to examine it more closely.

  ‘It is a lovely thing,’ he said at last, ‘and it must be worth a lot of money. It is real, of course?’

  De Richleau nodded. ‘Please accept my word for that. The lady to whom it belongs bought it from Van Cleff and Appels at Deauville, if my memory serves me. May I take it that I shan’t need my pistol and can put it away?’

  ‘Your offer is certainly a tempting one,’ smiled the Esthonian. ‘But first I should like you to answer a few questions.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Your nationality?’

  ‘British.’

  ‘Are you in the pay of your Government?’

  ‘No, I’m not in anybody’s pay.’

  ‘Why are you dressed as a priest?’

  ‘Because I want to get home to England. The first stage of my long journey lies through Polish territory, and the Polish Army is now disintegrating. In such a state all armies become more or less lawless. The Poles are a particularly devout people, and dressed as a priest I am far less likely to be held up and robbed or otherwise molested.’

  ‘Are you prepared to give me your word that if I let you have my numberplates you will not use them for any purpose which might harm my country?’

  ‘Yes willingly.’

  ‘All the same, I think I must ask you why you are so anxious to obtain these plates.’

  The Duke drew the laisser-passer which he had forced Mack to sign for him from his pocket and handed it across, as he replied: ‘This, as you will see, is a carte-blanche to pass all posts and cross the frontier, signed by a member of the Polish Cabinet. That would have fulfilled all my reasonable requirements yesterday; but it does not do so today. I propose to cross the frontier into Rumania, but by the time I get there the Russians may be in control of it. Therefore, I need something other than this Polish document to serve as a special credential with the Russians. It occurred to me that if I posed as a neutral diplomat on his way to rejoin his chief the Russians would allow me to proceed without argument.’

  The Esthonian nodded. ‘Yes. That is sound and plausible. If you were not in such a hurry you could easily have had Corps Diplomatique plates made for you at any garage and fitted them on yourself so I see no reason why I shouldn’t sell you mine.’

  “Thank you. I am most grateful to you.’

  ‘It seems rather that I should thank you,’ said the Esthonian with a smile, pocketing the bracelet as he stood up. ‘Let’s go down to the garage.’

  ‘There is just one other matter,’ the Duke remarked casually, also coming politely to his feet. ‘And it would be as well if we got it settled before we go downstairs.’

  ‘Oh! What is it?’ Fincks’ blue eyes narrowed a shade suspiciously.

  ‘You mentioned that your poor wife was in hospital and gave that as a reason why you have not been able to leave Warsaw.’

  ‘Yes, that is so.’

  ‘Well, I have recently been in a somewhat similar difficulty, but in my case the invalid is a man friend to whom I am greatly attached. Incidentally, his wife has also stayed with him, and she is the lady who owned the bracelet which I now hope will soon be gracing your wife’s arm.’

  ‘Thank you, yes. But what is it you want?’

  ‘Simply that my friend has sufficiently recovered for us to attempt the journey in an emergency ambulance. But he is still a very sick man. Naturally, I want to avoid any delay as far as possible, and spare my friend the exhausting business of being questioned by minor officials. If by chance you doubt my story and have an hour to spare, I would willingly take you to see my friend.’

  ‘I don’t doubt your story in the least, since you offer to take me to him. But what is all this leading up to?’

  ‘If you were about to make the journey with your wife you would be able to spare her these annoyances I have mentioned, would you not?’

  ‘Yes, I should certainly hope to.’

  ‘I think you would succeed, because, in addition to the Corps Diplomatique plates, you would have proper papers.’

  ‘Of course, and I take it you have your British passports?’

  ‘Certainly. But the Russians are not showing any particular fondness for the British just now. In fact, their attack on Poland has virtually made them Hitler’s ally, at all events for the time being. That was why I had in mind that it would be much more preferable for myself and my friends to travel as Esthonians. In fact the Corps Diplomatique plates will be almost worthless unless we have proper papers to support them. Would it be troubling you too much to ask you to provide three Esthonian passports for us?’

  For a moment Monsieur Fincks stared at him, before he exclaimed: ‘Well, I’ll be damned! Of all the impertinence!’ Then he burst out laughing.

  Having at last come to the real reason for his visit, de Richleau watched the Esthonian like a lynx, to see what his next reaction would be.

  ‘Toujours L’Audace,’ murmured the diplomat, when he had stopped laughing. ‘So that’s what you really came for, eh? All this business about the plates was merely to get me interested.’

  ‘How can you think that of me?’ smiled the Duke. ‘I have bought and paid for the number-plates already. This little matter of the passports is only a request which I trust you will grant to make a sick man’s journey easier.’

  ‘If I did and were found out I would lose my job.’

  ‘There is not the least reason to suppose that you would be found out,’ de Richleau said, now speaking with the utmost seriousness. ‘I promise to destroy the passports immediately we are over the Rumanian frontier. Even if they fell into someone else’s hands before that it is most unlikely that they would be traced back to you, as the issuing officer. If they were you could always say that I had forced you to give them to me at the point of my pistol. Much stranger and more terrible things are happening in Warsaw now, every day. Both of us may lose not only our jobs but our lives in the next raid. I would not ask it of you in normal times; but will you not please help me to get an injured man and a beautiful young woman out of this hell to which poor Poland has been reduced?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied the Esthonian, without further hesitation, ‘I will. I don’t know who the devil you are, but you’re a better diplomat than any I’ve ever met. And you’ve convined me absolutely. Esthonia is a little country, and I dread for it the fate that has overtaken Poland. All we ask is the right to live in peace and friendship with all other peoples, but now that the Great Powers have decided to fight it out I doubt whether we shall keep our freedom
for more than a few months longer. Anyhow, while Esthonian passports still have the power to save decent human beings from the horror that Hitler has brought upon the world, they should be issued to anyone who wants them.’

  De Richleau did a very unusual thing for him. He silently extended his hand, and Monsieur Fincks clasped it firmly.

  Half an hour later the Duke had in his pocket three old passports selected from a pile sent in for cancellation as being the most suitable on account of their descriptions. He also had an invitation to a reception at the Esthonian Legation held the previous month on which Monsieur Fincks had written the name on the passport which he had chosen, and a number of letters that he was supposed to be taking on to one of Fincks’ colleagues who had actually been killed by a bomb; while, under his arm, he carried a flat brown-paper parcel containing the Corps Diplomatique plates.

  As they were about to part the Esthonian produced the bracelet, saying: ‘I don’t think I ought to take this. It is worth several hundred pounds, and in any case at such a time decent people should help one another without thought of payment.’

  After a second’s hesitation the Duke took it back. ‘If it were my own property I should insist on your keeping it, but as things are I can hardly refuse your generous gesture. However,’ he added, producing the brooch, ‘this is of considerably less value. Please accept it for your wife with our best wishes for her recovery. I am sure the lady to whom the jewels belong would wish you to retain some souvenir of us.’

  ‘If you put it like that I should be very pleased to have it. Perhaps all too soon our safety may also depend on the few things of value which we could trade in an emergency.’

  ‘You really fear then that Esthonia may soon become involved?’

  ‘Yes. Now that Stalin has invaded Poland the Germans and the Russians may be fighting for her carcase within a week. In a Russo-German war the three Baltic States make such a perfect jumping-off ground for a direct Nazi attack on the Soviet that Hitler is almost certain to seize all our ports, unless Stalin forestalls him. In either case, poor Esthonia will lose her freedom.’