He spoke scathingly and Nancy Radstock gave a little cry of horror.
“Who wants to buy anything like that? I am sure it would be unlucky. They say jewels can portray the emotion of those who wear them, I would never, never want to wear anything that might bring me bad luck!”
“Nonsense!” Dolly said sharply. “Harry is only trying to frighten us. Personally diamonds, pearls and emeralds have always brought me good luck if only for the reason that Buck is ready to give them to me!”
“As you say, you are very very lucky to have him,” Nancy said, “so don’t risk it all by buying anything that might have an evil influence on you.”
“You are jealous, that’s what’s wrong with all of you,” Dolly declared. “Whatever you may say, I shall go looking for treasures in the bazaars and when I find them you will all have to eat your words!”
As Harry had anticipated, it was far too late by the time they docked for anyone to go ashore and Dolly wanted to play Mah-jong.
When the Duke refused to join the game, Harry sat down at the table knowing that Dolly would insist on playing for higher stakes than either he or George could afford.
The Duke went to the cabin that was his own special sanctum where he could escape from his guests and be alone.
The Siren was so large and so well planned that the party could have been far larger had not Dolly been determined to keep it intimate.
Now the Duke thought it was a mistake that they were so few. He wanted to talk to Harry, but that would have meant the others could not play Mah-Jong.
There were, however, more newspapers which he had not yet read waiting for him in the cabin and he sat down in one of the red leather armchairs.
He switched on the reading lamp that he had designed himself so that it remained at exactly the right angle however rough the sea might be.
He had just turned to the editorial in The Morning Post when a Steward came into the cabin.
“Excuse me, Your Grace. There’s a woman here who says she has a letter which she’ll only give personally into Your Grace’s own hands.”
The Duke looked up in surprise.
“Why did she say that?”
“I don’t know, Your Grace, but she refused to hand the letter over to anyone else and also says she won’t go away till Your Grace has received it.”
“Is this a new method of begging?” the Duke enquired.
“I don’t know, Your Grace? But I’ve been warned and warned what the beggars be like here.”
He paused for a moment before he added,
“The women speaks with an educated voice, Your Grace, but she’s poorly dressed and from what I’ve seen she could do with a square meal.”
The Duke was interested.
“You say she definitely will not give the letter to anyone except myself?”
“She’s been arguing with me, Your Grace, for nigh on fifteen minutes. I tells her in our country we has servants to carry things like letters to the Master. But she sticks to her guns, so to speak, and nothing I can say’ll move her!”
The Steward who had been in his service for a long time spoke in such an aggrieved fashion that the Duke laughed.
“Very well, Stevens. Bring the woman down and take care she doesn’t steal anything on the way.”
“You can be sure of that, Your Grace!”
Stevens left him and the Duke, with a faint smile on his lips, put down the newspaper and rose to sit at his flat-topped desk that stood at one end of the cabin.
He thought perhaps that he was making a mistake in allowing the woman to come aboard. At the same time he was curious to see what the letter contained.
‘It’s probably an invitation to visit some restaurant or nightclub,’ he thought, ‘or perhaps merely an advertising gimmick on the part of some shop.’
Then he told himself in that case it would be unlikely they would send somebody poorly dressed and certainly not a woman.
Despite the talk of liberating women, Turkey was still completely a man’s world and the Ottoman defeat in the war, which might have humiliated the soldiers as fighters, had definitely not make them any less aggressive as men.
The Duke waited.
Then he heard footsteps outside and the door opened.
“The woman, Your Grace!” the Steward announced.
The Duke looked up expectantly.
The woman who came into the cabin was certainly poorly dressed.
She was wearing the shapeless thick garment of a peasant, the skirt reaching almost to the ground, and a wide woollen scarf of a nebulous hue covered her head with the ends drawn back over her shoulders.
Because it was growing dusk and the Duke had not put the other lights on in the cabin, it was difficult to see her face since the scarf over her head was pulled well forward.
She did not speak, but moved towards the desk and held out the letter in a white envelope.
The Duke took it from her.
“Thank you,” he said. “I understand you speak English?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The voice was low and he thought musical.
“I hear that you would not leave this letter with my servants. Have you any particular reason for refusing to do so?”
“It is from someone you once knew, Your Grace, and is written to you in confidence. You will understand the need for secrecy when you read it.”
The woman was obviously well educated, the Duke decided. Her English was almost perfect and she spoke with only a slight rather attractive accent.
Equally the manner in which she spoke had a cool impersonality about it that struck him as strange.
He had somehow expected her to be eager and subservient, but she was neither.
He had a feeling that she was standing apart, almost divorced in some strange manner from what was taking place around her.
He looked at her searchingly and thought that she seemed extremely thin and he saw that the hand which held the letter was blue-veined and with the wrist bone sharply protruding.
Also the skin was very white which told him that she was certainly not Turkish.
A sudden thought struck him and he said,
“Will you sit down while I read this letter and perhaps I should offer you some refreshment?”
“It is unnecessary, Your Grace. I am only the messenger who has conveyed the letter to you in safety.”
The Duke, however, rose and walked across the cabin.
There was as usual an open bottle of champagne in an ice cooler, which was placed there after tea was finished in case he or any of his male guests should want a drink.
With the wine Stevens always put a selection of salted nuts, olives and a plate of small thinly cut pâté sandwiches.
The Duke picked up the plate of sandwiches and carried it to where the woman was sitting.
“I am sure you will join me in a glass of champagne,” he said, “and let me offer you a sandwich.”
For a moment he thought that she was going to refuse. Then with an inarticulate murmur she took one of the sandwiches from the plate, but slowly, so slowly that he was almost sure she was controlling an impulse to move quicker.
He put the plate down beside her on the corner of his desk, poured out two glasses of champagne and carried them across the cabin. He put one on his desk beside the plate of sandwiches and carried the other to where he sat down opposite her.
He glanced at the woman as he did so and saw that she was eating the sandwich slowly, taking such small pieces between her teeth that he was sure she was deliberately making it last as long as possible.
He remembered seeing men he had rescued in the desert who had been starved by their captors almost to the point of death eating in very much the same way.
One had always expected them to gobble. Instead, as if when they did have food, it was so precious, they savoured every morsel.
Picking up a gold letter opener, the Duke slit the envelope and, pulling out the piece of writing paper, read it.<
br />
It did not take long for the letter was short.
Then he said to the woman opposite him,
“Do you know what this letter contains?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I remember Prince Ivan Kerenski. As he says, we met in St. Petersburg when I was there in 1913.”
The woman did not speak, but the Duke fancied that her eyes in the shadows were staring at him intently.
“The Prince tells me that he has a treasure of importance that he thinks I will find interesting and I see that I have to be guided by you to where it is hidden. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
The answer was no more than a monosyllable.
“Are you suggesting that it would be dangerous for the Prince to come to me?”
The woman inclined her head slowly.
“But why? I cannot understand. Surely, if he has reached Constantinople, he can no longer be in any danger from the Bolsheviks?”
There was silence for a moment.
Then the woman said,
“The Prince will explain to you what the position is.”
The Duke looked down again at the letter.
He had never seen the Prince’s handwriting, but there was no doubt that the letter was written in a cultured hand and the phrasing was what one would expect from the type of Russian aristocrat that he knew the Prince to be.
He remembered him well.
He had been staying in St. Petersburg as the guest of the Czar and Czarina and Prince Ivan had been one of the Noblemen constantly in attendance.
The Duke recalled meeting him every day at some entertainment or another.
Thinking back, it now seemed a background of incredible luxury, of gold and malachite pillars, of priceless pictures, of servants so numerous that they fell over themselves in their efforts to supply every comfort a guest could require.
Also there had been the company of exquisite women shimmering in jewels as the men glittered with elaborate decorations.
It was almost impossible to think that in so short a space of time all that had vanished, the Czar and Czarina and their children shot, the aristocrats who surrounded them executed, while a few, and apparently amongst them Prince Ivan, still faced dangers.
The Duke put the letter down on his desk.
“I will, of course, be delighted to meet Prince Ivan as he suggests. Perhaps you will explain to me what you want me to do.”
“You are to come alone or with one other person,” the woman replied. “No one must know where you are going and it is imperative that you should not mention the Prince’s name to anybody, not even to your guests.”
For the first time since she had spoken to him, the intonation in the woman’s voice had changed from an impersonal and aloof note to one that undoubtedly held a tremor of fear.
“You must leave after dark,” she went on, “and I will be waiting for you at the end of the quay in an ordinary hired carriage. Please step into it quickly. Ask no questions and do not speak to the driver.”
There was a faintly cynical smile on the Duke’s lips as he asked,
“Is this cloak and dagger business really necessary?”
“I assure Your Grace,” the woman replied, “that not only the Prince’s life but other people’s lives are dependent upon the utmost secrecy.”
She certainly spoke seriously and with a sincerity that was impressive.
“Very well,” the Duke agreed. “I will do as you say.”
He glanced at the porthole and realised that, although it was not quite six o’clock, it was already dark.
“Would this time tomorrow suit you?” he asked.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I will go to the end of the quay as you suggest,” the Duke said, “and I will bring with me just one man. His name is Sir Harold Nuneaton. The Prince may have met him when he was in London.”
The woman did not seem interested and the Duke added,
“If that is all, I suggest you drink some of your champagne and please have another sandwich.”
He was convinced by now that she was hungry. Why he should be so sure of it, he was not certain. He just knew that the impression was there.
Once again she took a sandwich holding it delicately between her thumb and first finger.
The Duke thought that he should keep her company and he rose to his feet to fetch the small silver dishes containing nuts and olives from a table in the corner of the cabin.
He picked them up and, as he turned, he saw her move her hand slightly and was certain that she had seized the opportunity of taking another sandwich and concealing it in the pocket of her coat.
He wondered if it was for Prince Ivan and what she meant in his life, but he merely carried the silver dishes back to the desk and placed them down in front of her.
“Now tell me about yourself,” he asked. “Are you Russian like the Prince?”
He was quite sure that she was, but he wanted her to confirm it.
“I am not important, Your Grace,” she answered, “and now I think I should leave. If anyone asks why I called to see you, would you say that I was asking if you had any orders for fresh flowers from the bazaar?”
“I think it unlikely that I should be questioned,” the Duke said a little dryly, “but, of course, I am prepared to give that answer should it happen.”
“Thank you.”
The woman rose to her feet and he noticed that she had barely touched her glass of champagne and only two sandwiches had been taken from the plate.
The Duke opened the door of the cabin and she moved out in an imperious way which told him it was second nature to her to have doors opened for her to pass through them first.
It was something he had not expected from her appearance and yet, as she walked ahead of him, he was certain that he was right. She was in herself very different from the way she looked.
They reached the door that opened on to the deck and she stopped.
“Please do not come any farther, Your Grace,” she said, “I must not be seen talking to you.”
She did not wait for the Duke to reply, but slipped through the door and out into the darkness.
The Duke was intrigued. He wondered if there was anyone waiting for her on the quay and wanted to go out on deck to see her walk away.
Then he told himself that if there was really any danger he might be making things difficult for her and perhaps it would be impossible for her to be waiting for him tomorrow as she had arranged.
Because he could think of nothing more annoying than to go through the rest of his life being curious as to what Prince Ivan wished to tell him, he stayed where he was.
‘I must play this woman’s game by her rules,’ he told himself.
He waited for a few moments.
Then he walked towards the Saloon.
His guests had obviously just finished their game and Harry had risen to his feet to stretch his legs.
“Come on, Buck,” he said as the Duke entered. “You can take my place. Dolly has all the luck and I really cannot afford to play against her.”
“I want to talk to you, Harry,” the Duke said.
There was a note in his voice that made his friend look at him sharply.
“Oh, no!” Dolly protested. “I want you to dance with me. I will not allow you to go off gossiping with Harry in your sanctum that we women are so frequently barred from! Come and dance to just one record. Then it will be time to dress for dinner.”
She put a record on the gramophone as she spoke.
“I want to talk to Harry,” the Duke argued. “It’s important.”
“More important than me?” Dolly asked.
She spoke as if such an idea was preposterous.
“Actually the answer to that is ‘yes’,” the Duke replied.
Without waiting for her reply he left the Saloon as he spoke and Harry followed him.
Dolly stared after them at first in surprise.
Then, with a frow
n between her blue eyes, she slammed the lid of the gramophone down in a temper.
Chapter Two
The open carriage they were travelling in carried them across the Galata Bridge, which had been built by the Germans in 1913 to replace an old wooden structure.
Beneath it, on the Golden Horn plied big ferry boats and smaller craft of every kind.
What the Duke knew, since he had been in Constantinople before, was that under the iron arches were stalls of every sort and description besides bootblack and newspaper boys, beggars and piles of fish which had just been caught in the sea.
Dolly however, was interested only in reaching the bazaar.
She had searched in an ancient guide book for descriptions of the labyrinth where there was a maze of small shops, grouped by traders selling, she was told, everything from spices to jewels, from mandrake roots to leeches.
When they reached it, it was to find that the bazaar was covered, which gave the place a strange and mystic atmosphere, redolent with the spices, which were everywhere in huge baskets and sacks.
Harry found this rather interesting, having never been to a spice market before. But Dolly hurried them all on, talking only to a guide, who had arrived at the yacht with the carriage and apparently understood her instructions that she wished to see jewels.
The Duke, Harry thought, was in a particularly good humour this morning and he thought it must be due to the new interest which had been given him the previous evening. When he took Harry down to his cabin and told him what had occurred, he had in fact, been somewhat suspicious.
“Do you really believe that a Prince, who you tell me was of great importance in St. Petersburg, is really hiding here in Constantinople?”
“Read the letter yourself,” the Duke replied, “and while I have not seen Prince Ivan’s handwriting, I am quite certain that this has been written by a cultured man.”
Harry inspected the letter and was forced to admit that the Duke was right.
“What was the woman like?”
“It was difficult to see her,” the Duke replied. “Her face was in shadow, but she too was obviously well-educated and her English was almost perfect.”
He told Harry about the sandwiches.
Princes and Princesses Page 76