“What do you mean by that?” Craig asked.
“I think you will understand where most people would not,” Aloya said, “but when we were captured by the Russians here in Monte Carlo – ”
“Wait a minute!” Craig interrupted. “You are going too fast. First of all, why did he come home? He told me he would never return to England.”
“Oh – of course – I forgot to tell you,” Aloya said. “Mama – died! She had not been well for some time, but I managed with difficulty to send for Papa and he was there to say – goodbye to her.”
Her voice trembled for a moment.
Then she said and it was very moving,
“Mama knew he was coming and hung on and hung on when she might otherwise have died – until he actually appeared.”
She turned her face against Craig’s neck and he knew she was crying as she added,
“She – just had – time to tell Papa how much she – loved him and how – happy he had – made her – then her spirit slipped away – and there was only her – body left behind.”
Craig held Aloya very closely.
“I know that describes what happened, but she must be still near you, to tell you that you can trust me.”
“Of course she is – and near Papa – and although he would not – mind dying – I cannot – lose him.”
“He would be a loss to the whole world,” Craig said. “But tell me why he was coming back to England.”
“It was – because he could not – leave me alone in India and, although I begged him not to do so, he decided to take me to his sister with whom he has always kept in touch. He thought she would not only look after me, but would introduce me to English Society.”
Aloya paused before she said,
“He decided it was quite straightforward until he realised that the Russians were determined because he had returned from Tibet to either capture – or kill him.”
“You were not in Tibet with him? Craig asked incredulously.
“We only went as far as Gangtse just inside the country. We had a house there while Papa went wandering about, finding out from the Monasteries and of course in Lhasa, what the British wanted to know.”
Aloya paused for a moment.
“When Mama died in Gangtse, there was nothing Papa could do but come home.”
“Which of course was quite right where you were concerned.”
“I don’t think so, but I always do what Papa wants.”
“What I cannot understand is why you left the ship at Nice and came here,” Craig enquired.
“We went on board in disguise. In fact Papa was a Turk and nobody questioned for a moment that he was anything other than he appeared to be.”
And you?”
“I was his wife! I wore a yashmak and a burnous, which as you are aware, is very concealing. One can be fat, thin, pretty or ugly and nobody would be any the wiser.”
“A good thing, as you are so very lovely, my darling.”
Aloya drew in her breath.
“I want you to – think that.”
“I will tell you exactly what I think when you have finished your story. Why did you get off the ship in the South of France?”
“We were quite certain that no one on board had the slightest idea that Papa was not the Turk he pretended to be, but when we stopped at Naples for new passengers to come on board, among them were two men whom Papa recognised and he thought they recognised him too.”
Craig heard the fear in her voice as she went on,
“It was not, however, until we reached Nice that he was sure that they intended to kill him. We slipped ashore the moment the ship docked, leaving behind practically everything we possessed so that they would not be suspicious until after the ship had left the harbour.”
Craig saw the reasoning behind this and Aloya went on,
“Papa did not know where we could be safe in Nice, but there was a place he knew in Monte Carlo and we went there.”
She gave a little sigh as she added,
“It was rather scruffy and uncomfortable. I went out shopping for our food and, although I did not see anybody about who seemed in the least suspicious, Papa’s instinct told him that he must not take any risks.”
Craig knew that they must have been hiding in the place where Father Augustin had made enquiries in the first place.
“Why did you leave?” he asked.
“It was very unfortunate,” Aloya replied, “but a man who was also in hiding came to this particular place and Papa recognised him as an informer who would give information to anybody who was willing to pay for it and it was therefore too dangerous for us to stay.”
“So you moved and that was disastrous.”
“How do you know?” Aloya enquired incredulously. “What happened was that we left where we were really safe and Papa instructed me to walk on the other side of the street from him.”
Craig realised this was when he must have been seen by one of the British agents.
“He turned the corner along a street,” Aloya said, “and there were two men waiting for him who seized him and he had no chance to escape from them.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do?” she asked. “I did not have time to reason it out. I just ran to Papa to be with him, for whatever happened we would be together.”
The way she spoke was very moving and Craig said,
“I understand and so they took both you and your father to the Baron.”
“It was – terrifying. They started to question Papa and, when he refused to tell them anything they wanted, they said they would take him back to Russia, and – torture him until he – told them what they – wanted to hear.”
Craig knew from the way she spoke how terrifying it had been.
“Then Papa said he would tell them some of the things they wanted to know if they would let me go free.”
She gave a deep sigh.
“That was a great mistake. The Baron looked at me as if he saw me for the first time, and I knew by the expression in his eyes that he thought I might be useful to them.”
“So it was the Baron who thought up the idea that you should seduce Lord Neasdon into revealing his secrets about Tibet?”
“He told me he was very very important to the Foreign Office and would know the British plans if the Russians should invade that country.”
“So they dressed you up in spectacular fashion!”
“They told me exactly what I was to do,” Aloya said with a shudder.
“And your clothes?”
“A French designer over whom they apparently had some hold was brought to the yacht and instructed to make me look outstanding so that it would be impossible for Lord Neasdon not to notice me.”
“But surely he was not expected to speak to you on sight?” Craig asked, feeling it was somehow out of character considering Neasdon’s impression of his own importance.
“Oh, no,” Aloya cried, “they were far too clever for that! They found out all about him. His mother, of whom he is very fond, was leaving the day after he arrived here for America and by some method of their own they obtained a letter she had written.”
She paused and then went on,
“I think it was to a friend of hers in Monte Carlo and they forged her handwriting in a letter they wrote in her name to Lord Neasdon begging him when he arrived in Monte Carlo to be kind to the daughter of somebody to whom she owed a great debt of gratitude.”
“That was you, I presume?”
“Of course, and, because of the urgency with which the letter was written, Lord Neasdon called on me within a few hours of his arrival.”
“And was obviously bowled over by your beauty!” Craig said cynically.
“I had to tell him how much he impressed me and how wonderful I thought he was,” Aloya said in a low voice, “and I knew all the time I was talking to him that my maid, who of course is their spy, listened at the door to make sure I did not say – anything that might make
him – suspicious.”
She made a little sound of despair as she added,
“How could I dare to do that? When they told me that if I did not do exactly as they – wanted, they would – kill Papa immediately they had extracted his secrets from him?”
“Is that what they have been doing in the meantime?” Craig asked anxiously.
“No, Papa has been too clever for them,” Aloya replied. “He played for time while they were arranging my clothes and the Baron was lending me the jewels I wore, which of course are his. Then, when they began to question him seriously, he went into a trance.”
“A trance?” Craig exclaimed.
“It is something he learnt to do in India and he can render himself completely unconscious so that it is impossible to waken him. But naturally the trance only lasts for a certain time.”
“How long?” Craig asked, knowing it was of vital importance.
“Unless he is to die for lack of food and water,” Aloya said in a voice that trembled, “he has – to come back to – consciousness – tomorrow!”
Craig knew then that was why he had been aware perceptively that the sands of time were running out and that he had to do something quickly.
He was not only afraid for Aloya, but in some special way Randall Sare had made him realise that there was no more time.
“The Russians don’t know this,” he said, “so why did they say you had to take Lord Neasdon as your lover tonight?”
“They are waiting for Papa to regain consciousness and for me to give them results. Then they intend to take both of us away, and if I have nothing to tell them – I think they will – torture me in front of Papa to make him speak.”
Craig thought this was very likely and he said angrily,
“I swear to you, my darling, that shall not happen as long as I am alive.”
“Can you – save Papa – and me?”
“I swear I will do so and I know you will believe me as no one else would when I tell you that tonight, when I was on the terrace outside the Casino, I was told either by your father or some other force what I have to do.”
He saw Aloya look up at him and the expression in her eyes told him she not only believed him, but also knew that he would succeed.
Then, as if there was no more to say, his lips were on hers and he kissed her, masterfully, possessively, passionately, not as if she was a shy young girl, but a woman he loved more than anything else in the whole world.
CHAPTER SIX
Craig awoke with a feeling of happiness that for the moment made him forget the difficult and dangerous task that lay ahead.
All he could think of was his love for Aloya, how last night he had held her in his arms and known that she was everything he needed to make himself complete and that he was the most fortunate man in the whole world.
Having travelled in so many lands and having done so many strange things in his life, he was aware that she was unique, not only in her astounding beauty, but in the intelligence of her mind, her quickness of thought and most of all her intuition and perception that was the same as his own.
Her beauty, he now realised, came from her mixture of blood in which she combined the fair skin of her English forebears with the mystical beauty of her Russian or rather Georgian eyes.
It was this ancestry that had added the strange silver sheen to her hair which Craig realised he had occasionally seen before on Russian women, whose hair however had been black.
He also knew and he was certain that it was something Aloya believed, as her father did, that when two people loved each other overwhelmingly and were in fact the spiritual counterpart of each other, their children had a beauty that was created by love itself.
He knew better than most men the difficulties Randall Sare must have encountered when he had been forced because of his work to keep his marriage a secret from everybody.
It was not only, Craig was sure, because the authorities would have been shocked at his marrying a woman who was ostensibly Russian, but also because his enemies might, as they were doing now, use his wife and family as a weapon against him.
It was still hard to credit that Aloya and her mother had travelled over the bitterly cold, treacherous and extremely dangerous pass that connected India with Tibet.
But he had known that Gangtse, the first town inside the forbidden territory was a trading post and therefore they would not have aroused as much interest or hostility as they would have done further into the country.
Then in the dim light as the dawn crept up the sky Craig thought that only Randall Sare would have felt it obligatory to leave his wife and daughter in such a strange place and go off into the blue, disguised so cleverly that he must have convinced everybody he met that he was neither a spy nor an enemy.
This might be comparatively easy in India or other countries in the East, but the Tibetans had a perception equal to his own.
Some of the older monks in the great Monasteries could use what the uninitiated thought was clairvoyance or magic, but which in fact was a supernormal power, to find the truth.
Craig could understand how Sare, bereft of his wife whom he loved so deeply and encumbered with a very beautiful daughter, had known that the only possible thing he could do was to take her to England and safety.
And yet, because of his reputation and because to the Russians he was a marked man, they were both now in a situation that Craig knew was so dangerous and so desperate that one false step could destroy them both.
The thought of losing Aloya was like a thousand daggers striking at his heart and he made up his mind quite calmly and positively that if she died, he would die with her.
‘I would have bet my entire fortune,’ Craig told himself with a twist of his lips, ‘that no woman could ever have made me feel as I feel now, but I know that every word the poets ever wrote about love and every note the musicians played was true.’
Then he forced himself not to think of the emotions surging within his heart, but to concentrate his brain and his whole being on what lay ahead.
Last night when he had taken Aloya to the door of her bedroom he had said,
“From this moment leave everything in my hands. Trust me, pray and send out the vibrations which we both know will be received by your father.”
“Will you be doing – that?” Aloya asked.
“You know I will,” Craig replied. “I shall be telling him to be prepared and I know he will understand.”
He thought as he spoke there was no other woman in the whole world to whom he could say such things.
He had then held her close in his arms and kissed her passionately and demandingly until they were both breathless with their hearts beating frantically against each other’s.
“I love you,” Craig murmured hoarsely, “and love will always win.”
“You are – sure?”
“Look at me!” he commanded masterfully.
She did as he told her and he thought no woman could look more lovely or more exquisite, and their need of each other was like the air they breathed and the sunshine that came from the sky.
Then, as her eyes were held by his, he saw the fear, the worry and anxiety being replaced by a rapture that ran through him like little streaks of lightning, and he knew that she was feeling the same.
Because there were no words to express what they were both feeling, he kissed her again and since words were superfluous, without saying any more, he closed the doors between them and went to his own room.
*
Now he was going over step by step in his mind exactly what must be done, trying to make every detail foolproof as he had been taught to do, anticipating the worst and being prepared for it, obeying the golden rule, which was never to take an unnecessary chance.
Nobody who saw him a little later walking through the Hotel de Paris to the tennis courts, which were behind it and in front of the Hermitage, would have guessed that he had anything on his mind but the joy of spring and an anticipation of har
d exercise to sweep away the excesses of the night before.
The professional was waiting for him and as usual Craig managed to beat him in the last set and they arranged to play again the following morning.
After he had put on his thick woollen sweater, he walked not back to the Hotel de Paris, but to the Hermitage, passing through the glass door he went to the reception desk.
“Is Lord Neasdon down yet?” he asked. “I would like to have a word with him.”
The receptionist smiled at him in recognition.
“Good morning, Mr. Vandervelt, his Lordship is in the breakfast room. Shall I tell him you are here?”
“I will speak to him myself,” Craig replied.
He walked into the breakfast room thinking it was typically English of Lord Neasdon to breakfast downstairs rather than in his own suite.
There were only a few other people in the room and a glance showed him that Lord Neasdon was sitting at a table in the window reading the newspaper.
Craig walked to his table and only when he had stood for a second waiting did Lord Neasdon raise his head.
“Good morning, Vandervelt,” he said in a not particularly effusive tone. “You are very early.”
“I am sorry to disturb you,” Craig replied, “but I am hoping that you will join me for luncheon aboard my new yacht The Mermaid today. I am having a small party and I am keen for both you and the Countess to see it.”
He knew as he finished speaking that Lord Neasdon was wondering how he could refuse because he disliked him, but, before he could say, anything Craig went on,
“I have already sent a note to the Countess and I hope you will bring her with you in my motor car, which will be outside the Hotel de Paris at one o’clock.”
There was really nothing Lord Neasdon could do in the circumstances but accept and, as he did so, somewhat ungraciously, Craig remarked jovially,
“That is splendid! I shall look forward to seeing you. Goodbye until then and perhaps we might take a turn out to sea after luncheon if the weather is as good as it is now.”
He was gone before Lord Neasdon could think of a reply and there was a smile of satisfaction on his lips as he walked back to his hotel.
Mission to Monte Carlo Page 11