He realised it would be a reason for John to go to the Russian Embassy, and of course, meet the Princess.
He suspected that Prince Ivan was also good at fencing, as a great many Russians were.
It would have been easy for Prince Ivan to persuade John Wodehouse to have a game with him and for the Princess to join them afterwards.
Then she would find a way of hypnotising him, with John not realising for one moment what was happening to him.
It would be quite easy when he returned to London to find out if John had been to the Russian Embassy the previous afternoon, although he knew without investigation what the answer would be.
Then there was the question of his visit to Finland.
He had been so certain that anyone who learnt of his visit would accept his explanation that he had gone salmon fishing.
It was a sport he enjoyed, both in Scotland and in one year in Norway.
It had therefore been an excellent excuse if anyone was curious as to why he had been in Finland.
He might have guessed, he thought bitterly, that the Russian Secret Service were more perceptive than he had given them credit as being.
It all passed through his mind very quickly and he recognised how appalling Solita’s revelation was.
But he must, unless he wished to arouse the Princess’s suspicions, go to her bedroom, where she would be waiting for him.
For a moment every instinct within him cried out in disgust that she should have tricked him so cleverly.
Then some cool, calculating part of his brain warned him that this was only the beginning.
He had promised the Secretary of State for India that he would help him.
He had to save the men who were being ambushed by an enemy who knew in advance what their orders were. That was what he had to do now and he was much better equipped for the task than he had been before.
In fact he knew the first chapter of the drama.
Lord Kimberley had told his son that he himself deciphered the messages that went by Morse Code to India. They travelled via the submarine cable that went from the Foreign Office to the Viceroy in Calcutta.
It was very unlikely, in fact the Princess had not said so, that John knew what the message was.
He was only aware that because it was so secret, his father did it himself.
What the Duke knew he had to find out was how when the code reached India it was transmitted to the Russians before the British soldiers obeyed their orders.
As he thought it out, the Duke ceased to be the charming genial host he had been at dinner, an Englishman concerned only with the comfort of his guests, a man who was more interested in his horses and estates than anything else.
Instead, he became a soldier who had taken part in what the British referred to as The Great Game.
That was the most efficient and brilliantly performed Secret Service operation in the world.
It was the Duke’s tremendous self-control and the way his instinct helped and guided him that had made him successful in the projects he had undertaken in the past. They had all been exceedingly dangerous.
Almost on every occasion he had been within a hair’s breadth of losing his life or of being exposed and it was through sheer ability that he had been victorious.
Although few people were aware of it, he had earned an award for gallantry half a dozen times over.
He had never however been given a medal because in The Great Game no one was rewarded.
In fact for safety’s sake, none of the participants was known to any other.
They were just numbers and even to the heads of the Regiments with whom he was involved, Hugo Leigh had been just ‘Number 29’.
Now the Duke, as if he had been called to attention by a senior Officer, walked towards the door.
He knew he had to act the part that was expected of him.
Only by using an iron control over himself and his feelings as he had used them in the past, would he be able to allay any suspicion the Princess might harbour about him. He thought, however, what he would do if he could behave as he wished.
It would give him the greatest pleasure to put his hands round the Princess’s long white throat and throttle a confession out of her.
But that would be a stupid thing to do.
There would still be Prince Ivan to deal with and the Russian Secret Service, who would immediately be aware that the British suspicions, as yet unverified, were true.
He therefore let himself out of his bedroom and walked slowly and purposefully the short distance to the Queen Elizabeth room.
He opened the door –
*
Nearly two hours later, the Duke with his eyes shut was breathing evenly.
In the faint light coming from the candles that the Princess had left burning behind the diaphanous curtains of the bed, he looked sound asleep.
Very gently the Princess raised her head.
With her long dark silky hair flowing over her white shoulders, she was very lovely in the half-light.
There was a faint smile on her lips.
Never in her long experience of lovers of every nationality had she ever known one more handsome or more ardent.
Slowly, moving as sensuously as a snake, she sat up in bed so that she could look down on the sleeping Duke.
He was utterly relaxed.
Again moving very slowly, she slipped one hand behind his neck and the fingers of the other, light as a feather, moved over his forehead.
“Sleep – ” she whispered, “Sleep – ”
He did not move, nor did his eyes flicker.
After a moment she said in a voice that was little above a whisper,
“You are asleep, Hugo! You are dreaming – and you are dreaming of Finland – the land you visited last year. Tell me – what do you see? What are you dreaming – ?”
The Duke did not move and after a moment she said again,
“Where are you, Hugo? Where are you at this moment?”
“In – Finland!”
The Duke’s voice was low and almost inarticulate.
“And what are you doing? What are you doing in Finland?”
“Fishing.”
“And what else? Do you see a gun?”
There was silence and after a moment the Princess asked again,
“Do you see a big gun?”
“Salmon,” the Duke murmured, “many – salmon – very good – catch!”
The Princess’s fingers moved again over his forehead and the hand at the back of his neck tightened a little.
“Now you are in the India Office, Hugo – why did you go there?”
Again there was silence before the Duke replied slowly,
“Ask – Kimberley – Horse Show.”
The Princess’s lips tightened and then she said,
“Do you know about the secret messages to India? Did Lord Kimberley tell you about them?”
There was a long pause.
“Tell me,” she insisted, “tell me what you learnt at the India Office.”
“Horses,” the Duke murmured, “get – leaflets printed – quickly.”
The Princess gave an exasperated little sigh and then she said,
“When you wake you will remember nothing of this conversation, do you hear? You will remember nothing!”
She looked at him with her green eyes which had been on his face ever since she started her interrogation.
The Duke could feel the power of the vibrations she had been attempting to exercise over him.
He had been aware from the moment she had started that she was extremely experienced.
Unless he was very careful, he would, like so many other men before him, be hypnotised into saying what she wanted to hear.
Years ago, when he first entered The Great Game, he had been taught by an expert how to avoid being used in such a manner.
He was aware of the Princess’s fingers behind his neck holding him in a vice and he knew too that he would, if
he listened to her without protecting himself, give the truthful answers to her questions.
His brain would thicken and darken to every beat of his pulse.
Then he would be completely within her power.
The only protection was to concentrate his whole mind on something else, to divorce himself from what was happening.
There was no other way to combat her powers except through the strength of his mind.
His instructor had said to him,
“Think of anything, focus your attention on it – the alphabet, the multiplication tables, anything, so long as it prevents your being subjected to the will of the person who is hypnotising you.”
At first, the Duke had found it a difficult thing to do. Now, the moment he felt the touch of the Princess’s hand on his head, he began to recite a poem to himself that he always enjoyed,
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree – ”
He went all through it, stopping only to answer her questions when her hypnotic powers were relaxed.
He was in no danger until she had finished speaking.
Then he continued with his poem until he knew that finally she had given up and decided he was, as Solita told him when she had said,
“No different from the usual Englishman who thinks only of horses and of course – women!”
“That is what she now thinks I am!” the Duke told himself triumphantly.
He waited until the Princess had lain down beside him again, then he opened his eyes and yawned.
“Have I been asleep?” he asked. “How very remiss of me, when I might have been kissing you!”
“It is not surprising you are tired,” the Princess said gently, “I too am fatigued by the thrill of your love.”
“Then I must leave you,” he said.
There was a very convincing note of reluctance in his voice and the Princess replied,
“There is always tomorrow, my wonderful, handsome Hugo!”
“As you say, there is always tomorrow and a great many days after it.”
He kissed her lightly and rose from the bed.
He was aware as she watched him putting on his robe that she was disappointed.
It was, he thought, where she was concerned the failure of omission, but for him so far, a success!
It was three o’clock in the morning when he returned to his own room, but he was in fact not tired.
He was thinking of how he must communicate with Lord Kimberley as quickly as possible and they must decide what was to be done next.
As he got into bed, he was thinking that really Kimberley could do very little except in the future prevent his son from going to the Russian Embassy.
Solita had shown him where the fault lay in England.
He had still to find out how the Russians received the messages sent from the India Office before they could be imparted to the British soldiers concerned.
Now in his own comfortable bed, the Duke went over the position as it was at the moment.
The British had invented submarine cables and they had at first taken a route that had involved crossing Germany, Russia, Teheran, then on to India.
This was of course a very vulnerable route and the next was also unsatisfactory. It ran across Europe to Constantinople, across Turkey, to the Persian Gulf and from there to Karachi.
Twelve years ago a very much better route had been opened via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Suez and Aden to Bombay. This belonged to the English Telegraph Company, but was carried from Bombay overland to Calcutta by the Indian Telegraph Company.
It was a very long distance and there were many hazards and difficulties.
The Duke knew that the Russians were waiting to take advantage by any way they could find.
What would be important for them was to know which of the thousands of messages sent by Morse Code were the ones from the India Office in London. This was of course simplified to a great degree if they knew the actual time and date a message was being sent by the Secretary of State.
This message would go in diplomatic code to Calcutta and to the Viceroy.
He therefore worked out that the next step was to discover when it had reached Calcutta who intercepted it. Then gave the information it contained to the Russians.
The Duke turned it over in his mind.
He knew it would be a great mistake for the Princess to have the least suspicion that he had discovered, or rather Solita had, that she and her brother were working for the Russian Secret Service.
Also he was aware it would be disastrous for him to change in any way his attitude towards her. He had to convince her he was just as infatuated with her as he had been before.
The Duke had dedicated himself when he was a very young man to working both mentally and physically for his country.
He also abhorred the secret war instigated by the Russians which had cost so many lives.
The Czar, Nicholas I, had continually declared his country’s friendship for England and in fact he attempted to ‘pull the wool over the eyes’ of a people he arrogantly believed to be stupid.
‘I will make them suffer for this in one way or another!’ the Duke swore.
He knew as his feelings welled up inside him that he actively hated the Russians in the same way that Solita did.
He was furious with himself because he had been beguiled by the Princess’s beauty.
He had also been deceived by her and her brother’s continued assertions that they loved England and the English people.
‘I have been a fool!’ the Duke admitted to himself.
He knew now that somehow, in some way, he would not only prevent the Russians’ plan to intercept the cables, he would also manage to expose the Princess.
After that she would be unable to continue her nefarious plots not only in England but in other countries as well.
Before he fell asleep he told himself that Solita had saved him.
He might easily tonight have been hypnotised into betraying secrets that would have far-reaching effects .
When morning came he would not have the slightest idea of the damage he had done.
Hypnotism was, he knew, one of the most insidious and clever ways of interrogation, but he had never expected that it would be used in England.
In India it was fairly common, but the hypnotists themselves were usually Yogis or Fakirs and not politically minded.
What the Duke now realised was that the Princess had a far more complex character than he might have suspected and she had also been very skilfully prepared for her role by masterminds in the Russian Secret Service.
It was well known how efficient this was and how Russian agents moved in all the European countries seeking out information that might prove of interest to the Czar.
The Secret Service were feared and actually terrorised a great majority of its people. It was, and still is, part of the Russian genre.
If Tcherevin could not learn what he wanted by more accepted methods, he tortured his victims in such an appalling manner that few of them did not succumb.
The Duke was suddenly aware that if Solita had not discovered the truth about the Princess and her brother, he would at this moment be a marked man.
He also knew that his life, if not in England, then in any other part of the world, would not be worth more than a few pence.
He now realised that Solita was also in danger.
If, by the flicker of an eyelid, she let the Princess or Prince Ivan think she had overheard what had been said in what they believed was a language unlikely to be understood in England, she would be dealt with.
She would either have an unfortunate accident or suffer some injury that would permanently affect her brain.
‘I must warn her,’ the Duke told himself.
*
He was still thinking the same thing when he rose the next morning.
The Duke’s valet called him at six-thirty.
When Willy informed him that Sol
ita was riding with them he doubted, after his behaviour last night, that she would join them.
He entered the stable to choose the horse he would ride and there was a long array of them waiting in their stalls.
To his surprise he found Solita already there.
She was talking to his Head Groom and patting as she did so a magnificent stallion which was a new acquisition.
“Good morning Solita!” the Duke greeted her cheerfully.
He thought she looked paler than she had been yesterday and perhaps she had lain awake last night worrying about him.
There was also, he saw, a question in her eyes.
He knew she was wondering whether, after all she had said, he had gone confidently to the Princess and been hypnotised without being aware of it.
“Is this the horse you want to ride?” the Duke enquired.
“If you will permit me to do so,” Solita answered.
“Jupiter, as I have rechristened him, is quite a handful, but I expect you will be able to manage him.”
“As I think that is a compliment, I accept with pleasure!” Solita said.
There was a touch of sarcasm in her voice that the Duke did not miss.
“I will ride Pegasus,” he told the groom. “Saddle both horses quickly.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” the Head Groom replied.
“I suggest we wait outside in the sunshine,” the Duke said to Solita.
He walked ahead of her out of the stables into the cobbled yard.
As she joined him, he thought, a little reluctantly, he said,
“Everything is all right, and later I will tell you about it.”
“Can you be certain of – that?” Solita questioned in a low voice.
He knew she was thinking that he had gone to the Princess disbelieving her and if he had been hypnotised, he would not be aware of it.
“What you suspected happened,” he said, “but as you prepared me, no damage has been done.”
Solita stared at him and he saw the sudden light in her eyes.
“You are sure?” she asked.
“Quite sure and I am very much in your debt, Solita.”
He saw then her whole face light up. It seemed to him touching that she should mind so much.
Then Willy joined them and there was no chance of saying any more.
They rode through the Park and along some flat land on which they could gallop.
Solita and the Spies Page 7