The Second Seal

by Dennis Wheatley

  “Let me give you an example. Many of you will recall the beautiful young Archduchess, Ilona Theresa of Austria, who stayed in Paris for a short time this spring, on her way to England. She was then a lovely, healthy girl, full of the joy of life. In the summer she contracted tuberculosis. She became subject to a galloping consumption. Only yesterday I saw the great Swiss specialist, Dr. Bruckner, who has been attending her. He tells me that now he cannot give her more than three weeks to live——”

  Chapter XXVIII

  Across the Rhine

  Two afternoons later, de Richleau was standing in the fringe of a pine wood on the west bank of the Upper Rhine. With the same pair of powerful Zeiss glasses that, eighteen afternoons earlier, he had used to study the German-Dutch frontier, he now scrutinised that between Switzerland and Austria. He had felt then that his life depended on his getting out of the territories controlled by the Central Empires: he felt now that something worth more than his life depended on getting into them again.

  Madeleine de Frontignac’s innocent disclosure about Ilona had struck him like a thunderbolt. He had known for a long time that her illness was more serious than she admitted, and latterly that it was a matter for considerable anxiety: but he had not thought for one moment that she was in any danger of death. Yet the Marquise’s report had not been based on idle gossip. She had received it from Dr. Bruckner.

  Her terrible words had temporarily paralysed de Richleau’s brain. He felt sure that his social instincts had carried him through the last half hour of the party, and that he had said the appropriate things to her and her guests before leaving; but he could remember practically nothing about that. His mind had become obsessed with the thought that, if Ilona had only a few weeks to live, he must get to her at the earliest possible moment.

  He had had neither compunction nor difficulty in terminating the work he had been given on the fateful evening of September the 4th. Returning at once to Melun, he had told Sir Pellinore the facts. The Baronet had agreed that his commitment was an entirely voluntary one, and that he was free to go whenever he wished. After an earnest expression of his sympathy, he added:

  “Battle’s won now, anyway. Sir John’s movin’ his H.Q. forward to-morrow. So I’m goin’ home myself. Thunderin’ glad to have had the chance to lend a hand here. Experience I’ll never forget. But many more urgent things than drawin’ lines on maps with coloured pencils waitin’ my attention in London.”

  Sir Henry Wilson had proved equally amenable. To him the Duke simply said that he wished to be relieved of his duties on account of private affairs that needed immediate attention.

  “I’m sorry you’re leaving us,” the General said. “But you know the position as well as I do. The Huns are digging in on the Aisne, and the French haven’t another kick left in them; so there is bound to be a stalemate now for several weeks. It may even be the spring before either side has recovered sufficiently to launch another full scale offensive. You’ve been a big help to us in the past week, but it is no longer necessary for us to keep in such constant touch with General Galliéni. How long do you think it will take you to arrange these affairs of yours?”

  “About a month,” de Richleau had informed him glumly.

  “Well, when you’re through, if you care to come back to us, we’d be glad to have you. I’m afraid I can’t promise you the rank of Brigadier-General. But hundreds of people are being given temporary commissions now, and experts of all kinds are being granted field rank at once to enable them to be used to the best advantage. I should have no difficulty in getting you made a G.S.O.I., and with your ability you would soon be stepped up to full Colonel.”

  If anything could have pleased the Duke, the thought that he could now take up a post in which he could use his military knowledge would have done so. But for him the future was filled with nightmare uncertainties. Nevertheless, he thanked Sir Henry with all the cordiality he could muster, and promised to report for duty as soon as his affairs were settled.

  Next morning, Sir Pellinore saw the British Ambassador for him and secured him a permit to enter Switzerland. He bought himself a civilian outfit, packed his uniform into a suitcase and parked it at the Ritz. After lunch they parted with regret and affection; Sir Pellinore to return to England, de Richleau to seek a way of reaching Ilona’s deathbed, so that he might give her the comfort of his presence when she died.

  Early on Saturday, the 13th, he had arrived at St. Gall, near the south-east corner of Lake Constance. There, he bought a large scale map and hired a car to drive him the fifteen miles through the Appenzell to the village of Alstätten. In the village he had paid off his hired car and lunched; then gone out on his reconnaissance.

  Alstätten lay on a slope of the mountain range he had just crossed. To the east of it spread the low ground of the Rhine valley, which was there some eight miles wide; then on the Austrian side the ground rose steeply again to the mountains of the Vorarlberg. About four miles below him lay the village of Kriesseren; a mile beyond it wound the river, and two miles beyond that another village which he knew must be Hohenembs. For a few moments he searched the heights above it intently, knowing that the Imperial villa would be somewhere upon them. On one spur he could see a little irregular patch which he thought might be it.

  Having mastered the general lie of the land from his vantage point, he returned to Alstätten, and took a local ’bus down into Kriesseren. There was a little hotel there with a vine-covered terrace overlooking the river. From it he could now see the patch with his naked eye and confirmed his belief that it was a large châlet.

  At that hour in the afternoon the terrace was deserted, and having ordered himself a Kirschwasser he got into conversation with the waitress. She was a daughter of the proprietor, and lamented that the war had ruined the summer tourist trade of Switzerland. Few foreigners were coming there now, apart from invalids, and they were no good to a little hotel lying on low ground near the river.

  After a while he pointed to the châlet, remarking on its lovely situation, and asked if she knew who owned it.

  “The Emperor of Austria,” she replied. “It is occupied now by an Austrian Princess. I forget her name, but she is said to be very beautiful. She came there for her health soon after the war started, but they say she is in a bad way and unlikely to recover.”

  He winced, looked quickly away, and said: “In spite of the war, you still get news then of what goes on over there across the river?”

  “Oh yes,” she nodded. “We are not at war with Austria, God be thanked; so trade continues. But they are very careful now who they let in and out, because of spies and deserters.”

  After finishing his drink, the Duke walked down to the bank of the river. The Rhine was not very broad there, so he knew that he could easily swim it, but, obviously, it would be preferable if he could get a boat to take him over. As it was not a war zone, there were no defences, but he felt certain that, even in peace time, occasional night patrols would be on the look-out for people endeavouring to enter Austria clandestinely.

  Britain was the only country in Europe which had continued to allow the products of other countrys’ cheap labour to be dumped without limit or tax upon her. All the others protected their principal industries by duties; so, although travellers had been permitted to pass freely from one to another, all European frontiers had customs guards stationed along them to prevent illegal imports.

  This had resulted in the creation of a vast international smuggling organisation, and the gradual building up of a complete system of underground communications. De Richleau knew that on the frontiers of all countries still at peace the smugglers’ operations would have continued to function, and he felt that if he could get in touch with the local Rhine smugglers they would easily be able to put him across.

  Strolling back to the village, he began to make a round of the few peasant drinking dens that it contained. At the first he tried, a sour-faced woman brought him his drink and regarded him with quick suspicion when
he endeavoured to get her to talk about smuggling; but at the second he was luckier. Two fairly prosperous looking men were drinking there, and readily accepted his offer that they should join him in another round. They were not very communicative on the subject of smuggling, but admitted that it went on in the neighbourhood. After a while he took the bull by the horns, said that he wanted to get across the river that night and, under the table, showed them a handful of French gold.

  The chances that a police spy would possess so much foreign money were remote, so the sight of it allayed their suspicions. They discussed the matter between themselves in patois for a few minutes, then told de Richleau that for twenty louis d’or his crossing could be arranged. It was decided that he should dine at the little hotel and remain there till it closed, then return to the drinking den, and when the moon was down someone would take him across.

  Everything went without a hitch. The moon did not set till three, but it was a night of drifting cloud with few stars, and soon after four o’clock he was put ashore at a derelict landing stage on the Austrian bank.

  A few hundred yards inland he came upon a tin-roofed shed. It lay at the bottom of the garden of a house in the village of Albach, which was nearer to the river than Hohenembs and about three miles from it. There he sat down to hide until the village was astir. Soon after seven, he left the shed, skirted the north of the village, and reached the road. An hour’s walk up a series of gradual slopes and across the railway line brought him to Hohenembs.

  It was quite a small place, with only one inn and half a dozen shops; but one of them was a barber’s. Although it was a Sunday morning, like most hairdresser’s on the Continent, it had opened for a few hours to smarten up its patrons before they went to Mass; so he went into it and had himself shaved. Then he went to the inn for breakfast.

  Only one table in the little coffee room was occupied. At it sat two Austrian officers: a Major with a large fluffed-out red moustache and prawn-like eyebrows, and a dark little Captain. With them were two young women whose smart clothes suggested Vienna. De Richleau soon decided that the officers were probably stationed in the locality and had imported two good-looking demi-mondaines to amuse them over the weekend. Not wishing to embarrass the party by appearing to be listening to their conversation, he asked the elderly waiter to bring him a paper, and the old boy shuffled back with the previous day’s Innsbrucker Zeitung. Propping it up against the coffee pot, the Duke glanced through its principal news items, while eating a ham omelette he had ordered.

  The Austrian communiqué admitted that the German invasion of France had been brought to a halt, but stated that the check was merely temporary, and that their invincible allies would soon be in Paris. The big news came from East Prussia, and they were now able to give a full account of a second great German victory there.

  Between August 28th and 31st, during the battle of Tannenberg, the Germans had killed or taken prisoner three and a half out of the five Corps of which General Samsonov’s Army had consisted: but the Hindenburg-Ludendorff-Hoffmann combination had not been content to rest upon its laurels. From September 1st they had begun to redeploy their forces against Rennenkampf; who, on learning of his colleague’s defeat, began to withdraw his troops, and ordered them to entrench themselves along the Insterberg Line—a position of great strength, as its right flank was protected by the Baltic and its left by the northern end of the Masurian Lakes.

  By that time the first two of the Army Corps dispatched by von Moltke had arrived from the Western Front; so Hindenburg had six Corps to dispose of. Four had been directed north to make a frontal attack on the Insterberg Line: von François was to bring his Corps and all the cavalry right round the southern end of the lake chain, and von Mackensen to push his Corps through the Lötzen gap in its centre.

  The brilliant and indefatigable von François had been given charge of the whole outflanking movement, and by September the 4th he was already thrusting into Russian-held territory south and east of the lakes. By the 9th the rest of the army was in position and general battle was joined. The German assault failed to break the Insterberg Line, and von Mackensen found himself unable to force his way out of the Lötzen gap, as the Russians had its exit held too strongly. But in the past four days von François had worked his way right round behind them. Falling upon the four divisions opposed to von Mackensen, he cut them to pieces, thus opening the way for his colleague. Then the two Corps Commanders had hurled their troops north-eastwards against the flank of the main Russian Army. But Rennenkampf had had enough. He had given orders for a general retirement during the night, leaving two of his divisions to protect his retreat by a desperate rearguard action on the 10th. Both of them had stood with great gallantry, but been wiped out. That day Hindenburg had driven the last Russian from German soil, and his whole army was in full pursuit of the flying Rennenkampf. The paper de Richleau was reading concluded its account with the statement that the Germans had captured many thousands of prisoners, and vast quantities of booty, as the spoils of victory; and that the pursuit of the Russians was still continuing.

  It was clear to the Duke that there was nothing more to be hoped for on the East Prussian front for a considerable time to come. Both General Jilinski’s Armies had been decisively defeated, and he would be hard put to it to re-form the remnants of his fifteen Army Corps on the line of the Nieman. But this Russian disaster, serious as it was, had not the awful finality which would have crowned a similar German victory in France. Russia had territory to give—hundreds of miles of it—before any of her principal cities would be menaced; and her Siberian Army should now be arriving to fill the gaps in her torn front. Besides, on her southern front she had been more than holding her own against the Austrians.

  As de Richleau re-folded the paper to read the latest reports on von Hötzendorf’s doings, he heard a motor car drive up outside. He had caught enough of the conversation of the group near him to gather that they were about to set out for a Sunday picnic. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a soldier-servant enter the room, and heard him report to the Major that the baskets had been put in the car. The two officers and their girls stood up and, laughing together, went out into the passage.

  There was not much in the paper about the Austrian Army’s recent activities; but the Duke thought the brief communiqué significant. After announcing that the stalemate on the Serbian front continued with only sporadic fighting, it added that General von Hötzendorf had made a strategic withdrawal from Lemberg. As de Richleau knew well, the little Austrian C.-in-C. was the last man to make strategic withdrawals unless positively forced to it; so it looked as if von Hötzendorf must now be in a pretty bad way.

  De Richleau was not seriously thinking about the war. More than half his mind was occupied with the thought that within an hour or so now he would be with his beloved Ilona. His vague speculations about von Hötzendorf having got into serious difficulties were engendered only by the fact of having the newspaper there in front of him. He had just stretched out his hand for a plum, with which to round off his breakfast before starting for the châlet, when the two officers re-entered the room followed by the orderly.

  As the Duke looked up his glance chanced to fall on the orderly’s face. Like so many men with nondescript features, when put into uniform he looked like thousands of other soldiers, and entirely lacking in any marked individuality. De Richleau had scarcely noticed him when he had come into the room a few minutes earlier; now he found himself staring full at the man across the Major’s shoulder. His face was white and excited. It was also suddenly and horribly familiar. Instinctively the Duke half rose to his feet.

  At the same instant the officers drew their pistols and the Major snapped, “Put your hands up!”

  * * * * *

  Less than an hour later the Duke was locked in a prison cell. For the rest of the day—the day that had started so well, with only a walk up a hillside separating him from Ilona—he was left to brood over his misfortune. For it, no blame attach
ed to himself. He had been guilty of no stupid oversights like those which had betrayed him in Holland. His detection had come about through a piece of sheer bad luck. But that was immaterial. The fact remained that he had been caught; and not merely caught entering the country illegally, but definitely identified.

  As he sat on the wooden bench with his hands clasped between his knees, seeking a ray of hope where there was none, he knew what that meant. Within twenty-four hours he would be handed over to the K.S., and that would be the end of him.

  While in Serbia, Austria and Germany, he had skated on thin ice for days on end, several times deliberately prolonging periods of peril which might have landed him in the same situation as he was in at present; and he had got away. But that was little consolation now. However marvellous the long run of luck he had enjoyed in places where at any moment he might have run up against someone who knew the truth about him, it was a bitter pill that here, in a tiny village where he had every reason to consider himself free from any risk of recognition, a man who could denounce him as a spy and murderer should have come upon the scene.

  He had fallen a victim to one of those strange strokes of fate which appear to occur only through blind coincidence; yet, all the same, so often have a subtle connecting link with an evil action done in the past. The soldier-servant who had recognised him was the peace-time valet of the late Baron Lanzelin Ungash-Wallersee.