The Countess of Prague

by Stephen Weeks

  “Sir,” I said to the King, “may I introduce the Reverend Swinnerton?”

  The King ignored me for a moment. He was pointing. A small white long-haired terrier was cowering beneath the table. “Glaring error!” he roared. “We left Caesar at Windsor!”

  Yes, even I had to admit — they’d made one small mistake. However, I couldn’t help but admire the fact that both were wearing gardenias in their button holes.

  “But why? I thought you said you wouldn’t be doing this.” I addressed the not-so-reverend gentleman. His trouser fly was undone. “Why did you change your mind?”

  “They offered me so much more money. I was just tempted. And this,” he said, sweeping an arm in a gesture to indicate that which he would now only be able to dwell on as pleasures partaken of, or perhaps about to have been — for which activity he would have, surely, a lot of time ahead in an Austrian prison. He caught my eye again: “And it’s been fun. Plain fun.”

  Suddenly it occurred to us all at the same time. Northcott voiced it first: “So where is the Kaiser of Germany?”

  Swinnerton, quite as commanding a presence as his twin by appearance but not by birth, spoke reasonably. He had realised the game was up.

  “Look, gentlemen,” he said, “I had only a small part to play. Nowhere near as large as in All the King’s Mistresses. The Kaiser and his party, together with Sir Emile Brodsky, went back to his hotel. They did that nearly two hours ago.”

  “You were in that play?” exclaimed the King. I feared this poor reverend would now certainly be beheaded at the Tower of London for High Treason.

  “Yes, Your Majesty, I have to admit I was.”

  “Good show! We enjoyed it immensely with Mrs. Keppel. Very funny indeed. Bit near the bone at times — but a good evening and we never stopped laughing. Bit near the funny bone, we suppose one might say!”

  “Your Majesty saw it?”

  “We’ll teach you a thing or two about disguise one day. And on the way out, having taken off the appalling wig and spectacles, the people leaving the theatre complimented us on our performance! We’ll see we don’t press charges, especially if you have ended up swindling our nephew Willy out of two million marks.”

  Northcott was looking at his watch. “They will have had — by the time we get back there — nearly three hours’ advance on us. God knows what will have become of them.”

  ***

  As we arrived outside the Hotel Klinger another motor was drawing up. It was a Mercedes with mud on its wheels and windscreen. Its chauffeur hurried round to open the saloon door, leaving the engine running. Two very Jewish gentlemen with briefcases stepped out and walked briskly into the hotel. As we were walking into the reception hall, they were disappearing into the lift ahead of us.

  After some dialogue between Northcott and the night porter, the duty manager then appeared, hurriedly completing his dressing. He was soon shaking his head. “It’s impossible to disturb H.I.M. the Kaiser of Germany,” he was saying, “even if you are H.R.H. the King of England.”

  After more dialogue, with the said King of England pacing the reception hall and filling it with clouds of thick cigar smoke and even thicker curses, one of the Kaiser’s equerries was summoned. He gave forth the same story: the Kaiser had given the strictest instructions that he was tired and needed to get rest. No phone calls, telegrams, or cables.

  After a few minutes, while all this argument was still going on, the lift doors opened again and out stepped the two Jews. The King recognised them. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

  “Good evening, Your Majesty,” they replied, tipping their wide-brimmed black hats in unison. But there was no small talk. They left as briskly as they had arrived. Only one carried a briefcase now, I noticed.

  “They are the directors of the Continental branch, in Dresden, of Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt,” the King stated. “Theirs is the only financial house that can finance entire wars if needs must. And at short notice. Monarchs do well to remember such people — they may have need of them.”

  The implications of this were all too obvious. Before we could do anything, the lift had come down again. As the trellis gate opened, out stepped Sir Emile Brodsky. Another man who was in the lift stepped briskly past us as the King pointed at Brodsky. “Arrest that man,” he shouted.

  But I was already following the younger man with the shock of black hair — and now carrying a briefcase. I called to Müller and Schneider to come quickly. The man we were following was on foot. There were no cabs around and this man — who could only have been Pilipenko — disappeared down into the Colonnade. It was impossible to follow by motor.

  We were still in the Colonnade, with its moonlit, silent forest of cast-iron columns and its fountain of mineral waters still softly splashing, not seeing him. Perhaps we had lost him. Then there he was. We could suddenly see him again running the other side of the Colonnade and across the park towards the New Baths. He was a good fifty or sixty metres ahead now.

  Again he disappeared briefly, but by the time we had reached the baths we could see him on the Haupt-Strasse. I had to let the men go on first. I was wearing a wretched evening gown, for Heavens’ sake. I tried hitching up the skirt.

  Past the Continental and he turned up the lane towards the tobacco factory. Müller and Schneider were heading across the street to follow him there. But there was a shortcut from the tobacco factory to the station — he would lead them up to the factory, making them think he was inside. I ran — as best I could, feeling like a constricted turkey — straight towards the station.

  I was right. I saw him darting across the square — from down beside that grubby hotel in which I had spent my first night in the spa — and on towards the railway platforms. A locomotive with a single carriage was waiting, a great plume of steam and smoke catching the light of the moon as it shot upwards. I hurried as fast as my ridiculous costume would allow, getting to the gate that led to the platforms and now only a few metres behind him. A man in railway uniform stepped into my path, saying, “Special train, sorry. Last trains have left for the night.”

  “Get away, you fool,” I shouted.

  At that moment there was the sound of a gunshot. A bullet struck an enamel sign hanging above us with a fairground ping. The railway man ducked out of sight in panic. I kept on. I was determined to board that train. Pilipenko had now jumped onto the running board of the carriage. “Leave, leave will you?” he was shouting to the engineers on the footplate of the locomotive.

  There was the sound of the steam pushing pistons, the squeal of wheels on the track and the train was beginning to move. I just couldn’t make it in time. Now Pilipenko was inside the carriage and firing back towards me…me! Help! His shot was almost echoed by another: Schneider had reached the platforms and was returning the fire. Pilipenko ducked down and that was the last we saw of him as the train pulled rapidly from the station. But I was sure I had seen another head in the carriage too — an arm pulling Pilipenko down. Could that have been Jenks, I wondered?

  The railway employee now dared raise his head.

  “Idiot,” I shouted at him.

  Schneider was more practical: “What line’s he on?”

  “Karlsbad, sir.”

  “Direct?”

  “No intermediate halts or stations, no.”

  “Then telegraph ahead to Karlsbad at once. Get them to get the police out. That man must be arrested — you understand? I am Inspector Schneider from Prague. Mention my name.”

  I was still panting, heaving great breaths from my unexpected run and feeling the effect of tight corsetry on an otherwise reasonably athletic (although largely unexercised) frame. I was also sweaty, my dress was crumpled and hitched up so my stockings were showing — one of which was ripped. I was covered in dust. Goodness knows what I looked like. Müller, who had now run up to me, managed to add to my humiliation:

/>   “Your hair, Milady?”

  “Yes — well, what about it?” I snapped, after recovering my breath.

  “Well, it’s gone. I mean your wig, Milady, it’s gone.”

  I raised my hand to my unclad head. So to add to everything else I also looked like a scarecrow.

  Schneider came back from the railway telegraph office where he had been for the last couple of minutes. “Let’s hope they get him in Karlsbad. There’s nothing more we can do. Time to turn in, I guess. What a day!”

  “No, there’s just one thing more tonight,” I said. “At Grand Duke Mikhailovich’s castle there was only one light on. I think I know whose it is. I need to go out there now. If we go back to the Weimar and take that motor, can you drive, Inspector?”

  “I think so. Not driven that particular marque, but one is much the same as another — I hope.”

  “Good. And Müller, you have had a very tiring day, I am sure. We’ll be walking past the Continental where I understand you have a room.”

  “If I may, Milady, I would like to come too. I’ll see this thing through to the end yet. And —”

  “Yes, I know what you are going to say: and I may need rescuing again.”

  “Precisely, Milady!”

  ***

  The estate wall was again bathed by the light of the moon which sailed, pure white and mystical, through its occasional veil of clouds. The lodgekeeper was asleep or gone and the gates were still wide open. Through the park we went again. There was no light and no sound from the Summer House now, and we kept to the right — up the carriage drive to the castle itself.

  The castle was a neo-Gothic affair of a style popular in the first half of last century. Underneath its cloak of medieval romanticism and chivalry was probably the wretched — but genuine — stonework of some impoverished local Slavic tyrant’s crudely fortified tower. How history graces the past with such poetic intentions.

  Schneider stopped our motor under the porte cochère. After he had switched off the engine there was a sudden stillness. Indeed it was deathly quiet, even the owls had gone to their beds. Then there was a very faint sound. It was someone calling — calling for help, far off in the vast edifice.

  The tall, studded, Baronial entrance doors were surprisingly unlocked. Müller pushed one of them open and we went into the empty entrance hall with its huge staircase rising at one end to a Gothic gallery. The grey-blue light of the night sky filtered dimly through the bogus heraldry of the painted roof windows. The balusters at the angles of the stairs were carved into fantastical beasts holding the shields of barons who had never lived. Everywhere was evidence of a hurried evacuation — theatrical makeup, typewritten scripts, top-hats, trays and dishes, empty bottles, a scattering of hairpins. Schneider kicked a bottle. It rolled down the stairs, bumping on each echoing step before hitting the floor with a crash that shattered the eerie peace of the place.

  That sound seemed to have given renewed hope to whoever was calling for help, and now knocking too, pounding on a door that was evidently locked against him.

  That door was now at the end of a long corridor. The three of us approached it, not without some anxiety. We had already been shot at tonight — and that had given us all pause for thought. None of us was immortal. Death could be real — even in this peculiar world of make-believe in which we had found ourselves. The knocking and crying for help was interspersed with sobbing. At length we were on the other side of that door which had become as a cell door in a prison.

  “Who’s there?” Schneider shouted.

  “Brodsky. Sir Emile Brodsky of Paris and London,” came the reply. “Let me out, I beg you.”

  I turned to my companions. “I don’t think he’s dangerous, but by the time the police get involved or we take him back to Marienbad I may never get a chance to talk to this man quietly and sensibly. Can I do this, please? I’m quite determined to get to the bottom of this mystery and there are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “But let me actually open the door first,” said Müller.

  He had to push hard, as Brodsky was at first slumped against it on the other side. When it was open no more than a crack, Brodsky pulled himself to his feet and stared at us. He looked nearly mad. “You see, if you hadn’t come — then I could have starved to death in here. That’s how he left me.”

  “Pilipenko or Jenks?”

  “Jenks is not so bad as Pilipenko. Pilipenko is the monster.”

  “I want to talk to you before getting you to Marienbad. May I do that?”

  “Yes, but not in this room, please. Mine is across the corridor. It has some air at least.”

  That was correct. They had locked him into little more than a housemaid’s linen closet.

  We walked over to what he called his room. It was a large bedroom with a good-sized writing desk and a glazed door leading onto what I presumed was a small balcony. The room’s large windows must have had, in daylight, a fine view over the park. In other circumstances it must have been quite charming. Müller and Schneider retired to the corridor and shut the door behind them. I was alone with him — the key to all the mystery. I noticed he had suitcases and a portmanteau that hadn’t even been unpacked. The castle cannot have been properly staffed by these ruffians.

  “I’ve been a prisoner here — do you know that? And I was supposed to have entertained the King tonight. Do you know what happened?”

  “Yes. I do. I will tell you later. Why were you planning this party for tonight?”

  “It was to be my farewell to Society. They didn’t know it, of course, but that’s what it was meant to be.”

  He suddenly seemed to focus his eyes on me. Prior to that he had been looking into the vague distance.

  “By the way, I remember you now. You called on me in London — in Albany, didn’t you? I am so sorry I did not recognise you until now. You must have thought me very rude.”

  “It’s of no consequence,” I said. “Why was this to have been your ‘farewell’? You can answer me truthfully. I know you knew Hammond in London, for example.”

  Brodsky looked more relieved than shocked by my knowledge. “The blackmail, you understand? I was to be named in the Cleveland Street business — and then with more recent matters.”

  “Jeseniova Street, for instance?”

  However, at this Brodsky went white. “Yes. How do you know that?”

  “Let’s just say I’m making the correct assumption.”

  “I sold up in London. I found a cottage in some half-deserted fishing village in the south…in southern France, where I come from. An unknown little place called St. Tropez, on an empty stretch of the coast; out of the way. I would be happy there, I thought. I could find some affectionate boy from the region, or from North Africa. There are plenty of those in Marseilles. I could get on with the life I wanted, for once, but it would have meant a clean break from everything of my life before.”

  He looked at me, pleading for understanding. I let a faint flicker of it pass over my features. Nothing more. He went on:

  “I wasn’t going to be like Lord Arthur Somerset — he carried the can for Cleveland Street — living some half-life, exiled from his country but still yearning to be back in Society. Or Lord Euston, who for the rest of his life in London or the country, drew titters wherever he went, sniggers of ‘Poses Plastiques’, that sort of thing. But soon, I thought, the blackmailers could do their worst. I wouldn’t care.”

  He was sitting down now, holding his head in his hands. But I wasn’t going to be seduced into feeling too sorry for him — at least not yet.

  “So tell me about the gas?”

  “I invent things. Good with chemistry. I tried all kinds of mixes. I had started with carbon-monoxide, chlorine-trioxide, mercuric-oxide, conine, potassamide, potassium-carboxide, cynogen, but then I began to try simpler combinations like sulphuric and cyanide of p
otassium. Eventually, what I was looking for was to be found in ordinary vegetables — incredible as that may seem. One could buy all the ingredients at one’s local greengrocer’s. However, it took many months to find the way — then eventually I had it —”

  “Had what?” I still didn’t understand.

  “A gas which could kill in thousands almost instantly. It could transform war. Soldiers wouldn’t have to fight any more.”

  “You mean they could simply die instead — like poor sheep at the slaughter-house?”

  “But with such power it could cause peace, don’t you see? No-one would be prepared to use it, don’t you understand? It would deter the warmonger, especially if both sides had it. That’s how I began thinking of selling it to both sides at once — but a perfectly honest transaction. I had worked once for the German Government. They had asked me to perfect an idea they already had of an explosive which was to be smokeless, devoid of smell, and also of such a nature that it would be impossible for it to ignite except when placed in certain combinations.”

  “And was that possible?” I asked. I had never heard of such a thing.

  “I did it. I succeeded. But it was such a dangerous weapon that would transform war into something anyone could do. War could be everywhere: on the tram, in the library, at a restaurant. No battlefield required. Children could blow up express trains, sink ocean liners. No parliament or court where the public was admitted would be safe. There could be no real peace. I withdrew the patent and destroyed my notes. Eventually I told Berlin it was impossible.”

  “But you did patent a gun with a rotating barrel — what did the patent say: ‘capable of firing three hundred rounds a minute’?”

  “Yes. Think of the Austrians mown down at the Battle of Königgrätz — just because they still had muzzle-loading rifles. Governments should simply look out to get the best weapons in manufacture. It was not a fault of the inventors, but of the Austrian Government who didn’t believe it would make any difference. And don’t forget I’ve many patents for humanitarian inventions. I’m just the chef.”