Mediterranean Nights

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘But, Nicholas…’ her distress is pathetic. ‘One day they will get you, and then the whole world will go dark for me.’

  He laughs a little. ‘No, no, you must not distress yourself. It is just part of my business to be shot at occasionally, just as a sea captain must risk the storm which sinks his ship or a miner take the chance that one day he will be entombed by an explosion. These mixed races in our country—one does what one can—but it is impossible to please them all.’

  ‘But, Nicholas, I’m terrified for you. This is the second attempt in six months.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You need have no real fear for me, Caroline. These Terrorists are cowards. The leaders would not dare to take a chance themselves. They fasten upon some poor disappointed student who has failed to pass his exams and thinks that he has some grievance. They then drug him with hashish until he does not know what he is about. This poor fellow tonight was half-stupid with the drug, and it is always so. That is why they so rarely hit their mark even at close range. Why, if you threw your knitting needle at a man a dozen feet away you could not fail to hit him. But they always miss. Nothing but an accident, my dear, will make you free to marry that handsome Grand Chamberlain of mine, I promise you.’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, how can you?’

  ‘I mean it, Caroline. That is why, when the Purity League sent the new petition to the Chamber that I should tighten up the laws about the smuggling of drugs I postponed the issue for the fourteenth time. I could hardly say that to do so would not be healthy for myself.’

  ‘Nicholas, be serious.’

  ‘I am, my dear. I believe in drugs in moderation, and for that reason I am now going to give you just half a grain of medinal to make you sleep.’

  He takes a bottle of tablets from the cupboard, pours out a glass of water, and we then fade out, too.

  The corridor. Lieutenant Sasha Renescu stands half-dazed against the wall, his hair is dishevelled, a little rivulet of blood runs down his cheek. Opposite to him is his Colonel, livid with rage. The Colonel tears off the young officer’s single decoration and flings it on the floor. He then tears off his epaulettes and, snatching his sword out of its scabbard, breaks it across his knee. As he does so, the King, in his dressing-gown, comes out from the Queen’s door into the corridor and with a shrewd eye takes in the scene.

  The two officers spring to attention. The King beckons the young Lieutenant into his bedroom. The Colonel remains in the corridor, mute and furious.

  The King is seated on the edge of his bed. Sasha stands at attention before him.

  ‘You know, my boy, that this will mean court martial and the loss of your commission,’ the King says kindly. ‘For the protection of the State we cannot afford to allow such culpable negligence upon the part of an Officer of the Guard to be overlooked. By your own confession you were talking to some young woman in the garden, it seems, when you should have been watching while I slept.’

  Sasha murmurs an assent, and the King then goes on to say that in view of the service rendered by the boy’s father he does not wish to be unduly harsh. If Sasha wishes, although he may no longer serve him as an officer, he may serve him privately and thus, after a period, earn reinstatement to his rank. Sasha, overcome with repentance at his folly, springs at the chance.

  The King then tells him that, although he does not fear assassination for himself, he does fear death at the hands of the Terrorists on account of the nation. His premature death would destroy all the good work which he is trying to do, and one day, even if it is by a stray bullet, he feels certain that they will get him if they are not suppressed. He has his secret police, but the trouble is that the Terrorist organisation knows them just as the cleverest criminals in Europe know the leading detectives among the police, so their sphere of activity is limited. Here is an opportunity to try to find out who the leaders are from a completely different angle. A young officer who has been cashiered at the beginning of his career for something which he might well feel to be only a slight negligence. It should be readily accepted by them that he has reason for a grievance and that his misfortune may have slightly turned his brain. Is Sasha prepared, therefore, to serve his King by endeavouring to get accepted by these people as one of themselves, find out who the real leaders are and enable the Government to crush the mainspring of the organisation once and for all?

  Sasha accepts the dangerous mission. He is only too willing to do anything to repair the blunder that he has made.

  The King then tells Sasha that should he succeed in obtaining any useful information he is not to communicate with the police but write to Hans Kartoff, whose private address is No. 7, Tiergarten Gasser. Hans Kartoff is the King’s personal valet and will pass the information direct to him immediately.

  Sasha repeats the address. The King leads him to the door and opening it says coldly to the Colonel:

  ‘It is our desire that this officer shall be placed under close arrest and, after the due formalities have been observed, it is quite obvious that we shall no longer require his services.’

  The guards close in one either side of Sasha and he is marched away.

  We next see Sasha in civil clothes at what has obviously been a smart and comfortable flat. The walls, however, have been stripped of their pictures, a number of packing-cases stand about the floor, and it is obvious that he is selling up and going away.

  The next shot is of him leaving the building, the packing-cases are being piled into a van, and he enters a taxi-cab with a single battered suitcase.

  We then see him in a dingy room in the lower part of the city. He is bargaining with an old hag of a landlady for this new accommodation.

  Next, loafing along a mean street and entering a working man’s café. That he has grown a small pointed beard shows us that a period of time has elapsed.

  In the café there is loud talk against the Government. We see a workman with a morning paper spit upon a portrait of the King in his full-dress uniform at some function. Sasha gets into conversation with the workman. We hear the New Art Club mentioned.

  We then dissolve into the Club. The occupants are Bohemians. The women, mostly art model type, except for one or two elderly ones who have a very male appearance. The men vary from lusty, tough-looking artisans to bespectacled big-headed types of the middle classes. One or two are even in dinner-jackets. Sasha is seated at a table alone.

  After a little, the girl who was in the Palace garden enters. Sasha recognises her at once, but she does not notice him, and takes a nearby table. With her is an effeminate young man in a dinner-jacket. He is a little drunk and talking loudly in a high-pitched voice. She tries to quieten him.

  Suddenly the girl looks across at Sasha. A faint gleam of puzzled recognition dawns in her eyes. He nods and moves over to her table. The young man begins a drunken protest. She ignores him and, with an angry shrug, he leaves the table to join another woman who is seated alone.

  Sasha talks to the girl and finds out that her name is Stephanie. He pretends to be angry with her as a cause of his downfall, but he is much more angry with the King and his Colonel for refusing to overlook his slight breach of duty in leaving his post.

  He accuses her then of being mixed up with the Terrorists. Why otherwise should she be in a place like this? Her story of being an inmate of the Palace and daughter of one of the chamberlains was obviously a lie. As he talks he simulates gradually increasing anger until, in a burst of apparent fury, he threatens to denounce her to the police.

  His policy is effective, she becomes alarmed, her eyes grow wide and frightened. She feels that she must do something to prevent him carrying out his threat, so she takes the line of throwing herself on his mercy.

  She confesses that she is a member of the Terrorist organisation. Her father was not a chamberlain, but a brilliant barrister, and Member of the Chamber of Deputies. He was arrested on account of his liberal ideas and then released. Three days later the late King was assassinated. Her father happened to be in the cr
owd nearby at the time. He was absolutely innocent, but one of the secret police happened to recognise him and hauled him off after the mêlée. He was tried in camera and shot as an accessory even though innocent. Ever since she has worked for revenge upon this brutal Government as the corner-stone of which stands the present King. She associated more and more with her dead father’s political friends, and through them gradually got to know the most discontented elements in the population, and eventually become a member of the secret society which believed that the removal of this semi-autocratic monarch would be the salvation of the country.

  Sasha now becomes sympathetic. He airs his own grievance about his abrupt dismissal, and there is no more talk of his having her arrested. They agree to meet in the park on the following afternoon.

  We now see the middle-aged, strong-faced, semi-bald man who was behind the bushes in the Palace gardens. He is in the white coat of a doctor. It is a slum practice. Outside his door there is a long queue of poor, miserable, patient people waiting to see him. He deals with them one by one, being wonderfully kind and tender with the children. In an interval between his seeing patients Stephanie enters through a sliding panel in his consulting-room.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks, impatient apparently at being interrupted in his work.

  ‘A new recruit I think,’ she says. ‘May I bring him to you? I believe that he will prove the perfect instrument. He knows the Palace routine and has a grudge. He has all the makings of a fanatic, and will do our work for us if only you can arrange some way in which to treat him with the drug.’

  Doctor Pailev consents. ‘Bring him tonight, he says abruptly, and Stephanie disappears through the panel.

  The park that afternoon. Sasha meets Stephanie. He is clean-shaven again now. She asks him why. He says that it is because he has new hope. Before he felt that life was finished for him. Now he knows that there is work for him to do. Something worth while. The otherthrow of a corrupt Government by steady work against it and eventually the freeing of his countrymen from an intolerable autocracy.

  Sasha and Stephanie then go out on the ornamental lake in a little boat. There is a pretty scene where the young man breaks for a moment from the part he is playing and becomes the potential lover. Stephanie, too, casts aside her earnestness for a little, but just as she is softening to the normal feeling of a woman of her years for a young and attractive man, she draws back. They must not talk of such things as love. They have work to do—urgent important work—upon their strength of will and that of other comrades who feel the same depends the salvation of the country.

  The New Arts Club again. Doctor Pailev has just arrived. He is talking to Stephanie inside the doorway and says: ‘I thought it would be better if I met him here for the first time, just casually. If, after I have had an opportunity to judge, I think you right, you can both come back with me.’

  Sasha enters at this moment and is introduced. All three sit down at one of the tables and drinks are brought. Doctor Pailev appears to be a benign kindly person who talks of the good work he is doing to relieve pain and suffering in the slums, but occasionally we catch the gleam of the fanatic in his eyes. Then the talk turns to politics.

  ‘Not here, my friend,’ says the good Doctor. ‘It is too public. But come home with me for a night-cap before you go to bed.’

  We then see the Doctor’s surgery again and through a doorway a sitting-room furnished with rather shabby comfort. The three are together there. Sasha, apparently angry and indignant, is telling again the story of his dismissal, but the Doctor soothes him down.

  ‘We must be patient, friend,’ he tells him. ‘Patient—a word here and a word there. Help with processions and petitions where we can; make converts of our friends wherever possible, and the laws will be altered in good time. You must not take any notice of Stephanie. She is embittered by her poor father’s death and something of a firebrand. She even mixes with rather dangerous people, and I have warned her about that. For no good can come of it to herself or the country.’

  Sasha protests that they may wait until they are grey, but the laws will not be altered. Stephanie is right, and some action should be taken at least to force the King’s abdication.

  The Doctor is all against any form of direct action however. Then he remarks how tired Sasha is looking. He must allow him to prescribe for him.

  Sasha admits that he is not sleeping well, so the Doctor mixes him a draught and then, unlocking a drawer, takes a little phial of pills from it which he gives him saying: ‘You must take three of these a day. It is only a mild tonic, but it will buck you up.’

  The park again. Sasha and Stephanie are sitting on the grass having a picnic lunch together. He is looking tired and worried. The muscles of his face twitch occasionally. He complains that for the last fortnight he has been feeling rotten. The Doctor’s pills seemed to buck him up, but when he stopped taking them he felt himself going all to pieces. Now the Doctor is giving him a new treatment by injections and it doesn’t seem to be doing him much good, but the Doctor has been so kind that he hesitates to offend him by getting a second opinion.

  Sasha’s old Colonel walks past. He does not see them, but Sasha commences to rail against him and the King.

  Stephanie comments upon how much more bitter his feelings have becomes in these last few weeks.

  A dog comes up and nuzzles round in a friendly way. Suddenly Sasha kicks it and it lopes off with a yelp of pain.

  ‘Why did you do that, Sasha?’ Stephanie exclaims. ‘You are so gentle. I did not think you could ever be unkind to a dumb animal.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, with a shake of his head. ‘I didn’t mean to. I just feel like that. Everyone I see irritates me in these days except you.’

  A look of fear and understanding passes over her face. She leans forward and kisses him on the cheek.

  We next see Sasha in the mean lodging that he has taken. He is seated at a table with a small note-book before him. In it there are half a dozen names and addresses. The top one is that of Stephanie. The second that of Doctor Pailev, which has a large question mark against it. He takes a piece of rubber and rubs Stephanie’s name out. Then he draws a piece of writing-paper towards him and commences a letter.

  He stands up and passes his hand wearily over his eyes, then picks up the letter from the table, which we see is addressed to Hans Kartoff, No. 7, Tiergarten Gasser—the King’s valet. After which we see him post this letter in the street. He is obviously laying an information against such members of the Terrorist group as he has so far come in contact with, except Stephanie.

  Now we see the Doctor in his sitting-room with a group of his fellow Terrorists. He is telling them that Sasha is nearly ready. The King is to open the new wing of the Institute for Medical Research on the 13th of the month—an extra dose for Sasha and he will do their business for them.

  The King is then shown in his private study as in the first set. He has Sasha’s letter in his hand and the Chief of the Police is standing before him. The King is informing his minister of his arrangement with the young cashiered officer. He has not mentioned the matter before because he feared that if Sasha were given any assistance or seen conversing with any police officers it might arouse suspicion in the minds of the Terrorists. Since Sasha is untrained in such work the King is surprised that he has even managed to get so far as producing the names of five suspected people, and as an amateur it is quite impossible to expect him to be able to trace the heads of the whole organisation on his own. He instructs the Chief of Police, therefore, to put his own people on to watch the persons that Sasha has named as suspects, in the hope that they may now be able to get to the root of the whole conspiracy. But Sasha, meanwhile, is to be left to continue his work in ignorance that the police are secretly co-operating with him.

  As the Chief of Police is shown out the Queen comes in. She begins to protest about the King’s plan for opening the new wing of the Medical Research building himself, and asks: ‘But must you do this
, Nicholas—is it really necessary?’

  ‘Of course, my dear,’ he assures her kindly. ‘It is a thing which we have been looking forward to for months. Why, nearly a quarter of your own private income has gone into it for these last two years.’

  ‘But, Nicholas!’ she exclaims.

  ‘Now, now,’ he laughs. ‘No tarradiddles to me. I know that I am not supposed to know what you do with your own money, but I do. I am one of those inquisitive people who knows lots of things that they are not supposed to know. But seriously, everyone expects me to open the new wing myself.’

  ‘My dear, I know. But every time you go out into the streets I tremble for your safety. You even refuse to have proper guards.’

  ‘Of course. They would say that I was a coward if I did, and then there would be twice as many of them wanting to shoot at me. Be patient, Caroline my dear. If we can only last out for another few years they will come to understand me better—and they will not want to shoot at me at all. In the meantime you must be brave, my love.’

  We return to the Doctor’s surgery. He is injecting Sasha with a hypodermic in the arm. Stephanie is standing by. Sasha’s face has become dull and lifeless. He hardly seems to feel the needle.

  ‘There, my boy,’ says the Doctor cheerfully. ‘That will relieve the pains in your head.’ Sasha pulls himself together and makes to leave the room as Stephanie whispers to him:

  ‘I will be with you in a minute, but I want to talk to the Doctor first about myself.’ Sasha nods dumbly and shambles out of the doorway.

  Stephanie then turns on the Doctor and there is a big scene. ‘I can’t go through with it,’ she protests. ‘I can’t.’

  He fixes her with a cold glare: ‘You found him. He is the perfect implement that we have been seeking for years. How dare you even suggest that we should go back upon our purpose.’

  Her eyes fall before his glance. Then he becomes tender and comforting. ‘Stephanie, this is not like you. Have you not been the heart and soul of all our endeavours for the past three years? Do you forget what they did to your father? On the thirteenth we shall be free I tell you—free!’