The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘By Jove! Did they really?’

  ‘Yes. General Wavell defeated an army six times the size of his own and drove the Italians helter-skelter across half Libya. It’s true that the Eyeties are not in the same class as the Germans, but, even so, they were fighting behind their own well prepared defences, they had thousands of guns, quite a lot of armour and the whole Italian Air Force pitted against about three squadrons of British fighters—so it was a pretty good show.’

  ‘Gosh, yes! Absolutely marvellous!’ Philip murmured. ‘That’s real generalship. My God! What wouldn’t I give to get home, though, so that I could join up!’

  The Russian regarded him curiously. ‘What? You would like to go into the war?’

  ‘Yes, naturally. Not for the fun of the thing, but because we’ve got to get these blasted Germans down somehow, and every man counts.’

  ‘I am different. I do not mind fighting man to man. In fact, I rather enjoy it. But never again will I put on a uniform and allow people to order me about.’

  To Philip it seemed so obvious that no country could survive if its young men refused to serve it when it was in danger that it was pointless to pursue the theme, and a few minutes later they came in sight of the tent.

  Gloria was as astonished as Philip had been at the appearance of the well-fed, prosperous-looking stranger in such a desolate land; but once she had got over her first delight at being spared the long and lonely ordeal, which that morning she had made up her mind to face, she began to ply him with a dozen questions.

  Where was his camp? How far away was it? How long had he been there? Why had he left it? And so on.

  ‘Patience, Madame!’ he laughed. ‘You shall know in good time. I came down to the coast because I had a mind to shoot a seal if I could find one, but I live three good days’ march away from here in the mountains of the interior. That is quite a good distance, and will take two or three days longer if we have to carry you. However, the dried food that I have in that bundle on my sledge will last me a week, and I understand that you still have rations for six or seven days, so we ought to be able to make it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you help me to get her to the whaling station instead?’ suggested Philip. ‘We’re both terribly anxious to get home, and that’s the only place we’re likely to find a ship.’

  ‘What whaling station?’ asked the Russian.

  ‘Why, the one you spoke of yourself only an hour ago. When we first met you jumped to the conclusion that I had come from it.’

  ‘You are mistaken. I asked you only if you had come from a whaling station, because I thought that the most natural explanation of your presence.’ As he spoke Fedor Solgorukin’s face remained quite expressionless, yet Philip felt certain that he was lying. He went on briskly: ‘Now, as we have far to go we should lose no time. We will make the tent into a hammock and use its support pole as a carrying rod.’

  ‘But what would this place be to which you’re going to take us?’ Gloria asked. ‘Surely you don’t live all on your own up in those mountains?’

  His teeth showed white against the blackness of his beard as he smiled. ‘There are stranger things in heaven and earth than most men wot of! Those mountains hold a secret that many a scientist would give his eyes to unravel. I shall say no more at the moment than that there is a place there where I can offer you food and warmth for as long as you wish, it is my kingdom, and you, Madame, are the guest that I shall delight to honour in it.’

  Never in his life had Philip had more difficulty in making a decision. On the face of it the Russian seemed to be talking the most arrant nonsense, yet, if they did not go with him, what were they to do? They could only revert to their plan of fetching fresh supplies from the raft, and that was fraught with eight or ten days of appalling anxiety for them both and the awful hazard that they might lose each other in this wilderness of rocks and rifts. The thing that finally decided him was a half-humorous taunt from the Russian, who, seeing his hesitation, suddenly said:

  ‘Come along! What are you afraid of? I won’t eat you—yet!’

  ‘I’m not afraid of anything,’ retorted Philip. ‘I was only wondering how you’ve managed to come so far without any tent or even enough camp equipment to cook yourself a hot meal?’

  The other shrugged. ‘I was born in a cold country. One of my father’s estates was in the far north of Russia, and I spent several winters there as a boy. I learnt then not to mind the cold. I am very fit and on an expedition of a week or so, such as this, I require little to eat, and hot food or drink is a luxury; so why should I burden myself with a lot of unnecessary paraphernalia? I bring the sledge only so that I can drag the seal meat back on it, but a hammock will be much more comfortable for Madame. As for the nights, at this season of the year my furs are all that I require to keep me from freezing. I’m afraid you’ll find it pretty cold, though, as you have neither furs nor leather clothing.’

  ‘If it’s only for five or six nights I’ll manage somehow,’ said Philip, and together they began the business of converting the tent into a hammock.

  Half an hour later, after a simple meal, they set off. The Russian naturally led the way, with the fore-end of the hammock pole on one shoulder and his rifle on the other. He proved extremely surefooted and had a quick eye for spotting the best way across a piece of broken country. Gloria lay rather awkwardly in the improvised hammock, and Philip brought up the rear with the rest of the equipment piled on the sledge, which he dragged behind him.

  Soon after twilight began to fall their leader selected a camping site under the lee of a big overhanging rock. Gloria still could not rest her weight on her foot without pain, but sitting down she cooked them quite a passable dinner from their slender resources, in which the Russian did not hesitate to participate.

  Philip was tired and sore from the long hours of unaccustomed exertion that he had been through that afternoon, but he was still mentally excited by the new turn which their fortunes had taken through his meeting with Fedor Solgorukin. After the meal, he began to ask their new companion all sorts of questions.

  With many of them, particularly those concerning the place to which they were going, the Russian fenced and was casually evasive; but when Philip said: ‘You were saying this morning that you were once an officer in the Royal Navy. How long ago was that?’ he replied at once:

  ‘I entered Dartmouth in Nineteen-Nineteen, after I escaped from Russia.’

  ‘You will have been in the Revolution then,’ said Gloria. ‘So was me mother. She was the daughter of an Irish merchant trading in Saint Petersburg. The Bolsheviks killed him and looted his store; but by that time me mother was married to an English war correspondent and he got her safely away to Canada.’

  ‘What a small world it is!’ exclaimed Solgorukin. ‘I was living with my family in Saint Petersburg during those awful days, and perhaps the very same gang of murderers who killed your grandfather killed my parents. They would have killed me too, although I was scarcely more than a child, if they had had the chance. My tutor turned out to be one of the Communist students so many of whom, as we learned later, had turned our universities into secret revolutionary clubs. The little rat loathed me and planned to hand me over to the mob, but he was fool enough to tell me his intentions. I was only twelve, but the use of weapons is one of the first things taught to the boys of all noble Russian families, and things were already so unsettled that I was carrying a revolver. I pulled it out and shot him. I shall never forget the look of astonishment on his mean, stupid face. He was the first man I had ever killed, and I rather enjoyed it.’

  Solgorukin paused for a moment, evidently savouring anew this jolly memory, before he went on: ‘That same evening the mob broke into our palace and murdered not only my father, mother, sister, an old aunt and two cousins, but nearly all our faithful servants. I was saved by our chief huntsman, little Sergi, who happened to be in Saint Petersburg on a visit. Actually, he was a huge man, and he was very fond of me. We had many adventures togethe
r and killed quite a number of Reds before we eventually succeeded in reaching the Crimea, where he handed me over to my godmother, Her Imperial Majesty the Dowager Empress.

  ‘It was she who brought me to England when she was forced to leave Russia herself, and was taken off in a British destroyer. I was so thrilled with the guns and the sailors that she thought it would be a good thing for me to go into the Navy. As you may remember, she was Queen Alexandra’s sister, and she used her influence to get me taken into Dartmouth, although I was by then above the usual age. Then later, when it was clear that there would be no going back to Russia for us exiles, I took out British naturalisation papers and was granted a commission.

  ‘By then I was quite disillusioned of any idea that it would be fun to spend most of my life at sea, but nothing remained of the great fortune I should have inherited, so it seemed that going into the Navy was the only way in which I could support myself until I was old enough to marry. With many of my brother officers I got on famously. For good humour, courage, sound common sense and general kindliness of nature I have never met any body of men to equal the officers of the Royal Navy; but there was one little man whom I loathed.

  ‘He was a Socialist, and he would insist on talking about Russia without knowing anything about it. The result was, perhaps, unfortunate, although it only accelerated my leaving the Navy a year or so before I would otherwise have done. The thing that everyone seemed to take such exception to was the fact that I used a knife, although the injury I inflicted was by no means serious. Having no source of income but my pay, I had rather a difficult time for a few months, but I contracted a suitable marriage and settled down to enjoy the sort of life that a person of my birth is entitled to expect. I have been married four times, altogether, but, unfortunately, all four of my wives were bores.’

  The Russian ceased his flow of reminiscences as though bored himself with the tale he was telling; but the recital had forced Philip considerably to modify his opinion. The whole sequence of events, even the details of which most people would have been far from proud, had such a ring of truth that he could no longer doubt that Fedor was a prince, or that he had been an officer in the Royal Navy. Yet, if these things were true and he were not mad, this made his references to his ‘kingdom’ even more mysterious.

  ‘Where’s your last wife, Prince?’ asked Gloria. ‘I mean your present one. Will we be meeting her up there?’ She nodded in the direction of the chain of mountains towards which they had been heading all the afternoon.

  Solgorukin threw back his head in one of his gargantuan bursts of laughter. ‘Good God no!’ he chuckled, as soon as he had recovered a little. ‘I wouldn’t have brought Cornelia here even if I’d had the chance. She was the worst bore of them all. It was her insistence that we should go on a trip to the Grand Canyon while I was having a very pleasant love affair in New York that finished things between us. I went—I had to, because my bankers were making an intolerable nuisance of themselves, and the woman I was in love with had no money. But Cornelia and I had our final quarrel while we were supposed to be admiring the beauties of the Yosemite Valley, and I left her there to—er—find her own way home.’

  ‘From what you say I gather you managed to lead a pretty luxurious life between the two wars,’ remarked Philip. ‘Why on earth did you chuck all that up to come to this god-forsaken part of the world?’

  ‘I have told you that I was bored,’ the Prince replied sharply. ‘When Cornelia’s will was proved it was found that she had not left me one cent of her great fortune, and by that time I was already in South America, so——’

  ‘She’s dead then?’ Gloria broke in.

  ‘Yes, did I forget to mention that? She was a very stupid woman, and when I drove off in the car—just to make her realise that money was not everything, you know, and that even a millionairess gets tired if she has to walk ten miles to the nearest road-house—she walked over a cliff in the dark; and there wasn’t much left of her when they found her some days later, as she had fallen a sheer thousand feet before she hit the rocks. Anyhow, as I was saying, finding myself in the Argentine with very little money I thought I’d put my old navigational knowledge to some use. I signed on as second officer to do a season’s whaling in the winter of ‘Forty to ‘Forty-One, largely for the fun of the thing, and a week or so after we landed I—er—well, I made a discovery which decided me to stay on.’

  Both Philip and Gloria had already learned that it was no good pressing the Prince for information about his mysterious secret, and as they were both now very tired they decided to turn in; but before he dropped off to sleep Philip could not help wondering what had really happened to Cornelia. He had an uneasy suspicion that it was Fedor who planned that trip to the Grand Canyon, and that he had pushed the wretched woman over the cliff in the hope that he would inherit her fortune. Probably as a precaution against suspicion falling on him he had got out at once to South America; then learning perhaps that it had, he had shipped out in the whaler to the Antarctic to get beyond the reach of the United States police. All that fitted in nicely, but Philip had to admit to himself that he had no foundation whatever for his highly libellous theory and that he was considerably influenced by the fact that he had taken a very strong dislike to Prince Fedor Solgorukin.

  Philip’s dislike of their new companion was not shared by Gloria, who found the Prince attractive and amusing. He, too, obviously liked her, and as the party trudged along during the days that followed they were always laughing and joking together. More than once Fedor inferred that there was a special bond between them owing to the fact that relatives of both of them had been murdered by the Bolsheviks, and it seemed that he treated her as an equal on this account, quite apart from the consideration he showed her as a woman; whereas to Philip he was often barely civil.

  Hour after hour, while daylight lasted, they tramped doggedly forward across barren, windswept icefields towards the great range of snow-topped mountains, which seemed to get ever higher the nearer they approached. During the daytime the movement kept Philip fairly warm, but at night he was bitterly cold, owing to his refusal to deprive Gloria of more than the single sleeping-bag which he had been going to take with him on his journey to the raft. She, too, felt the cold keenly, on account of her enforced inactivity, although she lay smothered in coverings both night and day.

  On the fourth night they reached the base of the mountain range, and Fedor led them to a cave where they were able to make camp in considerably more comfort than they had known for some time. After the meal, an open row at last broke out between the two men over, of all things, the question of Big Ships.

  The Prince had by this time heard most of their adventures, but Philip had rather skated over his original object in inventing his Raft Convoy; but when the subject cropped up again he saw no reason why he should preserve any particular secrecy about it, and went into full details of the project.

  ‘Well, as an ex-Naval man myself, I think you’re completely off the mark!’ shrugged Solgorukin. ‘It stands to reason that the country that builds the biggest, most heavily armed battleships will secure control of the seas the moment it has enough of them.’

  ‘You’re taking no account whatever of air power,’ protested Philip, and produced all his usual arguments.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said the Princes, as soon as he could get a word in. ‘We all know that in these days it’s suicide for a big ship to go in anywhere within reach of land-based planes; but that is no longer the function of the Big Ship. It is to carry the war to the enemy’s territory in places where he has few, if any, aircraft to defend himself. No Battle Fleet now ever operates without its aircraft carriers, and they are not only its eyes but a shield against all but the heaviest scale of enemy air attack. They are also capable of striking most telling blows at enemy bases.’

  Philip nodded. ‘Yes, I agree all that. But why not have your fleet entirely composed of aircraft carriers, with destroyers to protect them from U-boats?’


  ‘But, my dear fellow, that wouldn’t be any good if some of the enemy’s big ships came on the scene. You’d lose all your carriers. You must have big ships to protect them.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Then you must be very dense,’ said the Prince acidly. ‘From the time Naval warfare started with bows and arrows and stone shot, all other things being equal, victory has always gone to the Fleet that could fire the biggest broadside.’

  ‘Well, an aircraft carrier can fire a bigger broadside than a battleship.’

  ‘Now you’re talking through your hat. Aircraft carriers mount only six-inch guns or something like that. Anyhow, the weight of their broadside wouldn’t amount to that of a single sixteen-inch shell.’

  ‘I’m not talking about weight,’ Philip countered, ‘but explosive power. You know as well as I do that, to stand the pressure of being fired out of a gun barrel, nine-tenths of the weight of every shell has to be solid steel, and that there is only room for a comparatively small explosive charge inside. Bombs, on the other hand, are very different. They need only a thin metal casing to hold together the solid mass of explosive which forms their bulk. In consequence, the aircraft of one carrier can drop in a single sortie a far greater tonnage of high explosive than could be fired off by the big guns of a whole fleet of battleships. That’s why it is now so hopelessly uneconomical to send a battle fleet to bombard a port. A few squadrons of heavy bombers can create more havoc in ten minutes than a battle fleet could by bombarding the place for a couple of days. It’s such a waste of good steel too. Anyhow, you can take it from me that the sixteen-inch gun is now as outmoded as a Roman catapult.’

  The Russian’s voice held the trace of a sneer, as he said: ‘You think yourself a monstrous clever fellow, don’t you? But the fact remains that all Service opinion is against you. If you had ever been in the Navy, as I have, you would know that the men who reach Admiral’s rank are not fools. What is more, it may interest you to learn that the American Navy Chiefs think the same way. When I left the States they were still building big ships as fast as they could go.’