"BEYOND DOVER"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1939, Page 10

"BEYOND DOVER"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

VAL GIELGUD.

(Author of “Death at Broadcasting House,” etc.)

CHAPTER XVII. (Continued). Casimir quickened his steps as they approached the gateway. The sentry challenged. “I wish to see the Officer of the Guard,” said Casimir. The sentry shouted. A sergeant appeared at the double, and .regarded the visitors doubtfully. To his eyes they were a queer couple; a girl got up for riding, without a sign of a horse anywhere, and a big man who looked like an English milord except for his beard. Casimir spoke to him quietly in German, and a thousand-dinar note changed hands almost imperceptibly. The sergeant went away. Five minutes passed, while the sentry remained statuesque though the sweat was dripping down his face, and Sally thought she would have given the world for a camp stool. Then an officer, in white drill tunic and trousers, with two stars on his wide gilded epaulettes moving more like a waxwork than a human man, and pulling on white gloves, came through the gateway and stared at Sally, raising one eyebrow—a mannerism she particularly disliked. Casimir promptly altered his line, sizing up his man with his usual accuracy of judgment for a pedantic disciplinarian of the most tiresome Prussian school. He took off his hat formally and clicked his heels.

“I shall be obliged, sir,” he said, ‘'if you will give my card to His Excellency General von ■ Auffenburg at the first convenient moment.” The lieutenant took the card, and turned it over between his fingers. “His Excellency is at. Mess,” he said.

“You will kindly inform him without delay,” said Casimir Konski, “that the lady with his Majesty’s jewels wishes to see him immediately!” And behind his level voice was the tone of a hundred parade grounds, making Sally jump, and the lieutenant snap to attention as if being called over the coals by a Field-Marshal. “If you will be so good as to follow me,” he said, and led the way past the sentry, who still had not moved a muscle, into a stone courtyard, and along a flagged passage opening on one side upon a garden, which reminded Sally of cloisters in a university college. They had only just entered this passage when Casimir stopped. "Stupid of me,” he apologised, “I left my coat at the gate.” He had hung it on the railings beside the sentrybox and now he hurried back to get it. The lieutenant looked curiously at Sally while he was gone —perhaps he had heard something of the famous jewels and their significance—and played with the tassel on the hilt of his sword.

At the gate, Casimir, swinging his coat over his arm, was saying to the sergeant after glancing at his watch: “I expect a young Englishman here within the hour. It will be to my convenience—and yours —if he is brought to me without delay once I had left the General. His name is Craven. He will have an English passport, a laissez-passer signed by me, and a worried expression.” And Casimir rejoined his companions, apologising again for his carelessness./

For perhaps five minutes he and Sally were left sitting in a small room rather like a cell, barely furnished with a table and two or three wooden chairs, and lighted only by barred embrasures high up in the stone walls above their heads. Casimir sat as easily and apparently as comfortably as if it were in his own house, tapping an amber-headed malacca cane against his shoe. But Sally fidgetted nervously and played with her bracelet.

“What's General von Auffenburg like?” she asked at last. She did not want to talk to Casimir, but the silence was getting on her nerves. She was wondering what had happened tc Hugo Brandon at Duvornik. “Von Auffenburg,” repeated Casimir. "Oh —capital old' fellow of his own type, rather ‘blood and iron’ you know —but you’ll see for yourself.” The door opened and Sally jumped up. She found herself facing an old man with thick snow-white hair, a moustache like a flying gull, and a deeply-lined face the colour of pale leather. He wore field-service uniform with many ribbons, breeches and spurred riding boots. He had unusually thin tips, so that when he smiled he showed too much of his teeth, .which were large and yellowish. “Ah, my dear Casimir!” he said warmly, and came forward holding out his hand.

“I’m glad to see you, Karl,” replied Casimir Konski. “This young lady is Miss Martin, who brings you His Majesty's jewels on behalf of His Highness Ottokar Maximilian. Miss Martin —His Excellency, General Karl von Auffenburg.” Sally bowed —she felt it would be too ludicrous to attempt' a curtsey in breeches. The General's eyes bulged a little, but he kissed her hand. “These are the jewels, General,” she said, and handed over the case and the key. Von Auffenburg opened it, glanced at the contents quickly, relocked it and put the key in his pocket. "We must be very grateful to you, young lady," he said. “But I’m forgetting my hospitality. You have not lunched?” • “We have not,” sad Casimir, almost emphatically. "Then perhaps you will honour my Mess?” Von Auffenburg led the way, talking half over his shoulder. "You are just in time, Casimir. Another day might have been too late. There are a lot of stories going about, and ” he lowered his voice a little, "and I’ve being having trouble with some of the tank corps personnel. Nothing serious, but still —now we can get to work.” He rubbed his big hands together with satisfaction. An orderly opened a pair of solid double doors, and they walked in to the Mess-Room. What Sally expected she hardly knew: perhaps something based on a considerable liking for the “pictures”; some fifty young men in silver laced tunics and dolmans, standing up with champagne glasses in their hands, drinking a toast to a portrait of Hugo Brandon's father; or perhaps waving drawn swords, as she remembered they were doing in a picture she had seen somewhere of the Hungarian nobility rallying to Maria Theresa. She could not therefore be

blamed if she felt a certain disappointment with what she actually found. It was a small mess —not more than fifteen officers in all. Eight at least were elderly or middle-aged. They were all wearing Styrian service dress —that ugly greyish green which blends so amazingly with the Styrian hill backgrounds—and they were eating. rather tough veal and salad, and drinking a local wine, orange rather than, rose in colour, and with a queer bitter after taste. They stood up formally when the General came in; waited while chairs were placed and food brought for the visitors; and then sat down again and continued to talk quietly and entirely without histrionicism.

“We can be ready to move off in a couple of hours,” said von Auffenburg, “Some wine, Miss Martin? No?” Casimir looked at a clock on the wall.

“That should do nicely,” he said. “In ten minutes his Highness makes his speech on the radio at Duvornik, if all has gone well there. Have you a set handy?” “In my private office.”

“Thank you. Perhaps we might hear it together, Karl? I have a special interest in that speech.” “Its effect may be incalculable,” said the General, frowning. “I mistrust these new-fangled methods, but then I know I’m out of date. I was educated with horses,” and he sighed and rested his chin for a minute on one lean hand, whose veins stood out almost black against the yellow skin. “I still find it difficult to.believe that I may not put a dozen of the present government in front of a firing squad when I enter the Capital—damned scoundrels!” “I’m counting on you, Karl. No needless bloodshed,” said C-asimir, with an uplifted forefinger. Again he looked at the clock. “I think we should go.” The mess heaved itself to its feet, with a clatter of boots on bare boards. “Ottokar Maximilian and Styria” growled von Auffenburg, lifting his glass rather as if he were ashamed of himself. A little answering growl ran along the table; and the youngest officer present hastened to open the door. Outside in the passage the Sergeant of .the Guard was waiting unobtrusively in the shadows. He stepped forward and whispered to Casimir, who nodded.

“You will excuse me, Karl. A private message from His Highness.” He took Sally by the elbow and drew her swiftly along the passage to the room in whic hthey had waited, for von Auffenburg. “Wait here a minute,” he said. “A friend of yours wants to speak to you in private.” He went out. For a moment Sally was within an ace of bolting after him. Why on earth should Hugo want to see her alone, at this moment? How on earth had he got to Bratza from Duvornik? The door opened. “Hugo!” she burst out; then recoiled against the wall. It was Nigel Craven who stood in the doorway, with Casimir Konski at his elbow: Nigel, rather wild about the hair, but with very tanned features, and something of his old gaiety of expression. “Oh, Sally, my dear, I’m so desperately glad to see you,” he said, and came forward' holding, out his hands. Sally stayed motionless. “I know you will have plenty to say to one another,” came Casimir’s smooth and hateful voice. And then Nigel also turned staring. For they both heard distinctly the grinding of the key as it was turned in the heavy lock. CHAPTER XVIII. In the private office of the Director of the Radio Station at Duvornik, Hugo Brandon,'now out of his own mouth and by the acclamation of some thousands of adherents declared Hereditary Arch-Duke of Styria and the Islands, sat at a table and felt very sick. Before' him was an untasted omelette, a salad, and a flask of red wine. He had drunk a little of the wine, but the very idea of food nauseated him. He felt somehow —emptied. As if virtue had gone out of him, like his speech, into empty space. He felt that he had been founding wanting, even without being tried. Yet, on the face of it, all had again gone well. The Colonel had landed him safely and to time. And he had found the Radio Station already in the possession of his own partisans from afmong the garrison. He had delivered his speech satisfactorily—nervously, of course; but, as Flanescu had said, that had probably given it the human touch without which all words on the radio are a vain thing. Nor had he been content with Casimir Konski’s neatly balanced phrases, and the carefully weighed promises that seemed to mean so much and in reality committed him to so little.

He had taken the bit between his teeth during the last three minutes. He had told his countrymen that he had come back to them because he believed they needed him; he believed that they were tired of the Republic, with its poverty of spirit, its cringing to expedienccy, its dingy ineffectiveness. But that if he was wrong, he would retire at once. He had promised to ride next day from Duvornik through Bratza to the Capital, and to accept the verdict of the .manner of his reception at the hands of his Styrians throughout the villages along the way. He had made his gesture. And even Casimir Konski, listening in von Auffenburg’s shabbily furnished office, could hardly repress a certain admiration. "Unwise,” he said, “but there’s a flame about it ” The General banged his fist down on the desk. “If I know Styria,” he said, “that wins us the game! That’s enough for me, Casimir. 1 shall have the Capital by nightfall.” He struck a bell for his orderly, and picked up his cap. (To be Continued.)