Dennis Wheatley - The Forbidden Territory

“Surely,” remarked the Duke, “Shulimoff must have had investments outside Russia before the Revolution. How did he come to be in such a state?”

“He’d, blown every cent; got no sense of money. If he’d got a grand out of the fruit merchant he’d have spent it next day. But money or no money, he’d got personality all right; that hospital was just run for him while he was there. He tipped me off he was pretending to be a Catholic; all those places are run by nuns, and he knew enough about the drill to spoof them all; they fairly ran round the old crook! After I’d been there a few times he told me his real name, and then the fun started. He wouldn’t open his mouth if anyone who could speak a word of English was within fifty yards; but, bit by bit, he told me how he’d cheated the Bolshies.”

“Are you sure he was not amusing himself at your expense?” asked the Duke. “He seems just the sort of man who would.”

“Not on your life. He was in deadly earnest, and he’d only tell a bit at a time, then he’d get kind of nervous, and dry up — say he’d thought better of it — if the goods stayed where they were the Bolshies would never find them till the crack of doom; but if he told me, maybe I’d get done in after I’d got ’em, and then the something — something — something Bolsheviks would get them after all.”

“And where had he hidden this famous hoard?” De Richleau asked with a smile.

“You’ve hit it.” Rex threw up his hands with a sudden shout of mirth. “Where? I’m damned if I know myself!”

“But, Rex — I mean,” Simon protested. “You — er — wouldn’t risk getting into all this trouble without knowing where they were?”

“I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea,” Rex admitted. “They’re at Romanovsk all right, and I was getting right down to the details with the old prince, when — ”

“What happened? Did he refuse at last to tell you?” The Duke’s shrewd grey eyes were fixed intently on Rex’s face.

“No, the old tough just died on me! Rotten luck, wasn’t it? He seemed all right, getting better every day; but you know what old men are. I blew in one morning and they told me he was dead. That’s all there was to it!”

“Surely, my friend,” De Richleau raised his slanting eyebrows, “you hardly expected to find the jewels at Romanovsk on so little information. Remember, many people have been seeking this treasure on all the Shulimoff estates for years.”

“No, it’s not all that bad,” Rex shook his head. “When things blew up in Leningrad in 1917, Shulimoff didn’t wait to see the fun; he cleared out to this place here, bringing the goods with him. He thought he’d be safe this side of the Urals till things quietened down, or if they got real bad, he meant to go farther East. What he forgot was that he was the best hated man in Russia. The Reds sent a special mission to hang him to the nearest tree, and they did — as near as dammit! Took the old fox entirely by surprise. He’d have been a dead man then if some bright boy hadn’t cut him down for the fun of hanging him again next day! It was the old man’s cellar that saved him. The bunch got tight that night, and they’d locked him in the foundry without any guards outside.”

“The foundry? In the village was this?” asked the Duke.

“Lord, no, in his own house. He seems to have been a bit of a metallurgist — made locks, like Louis XVI, in his spare time, when he wasn’t out beating peasants or hitting it up with chorus girls from the Folies Bergère.

“This foundry was a kind of laboratory and study all in one. I reckon they chose it as his prison because it was one of the only rooms that had strong iron bars to the windows. That let them all out for the drunk! All being equal in the Red Army, no one wanted to miss a party to do sentry-go.”

“How did he get out, then,” Simon asked, “if the windows were barred?”

“Easy; he had all his gear in the foundry, so he cut those bars like bits of cheese with an oxy-acetylene lamp. But the old man kept his head — as luck would have it, the jewels were in the foundry. He wouldn’t risk taking them with him, in case he was caught, so he occupied the time while the Reds were getting tight in making something at his forge to hide ’em in.”

“What was it?” came Simon’s eager question.

“Now you’ve got me,” Rex shook his head. “That’s just what I never squeezed out of the old fox before he went and died on me.

“It was some sort of metal container, and he put the stones inside. It was something that ’ud look like part of the fittings of the foundry, and something that nobody would trouble to take away. He soldered it in, too, I gathered, so that nobody could shift it without breaking the plant. You should have heard that wicked old devil chuckle when he thought how clever he’d been!”

“I can hardly imagine that it can still be there,” said De Richleau, thoughtfully; “the place must have been ransacked a dozen times. They would not have overlooked the plant in the foundry, especially a portion which had been newly forged!”

“Old Shulimoff was an artist. I’ll bet it’s there to this day among a mass of rusty machinery. He realized they’d spot the new bit, so he had to make it all look alike. What d’you think he did?”

“Don’t know,” said Simon.

“Set fire to the house, and then legged it through the snow. That foundry can’t have been much to look at, even if there were any Reds left to look at it next day. He reckoned that he’d get back there when things were quieter, but he never did. He was lucky in falling in with a party of ‘White’ officers, and later they all got over the Persian frontier together. I’ll bet — ”

But they were never to know what Van Ryn meant to bet. The crack of a whip brought them scrambling to their feet. Twenty yards away the sleigh had leapt into motion. They had all been so interested in listening to Rex that they had forgotten to keep an eye on their prisoner. He had stealthily harnessed the horses while their backs were turned. The Duke drew his automatic and fired over Simon’s shoulder; the bullet hit an intervening tree and ricochetted with a loud whine. He ran forward, firing again and again, but the sleigh was rounding the bend of the track at full gallop on the road to Tobolsk. Rex snatched up the prisoner’s rifle, but he threw it down again in disgust. Nobody could hit a moving target through those trees.

They looked at each other in real dismay. They were now utterly helpless in the depths of the Siberian forests, an easy prey to the hunters who would soon be on their tracks. It could only be a matter of hours until they were captured, or dead of cold and exhaustion in the wastes of these eternal snows.

It was Rex who broke the unhappy silence. “If we’re not the world’s prize suckers,” he declared bitterly, “I’d like to know who are!” And he began to roar with such hearty laughter that the Duke and Simon could not forbear joining in.

“This is no laughing matter.” De Richleau shook his head. “What the devil are we to do now?”

“Walk,” said Simon, the ever practical, and in truth it was the only thing they could do.

“Good for you,” Van Ryn exclaimed, patting him on the shoulder with one large hand while with the other he picked up the rifle and the strap of Simon’s rucksack. His cheerful face showed no hint of his quick realization that the pace of the party must be that of the slowest member, or his anxiety as to how many hours it would be before Simon’s frail physique gave out under the strain. He only added: “Come on, let’s beat it.”