Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

So I did, still not knowing his name. Nicholas knew him, though, knew him at once. I knocked upon his door; he opened it a crack, saw our faces and flung it wide. 'General Dutov!'

Dutov fell upon one knee.' Your Majesty, how can this be? Where are you bound.'

'Ekaterinburg,' the Tsar said.

'No, you're not\ Too damned dangerous,' Dutov roared. 'Come with me. I've men to keep you safe.' He had, too. And nothing in his way. I am certain now that had Nicholas gone with Dutov that night he could have ridden off to safety.

But he would not. 'Thank you. General, but no.'

'Great God, why not? You could go to your death in Ekaterinburg, Sir!'

Nicholas's quiet voice seemed all dignity beside Dutov's roaring. 'My children are in Tobolsk, General. I cannot depart and leave them."

'Sir, they won't harm children!" Dutov insisted. 'But you and the Tsarina are another matter. Come with me!'

But he would not. Instead he said to Dutov, 'Once my family is united I will be glad of any help you can offer. But as you see - at the moment. General, I am helpless.'

Shortly thereafter Dutov withdrew with his band of marauders. Without robbing us, either! It was a still night, and very dark, and now unutterably lonely in the great spaces of Siberia. I shuddered suddenly in the chill, signed to the driver to restart the train, and climbed aboard. I was standing in the unlit corridor of the Tsar's carnage when the door opened and a head emerged, said 'Oh!' as though startled and then asked hesitantly, 'Commissar Yakovlev?' I needed no telling whose voice this was. Very quietly she said, 'May I talk to you?'

The second part of Dikeston's narrative ended there. Instructions as to the means of obtaining Part Three were appended in an envelope, paperclipped to the last page. In his panelled office at 6, Athelsgate in the City of London, as Sir Horace Malory picked up a silver paper-knife and slit the envelope, he found his hands were trembling . . .

CHAPTER FIVE

Deeds and Mr Grace

Everybody who has ever purchased a house is familiar with the airy ways and dilatory habits of lawyers. Most people are aware that it is the profitable practice of those who specialize in the conveyance of property to discover great thickets of difficulty where few truly exist. Even a solicitor who is not trying to cause delay will often do so, out of habit or lethargy, for months at a time. The lawyer with his heart actually set upon spinning out time will make a limpet look as lively as a thoroughbred stallion. Dikeston's brief instructions began the trouble, and it was perfectly clear to Malory that that was how they had been designed.

'The deeds of Carfax House,' ran Dikeston's relevant sentences, 'are to be presented for inspection to the manager of the Liverpool branch of the Irish Linen Bank together with the sum of fifty thousand pounds. Both are to be passed on to the holder of a special account numbered X253.'

'And in return, what we get is packet three?' Pilgrim asked.

'Yes.'

'Horace, where does it say so?'

Malory's lips tightened. 'It says so on the envelope, Laurence. In typescript. It actually reads, if you're interested, "Instructions for obtaining part three of the narrative of-"'

'Yeah, okay. Now, how about these deeds? Tell me the English legal set-up.'

'Have you read Dikeston's narrative?'

'Well, I kind of skimmed it. The guy's in a fix, sure. Look, Horace, we all know it's a sad story. When they get to Ekaterinburg, the Romanovs get slaughtered, that's how it ends. You can read it for nothing in the library. You can even see a movie. Tell me about the deeds, huh?'

'I told you about Yakovlev - that he went off with a trainload of treasure and then vanished?'

'Sure you told me.'

'Very well. Now I'll tell you about Dutov. He was a warlord, a law absolutely unto himself on the far side of the Urals.'

Pilgrim held up a hand. 'I've got the picture, Horace. I understand, believe me. There's chaos, and all these people are milling about in the middle. There's a fortune in various kinds of treasure. There's Zaharoff's document. Now we have warlords. Okay, it's exciting. But tell me about the deeds. You get them when you buy a house, right?'

'Well, yes. After the purchase is complete.'

'I thought so. After! We have to buy this damned house.'

'Yes.'

'Okay, Horace,' Pilgrim sighed noisily. 'Go right ahead. You don't need my say-so.'

'I'm simply informing you. The house can probably be sold later. That isn't important.'

'How much so far, including the house?'

'Two hundred thousand, I suppose. But as I say, the house can be sold.'

'Better check first,' Pilgrim said, 'that it can be bought.'

'Oh, it can.'

'Sure, at a price.'

Business talk over luncheon was preferable, it seemed to Malory that day, to further discussion with Pilgrim of South London property values. Accordingly he ate his salmon and drank his Mosel with one ear swivelling like a horse's in the direction of whichever of the partners had matters to raise. In the partners' dining-room at Hillyard, Cleef it had long been the custom to discuss openly any matters which might benefit from a general airing. One partner, recently married to an actress half his age, had received what he described as 'an interesting opportunity' to invest in a film. Smirks were exchanged across the table and thumbs turned down. General approval greeted an application from one of the great civil engineering concerns for a six million advance towards its costs in a Saudi building project. And Fergus Huntly's revised bid price for the seed and fertilizer company got a thumbs up. Privately, Malory thought it to be pitched unnecessarily high but was not disposed to say so. His thoughts were anywhere but in the City of London. One moment they would be sweeping like a satellite across the Urals; the next pointing like a finger at a neat, if not authentic, Georgian house some six miles from where he sat. Mr and Mrs Denis Abrahams, their house in Blackheath by now newly-decorated and repaired, were not anxious to sell.

'It's such a sweet house,' Mrs Abrahams told Jacques Graves, gushing extravagantly. 'We're frightfully attached to it. And it's so convenient. All our friends are near by.'

Her husband took a slightly different line. He was prepared to consider a good offer. But not an independent valuation. 'I am, after all,' he said, 'a creature of the market place. Supply and demand, and all that.'

Graves knew all right: Hillyard, Cleef was bent backward over the barrel, and standing upright again would come expensive.

'The actual worth?' Sir Horace Malory asked him.

'Value to us,' said Graves flatly.

'There must be a figure.'

'I got two local estate agents to give me an idea. One said a hundred and five thousand, the other a bit higher.'

'Offer the higher figure.'

'Okay.'

Mr and Mrs Abrahams accepted. The higher figure was one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds. Graves, sitting in their gleaming drawing-room, rising to shake hands on the deal suddenly thought Abrahams's eyes looked shifty.

And so it proved. Abrahams's solicitor was a Mr Thomas Plantagenet Grace, a partner in Holdfast & Grace, of London Wall. He was also Mrs Abrahams's brother-in-law.

'The point is,' Abrahams told Grace, 'that they must want it badly, but I don't know how badly.'

Grace nodded wisely. 'We'll find out - if somebody else comes in with an offer,' he murmured. Solicitors acting for Hillyard, Cleef, and this was a firm accustomed to enormous fees in recognition of its willingness to match its* pace to the urgent needs of a banking house, then approached Mr Plantagenet Grace. Their letter was opened and acknowledged by Mr Grace's secretary, and then placed in a folder marked 'Abrahams conveyance' to await his return. Mr Plantagenet Grace was away for a while; it was his custom, at that time of year, to recharge his batteries with a trip to Barbados. Hillyard, Cleef's solicitors informed Jacques Graves, who consulted Abrahams. Abrahams was surprised and regretful, but having instructed Mr Grace felt unable to do more than wait. To nobody's surprise, not Graves's and certainly not Sir Horace Malory's, the Barbados hiatus produced a further offer. Mr Thomas Plantagenet Grace discovered it on his desk upon his return. It upped the ante to£130,000.