Dennis Wheatley - The Secret War

It was cold now. The temperature had fallen at least forty degrees;. as it does each night in the Abyssinian highlands. They were glad of the bottle of fake Chartreuse which stood on, the table before them, , even if it was poor stuff it at least sent a fresh glow of warmth through their bodies.

For half an hour they talked of trivialities and he had been speaking of the first Journey East of Suez that he had ever made when she said

'Tell me more about yourself, Anthony. You've visited so many strange places yet it doesn't seem to have altered you a little bit.'

'From what?' he asked curiously.

'Oh, I don't know, somehow you seem as though you must always have been lean and brown and tall and very attractive, but rather silent, and a little cynical; as though nothing had ever touched you very deeply.'

`No,' he smiled. `You were thinking I hadn't changed much from that time I can't remember when we met years ago.'

`Nonsense,' she said airily. `I've already told you that was in some previous existence, although you won't believe me. I want you to tell me what you've been doing in this one.'

He stared at her hard for a moment, shrugged, and began to tell her of his past. Usually he was rather reticent about his adventures but with her he talked easily and well; just as though they had been intimate friends for many years.

Outside, the Abyssinian night grew blacker. Below, the watchmen, who were there to drive off the hyenas, sang their tuneless chorus. Time drifted on, the clock struck nine, ten, eleven without their noticing it. All thought of the strange and dangerous adventure into which they had bean drawn had left them. They were completely happy in each other's company.

It was Lovelace who, at last, suggested it was time

for her to get to bed because Blatta Ingida Yohannes would probably be calling for them at the same ungodly hour again next morning.

`I'm not in the least tired,' she said as she stood up reluctantly. `This evening's been a little oasis of delight. Anthony, in a desert of dread and distress. I suppose we must think of tomorrow though, so I'll go to bed now, although my brain is much too active for sleep yet. I'll read for a bit I think,'

As she spoke she picked up a magazine which someone had left on a side table. It was a nine months old copy of Country Life.

He stood beside her as she flicked carelessly through the pages. For a second she paused at an article on Mazes in famous English gardens; then she made a move to pass on but he exclaimed: `One moment!' and seized her hand.

His eye had caught a photograph of the maze at his own home, Fronds Court in Yorkshire. In his mind's eye he saw it again as he had seen it so often with all its yew hedges trim and orderly but he saw something else as well. He knew now where he had met Valerie before.

She glanced up at him and the change in his expression must have given him away, for she said softly; 'You've guessed at last haven't you?'

'Yes,' he said slowly, and in a fraction of time he lived again that long past moment of a summer afternoon. The gardens at Fronds had been thrown open for a charity. That was why, wanting to be alone, he had found a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, with great, grey eyes and chestnut hair done up in pigtails. She had come racing towards him near tears with distress at not being able to find her way out, He had told her it was a two hundred year old custom that anyone lost in the maze should pay a forfeit if they wished to be led out of it and, upon her agreeing, laughingly demanded a kiss.. At first she had refused but, when he had insisted, instead of the childish peck on the cheek he had expected, to his immense surprise the little girl had solemnly reached up her arms, placed them about his neck and kissed him full and hard upon. the mouth. As he had led her outward along the green walled twisting paths she had told him shyly that she had never kissed anyone like that before and that those sort of kisses were sacred things. He had felt a little bewildered, and a little ashamed, but he had found her parents for her and they had all driven away in a big Rolls Royce to York, where they were spending the week end while doing a motoring tour of England.

The episode of that serious child had troubled him a little for a few days before it had slipped from his memory; to return now as clearly as if it had occurred only the day before.

His brown eyes met Valerie's grey ones. She raised her arms and, after a dozen years, he felt them around his neck again. Before he realised what he was doing he had clasped her to him and her soft lips had melted into his,

Suddenly she threw back her head and sobbed `Oh, we're a couple of beastly rotten cads but we can't help it, darling can we?'

`No,' he said, `no. I've never loved anyone before, but I love you, Valerie and it's hell that it should happen like this yet I can't help it.' With all the pent up passion of years he pressed his lips on hers again just as Christopher entered the room.

22

The king of kings goes by

A heavy banging on her door roused Valerie at half past five the following morning and she heard the Greek hotel porter call out; 'Blatta Ingida Yohannes has telephoned, lady he will be here at six.' It was the same formula as that with which she had been roused on the previous day.

After a second she realised that she was in Addis Ababa and the awful scene of the night before came sharply back to her. Christopher's demoniacal rage when he had returned from his round of the town to find her in Anthony Lovelace's arms and their long, bitter wrangle afterwards.

It seemed as if he had kept her up half the night and that for the other half she had tossed a sleepless prey to shame and misery. Her mouth was parched and, as she crawled out of bed, she knew that a splitting headache was starting.

Her mirror was no comfort. It showed her smooth chestnut hair tangled and tumbled from her restless night, dark circles under the big grey eyes which stared back at her, and that the climate was playing the very devil with her complexion. Hastily she began to dab on a coat of soothing oil.

The thought of another sightseeing expedition appalled her. As if it wasn't enough that she would have to handle Christopher and Lovelace with extreme diplomacy, that all three of them were engaged on a secret man hunt which might become an open attempt at assassination within the next twenty four hours, without having to exhaust herself making polite conversation with the young Abyssinian while they trudged round schools and hospitals.

She began to brush her hair vigorously while she thought over the wretched business that had occurred the night before. Lovelace ought not to have kissed her. He had known from the moment they had met just a month ago, back in the States that she was engaged to Christopher. But had he kissed her? Yes, afterwards, as though he never meant to stop; but she had kissed him first.

Valerie was completely honest with herself; she adored the lanky, brown faced. Englishman; always had, ever since that day long ago when he had made her give him a kiss as a forfeit before showing her the way out of the maze at his lovely old home in Yorkshire. How strange that he should have forgotten it until the night before; yet not strange really as he was already a full grown man whereas she had been only a little girl with pigtails and a short frock. She had been obsessed with the thought of him for months afterwards, made him her dream hero, and woven a thousand romances round his tall loosely knit figure. It had never occurred to her then that she was being disloyal to Christopher because, in those days, she looked on Christopher as a brother. She wondered now if she had ever really thought of him in any other way. She loved him, had done so as long as she could remember, because of his gentleness and his chivalry and his devastatingly good looks. Later, fascinated by his passionate idealism and touched by his pathetically impractical nature, she had begun to mother him as well, until her admiration and affection for him had led her to believe that she was blessed beyond measure in that he had never cared for anyone but her, and that their marriage could not possibly fail to be a happy one.