Dennis Wheatley - The Shadow of Tyburn Tree

It was now well past one in the morning. Since six o'clock Natalia had indulged her taste for heady wines at frequent intervals, and in the past hour she had put away the best part of a bottle of champagne.

From the glitter of her green eyes and the flush on her thin cheeks Roger knew that she was three-parts drunk. Orlof, now lurching across the table, was very drunk indeed; and Roger himself felt far from sober. But he was sober enough to fear that the other two were about to enter on a violent quarrel, and made an effort to prevent it.

"I give not a damn how Czar Peter died," he declared roundly. "But I'm mightily obliged to your Excellency for your first-hand account of so enthralling a piece of history."

Natalia ignored him and leaning forward focussed her eyes on Orlof. "Go on, Alexi," she muttered. "You told me about it once before. Tell me again how you and Teplof strangled him."

Orlof jerked himself back and, his muscles tensed, snatched up his heavy goblet. Roger half rose, from the conviction that the drunken giant meant to hurl it in her face; but suddenly Orlof relaxed, set the goblet down, and gave a low laugh:

"Since you know how things went already, what's the odds? Katinka appointed the brothers Baratinsky to be his gaolers out at Ropcha. She had meant to keep him a prisoner, but the excitement of July the 9th had swept the troops off their feet, and a few days later a reaction set in. It was clear that if Peter Feodorovitch were dead no counter revolution could be launched in his favour. So Katinka sent Teplof and myself out there to see him."

"And then?" whispered Natalia Andreovna, eagerly.

"We asked permission to dine with him. Poison was put in the wine that he was offered before dinner. He drank it and was almost instantly seized with an acute colic. We urged him to drink some more of the wine and thus make a quick finish. But, a coward to the end, he refused. I threw him to the floor and Teplof twisted a table-napkin round his neck. We pulled it tight. Thus died a weakling and a traitor."

"May God have mercy on your soul!" muttered Roger, shocked into the exclamation by this barefaced confession to most brutal murder.

Orlof swung upon him. "Keep your prayers for those who need them, boy! I was but a soldier executing orders. If pray you must, pray for the Empress, who sent me to do her husband's business."

"I'll not believe it!" cried Natalia Andreovna. "Katinka has too mild a nature to initiate such a crime. 'Twas Gregory and you others who decreed in secret that Pater Feodorovitch must die, from knowing that as long as he lived your own necks would be in jeopardy."

"Aye, he had to die!" shouted Orlof. "But 'twas the Empress who gave the order!"

"You're lying."

"I am not. 'Tis as I tell you."

As they glared at one another across the table Roger felt certain that next second they would fly at one another's throats. But once again he was mistaken. Orlof suddenly kicked his chair from under him, lurched to his feet, and staggered across the room.

"I'll prove it!" he cried, pressing his great thumbs against two carved rosettes in a heavy oak bureau. "May St. Nicholas strike me dead, if I don't prove to you that Teplof and I did no more than play the part of executioners."

The hidden locks of the bureau sprang back under the pressure and it opened. Roger saw him jab his thumb again against an interior panel low down on the right, and a door slid back disclosing a secret cavity. For a few moments Orlof rummaged in it muttering angrily. "Where is the accursed thing? I've not set eyes on it these ten years past; but I'll swear 'tis here somewhere. Aye! This is it!"

Turning he slammed a piece of yellowed parchment down on the table in front of Natalia Andreovna. Roger peered over her shoulder and saw that it was a brief letter signed "Katerina Alexeyevna." The note was addressed to Prince Baratinsky, the text was in German, and it ran:

A new crisis menaces our authority and life. Therefore we have this day determined on sending Alexi Orlof and Teplof to have speech with the person whom you have in keeping. They have orders not to return until they can hail us with the cry "Live long, Czarina."

For a moment Roger was puzzled by the last sentence; then he recalled having heard that on the death of a Russian sovereign it was customary for those who brought the news to his successor to break it by using those words in salutation.

He had hardly grasped the full significance of the note when he caught the sound of running feet outside on the landing. Next second a dishevelled officer burst into the room. Flinging himself on his knees before the High Admiral the breathless intruder panted:

" 'Tis war, Excellency! 'Tis war! Gustavus of Sweden has landed at Helsingfors with an army of forty-thousand men, and is advancing on Petersburg."

"Ten thousand devils!" bellowed Orlof.

Natalia Andreovna sprang to her feet, and cried: "I feared as much, although my father would not listen to me! With our armies dispersed all over Southern Russia what hope have we of saving the Residence from that treacherous toad!"

Orlof seemed to have suddenly sobered up. Snatching the parch­ment from the table, he threw it among the jumble of papers in the bureau and snapped down the lid. With his heavily-pouched eyes showing something of their old fire he turned upon her. "We still have the Fleet. St. Nicholas be praised that its sailing for the Mediterranean was delayed. It may prove our salvation yet!"

Next moment he had grabbed up a great jewelled scimitar and brandishing it above his head ran from the room shouting at the top of his voice in a jumble of French, German and Russian. "To arms! To arms! Find me Admiral Greig! Every man to his post! To arms! To arms! We are attacked!"

The officer who had brought the news, Natalia and Roger all followed him at the run. Halfway across the landing Roger halted in his tracks and shouted to his mistress. "I left my snuff-box on the table. Don't wait for me. I'll get it and be with you again in one moment."

Swinging round he dashed back into the High Admiral's foul-smelling den, went straight to the bureau and pressed the two rosettes, just as Orlof had done. The lid flew open. In frantic haste he searched among the papers. Suddenly his eye fell upon the note that Orlof had produced. Thrusting it into his pocket, he snapped down the lid again and ran to join the others.

The impulse to steal the document had come to him on the spur of the moment. It had suddenly flashed upon him that it was probably the only existing proof in the world that Catherine II was a mur­deress; and had deliberately ordered the assassination of her husband. As such it was a State paper of incalculable value. Yet he also knew that if the theft were discovered and the paper found in his possession death under the knout would be his portion.

CHAPTERxv

T H E P L 0 T

A Tthe bottom of the staircase Roger caught up with Natalia. The scene had changed since they had come upon Orlof sitting there an hour and a half earlier. The long rooms were less crowded, the more respect­able guests having gone home, but hundreds of people were still dancing and feasting, the great majority of them now obviously the worse for liquor. The veneer of civilisation symbolised by the minuets, gavottes and quadrilles, danced while the Empress had been present, had been replaced by Tsardas, mazurkas and wild Russian country-dances; here and there men lying dead-drunk on the floor and couples were embracing openly in nearly every corner.

Towering head and shoulders above the crowd, the giant High Admiral was running through it, bellowing for the bands to stop and beating the drunks he came upon into some sensibility with blows from the flat of his scimitar. Within five minutes the revelry had ceased only to be replaced by panic, as the drunken mob, believing the Swedes to be at the very gates of the city, began to fight its way towards the doors.