A Princess Runs Away, page 7
“You mean that people will be looking for you?” Kelvin questioned.
He was trying to work out the story in his mind as she spoke.
Now he realised that he had made a mistake.
“I don’t want to think – about it,” Vasila said.
He could hear distinctly the fear in her voice as she continued,
“Perhaps tomorrow there will be some way out or – perhaps not.”
Because she was clearly agitated, Kelvin suggested,
“We will leave it until tomorrow and talk about it then. Perhaps you will trust me and I promise I will try to find a solution for you, no matter how difficult it may be.”
She turned and smiled at him.
“You are the kindest man in the world and thank you – thank you. At least tonight I can sleep without being frightened.”
She rose from the bed as she spoke and smiled.
Then almost before he realised what she was doing she had gone through the trap door and was climbing down the ladder.
When she reached the bottom, she looked up and waved her hand.
“Thank you again,” she called, “and goodnight.”
She went into the bedroom and then he heard the cupboard door close.
For a moment he could hardly believe that she had gone so quickly. Almost before he had finished what he was saying to her, she had vanished.
Yet he knew that what he would have said would only have just been the obvious, but not what he felt and longed to say.
‘At least,’ he told himself, ‘I might have kissed her goodnight.’
Then once again he was thinking that she was too young, too innocent and too unspoilt.
The only decent thing he could do was to leave her as she was. But he knew that a great number of men would think otherwise.
He lay down on the mattress and pulled one of the blankets over him.
But he knew as he looked up at the stars that he would not be able to go to sleep very easily because he was thinking of Vasila.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vasila slipped into the large bed and then lay back comfortably against the pillows.
She was thinking that she was very lucky to have such a delightful place to sleep.
If Kelvin had wanted to sleep in the house then she might have had to go up on the roof.
She thought that might have been rather frightening with bats flying around and with the feeling that she was not protected by walls.
‘At least no one will find me here,’ she mused.
She wondered what they were saying about her at Windsor Castle and she supposed that there would have been a search for her.
When the Equerry did come back with the Lady-in-Waiting and found that she was not sitting on the sofa, he must have been astonished.
Just her handbag would be there that would at least would be convincing evidence that that was where he had left her.
‘The Queen will be very angry,’ she thought.
Then she asked herself what the Queen could do now except to turn her out of the Grace and Favour house at Hampton Court. But that would be a very cruel action by a Royal since she would have nowhere else to go.
The answer was, of course, quite simple.
She could marry the Prince as they wished her to do and go with him to Saralovia.
But once again she was seeing the Prince’s face as he drove her and she knew that she could never in a thousand years come to trust or love a man who looked like that.
She remembered a line in one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems,
‘If thou must love me, let it be for naught, except for love’s sake only.’
That was what she wanted.
That was what she had dreamed she would find.
A man who would love her not because she was a Princess and who could protect him against an enemy.
He would love her because she was herself and it was the same way that she wanted to love him.
Not because he was distinguished, not because he had a title but because of the man he was.
But she was apprehensive of what would happen to her now that she had run away. Sooner or later she would just have to go back simply because she had no money and nowhere else to go.
If Prince Gadelov has already returned to Saralovia, would they send her after him?
It would be so humiliating and she fervently hoped that Queen Victoria, the Prime Minister and her Statesmen would not want to do that to her.
It was all very muddling and thoughts kept passing through her head and left her feeling more helpless than she had been before.
She wished that she could climb up onto the roof and tell Kelvin the whole truth about herself and she had the feeling that he would understand as no one else would.
Then she asked herself, why should he bother?
She was just a girl who had asked him to take her on the Helter-skelter.
When tomorrow came, he would doubtless go back to London and never think of her again.
It was all so worrying.
Without going to sleep as she had hoped she would, she kept tossing from side to side.
At last, while she was still worrying, she fell asleep.
*
Vasila was dreaming that she was very happy and that someone was telling her that she need not be afraid and he would protect her.
Then she was dreamily aware that she could hear a man speaking.
He was speaking so softly that it seemed as if the voice was part of her dream and had no existence in reality.
Then, as she listened, she heard him saying,
“He’s not here, he must have gone out. We’ll wait for him downstairs.”
Then another voice, also that of a man, asked,
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“He’ll come back all right,” the other man replied, “with that waiting for him.”
It slowly percolated through Vasila’s mind that he was referring to her.
She was just about to sit up in bed and ask them who they were and what they were doing in her room.
Then she remembered that, not having a nightgown, she had gone to bed naked.
She therefore lay very still and kept her eyes tightly closed.
Then she heard the men move away.
It was then she realised something, which because she was so drowsy, she had not been aware of before.
The men were speaking in Russian.
For a moment she could not believe that it was true and then she knew that she had understood every word.
The Prime Minister and the Queen had told her all about the infiltration practised by the Russians.
If they were here in this house, they must be spies who had crept in surreptitiously.
Then she sat up in bed.
They were here looking for Kelvin and he was their victim. They intended to kill him.
Suddenly it all occurred to her mind like a flash of lightning. Now she was no longer half-asleep but alert and aware of danger and what was happening.
The men had left the room.
Although she listened, she could hear no sound of them, which was not surprising at all, as if they were who she thought they were, then they would move in complete silence.
The man they were seeking would not be aware of their presence before they killed him.
Very slowly so as not to make the slightest sound, Vasila slipped out of the bed and found that she could see easily in the moonlight streaming in through the window, as she had not pulled the curtains.
The door was ajar and, crossing the room on tiptoe, she closed it very slowly and gently.
Then she looked around for something to wear and, as her clothes were lying on a nearby chair she put on her chemise and a petticoat.
Knowing that she had to climb up the ladder steps she did not bother with any more.
Opening the door of the cupboard and moving step by step to reach it, she pulled it to behind her.
Then in the darkness she started to climb up to the roof.
The trap door was mercifully open so she made no sound as she went onto the roof.
Now in the strong moonlight she could see Kelvin lying on the mattress. He was covered by a blanket and was asleep.
She moved towards him on her bare feet and then, bending down, she touched his shoulder.
Because she was scared that he might call out her name, she put her other hand on his lips.
He opened his eyes.
Before he could say anything she whispered to him so softly that he could only just hear,
“Kelvin, there are two Russians downstairs waiting for you. I think – they intend to kill you.”
Kelvin sat up abruptly.
Being used to danger he was immediately alert.
At the same time he found it hard to believe what Vasila had just said to him.
“Two men,” he said almost in a whisper. “How do you know they are Russian?”
“It was what they were speaking,” Vasila replied.
“You can speak Russian?” he asked in amazement.
She nodded.
He did not say anything more, but stood up.
“Stay here,” he said. “If I don’t come back, wait until it is daylight and then make very sure that there is no one in the house before you go downstairs.”
He walked as swiftly as she had done with bare feet across the roof to the trap door.
He started climbing down and, watching him, she saw him close the trap door above him slowly and silently.
She sat on the mattress for some time before she finally lay down.
She was finding it very hard to believe what had happened so quickly and so unexpectedly.
Yet Kelvin had believed her and he had not seemed to be particularly surprised that the Russians were looking for him.
She feverishly turned over in her mind what was going on in this quiet part of England.
She came to the conclusion that he was in some way fighting the Russian infiltration, which both the Queen and the Prime Minister were so concerned about.
She had never for one moment thought that there would be Russians creating trouble in England.
Therefore, if they were here, they must have come on a special mission.
And that must specifically involve Kelvin.
He had given her orders and she realised that she must obey them, but it was really terrifying not to know what was happening.
Did he have the upper hand by taking the Russians by surprise?
It was by the mercy of God that he had not been in the bed where they had found her. In which case he would have had no defence against them.
‘I thought he was being kind in looking after me and protecting me,’ Vasila said to herself, ‘but actually I have done him a greater kindness. In fact I think I may have saved his life.’
There was no sound except from the river below the house and there was the occasional hoot of a night owl.
‘Suppose that the Russians have been too much for Kelvin,’ Vasila could not stop herself thinking, ‘and he is now lying dead.’
Her whole body shivered at the thought.
Then she began to pray frantically that God would protect him.
And that if anyone had to die then it would be the Russians.
*
Kelvin had not argued when Vasila told him that two Russians were looking for him and they were waiting for him downstairs.
It had always been a possibility, but one which he should not have allowed to happen.
He now told himself that he had been most unwise in accepting the General’s offer of his house for the night.
He had been downright stupid to go to the circus and at least he should have concealed himself immediately in the house by the river.
What he had learned in India should have been a warning to him.
The Russians carefully thought out every move that they made. They had accumulated far more information than anyone ever expected them to do about the men who were on their list to be exterminated.
So they must have been following him, as he had feared they might, but he had seen no evidence of it.
They would have guessed after his visit to the War Office that his next call would be at Windsor Castle for an audience with the Queen.
It would therefore be quite easy for them to watch the gates and see who came in and out.
They could in fact have easily destroyed him at the circus.
As they had not done so, he felt that those watching The Castle were not the same men as those who had come from India to assassinate him.
It would have been simple before they left Calcutta to send a cable to England and they would have instructed some of their people to watch the War Office and others Windsor Castle.
These instructions would have been read, digested and considered by their Russian Director of Operations in London.
He could now see it happening all too clearly.
Because he was home in his own country he had been foolish enough to think that he might be safe.
Whereas he had been on the death list ever since he had set foot on English soil.
In the bedroom that Vasila had just left, he put on a pair of dark trousers and he found a close-fitting dark blue sweater in his trunk.
He was far too experienced in The Great Game to hurry. If he had done so, he might have made a slight sound that would alert those who were waiting downstairs.
He moved slowly and, as he found what he needed to wear, he put them on swiftly.
He was fortunate that apparently the Russians had no idea that there was a roof garden overhead.
He drew two revolvers from his trunk. He never moved without them when he was in India.
He thought now what a fool he had been to go onto the roof without one.
His two revolvers had been specially made for his work in The Great Game and with them were silencers.
A shot ringing out in the night air could alert people who had nothing to do with what was happening.
Kelvin then fitted the silencers to the revolvers and loaded them and, moving across the bedroom floor, he very gently opened the door that Vasila had closed.
The staircase was in darkness, but there was a faint light coming from below.
He knew that it was the moonlight shining through the narrow glass windows on either side of the front door.
Very very slowly, one step at a time, he started to move down the stairs.
Although they were carpeted, he well knew that the slightest creak would alert the men waiting for him.
When he was half-way down he saw them.
They were standing on either side of the door.
They were looking out, watching for his expected arrival.
Each Russian had a weapon in his hand that they intended to kill him with.
Slowly Kelvin took one more small step and then another.
He did not make a sound.
As if the fact that he was behind them penetrated the consciousness of the Russians, the man on the right of the door turned round.
As he did so, he raised the gun in his right hand.
With the swiftness that comes from practice and a reaction that was nearly supernatural, Kelvin shot both men almost simultaneously.
He shot the Russian who had turned round straight through the heart.
His second bullet struck the other man through the back of his neck.
Both Russians collapsed slowly onto the floor and they were dead by the time Kelvin descended the stairs and reached them.
He went first to the Russian he had shot through the heart and took the gun from his hand and some papers that he found in his pocket.
Then he did the same to the second Russian on the other side of the doorway.
The sound of the shots muffled by the silencer had not carried outside the house.
Kelvin found a garden door, as he expected, opened it and looked to right and left and there was not a sign of anyone.
The moonlight was on the river moving slowly at the bottom of the garden.
Kelvin picked up the first Russian and carrying him over his shoulder he went down to the river’s edge.
He threw the man’s body as far as he could into the water and it was taken away by the current even quicker than he expected.
Then he went back for the other man.
By the time he returned to the river there was no sign of the first Russian and he reckoned that by morning the bodies would be a long way down from where he had thrown them.
He walked quickly back into the house closing the garden door behind him.
Then he went up the stairs and, having put away his revolvers in his trunk, he climbed up the steps to the roof.
Vasila was not asleep.
She lay on the mattress praying that Kelvin would be saved. She was also listening because she expected to hear the sound of shots.
When Kelvin appeared, she sat up and held out her arms.
“You are safe!” she cried out. “I was so afraid that something would happen to you.”
Kelvin sat down on the side of the mattress.
“I am safe,” he said, “thanks to you. Now tell me how it is possible that you know Russian.”
For a moment Vasila hesitated and then she told the truth,
“My father was Russian.”
“That accounts for your eyes. I wondered why they were so different and not in keeping with your golden hair and your white skin.”
“What has happened?” Vasila asked him. “What have you done with those men?”
“They will not worry us again,” he replied briefly. “Therefore the sooner we forget about them the better.”
He paused before he added,
“In fact, Vasila, this is an order. You must never tell anyone about what happened here tonight.”
“They came here intending to kill you,” Vasila said, “and you have killed them.”
“I don’t want to talk about it or to think about it,” Kelvin replied. “I only want to thank you for being so clever and incidentally for saving my life.”
“I hoped that was what I had done,” Vasila said. “I am so very very glad that I heard what they said, although they were speaking very softly.”
“Now,” Kelvin said, “we have to leave, at least I have to.”
