by Andre Norton
The room by the canal was small, much smaller than the other caverns of the cellar and here was the safe partly built into the wall, as solid now as the blocks about it. But when Lorens knelt before it in the dust, the door gave readily to his pull.
He stood the linen-swathed picture within one corner, then put the jewel case on the single shelf. Two years it would rest there. Two years of — what?
The door snapped shut. His fingers were on the dial knob. What word would do to set the lock? And what would happen if something ill chanced and that word, in his brain only, would be lost? No one could say nowadays with confidence, “I have a future. I shall stand here two years from now and open this door again.” One could only hope. Someone must share his secret — someone to be trusted.
Under this roof now — since the other servants had been told to go — there was only a dying man and the Eurasian; neither one could help him. And in blasted Rotterdam who could he call upon?
He rubbed the sweating palms of his hands on his rough tweed trousers. Someone must share his secret — but who — where — ? As he bent forward again, a paper crackled in his pocket. He plucked at the white corner which had pushed above the edge of the tweed. A canceled stamp showed there, a blue stamp with unfamiliar markings in white. He sat for a moment, rocking slowly on his heels, staring at the envelope.
Here was the answer, the perfect answer, the only answer left him. He reached for the dial knob. Six times it clicked into place. For a last precaution he tried it, but the steel no longer moved. Set and sealed, safe for two years. And if he could work it — the secret would be equally safe too.
“Mijnheer Lorens!” Klaas was waiting for him as he came again into the great hall above. “Tuan Joris would have you read this — now.”
“This” was a letter, bulky and sealed. The envelope tore unevenly under Lorens’ probing finger, and he pulled out thick, heavy sheets of office foolscap scrawled over with the black strokes of his grandfather’s writing.
My dear Lorens:
When this comes to your hand, it will be because I can no longer manage my own affairs. I have never wished for youth again, but had I ten more years before me now it might be better for all of us. Two years ago I foresaw the coming of this night which will close upon the Netherlands. We cannot hope for ‘peace in our time’ until we have won it.
And never have we battled an enemy so well prepared. He has his cohorts in every land, his miners burrowing into the foundation of every government he plans to topple. Today we cannot say — until the last bitter hour — ‘this man is my friend, that my enemy.’
One of the favorite devices of the invaders has so far been a descent upon and despoiling of leading manufacturers and merchants. Sometimes these businesses are taken by outright robbery, sometimes by a pitiful form of forced sale. But, by one way or another, they all come into the hands of the Nazis. This shall not happen to the House of Norreys.
For over a year I have been slowly dissolving all our business ties, secretly closing down one activity after another, disposing of our family holdings here and abroad. The fluid cash capital which is the result of such a withdrawal has been placed in foreign banks — in the strongholds of those who stand against our invaders.
If our country falls, these sums will be ‘frozen’, we shall not be able to draw upon them, but then neither will the enemy. And if they seize Norreys — as I have hints of their doing — they will hold only an empty shell.
I have been watched and spied upon, sometimes by those I might have trusted most had I not dreaded the coming fire. And all those associated with me have been under this unseen surveillance also. That is why I cut all the ties between us, sent you away from Norreys and refused to allow you to return.
In those places where such information would do the most good — good for us — harm for our enemies — I have allowed it to become known that I am seriously dissatisfied with your conduct, that I believe you totally unfit to carry on the business, even if you were of age, that I have no confidence in you and will share no private information with you. This idea has been thoroughly planted, it had to be.
You are only eighteen and, as a minor under the law, you would have to remain under guardianship for three years. The situation is ready-made for the appointing of a Nazi guardian who could loot the House at his leisure. You would probably be shipped into Germany for safekeeping.
But while the heir to Norreys would not be allowed to escape the Nazis, they will have little interest in Lorens van Norreys who has been disinherited and has no claim upon the House or its possessions. The world will be told that upon this, your last visit to me, I refused to see you and that we parted enemies. If it becomes necessary for you to answer questions, remember this. We were on bad terms, we continued so until the end.
You must, of course, leave the Netherlands at once. If you can reach Piet in Java, so much the better. Although he is a rank fool in business, he can be trusted and he is your only remaining relative.
When you leave this house go straight to Varlaam, the fishing village. There find Captain Wim Smits. Follow his instructions, I have every confidence in him.
You are young, but I have never considered that a fault. Youth may carry you through to the end of this struggle. And when the day comes, and it will, that you may return, I shall look to you to carry on the House after the traditions which have sustained it through the years.
Since I have some belief in you, having watched you perhaps more carefully than you have known, I shall leave you free to carve your own future. For you will never forget that you are both a son of the House of Norreys, and a man of the Netherlands!
Your grandfather,
The lines which made up the’ Joris van Norreys’ at the bottom of the page were just as bold as the first letters, but to Lorens they wavered. He had only read it once, but he could repeat whole sentences, paragraphs. Those he must continue to remember always —
He crumpled the stiff paper into a ball, dropped it into the charred wood in the hall fireplace. There was a silver matchholder on the table near-by and it took only a moment to scratch the sliver of wood, to set the paper afire. He watched it flare up and burn, then he crushed the black sheets to powder with the poker.
“That was well done.” Klaas was coming down the stairs again, soft-footed, stolid-faced. “It is time for you to go now, Mijnheer Lorens. And take with you this case. It contains your passport and money. The old Tuan has had the proper visas added to the passport.”
“He thought of everything — ”
“Men such as Tuan Joris do, that is why they live so long.”
“May I see him again — just to say good-bye?”
But Klaas’s hand was already on the latch of the front door.
“He has said no, Mijnheer Lorens — Wait!” The man was staring through the grilled window in the door, his straight body tense and still. “They are coming up the drive!”
There was no need to explain to Lorens who “they” were.
“Then I can’t go now — ”
Klaas spoke without turning. “Go into the drawing room. And remember, you are not welcome beneath this roof. We shall find a way — ”
As Lorens moved away, the impatient tattoo of the knocker beat through the house, echoing up the well of the stairway.
2
THE ENEMY
“We would see the Jonkheer van Norreys — ”
The uncertain voice which began so fumblingly was caught up by another which possessed no doubts, each word echoed by the click of boot heels on the polished floor.
“Out of the way — you!”
And at that whip-snapped order, Lorens stepped to the doorway to see the three men who had crossed past Klaas into the house. One of them he knew.
“Steinhaltz!”
In answer to Lorens’ cry of surprise, the man’s head bobbed around on his corded neck. For ten years, fifteen, as far back as Lorens could remember, that same head had bobbed and nodded ove
r one of the thick ledgers in the outer office of a dingy counting house down by the wharf in the city. The hair had thinned and disappeared above the seamed yellowish forehead, the mouth had sagged a little more each year, but Anton Steinhaltz was an unchanging fixture of that dying branch of the family business, as much a part of the dark room as the cranky stove and the out-of-date wall calendar.
But now Steinhaltz stood in the hall at Norreys as if he had a right there too. The usual mud-drabness of his shoddy suit was heightened by a broad, bright-colored band pinned about his sleeve, crookedly, as if he had fixed it so in haste or in a poor light. In his dull features there was no change, and he still flexed his fingers nervously as if reaching for a pen which no longer lay in a wooden tray before him.
“Who is this?” The tall man in gray uniform was demanding an explanation of Lorens from the clerk.
“He is young Mijnheer Lorens van Norreys. What he is doing here I do not know — ”
“So!” The word lengthened into a hiss; the tall officer was not pleased.
“May I ask what you are doing here, Steinhaltz, and what is the meaning of this intrusion?” Two could ask questions, thought Lorens, and surely a show of natural indignation was part of his proper role.
“It is for us — the little people your high mightiness has never noticed — to ask questions now, Mijnheer van Norreys. And such as you must answer them!”
Steinhaltz had to look up to meet the eyes of his employer’s grandson. But his pale tongue flicked across his lips as if he savored this moment to the full. “No more now will it be ‘Go here, Steinhaltz,’ ‘Do this, Steinhaltz.’ Now we shall give the orders, Mijnheer van Norreys.”
“Silence!” The officer brought his heels together with a click and half inclined his head stiffly toward the boy. “I am Ober-Lieutenant Kobber, and this is Group-Leader Schweid” — he indicated the third member of the party whose blue civilian coat, Lorens guessed, should rightly have been a black one. “We must see the Jonkheer van Norreys at once, it is most important.”
“My grandfather is dying,” Lorens answered quietly. “Certainly nothing is important enough to disturb him now. Perhaps I can serve you.”
But it was Group-Leader Schweid who had the answer to that. “Have you been in your grandfather’s confidence lately, Mijnheer?”
The stark insolence of the man made Lorens’s hands ball into fists.
“No — ” he began, but Klaas took the game from him deftly.
“The Jonkheer has been expecting these gentlemen, Mijnheer. His orders were to admit them at once. And shall I inform him that you are leaving?”
Steinhaltz went so far then as to reach out a tentative hand, almost as if he were about to touch the Ober-Lieutenant’s sleeve.
“Is it not as I told you? The Jonkheer will have none of the boy, he knows nothing, nothing at all. We are wasting time with him — ”
“Quiet!” Again the whip cracked, and Steinhaltz’s oversized head seemed to cower down into the hollow of his collar bones as if he had felt the lash across his hunched shoulders.
“You will remain here, Mijnheer,” the officer ordered Lorens. “And you” — he turned upon Klaas — “will show us in to the Jonkheer at once.”
But Schweid did not go with his companions. Instead he followed Lorens back into the drawing room. He was a young man with a keenly cut, clever face and blankly dead eyes which moved slowly about the room as if they both weighed and X-rayed all within it.
“So you are no longer in favor with the Jonkheer, Mijnheer van Norreys?”
Lorens allowed his annoyance and impatience to show openly. “My personal affairs — ” he began hotly.
Schweid permitted his drill-squared shoulders to touch the wall by the door and hooked his long-nailed, hairy thumbs in his vest pockets. “Your personal affairs are very much the business of the Reich — now. You and your countrymen will soon learn the value of cooperation, argument only wastes valuable time. I have already visited your rooms on the Valeriusstraat. Yes” — he seemed genuinely amused at Lorens’ start of surprise — “we have been interested in your, Mijnheer Lorens van Norreys, for some time. You are a young man of great expectations — very great. And we found it necessary to learn all we could about you and those expectations. So now I have some questions to ask. For example — what are these?”
From his coat pocket he pulled a packet of letters fastened together with a clip. Lorens felt the warmth of the hot blood creeping up his throat. To get those, this black-coated jackal of the Gestapo must have plundered his desk, forced it open since the key was still in its owner’s possession.
“Those happen to be personal correspondence.”
“True. But where did you meet this so-interesting American who writes to you such long explanations of his actions and his country? And why does he ask these questions concerning where you go, what you do, the details of your daily life?”
Lorens shrugged wearily. “I have never met him. Three years ago a school friend told me of a club conducted by an American newspaper which furnishes names and addresses of those who are interested in knowing young people in different countries. It is a plan to make the youth of foreign countries friends. This American boy tells me of his life in his country, of the books he reads, his hobbies, his studies, and the holiday trips he takes. In turn I tell him of life here — so that each of us knows a little about a country which we may never be able to visit. We learn something of each other’s people, of each other’s daily life. We exchange opinions and ideas — ”
Schweid drew a deep breath. His lips peaked into a sort of soft beak, so that he might have been a shrike brooding over some new variety of insect before impaling it in his tree larder. He looked from the packet to Lorens.
“And it is the truth you are saying! But what a wonderful weapon! Just so can these Americans gather all this so-innocent knowledge. They can put together a scrap here and a scrap there and have a complete picture to work with — what forethought!”
“It isn’t like that at all! I don’t believe that Lawrence has ever shown my letters to anyone except members of his family. It is no weapon, this plan of world friendship, unless it is one against war and misunderstanding. If I get to know one American and his life, then, in a way, I am meeting them all. And when the youth of all nations are friends and understand each other, how can your wars be fostered?”
To his surprise Schweid nodded. “Yes, that is the weak point of such a plan, as we discovered when we tried it once. Unfortunately the stupid Americans did not answer properly the questions our young people were ordered to ask. They even had the audacity to find our propaganda humorous. And they talked too much of their democratic poison in return. One must hold the minds of the young to succeed, our Fuehrer understood that from the start. That is why these degenerate democracies shall fall before iron determination of the Reich. We are driving now to the Channel. Belgium is falling and then will come France — who is so smug behind the Maginot Line! We shall lick up the armies of England and then invade her island. And this time peace shall be dictated on the banks of the Thames!”
Lorens couldn’t resist a question. “Rather sure, aren’t you?”
“Sure?” Schweid’s eyes widened. “Why should I not be sure? Nothing will save France or England now. And with their armies in the field crushed, we shall be free to follow our destiny. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland — they are all ours. And now we shall sweep up the rest of you!”
“My American friend has a proverb, a folk saying which he once quoted: ‘Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched’ — ”
“ ‘Don’t count your chickens —’ Oh, I see. But we shall prove that American saying wrong. And when all Europe is ours, we shall turn north, even as the Fuehrer has promised, and drive the Communist swine of Russia into their eternal snows for good! We of the Herrenvolk shall — ”
“Too late — !”
The words echoed down the hall, into the drawing room. And Lorens
knew then that Joris van Norreys’ hard-won rest had not been disturbed, that the invaders had indeed come too late. Now there was nothing he could do for the old man he had half feared, wholly respected, and never dared to love, but obey his last wishes and leave the hollow shell of Norreys to those who had come to claim it.
Twilight was throwing blue shadows across the long room now. He knew this part of the countryside as well as he knew the room itself. Once outside, he could show clean heels to any Nazi, even if they had another and locally informed Steinhaltz to guide them in pursuit.
Kobber and Steinhaltz were coming down the stairs, he could hear the heavy tramp of the soldier. And Schweid moved to intercept them. Lorens began to edge toward the windows. But the boy never had time to put his half-formed plan into action.
The coughing roar of a low-flying plane suddenly filled the room. Schweid whirled and dived toward the nearest window, brushing Lorens out of his path with a stiff-armed jab. As he stumbled into the fireplace, the boy saw the tall outline of Kobber appear in the doorway just before a scream of tortured air drowned out the noise of the failing motors above.
With animal instinct Lorens drew himself into the cavern of the chimney place, powdery ashes stinging in his eyes so that he crooked his arm across his face. He did not hear the explosion; perhaps by then he was deaf. A giant hand tried to pluck him out of his refuge, then slammed him back against the rough stone, driving the breath from his lungs, so that he lay limp and choking.
When he was able to struggle to his knees again, there seemed to be more light in the room, a room which looked as if its splintered contents had been stirred like porridge, well mixed with plaster and soot. As Lorens tottered out of his hole, glass crackled and powdered beneath his shoes. The great chandelier had fallen, and where the windows had been was one jagged hole open to the rising evening wind.
