by Andre Norton
But not quick enough, it seemed. For the door through which he had entered was opened, and he heard the faint rustle of someone slipping through. Then followed the sound he feared, the click of a key in a lock. Whether he liked it or not, he was now committed to going on, all retreat had been cut off — at least for the present. Which way was this newcomer going? He could not be passed without discovery.
Nor was he. Rough wool stuff brushed against him and there was a single startled gasp. He could hear the quickened breath of the other, then came a whisper.
“How could you be so reckless, Pieter?”
It was a woman who spoke. A woman of strong nerves, since she had not screamed at that unexpected meeting in the dark. But maybe, since she seemed to think he was “Pieter”, the meeting wasn’t unexpected, after all. And if she discovered that it was a stranger — While he was still hesitating, a hand groping through the dark found and closed about his wrist.
“Keep quiet,” she ordered. “The Kapitan has gone again, and the two other fools are in the kitchen, Kaatje keeps their minds occupied. Perhaps you have done well, after all, we shall have time to get you above before they return.”
So Pieter must be hidden from the Nazis. Then maybe his guide would take more kindly to the surprise of his own identity. At least he would play her game as long as possible. Treading on tiptoe as much as he could, he allowed her to lead him through the lighted door.
By the glow of some candles in a branched stick he could see his companion now, at least the back of her stiffly held head. She was dressed in a full-skirted country costume, and a winged lawn cap hid her hair and most of her averted head. But somehow he believed that this was no farm woman.
Without turning to view him, she pulled Lorens on through the room with the candles and into a boxed hallway where stairs led up. There she dropped his hand to pick up a lighted candle left on the broad newel post. But still she did not look back. Lorens trod more confidently now. It appeared that his luck was in; very well, he would push it as far as he could.
“Come on,” her whisper floated back as she started up the stairs.
The flight gave on a short hall where closed doors faced each other. Outside of one a pair of high military boots stood arrogantly. But the woman did not pause; instead she continued on to the far end where another stairway, narrower and without carpet, led up into gloom. This was topped by a door which she sent open with a vigorous push. Again a hall and two doors. She turned to the one on the left and entered the room which it guarded, Lorens still at her heels.
It must have been a servant’s room in which they found themselves. There was a dilapidated cot pushed against the far wall, a washstand across from it, and a battered chest of drawers facing them. Over this hung the one unusual bit of furnishing — a long mirror framed with time-dulled gilt. The glass itself was misty, but not too clouded to reflect the candle and their faces — white expanses with black pits for eyes and mouths.
The woman stood staring into that mirror, then she turned in one lithe movement to confront Lorens. She still held the candle in her left hand, but in her right was a snub-nosed revolver, a small dainty piece which yet menaced.
“Who are you?” The words were spoken in a low tone, but there was a passionate intensity to them which gave the question more force than if it had been wildly screamed.
Lorens’ eyes met hers, level and dark, then dropped to her mouth with its pale straight lips. Her face was gaunt, hollow of cheek, with its fine bones outlined almost proudly beneath the bluish-white skin.
“I am from England. I landed by chance in your garden — chuted down — ”
“R.A.F.?”
“No, I am a Netherlander. I have come to do a certain piece of work. I am telling you the truth, Mevrouw — ”
“The truth!” Her ugly harsh laugh was but a whisper of sound. “What is the truth nowadays. What proof have you?”
“None. Except the chute tangled in your trees.”
“So.” Lorens sensed that her first hostility was partly gone, that she was now considering the situation in all its aspects.
“What did you intend to do?” she asked after a moment.
“Frankly, Mevrouw, I do not know. I had planned to land in the field; from there I could have reached my objective. But instead I landed here, and there is the sentry at the gate. Perhaps the wall —”
“It cannot be climbed. They have a high-voltage wire along its crest. As soon as it is light, they will find the chute — what then? Don’t you think that they will not search every inch of the grounds and house! This is a stronghold which they have believed secure. To have that belief shattered will arouse their worst tempers. The Kapitan has a price on his head; already there have been three attempts on his life. No one is allowed here who is not fully vouched for and investigated —”
“And you, Mevrouw? And Pieter?”
“Do not flatter yourself that I am alarmed at your speaking of Pieter. You really know nothing of him. But it is our misfortune that you have stumbled into a plan too well made and far along to be discarded. We shall be forced to keep you with us and get you out of here, whether we wish to or not. For the present, stay here. No one ever comes to this floor but Kaatje and I. For a time” — again she studied his face — “we shall have to trust one another. Do you consent?”
He bowed. For all her rough dress he was sure now that she was no ordinary serving woman. “Mevrouw, how can I do otherwise?”
“Now where is this chute, perhaps it can be taken care of —”
“I left it entangled in some tall trees and then walked along the wall, through a pond, to the drive.”
“Then it is in the oaks to the west. Remain here and open the door to no one who does not knock twice, close together. I shall see what can be arranged.”
She was gone, taking both weapon and candle with her. Lorens groped his way across the room and dropped the bolt into place. Then he felt out the cot and tugged open the shutter of the window above it. The dawn wind was rising, but as yet the sky was dark. He crouched there on the lumpy mattress wondering just what sort of tangle his impulsive actions had led him into.
14
ORANGE SUN RISING
And shortly he slipped down to lie full length on the cot, snuggling his cheek into the musty covering of the flat pillow. His sleep was deep and untroubled by dreams, and when he aroused there was a grayish light seeping in around the edges of the shutters.
From below drifted the murmur of voices, and Lorens got to his knees to peer down over the window sill, taking care to keep the shutter closed save for a crack at the bottom.
Although the sun was not yet up, there was light enough for him to see the Kapitan climb stiffly out of the car. He came directly into the house. And then, with a clash of gears which suggested that the driver had lost his fine touch through fatigue, the car drove off again.
There was nothing more to be seen, save a pair of birds making a minute inspection of the grass plot. Lorens pushed the shutter an inch wider, folded his arms across the sill, and rested his chin upon them. Dawn in the Netherlands —
The night had been dark with heavy clouds. But now the sky, as far as he could see, was swept clear, ready for the sun. And streaks of color had already thrust out spearheads. There was a sweet wind, too, which lapped his head and shoulders. He had seen dawns halfway across the world, splashes of bold color, forerunners of brazen suns. But none as this.
What had that formidable woman who had left him here managed to do about the chute? Was it gone from the trees, safely hidden where it would not betray him? Somehow he believed that it was. His hostess had the air of one who was not easily balked.
He got up and padded across the room, examining it as might an animal shut up in strange quarters examine a new cage for the first time. This was a servant’s attic, and a poorly housed servant at that. Of the two chairs neither was whole. The pitcher on the commode lacked most of its snout, and the bowl beneath it was cracked.
The bed was a narrow cot with a lumpy mattress and many-times-darned sheets. There was a strip of very ragged and colorless carpet on the floor.
Only the mirror spoke of other ways of life and more spacious days. Its gilt frame was intricately molded in a design of flowers and plump cupids’ heads. Rococo, of course, late eighteenth century, he guessed, but it had an overblown charm.
His own faced stared back at him, reflected as a shapeless drab oval. When had he seen such a reflection before? The same lined face, grayed beneath the tan, the same hollowed cheeks, and fatigue-dulled eyes?
Why, it had been in Tjima — in that hotel where he had gone in quest of Piet. He wondered what had become of that hotel and of the young clerk who had been the unwitting tool in changing his whole future life.
Two muffled taps brought him from the mirror to the door. He drew the bolt softly, keeping the fingers of his other hand laced in the strings of his boots.
It was a small visitor who shuffled through, her doubled apron caught up as a bag in her claw hands. She walked with a curious rocking gait, one shoulder held higher than the other. But not until she dropped from her apron a bundle tied up in a coarse napkin did she lift her head to look at him.
“Why — ” Lorens loosened his hold on the boots, “you’re just a — a little girl!”
She smiled, no child’s smile, and yet there was something in that wry grin which hurt. A seamed white scar cut her soft cheek in a brutal pattern, but above it her eyes were very wide and blue, with long silky lashes.
“I’m Kaatje, Mijnheer.” Although her voice was pitched hardly above a whisper, it carried pure. “And here is your breakfast — lunch, too, maybe. We cannot come abovestairs so much when he is here.” She jerked her tilted head in a sidewise motion which indicated the house below. “Always peeking and prying, that one is.”
“The chute?”
Again Kaatje laughed noiselessly. “It’s gone right enough, where they won’t be seeing it. But you’re to bide here ’til you’re fetched. I must go now, he might be counting the minutes I’m out of the kitchen. Keep close and don’t move so that it can be heard below.”
She flicked her patched and darned skirts around the edge of the door and was gone. Lorens shot the bolt, then went to see what breakfast might be. He still had a packet of iron rations in his pocket, but that he was determined to cling to until in actual need.
Wrapped in the napkin were some thick slices of bread, but a bread such as he had never seen before, gray and rather gritty as if some of the stone of the grinders had broken off into the flour. It had a faintly sour, unpleasant odor. With it was a small cut of cheese, dry flavorless stuff which bore little resemblance to the golden richness he remembered of old. And that was all.
To choke down a portion of that gritty bread, that putty-tasting cheese, was a task without pleasure, used as he had been to the bounty of American and the balanced rations in England. This was a poverty of food he could not associate with his own land.
For drink he had only the stale contents of his small canteen. And the mouthful he allowed himself was hardly enough to combat the extreme dryness of his provisions.
But lack of water was not his only hardship as the day wore on. The worst was the unending boredom. He tried to sleep again, but succeeded only in lying on his back trying to identify every sound in the house. There was nothing to read, nothing to do but lie and watch the ceiling or sit and stare at the wall.
In the end he was driven to making another tour of exploration around the room. And in the single drawer of the washstand he found salvation — the stub of a pencil. With the florid mirror for his model he began to draw on the floor boards.
This curled and embellished leaf, simplify it here, lengthen the tip, accentuate the curve, put the design into green brilliants, or the Victorian French paste, and behold — one of the modern earrings made to fit about the outer rim of the ear.
And take a cupid — as Lorens did quickly enough — add tiny horns and give a different line to the full lips — there was a baby imp of whimsical appeal. Cupid and imp together on a clip — Lorens stretched out farther on the floor, his tongue tip protruding between his teeth as he corrected a false line.
Carla would like these. For a moment Lorens thought he could almost hear her eager laughter, just as he could visualize her with such a trifle in her fingers. Odd how he always remembered her hands best as being grimy and stained with brown smears, grit and sand under her broken nails. Yet those hands had been the only stable mooring in a mad, whirling world of pain, thirst, and baking heat. Always they would be his highest standard of comparison.
Yes, Carla would like the imps. He went on drawing them. But now memory gave them something of Ganesha’s amused tolerance for the world of men and all its follies.
It was then that the House of Norreys had its second birth. For Lorens, carefully nursing his stub of lead, was giving first expression to the designs which were to make him famous. Cupid and imp from a discarded mirror in a servant’s room were to roam the world on their stubby wings and win it with the charm of their own fat selves.
Not that he could forget his surroundings so easily. Once he stood pressed against the door as wooden-soled shoes clumped up the stairs and passed his room. But the knock he expected did not come. And after a time he heard those feet returning whence they had come.
Bright fingers of the late morning sun struck through the shutter crack, and Lorens risked another peek into the garden.
Kaatje came around the house at her rocking pace, a heavy bucket pulling her crooked body even more out of line. A short distance behind her came a man in a field-gray uniform, a pot helmet making him appear from above to be a sort of unwholesome toadstool.
The little serving maid paid no attention to her escort, and they soon were out of sight around the curve of the drive. Perhaps, thought Lorens, the inhabitants of this house were only allowed out of the grounds when they were accompanied by one of the Nazis.
But then who was Pieter and why had he been expected last night? What was this mysterious plan of which Lorens was now a small part, whether he wished or not? And how was he going to get out of this trap and into the marsh? The time was growing shorter. On or about May fifteenth he was going to be at Norreys. And the Kapitan was not going to stop him!
The hours wore on, then it was late afternoon. There was something going on downstairs. Twice messengers on motorcycles had roared up to the front door, and later there was another sentry placed to walk a beat around the house itself. This sudden activity certainly did not argue well for his being able to get away tonight.
A car pulled up before the door and the black-uniformed Kapitan hurried out to plunge into it with more haste than dignity. At his command the sentry climbed in, too, and another soldier ran from the back of the house to jump on the running board as the car swerved around, picked up speed, and was off in a shower of loose gravel.
Lorens had hardly watched them out of sight before he heard steps in the hall and the double knock brought him to open the door. The tall Mevrouw came in, Kaatje close on her heels. Both of them had an air of confidence as if for a time they were free of the need to be on guard.
“Sit down,” the Mevrouw waved him to the cot while she took one of the shaky chairs and Kaatje leaned her crooked back against the closed door, one ear against the old paneling as if to listen.
“We have perhaps a half hour clear now, they are off on a chase, a hot scent. And there is much to be planned. For the present you are unsuspected, as we got the chute out of the way. No, don’t thank me” — she raised a hand in protest as he tried to interrupt. “It would have betrayed us as quickly as it would you. Then, too” — for the first time her chiseled lips took on the faint semblance of a smile — “the good silk will be well used. It has been a long time since we’ve seen its like, or touched needle to such, hasn’t it, Kaatje?”
“True, Mevrouw,” Kaatje nodded, folding her stick arms under her tattered apron.
“Listen and don’t interrupt, there are things you must know. First this house is the temporary headquarters of the Gestapo leader in this district. He is afraid of assassination, so he has a series of headquarters and keeps moving from one to another, hoping to outwit us that way. But at the moment it is more to our purpose to let him live.
“There is a corrosion which power works in these Nazis. For just so long they can play the steel superman, and then inside their metal shells they begin to crumple. So we prefer to keep in power one whom we know to gaining another master whom we do not. Every Nazi within our borders is living on borrowed time and knows it. That is why the Kapitan must patrol the roads at night, always afraid of a rising, or an act of sabotage here which will either mean his death or call down the wrath of his superiors.
“But his presence makes an excellent cloak for our own activities. I do not know what is your mission here, Mijnheer. Manifestly you were not sent to us or you would have come prepared with the proper knowledge.”
She paused as if waiting for him to explain. Lorens hesitated. He had heard the stories of enemy agents placed within underground movements to betray their companions at the right moment. But he could not believe when his eyes met her deeply sunken ones that this woman, whose coarse dress and modulated voice were so much at a variance, was one of them.
“I am trying to reach an island in the marsh. Once there, I was told, I would be passed along to the place I must reach this month — ”
“One of those are you?” she nodded. “But you are a good five miles out of your way. And I cannot see now how you will be able to get back — ”
“Back? You mean that I am farther from the coast than the marsh?”
“Yes. This is Dosterdoorn.”
“Dosterdoorn! Why, then I am within striking distance! Tell me, what do you know of conditions now in a little village called Norreypoder?”
“Norreypoder? They have had it hard. It is the Kapitan’s district, and he seems to have some special spite against the place. They have taken hostages from there three times since the first of the year. He keeps an extra watch on the town, almost as if he were waiting for something to happen there.”
