Getting to his feet, he set off along the path. At intervals other paths led off from it, and for a while he feared he would lose his way. But he had made the trip three times that night, so only once got off the right track. Shortly after having got back on to it, he caught sight of the roof of the cottage silhouetted against the night sky.
Cautiously he approached it. The door stood open and a faint light from it dimly lessened the surrounding gloom. It seemed unlikely that Malacou would have left the door open, so the inference was that the S.D. men had already visited the place and either found it empty or carried him off. Still treading with great care, although he now believed the cottage to be deserted, Gregory continued to advance and stepped into the small, square hall. The light was coming from an inch-wide crack down the edge of the living-room door, which had been left ajar. Just as he was about to push it open he heard a gruff voice say in German:
`Talk, you Jewish pig, or it will be the worse for you.'
For an instant Gregory remained standing with his hand raised, as if frozen. Only by the man speaking at that moment had he been saved from blundering in and almost certainly being shot down. The scene being enacted in the room leapt to his mind as clearly as if he could see it through the door. The S.D. mm had caught Malacou there and were questioning him. Next minute the occultist's voice came in a tremulous whine:
`I tell you I know nothing. I was about to go to bed. I swear it!'
`At three o'clock in the morning?' sneered the German. `You lie! You had just…'
Gregory lost the rest of the sentence. With infinite caution he had stepped back. Turning, he stole away in the direction from which he had come. The snatch of conversation he had overheard made it clear that the S.D. men had arrived before Malacou had had time to get his clothes off. The irony of it was that he often stayed up until the small hours making involved calculations from his astral charts and pondering over occult operations. But the Nazis would never believe that. And they would now treat his Turkish passport as so much waste paper. They would haul him off to a concentration camp and beat the truth out of him with steel rods. He would be lucky if he escaped the gas chamber. Gregory could only pity him, for he was far from owing him anything; and any attempt to rescue him would have meant a more than fifty-fifty chance of being killed himself.
Next moment, struck by a sudden thought, he pulled up. The S.D. men's motor-cycles must be somewhere nearby. Turning about, he padded softly round to the back of the building. There, propped up on their stands and with lights out, at the entrance to a dirt track road that presumably led to Rozan, stood the two machines. His heart suddenly lifted. One, at least, of his urgent problems had been solved. He had only to sabotage one of the machines, then ride off on the other, to be well clear of the district before dawn.
As he took another step forward a terrified shout came from the cottage. At the sound he halted again. He was standing within two feet of a clapboard wall that formed the far side of the living room and could well imagine what must now be happening in there.
Setting his mouth grimly, he advanced towards the nearer motor-cycle,, thinking as he did so that it might just as easily have been himself who was being beaten up. Had it been, Malacou, with his dread of physical violence, would certainly not have attempted to rescue him. No; it was bad enough that his contact with the occultist had led to his becoming stranded and penniless many hundreds of miles from any escape route to a neutral country. He would need all the resource and stamina he possessed to keep clear of trouble himself.
When he was within six feet of the machine, a piercing scream rang out. Again he halted in his tracks. That hideous sound could mean only one thing. Those swinish Germans were not merely beating up the unfortunate Jew; they had started in to wring a confession from him. Gregory's stomach seemed to turn over. Yet, horrible as was the mental picture of Malacou being tortured, he steeled himself to ignore it.
Another scream echoed through the silent night. A cold sweat broke out on Gregory's forehead. He was seized by a fit of nausea and closed his eyes. A moment later he told himself that the ghastly treatment now being meted out to Malacou could be no worse than that inflicted on hundreds of other people in the countries over which the beast named Hitler ruled. After a few seconds he opened his eyes and had got hold of himself again. With renewed resolution he advanced to the motor-cycle and knelt down beside it with the intention of removing the sparking plug. As he reached out for the leather toolbag behind the saddle he realized that his hands were slimy with sweat and trembling so much that he could not undo its buckle…
Scream after scream came from the cottage. Gregory was shaken by a shudder. In a hoarse voice he let out an unprintable Italian oath that he used only at times of extreme distress. Then he began to curse Malacou. The occultist had been no more to him than a chance acquaintance met with in the course of a secret mission. He was a practitioner of bestial rites, had forced his daughter to commit incest with him and had driven her to suicide. He had robbed the von Alterns and by his evil machinations brought about Herman Hauff's death. He had held Gregory at Sassen against his will and to protect himself had even been prepared to murder him rather than let him fall alive into the hands of the Nazis. Lastly, that very night it had been his attempt to get away from Poland that had landed Gregory in this wretched situation. Few people could have less claim to Gregory's pity, let alone by his misfortune saddle him with the moral responsibility of attempting his rescue at the peril of his own life.
Frantic to get away and be done with this nightmare episode, Gregory continued to fumble with the tool satchel. He got the buckle undone but his sweaty fingers could not find the spanner needed to unscrew the sparking plug. Yet to ride off on one machine and leave the other still capable of functioning would, he knew, immensely reduce his chances of evading capture.
As he knelt there Malacou's whimpering cries continued to come clearly to him. Punctuated by brief intervals during which even his choking gasps for breath could be faintly heard, he gave tongue to imprecations, long-drawn-out groans and gabbled pleading. Gregory's hands dropped to his sides and he stood up. However evil and worthless the man who was being tortured, he could stand it no longer.
Yet his sudden decision to intervene, whatever the cost to himself, did not prevent him from exercising his habitual caution. Planting each foot carefully, so that its crunch was barely audible, he walked round the house. When he reached the front door he got out and cocked his automatic. Stepping softly into the hall, he peered through the inch-wide crack between the door jamb and the living-room door. The sight that he glimpsed through it did not surprise him. It served only to harden his cold rage against those thousands of Germans whom Hitler had turned into beasts more ferocious and pitiless than any to be met with in the wildest jungle.
Although to him it had seemed an age, probably less than two minutes had elapsed since he had heard Malacou's first screams; so the wretched man had not yet fainted from the agony to which he was being subjected. One square-faced blond young brute was holding the Jew's arms pinioned behind his back, while the other, who had his back to Gregory, was holding a cigarette lighter under Malacou's chin.
With his left hand Gregory thrust the door wide open. Lifting his right, he shot the nearer Nazi through the back of the head. In a second the tableau dissolved into a mass of whirling arms and legs. The head of the shot, man jerked forward and spurted blood. Then he crashed to the floor. The other thug released Malacou and grabbed for his gun. Malacou, maddened by pain, his eyes starting from his head, heaved himself forward, tripped on the fallen Nazi then cannoned into Gregory. At the moment they collided Gregory fired his second shot. The man who had been holding Malacou had his pistol out but had not had time to take aim. To escape Gregory's shot he flung himself sideways, crashed heavily into a dresser at that side of the room, failed to recover his balance and fell sprawling on top of his dead comrade.
For a moment Gregory had been in complete command of the situa
tion… But only for a moment. Malacou's blind charge to get through the door and escape had thrown him, too, off balance. Just as he fired, Malacou, with arms flung wide, had come hurtling at him. His pistol hand was knocked up and sideways. With a sickening thud it hit the door jamb, breaking the skin of his knuckles. He gave a gasp of pain and the pistol dropped from his nerveless fingers.
Malacou, bellowing with fear and pain, ducked beneath his outstretched arm, brushed past him and, still howling, dashed through the front door out into the darkness. Even as Gregory cursed the Jew his eyes remained fixed on the surviving Nazi. He had scrambled to his knees and still held his gun. Before he could lift it Gregory leapt forward and kicked him in the face.
With a yelp he went over backwards. His pistol- exploded and the bullet brought some of the china crashing down from the dresser. Losing not a second Gregory stepped over the body of the man he had shot and, as the other Nazi came up on his knees, kicked him in the crotch. From his bleeding mouth there issued an agonized wail, his eyes seemed about to start from his head, he dropped his gun, clutched at his testicles and bent right forward. Berserk with hatred for these blond beasts that Hitler had let loose upon the world, Gregory kicked the man's head with his heavy shoe then, after he had slid to the floor, kicked it again and again until it was a mass of blood with the temple stove in and he was undoubtedly dead.
When Gregory at last ceased kicking a sudden silence descended on the cottage. Breathing hard from his exertions he stood there surveying the shambles about him. Gradually, as he sucked the bleeding knuckles of his right hand, his frenzy subsided. He felt no compunction for what he had done; only a sense of relief that he had emerged victorious and without serious injury from such a violent and uneven conflict. Walking to the door he shouted for Malacou, but there came no reply. Evidently the pain-crazed Jew had made off in the darkness and was hiding somewhere in the marshes. In view of what had taken place in the cottage it now seemed unlikely that he would again risk returning to it.
As Gregory stood there in the open doorway he suddenly recalled the foreknowledge about which the occultist had been so greatly concerned when at Sassen. His stars had foretold that at about this time in 1944 he would be in grave danger of death, but would be saved by Gregory. At the thought Gregory grinned wryly. The prophecy had come true. All against his better judgement he had found himself compelled to rescue Malacou. But whether, now that he was again, on the run, he would succeed in evading capture was quite another matter. Whether he did or not meant nothing to Gregory. Brushing the Jew from his mind, he turned back into the cottage to deal with matters there.
He thought it unlikely that the two dead S.D. men would be missed until early in the morning, when they would be due to report before going off duty. Soon afterwards the country would be scoured for them and all lonely buildings in the area searched. But the longer the time that elapsed before their bodies were discovered the longer it would be before they were known to be dead, and a general call sent out giving the numbers of their motor-cycles with urgent orders to arrest anyone found using one of them. Therefore, Gregory reasoned, if he putt in an hour's hard work now, removing all signs of the struggle from the cottage and hiding the bodies in the marshes, he might delay for several hours the whole countryside becoming alive with police and troops on the look-out for him.
He stood for a moment looking down on the two dead men, then ran quickly through their pockets, taking their wallets and loose change. They were much of a size and he judged both to be an inch or two taller than himself. The man whom he had shot through the back of the head had blood all over his tunic; the other, although badly battered about the face and head, had bled comparatively little. Choosing the latter, Gregory set about the grim task of stripping him of his uniform. When he had got it off he dragged the body in a fireman's lift up across his shoulders. Bent nearly double under the weight, he carried it about fifty yards along the path by which he had come to the cottage, then for a further fifteen along a side turning on one side of which water glistened faintly between tall patches of reeds. After pausing for a minute to regain his breath, he exerted all his strength and heaved the body as far into the reeds as he could.
Returning, he collected a torch that had been part of the man's equipment and a big jug from the living-room dresser, then went round to examine the two motor-cycles. The tanks of both were well over half full, so he drew off enough from one to fill the other, then wheeled the partly empty one round to the front of the cottage. Leaving it there on its stand, he carried out the second body and sprawled it across the machine. Having satisfied himself that it would not fall off, he wheeled the motor-cycle with its gruesome load down to the place where he had thrown the first body into the water. Another heave and the second body followed the first. Upending the motor-cycle so that only the back wheel touched the ground he ran that into the water as far as he dared then let it crash down on top of the two bodies.
As the splash resounded he stood back gasping to survey his handiwork. The mudguard and part of the rear wheel of the machine still showed above the water, but there was nothing he could do about that. Anyone passing there in daylight could hardly fail to notice the partially submerged motor-cycle but only a small patch of reeds had been broken down and the marshes covered a wide area, so it might be several days before the bodies were found; and Gregory's purpose would be served if the S.D. men's fate remained uncertain for twenty-four hours.
His exertions had tired him terribly and his leg was paining him badly again, but he had now completed the most laborious part of the task he had set himself. Mopping the sweat from his forehead, he returned to the cottage at a slow walk. In a corner cupboard of the living room he found a bottle of Polish Cherry Liqueur and poured himself a good tot. It was poor stuff, made from potato spirit, and he needed no warming up, but it lent him new vigour for his further activities.
Lighting the oil stove he put a saucepan of water on to boil. While it was heating up he collected the pieces of broken china and hid them above the eye line on the top of the dresser, then changed into the uniform of the S.D. man whom he had stripped. Under one of the beds in the bedroom he found a suitcase and a hold-all. The latter being better suited to his purpose, he packed his own clothes in it, adding to them shaving and washing things that had belonged to either the Pole or Malacou, a soft Tyrolese hat with a feather in the band and such oddments of food as he found in the larder.
By that time the water was boiling. With a bucket and sponge he got down on his knees and, blessing the fact that the floorboards were covered with cheap linoleum, cleaned up the spilt blood. That done, he set about hunting for the reserve of money that he felt sure Malacou would have hidden somewhere about the cottage. Taking care to disturb things as little as possible, he searched every drawer and cupboard, looked behind the books in a small bookcase and for a loose brick in the hearth, then with a smooth skewer from the kitchen he prodded the pillows and mattresses, hoping to hear the rustle of bank notes. He had no luck, except in finding a map of Poland that would prove useful.
As a last resort he went through to a small slip room which he guessed had been occupied by Tarik. While hurriedly running through the hunchback's few poor belongings he wondered what had become of him; but could only assume that after they had all been surprised on the road either he had not returned to the cottage or, if he had, on the arrival of the S.D. men he had panicked and fled. Either way, it seemed a fair bet that, like Malacou, he was somewhere out on the marshes. Owing to the strong psychic bond that linked them, it seemed probable that by this time he had found his master and was striving to comfort him after the ordeal through which he had passed.
Gregory's search of Tarik's room did not yield even a few Polish kopecs or German Pfennige and a glance at his watch showed him that it was now nearly half past three; so he decided that he must abandon his hunt for any hoard that Malacou might have concealed in the cottage. That there was a round sum of money hidden there somewhere he
would have bet his last shilling; but it now seemed certain that it had been secreted under the floorboards or somewhere in the thatch of the roof, and he could not possibly give the time to such thorough explorations.
Swiftly checking through the money he had taken from the two Nazis he found it amounted to eighty-four Reichsmarks and seven Pfennige, together with a few small-denomination Polish notes for which he had no use. That was the equivalent of about Ј7 10s. in English money; so would keep him only for a few days and was hopelessly inadequate for any attempt to get out of German-held territory. But it was better than nothing.
Still furious that his prospects of eluding his enemies should be so heavily handicapped by his failure to find Malacou's hoard, he quickly set the living-room furniture to rights so that no-one entering it would now have grounds for suspecting that a fight to the death had recently taken place there. Then he put out the oil lamp and, closing the front door behind him, went round to the back of the building.
At intervals, between his most strenuous exertions during the past hour, he had been trying to make up his mind on the best course to pursue. Lacking a solid sum to offer as a bribe, he felt certain that he had very little chance of persuading a skipper in one of the Baltic ports to run him over to Sweden. For a while he had contemplated the route Kuporovitch had taken, from Kiel up the Little Belt and across Denmark; but Kiel was over five hundred miles away and lack of money would again prove an obstacle almost impossible to overcome. The frontier of Switzerland was still more distant, and that of Spain obviously out of the question.
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