by John Creasey
Bullets—spilled from the drum of the machine-gun as it fell—started exploding in the flames and shot in all directions like a gigantic firework.
He heard an oath from behind him, and out of the corner of his eye saw one of the others fall—in the masks, he could not tell which. One bullet ploughed through the leg of his trousers, but he was half-way up the stairs by then, and there was less danger from behind. He was three steps from the barricade, and expected gunfire from it at any moment.
He leapt.
It was a prodigious effort, the greater because he was jumping from the lower level to a higher one, and he could not have contrived it without the balustrade to give him purchase. He went flying upwards—and in mid-air, saw two men. Not with tommy-guns, but with a long, steel hose between them.
They saw him coming.
They were masked, and that told him they proposed to use some sort of gas. But the sight of his huge frame, flying through the air and only a few feet from them, made them turn in panic. They dropped the hose, which struck against the wall. As Loftus landed, the two men were backing towards a narrow passage.
He heard the loud hiss!
He did not know what had caused it at first, but a sudden dazzling white light gave him a clue. Then he felt the heat about him—and knew that liquid gas had been used; the hose had been a fire-gun.
He regained his balance—and used his automatic.
He was in such deadly earnest that he thought nothing of the risks, the dangers involved. He saw one man go down and then another: one was so still that he was probably dead.
As he passed them, he saw the second turning a gun on him—and fired as he moved. The gun dropped, harmless; the man’s wrist shattered. His curses, in guttural German, flew after Loftus through the roar of the flames, the hiss of extinguishers, the shouting of orders below-stairs.
The passage itself was empty and quiet.
Three doors led from it, two of them standing open. As he approached the one that was closed, he stopped abruptly. For at the end of the passage, in what seemed a blank wall, an opening had suddenly appeared—clearly operated on the same basis as the sliding-doors of Craigie’s office.
A woman stood there.
Behind her was a man. He could recognise neither because of the masks they wore, although his mind leapt at once to Richoffen and Paula Duveen. But the fact that the nearer of them was a woman made no difference to what he had to do.
He fired, knowing he had only one bullet left.
The bullet went home and he heard her gasp, a muffled sound behind her mask. She staggered, then fell across the threshold of the secret doorway.
Loftus went forward.
The gun in his hand gave no inkling of the fact that he was virtually unarmed, but he did not have to worry. Footsteps pounded beside him; he saw Martin Best with a gun in each hand, and took one as calmly as a runner would take the baton in a relay race. Best had reckoned he would need it, of course: it was the way the Department men worked—anticipating what was wanted, rarely if ever caught napping.
The door began to close.
It pressed against the unconscious woman and began to crush her ribs. The speed of its movement slackened, but did not stop altogether. Loftus knew that but for her blocking it, the door would have closed before he reached it.
He fired at a man’s back as he reached the partition, and squeezed through, stepping over the woman as he went. Best followed, an even tighter squeeze, but stopped at a gesture from Loftus, to drag the groaning woman clear of the steel doors.
There was another, similar door, opposite them.
Through it, a man had gone. Loftus fired twice into the gap, then leapt at it. But the door was so nearly closed that there was no chance of getting through. It snapped shut—and from beyond it, there was movement: a whirring movement that for a moment he could not identify. Then suddenly guessing, he turned and rapped:
‘The cellar—quick!’
As Best turned with him, two men came hurrying along the passage: soldiers with fixed bayonets, and of course masked.
‘Get the woman out of there!’ Best called, and raced after Loftus who had already reached the head of the stairs. By now, the second landing, some fifteen feet below, was burning with a fierce, white heat which was shrivelling the walls. The banisters were blazing furiously, too, but there was remarkably little smoke.
They could see the men below, doggedly but hopelessly trying to get the fire under control. Nothing would stop the staircase from collapsing.
‘I’ll drop, old man,’ Loftus grunted—and even now, his manner and tone seemed casual.
He sped to the end of the passage where the banisters were so far unaffected, and swung himself over. For a moment, he hung in mid-air, gripping the balustrade. Then moving his grip to the uprights, he went down them slowly, still hanging over the hall. The banisters creaked ominously, and he glanced down. He had some ten feet or so to drop.
He let himself go, bending his knees to lessen the impact, and he touched the floor half-stooping. But someone broke his fall and he drew himself up, unharmed.
‘The cellar!’ he said. And without waiting to see whether Best had been able to jump, he raced for the kitchen door with the Errols and two soldiers hard on his heels. The passage was an inferno, now—so hot that breathing was painful and his clothes seemed to be welded on to him.
Yet he was completely oblivious of these things.
He went through the kitchen and into the large scullery, where a door he yanked open showed a flight of stone steps leading down into cavernous darkness. Behind him, the flames were hissing and crackling, and he heard one crash that could only have been a collapsing wall or roof.
The beam of his torch stabbed downwards. At the foot of the stairs was a stone-walled passage, and beyond it, an open door. He went down three steps at a time, and straight through the doorway, gun in hand.
The torchlight played over a large room, well-furnished and showing signs of recent habitation—and of flight. Cupboard doors and filing cabinet drawers stood wide open, and there were papers strewn about the floor. Against one wall, a pile of charred paper still smouldered.
But there was something else.
He heard a moan, and saw what might have been a man in one corner—was a man. From the shapeless pile of blankets, a pair of feet—bare and blackened—protruded. Loftus hesitated, then went swiftly across to another door, which stood ajar. He saw a movement and stepped swiftly to one side. As he did so he recognised the hunch-back, Grey.
He had seen him only that once, at Fourways: but there was no mistaking the man, nor the expression in his eyes as he came in sight, gun in hand. Loftus pressed close against the wall: almost invisible, at that angle.
He let Grey get half-way to the door. Then:
‘I think,’ he said softly, ‘you’d better drop the gun, little man.’
He fired on the instant as the man swung round, his finger already on the trigger. Grey’s bullet went perilously close to the big man’s head—and as he fired, he jumped. He jumped the wrong way; the bullet Loftus had meant for his arm went into his stomach, and he gasped with the shock and pain. He did not fall immediately, but stood swaying, his hands moving slowly towards the wound.
Both hands were coloured with blood as they reached the spot.
Loftus said:
‘Where’s Richards, Grey?’
The wounded man’s lips twisted in a snarl of defiance. Loftus reached him, easing his fall to the stone floor, but the thin lips tightened and he knew there was little chance of information from this source.
He said flatly:
‘You’re dying, Grey. Why not talk?’
Grey muttered, gasping the words:
‘I have worked—too long—to bring about—your ruin, Loftus. You, all of England, all England means!’ His voice rose and there was hatred in his eyes. He raised one bloody hand aloft, and shouted: ‘Deutschland über alles! Heil Hitler!’
They were
the last words he spoke: there was an ugly rattle in his throat at the final syllable, and he collapsed.
Loftus looked bleak. Against fanaticism of the type that had burned in Grey, there was no reasoning. He rose, and glanced again towards the bundle in the corner—then forced himself to step instead through the doorway by which Grey had come.
He saw the lift at once: he had been right about the whirring noise. Flicking the torchlight around, he saw opposite the lift-shaft a hole in the wall, no more than four feet high.
He reached it in two strides.
Around it, and disappearing into it, were several spots of blood. He knew then that the man he had fired at had been hit—and had gone into that hole. Crouching low, he prepared to follow.
It was as well he did not get further.
He heard a rumble at first, as if from a long way off. And then the roar of an explosion which hurled him across the stone-walled passage against the iron gates of the lift. He saw that the blast had caught the soldiers in the same way—and saw, too, the flames and smoke that belched from the hole he had nearly entered.
And he knew, then, that his quarry had managed to escape.
————
It was only later that Loftus learned how the escape had been contrived. He had given orders for the adjacent houses to be occupied, but he had not reckoned with a tunnel driven to the other side of the road, some ten yards beneath its surface. It was found by the police and militia during the next hour, when it was realised that the empty house on the other side of the street had been used by the fleeing man, who had then simply escaped via its back door.
The tunnel had been blown in by him, to prevent pursuit.
Loftus was grateful for his own escape: he had clearly been only a split second from disaster. And the toll of that night’s efforts was already heavy enough. Davidson had been struck in the chest by flying bullets: and Best had tried to make his jump, but the top landing had collapsed with him. He was now in hospital—and Oundle was already at St. George’s.
But at least, Loftus told himself grimly, there were some things to set against those losses.
The woman who had been taken away by the soldier—who with commendable good sense, had promptly found and used the fire escape—was Paula Duveen, as he had suspected. It was unlikely that she would live long. Loftus had aimed for and hit her thigh, intent only on disabling her. But her ribs had been badly crushed by the heavy steel door.
She was conscious, and seemed to know she would not live many hours—and the pain in her chest must have been unbearable. But as Loftus was bitterly aware, she was no more likely to talk than the dead Grey.
Most important of all, however, they had found de Boncour.
It was he whom Loftus had seen in the corner of the cellar, and they had managed to get him out before the house had collapsed—the whole building rendered unsavable, by the liquid fire the defenders had used.
De Boncour had been unconscious—an unconsciousness brought on by pain, for the soles of his feet had been flayed and burned in an effort to make him talk.
He had not talked.
Pale-faced but with his eyes glittering, and his hands waving excitedly, he told Loftus and Craigie and Labiche how he had been coming from the hotel when he had been called aside, struck over the head, and carried to a car. By, he said, men dressed as A.R.P. wardens. Loftus had only caught one: further investigations were later to prove that three men had been involved.
But for the time being, that was unimportant.
De Boncour had said no word, although they had tortured him to try to find whether Labiche had yet talked. Craigie and Loftus exchanged wry glances, at that: Labiche certainly had not.
‘But, Labiche—you can, now!’ said de Boncour.
Labiche felt the eyes of Craigie and Loftus as well as de Boncour on him. The four of them were alone in the room, although the Errols and Yvonne were nearby, and Loftus had sent for Gay Parnell.
Labiche said:
‘Of course, m’sieu.’ He spoke simply, as if reciting a lesson: the impression had been fixed so grimly in his mind. ‘I wrote of the island, the place surrounded by water. It is near the German and Dutch coasts. It is reputed to be rocky and barren, and useless—as for aircraft, it is. The Germans established an experimental gas station there—and one day, a laboratory experimenting with euthan blew up. For a week there was no man on the island who did not sleep—no man, that is, but me and one other. We had been inoculated by anti-euthan, which protected us. There was no way to escape and on that island of the sleeping or the dead, we were prisoners——’
Labiche stopped for a moment, then went slowly on:
‘That was two months ago. Scientists and workers, all have recovered. They had learned of euthan from the English scientist, Golightly—although, I do not know if their information came from him, in person. They have found a substitute for euthan, which can now be manufactured in great quantities. But—the manufacture of all poison gas takes place on that island. The laboratories are mostly underground—for many years, they have been preparing it. They have lesser factories throughout Germany, but they are unimportant. The deadly gases, the fatal gases, are all manufactured on that island—deep underground, unapproachable by air. Stored there, is gas enough to conquer all of Great Britain. I do not guess, messieurs; I know it. All the assembled stores are there, waiting for the signal from Hitler for the final invasion. All else fails him—he must use gas. How long is it that I have escaped?’ he asked abruptly.
‘When you were found, you said you had been free some days,’ said Craigie. ‘That was four days ago.’
Labiche’s brown eyes stared at him, and in them there was horror.
‘A week?’ He looked stricken. ‘Messieurs—they may have started: the gas may no longer be there! If that is the case——’
He stopped, while into the room floated the wail of sirens warning of approaching raiders—and there was no way of knowing what those raiders carried.
18
Approach to the Island
Labiche had told the truth.
He knew it as no one else could, and in the following hour he talked more freely and precisely of what he had learned. Of how he had contrived to be registered with the Nazis as a research chemist, and had been pressed into service on the Island of Gruntz, a place so small as to be considered of no significance by the Allied authorities. A rocky place; uninhabited, unfortified. For years, approaching it in secret by submarine, the Nazis had been building underground there the biggest gas factories in the world—and no rumour had escaped to the Allies, until Labiche had been sent to work there.
No man employed on the island was allowed to leave for the mainland.
For eight months he had worked there, forced to produce—and try to find refinements which would make more deadly—the gases which were being prepared for use against his own country. Refusal would have meant death—and the end of all possibility of escaping, or otherwise getting word to de Boncour. He had found no opportunity until an accident in his section of the laboratory had necessitated his being sent to a mainland hospital. From there, he had managed to smuggle out a letter for de Boncour via a relative, but it had taken a month on its journey.
Much had happened in that time.
Labiche had tried to escape from the hospital during his convalescence. He had been recaptured and sent to a concentration camp, where he had been tortured—apparently in an effort to discover whether he had intended to escape out of the country to tell what he knew, or was merely trying to avoid returning to the island.
All but the more influential leading scientists had been forced into service in that place, and the island had become synonymous with terror. Labiche knew of at least fifteen fatal accidents among the scientists themselves, all caused through leakages of poison gases of indescribable horror.
There were, he told them, bacteriological departments there, as well. The labourers on the island were mostly Jews, and these and convicte
d anti-Nazis were used in experiments just as mice or guinea-pigs might be used by vivisectionists. Men died by the dozen every day. Men went mad, and were shot by guards—themselves ‘privileged’ convicts, wearing uniforms of rubber which were by no means always proof against the deadly gases which at times escaped.
The island, Labiche reported, was ringed by mines to make sure nothing ever approached its coast, and several small Allied vessels had been destroyed in its vicinity.
‘Nor could even the most serious attack by the Allies have any hope of success,’ he added, bitterly. ‘It would be doomed, from the start.’
‘Why?’ asked Loftus.
‘Why?’ echoed Labiche, his normally gentle brown eyes burning. ‘At every fifty yards, Loftus, there is a torpedo tube! Even if it were possible to get close enough to sweep up the mines, they could be replaced with great speed—and, messieurs: the explosive power of any one of those mines is ten times what would be needed to sink the Athenia! I tell you—no naval attack could succeed. It is too small a place to be vulnerable. And if any did get ashore—there is the gas. The gas,’ he repeated, and shivered.
‘What are the air defences?’ Craigie asked quietly.
‘There are five hundred Messerschmitt fighters on the mainland on instant call for the defence of the island. And underground, right there on Gruntz itself, there are five hundred more! There are anti-aircraft guns on platforms below the surface which can be brought into action in moments—and not in ones and twos, but in hundreds. The island—the gases—these are the last resorts of the Hitler regime. Gruntz is protected more than any port, any harbour, any city. It cannot be attacked!’
‘It must be,’ said Loftus, calmly.
Craigie drew a deep breath.
‘How did you learn all this, Labiche?’
‘I was there a long time, m’sieu. I had heard rumours of such a place, but I did not know what it was, nor where. Once on the island, I was able to ask questions. The Jewish workers, the chemists and scientific researchers—I never lost an opportunity for learning more. And,’ he added, slowly and painfully, ‘at times I would be seen talking, and then I would report my informant—would report that he was not to be trusted. He would be killed, you understand—shot because I had reported him! I, who had persuaded him to talk!’
