The Black Baroness

by Dennis Wheatley

As she carried the case through the open doorway she said over her shoulder to Grauber: ‘There is no immediate hurry. I am travelling by my own plane so my pilot will await my convenience. I think, therefore, it would be better if I telephone down at once to tell the management about this hotel rat so that I can be here to make the necessary statement when he is handed over to the police.’

  ‘Damn the woman!’ thought Gregory. ‘Why in Hades couldn’t she let well alone?’ He had no pull with the Dutch Government and no possible explanation for being in the Baroness’s suite. Moreover, he was standing there masked with a pistol in his hand. There was a perfectly clear case of attempted burglary and menacing with arms against him, which was a very serious matter. If he were once handed over to the police the law would take its course and he would find himself sentenced to a long term in a Dutch prison. But, to his relief, Grauber said:

  ‘No. That would not be wise, gnädige Frau Baronin; you might be held as a material witness in the case, and that would derange all our plans. Also, it is vital that you should leave at the time arranged. As it is, we allowed only a quarter of an hour for you to get clear of Schiepol and well out over the coast, where you will be in no danger of running into an air battle. You are much too valuable to us for us to risk anything of that kind, and our bombers will be over Rotterdam at three o’clock. You are late already; you must not lose another moment.’

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ thought Gregory. ‘Air battles—bombers over Rotterdam in the next twenty minutes—we’ve been caught napping again, blast it! Hitler is launching his Blitzkrieg tonight.’ But in spite of his suppressed excitement there was nothing whatever he could do about it.

  The Baroness had carried her other two cases out of the room, and she turned in the doorway to reply swiftly: ‘I had no idea that zero hour was so near, but don’t worry; I shall be off the airport well before three o’clock.’

  ‘Gute Reise, gnädige Frau Baronin.’ Grauber clicked his heels and bowed once more as she closed the door with a muttered, ‘Danke schön, Herr Gruppenführer.’

  ‘Now,’ Grauber addressed Gregory, speaking once again in French as he walked over and perched himself on the end of the bed, ‘one word from you or one movement of that gun during the next ten minutes and I shall shoot you where you stand. I can easily press the trigger of your gun afterwards and say that I suddenly came upon you in the room here and it was you who fired on me first. As you are a masked man who obviously came here with felonious intentions everybody will believe me. So, rat, keep a still tongue if you wish ever to be able to wag it again with your thieves’ fraternity.’

  Gregory nodded, indicating that he understood, but he did not trust himself to speak in case Grauber recognised his voice, and for several minutes they remained eyeing each other but practically unmoving, while various sounds coming through the sitting-room door told of the porter’s arrival and then, by a loud slam of the outer door of the suite, that both the porter and the Baroness had departed.

  For another five minutes Grauber remained sitting there and during them Gregory, who still had his own gun in his hand, was sorely tempted suddenly to bring it up and shoot him; but the Gestapo Chief had the drop on him, as his automatic was already levelled and he had only to press its trigger. Gregory might have killed his enemy or perhaps, as his aim would necessarily be wild, have only wounded him, but at that point-blank range it was quite certain that he would have paid for his fun with his life and it did not seem to him that the game was worth the candle.

  A gilded sun-pattern electric clock set in the wall above the sitting-room door stood at seven minutes to three when Grauber, evidently considering that the Baroness had had ample time to get clear of the hotel, stood up again and piped in his effeminate falsetto: ‘Now that there is no longer any danger of my friend being involved in this business I propose to hand you over to the police.’

  Gregory bit his lip with annoyance. During those moments of waiting he had become confident that Grauber intended to let him go so as to save himself trouble. With a German invasion due to break at any moment it had seemed that a Gestapo Chief would have a score of urgent matters to occupy him, and the last thing he would want at such an hour of crisis was to spend his time dictating statements to Dutch policemen about a common burglar who, after all, had not even succeeded in getting away with anything. But Gregory remembered with dismay that Grauber and his colleagues had a habit of perfecting all their arrangements down to the last detail beforehand, so the real probability was that now that the balloon was actually due to go up he had nothing whatever to do but sit back and watch the well-oiled wheels of the Nazi machine begin to turn as it roared forward on the lines that had been so carefully laid down for it.

  For a second he thought of trying to argue Grauber out of his decision. He knew well enough that no plea for mercy would have any effect, but if he said that he spoke German, had understood Grauber’s remarks that the Blitzkrieg was being launched at that moment and that he was a German Fifth Columnist who had work to do for Germany, there was just a possibility that Grauber might have let him go; particularly as Fifth Columnists in countries outside Germany were largely recruited from the criminal classes, which would lend a certain plausibility to such a story. But the trouble was that if he once opened his mouth Grauber still might recognise him and, as they were alone, kill him without further argument; so he decided that he dare not risk it.

  Having spoken on the bedside telephone to the man on duty downstairs, while never taking his solitary eye off Gregory for a single second, Grauber replaced the receiver. With his free hand he took out his handkerchief and dabbed at a small boil on his chin, and Gregory caught a whiff of the rather sickly perfume that he always affected. Then the German perched himself on the end of the bed once more as they waited for the night-porter and the police to arrive.

  Gregory, meanwhile, was wondering frantically how he could get out of this wretched mess in which he had landed himself; but the evidence against him as he stood there was so obvious that any plea of innocence would only be laughable. The Dutch police were efficient and it was most unlikely that they would allow a burglar who had been caught with a weapon in his hand the least loophole for escape on the way to the police-station; in fact he would almost certainly be handcuffed to one of them. In the course of the next few days he would come up for trial, as even an invasion was unlikely to interfere with the normal criminal procedure in a coast city like Rotterdam that was many miles from the German frontier. Then he would be sent down for two or three years’ hard labour, and he did not see how even Sir Pellinore would be able to help him.

  He had got thus far in his gloomy speculations when there was the sound of a pass-key turning the lock of the outer door and a moment later the night-porter entered the room with a plain-clothes man, who had ‘hotel detective’ written all over him, and two uniformed policemen.

  Grauber immediately addressed the plain-clothes man in French. ‘As you probably know, my friend, Madame de Swarle, has just left the hotel. I had to see her on urgent business but I could not get here before two o’clock. I have had no opportunity to secure accommodation for myself, so she said before leaving that I had better take over her suite and sleep in this room for what is left of the night. She had hardly been gone five minutes when I went into the bathroom and caught this fellow in the act of wriggling through the window. Fortunately, I had a gun on me so I was able to hold him up, but you will notice that he is armed; and if I had not drawn my own weapon very quickly he would have shot me. Kindly remove him. I will visit the police-station in the morning to charge him with felonious entry.’

  The detective looked at Gregory. ‘Have you anything to say?’

  Gregory silently shook his head, but from under the brim of his hat he snatched a glance at the clock; its long hand now had only half a minute to go before it reached the hour.

  ‘Right, then,’ the detective nodded to the policemen. ‘You’d better take him along, boys.’

  G
rauber had lowered his gun at the entry of the police. Gregory suddenly stepped back and raised his, pointing it not at the police but at Grauber. ‘One moment!’ he cried, using the husky voice in which he had spoken to the Baroness. ‘Remain quite still all of you, or I will kill this man.’

  The night-porter had started forward, but he checked himself. For half a moment all six men remained rigid, like a set tableau. Gregory was listening with all his ears for the hum of aeroplane engines, praying that the Germans would be on time. The others were staring at him, wondering what he meant to do. A full minute passed, but no sound broke the stillness.

  ‘Well?’ exclaimed Grauber at last, turning with a sneer towards the two policemen. ‘Are you going to remain standing there all night while this man threatens me?’

  In vain Gregory strained his ears. For once the Germans were late in launching their programme. Knowing that he could hold the situation no longer he played another card. Lifting his free hand, he jerked down the handkerchief that covered the lower part of his face.

  ‘Gott im Himmel! Sallust!’ With a shout Grauber sprang up from the bed. But Gregory had him covered, so he could only stand there snarling with anger at the thought of the opportunity to revenge himself that he had now lost.

  ‘So you recognise me at last,’ Gregory said smoothly. ‘I am glad of that, because I wanted these gentlemen to be given clear proof that I’m somebody who is known to you.’ He swung round to the others. ‘Now let me make it clear what has been happening here. I am not a burglar; I’ve stolen nothing; and the only thing with which this man can charge me is with breaking into Madame de Swarle’s suite. If he does that I shall counter-charge him, because I challenge him to prove that he has any right here either. Again, if he charges me with threatening his life I shall charge him with threatening mine; and on that count I have the advantage because when you entered this room he was actually holding me up with his pistol.’

  The four Dutchmen looked extremely puzzled. The whole matter had now taken such a totally different turn from anything they had anticipated, and while they followed Gregory’s reasoning they did not see what they ought to do. At last the detective said:

  ‘That’s all very well; but it was the other gentleman who called us in and he wouldn’t have done that unless you had been threatening him.’

  ‘Oh yes, he would,’ said Gregory: ‘because he had the draw on me and it’s in his interests to get me locked up for the night—or longer if he can manage it—so that I’m out of his way; but I’ll bet you a hundred gulden to twenty-five cents that if you take me to the police-station he’ll never turn up to charge me with anything in the morning.’

  ‘Can you explain what you were doing here?’ asked the detective.

  ‘Yes. You Dutchmen have got yourselves mixed up in an international quarrel; I am an Englishman, at present employed upon a special mission for my country; while that fat, repulsive thug at the end of the bed there …’ Suddenly he broke off, and exclaimed: ‘Listen!’

  It was now three minutes past three; no aeroplanes were droning overhead but in the silence that followed his exclamation they could all hear the sound that he had been the first to catch: it was a low, irregular thudding in the distance.

  ‘D’you know what that is?’ he said quickly.

  The detective shook his head.

  Gregory smiled grimly. ‘At three o’clock Hitler loosed his Blitzkrieg and those are German bombs falling on your airport out at Schipol. What is more, as I was just about to tell you, the repulsive individual who so rashly brought you up here is Herr Gruppenführer Grauber, Chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.—I, and for the last few minutes he has been just as much your enemy as mine. I shall hold you responsible to your Government if you fail to arrest him instantly.’

  The four Dutchmen gasped. So the thing that they had been dreading for months had happened after all, in spite of their efforts to placate both Hitler and the Allies. Their peaceful, prosperous country was to be made a battle-ground and devastated in the Titanic struggle of the two mighty antagonists. The distant thudding of the bombs continued; almost as one man they swung angrily upon Grauber.

  With pardonable satisfaction Gregory watched them close in upon his enemy. He had got himself out of a very awkward mess and, triumph of triumphs, succeeded in snaring the German in his own net. He now had little doubt that the Dutch would take very good care of Grauber until an extradition warrant could be obtained for his transfer to England and trial for the murder of Tom Archer in Hampstead during the previous October; but Gregory had underrated his opponent.

  Grauber stood up and smiled blandly at the angry Dutchmen. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have only this crook’s word for it that those are German bombs you can hear falling, even if they are bombs at all. The English have been planning to invade your country for a long time and it would not surprise me in the least if it is they who have attacked you without warning. In any case, I’m quite willing to accompany you to the police-station provided that you take this unscrupulous desperado, who is wanted for several murders in Germany, with you as well.’

  His calmness and the thought that, after all, they as yet had no proof that Gregory was speaking the truth swiftly modified the anger of the Dutchmen towards Grauber; they looked from the German to the Englishman with doubtful expressions, until Gregory said:

  ‘That suits me. Let’s all go to the station.’

  The detective nodded, one policeman took Grauber’s arm and the other Gregory’s arm. They filed out, went down in the lift and, leaving the night-porter, into the street. As they reached it the roar of aeroplanes sounded in the dark sky overhead and a fresh series of explosions came from a new direction. These had quite a different note from the first and Gregory felt certain that they were gunfire down at the docks. He could only pray that if the Germans were playing the same game there as they had played in Oslo the Dutch were resisting.

  The Police Headquarters lay in the centre of the city, only a short distance from the hotel, and when they reached it they found that the normal quiet of its early morning hours had been rudely disturbed. Instead of only the small night-staff being in evidence policemen were still pulling on their uniform jackets as they hurried out from the dormitories to the street, while a little knot of senior officers had already gathered in the charge-room, where one of them was shouting down a telephone. Before the detective or either of the policemen had a chance to say anything Grauber boldly addressed an Inspector:

  ‘I wish,’ he said loudly in German, ‘to see Chief Inspector Van der Woerden; I have been taken into custody on a false charge, but the Chief Inspector knows me and will see to it that justice is done.’

  The inspector frowned and shook his head. ‘We can’t disturb the Chief at a time like this, and if you’re a German citizen it’s just as well that you’ve been taken into custody. You’ll be safe enough here, but when the news that Hitler is attacking Holland gets round—as it will in the course of the next few minutes—you’d stand a good chance of being lynched if you remained out in the street.’

  ‘It was the Germans bombing the air-port out at Schipol, then?’ Gregory cut in triumphantly.

  ‘Yes; it must have been, because we’ve just had it over the telephone that German troops have made a surprise landing on the wharfs down in the harbour, though how they managed to get there without our Navy intercepting them is a complete mystery.’

  ‘I can tell you,’ Gregory said grimly; ‘and it’s your own fault for not learning the lesson of Norway. They’ve probably been coming into the port for several days in cargo ships and barges, but they’ve remained concealed under the hatches until their zero hour.’

  Grauber shrugged his massive shoulders and taking out a visiting-card thrust it at the Inspector. ‘If the Führer has decided to take the Netherlands under his protection you should be grateful. He will save you from the English. In the meantime I insist that you send for Chief Inspector Van der Woerden.’

&nbs
p; The Inspector stared at him angrily. ‘That’s quite enough from you. Hitler is not the master of Holland yet, and I tell you that the Chief Inspector is too busy for us to disturb him at a time like this.’ Swinging round to one of the policemen he asked: ‘What was your reason for bringing these two men in?’

  The man piped up in a sing-song voice: ‘At two hours fifty-five we were called into the Weimar Hotel by the house detective. We ascended with him and the night-porter to Suite 141 on the first floor; there we found these two men, both with automatic pistols in their hands. The one states that he is a German, the other that he is an Englishman. It was the German who rang the night-porter for police assistance and when we arrived on the scene he was covering the Englishman with his weapon. Both charge the other with breaking into the suite and with threatening violence.’

  Grauber made a swift gesture, brushing the statement aside, as he said to the Inspector: ‘That is an accurate account of what occurred, but it has no bearing upon the present situation. It is now clear that the Führer has decided to give his protection to your country. If you are wise you will accept that protection peaceably; if you are foolish you will resist. But nothing you can do will prevent the German Army being in full control of your country within a week. Then, my friend, there will be a reckoning. For those who have conducted themselves creditably there will be no trouble, but for anyone who has arrested a German citizen and not given him a reasonable opportunity to state his case there will be very big trouble indeed.’

  ‘So you’re up to your blackmailing tricks even before you’ve conquered the country,’ Gregory cut in furiously. ‘Don’t you listen to him, Inspector.’

  The Inspector had gone red in the face and looked as if he was about to strike Grauber, but the German went on imperturbably: ‘I am a high official of the Nazi Party and when Holland is conquered my word will be law here. For your own sake you should think well before incurring my displeasure—particularly if you have a wife and children. Either you fetch Chief Inspector Van der Woerden immediately so that I can make proper representations to him, or you will have to answer to the German authorities within the next few days for having refused my request—and by that time we shall have concentration-camps in Holland as well as in Germany.’