The Black Baroness

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Well done, well done!’ Gregory murmured. ‘But how long d’you think you’ll be able to hang on to the bits of it that are still in Dutch hands?’

  ‘Another twelve hours, perhaps, but that’s about the best we can hope for. Our supplies of ammunition are running low and more and more German troops are pouring into the suburbs. The odds are that they’ll have gained complete control of this vast heap of wreckage, which was only a few days ago our splendid city of Rotterdam, by the small hours of the morning.’

  Gregory made a grimace. ‘Well, I don’t suppose we shall ever know now what a Dutch court would have done to me for killing Chief Inspector Van der Woerden, but one thing is quite certain—if I’m still here when the Nazis walk in they’ll shoot me.’

  ‘That’s just what I thought, and I’ve made up my mind that I’m not justified in holding you any longer.’

  ‘Thank God for that!’

  ‘Well, after the way these Fifth Column people have stabbed Holland in the back it certainly wouldn’t be the act of an Ally to hand you over as a prisoner to the Germans. God knows if you’ll be able to get out of the city alive but I’m not standing on any formalities at a time like this, so if you like you’re free to try it.’

  ‘Right!’ smiled Gregory. ‘Even a dog’s chance is better than nothing,’ and grabbing up his suitcase, he swiftly ran through its contents. He had no intention of burdening himself with it but just selected the most useful items and stuffed them in his pockets. When he had done he poured a drink for himself and another for the Inspector. They solemnly drank damnation to the Nazis, then went outside together. On the doorstep they shook hands and Gregory stepped into the street a free man once more.

  Erika had never been far from his thoughts during these trying days and he knew that she would have been worrying herself sick about him, so his natural impulse was to get back to her at the earliest possible moment. As the Allies were now holding a line from Antwerp to St. Trond he reckoned that apart from the danger of air-raids she was still quite safe in Brussels and would almost certainly remain there as long as there was any hope of his rejoining her; but the difficulty was how to get there.

  The city lay on the north bank of the Rhine, or Lek as it is called in western Holland, and the normal route to Brussels ran south-east, across the one bridge that spans the broad river, over the Noorder Eiland and through the great dock area of the Feijenoord peninsula. The bridge, island and docks were now in the hands of the Germans, who had also occupied the whole of the Karlingen area of the eastern side of the city; so the only free exits remaining were by way of the northern or western suburbs. But to head north or west would take him further from his goal and mean that in a few hours he would find himself pinned by the Germans up against the coast. On the other hand, if he could reach the river and get across by boat to a place either east or west of the docks the rest of his journey should not prove difficult as he would be in friendly country still held by the Dutch. In consequence he decided to turn south and see if he could get through to the waterfront.

  All hell was now loose in Rotterdam. The cannonade had increased to a steady drum-fire and the evening sky was one great pall of reddish smoke from the fires that were eating out the heart of the city. At Hamar he had seen how a small place can be practically blasted off the map by concentrated bombing, but this was a huge industrial area many square miles in extent and it did not take him long to realise that it had suffered in a degree that he would have thought unbelievable. The first air-raids on Helsinki were large-scale affairs but the damage they had done was simply nothing compared with the havoc which had been wrought by five days and nights of shelling, bombing and incendiarism in the great Dutch port.

  Not a pane of glass remained in any of the windows; great gaps appeared every hundred yards or so in the rows of buildings; streets and pavements were torn up as though from an earthquake; water mains had burst and flooded the lower levels; thousands of slates had been blown off the roofs and littered the gutters; lamp-standards had been uprooted and thrown across the roadways; tangles of fallen telephone wire snaked across great heaps of débris; the ways were partially blocked with overturned cars, wrecked omnibuses, twisted bicycles and dead horses; here and there barricades of vehicles, torn-up paving-stones and furniture dragged from houses had been erected, among which the killed were still lying; the air was stifling from the fires that were raging and in places ashes were falling like black snow; aeroplanes droned ceaselessly over-head, bombs crashed, guns thundered, fires roared, rifles cracked and machine-guns chattered. Sheltered in his cell even the babel of sound had given Gregory no conception that the city had been reduced to such an incredible scene of chaos and disruption.

  Stumbling over bricks and skirting piles of wreckage he headed south, but he had not got far before he was checked by flames and smoke issuing from a block of burning office buildings. Turning back he tried another street but found it blocked by a barricade upon which police and troops were fighting. Twenty-four hours earlier the Germans had gained a foothold on the northern bank of the river and they were now in possession of all that was left of the railway station and the Central Post Office. By street after street he tried to work his way down to the waterfront but in every case he was held up by fires or turned back by squads of armed police, while shells screamed over, bullets whined and brickbats hurtled through the smoke-laden air.

  After two hours spent crouching and dodging in this inferno he gave it up as impossible and turned west. Night had come once more and the red glow from the sky lit the scene of devastation. For what seemed an interminable time he picked his way through streets half-blocked by falls of rubble and twisted girders. Here and there a leg, an arm or a human head stuck out grotesquely marking the place where a human body lay crushed and buried. Rescue parties were at work among the ruins but they could not keep pace with the casualties and while there were so many maimed and bleeding humans to be helped and cared for there was no time to collect the dead. Owing to the heat some of the corpses were already beginning to stink and their odour mingled with the stench of cordite and the all-pervading smell of burning. ‘This,’ thought Gregory, as he stumbled on, ‘is total war—Hitler’s war. Pray God that we can keep it out of England.’

  Even towards the west his progress was constantly checked by other fires or police patrols and for a time he lost all sense of direction, to find himself eventually right up in the north by the Law Courts. Here he came upon a new series of barricades which were being attacked by another force of Germans who had worked their way round the city, and on both sides of the barriers snipers were firing from the roof-tops at anyone rash enough to show himself in the streets. Having tried to go west again by half a dozen different turnings, without success, he entered a house, the door of which was standing open. No one was about so he made his way through into the back garden, then he began the laborious process of climbing over wall after wall down the block until at last he emerged in a side-street that was on the German side of the line of barricades.

  He had not gone far when a squad of German infantry came running down the road. Without even challenging him two of them raised their tommy-guns and let fly. With that swiftness of thought which had saved his life many times before he flung up his arms at their first gesture and, letting his body relax, slumped backwards on to the pavement. The little bursts of bullets hissed over his head and spattered on the brickwork of a wall behind him. For a moment he lay there holding his breath, waiting for another burst to be poured slap into his body; but the Germans thought that they had already eliminated this solitary Dutchman who might be up to no good in the area where they were operating; without another glance at him they hurried on.

  Stumbling to his feet he went forward more cautiously until at the end of the street he saw a German sentry. He had barely started to consider whether he dared risk a bullet by going on or had better turn back when the matter was settled for him. Above the dull rumble of the bombardment there came a
solitary whip-like crack and for a second a stab of fire lit a second-floor window just ahead of him. The German sentry, shot from above through the back, reeled suddenly and pitched face-forward into the gutter.

  A few streets further on he had to crouch in a dark archway for some moments while a German tank column rattled and bumped its way over the débris in the direction of the barricades, and ten minutes later he had to hide again from a company of infantry; but at last he reached the Zoological Gardens, right on the outskirts of the city, and it seemed that he had got clear of the Germans. Turning south-west he started to make his way through the residential district of Beukelsdijk. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when he got on to a main road down which scattered groups of people were moving, and he realised that as they were all making in one direction they must be refugees who were heading for the coast.

  The last five hours had been both nerve-racking and tiring work but as he had just spent the best part of five days either in bed or lying down he had plenty of reserves of energy, so he put his best foot forward and, taking a short rest every half-hour, passed group after group of wearily-plodding people. At about half-past three he came to a main crossroads right out in the open country and the signpost showed him that the road he had been on led to The Hook while that which cut into it from the north went to Delft. Down this was trickling another stream of refugees and as the two streams mingled at the crossroads some groups took the road south while others went west towards The Hook. Under the signpost Gregory sat down to rest again and smoke a cigarette while he considered the situation.

  He had long since given up any hope of getting through or round Rotterdam with a view to trying to cross the Dutch frontier into Belgium, and it was now quite clear that his only means of getting out of Holland was by sea. The question was which road offered him the best prospect? That to the south led to the broad mouth of the river, which was less than three miles away, and he might succeed in getting a small boat there at a village on the coast; but it was said that the Germans had mined the estuary, and there was no proper port along the shore where ships would be embarking refugees. On the other hand he was pretty tired now, The Hook was still seven miles distant and he had only his legs to carry him; but, unless the Germans had got there already, in the big harbour he was much more likely to find a ship that would take him to England. Grimly he decided to face the longer journey and stubbing out his cigarette stood up to tramp on again.

  He spoke to nobody, for he felt that the Dutch must now have very good reason to suspect all foreigners of being Fifth Columnists, and he had no intention of risking being lynched, or arrested again and confined in another police-station while inquiries were being made about him. If he had not considered that discretion was so very necessary he might possibly have bought a lift for part of the way, as a number of cars and carts were constantly passing, but he preferred to make quite certain of retaining his liberty, so he did the whole distance on foot, arriving at The Hook at seven in the morning. Since leaving the Rotterdam Police Headquarters, some eleven hours earlier, he reckoned that he must have covered well over twenty miles and he was seriously feeling the effects of his exertions; but on entering the town he was immensely cheered by the sight of British sailors and marines.

  They appeared to have taken charge of the traffic and the whole harbour area. Some were directing the stream of refugees towards the docks while others were carting ashore large cases, which Gregory guessed contained explosives. As he had been approaching the port he had heard several heavy detonations, but such sounds had become a normal background to his life during these past few days so, tired as he was, he had not taken any special notice of them, assuming that as German planes were once again circling overhead they were bombing the harbour; but he had hardly reached the docks when there was a terrific crash and a whole wharf about half a mile distant seemed to disintegrate in a sheet of blinding flame. The Navy knew their business and were seeing to it that there would not be much left in the way of harbour works by the time the Germans got there.

  Good-humouredly, but firmly, the British sailors and marines herded the never-ceasing flow of refugees into the long customs sheds while Dutch interpreters who were working with them told the crowds of grimy, despondent people that they must abandon their cars, vans, wagons and all their contents as, in order that the ships which were leaving could take the maximum number of passengers, they could not be allowed to retain anything but hand luggage.

  For over an hour Gregory waited in the customs shed, resting his weary limbs by lying at full length along one of the benches with his head pillowed on his arms. While he lay there further shocks more like earthquake tremors rocked the building and a number of lesser bumps together with anti-aircraft fire showed that the Nazi planes were strafing the refugees and their rescuers. From time to time batches of the patient, sad-eyed crowd were shepherded out on to the quayside, and at last came Gregory’s turn to be taken on board a cargo vessel.

  Now that he had a proper chance to look round he saw that one side of the fairway had already been blocked by the sinking of a dredger and two trawlers and that other vessels lying near by were evidently in readiness to be used for closing the gap, when the last evacuee ship had cleared the harbour mouth. The great steel gates of an inner lock were half-submerged and twisted almost beyond recognition, and in many places fires were burning where the British had dynamited port-authority buildings and warehouses. Every now and again waves of German bombers came over to add their quota to the racket but most of their bombs fell harmlessly in the sea. Once on board Gregory found himself a corner among the crowd where he could sit on the deck with his back to the engine room hatch, and, like many others of the exhausted refugees who were past caring about the bombs, dropped off to sleep.

  When he awoke he had the curious sensation that something strange was going on, but after a moment he realised that it was only the silence which seemed unnatural. The ship was out of sight of land and for the first time in six days the crash of bombs and the rumble of guns were no longer audible. He found that it was half-past two in the afternoon but it was not until eleven o’clock that night that they put into Harwich, and even then, in spite of his British passport and reiterated statements that he was not a refugee, he had to submit to a rigorous examination by the Security Police who were exercising every possible precaution to prevent German Fifth Columnists entering Britain with the genuine victims of Nazi persecution. It was past one before he was able to get away from his unfortunate fellow-travellers, who were being specially catered for, and nearly two when he flopped into bed at the Station Hotel.

  He did not wake till ten o’clock on the Thursday morning but he had hardly opened his eyes before he recalled the urgent necessity of getting back to Brussels, and to Erika, now that the Blitzkrieg was on, without losing a moment. He knew, without inquiring, that all passenger sailings would have been cancelled, so he at once got on to London and was fortunate enough to catch Sir Pellinore at home.

  Having told his elderly friend the gist of his news he asked if permission could be obtained for him to be taken on board any naval vessel which might be leaving Harwich for Belgian waters. Sir Pellinore said that he thought matters could be arranged and that he would get in touch with the Admiralty at once.

  On reaching the hotel Gregory had been too utterly weary for more than a rough clean-up, so, having telephoned down for breakfast to be brought in half an hour, he lay for a bit in a hot bath, soaking off the rest of the smoke and grime of Rotterdam. His breakfast, which consisted of China tea, smoked haddock with a poached egg, and mushrooms on toast, was a special order given on his old principle that the best meal obtainable was never too good if there was no knowing when one was going to get another. When he had finished it he felt distinctly better and turned his attention to the morning papers.

  On the previous day the whole of Holland had been submerged beneath the Nazi flood and the Dutch were now holding out only in the island of Zeela
nd. The Allies were maintaining their line from Antwerp to Namur but further south enormous pressure was being exerted on the French. German armoured columns had broken through at three points between Namur and Sedan and were still attacking in spite of the fact that 150 Allied planes had spent the entire day going backwards and forwards to their bases for relays of bombs which they had hurled on the advancing Germans and the road junctions.

  At midday he dressed and went out into the town where, although the weather showed no signs of breaking, he bought himself a rubber raincoat as a precaution against a choppy crossing, then he returned to await events in the hotel lounge. At two o’clock a message arrived for him from the port authorities to say that instructions had been received from the Admiralty that he was to be given passage in one of His Majesty’s ships which would be proceeding to Belgium, and that he was to report to the Admiralty Building, Harwich, at eight-fifteen that night. He cursed the delay but knew that he was lucky to have enough pull through Sir Pellinore to get taken across at all.

  In the evening the news was no better. From Namur to Sedan there were a million men fast locked in battle and at the southern end of this vital sector the Germans were obviously getting the best of it. They were exploiting the breaches made in the French line on the previous day. It seemed that somebody had failed to blow up the bridges across the Meuse in the face of the advancing enemy so that they were now well over the river and had captured Rocroi, Mézières, Sedan and Montmedy; while their advance units were now several miles south and west of these places, thereby creating a most dangerous bulge in the Allied line. However, the fact that the Germans had reached Louvain, in Belgium, gave Gregory considerably more concern. Louvain was less than twenty miles from Brussels, and Erika was in Brussels.