The Black Baroness

by Dennis Wheatley

  Even half-naked as he was, and with the lid up all the time, the heat in the tank was almost unbearable, so outside the town he drove off the road into a small wood and got out to have a rest. His trousers were wet through with perspiration and steaming from the heat, while he felt as limp and heady as though he had spent several hours in the hottest room of a Turkish bath. When he had recovered a little he made a meal off some of his iron rations then lay down in the shade of a tree. For over an hour he rested there out of the broiling sun and it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon when he once more climbed into his sardine tin, got it back on the road and headed for Bapaume.

  At Bapaume, where he again ran into many Germans, he could hear the guns, somewhere to the south; so it seemed as though the French were still holding the line of the Somme and he knew that his next job was to find a way of crossing it. The road to Paris lay through Peronne, which was actually on the Somme, and he hoped that if the Germans had already captured the town he might succeed in crossing the river there; but as he advanced with one of the German columns he found many indications that he was once more nearing a battle-front. The column gradually dissolved to deploy into positions to which each unit had been directed. Carefully-concealed heavy batteries boomed from the fringe of the woods on either side, many of the fields were occupied by infantry who were resting, and further on the sharp crack of field-guns came from the dips between the rolling downs, while German aircraft were again circling directly overhead.

  By seven-thirty he had reached the outskirts of Peronne to find that it was in the hands of the Germans, but evidently they had not yet succeeded in establishing a bridge-head across the river and the French were pounding the town so heavily that it was out of the question to attempt to go through it.

  Turning off the road Gregory headed west and went on for about two miles, keeping a small ridge between himself and the river, then ran the tank up to the crest of the ridge to see what he could make of the situation. He was not long left in doubt. A French 75, concealed in a wood somewhere on the opposite bank, immediately blazed off at him. One shell screeched over and burst about ten yards to his rear; a second pitched thirty yards in front of him and dead on the line. He did not wait to make any further investigation but, heaving the tank round, rattled off back down the far side of the ridge again. Driving to the edge of a small coppice, he dressed himself and, having taken a good look round to see that there were no Germans about, got out.

  He was loath to leave the tank which had proved such a good friend to him and which, in spite of his very rudimentary knowledge of its workings, was such an excellent piece of British craftsmanship that it had not once let him down during the whole of his ninety-mile jorney; but it was clear that he could not cross the river in it and so must take to his feet once more.

  It was now past eight o’clock. With only about another hour of daylight to go and with his previous experience of crossing battle-fronts still fresh in his mind he felt that, dressed as a civilian, he would stand much more chance of making a safe crossing in the daytime, so having collected some of his iron rations he went through the trees to the far side of the coppice and sat down to make his evening meal.

  No major action was in progress in the locality and such Germans as passed from time to time took him to be one of the innumerable homeless refugees who were wandering about the country, and after a bare glance in his direction went on. The night was warm and fine; as twilight fell he hunted round until he found a little dip in the ground which would provide a rough pillow for his head and, thoroughly tired out after his fatiguing day, soon fell into a sound sleep.

  Shortly after dawn he was up again and making his way towards the river. He noticed that during the night the Germans had brought up a lot more troops and in one valley he saw a large concentration of tanks waiting to go into action, but he knew that before they could do so the German engineers would somehow have to fling a pontoon bridge over the river, which would not prove easy as the French had it under fire from the far bank.

  At two points he was turned back by German sentries and, having decided against producing his German passport unless it proved absolutely necessary, he meekly submitted to their order, retracing his steps each time then making a wide semicircle which brought him back towards the river again. At the third attempt he succeeded in slipping between the German outposts and reaching the river-bank at a place where it shelved steeply and where for several hundred yards the actual water of the stream was not under observation by the Germans in his rear. Slipping off his clothes, he tied them up in a bundle and entered the water for what proved to be a short and not on-enjoyable swim, as a full four weeks of sunshine had warmed the Somme to a pleasant temperature.

  On the far shore he scrambled out and, having dried himself as well as he could on his shirt, dressed again. No one challenged him and he crawled up the steep bank on his hands and knees. The second he put his head over the top a rifle cracked and a bullet whistled past his ear.

  Ducking down, he lay there on the edge of the slope and began to call out as loudly as he could in French. A distant voice answered him saying that it was no good playing any of those tricks as he had better swim home to his friends; but now that he had made contact he was, for him, considering the earliness of the hour, in a most cheerful frame of mind. As he possessed a considerable mastery of French argot he told the troops ahead, in their own pet expressions, that he was not a German but a refugee from Lille; then he told them a dirty story which had been current during his last visit to Paris, and ended up his shouted monologue with the request that he might be allowed to come forward as he could tell them about the German dispositions on the other bank.

  He was told to stay where he was and a few moments later a new voice called to him to advance with his open hands stretched up above his head. He promptly obeyed and walked forward into a landscape that did not appear to have a living soul in it, but when he had covered a hundred yards a poilu, who appeared to have grass growing out of his tin hat, raised his head a little and, covering him with a rifle, told him to jump down into a nearby ditch.

  There were six men there in a cunningly-concealed machine-gun nest, and by a devious route one of them took him a few hundred yards further back, to Company Headquarters, where he was questioned by a morose-looking Captain.

  Gregory told him what he had seen on the other side of the river and managed to convince his questioner that his slight accent was attributable to the fact that, although a Frenchman of Lille, he was of Belgian extraction. During the past fortnight there had been such an enormous number of civilians wandering about in the French battle-zone that the Army had long since given up arresting anyone against whom they had not definite grounds for suspicion, so after he had said his piece he was allowed to go, and set off across country in the direction of Nesle.

  The Germans had begun their preparatory bombardment, which they were supporting with an aerial attack, so the first few miles proved dangerous going and—just as in Belgium—Gregory frequently had to take cover in the nearest ditch. At length, however, he got on to a side-road in a somewhat quieter area and was able to put his best foot forward; but by the time he was half-way to Nesle he was already regretting the loss of his tank. On him he had no credentials of any kind by which he might have persuaded the French Army to provide him with transport, neither could he use any form of personal touch such ay he had employed with excellent effect when trying to induce the British General to lend him a Staff car to take him into Ostend; and apart from army vehicles the only traffic moving along the road consisted of an occasional farm-cart already appallingly overloaded with the belongings, women and children of some peasant family escaping from the battle-zone—and it was over ninety miles to Paris.

  All through the long, hot morning he trudged on and it was after one o’clock before he reached Nesle. Although the little town was crowded with both troops and civilians he managed to secure a passable meal at a small restaurant, but soon fou
nd that there was no means of getting any form of transport which would help him on his journey. Nesle was on a branch line running between Amiens and Laon, which now formed the first line of lateral communications behind the new French front. The only trains working on it were packed with troops, and even if he could have secured standing-room on one it would not have carried him any nearer Paris; so at three o’clock in the afternoon he set off to walk to Roye.

  It was nearly six o’clock when he got there but, when he did, he had better luck. The station was on the direct line for Paris and a booking-clerk informed him that, although the trains were no longer running to schedule, one upon which civilians could travel would be leaving in the next hour or so. He had another snack and a bottle of red wine in the station buffet and at about half-past seven a train came in on which he managed to get a seat in a compartment that was crammed to capacity. All traffic had been entirely upset by the military requirements so the train was appallingly slow, but he stepped out on to a platform of the Gare du Nord a few minutes before ten o’clock. The journey from Dunkirk had taken him forty hours, but, all things considered, he thought that it had been remarkably good going.

  He took a taxi straight to the Hotel Saint Regis in the Rue Jean Goujon, just off the Champs Elysées, where he always stayed when he was in the French capital; and when the English manager recognised his old patron in the dirty, dishevelled figure that came up to the desk to ask for a room he immediately took Gregory up to one of the delightful apartments which were so different from the ordinary hotel-bedrooms through being furnished with individual pieces many of which were antiques of considerable value.

  Gregory’s first necessity was to get news of Erika, so he put through a personal call to Sir Pellinore at Carlton House Terrace, knowing that Kuporovitch would have taken her there on landing. He then ordered a light meal and a bottle of champagne, and turned on a hot bath. In spite of his trying day he was not unduly exhausted, because he had had over nine hours’ good sleep in the wood near Peronne the previous night, and although he would have much preferred to sink into the comfortable bed after his bath he felt that not a moment should be lost in getting on the track of Madame la Baronne Noire.

  Although it was nearly eleven o’clock he thought that there was a good chance that in times like these Colonel Lacroix, the Chief of the famous Deuxième Bureau, would still be at work at that hour, so he rang up the Sûreté-Générale. The Colonel was there, and on Gregory’s saying that the matter was urgent Lacroix told him to come round as soon as he liked.

  He spent a quarter of an hour refreshing himself in the marble bath while the valet cleaned up his clothes as well as possible and found him a razor. Having dressed again he fortified himself with the bottle of bubbly and an omelette aux champignons.

  Half-way through his meal the call came through. Erika had survived the journey but seasickness had caused a further haemorrhage, and she was very low. Sir Pellinore did his best to be optimistic but Gregory sensed his anxiety and decided that for himself only work could drug his acute distress and worry.

  Ten minutes later he left the hotel. At a quarter to twelve he was taken up to the top floor of the big building on the south bank of the Seine and shown into the fine room which during the daytime had such a lovely view of the spires and domes of Paris.

  At a big desk near the wide windows a tiny, grey-haired man, whose lined face resembled that of a monkey, was sitting. His hands were clasped over his stomach and his eyes were cast down in an attitude of Buddhistic contemplation. The desk was remarkable only for the fact that it had not a single paper on it and it seemed to Gregory almost as though the famous Chief of the French Secret Police had not even moved since he had last seen him.

  ‘So you’re back from Brussels?’ said the Colonel in his gentle voice, suddenly glancing up.

  Gregory smiled. ‘And how did you know that I had been in Brussels, mon Colonel?’

  Motioning Gregory to a chair the little man gave a faint sigh. ‘I know so many things, mon ami, that sometimes I almost feel that I know too much, but agents of your ability and courage are not so common in the dark web at the centre of which I sit for me to lose track of one. Through the good Sir Pellinore I have followed your perilous journeys with the greatest interest.’

  ‘I see. Then you’ll know of the part I played in the November Putsch and how I succeeded in getting Goering to send me to Finland afterwards?’

  ‘Yes. And I am happy at last to have the opportunity of felicitating you upon the many splendid services that you have rendered to the Allied cause.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, sir, and I shall never forget that when I fell down on my first big job it was you who gave me a second chance. A lot of water has flowed under the bridges of the Seine since then, though.’

  Suddenly Lacroix’s monkey-like little face changed from amiable passivity to black anger. ‘Oui. Much water has passed beneath the bridges of the Seine, also many British soldiers have crossed the Channel in the wrong direction.’

  Gregory spread out his hands with a peculiarly French gesture that he often made when using that language. ‘What would you, mon Colonel? He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. Our men are still alive and free, which, after all, is very much better than if they were prisoners or dead. The B.E.F. will soon be reconstituted and sent back to France.’

  ‘And in the meantime?’ asked Lacroix angrily.

  ‘In the meantime things don’t look particularly rosy’ Gregory had to admit. ‘Still, presumably you’re bringing back from Africa every single man you’ve got, to form an army of manœuvre in Central France; and with Weygand at the helm I imagine that the people of Paris can still sleep soundly in their beds.’

  ‘They may sleep, but not soundly. Did you know that between one fifteen and two-fifteen today Paris was raided by two hundred and fifty Nazi planes?’

  ‘The manager of the Saint Regis did mention that you’d had an air-raid but I got into Paris only at ten o’clock and I’ve seen no signs of any damage that may have been done.’

  ‘They dropped 1,000 bombs, 254 people were killed and 652 injured. Now they have started this sort of thing it is likely to continue. From this point on we must anticipate that at least 1,000 Parisians will become casualties daily; which will lead to a great lowering in the morale and the war effort of the capital. And do you know why we must submit to this new blow? I will tell you. It is because the British Air Force was withdrawn to protect your Army during its evacuation from Dunkirk and will henceforth be occupied in defending England instead of being able to carry out its allotted task of defending Paris.’

  Gregory shrugged. ‘Really, sir, it’s hardly fair to blame us because during the last few years your own Government has been so criminally slack that you haven’t enough planes to protect yourselves.’

  ‘But it was part of the agreement,’ said the Colonel in a tired voice. Trance spent 70,000,000 of your pounds sterling upon her great Maginot Line. While Europe was still at peace 6,000,000 of her sons left their normal occupations which were productive to become non-productive for many months, but to fit themselves to defend their country in her hour of need. That was France’s contribution. Britain refused to introduce conscription, but her part was to hold the seas and to create an Air Force which should have been strong enough to balance that of Germany, while we held the great German Army at bay on land. Can you wonder that today in Paris everybody is saying that the English have let us down?’

  ‘Surely, sir,’ Gregory replied patiently, ‘if we’re going to hold an inquest we must go back to the beginning of the present trouble? There would have been no break-through towards the coast, and so no evacuation and no withdrawal of our Air Force, if your Generals Giraud and Huntziger had not made an incredible mess of things at Sedan and allowed the bridges across the Meuse to fall into the enemy’s hands.’

  Lacroix nodded. ‘I give you that. But in spite of the German break-through there need have been no great military
disaster had not the British lost their heads. They panicked and they ran.’

  Gregory stood up. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t remain here if you’re going to say things like that. At Louvain, at Oudenarde, at Arras, they fought magnificently, but they were outflanked in the south entirely owing to the incompetence of your own General Staff and they were outflanked in the north through King Leopold throwing his hand in without even warning them. Finding themselves surrounded on three sides by German Armies which were enormously superior in both equipment and numbers, what else could they do but retreat?’

  The little Colonel suddenly leapt to his feet; his black eyes flashed; he banged his small, brown fist on his empty desk and almost screamed:

  ‘Mon dieu, mon dieu, mon dieu! What could they do? Why, cut their way through, of course. Gort had a quarter of a million men. With him were three French Armies and many Belgian units who refused to lay down their arms even when they were called upon to do so. The German corridor was only thirty miles in width for several days. Had the whole of that great army been flung against one fifty-mile sector of the corridor, how could the Germans in it possibly have failed to collapse under such a blow?’

  ‘For the simple reason that the Germans had eight armoured divisions in the gap,’ Gregory replied promptly.

  ‘Eight divisions,’ sneered the Colonel; ‘and what is that? 150,000 men at most, even with Corps and Army troops. Do you suggest to me that 500,000 men could not have smashed them whether they were armoured or not? If Gort and the others had lost 100,000 men in casualties—one-fifth of the Anglo French force—they would have won a great victory by cutting off the Germans between Arras and the coast, and would still have come through with an Anglo-French Army of 400,000 men complete with tanks, guns and equipment. That force would then have been with us to hold the line of the Somme and defend Paris. But where is it now? Gone—vanished—dispersed—in confusion and disgrace, leaving behind it two-thirds of the peace-time output of your military armaments factories and leaving us naked to bear the whole brunt of the German onslaught.’