Turning round, Gregory began to walk back towards the Villa. As he recalled Grauber’s horrid chuckle he felt more strongly than ever that such evil gloating could have been inspired only by the fact that he had got Erika. If so, then Einholtz had lied about those posters offering a reward for her capture. What possible reason could he have had for doing so—unless he was Grauber’s man? If he was he would take immediate steps to inform his master that, at last, the fly was buzzing round the web.
It was no more than six or seven minutes since Gregory had left the Villa. When he had returned to within fifty yards of it he stepped off the road and, crossing a strip of coarse grass, concealed himself among a little group of trees that were growing quite close to the water’s edge. From his position he could see the back of the Villa clearly in the moonlight, and the boathouse, which lay a little way below it. Taking a fat Sullivan from his cigarette-case he turned his back to the Villa, lit it, cupped the burning end of the cigarette in his open hand, turned round again, and waited.
For ten minutes nothing happened, and there was no sign of life in the house; then a door banged and there came the sound of quick footsteps on a gravel path. Einholtz’s tall figure emerged from the patch of shadow at the back of the Villa. Purposefully he strode down to the boathouse and disappeared inside it. A minute or two later an engine started up, then a long launch, with Einholtz at the wheel, left the shed and nosed her way out into the lake.
Gregory smiled to himself in the darkness. He was thinking how very nearly Einholtz had put it over him; only his eagerness to let his chief know that the success of their plot now appeared imminent had proved his undoing. That he meant to cross the lake to Germany Gregory had no doubt at all. The launch was a fast one and could no doubt hold her own with any Swiss patrol boat that might challenge her; moreover, her exhaust had been muffled. Besides, Einholtz would have had ample opportunity to make a study of the times and places where they operated, and when he reached the middle of the lake he would have nothing more to fear, as, after that, he would be in Nazi-controlled waters.
As it appeared so easy for Einholtz to cross, even in moonlight, Gregory began to wonder why it should have been suggested that he should not make his own crossing for a week. Perhaps that had been one of Einholtz’s many artistic touches as, had he really been on the level, he would naturally have favoured a dark night as offering the best chance of running the gauntlet of the Nazi patrols. In fact, it would have been courting disaster to attempt to get through them on a night like this. But Gregory thought there was probably another reason for the proposed delay. Grauber would want to handle this matter personally, and the Hen Gruppenführer was a very busy man. He would require a week or so’s notice before he had a free date on which he could come down to Württemberg to savour to the full the capture and final humiliation of his deadly enemy.
Pulling freely at his Sullivan now, Gregory started to speculate on what part von Osterberg was playing in all this. It seemed beyond dispute that the Count must have been a party to the plot from the beginning. The idea that he was low enough deliberately to have enticed his own wife from her safe refuge in Britain to Switzerland, in order to hand her over to the Nazis, made Gregory’s fingers curl with the itch to get them about the Count’s lying throat. He wondered if he was really as ill as he looked. For such a delicate-looking man to sham illness would not be difficult. Perhaps he was shamming so that his apparent state could be used to postpone the trip to Germany until it was convenient for Grauber to receive them on the other side. It would be interesting to find out if von Osterberg was really ill or not. Gregory decided to pay the Count a little visit.
Slipping over a low bank, he got down on to the foreshore and began to walk cautiously along it. After passing the boundary fence of the small garden he climbed up the bank again and walked along a strip of lawn, past the path that led down to the boathouse, till he reached the long low window.
There were chinks enough between the curtains to show that the light in the sitting-room was still on, but he could get no more than a slit-like glimpse of the room through any of them. Treading as gently as he could, he moved further along the wall until he reached the back door. It had a yale lock, so, if von Osterberg had not bolted it on the inside after Einholtz’s departure, getting in would prove easy. Taking an inch wide strip of strong celluloid, which he always carried for this purpose, from his pocket, Gregory inserted its end in the crevice and pushed gently, until the natural spring in the celluloid forced back the spring catch.
Still holding the celluloid in place with one hand, he now pressed with the other, and the door gave at his touch. No light showed through the crack of the opening so he drew the celluloid out. As the latch slipped back with a faint click he waited, holding his breath. No sound broke the stillness. He then took from its shoulder-holster, under his left armpit, the nice new automatic with which Sir Pellinore had furnished him before he left London. Having made sure that it was ready for instant action and adjusted its silencer he tiptoed inside.
The moonlight from the open door behind him showed that he was in a small scullery and that the kitchen lay beyond it. Cautiously as a cat he made his way through both rooms to the far door of the kitchen. His free hand closed on the doorknob and with one firm movement he turned it. The door creaked a little as he eased it open and again he remained quite still for a moment, listening intently.
No sound came. There was no light on in the passage and, with his gun held ready, he advanced into its deeper shadow. To his left some cracks of light gave him the position of another door, which he knew must be that of the sitting-room. One step at a time, and pausing half a minute between each, he advanced towards it. Again he listened, but the house was absolutely silent. He began to wonder if von Osterberg had left it by the front door while he was making his way round the back, or if the Count was still, perhaps, asleep.
Pleasant as he had felt it would be simply to walk in and wring the Count’s neck, he had dismissed the idea instantly. To show his hand yet awhile, and to disclose that he had not, after all, been completely duped, would have been to give away a most valuable advantage. If he could, he wanted, while remaining hidden himself, to get a good look at von Osterberg, so as to see if the Count was still sitting mournfully about or hopping around the place as lively as a cricket. Not being able to see anything through the window had been a big disappointment, but the easy lock on the back door had proved too tempting to resist and he had gone in with the hope that he might yet catch a sight of von Osterberg through a half-open doorway. That hope, too, had vanished and it seemed to Gregory that he dared not now risk intruding any further, or he would be bound to be seen himself, and thus lose the advantage that he had over his enemies.
He was just about to make a stealthy withdrawal when he thought he heard a gentle snore. After a moment it came again. Von Osterberg was, then, in there and still sleeping. Gregory folded his hand round the doorknob, pressed gently with his shoulder against the door so that it should not budge, and turned the knob. Then, millimetre by millimetre, he pushed the door inward until it was open a couple of inches. Screwing his head round, he peered inside.
The Count was sitting in the same chair and, apparently, had not woken since Gregory’s departure. His thin face was lined, his grey hair untidy, and he certainly looked very ill and worn. In any case he had certainly not been shamming sleep after his two goes of Glühwein. As Gregory was about to close the door again his eye caught the glimmer of the firelight on some shining object near von Osterberg’s right foot. For a second he stared at it unable to make out what it was; then, suddenly, he recognised the form of the thing he was looking at. It was a nickel-plated handcuff; one of a pair, and it was round the Count’s right ankle. The other was round the thick rail between the front legs of the old-fashioned wing chair in which he was sitting.
Gregory carefully reclosed the door, stole away down the passage, gingerly crossed the kitchen quarters and left the house, gently cl
osing the back door behind him.
As he regained the road and walked out to Steinach he congratulated himself on the success of his second visit to the Villa. From it he knew now just how the land lay. Einholtz was a Gestapo man acting under the orders of Grauber. Von Osterberg was just a poor weak stooge who had allowed himself to be caught up in their filthy web. They had evidently terrified him into writing those letters, and acting a part when the two people they were intended to snare had appeared on the scene. That he had resisted, to some extent, was obvious from the fact that they still kept him a prisoner, and he had become genuinely ill from strain and fright. But what a poor fish he must be, Gregory reflected, not to have been able to think up some way of warning his wife before she went into Germany or, when in neutral territory and left alone for hours only shackled to a heavy chair, not to have the guts even to get hold of a hacksaw or a hatchet and free himself.
For anyone so lacking in spirit Gregory could only feel complete indifference as to whether they regained their freedom or allowed themselves to be beaten to a pulp. But von Osterberg’s betrayal of Erika made him see red. Anyone, he believed, might be tortured into finally admitting anything, but to remain a semi-prisoner for weeks and take no step of any kind to warn an old friend who was running into danger seemed to him absolutely unforgivable. Through the Count’s own lack of will and decency he had made himself a pawn in the game, and Gregory had no hesitation in making up his mind to treat him as such, with complete unscrupulousness, should the need arise.
It was nearly midnight when he at last got back to the Pension Julich, but Kuporovitch was waiting up for him and had, moreover, had the forethought to have some cold supper left for him on a tray. While Gregory ate it in his bedroom he gave his friend a full account of all that had passed that evening.
“I think you have got a long way in a very short time,” was Kuporovitch’s comment, when Gregory had finished his recital. “But it seems that we shall not be called upon to take any active steps for several days to come. So let us sleep upon it and discuss the whole situation in the morning.”
Gregory agreed that this was excellent advice, and having slept well, woke up to find, as so often happens, that the previous night’s events had sorted themselves in his mind and now stood out in much clearer perspective. After breakfast they put on their overcoats and went out, not because either of them liked walking in wintry weather, but because they felt that only in the open could they talk freely without fear of eavesdroppers.
The salient points that had emerged from Gregory’s visit to the Villa Offenbach were: That two traps had definitely been laid there. Into the first, Erika had walked, and, in consequence, was now almost certainly a prisoner of the Gestapo. Into the second, Gregory, so his enemies happily believed, was, quite unconscious of his danger, now walking. Einholtz was a clever and dangerous agent of the Gestapo; von Osterberg was his unwilling but completely subservient accomplice, and a prisoner whose shattered nerves made him unreliable and of little further value to either friend or foe. The story about the scientific notes in the laboratory safe at Niederfels was all balony. They had probably never existed. But Peenemünde was an experimental station where a new gas or weapon was being perfected and it seemed certain that the Count had worked there. Einholtz had crossed to the far shore of the lake during the night to warn his colleagues that the fly was shortly about to take a header into the web, and probably to arrange that when he touched down the Chief Spider should be there to receive him. The enemy was, however, still presumably ignorant that he was not working entirely on his own, but had brought Kuporovitch with him to Switzerland. They had several days before them in which to make a counterplot, as, either for the sake of artistry or on account of orders from above, Einholtz had no intention of allowing Gregory to set out on his venture for another week at least. When he did go von Osterberg would definitely accompany him and now, it seemed, Einholtz also, since, if the latter still took the precaution of handcuffing the former to a heavy armchair during a temporary absence, it was most unlikely that he would let him go off as a free man alone with Gregory.
The major facts which emerged from all this were: that Erika was not simply in hiding, and, once found, could be got out of Germany with comparative ease. If she was to be rescued at all she would have to be snatched by force or trickery from under Grauber’s own eyes. And that if Gregory went through with the arrangements already tentatively agreed upon he would go into Germany, not with one or more friends to help him, but in the company of those whose object was his death and, moreover, be a marked man—his every movement watched by a score of unseen eyes—from the first moment that he set foot on Nazi territory.
Gregory and Stefan thrashed the problem out for the best part of three hours and two among the numerous decisions they reached were: that Kuporovitch must leave the Pension Julich at once, so that his presence in the wings should continue unknown to Einholtz, if the Gestapo man called there to see Gregory. That he should move down to the little hotel in Steinach and endeavour to rent a small furnished house or cottage there, if possible, among the straggling properties to the west side of the village, among which the Villa Offenbach lay, in order to be as near the scene of action as could be managed.
After lunch Kuporovitch packed his bag, paid his bill at the Pension Julich, let it drop at the desk that he was going down to Zurich, and departed. Gregory spent most of the afternoon on his bed, trying not to think of Erika.
Next day, to distract his mind, he bought some large sheets of paper, a ruler, indiarubber and pencils, and began to draw a plan of the sort of house he would like to own if he eventually decided to build instead of buying one.
That was on Friday. On the following Sunday, 7th of December, 1941, he was still at it, when the momentous news flashed round the world that, in defiance of all decency, honesty and humanitarian considerations, the Japanese had, without warning, bombed the United States Fleet in Pearl Harbour and, equally without warning, simultaneously attacked Singapore.
Very soon it was known that Britain had joined the United States in her war against Japan and that the great American people had joined the British Empire and the Soviet Union in their determination to remove the curse of Hitlerism from the earth.
Gregory knew that the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the Far East were now in for a very thin time indeed. Nobody but a fool could have imagined that after two and a quarter years resisting the might of Germany, and for a year of that on its own, the British Empire could have any but the most meagre forces merely keeping watch and ward against a possible contingency down there in Malaya. But America, with her hundred and twenty million citizens, her fine fleet, her rapidly expanding Army and Air Force, her vast wealth, her enormous influence in neutral countries, her huge stores of raw materials, her immense agricultural potential, and her staggeringly vast capacity for producing the most modern weapons of war—was in. That was what mattered, and there was some real hope now of putting all that were left of both the Germans and the Japs behind the bars within a foreseeable period.
With a spontaneous happiness that he had not felt for months he broke into the old American marching song of the last war: “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching; John Bull, America’s in with you! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching; just to help you see this through!”
Kuporovitch rang up, equally delighted with the news. He also had news of his own. He had succeeded, the previous evening, in persuading a French writer to rent him a cottage on the lake shore that was only about half a mile further out of Steinach than the Villa Offenbach, and was moving in that afternoon. Having described its appearance and whereabouts, he suggested that, after dark, Gregory should come down and join him there for a picnic meal to celebrate America’s entry into the war.
Gregory agreed and arrived about seven o’clock with two bottles of French champagne under his arm—Krug, Private Cuveé, Vintage 1928, no less. Kuporovitch had already laid in three bottles of his favourite Chambertin
and two of old brandy, so a good time was had by all.
Kuporovitch related that he had set his heart on this little cottage, as it was some distance from any other dwelling yet adjacent to the lake and almost within a stone’s throw of the scene of operations. The Frenchman, who had rented it for the duration, was a man of mixed ideals, being both a Communist and a Pacifist. He had not wanted to sub-let, but he was poor, and Kuporovitch had at last induced him to do so by offering for one month, with immediate possession, a sum that would pay his rent for a year.
They drank innumerable toasts, forgot their worries for a few hours, and, Gregory having decided to spend the night there, in the early hours saw one another several times to bed.
On the Monday morning Gregory returned to the Pension Julich and, somewhat lackadaisically, resumed his efforts as an amateur architect. In the afternoon Einholtz called to see him.
The German said at once that he had now made up his mind to join Gregory in the venture, and some little time was occupied in discussing means by which he could be certain of securing the promised payment in the event of the trip proving a success. As Gregory had anticipated Einholtz’s decision he had already thought out certain proposals to this end, and after a few minor points had been settled he agreed to make the necessary arrangements. Both of them knew that there was not the remotest possibility of the sum being collected, but they both had to appear seriously concerned about the matter for fear of giving away their secret intentions to one another.
Come into my Parlour Page 43
