I must have done about another mile and a half when the real trouble began. I still had the six matches, but my hands were too numb to get them out of the box without wetting them, and I had been going forward blindly, sometimes on the road and sometimes off it. I was wondering whether I would get along better if I sang, when I walked into a telegraph post.
It was of pre-cast concrete and the edge was as sharp as a razor. My face was as numb as my hands and I didn’t feel much except a sickening jar; but I could taste blood trickling between my teeth and found that my nose was bleeding. It was as I held my head back to stop it that I saw the light, looking for all the world as if it were suspended in mid-air above me.
It wasn’t suspended in mid-air, and it wasn’t above me. Darkness does strange things to perspective. After a few seconds I saw that it was showing through the trees on the hillside, up to the right of the road.
Anyone who has been in the sort of mess that I was in will know exactly how my mind worked at that moment. I did not speculate as to the origin of that God-forsaken light or as to whether or not the owner of it would be pleased to see me. I was cold and wet, my nose was bleeding, and I would not have cared if someone had told me that behind the light was a maniac with a machine-gun. I knew only that the light meant there was some sort of human habitation near me and that I was going to spend the night in it.
I moved over to the other side of the road and began to feel my way along the wire fence I found there. Twenty yards or so further on, my hands touched a wooden gate. The light was no longer visible, but I pushed the gate open and walked on into the blackness.
The ground rose steeply under my feet. It was a path of sorts, and soon I stumbled over the beginnings of a flight of log steps. There must have been well over a hundred of them. Then there was another stretch of path, not quite so steep. When I again saw the light, I was only about twenty yards from it.
It came from an oil reading-lamp standing near a window. From the shape of the window and the reflected light of the lamp, I could see that the place was a small chalet of the kind usually let to families for the summer season or for the winter sports. That it should be occupied at the end of November was curious. But I didn’t ponder over the curiosity: I had seen something else through the window besides the lamp. The light from a fire was flickering in the room.
I went forward up the path to the door. There was no knocker. I hammered on the wet, varnished wood with my fist and waited. There was no sound from inside. After a moment or two I knocked again. Still there was no sign of life within. I knocked and waited for several minutes. Then I began to shiver. In desperation I grabbed the latch of the door and rattled it violently. The next moment I felt it give and the door creaked open a few inches.
I think that I have a normal, healthy respect for the property and privacy of my fellow-creatures; but at that moment I was feeling neither normal nor healthy. Obviously, the owner of the chalet could not be far away. I stood there for a moment or two, hesitating. I could smell the wood smoke from the fire, and mingled with it a bitter, oily smell which seemed faintly familiar. But all I cared about was the fire. I hesitated no longer and walked in.
As soon as I was inside I saw that there was something more than curious about the place, and that I should have waited.
The room itself was ordinary enough. It was rather larger than I had expected, but there were the usual pinewood walls, the usual pinewood floor, the usual pinewood staircase up to the bedrooms, and the usual tiled fireplace. There were the usual tables and chairs, too: turned and painted nonsense of the kind that sometimes finds its way into English tea shops. There were red gingham curtains over the windows. You felt that the owner probably had lots of other places just like it, and that he made a good thing out of letting them.
No, it was what had been added to the room that was curious. All the furniture had been crowded into one half of the space. In the other half, standing on linoleum and looking as if it were used a good deal, was a printing press.
The machine was a small treadle platten of the kind used by jobbing printers for running off tradesmen’s circulars. It looked very old and decrepit. Alongside it on a trestle table were a case of type and a small proofing press with a locked-up forme in it. On a second table stood a pile of interleaved sheets, beside which was a stack of what appeared to be some of the same sheets folded. The folding was obviously being done by hand. I picked up one of the folded sheets.
It looked like one of those long, narrow business-promotion folders issued by travel agencies. The front page was devoted to the reproduction, in watery blue ink, of a lino-cut of a clump of pines on the shore of a lake, and the display of the name “TITISEE.” Page two and the page folded in to face it carried a rhapsodical account in German of the beauties of Baden in general and Lake Titisee in particular.
I put the folder down. An inaccessible Swiss chalet was an odd place to choose for printing German travel advertisements; but I was not disposed to dwell on its oddity. I was cold.
I was moving towards the fire when my eye was caught by five words printed in bold capitals on one of the unfolded sheets on the table: “DEUTSCHE MÄNNER UND FRAUEN, KAMERADEN!”
I stood still. I remember that my heart thudded against my ribs as suddenly and violently as it had earlier that day on the Stelvio when some crazy fool in a Hispano had nearly crowded me off the road.
I leaned forward, picked the folder up again, and opened it right out. The Message began on the second of the three inside pages.
GERMAN MEN AND WOMEN, COMRADES! We speak to you with the voice of German Democracy, bringing you news. Neither Nazi propaganda nor the Gestapo can silence us, for we have an ally which is proof against floggings, an ally which no man in the history of the world has been able to defeat. That ally is Truth. Hear then, people of Germany, the Truth which is concealed from you. Hear it, remember it, and repeat it. The sooner the Truth is known, the sooner will Germany again hold up its head among the free nations of the world.
Then followed a sort of news bulletin consisting of facts and figures (especially figures) about the economic condition of Germany. There was also news of a strike in the Krupp works at Essen and a short description of a riot outside a shipyard in Hamburg.
* * *
—
I put it down again. Now I knew why these “travel advertisements” were being printed in an inaccessible Swiss chalet instead of in Germany itself. No German railway official would distribute these folders. That business would be left to more desperate men. These folders would not collect dust on the counters of travel agencies. They would be found in trains and in trams, in buses and in parked cars, in waiting rooms and in bars under restaurant plates and inside table napkins. Some of the men that put them there would be caught and tortured to betray their fellows; but the distribution would go on. The folders would be read, perhaps furtively discussed. A little more truth would seep through Goebbels’ dam of lies to rot still further the creaking foundation of Nazidom.
Then, as I stood there with the smell of wood smoke and printing in my nostrils, as I stood staring at that decrepit little machine as if were the very voice of freedom, I heard footsteps outside.
I suppose that I should have stood my ground. I had, after all, a perfectly good explanation of my presence there. My car and the blood from my nose would confirm my story. But I didn’t reason that way. I had stumbled on a secret, and my first impulse was to try to hide the fact from the owner of the secret. I obeyed that impulse.
I looked around quickly and saw the stairs. Before I had even begun to wonder if I might not be doing something excessively stupid, I was up the stairs and opening the first door I came to on the landing. In the half-light I caught a glimpse of a bed; then I was inside the room with the door slightly ajar. I could see across the landing and through the wooden palings along it to the top of the window at the far side of the room
below.
I knew that someone had come in: I could hear him moving about. He lit another lamp. There was a sound from the door and a second person entered.
A woman’s voice said in German, “Thank God, Johann has left a good fire.”
There was an answering grunt. It came from the man. I could almost feel them warming their hands.
“Get the coffee, Freda,” said the man suddenly. “I must go back soon.”
“But Bruno is there. You should take a little rest first.”
“Bruno is a Berliner. He is not as used to the cold as I am. If Kurt should come now he would be tired. Bruno could only look after himself.”
There was silence for a moment. Then the woman spoke again.
“Do you really think he will come now, Stephan? It is so late.” She paused. Her voice had sounded casual, elaborately casual; but now, as she went on, there was an edge to it that touched the nerves. “I can keep quite calm about it, you see, Stephan. I wish to believe, but it is so late, isn’t it? You don’t think he will come now, do you? Admit it.”
He laughed, but too heartily. “You are too nervous, Freda. Kurt can take care of himself. He knows all the tricks now. He may have been waiting for the first snow. The frontier guards would not be so alert on a night like this.”
“He should have been back a week ago. You know that as well as I do, Stephan. He has never been delayed so long before. They have got him. That is all. You see, I can be calm about it even though he is my dear husband.” And then her voice broke. “I knew it would happen sooner or later. I knew it. First Hans, then Karl, and now Kurt. Those swine, those—”
She sobbed and broke suddenly into passionate weeping. He tried helplessly to comfort her.
I had heard enough. I was shaking from head to foot; but whether it was the cold or not, I don’t know. I stood back from the door. Then, as I did so, I heard a sound from behind me.
I had noticed the bed as I had slipped into the room, but the idea that there might be someone in it had not entered my head. Now, as I whipped around, I saw that I had made a serious mistake.
Sitting on the edge of the bed in which he had been lying was a very thin, middle-aged man in a nightshirt. By the faint light from the landing I could see his eyes, bleary from sleep, and his grizzled hair standing ludicrously on end. But for one thing I should have laughed. That one thing was the large automatic pistol which he held pointed at me. His hand was as steady as a rock.
“Don’t move,” he said. He raised his voice. “Stephan! Come quickly!”
“I must apologize…” I began in German.
“You will be allowed to speak later.”
I heard Stephan dash up the stairs.
“What is it, Johann?”
“Come here.”
The door was pushed open behind me. I heard him draw in his breath sharply.
“Who is it?”
“I do not know. I was awakened by a noise. I was about to get up when this man came into the room. He did not see me. He has been listening to your conversation. He must have been examining the plant when he heard you returning.”
“If you will allow me to explain…” I began.
“You may explain downstairs,” said the man called Stephan. “Give me the pistol, Johann.”
The pistol changed hands and I could see Stephan, a lean, raw-boned fellow with broad, sharp shoulders and dangerous eyes. He wore black oilskins and gum boots. I saw the muscles in his cheeks tighten.
“Raise your hands and walk downstairs. Slowly. If you run, I shall shoot immediately. March.”
I went downstairs.
The woman, Freda, was standing by the door, staring blankly up at me as I descended. She must have been about thirty and had that soft rather matronly look about her that is characteristic of so many young German women. She was short and plump, and as if to accentuate the fact, her straw-coloured hair was plaited across her head. Wisps of the hair had become detached and clung wetly to the sides of her neck. She too wore a black oilskin coat and gum boots.
The grey eyes, red and swollen with crying, looked beyond me.
“Who is it, Stephan?”
“He was hiding upstairs.”
We had reached the foot of the stairs. He motioned me away from the door and towards the fire. “Now, we will hear your explanation.”
I gave it with profuse apologies. I admitted that I had examined the folders and read one. “It seemed to me,” I concluded, “that my presence might be embarrassing to you. I was about to leave when you returned. Then, I am afraid, I lost my head and attempted to hide.”
Not one of them was believing a word that I was saying: I could see that from their faces. “I assure you,” I went on in exasperation, “that what I am telling…”
“What nationality are you?”
“British. I…”
“Then speak English. What were you doing on this road?”
“I am on my way home from Belgrade. I crossed the Yugoslav frontier yesterday and the Italian frontier at Stelvio this afternoon. My passport was stamped at both places if you wish to…”
“Why were you in Belgrade?”
“I am a surgeon. I have been attending an international medical convention there.”
“Let me see your passport, please.”
“Certainly. I have…” And then with my hand in my inside pocket, I stopped. My heart felt as if it had come right into my throat. In my haste to be away after the Italian Customs had finished with me, I had thrust my passport with the Customs carnet for the car into the pocket beside me on the door of the car.
They were watching me with expressionless faces. Now, as my hand reappeared empty, I saw Stephan raise his pistol.
“Well?”
“I am sorry.” Like a fool I had begun to speak in German again. “I find that I have left my passport in my car. It is several kilometres along the road. If…”
And then the woman burst out as if she couldn’t stand listening to me any longer.
“Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” she cried. “It is quite clear. They have found out that we are here. Perhaps after all these months Hans or Karl has been tortured by them into speaking. And so they have taken Kurt and sent this man to spy upon us. It is clear. Don’t you see?”
She turned suddenly, and I thought she was going to attack me. Then Stephan put his hand on her arm.
“Gently, Freda.” He turned to me again, and his expression hardened. “You see my friend, what is in our minds? We know our danger, you see. The fact that we are in Swiss territory will not protect us if the Gestapo should trace us. The Nazis, we know, have little respect for frontiers. The Gestapo have none. They would murder us here as confidently as they would if we were in the Third Reich. We do not underrate their cunning. The fact that you are not a German is not conclusive. You may be what you say you are: you may not. If you are, so much the better. If not, then, I give you fair warning, you will be shot. You say your passport is in your car several kilometres along the road. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to spare time tonight to see if that is true. Nor is it possible for one of us to stand guard over you all night. You have already disturbed the first sleep Johann has had in twenty-four hours. There is only one thing for it, I’m afraid. It is undignified and barbaric; but I see no other way. We shall be forced to tie you up so that you cannot leave.”
“But this is absurd,” I cried angrily. “Good heavens, man, I realize that I’ve only myself to blame for being here; but surely you could have the common decency to…”
“The question,” he said sternly, “is not of decency, but of necessity. We have no time tonight for six-kilometre walks. One of our comrades has been delivering a consignment of these folders to our friends in Germany. We hope and believe that he will return to us across the frontier tonight. He may need our help. Moun
taineering in such weather is exhausting. Freda, get me some of the cord we use for tying the packages.”
I wanted to say something, but the words would not come. I was too angry. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so angry in my life before.
She brought the cord. It was thick grey stuff. He took it and gave the pistol to Johann. Then he came towards me.
I don’t think they liked the business any more than I did. He had gone a bit white and he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. I think that I must have been white myself; but it was anger with me. He put the cord under one of my elbows. I snatched it away.
“You had better submit,” he said harshly.
“To spare your feelings? Certainly not. You’ll have to use force, my friend. But don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. You’ll be a good Nazi yet. You should knock me down. That’ll make it easier.”
What colour there was left in his face went. A good deal of my anger evaporated at that moment. I felt sorry for the poor devil. I really believe that I should have let him tie me up. But I never knew for certain; for at that moment there was an interruption.
It was the woman who heard it first—the sound of someone running up the path outside. The next moment a man burst wildly into the room.
Stephan had turned. “Bruno! What is it? Why aren’t you at the hut?”
The man was striving to get his breath, and for a moment he could hardly speak. His face above the streaming oilskins was blue with cold. Then he gasped out.
“Kurt! He is at the hut! He is wounded—badly!”
The woman gave a little whimpering cry and her hands went to her face. Stephan gripped the newcomer’s shoulder.
“What has happened? Quickly!”
“It was dark. The Swiss did not see him. It was one of our patrols. They shot him when he was actually on the Swiss side. He was wounded in the thigh. He crawled on to the hut, but he can go no further. He…”
The Big Book of Espionage Page 41
