But Stephan had ceased to listen. He turned sharply. “Johann, you must dress yourself at once. Bruno, take the pistol and guard this man. He broke in here. He may be dangerous. Freda, get the cognac and the iodine. We shall need them for Kurt.”
He himself went to a cupboard and got out some handkerchiefs, which he began tearing feverishly into strips, which he knotted together. Still gasping for breath, the man had taken the pistol and was staring at me with a puzzled frown. Then the woman reappeared from the kitchen carrying a bottle of cognac and a small tube of iodine of the sort that is sold for dabbing at cut fingers. Stephan stuffed them in his pockets with the knotted handkerchiefs. Then he called up the stairs, “Hurry, Johann. We are ready to leave.”
It was more than I could bear. Professional fussiness, I suppose.
“Has any one of you,” I asked loudly, “ever dealt with a bullet wound before?”
They stared at me. Then Stephan glanced at Bruno.
“If he moves,” he said, “shoot.” He raised his voice again. “Johann!”
There was an answering cry of reassurance.
“Has it occurred to you,” I persisted, “that even if you get him here alive, which I doubt, as you obviously don’t know what you’re doing, he will need immediate medical attention? Don’t you think that one of you had better go for a doctor? Ah, but of course; the doctor would ask questions about a bullet wound, wouldn’t he? The matter would be reported to the police.”
“We can look after him,” Stephan grunted. “Johann! Hurry!”
“It seems a pity,” I said reflectively, “that one brave man should have to die because of his friends’ stupidity.” And then my calm deserted me. “You fool,” I shouted. “Listen to me. Do you want to kill this man? You’re going about it the right way. I’m a surgeon, and this is a surgeon’s business. Take that cognac out of your pocket. We shan’t need it. The iodine too. And those pieces of rag. Have you got two or three clean towels?”
The woman nodded stupidly.
“Then get them, please, and be quick. And you said something about some coffee. Have you a flask for it? Good. Then we shall take that. Put plenty of sugar in it. I want blankets, too. Three will be enough, but they must be kept dry. We shall need a stretcher. Get two poles or broomsticks and two old coats. We can make a stretcher of sorts by putting the pole through the sleeves of them. Take this cord of yours too. It will be useful to make slings for the stretcher, and hurry! The man may be bleeding to death. Is he far away?”
The man was glowering at me. “Four kilometres. In a climbing hut in the hills this side of the frontier.” He stepped forward and gripped my arm. “If you are tricking us…” he began.
“I’m not thinking about you,” I snapped. “I’m thinking about a man who’s been crawling along with a bullet in his thigh and a touching faith in his friends. Now get those poles, and hurry.”
They hurried. In three minutes they had the things collected. The exhausted Bruno’s oilskins and gum boots had, at my suggestion, been transferred to me. Then I tied one of the blankets round my waist under my coat, and told Stephan and Johann to do the same.
“I,” said the woman, “will take the other things.”
“You,” I said, “will stay here, please.”
She straightened up at that. “No,” she said firmly, “I will come with you. I shall be quite calm. You will see.”
“Nevertheless,” I said rather brutally, “you will be more useful here. A bed must be ready by the fire here. There must also be hot bricks and plenty of blankets. I shall need, besides, both boiled and boiling water. You have plenty of ordinary salt, I suppose?”
“Yes, Herr Doktor. But…”
“We are wasting time.”
Two minutes later we left.
I shall never forget that climb. It began about half a mile along the road below the chalet. The first part was mostly up narrow paths between trees. They were covered with pine needles and, in the rain, as slippery as the devil. We had been climbing steadily for about half an hour when Stephan, who had been leading the way with a storm lantern, paused.
“I must put out the light here,” he said. “The frontier is only three kilometres from here, and the guards patrol to a depth of two kilometres. They must not see us.” He blew out the lamp. “Turn round,” he said then. “You will see another light.”
I saw it, far away below us, a pinpoint.
“That is our light. When we are returning from Germany, we can see it from across the frontier and know that we are nearly home and that our friends are waiting. Hold on to my coat now. You need not worry about Johann behind you. He knows the path well. This way, Herr Doktor.”
It was the only sign he gave that he had decided to accept me for what I said I was.
I cannot conceive of how anyone could know that path well. The surface soon changed from pine needles to a sort of rocky rubble, and it twisted and turned like a wounded snake. The wind had dropped, but it was colder than ever, and I found myself crunching through sugary patches of half-frozen slush. I wondered how on earth we were going to bring down a wounded man on an improvised stretcher.
We had been creeping along without the light for about twenty minutes when Stephan stopped and, shielding the lamp with his coat, relit it. I saw that we had arrived.
The climbing hut was built against the side of an overhanging rock face. It was about six feet square inside, and the man was lying diagonally across it on his face. There was a large blood-stain on the floor beneath him. He was semi-conscious. His eyes were closed, but he mumbled something as I felt for his pulse.
“Will he live?” whispered Stephan.
I didn’t know. The pulse was there, but it was feeble and rapid. His breathing was shallow. I looked at the wound. The bullet had entered on the inner side of the left thigh just below the groin. There was a little bleeding, but it obviously hadn’t touched the femoral artery and, as far as I could see, the bone was all right. I made a dressing with one of the towels and tied it in place with another. The bullet could wait. The immediate danger was from shock aggravated by exposure. I got to work with the blankets and the flask of coffee. Soon the pulse strengthened a little, and after about half an hour I told them how to prepare the stretcher.
I don’t know how they got him down that path in the darkness. It was all I could do to get down by myself. It was snowing hard now in great fleecy chunks that blinded you when you moved forward. I was prepared for them to slip and drop the stretcher, but they didn’t. It was slow work, however, and it was a good forty minutes before we got to the point where it was safe to light the lamp.
After that I was able to help with the stretcher. At the foot of the path up to the chalet, I went ahead with the lantern. The woman heard my footsteps and came to the door. I realized that we must have been gone for the best part of three hours.
“They’re bringing him up,” I said. “He’ll be all right. I shall need your help now.”
She said, “The bed is ready.” And then, “Is it serious, Herr Doktor?”
“No.” I didn’t tell her then that there was a bullet to be taken out.
It was a nasty job. The wound itself wasn’t so bad. The bullet must have been pretty well spent, for it had lodged up against the bone without doing any real damage. It was the instruments that made it difficult. They came from the kitchen. He didn’t stand up to it very well, and I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t feel so good myself when I’d finished. The cognac came in useful after all.
We finally got him to sleep about five.
“He’ll be all right now,” I said.
The woman looked at me and I saw the tears begin to trickle down her cheeks. It was only then that I remembered that she wasn’t a nurse, but his wife.
It was Johann who comforted her. Stephan came over to me.
“We owe you a great debt, Herr
Doktor,” he said. “I must apologize for our behaviour earlier this evening. We have not always been savages, you know. Kurt was a professor of zoology. Johann was a master printer. I was an architect. Now we are those who crawl across frontiers at night and plot like criminals. We have been treated like savages, and so we live like them. We forget sometimes that we were civilized. We ask your pardon. I do not know how we can repay you for what you have done. We…”
But I was too tired for speeches. I smiled quickly at him.
“All that I need by way of a fee is another glass of cognac and a bed to sleep in for a few hours. I suggest, by the way, that you get a doctor in to look at the patient later today. There will be a little fever to treat. Tell the doctor he fell on his climbing axe. He won’t believe you, but there’ll be no bullet for him to be inquisitive about. Oh, and if you could find me a little petrol for my car…”
It was five in the afternoon and almost dark again when Stephan woke me. The local doctor, he reported, as he set an enormous tray of food down beside the bed, had been, dressed the wound, prescribed, and gone. My car was filled up with petrol and awaited me below if I wished to drive to Zurich that night. Kurt was awake and could not be prevailed upon to sleep until he had thanked me.
They were all there, grouped about the bed, when I went downstairs Bruno was the only one who looked as if he had had any sleep.
He sprang to his feet. “Here, Kurt,” he said facetiously, “is the Herr Doktor. He is going to cut your leg off.”
Only the woman did not laugh at the jest. Kurt himself was smiling when I bent over to look at him.
He was a youngish-looking man of about forty with intelligent brown eyes and a high, wide forehead. The smile faded from his face as he looked at me.
“You know what I wish to say, Herr Doktor?”
I took refuge in professional brusqueness. “The less you say, the better,” I said, and felt for his pulse. But as I did so his fingers moved and gripped my hand.
“One day soon,” he said, “England and the Third Reich will be at war. But you will not be at war with Germany. Remember that, please, Herr Doktor. Not with Germany. It is people like us who are Germany, and in our way we shall fight with England. You will see.”
I left soon after.
At nine that night I was in Zurich.
* * *
—
Llewellyn was back in the room. I put the manuscript down. He looked across at me.
“Very interesting,” I said.
“I’d considered sending it up to one of these magazines that publish short stories,” he said apologetically. “I thought I’d like your opinion first, though. What do you think?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, of course, it’s difficult to say. Very interesting, as I said. But there’s no real point to it, is there? It needs something to tie it all together.”
“Yes, I see what you mean. It sort of leaves off, doesn’t it? But that’s how it actually happened.” He looked disappointed. “I don’t think I could invent an ending. It would be rather a pity, wouldn’t it? You see, it’s all true.”
“Yes, it would be a pity.”
“Well, anyway, thanks for reading it. Funny thing to happen. I really only put it down on paper for fun.” He got up. “Oh, by the way. I was forgetting. I heard from those people about a week after war broke out. A letter. Let’s see now, where did I put it? Ah, yes.”
He rummaged in a drawer for a bit, and then tossed a letter over to me.
The envelope bore a Swiss stamp and the postmark was Klosters, 4 September 1939. The contents felt bulky. I drew them out.
The cause of the bulkiness was what looked like a travel agent’s folder doubled up to fit the envelope. I straightened it. On the front page was a lino-cut of a clump of pines on the shore of a lake and the name “TITISEE.” I opened out the folder.
“GERMAN MEN AND WOMEN, COMRADES!” The type was worn and battered. “Hitler has led you into war. He fed you with lies about the friendly Polish people. In your name he has now committed a wanton act of aggression against them. As a consequence, the free democracies of England and France have declared war against Germany. Comrades, right and justice are on their side. It is Hitler and National Socialism who are the enemies of peace in Europe. Our place as true Germans is at the side of the democracies against Hitler, against National Socialism. Hitler cannot win this war. But the people of Germany must act. All Germans, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, must act now. Our Czech and Slovak friends are already refusing to make guns for Hitler. Let us stand by their sides. Remember…”
I was about to read on when I saw that the letter which accompanied the folder had fluttered to the carpet. I picked it up. It consisted of a few typewritten lines on an otherwise blank sheet of paper.
Greetings, Herr Doktor. We secured your address from the Customs carnet in your car and write now to wish you good luck. Kurt, Stephan, and Bruno have made many journeys since we saw you and returned safely each time. Today, Kurt leaves again. We pray for him as always. With this letter we send you Johann’s newest work so that you shall see that Kurt spoke the truth to you. We are the army of the shadows. We do not fight for you against our countrymen; but we fight with you against National Socialism, our common enemy.
Auf Wiedersehen.
Freda, Kurt, Stephan, Johann, and Bruno.
Llewellyn put my glass down on the table beside me. “Help yourself to a cigarette. What do you think of that? Nice of them, wasn’t it?” he added. “Sentimental lot, these Germans.”
THE TRAITRESS
SYDNEY HORLER
“HORLER FOR EXCITEMENT” appeared in advertisements and on the dust jacket of scores of books when the popular and prolific Sydney (Harry) Horler (1888–1954) was at his peak in the second quarter of the twentieth century.
His parents wanted him to be a schoolteacher but he refused and left school to become a copywriter for the Bristol Evening News, where he later became a reporter and went on to the same position in Manchester, Birmingham, and London. Horler had just started to write fiction when World War I broke out, so he stopped to enlist and was commissioned a second lieutenant to write propaganda for Air Force Intelligence. His poor eyesight prevented him from seeing combat. After the war, he began to write sports fiction but found his calling when he wrote his first mystery, The Mystery of No. 1 (1925).
He wrote about a hundred fifty mystery novels, many serialized in the British periodical News of the World. His most famous series character is Timothy Overbury “Tiger” Standish, son of the Earl of Quorn—a hearty, two-fisted, soccer-playing superhero similar to H. C. McNeile’s Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond. Standish makes his debut in Tiger Standish (1932) and the virile patriot was published regularly up to World War II.
Other characters featured in Horler’s work include Ian Heath, a British secret agent, who first appeared in The Curse of Doone (1928), and Gerald Frost, known as “Nighthawk,” an outraged burglar who steals jewelry from society ladies of questionable virtue, using their own lipstick to scrawl the word “wanton” on their pillowcases as they sleep.
Horler is seldom read today for several reasons, including unbelievable plots, a dreadful writing style, and overtly negative remarks about pretty much anyone who isn’t British, an attitude reflected in his private life as well as his fiction, but he was enormously popular in his day and one of England’s bestselling writers.
“The Traitress” was originally published in the November 1930 issue of Hush magazine; it was first collected in The Screaming Skull and Other Stories (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1930).
THE TRAITRESS
SYDNEY HORLER
THAT DULL RED STAIN was blood.
The realization came swiftly to Chertsey as he stood, uncomfortable and bewildered, in the centre of the room.
At his feet was a murdered man.
Bai
ntree, clad in evening dress, lay perfectly still; his arms were outflung, and his legs were supine. Their limpness was so horribly grotesque, they might have belonged to a giant doll. In Baintree’s breast was the wound which the assassin had made. The stiff white shirt was ugly with it. With a shudder, Chertsey remembered that some of that life-blood was on his hand.
He looked round. He did not deny that he was nervous—very nervous. One had to live through an ordeal like this to know how deeply one could be stirred.
The sight of the telephone on its stand in the far corner reminded him of things outside—of the Police….In such a case one always telephoned for the Police. He was suddenly filled with dread….With that blood on his hand….
Thirty yards away, in Piccadilly, a taxi-cab passed with hooting of horn. Inside this room there was a deep, immovable stillness—the uncanny silence of death. It began to frighten him. He felt he could not stand it any longer. Whatever discomfiture the action might bring, he must ring up the Police.
And then, as he took the first step across the carpet, the door opened and a man walked into the room.
The suddenness of this man’s appearance, following upon the tremendous shock he had just received, made him pull up with a start. And instantly the thought came as he looked into the stranger’s face that he must appear a guilty person. He certainly felt one.
The stranger was calm and clear-headed; in the circumstances amazingly so. Keeping a steady gaze upon Chertsey, he quietly closed the door. After he had done this, his hand went into a pocket. It was withdrawn holding a revolver.
“Who are you?”
It was a voice with a vibrant note—like the sound of steel cutting the air. It matched the speaker. Mesmerized by the behaviour of the other, Chertsey continued to stare. He saw a thinnish man of perhaps forty-eight, dressed in a dinner-jacket suit beneath a light overcoat. Used to forming impressions, he swiftly summarized the man’s face. The colour of the flesh was grey, and every feature was grim; the thin, tight-locked lips, the challenging jut of the jaw, the angry blaze of the eyes—a granite man, this.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 42
