by John Creasey
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Palfrey.
‘You will when you leave here,’ said Orleck. ‘It is where the old monastery stands. From there you can get back to the mainland or, if it seems wiser, you can go down the fjord. I do not advise that; parts of the fjord are mined, the entrance from the Skagerrak also, much more than anywhere else. I suggest that you delay your attempt to rescue Raffleck until tomorrow night; also that two of you explore the fjord—I will give you a guide, of course—and the others, the hills beyond the sanatorium. It will not then be new ground to you. You see,’ added Orleck gently, ‘when Raffleck has gone—and I have sufficient faith to believe that you will succeed in removing him—then Oslo will be a different place. You will have noticed how all the people give an impression of waiting.’
‘I’ll say!’ exclaimed Conroy.
‘They wait for the next purge,’ said Orleck. The disappearance of Raffleck will cause such an outbreak. No one will be allowed on the streets at night, there will be a widespread search. Many, perhaps, will be arrested, some will certainly be shot. You understand, Dr. Palfrey, that only success in your mission would justify such an outbreak?’
‘I do,’ said Palfrey. ‘There is one other thing, Orleck—you know, don’t you, that some of your most notable men have recently disappeared from Oslo?’
‘Only too well,’ said Orleck. ‘But if you wish to know where they have gone, I cannot help you. There is something else which might be of interest,’ he went on quietly. ‘Delegates from the Quisling Party have been summoned to Berlin. Some are already there. I do not know why—you and your colleagues might be able to find out.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Palfrey.
But he did not spend a lot of time thinking of the delegates to Berlin.
The next twenty-four hours passed quickly enough. With Conroy and a youth – who was able to scramble down the sides of hills and find his way amongst the trees bordering the fjord nearer Oslo, as well as to explain in great detail the island where the crumbling ruin of the old monastery stood – he went as far as Skak village and saw the White House. It was a smaller place than he had expected, but from there, Orleck assured him, a message could be safely passed on.
Stefan, Brian and Drusilla were exploring the hills north of the city. Palfrey wished he could see them, but was satisfied when Orleck told him that they would be waiting near the Sigurd Sanatorium after dark.
Once there, he said, they would be on their own except for the boat on the river.
Chapter Five
Raffleck
It was quite dark.
Trees rose high on either side and cut off what little light there was, although the stars were hidden by clouds and it had turned cold, even for Oslo in autumn; a sharpness about the north wind heralded snow.
The wind whistled and howled through the trees, filling Palfrey’s mind with vague imaginings. He was reassured by the ringing of their heels on the road and the glow from Conroy’s inevitable cigarette.
They came upon a white post driven into the side of the road.
Orleck had told them to wait there, but there was no need to wait for long. Hardly had they stopped before a ghostly voice came out of the gloom: ‘Sap?’
Palfrey called as softly: ‘Yes, who’s that?’
Figures materialised – Stefan’s and Brian’s. Palfrey’s heart missed a beat when he realised that Drusilla was not with them. He said quickly: ‘Where’s ’Silla?’
‘Orleck excelled himself at the last moment, Sap. She is in the sanatorium, where she has just obtained a post as a nurse. It will be useful.’
They walked right across the drive; no more than twenty yards along it grew less dark, the trees no longer guarded them on either side. There were white posts sticking out of the ground and painted to catch the lights of any ambulances and cars which arrived with patients. As they stepped across a smooth-topped carriage-way, the building of the sanatorium showed against the grey sky; it was larger than Palfrey had expected. The glow from Conroy’s cigarette was reflected in the windows on the ground floor; Palfrey remembered the long, glass-enclosed verandah which had surrounded the place when he had seen it earlier that day.
They were prepared for the man who came towards them from the side of the house. His footsteps rang on the hard surface, proving that he was not concerned with concealing his presence. He called out in a sharp voice:
‘Halt, there!’ They stopped, and the man came up and shone a torch into their faces. ‘Who are you?’
Palfrey switched on his own torch, revealing a German in drab grey uniform.
Stefan said: ‘Why were you not by the front door?’
‘You papers, please,’ said the man, stolidly. ‘Afterwards I may answer questions, Excellency.’
‘At least you have some knowledge of your duties,’ grumbled Stefan. ‘There should be two of you. Where is the other man?’
‘He will return from his rounds, Excellency.’ This fellow was in no way worried by Stefan’s hectoring manner.
Stefan grunted but held out his papers; the others followed suit but all the man looked at was the official stamp. He saluted when he had finished, then said quickly: ‘Two of the night guards have not come on duty, Excellency. There remain only two of us. We do our best.’
‘Where are the others?’ barked Stefan.
‘I do not know, Excellency. They have not returned from an expedition this afternoon. Nor are they the first not to return,’ he added. ‘I have applied for reliefs, Excellency, but have no assurance that they will come tonight.’
‘Ach!’ growled Stefan. ‘It is deplorable!’
As his words faded on the wind the door of the sanatorium opened and all of them stared towards the white-clad figure of a man standing there. He carried a torch which he shone towards the ground and illuminated the skirt of his white overall.
‘It is more than deplorable,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘that such a disturbance should be permitted. What is it you want?’
The guard said abruptly: ‘They come to inspect, Herr Doktor.’
‘To inspect what?’ demanded the white-clad man, sharply.
‘The way this place is conducted,’ growled Stefan. ‘Step aside.’ He went forward, pushing past the doctor unceremoniously, and soon all of them were standing inside a large, square hall. When the door closed the doctor switched on a dim light. He was revealed as a tall, thin-faced man with fair hair and a rather doleful expression. His ‘overall’ was a coat; obviously he had put it on hastily, for he wore pyjamas beneath it – royal blue legs showed above a pair of cracked leather slippers. His hair was awry, as if he had been roused from sleep.
‘This is nonsense!’ he grumbled. ‘What a time to inspect the home! Why could you not come by day?’
‘The things we wish to find do not happen by day,’ growled Stefan.
‘This home is well conducted,’ said the doctor resentfully, but as he grew wider awake it was clear that he also grew more wary. ‘I am the resident doctor in charge. Your papers, please!’ They went through the formality again, but the papers were handed back quickly. ‘What is it you wish to see?’
‘The wards and laboratories,’ said Palfrey. His ‘pass’ described him as Dr. Pretzel, and he felt, as he looked at the other’s eyes, that he was at last justifying his presence here. ‘I understand, Doktor—’ he paused, waiting for the name.
‘Oster,’ said the other, promptly enough.
‘Doktor Oster,’ went on Palfrey, ‘that you have some interesting cases, and while my companions are performing their duty, perhaps we could discuss them. I am interested in paranoia,’ he added, smiling as one medical man to another. ‘You have some interesting patients here, I am told.’
Oster thawed at once.
‘Yes indeed,’ he said eagerly. ‘I will send for the secretary, Herr Doktor. He will guide your companions and you and I can perhaps exchange notes.’ He stepped to the wall and pressed a bell; soon a short, thick-set man, sleepy-eyed behind thick-l
ensed glasses but fully dressed, came hurrying along the passage. Oster gave him instructions – he was something more than the resident doctor, thought Palfrey – said that he had examined the passes, gave the man directions to show the visitors wherever they liked.
When they had disappeared into the shadows of the stairs Palfrey looked at Oster with a one-sided smile.
‘It is regrettable, Herr Doktor, that the only way in which I can make such visits is to come with such a party.’ He shrugged his shoulders, then launched into a mass of details and theory on paranoia subjects which seemed to startle Oster but quickened the man to deep interest. They walked to the end of the staircase, along a passage, and Oster said as he opened a door: ‘You will be interested in some of the experiments we have carried out in the laboratory. We have the advantage of having patients whom we can use without fearing whether they live or die.’ He laughed a little.
Palfrey said: ‘Just what do you mean?’
‘Come, come!’ said Oster, ‘we have Norwegian patients whom we can regard dispassionately. We can experiment with them where with others we must do our best to cure them by the known methods. Perhaps they are unwilling specimens’ – Oster laughed again, a cruel, unpleasant sound – ‘but that matters little. It has long been obvious to me, Herr Doktor, as doubtless it has to you, that madness can only be studied in a madman. Obvious, yes?’
‘Naturally,’ Palfrey said, forcing himself to sound genial.
‘So here we have developed a system of worsening the symptoms of the patients and then exploring the brain reactions to the worsening—finding cures sometimes, finding methods of treatment which include injections in the brain—but then, I am boring you, this is elementary.’ Oster laughed again. ‘We have one man here who is a master, Herr Doktor. He is difficult, yes, but a master! I have watched his struggle with much interest, it is pleasant to be able to regard others with complete detachment.’
Palfrey said: ‘Whose struggle?’
‘The master’s,’ said Oster with another light, cruel laugh. ‘Dr. Raffleck. You know, of course, that he is here?’
Palfrey looked startled. ‘I was told that he was at the Aalson Hospital. I had hoped to meet him.’
‘You will meet him,’ said Oster. ‘Whether you will be glad is a different matter. He remains hostile but is too precious a man to lose. Imagine his position,’ added the German quickly. ‘There are men whom he knows, patients he has treated for a long time. I work upon them—they get worse. Raffleck knows that I cause that. I then pass them to him for treatment. He is torn between refusing to co-operate with a man who will use such methods and the urge within him to find the causes and the treatments for the condition. However, he is a doctor first, a Norwegian afterwards. So he always yields.’
Oster stood by another white-painted door at the end of a long laboratory with the impedimenta of the profession on long benches on either side. Palfrey saw that everything was modern; it was as well equipped as any London hospital.
‘He is in this smaller room, now, considering the case of a patient for whom he has some regard,’ said Oster.
‘I see,’ said Palfrey. ‘It should be interesting.’
‘It will be,’ said Oster, and opened the door.
Dr. Harald Raffleck was standing over a white-topped table, peering at a chart held between his thick, hairy hands. That was the first thing Palfrey noticed about Raffleck – his hands were those of a navvy rather than of a doctor. The chart hid the lower half of his face, and as he was looking down at him the top half, with the high forehead, had a curiously foreshortened effect. He did not look up when the door opened but continued to peer at the thing in his hand.
The room was a miniature of the larger laboratory.
‘Good evening, Raffleck!’ said Oster softly. ‘A distinguished colleague has come to see you.’
Raffleck looked up sharply.
Palfrey caught a quick glimpse of his eyes; he did not forget that first impression, one of a man who was enduring an agony greater than any man could really bear. It showed mostly in his eyes, large, pale blue, narrowed at the corners. His fine forehead was wrinkled and graven with dark lines; his face showed the marks of much privation; there was an ugly burn scar on his right cheek. He looked a man of sixty but Palfrey knew that he was not forty years old.
His lips, full and badly shaped, parted for a moment; Palfrey saw that he had no teeth.
‘A colleague?’ He spoke in Norwegian.
‘From Berlin,’ said Oster.
Raffleck closed his lips, then sat down slowly. He looked very weary, and did not speak immediately. Then: ‘I have no colleagues in Berlin, Herr Doktor.’
‘Raffleck will joke,’ said Oster. There was no humour in his thin-lipped smile. ‘You will be good enough to remember, Raffleck, that Doktor Pretzel is a good friend of mine.’
Palfrey gave a smile as tight-lipped as Oster’s. Raffleck looked at him and through him, then dropped the card on to the table and said in a low-pitched voice which seemed to be as wracked with pain as his eyes: ‘I cannot go on, I just cannot go on. This card—it is a horrible thing. There was no need for Wegeland to reach so advanced a stage of dementia, it is wrong, quite wrong! I have treated him for many years. He would have been re covered now but for—’
‘You forget yourself, Raffleck!’ said Oster sharply. ‘You are able to work here, with all these advantages, only because you do what you are told to do. If you give Doktor Pretzel a wrong impression, you can imagine that he will report adversely when he returns. You will doubtless remember that there is ample room for another man in the huts at Dachau. Doktor Raffleck,’ added Oster with vicious sarcasm, ‘visited Dachau for a period of six months. There he had ample opportunity to study patients. Did you not, Raffleck?’
Raffleck compressed his lips; his hands clenched at his sides, and yet he was so obviously hopeless and impotent.
Palfrey began to talk, quietly, of mental diseases and not of Dachau. It was some time before Raffleck began to open up, but soon he seemed to forget what was keeping him here and what was so deeply on his mind. He became the specialist, not a victim of misrule. Palfrey, by no means a stranger to the subject, knew that Oster was right in one respect, and that the Marquis had not chosen badly; this man was a master who lost himself completely in his subject.
After a while, Raffleck said: ‘There is one patient you would perhaps like to see, Herr Doktor.’ He looked diffident, seemed grateful that Palfrey had shown a real interest. ‘I have especial concern for him. He is a German general with tendencies which—’ he went off into a welter of detail. ‘By normal standards he would have been dead a year ago, but I have kept him alive and he even shows some improvement. I can best show you what I mean by taking you to the patient.’ He gave Oster a gentle, even humble glance. ‘Is it permissible for Doktor Pretzel to come with me, please?’
‘To the case of His Excellency General von Tranter, yes,’ said Oster. ‘This way!’
He led them through the outer laboratory, which was deserted, then up the stairs. As they reached the landing, Palfrey saw a door open and Stefan came out. Further along a wide passage a girl came hurrying, dressed in nurse’s uniform; the dim light at first prevented Palfrey from seeing that it was Drusilla.
Then she drew nearer.
As she walked past quickly, Oster put out a hand and pinched her arm. She pulled her arm back. Palfrey felt his fists clench, only just managing to stop himself from opening hostilities there and then. Drusilla reached the landing and disappeared.
‘Sometimes we are fortunate,’ said Oster lightly. ‘The nurses—you should see the nurses! Hags, old midwives, any old useless creatures they can spare! But you saw that one? She came to us today.’ He winked. ‘She is not used to us yet, but I have no doubt she will learn.’
Conroy and Brian came out, followed by the short secretary who stood blinking at them behind his thick-lensed glasses.
‘You are being well looked after?’ Oster asked Stefan
.
‘As well as can be expected,’ growled Stefan, looking at Palfrey. ‘You are satisfied so far, Herr Doktor?’
‘Very well satisfied,’ said Palfrey. ‘I have had a most interesting exchange of opinions with Dr. Raffleck.’ He glanced at the Norwegian and gripped his arm in friendly fashion. ‘I suggest that now all of us go to the room where we will find General von Tranter, and satisfy ourselves that he is being well cared for. Eh, Raffleck?’
Raffleck looked at him, dubiously.
‘This is a large number for a visit.’
‘We shall not be long,’ said Palfrey. ‘The secretary will perhaps lead the way.’ He walked with Oster and Raffleck on either side, behind Stefan and Brian, Conroy in the rear.
He saw Drusilla at the other end of the passage.
It was all working very smoothly, he thought, almost too smoothly.
Nothing went amiss, however, and the short-sighted secretary opened the last door in the passage, then stood aside for the others to enter. Raffleck made another ineffectual protest but Palfrey gripped his arm; Raffleck looked at him curiously. Brian stayed behind with Conroy at the last minute. Stefan’s vast frame seemed to fill the room where a man was lying motionless in bed with his head heavily bandaged.
His eyes were open and he was staring towards the ceiling. He did not appear to notice the intrusion.
Stefan stood aside for the doctors to go nearer to the bed, then put out his arms. It was a surprisingly smooth and easy gesture, as if he were about to commence a gargantuan yawn-cum-stretch. Instead, his hands fell upon the necks of the secretary and Oster and gripped their throats before they uttered even the beginning of a gasp.
Raffleck was going towards the patient.
Oster kicked out and tried to wrench himself away; Palfrey struck him a heavy blow on the solar plexus and robbed him of any remaining strength. Stefan, quite expressionless, increased his pressure; he was quite capable of handling the two together.
Palfrey said, in English: ‘Let them live, Stefan, we’ll only make it worse for the others if we kill them.’ He gripped Raffleck’s arm as the doctor turned in astonishment, while the German general lay staring towards the ceiling without moving, his eyes glazed as if he were dead.
