Come into my Parlour (10 page)

“That's true enough. But say they had something that could paralyse the R.A.F., eh? Something our masks won't protect us against with which they could drench our airfields. Then they'd be able to put it down on our cities and it would be
our
war industries that would pack up. As long as Britain is a going concern we've got the Nazis set. But if they could knock out our big towns and render them untenable the whole course of the war would be changed. Britain is the only practical base in which a striking force for the eventual invasion and reconquest of the Continent can be built up. Given a new weapon that could paralyse our cities and render our Air Force impotent we will never see the defeat of Hitler in our lifetime. Some such entirely new scientific development is the one and only thing I'm frightened of. Now d'you understand why I want you to get me this information, whatever it may cost?”

“Yes,” said Erika, solemnly, “I do. Is there anything else that strikes you about the letter? Any advice you can give me about the way to deal with him, I mean?”

Sir Pellinore had another go of port and read the letter through again.

“Why has he gone to earth right on the Nazis' doorstep?” he asked, after a moment. “There's only Lake Constance, or the Bodensee as you Germans call it, between him and the fellers who're out to get him. It's summer, and I should have thought he'd have parked himself somewhere up in the mountains as far from the German frontier as he could get.”

“Perhaps that's on account of the cover he has chosen,” Erika suggested. “He was always keen on fishing. That goes well with his story about his being a Swedish naturalist, and if he's in hiding with nothing to do all day the fishing would be a godsend as a recreation.”

“Um! Perhaps you're right,” Sir Pellinore grunted. “Maybe, too, that he's cleverer than we think, and reckons the sleuths are less likely to look for him right under their noses. I thought for a moment that it might be a trap. Don't want you sandbagged and shanghaied back to Germany.”

“That possibility occurred to me, too,” Erika agreed. “I thought of it only this morning when I was coming up in the train. Do you think it could be a lure to get me there?”

“You know the feller better than I do, so you're the best judge of that,” Sir Pellinore replied non-committally. He would have been distressed beyond measure if anything had happened to Erika, but he honestly thought the chances of that extremely unlikely and, in any case, his every action for the past two years had been governed by the sole consideration of what it would contribute to the defeat of Hitler. In his position he had to steel his heart and follow the dictates of cold logic when dealing with such problems. If it had been one hundred to one that Erika would land herself in Dachau but the one chance offered a possibility of saving a hundred British lives of equal value to her own, he would still have encouraged her to go to Switzerland. As it was, the risk appeared infinitely smaller and the stake immeasurably greater. He had drawn her attention to the only glimmer of a red light that he could see, and felt that was as far as his principles would allow him to go.

“The Gestapo could compel pretty well anyone to write such a letter,” Erika said slowly, “but I don't think they'd let them out into Switzerland afterwards if they had. What is more, I don't think they would allow any mention of this new form of warfare they are contemplating to appear in the letter either.”

“That's true. Still, we can't be too careful. Tell you what. I'll send that young Guardee out with you. What's his name? Piers something. Feller who's staying down at Gwaine Meads now.”

“Piers Gaveston. Oh, I wish you would. He's such a nice boy, and he seems to have had such terribly bad luck.”

“Yes. Bit impetuous, but he's got his head screwed on all right. Sound as a bell too. But I can't spare him for long. You must keep it under your hat, but this bit of a pickle he's been in was all a put-up job. Very unpleasant, but necessary to give certain people the impression that he's a bad lot.”

Erika smiled. “We all felt sure that he must really be innocent as he was one of your private guests.”

“You did, eh?” Sir Pellinore's bright blue eyes suddenly hardened. “Never jump to conclusions about a thing like that. I've got plenty of friends who'd be wearing broad arrows now if they'd been fools enough to be found out. Anyway, young what's-his-name is being groomed for a special job and he's due to start on it at the end of the second week in August. There should be just time, though, for him to take you out and have a preliminary snoop round at this chalet place. If your husband's really there it should be all right for you to go ahead,
but if the place is occupied by anyone else that'll show there's something phoney about it, and you can return with Piers to England.”

“Thank you so much. Is there any other point in the letter that strikes you?”

Sir Pellinore poured himself a second glass of port and read the letter through to the end.

“I don't think so,” he said, taking off his spectacles and handing it back. “By and large, the story seems too logical to be fishy. Reading between the lines, I should say your husband is just as anxious for a divorce as you are. He obviously thinks you'll be in no position to support him in the future and would like to be free to sell his title to some rich man's daughter who wants to put a coronet on her undies.”

“I imagine it is not easy to get to Switzerland now Hitler is in control of Northern France and Vichy France is closed to us, but I take it you will be able to help me about my journey?”

“Yes. If you wanted to go only on personal grounds, to get this divorce, it might be very awkward. But in view of this new type of warfare business I can say with a clear conscience that you're going out to do a job for me. We send long range aircraft over now and again with the bags for our Legation, and I can get you a passage in one of them. I'll fix up the money side of it for you, too. Get you a credit for twelve hundred at a Swiss bank and have a chit sent to our Minister there that he is to weigh out any bigger sum that you may require if you can do a deal over the secret information.”

When Erika had thanked him he finished his port and they went upstairs, where it was agreed that she should return to Gwaine Meads the next day and wait there until she heard from him.

A week elapsed and on the following Thursday morning she received a letter in Sir Pellinore's bold, flowing hand. It was extremely laconic and simply said:

A plant will be leaving on Sunday. Suggest you arrive here early Saturday afternoon. Have written instructing your escort to place himself at your disposal. You can now tell him whatever it is strictly necessary for him to know. Bless you
.

P
.

Piers Gaveston had also received a brief chit from Sir Pellinore, by the same post; and, glancing up from it, he smiled at her across the breakfast table. He was a tall fair young man with nice brown eyes and a slightly upturned moustache. They made no comment on their letters but as soon as the meal was over, on seeing her go out on to the terrace, he drifted casually after her.

As soon as they were out of earshot of Madeleine and the Professor he said with a grin: “I'm instructed to report for duty, madame! What are your orders for the day?”

“Nothing very onerous,” she smiled. “Let's walk through the woods as far as the little Greek temple, and as we go along I'll tell you why Sir Pellinore has asked you to help me.”

They fell into step, and, leaving the gardens, strolled slowly down the long grassy glade while Erika told him about the journey they were to make and her husband; but she said nothing of the secret work upon which Kurt von Osterberg had been engaged.

“I do hope you manage to fix things up all right,” he said, when she had finished. “It must be rotten to be tied up to a chap that you no longer care about. Anyhow, I'll make darn certain it's him who is living at this place, and not some of those Nazi so-and-sos, before you go anywhere near it.”

She told him then that Sir Pellinore had let her into the secret of his cashiering, and that she thought it far braver for a young man to submit to such an ordeal in the interests of his country than any heroics would have been that he could perform in a battle; but he replied quite lightly:

“Oh, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. The day after I had committed myself to Sir Pellinore I would have given the earth to get out of it. The time while we were setting the stage for our little act was pretty grim, too; but once the balloon went up the fun began. People's reactions were so unexpected and often quite comic. They hurt at times, because some that I would have put my last quid on as good as spat in my eye; but others, some of them people I hardly knew, came forward and practically offered to perjure themselves for me. There's nothing like a spot of real bother to show you what your friends are made of.” Then, without disclosing its object, he gave her an amusing account of the case.

As they were walking back, Erika remarked: “Gregory Sallust told me that you have the same name as a famous character in English history. Are you descended from him?”

“Infamous, you mean,” he laughed. “Piers, or Pierce, Gaveston was the wicked favourite of Edward the Second. He used to take the King out to night clubs when he ought to have been attending to dreary affairs of State. The Barons were a gloomy lot of killjoys and didn't like poor Piers a bit; they caught him and did him in, in the end. My family claim to be descended from this young spark and apparently thought it would be amusing to christen me after him. Fortunately both my parents are dead, so they'll never know how suitable their choice was, as I, too, shall always be regarded as a bad hat.”

This confidential chat had the effect of drawing Erika and Piers closer together than all their casual conversations in the past weeks had done, and she felt that she was lucky to have such a likeable companion for her escort.

On the Friday night she told the Matron that she was leaving to do some secretarial work for Sir Pellinore in London, and said good-bye to a number of people she had come to know in the convalescent wing. Afterwards she had a long heart-to-heart chat with Madeleine, and was seen off by her and the Professor when she left with Piers next morning.

That afternoon she found that Sir Pellinore had made an appointment for her with the barber who worked for one of the M.I. Department. He dyed her hair a deep, rich brown and took a shade off the corners of her eyebrows. A photograph of her was then taken, and after dinner that night Sir Pellinore gave her a Swedish passport in the name of Madame Astrid Largerlöf and all the other papers that she would require. On the morning of Sunday, the 10th of August, he waved them good-bye from the steps of his house and a taxi took them to a wartime department of the Air Ministry situated in Holborn.

They were there as instructed, at half past nine, but, although the journey down to the airfield in Kent, from which they were to depart took only a little over an hour, their aircraft did not take off till nearly three o'clock in the afternoon. The delay seemed interminable, pointless and exasperating; which caused Piers during one dreary wait to remark:

“What extraordinary people airmen are. I've had quite a lot to do with them in the past two years and operationally they are absolutely wizard. I've seen squadrons go up to fight in the Battle of Britain, and squadrons of bombers leave on long trips to Germany, and in every case the aircraft took off, one after the other at stated intervals, to the split second; yet, if you want them to fly you anywhere, nothing is ever ready. They start to test their engines only when the aircraft is due to get off and, like today, often in the end decide to use another, or stop testing for an hour because it's time for the mechanics to have their lunch. In fact, where passenger flying is concerned they seem to lose their sense of time altogether.”

“They've inherited that from the Civil Air Lines of pre-war days, I expect,” Erika replied. “They had brought time-wasting to a fine art; but what can the poor passengers do as long as air routes are granted to corporations as a monopoly?”

Piers shrugged. “Well, let's hope that the British Air Lines run things a bit better after the war.”

By ten to three they were at last emplaned with the one other
passenger who had accompanied them from London. He was a pleasant middle-aged man with spectacles; and although he had said nothing of his business, Piers, having caught sight of the heading of some documents he had been reading during one of their interminable waits, had gathered that he was something to do with the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

As they were going to a neutral country their pilot was a civilian and the aircraft had civil markings; its windows were also blacked cut in order that the passengers from a belligerent country should not gain knowledge of the Swiss defences. In consequence they could see nothing of the landscape below them, but the aircraft climbed and climbed until Erika thought it was never going to stop and the great height made her acutely uncomfortable, even when she put on her oxygen mask. But the high altitude at which the aircraft made the greater part of its flight was necessary in order to avoid the possibility of running into German ‘planes while flying over France. In due course they dropped and dropped, which gave her an equally sickly feeling, but the pilot made a good landing on the Swiss aerodrome, having accomplished the actual journey in considerably less time than his passengers had spent between reporting to the office in London and taking their seats in the 'plane.

After their papers and suit-cases had been examined, Erika and Piers said good-bye to their fellow passenger and took a taxi to a small hotel. It proved to be full, so they went on to the second on a short list that Piers had made before starting, and here they secured accommodation. The plain but abundant food, together with unstinted butter and cream, that they were given for their dinner seemed almost a banquet compared to meals in wartime Britain; and, after it, tired out from their long day, they went early to bed.