Come into my Parlour (58 page)

Still dazed from the shock of his swift capture, and all the fight temporarily gone out of him, the Gestapo man walked down the passage after Gregory to the sitting-room. All three of them entered it and Kuporovitch closed the door behind them.

Von Osterberg was sitting in his usual chair. He looked up with a start as they came in, and nervously shuffled to his feet.

“Good evening, Count,” said Gregory. “There is no need to be alarmed. As you see, your gaoler is no longer in a position to harm you.”

“I—I don't understand!” stammered the Count.

“It is quite simple,” Gregory replied firmly. “We know what has been going on here. The Gestapo forced you to write those letters, to help in trapping Erika, and to attempt to trap me. But the trap has worked the other way—this time. I repeat that you have no more to fear from this man Einholtz, and I now want you to tell me as clearly as you can exactly what did happen when the two of you took Erika into Germany.”

Kuporovitch had given Einholtz a push that sent him sprawling
into an armchair, so that with his hands tied behind him he could not get up without considerable difficulty.

Von Osterberg stared at him wild-eyed, then looked back at his captors and gasped:

“Do you—do you mean—that I'm free?”

“More or less,” said Gregory laconically. “Come on now! I've got no time to waste, and I want your story.”

For a moment von Osterberg remained silent, evidently trying to collect his wits. Then he began to talk in short, jerky sentences. He told them everything, just as it had happened, from the time of his first being intimidated into serving the Gestapo, right up to Erika's capture and the infamous supper-party which had followed at Schloss Niederfels.

“So that's how Grauber learned about the three things that I had gone to Russia to find out,” commented Gregory. “What did they do with her then?”

“They locked her up in one of the dungeons,” replied the Count slowly. “It wasn't too bad a prison, as it was quite dry. At one time we had used it as a store room. Next day they gave her a bed and a few pieces of furniture and they continued to keep her there. She was still there when we came back here.”

“Do you think she is still there, now?”

“I don't know. I suppose so. As they had kept her there for the best part of two months there doesn't seem any reason why they should have moved her since.”

“All right.” Gregory stepped over to an open desk upon which were some sheets of writing-paper and a pencil. He gave them to von Osterberg and added: “Now you will be good enough to draw for me a series of plans of the Castle—particularly the part of it in which this dungeon is situated.”

With pencil and paper before him the Count seemed to take on new life. For twenty minutes he sketched and wrote rapidly, while Gregory sat beside him watching and asking questions from time to time. At length Gregory was satisfied, and sweeping up the papers put them in his inner pocket. Then he said:

“Before the Gestapo got to work on you, you were doing a job at the experimental station at Peenemünde, weren't you?”

Von Osterberg nodded.

“What was this experimental work that you were engaged on?”

The Count shook his head. “I cannot say.”

“Oh, yes you can,” Gregory said threateningly “Come on now! What was it?”

At the same moment Einholtz spoke for the first time. “Keep silent, Kurt. If you speak you will live to regret it.”

Von Osterberg stood up. “I am a German,” he declared, “and a patriot. I refuse to talk.”

“Well said, Kurt, well said,” cried Einholtz.

Gregory, too, stood up. Looking the Count full in the face he said: “I don't care what you are. You're going to tell me what you know.”

“Nothing will make me do that. Nothing!”

Gregory hit him a resounding slap across the face. “Talk, damn you!” he roared. “Or I'll beat you to a jelly.”

Von Osterberg crumpled up and fell back in his chair, but he still violently shook his head and refused to speak.

“I suppose you're still scared of Einholtz,” Gregory muttered. “All right; we'll deal with him first.”

Turning to the Gestapo man, he ran quickly through his pockets. Among their contents were the handcuffs, a special pass showing him to be an S.S. Lieutenant-Colonel, and a wad of a dozen letters. Gregory put the whole lot in his own pocket, and snapped:

“Stand up!”

Einholtz struggled to his feet. “You'll pay for this in the long run,” he growled. “
Herr Gruppenführer
Grauber will see to that.”

“Never mind Grauber now,” Gregory said with menacing quietness, “I am dealing with you. Do you know about this work that is going on at Peenemünde?”

“Yes, I do.” Einholtz gave a twisted grin. “Not much, but enough, at all events, to be certain that all your hopes of Russia are pure moonshine, and that with this wonderful new weapon we shall destroy all your English cities long before America can come to your aid.”

“Are you going to tell me about it? To talk might be worth your while.”

“Is it likely?” Einholtz sneered.

“You can take your choice. You are either going to talk or die.”

Einholtz went very white. Then he moistened his lips and muttered, “I'll see you damned first.”

Gregory lifted his pistol. “Are you quite sure? I mean what I say.”

“Certain,” gasped the German.

“Then, as you are a member of the Gestapo, which has wilfully inflicted terror, humiliation, unbearable pain and death on countless innocent people, I, taking this deed fearlessly upon my own soul, condemn you to die, in agony, yourself.”

Gregory squeezed the trigger of his pistol, and shot Einholtz through the stomach.

The German doubled up, slid to the floor with a screech of pain and lay there twisting and whimpering.

For a moment Gregory stood there watching him with complete detachment, then he put a second bullet through his head. Einholtz jerked and lay still.

Von Osterberg, gripping the arms of his winged chair, sat forward in it staring in fascinated horror at the bloody corpse on the floor. Gregory turned back to him and went through his pockets. They were completely empty.

“Now!” he said. “You see that Einholtz will never be able to repeat anything you may say. I give you my word that my friend and myself will never disclose the source from which we obtained our information; and if you will tell us what we wish to know I will guarantee that you shall be provided with ample funds to start life afresh in South America.”

But the Count only shook his head and, averting his eyes from Einholtz's body, looked dumbly at the carpet.

“So you refuse to play,” Gregory snapped. “It's time that I warned you, then. You've seen what happened to Einholtz. I've plenty of bullets left and I can quite well spare two for you.”

“Shoot me then,” gasped von Osterberg, in a half-strangled voice. “I have no future; and, for me, life is no longer worth living. Shoot me!”

At that cry from the heart Gregory knew that to persist further was useless. He was up against, not a man, but a wreck who no longer cared if he lived or died.

Switching over the safety-catch of his gun he put it back in his pocket, and said: “Stand up!”

Slowly the Count obeyed.

Putting his hand into another pocket Gregory drew out a silk handkerchief. Folding it carefully into a bandage the ends of which were formed by two of its corners, he wrapped it round the knuckles of his right hand, then clenched the part that was inside his palm so that the swathe across his knuckles became tight and firm.

He looked for a moment at von Osterberg, then he said:

“You regard yourself as a man of honour, don't you; because you have just refused to betray your country's secrets. Yet you betrayed the woman that you once loved and, like a veritable Judas, led her by the hand to torture and death. When Hitler and his gang are dead; when the brutal tradition of Bismarck and the harsh philosophy of Neitzsche are at last forgotten; when all that are left after this war of the stupid, brutal German people have been sent back to labour on the soil for five generations, then, and not before, we may hope to educate a new and cleaner race of Germans to share in the benefits of modern civilization. For you, civilization has meant the employment
of your gifts upon a horrible weapon of destruction. For you, honour has meant the acceptance of such scars as I see on your cheek in senseless student duels. Well, I am going to give you another scar, and one that you will bear for all that remains of your miserable life. Each time you look at yourself in a mirror you will think of the betrayal of your wife, and remember that you received it for that as the brand of dishonour.”

As he finished speaking Gregory drew back his silk-covered fist and struck von Osterberg a glancing blow from temple to chin. The silk, catching under heavy pressure on the skin, ripped it open as though it had been slashed with a knife and blood poured from the gaping wound. It was a trick that Gregory had learnt, long ago in Paris, from an Apache.

With a cry like a wounded animal von Osterberg slumped backwards in his chair and buried his bleeding face in his hands. But Gregory stepped forward immediately, grabbed him by the arm, jerked him to his feet, and said:

“Where's your bathroom? Pull yourself together and take us to it.”

Moaning and staggering, the Count led the way upstairs, supported by Gregory, who, when they reached the bathroom, pushed him inside it. As he collapsed on the floor Kuporovitch took the key out of the lock, reinserted it on the outside of the door, and locked him in. Then the two friends went downstairs again.

Kuporovitch took the shoulders of Einholtz's dead body and Gregory the feet. Between them they carried it out through the kitchen, scullery and back door, down to the boathouse. While Kuporovitch was getting it on board the launch Gregory went back to a woodshed that was affixed to the side of the house. Flashing his torch round he found a chopper and, picking it up, hurried back to the boat with it.

He spent the next few minutes examining the engine of the launch and seeing that the tanks were full of petrol. Meanwhile Kuporovitch hunted round till he found an old anchor, and attached it firmly to Einholtz's feet. Gregory then took from his pocket a small envelope which contained the cyanide of potassium capsules. Opening his mouth he carefully fixed one of the red ones to the outside of one of his back teeth. Having practised wearing one of the green dummies ever since he had left London, he was now so accustomed to the feel of the small pellet that he was rarely conscious that he had it in his mouth at all.

“I must say I am glad that I'm not called on to use one of those things,” Kuporovitch said, with a smile.

Everything had gone with such clockwork precision that it was the first remark either of them had made to the other since they had entered the Villa.

“All I hope is that I am not called upon to bite it,” Gregory grinned back.

Stepping down into the launch he raised one of Einholtz's arms and laid its hand on the gunwale. It was the hand on which the amethyst ring glittered dully. Raising the woodchopper, Gregory struck at the dead German's wrist with all his force. The chopper severed it at a single blow; both the hand and arm fell back into the launch.

Picking up the hand, Gregory wrapped it in a piece of oiled silk and rammed it into his pocket.

Kuporovitch had opened the outer doors of the boathouse; Gregory started up the launch's engine.

“Good luck, dear friend! Good luck!” called the Russian

“Thanks! I'm on the top of my form tonight,” Gregory shouted back. “See you in two days' time!”

And the long low launch slid out through the smooth water on her way to Germany.

Gregory had good reason to be pleased with himself. So far everything had gone according to plan and without the slightest hitch. By his surprise tactics he had beaten the gun, and was going into Germany two days before he was expected. Moreover, his guess that Erika was still most probably at Niederfels had been confirmed by von Osterberg.

That, so far, was the real high spot of his good fortune. He had feared at first that Grauber might have sent her to some concentration camp hundreds of miles deep in Germany, and her rescue from a well-guarded camp would have proved immensely difficult. But, on reasoning the matter out, he had reached the conclusion that if Grauber wished to maintain the impression that Erika had not been caught he would not move her. The beautiful Erika von Epp, being such a well-known person in Germany, if moved, might be recognised in transit and, later, her presence in a concentration camp for several months would be almost certain to leak out through guards and others talking, and might get back to Switzerland; whereas the Castle itself offered every facility for a safe and secret prison.

In consequence, his plans had been made on the tentative assumption that she was at Niederfels, and this now seemed highly probable.

It was most unlikely that Grauber would arrive at the Schloss before the evening of the 13th. If the situation there was the same as it had been when von Osterberg left, and there seemed no reason why it should not be, the old Countess's personal maid Helga Stiffel was still Erika's chief gaoler. No doubt Helga had assistance of some sort, as Grauber would not have risked the possibility of so valuable a captive escaping through the slackness or complacency of one woman. On the other hand, he would certainly not have allocated S.S. personnel to such a backwater job, as, now that Germany was holding down half Europe, trained Gestapo men were far too scarce and valuable. Therefore, Gregory felt, by going in before Grauber and his personal staff
appeared on the scene he should have a very good chance of effecting Erika's rescue.

Another thing that pleased him greatly was that he had been able to keep Kuporovitch out of this desperate gamble. The Russian had grumbled a lot at being left behind, and Gregory knew his worth as an ally too well not to be sorry on that account; but he had felt that he owed it both to his loyal friend and to Madeleine that Stefan should be protected against his own courageous inclinations. This venture was different to all others that they had undertaken, in that they had given Sir Pellinore their word that, if captured, they would commit suicide by swallowing the cyanide globules. Gregory had no illusions about the fact that, although things had started well, he was still only at the beginning of the job, and that once in Germany the risk of being caught before Erika could be got out of the country was very considerable indeed.