Curtain of Fear (26 page)

“Follow me!”

Nicholas still had Fedora by the arm with his left hand; in his right he grasped Kmoch's gun. Hardly ten seconds had elapsed since they had scrambled from the car. Turning as one, they ran after their rescuer. He dived round the corner of the alley from which the lorry used for the ambush had come. As they followed several bullets whizzed past their heads and thudded into the lorry's canvas hood, but once round the corner they were temporarily safe.

Behind them the firing continued. It had roused the whole quarter. Some people were running to get clear of the danger area, others had flung up windows and were leaning from them, shouting questions at one another to find out what had started the battle.

The fresh air during the drive from the headquarters had completely restored Nicholas, but he was worried about Fedora,
The man ahead was running fast, and knowing what she must be suffering from her recent whipping, he feared she might not be able to stay the pace. Glancing at her, he cried:

“Can you manage to keep it up?”

“Don't worry!” she panted. “I'll run till I drop! Better to die of heart-strain than be recaptured.”

They had covered about sixty yards. Their rescuer was leading by some fifteen feet. He was within that distance of another crossroads. Suddenly two policemen, attracted by the sounds of firing, came charging round the corner towards them. Almost simultaneously shots crashed out from two directions. The man ahead pulled up with a jerk, his gun clattered to the pavement, and he grabbed at his right arm. One of the policemen seemed to rise on tiptoe, then he executed a graceful pirouette and fell flat on his face in the road. The other fired again, but still clutching his arm, the wounded man jumped sideways; then, with extraordinary agility, took a flying leap through the open doorway of a small restaurant that occupied the corner of the street.

The remaining policeman and Nicholas were left face to face with only about six paces between them. Never before in his life had Nicholas handled an automatic, much less fired one; but already he had instinctively pointed it at the policeman's body. He pressed the trigger and it went off. The policeman's mouth opened, he swayed drunkenly, then fell to his knees; but he did not collapse. He had been in the act of lifting his gun to fire a third time. As he was hit his arm had fallen to his side; but now he raised it again, although slowly as though the weapon he held was very heavy.

Nicholas stared into the kneeling man's eyes. The very idea that he might have killed a fellow human being shocked him to the depths of his conscience. In spite of all that had happened—the ambush, the shooting, their rescue and the danger they were still in—it never even occurred to him to fire again. In another moment he would most probably have been choking out his own life, had not Fedora intervened. Dashing forward she kicked the policeman in the face. His hand swung sideways and the gun exploded; the bullet shattered the plate-glass window
of the restaurant. He gave a choking cry and rolled over dead.

It was now Fedora who seized Nicholas' arm and dragged him forward. “Hurry!” she cried. “Hurry! or we won't get away before the squad-cars come on the scene!”

Stuffing the gun into his jacket pocket, he ran on with her round the corner. They crossed the street diagonally and dived down another turning. Before they were half way along it they heard the wailing klaxons of the squad-cars behind them. Jerking on Nicholas' arm to slow his pace, Fedora gasped:

“We must walk now! If they spot us running they'll be on us like a ton of bricks.”

They covered another thirty yards, then a klaxon wailed ahead of them. Next moment a squad-car pulled up at the far end of the street along which they were advancing. Four policemen tumbled out of it. The street was quite a long one, so they were some distance off; but they spread out across the road, turning back the few pedestrians who were coming towards them, and barring it to traffic. It was useless for the fugitives to retrace their steps, as the whole area in which the ambush had taken place was now swarming with police.

Desperately, Fedora looked round. A little way further on there was a neon-light sign, as yet unlit. It outlined a windmill, and the Czech words above it were the equivalent of ‘Le Moulin Rouge'. Fedora nodded towards it.

“We'll go in there! Our best chance of escaping recognition lies in mingling with a crowd.”

Obediently he walked forward with her; but he was still thinking of the awful staring eyes of the policeman who had tried to shoot him, and he muttered:

“You saved my life just now! I almost wish you hadn't. I killed that man. He was only doing his duty. It is a frightful thing to have done.”

She shook his arm impatiently. “Don't be a fool! This isn't England, where the police are honest decent men. There are no Czechs in our police-force now who haven't volunteered of their own free will to take orders from the Russians. Every
one of them is a Com. They are the dregs of our race, ex-convicts and criminals of all kinds. There is no law for them, except obedience to their bosses; and they are all stinking with money that they have blackmailed out of shopkeepers and householders for small breaches of the regulations. You wouldn't spend a sleepless night if you had trodden on a slug in a garden, would you?”

As she finished speaking they were within a few yards of the entrance of the Moulin Rouge. An elderly, lethargic-looking doorman dressed in a shabby uniform said, “Welcome, Comrades; it's a good show to-night,” in a tone which implied that he couldn't have cared less; and they went inside.

There was no entrance fee to pay and no pretension to smartness about the place; no welcoming cloak-room attendants and no semi-nude young ladies carrying trays with cigarettes, chocolates and sprays of flowers for sale. They walked down a broad, empty corridor and entered a large, lofty room.

It was the type of
nachtlokal
which is to be found in every central European city, and in the old days combined the functions of music-hall, restaurant, dance place and rendezvous for prostitutes. The raised stage at one end of it was large enough to hold a score of girls or a team of acrobats, a small space in the middle of the floor was left free for couples to dance in between the acts, and rows of small tables were set round it; behind them in a horseshoe were ranged a double tier of private boxes.

However, it was obvious that the place had degenerated sadly since Austrian nobles and rich Czech industrialists had been its principal patrons. Even the poor lighting failed to disguise the fact that it had not been painted for a decade and that the gilding on the scroll-work of the boxes had become tarnished. None of the customers was in evening dress, no food was being served and the stage show in progress was most decorous, as it consisted of a dozen peasants in traditional costume doing a village dance. The only things that linked it with its past were that drinking was permitted and that some of the tables were occupied by very seedy-looking women whose profession was obvious.

A bald-headed waiter with mean little eyes shuffled forward, and at a word from Fedora showed them into a lower-tier box. Without waiting for any order, or to perform any service, he closed the door behind them, and Fedora whispered:

“Occupying a box means we've got to pay for champagne, whether we drink it or not. I expect it's pretty filthy, but you might open it and see.”

There was a bottle on the table, in an ice-bucket that contained no ice, and two thick tumblers. As Nicholas picked the bottle up he said uneasily, “I haven't got any Czech money.”

“Don't worry about that, I have.” She put up a hand and began to feel about under her beret among the tight plaits of hair. “That ghoul of a wardress went through my bag, of course, but she didn't get anything for her pains except small change. After our midday interview with sweetie-pie Frček I took the opportunity to hide the few Czech notes I brought with me from London.”

Nicholas eased the cork out of the bottle and half filled the two tumblers. As the hour was still early, and the place had not been open long, the wine had not had time to lose entirely the chill of the cellar. It was Hungarian Sparkling Samorodny, and anyone accustomed to drinking the finer
cuvées
of the famous French houses would have taken a poor view of it. But Nicholas did not know one brand of champagne from another, and his two hours in the X-cell had given him an appalling thirst; so he drank it down gratefully.

He had only just set down his glass when he saw a woman come in. She was wearing a white straw hat decorated with imitation cornflowers. After a furtive glance round she sidled up to the box in which they were sitting. It was raised only a foot or so above the level of the main floor, so she could lean an elbow on its edge. As she turned towards them he looked down into her face. It was not old in years; she was probably no more than thirty, but it was loose-mouthed, pouch-eyed, and riddled with debauchery. There could be little doubt how she scraped a living.

In a swift whisper, she said, “I saw you come in. The police
are questioning people outside and asking if they've seen a couple like you two. Old Jan, the doorman, is all right. He'll keep mum; but you had better pass the waiter something to shut his mouth. I came in to give you the tip-off, because I heard one of the top Coms tell some of his boys to run through this place—and they'll be in here in a minute.”

It was a very nasty moment. Nicholas was conscious of a horrid empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. Less than fifteen minutes ago they had been Kmoch's prisoners and on their way to Moscow. In the past few hours he had lost all his illusions about people receiving justice in any of the Communist-controlled countries. He had had all the evidence he needed that overnight he had been plunged back into a way of life in which barbarities were practised that had never been equalled in the Dark Ages. Even Ivan the Terrible had never included among his tortures a body of men charged with destroying men's minds and robbing them of their personalities.

As yet he had hardly had time to appreciate his rescue from that appalling fate; now he was threatened with it again. Desperately he looked round for some side-entrance to the hall by which they might escape, or a place where they could hide during the police raid that the prostitute had warned them was about to take place.

The blood had drained from Fedora's thin cheeks, but she did not lose her head. Crumpling up one of the notes she had just taken from her hair, she pressed it into the woman's hand, and said:

“Thanks, sister. We will be in greater danger if we leave our box, so will you see the waiter for us and try to square him with this? And … and, could you possibly lend me your hat!”

The gaily-dressed peasants on the stage were stamping and whirling through their dance; the attention of the audience was concentrated on them. The lights were dim and neither of the adjacent boxes had yet been taken. After a quick look round, to make certain that she was not observed, the woman took off the white straw with the cornflowers and slipped it over the edge of the box. Not only her mouth but her tired eyes smiled, as she murmured:

“It's my new one, for the summer; but you're welcome. If they don't spot you, when you've done with it leave it in the back of the box. I'll fix the waiter, then I shall make myself scarce; but I'll come back for it before the place closes. Good luck, dearie.”

As she sidled away Fedora whispered, “Thanks, sister; and bless you.” Then she turned to Nicholas.

“They will have the back entrance covered by now, so any attempt to get out will be hopeless. But they can't know for certain that we are in here. If the doorman and the waiter don't split, the Coms may content themselves with a quick look round, and not bother to have everyone paraded on the dance floor. Anyhow, we've just got to stick it out and keep our fingers crossed. If only this damn' thing still works we may escape recognition.”

As she spoke she pressed a small button underneath the edge of the table. To Nicholas' amazement he felt the floor slowly sink beneath them. The table, the small couch behind it on which they were sitting, and an oval of floor nearly as large as the area occupied by the box were all supported on a single hydraulic pillar, making it like an open goods-lift.

On the continent, unlike in puritanical Britain, there have never been any regulations limiting the width of curtains in private boxes, or other devices which could be used to screen their occupants from view; so that couples in them can, if they wish, ignore the show to indulge in more intimate amusements.
Had Nicholas been older when he was in Prague before, and owned the money to visit such places, he would no doubt have come across this ingenious and amusing idea of supper tables which could be made to sink below the level of the floor; as it was, he could only exclaim at this apparent miracle and wonder when it would stop.

The lift brought them to rest about six feet down, so that they were now in an almost dark pit with their heads about five feet below the level of the edge of the box.

Pulling off her beret, Fedora thrust it at Nicholas, and said, “Here, put this on to hide your red hair.” Then she adjusted the flashy white straw so that it hid her silvery-blonde coronet of plaits. It was at that moment that the band abruptly ceased playing and the lights went up.

They could now see one another clearly in the glow coming from above, and she smiled at him a little wickedly. “I'm afraid you've got to play the he-man now and do your stuff. Try to imagine that we're back in the bad old days, and that you're an Austrian Count supping with the prettiest girl in the chorus.”

Nicholas grinned. The tumbler of champagne he had drunk was beginning to have its effect, the danger they were in gave him a sense of recklessness, and he had not forgotten that only a few hours ago she had called him a prude.' Without the slightest hesitation he put his arms round her, pulled her into a tight embrace and kissed her full on the mouth.