The Black Baroness (32 page)

The man piped up in a sing-song voice: ‘At two hours fifty-five
we were called into the Weimar Hotel by the house detective. We ascended with him and the night-porter to Suite 141 on the first floor; there we found these two men, both with automatic pistols in their hands. The one states that he is a German, the other that he is an Englishman. It was the German who rang the night-porter for police assistance and when we arrived on the scene he was covering the Englishman with his weapon. Both charge the other with breaking into the suite and with threatening violence.’

Grauber made a swift gesture, brushing the statement aside, as he said to the Inspector: ‘That is an accurate account of what occurred, but it has no bearing upon the present situation. It is now clear that the
Führer
has decided to give his protection to your country. If you are wise you will accept that protection peaceably; if you are foolish you will resist. But nothing you can do will prevent the German Army being in full control of your country within a week. Then, my friend, there will be a reckoning. For those who have conducted themselves creditably there will be no trouble, but for anyone who has arrested a German citizen and not given him a reasonable opportunity to state his case there will be very big trouble indeed.’

‘So you’re up to your blackmailing tricks even before you’ve conquered the country,’ Gregory cut in furiously. ‘Don’t you listen to him, Inspector.’

The Inspector had gone red in the face and looked as if he was about to strike Grauber, but the German went on imperturbably: ‘I am a high official of the Nazi Party and when Holland is conquered my word will be law here. For your own sake you should think well before incurring my displeasure—particularly if you have a wife and children. Either you fetch Chief Inspector Van der Woerden immediately so that I can make proper representations to him, or you will have to answer to the German authorities within the next few days for having refused my request—and by that time we shall have concentration-camps in Holland as well as in Germany.’

‘Don’t allow him to intimidate you, Inspector,’ Gregory cried. ‘This man is a Gestapo agent and it is people such as he who are at this moment signalling with lights to the aircraft that are killing honest Dutch citizens with their bombs. If you deal with him according to his deserts he won’t be alive to tell any lies about you by the time the Nazis get here.’

But the Inspector was badly shaken. It was not even certain
yet that his Government would decide to fight, and even if they did, how could thirteen million Dutch stand up to eighty million Germans; particularly when those Germans had the mastery of the air? Privately he doubted if the Dutch Army could hold out for very long even with Allied aid, and after that Government, officials and people would have to submit to the Nazi bosses whom the Germans sent them. He
had
got a wife and children to think of and, after all, the German was not asking to be released, only that a higher official should be sent for to hear what he had to say. What the Chief Inspector might decide was not the Inspector’s business, and by sending for him he could relieve himself of the whole unpleasant business.

‘All right,’ he muttered sullenly. ‘Chief Inspector Van der Woerden is in the building somewhere, I think.’

‘How nice,’ sneered Grauber, in his thin falsetto, ‘and how fortunate for all concerned.’

While the Inspector left them they stood there in the charge-room, to and from which policemen and civilians were now constantly hurrying. In the next few moments the news came through that German troops had crossed the Dutch frontier and that Amsterdam was now being bombed. The sound of the cannonade down by the harbour increased in violence, and the irregular rat-tat-tat of machine-guns was added to it. Just as they heard that the aerodromes at Brussels and Antwerp were also being bombed the Inspector returned with his superior, a short, stocky man with a grey moustache.

Grauber clicked his heels and bowed. ‘I regret to have taken you from your duties at such a time, Chief Inspector,’ he said formally, ‘but your police are holding me upon a very minor charge which cannot easily be substantiated. If I
give
you my word to hold myself at your disposal, will you permit that I am released at once?’

‘He’s a German agent!’ cut in Gregory; ‘I insist that you should hold him here, otherwise he’ll engineer further death and destruction among your people.’

The Chief Inspector glanced coldly at Gregory and said in a toneless voice: ‘I know this gentleman. I am perfectly aware that he must now be considered as one of Holland’s enemies, but it so happens that he is a member of the staff of the German Embassy; therefore he has a right to expect certain diplomatic courtesies.’

‘He’s no more a member of the Embassy staff than I am,’
Gregory cried, ‘and even if he were you’d be insane to let him loose in Rotterdam tonight. If you do he’ll go straight down to the docks and give all the help he can to the enemy troops there who’re trying to capture your city.’

With barely veiled hostility the Chief Inspector replied smoothly: ‘Kindly mind your own business and refrain from attempting to interfere in mine. The affair at the docks will soon be settled and Holland is not yet at war with Germany.’ Then he turned to Grauber. ‘I accept your word,
Herr Gruppenführer,
that you will report to the Dutch authorities within twenty-four hours if you are called upon to do so. You may go.’

‘I thank you, Chief Inspector.’ Grauber clicked his heels again, bowed from the waist and without a glance at Gregory walked quickly out of the station.

It was about the clearest instance of a Gestapo tie-up with a foreign police official who was on their books as a reliable Fifth Columnist that it could have been possible to witness. Gregory was absolutely wild with rage and the old scar on his forehead stood out a livid white. He turned furiously upon the Chief Inspector. ‘How
dare
you let that man go! He’s a murdering Gestapo thug, and you know it, you damned Fifth Column traitor!’

Suddenly, in his white-hot anger, before anyone could stop him he snatched up a heavy round ebony ruler from a nearby desk and struck the Chief Inspector with it a terrific blow across the head.

For a second Van der Woerden’s eyes started from their sockets, round, goggling, horrible. His mouth fell open, blood began to ooze from a jagged line across his temple and he slumped to the floor without a sound.

With shouts of surprise and dismay the group of policemen flung themselves upon Gregory. There was a short, violent struggle, and as they wrenched him erect, with his arms pinioned behind him, the Inspector who had fetched Van der Woerden knelt down to examine him.

After a moment he looked up and said: ‘That blow will cost you your life. He’s dead.’

Within a second of having struck the man Gregory had sobered up and the struggle with the police was not due to resistance on his part but owing to the fact that so many of them had all attempted to seize him at the same time.

Normally he despised people who lost their temper, as he maintained that those who were stupid enough to give way to anger placed themselves at a disadvantage, and if ever he had to fight he always fought with a cold, calculating ferocity, which was infinitely more dangerous than any whirlwind attack delivered without plan through loss of control. But, in this instance, his feeling of indignation and disgust had been so overpowering that he had virtually been affected by a brain-storm.

Such a thing had never happened to him before and it frightened him a little. He felt that perhaps the strain he had been through in the last eight and a half months was beginning to tell and that he was losing his grip. But as he stared down at the dead police chief he did not feel the least remorse at what he had done.

To have struck the official in such circumstances would have been bad enough, but to have killed him was infinitely worse. He knew that his act might cost him his life; and not as the price of something for which he might have been willing to give it, such as settling accounts once and for all with Grauber or dealing some major blow at the Nazis, but without anything to show for it, as a convicted murderer in a prison yard. Nevertheless, apart from the personal peril into which the act had brought him, he would not have undone the deed even had he had the chance.

Van der Woerden had known that his country was being invaded by the Germans. Even as he had stood there he was aware that the Nazi forces which had entered the port in secret were killing the very men who looked to him as their own officer for leadership and the citizens whom it was his duty to protect; yet he had deliberately allowed a German secret agent to go free so that he could continue his nefarious activities and inevitably bring about the loss of more Dutch lives. The man
had been that lowest of all human beings—a proved traitor to his own country—and he deserved to die.

The Inspector stood up and gave an order in Dutch. Gregory was hurried down a corridor and thrown into a cell. The steel door clanged-to behind him.

He was quite calm again now and already thinking about what measures he should take. Producing pencil and paper from his pocket he wrote out two telegrams; the first was to Sir Pellinore:

‘HAVE EXECUTED DUTCH POLICE INSPECTOR ACTING AS GESTAPO AGENT STOP UNDER ARREST ROTTERDAM STOP PLEASE INFORM FOREIGN OFFICE AND GET LEGATION TO DO THEIR BEST TO POSTPONE TRIAL TILL SITUATION CLARIFIES.’

The second, which he addressed to the British Minister at The Hague, ran:

‘HAVE KILLED DUTCH POLICE INSPECTOR BELIEVING HIM TO BE GERMAN AGENT STOP UNDER ARREST ROTTERDAM STOP KILLING JUSTIFIED ON GROUNDS THAT IT TOOK PLACE AFTER INVASION AND VICTIM WAS ACTIVELY RENDERING ASSISTANCE TO ENEMY STOP SEND LEGATION OFFICIAL TO RECEIVE DETAILED PARTICULARS STOP PELLINORE GWAINE-CUST LONDON WILL GUARANTEE MY BONA FIDES.’

On reading these through he thought that they were pretty good. There was nothing like carrying the war into the enemy’s camp and surely the first line of defence against murder was to state categorically that it was not murder at all but justified killing in the execution of one’s duties. Officially, of course, the British Legation could not give any assistance to a secret agent but, for once, he felt that his entirely unofficial position should stand him in good stead. His situation was that of an ordinary British citizen travelling in Holland who had got himself into trouble, and it was incumbent on his Legation to investigate the matter and see that he received fair play.

Sir Pellinore would probably storm and rage when he got his telegram. Anxious as Gregory was, he smiled as he imagined the sort of thing that the elderly baronet would say: ‘There’s that damned feller—can’t move ten yards without killing somebody or getting them killed on his account, and now he’s had the impudence to drag me into it.’ But Gregory felt quite certain that however annoyed Sir Pellinore might be he would get on
to the Foreign Office immediately and pull every available wire which might ring a bell in that most intelligent and powerful of British institutions.

So far, so good, but there were two thoughts which made Gregory extremely uneasy. He had seen quite enough of the new German methods of warfare in Norway to be under no illusions as to how a
Blitzkrieg
worked. The Germans were already attacking Rotterdam from the sea and bombing the Dutch airports; within a matter of hours landings by parachute-troops could be expected and these together with the innumerable Fifth Columnists that the enemy had established in Holland, would be destroying all communications; so it was highly probable that neither of his telegrams would reach its destination. Further, while he was sitting in his cell, Queen Wilhelmina was probably signing a proclamation placing the country under martial law. In that case any civilian who killed a member of the armed forces or of the police would be liable to be tried by court-martial and summarily shot. By morning, therefore, he might find himself in the last and stickiest corner of a career which had already had far more than its fair quota of sticky corners.

Having given the police time to cool down he banged upon his cell door and, on the warder’s appearing, asked him to fetch the Inspector, whose name, he learnt, was Fockink. Some quarter of an hour later the Inspector arrived and inquired what he wanted. He produced the two telegrams that he had written out, together with a 50-
gulden
note, and asked for them to be sent off at once.

The Inspector, like most educated Dutchmen, could understand English. He read the messages through and was visibly impressed on seeing that one asked the assistance of the British Foreign Office, and that the other was addressed to the British Minister at The Hague. He had not forgotten the manner in which Grauber had threatened him if he refused to send for his superior and the fact that bombs were still falling did not make him feel any love at all for the Germans, so he said quite civilly:

‘I’ll send these off if I can, but there’s so much trouble in the city now that I’m afraid it’s very doubtful if they’ll get through.’

‘Have the Germans succeeded in penetrating from the harbour to the centre of the town, then?’ Gregory asked.

‘No; but they must have had scores of agents living here, as fighting seems to have broken out in half a dozen places. One
party has seized the broadcasting station and another attempted to storm the telephone exchange. Troops and police are trying to round them up now but they must have had secret stores of arms as they’re all carrying tommy-guns and hand-grenades. Each group, too, appears to be trained in street-fighting and properly led so it’s a very different matter to putting down an ordinary riot, and we’re not organised to contend with this sort of thing.’

Gregory shrugged. ‘Even if you were, you wouldn’t stand much chance if many of your senior officers are like that fellow Van der Woerden—just waiting for the opportunity to sell you to the enemy.’

‘Are you quite sure that German was not on the Staff of their Embassy?’

‘Certain of it; I know him well; he’s the Gestapo Chief,
Gruppenführer
Grauber. And even if he had been an accredited diplomat, that’s no possible excuse for letting him go at a time like this when his country has just invaded yours without the slightest provocation.’