The Black Baroness (58 page)

However, the Gunner Captain was in a state of angry gloom or which he had good reason. He had been detached from the 51st Division some days previously, for special duties, and when he had endeavoured to rejoin his unit he had learnt that practically the whole Division had been scuppered.

British troops which had been re-landed early in the week had done their utmost to hold a line from Barentin, along the little River Saône, to the sea, in order to prevent the Germans reaching Le Havre; but the French on their right had let them down and, although the bulk of the British had been got off in a new evacuation, two brigades of the 51st Division had been cornered at Saint Valéry. Some of Britain’s most famous regiments had been there, including the Gordons and the Black Watch, and with the utmost valour they had fought unbroken in a desperate ring; but when at last their ammunition had run out their commander, Major-General V. M. Fortune, had been compelled to surrender, so six thousand of our best men had fallen into the hands of the enemy.

Gregory felt that this was a very different business from the ignominy of Dunkirk, where a quarter of a million men had been ordered to throw away their guns and baggage. In this case there had been tremendous odds against a few thousand infantry unsupported by tanks, heavy artillery or aircraft, and having fired their last shot before surrendering those splendid Highlanders had done all that was humanly possible, maintraining
untarnished the magnificent record of the Glorious 51st. Nevertheless, it was yet one more grim act in the colossal tragedy which had been unfolding before his very eyes day after day these past terrible weeks.

He offered the Gunner a lift in his taxi to Bordeaux, which was gladly accepted, and running again through side-streets they came out on the road to Poitiers. It was now one o’clock in the morning and Gregory thanked his gods that he was making this part of his journey at night, as he had reached the area where even greater numbers of the refugees who had left Paris ahead of him were making their way south.

The road was never entirely clear of that endless column which had its origins in all the desolated cities of Holland, Belgium and Northern France, to be swollen during more recent days by another two million evacuees from Pans; but thousands of them were now passing the night in the fields, as could be seen from the small ‘bivie’ fires and moving lights which from time to time threw up stationary cars, vans and carts piled with baggage and household belongings; and Gregory knew that had it been daytime their numbers would have rendered the roads absolutely impassable.

At dawn they passed through Poitiers and, halting south of the town, had some more food from Gregory’s hamper to sustain themselves. Daylight now revealed the full tragedy that the last week of the war had brought about. The procession of luxury cars alternated with aged farm-carts; yet every few hundred yards vans, cars and lorries had been abandoned because they had run out of petrol, and on both sides of the road the endless ribbon of higgledy-piggledy makeshift camps continued.

All through the long, hot morning they stopped and started, stopped and started, but by mid-day they reached Angouiême, where during a short halt they picked up an R.A.F. sergeant-pilot and an A.S.C. private, both of whom had got themselves hopelessly lost.

In the café where they had found these two Gregory learnt that the new German thrust, directed at the western end of the Maginot Line on the previous day, had, after all, proved a success. The Huns were clean through, and their armoured columns were now racing east in an attempt to cut the whole Line off from the main French Army.

After leaving Angoulême the traffic became a little less congested
and at a quarter to five in the afternoon the taxi pulled up outside the Hotel Julius Caesar on the outskirts of Bordeaux.

Taking leave of the three men to whom he had given a lift, Gregory handed the taxi-driver his bonus. They had accomplished the three-hundred-and-sixty-mile journey in just under twenty-six hours without a single breakdown and he felt that, considering the appalling conditions on the road, the man had well earned the money.

At the desk Gregory learnt, to his relief, that Sir Pellinore was in the hotel, and having sent up his name he was at once asked to go up to the Baronet’s suite.

Sir Pellinore was delighted to see him, but he was not in one of his chaffing moods and was much too busy on a pile of papers spread out in front of him to enter upon long dissertations. After telling Gregory that Erika was now progressing well, and expressing his sorrow when he was told of Kuporovitch’s death, he gave a bare outline of the state of things at the moment.

On this the eleventh day of the battle for France the situation, had become absolutely desperate. After terrific fighting at Saarbruecken the Germans had gone clean through that ghastly white elephant, the Maginot Line, which had tied a great portion of the French Army to it during these last terrible weeks yet had failed in the end to fulfil its vaunted function as an impassable barrier. The German thrust had deepened alarmingly in the last twenty-four hours and their armoured units had penetrated as far east as Saint Dizier. They also claimed the capture of Verdun. That mighty fortress, the Glory of France, which in the last war had for months withstood the hammer-blows of the German Crown Prince’s Army, had now fallen to Hitler’s fanatical youth in a single day.

In the centre the French were giving way all along the line, and in the west Le Havre had fallen, its huge stores of armaments and supplies, brand-new from the British factories, had been captured before there had been time to burn or destroy one-tenth of them. The only hope which now remained to France was that the German effort might at last peter out from utter exhaustion.

‘And what of the political situation?’ Gregory asked.

‘God knows!’ Sir Pellinore flung up his big hands in a weary gesture. ‘We wrangled with them all last night and all this morning, Churchill and Beaver brook have just left for home,
but I understand that their intention is to discuss with the War Cabinet a last bid to keep the French from throwing their hand in. The suggestion is that we should offer them a solemn Act of Union by which all French citizens will in future enjoy the rights of British citizenship in addition to their own and
vice versa
; so that the two great Empires become insolubly united and each will benefit from the assets of the other.’

‘By Jove!’ murmured Gregory. ‘Only a man like Churchill is capable of such great statesmanship. It may even be the beginning of a new world-order in which nation after nation unites to pool the whole world’s resources.’

‘Yes,’ Sir Pellinore nodded. ‘If it goes through, history will be made in the next few hours; but even if we make the offer, will the French accept it? The price is that they fight on, and it doesn’t seem to me that they’ve got much fight left in them. But I can’t stay gossiping with you. Tell me, as briefly as you can, what you’ve been up to.’

‘I had a free trip to sunny Italy and afternoon-tea, consisting of poisoned wine, with that modern replica of Lucrezia Borgia, your little friend the Black Baroness.’

‘The devil you did!’

‘Two of Lacroix’s men flew me back to Paris just in time to save me from being bottled up in an Italian concentration-camp and when I got back I was out of the game for three days owing to the effects of the poison.’

‘Anything to show for it?’

‘No; not a damned thing. I’ve even lost track now of the Baroness, but I’m hoping that she’s here in Bordeaux.’

‘She is. She’s staying in this hotel.’

‘Thank God for that! I’ve got a long score to settle with that little fiend, and I’ll settle it tonight.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind,’ boomed Sir Pellinore. ‘She’s already done all the damage that she can and, as a matter of fact, I happen to know that she’s leaving Bordeaux this evening.’

‘But since this is the centre of the whirlpool why on earth should she do that?’

‘Because Pétain and Weygand have now openly taken over from her and are advocating surrender.’

‘What, Pétain, too?’

‘Yes. The old fool is absolutely gaga, and the others have persuaded him that he should fill the rôle of the white-headed
martyr who saved his country from herself and further French
poilus
from being massacred by having the courage to face the obloquy of asking for an armistice. The Baroness is wise enough to know that any suggestion of petticoat influence now might be just the one thing that would swing matters the other way, so she’s leaving matters in the hands of the men who actually sit at the Council table.’

‘All the same, I tell you that I’ve got a score to settle with her.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Gregory. If you could have eliminated her somehow a month ago—a week ago—even yesterday—it would have been worth your while to run the risk of paying with your life for that pleasure; but not now. Her death cannot help us one iota, and since by the Grace of God you’ve come through these frightful weeks alive, I mean to take you home with me to Erika tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gregory slowly, ‘but I couldn’t leave with a quiet conscience; because, quite apart from settling with her personally, there’s still a job of work to be done.’ He then told Sir Pellinore what Lacroix had said about the Baroness’s letter-files and the Ford van which she had almost certainly used to remove them to Bordeaux.

‘Hmm; that alters matters,’ grunted Sir Pellinore after a moment. ‘Even if the Government give in, I’ve no doubt that many of the best elements among the French will elect to fight on with us, particularly in the French Colonies, and we can’t afford to have untrustworthy men among them. Yes, you must get those files, Gregory, and if you find an opportunity to give that woman the works without being caught yourself, by all means do so; she deserves a bullet more than any criminal in the whole of Europe who still remains unhanged.’

‘Have you any idea what time she’s leaving?’ Gregory asked.

‘Yes. At seven o’clock. I actually heard her giving instructions to the head waiter for a picnic-basket to be ready for her at that hour.’

‘D’you know where she’s going?’

Sir Pellinore passed a hand over his white hair. ‘No; I haven’t the faintest notion.’

‘She has a villa at Pointe des Issambres, so she’s probably going there. At such short notice it would be almost suicidal for me to attempt to tackle her here in the hotel, so I think the best thing would be for me to try to hold her up at some lonely spot outside the town.’

‘That’s it,’ Sir Pellinore nodded; but don’t let her get too far, Gregory, because I’m sailing tomorrow at midnight and I want to take you home with me.’

‘With luck,’ said Gregory, ‘I’ll be back long before that. I know how busy you are, and as it’s now nearly six o’clock I haven’t any too much time to make my preparations; so I’ll get along.’

When Sir Pellinore had gripped his hand and wished him luck he went downstairs and strolled out to the hotel garage.

Outside it were two mechanics and a little group of chauffeurs discussing the crisis with such animation that they were completely absorbed, and Gregory had no difficulty in slipping past without any of them noticing him.

There were several lines of cars inside the building but he soon found the Ford. It was the only commercial vehicle among the whole fleet of automobiles, and as he peered at it from between two other cars, he saw that a tough-looking fellow was sitting on the driver’s seat with his head pillowed on his arms, drowsing at the wheel. This did not at all surprise him, as he had not for one moment imagined that
Madame la Baronne
would leave the pseudo laundry-van—which probably contained a fortune—unguarded.

Gregory’s first intention, having identified the van, had been to go on ahead and choose some suitable spot for holding the Baroness up, but he was quick to realise that he had no guarantee whatever that she was actually going to Pointe des Issambres. She had a villa there but she might quite possibly be going somewhere else, in which case she would probably take a different road and he would then miss her altogether, It therefore seemed that his only safe course was to follow her when she set off until they reached a deserted stretch of road where he could puncture her back tyres by shooting at them and bring her to a standstill.

But a more careful scrutiny at the van showed him that, although it had the appearance of a Ford, it was not a Ford at all. The exhaust pipe was much too big, so evidently the Baroness had a far more powerful engine fitted under the Ford bonnet. That presented a nasty snag as, given clear roads—which were probable if she were crossing France from Bordeaux to the South through an area where few refugees would be moving—his taxi would never be able to keep up with her.

It then occurred to him that his best chance of achieving his
end was, if he could, to conceal himself In the van and travel with her. As she was leaving at seven o’clock it was reasonable to suppose that she would put in only three or four hours’ driving then pull up somewhere for the night. If that somewhere proved to be one of the many excellent wayside hostelries that line the roads of France he would have a much better opportunity of dealing with her and getting away afterwards than he could possibly have in Bordeaux, and he would still be back in plenty of time to sail with Sir Pellinore for England the following night.

Treading very cautiously, so as not to rouse the driver, he worked his way round behind several cars until he reached the back of the van; but, as he had feared, the doors had a good solid lock which it would have been quite impossible to force without alarming the man at the wheel.

For a few moments Gregory stood there deep in thought, then he tiptoed round to a car in front of and to the left of the van. The car had been left unlocked so that the garage men could move it. Opening the far door, Gregory crawled inside and gently lowered the opposite window. By squinting from it he could just see the driver without being seen himself. Taking out his automatic, he clicked a bullet up into the chamber, knelt down, rested the barrel on the ledge of the window and, aiming carefully so as not to hit the man, pressed the trigger.