Come into my Parlour (52 page)

Sir Pellinore nodded. “Well, it's some comfort, anyhow, that you've so far proved right about Leningrad. The War Office thought the city would fall a couple of months ago, but Voroshilov is still hanging on.”

“And he will continue to do so,” Kuporovitch put in, with sublime conviction. “If Leningrad falls you can hang me out with the washing too.”

Having sent what was left of his third glass of port to join its predecessors, Sir Pellinore wiped his white moustache and said: “Well, as the fate of the civilized world may hang on this Russian armageddon, I find it more comforting to talk to you fellers than to the Chiefs of Staff. Let's go upstairs and drink a spot of Kümmel.”

“The original pre-nineteen-fourteen Mentzendorff?” asked Gregory with a smile.

“Yes, drat you! The bin's getting down near empty now; but I knew I couldn't fob you off with that muck we have for parties, and we'll need something pretty potent handy, in view of what we have to talk about.”

Upstairs, the long-necked, dust-encrusted bottle reposed upon a silver salver with three glasses and a corkscrew placed before it. Picking up the bottle and the corkscrew, Sir Pellinore advanced to the fireplace and began gently to tap off the wax seal.

“Never believe in doing anything myself that I can get other people to do for me—with one exception,” he muttered. “I won't let servants open old bottles. Servants these days don't understand how to handle fine liqueur. This cork's gone to powder, like as not, and if I allowed them to monkey with it they'd let the cork dust ruin the drink.”

Having gently inserted the corkscrew he pulled it with a swift sideways twist and the crumbled cork was flicked clear, on to the hearth. Then he filled the three glasses with the syrupy white fluid, and lifted his own.

“Well, here's luck on your next venture. You'll need it.”

They drank in silence. The thirty-year old-Kümmel was as soft as cream but had a concealed punch that sent a glorious warmth through them as it went down. Gregory let out an appreciative sigh, and said:

“Your toast inferred that you already have in mind another job for us. If that's so, unless it's something terribly urgent, I'd rather we didn't discuss it for a week or two. Stefan and I have had a pretty sticky three months of it and I think we're entitled to a spot of leave now. Naturally he wants to see his wife, and you know how mad I am about Erika.”

“Of course, of course; a very reasonable request.” Sir Pellinore began to stride up and down the big room with his hands in his trousers pockets. He remembered few things in his life that he had so much hated to have to face as his present task of breaking the news about Erika to Gregory. He would have liked to have gone to meet him on the dock and get it over there, but had felt that the blow might be softened just a little if it was delivered in these familiar surroundings after a good dinner. He had not enjoyed a single mouthful of the meal himself, but it had enabled him to ply Gregory so heavily with good wine that he was in hopes that by the time they got to bed nature would take charge. A few hours' sound sleep after the shock was the best prescription he could devise for restoring the victim's equilibrium, and he meant to send Gregory to bed more or less tight, if he could possibly do so. After a moment he went on:

“I take it you still want to marry Erika?”

Gregory looked up from his Kümmel in surprise. “Yes, of course. We'd get married tomorrow if only she were free.”

“Quite! Well, there were developments about that soon after you left England. A letter reached her, via the Swiss Legation, from her husband, offering to give her a divorce.”

“By Jove! How terrifically exciting!”

“I've got it here.” Sir Pellinore paused in front of his desk, took two letters from a drawer, and handed one over. “She left it with me, and I think you had better read it.”

Gregory's face remained quite expressionless while he read the long letter, but, when he had finished, it was very glum as he said: “Divorces usually take the hell of a time. It says three months here, but I should have thought it would mean much longer than that. I suppose you're trying to break it to me that Erika went abroad to get her freedom and is not back yet; so I won't be able to see her before I have to go off again myself on this new job you've got for me.”

“That's it!” Sir Pellinore refilled the Kümmel glasses and there was a moment's silence.

Suddenly Gregory sprang to his feet. His face was dead white and
the weal of his scar showed strongly. Letting out a peculiarly blasphemous oath that he used only on very rare occasions, he cried:

“You said something about a trap before dinner. You don't mean—you don't mean——”

Sir Pellinore nodded. “Yes, I'm afraid so. Words can't express what I feel for you, my dear boy—but none of us could have foreseen it. Erika went to Switzerland on the tenth of August. She wrote to me from St. Gall on the twentieth, and I have not heard from her since. Here is her letter. When you've read it I'll fill in the gaps as well as I can.”

With a trembling hand, Gregory took the second letter. His eyes blurred over as he read the familiar, dearly-loved writing, but having to concentrate on it saved him for the moment from visualising the worst that might have happened. When he had done, he said:

“So she went into Germany, to get the low-down on this new weapon. Of course, that's all baloney. It doesn't exist. The divorce was the bait to get her to Switzerland, and this new gas, or whatever it is, the bait to get her across the frontier.”

“I wonder if you're right about that,” Kuporovitch intervened. “The Germans have not only their own scientists but also Czechs, Norwegians, French and many others whom they compel to work for them now. With such resources they might easily become possessed of some scientific secret that would change the whole course of the war.”

“I've always feared that myself,” Sir Pellinore agreed. “Whether von Osterberg knows anything really worth getting hold of, it is impossible to say, but he may. The R.A.F. recently reported the development of a great new experimental station up at Peenemünde, on the Baltic, and Erika says that, by his own account, von Osterberg was employed somewhere up in the north before he escaped to Switzerland.”

“Escaped my foot!” exclaimed Gregory. “He was deliberately planted there by Grauber, to pull Erika in.”

“No. You were the big fish that Grauber was after. He reckoned that you would accompany her to Switzerland, and that when von Osterberg had said his piece, it would be you who would go into Germany to get those notes.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Gregory glanced at Kuporovitch. “I can see daylight now about what Grauber meant when he said in the U-boat that once he got me back to Germany he'd make me talk without resorting to torture. The swine had got Erika already and he was contemplating flaying her alive in front of me if I refused to spill the beans.”

“You are right,” Kuporovitch agreed. “But from that emerges one comfort for you. It means that Erika is still alive and unharmed. To exert maximum pressure on you he must produce her well and with her beauty unmarred to start with, when he catches you, as he no doubt still hopes to do.”

“Yes—she is the bait now,” Sir Pellinore agreed. “And evidently, in anticipation of your getting safely back from Russia, the trap has recently been reset.”

“What d'you mean?” Gregory asked quickly.

Sir Pellinore walked over to his desk and produced a third letter. “This reached me early this month, again via the Swiss Legation, and it is another letter from von Osterberg. But before you read it I'll tell you the very little that I was able to find out subsequent to Erika's disappearance. As you'll have gathered, I sent young Piers—what's-his-name—out to Switzerland with her; so he was able to give me the lie of the land on his return. I was deuced worried when I learnt that Erika was going into Germany, but by the time I had her letter she had crossed the lake, so there was nothing I could do about it. Still, for once I put the national interest second to yours and I laid Piers off the job he was going to do for a bit. After a week, having heard nothing more from Erika, I sent him out again. He reported that on the evening of the twenty-second of August the launch from the Villa Offenbach was seen going out, apparently on a fishing expedition, with two men and a gel in her. As far as is known the launch did not return, and the Villa remained unoccupied. On learning that, I realised that either the whole party had been caught or that Erika had been betrayed by her husband, so I recalled Piers and proceeded to await events.”

“D'you mean to tell me you've sat here for three months and done nothing!” Gregory cut in angrily.

Sir Pellinore spread out his large hands. “What could I do, my boy? I felt that it was all Lombard Street to a china orange that we'd been had for mugs and that Erika had been deliberately snared to bait a fresh trap for you. Therefore, that she was a prisoner, but safe for the time being.”

“You could at least have tried to find out the concentration camp to which they had sent her.”

“That was next to impossible. As I've often told you, our Secret Service performs miracles in keeping us informed of the enemy's military moves, but it seems to know next to nothing about what goes on inside Germany. I could have sent young what's-his-name or someone like that, but I didn't dare to risk it. None of them is in your class, and if they had mucked the thing up and got Erika killed
while trying to get her out you would never have forgiven me. No, I felt confident that no harm would come to Erika as long as Grauber had a use for her, and that you'd want to handle this thing yourself. So I waited for you to return.”

“Yes, you were quite right about that,” Gregory admitted rather grudgingly.

“Good! Well, although I couldn't do anything about Erika, I had a watch kept on the Villa Offenbach. It was reported to me that on or about the twenty-fifth of October the Villa was reoccupied by two men answering the descriptions of von Osterberg and Einholtz. In the light of what we now know, it looks as if, by that time, having got back to Germany himself, Grauber had learned through one of his agents in Leningrad that you had escaped being drowned in that U-boat. He'd conclude then that you'd probably be back in London by early November—as you would have been had you been able to get an aircraft from Cairo. So he packs von Osterberg and t'other feller off to set the trap again. As soon as they're settled in, the Count writes this letter; it reached me ten days later.”

Gregory took the letter, which was in German, and read it out, translating as he went along:

“
Dear Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust
,

“
During several conversations that I had with my wife here in mid-August she mentioned, more than once, the great kindness that you had shown her as an enemy alien while domiciled in Britain. It therefore seems probable that before leaving England she told you that she was going to Switzerland for the purpose of coming to some arrangement with me about our future relations
.

“
Our discussions on the subject proceeded very amicably but, most unfortunately, they were complicated by another matter which resulted in our deciding to risk a short trip into Germany, for the purpose of recovering certain personal papers from my old home—Schloss Niederfels
.

“
We crossed the lake on the night of August twenty-second and reached Niederfels in safety. Both of us had naturally assumed that the staff of old family servants there would prove completely trustworthy, but by a most tragic piece of ill-luck my mother had recently taken into her service a new lady's maid. The girl's last place was in Berlin and, I gather, she was the mistress of an S.S. man there. In consequence, she denounced us to the local headquarters and we only narrowly escaped being captured in the Castle
.

“
In our flight we had the further misfortune to become separated. I took refuge with an old friend of mine and he concealed me for nearly two months, after which I succeeded in making my way back here. What has
happened to Erika I do not know. The friend with whom I was in hiding told me that there was a great hue-and-cry after us both, but no report of her ever being captured. It therefore seems reasonably certain that she also took refuge with one of our tenants and is still in hiding somewhere in the neighbourhood of Niederfels, but afraid to leave the temporary security that she has found
.

“
If I am right in this I do not doubt that by discreet enquiries I could soon find her; and I feel very strongly that it is my duty to go back and help her to escape from Germany, which should not be very difficult now that the hue-and-cry for us has had time to die down. But, I am ashamed to say, my courage is not equal to undertaking such a trip alone
.

“
You see, I am not a man of action. Most of my adult life has been spent in scientific research and few men could be more ill suited to undertake such a venture as myself
.

“
However, Erika was extremely frank with me when we discussed our future. She freely admitted that in the event of her obtaining her freedom it was her intention to marry a Mr. Gregory Sallust. I understand from her that he is a journalist and war correspondent, whose assignments in many countries have called for a most active and enterprising nature. In fact, that he has all those qualities which are so lamentably lacking in myself
.

“
I have no animus whatever against Mr. Sallust on account of the fact that he is in love with my wife, and it has occurred to me that if he is still working in Fleet Street, or could be recalled from some front on which he may be reporting the course of the war, he would, perhaps, welcome the opportunity of affording me the assistance which I regard as essential, if I am to go back to Germany on an attempt to rescue my poor wife
.