The Black Baroness (30 page)

The movement was so swift that the woman who was in the room had not a second to grab any weapon she might have had, or even open her mouth to shout, before she found herself covered from the wide-open doorway.

The room was a bedroom with three entrances; the doorway in which he stood and two other doors, one on his right which led to the bathroom and was shut and a second, just ajar, which evidently led to the sitting room. A big wardrobe and most of the drawers in the room were open, and they were all empty. Two suitcases stood near the bed and the woman was bending over a white rawhide dressing-case; he had caught her just as
she was completing her packing. The fact that she had packed for herself indicated that she had no maid with her, so evidently her visit to Rotterdam under the
nom-de-plume
of Madame de Swarle was highly secret.

One glance was enough to satisfy Gregory that Madame de Swarle was unquestionably the Baroness. Her dead-black hair was quite straight and cut short, with a fringe making a line across her forehead so that her pale face stood out startlingly from it; and from beneath a pair of level eyebrows her jet-black eyes stared at him with an inscrutable expression. She was small and slim, and to the casual glance she certainly did not appear to be the fifty years that Sir Pellinore had given her. Her figure was perfectly preserved and apart from a faint network of wrinkles at the outer corners of her eyes her face looked like that of a woman of thirty. The only splash of colour was her mouth, which was heavily lipsticked a vivid scarlet. Gregory understood at once why she had such power over men. She had a subtle and peculiar sexual attraction which seemed to exude from the poise of her whole figure and her red mouth. He could not have defined it, but there was something about her—warm, soft, pulsating.

She stared at him across her open dressing-case but she was perfectly self-possessed. There was no trace of fear in her dark eyes at the sight of this masked unknown man who threatened her with a gun. She remained absolutely still and did not even open her red-lipped mouth to ask him what he wanted, but waited quietly for him to speak first.

He wondered for a second where she could be off to at this time of night, but that did not concern him for the moment. Stepping into the room and closing the door behind him he said in a gruff, low voice:

‘
Madame
is said to have some very nice jewels. I want them. Take off your rings and those pearls, put them in that dressing-case and bring it over here to me.’ He knew that any papers that she might have would be in the dressing-case, and it was these that he was after; but he wanted her to believe him to be an ordinary hotel thief.

‘And if I refuse?’ she said in a low, musical voice.

‘Then,
Madame,
you must take the consequences. I want those jewels and I mean to have them. Also, I do not intend to risk a long term of imprisonment by chancing your giving an alarm while I tie you up and gag you. There is a silencer on
this automatic. If you refuse to do as I tell you I shall have to shoot you.’

She raised her voice and cried with sudden defiance: ‘I
do
refuse!’

Gregory gave her full marks for courage although he felt certain she could not realise how very near death she was at that second. She was gambling upon the fact that few jewel thieves will deliberately commit murder. They may shoot if they are surprised during a theft, in order to escape capture, but not once in a thousand times will they kill purely to secure their loot when they are the masters of a situation.

But he was not a jewel thief and it was his duty to put this dangerous woman out of business just as much as it is a sentry’s duty to fire upon an enemy whom he may see creeping towards him across no-man’s-land. It was a perfect opportunity to settle the matter once and for all. The silencer on his gun would prevent the shot being heard. Within two minutes he could be back in his bedroom. In ten, abandoning his suitcase and its contents which had no marks by which he could be identified, he could be out of the hotel; and he could take her jewels to provide a motive for the murder. Travel presented no difficulties in these countries which were still at peace and long before her body was discovered he would be over the Belgian frontier. Certain interested parties might guess that the Baroness had not been killed purely for the sake of her jewellery, but they had good reasons for keeping their mouths shut. When he reappeared in Brussels as Erika’s butler there would be nothing whatever to connect him with the crime. He was very tempted to squeeze the trigger of his automatic.

Yet somehow he could not do it. If she had attempted to reach the bell or to grab any weapon that she might have had in her open dressing-case she would have been a dead woman; but she did nothing of the kind; she just stood there staring at him, and the only expression which he could fathom in her eyes was a look of interested curiosity as to whether he meant to shoot or not.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m not shooting for the moment; but I will if you move your lips by as much as a millimetre. Stand back from that case and put your hands up!’

She did as he had ordered and, stepping forward, he slammed down the lid of the case, pressed home the locks and picked it up.

Her lips twitched into a sudden smile. ‘It is not, then, my rings and my pearls that you are after?’

For a second he debated whether he should continue his bluff and forcibly strip the rings from her fingers or if he should content himself with the suitcase, thereby giving away the fact that he had really come for her papers, and get out as quickly as he could. Bat in either case she would raise the alarm the moment he had left her suite, so he had somehow to render her incapable of doing that until he was at least clear of the hotel. It occurred to him that the easiest way to do so was to get her into the bathroom, where there was a good supply of large towels. By gripping her throat with one hand he could prevent her screaming until he had pouched his gun; then he could wrap one large towel round her head and tie her up with the others. So he said:

‘All in good time. I’ll have the rings and the pearls in a minute, but I expect you’ve got some other trinkets in this case so I’m taking that as well.’

He brandished the gun again. ‘Now, you’ve got it coming to you this time unless you obey me. Quick march I Out of here and along the passage to the bathroom!’

Somewhat to his surprise, she did not again refuse to be intimidated, but walked unhurriedly past the foot of the bed and across the room to the door leading into the passage.

As she opened it Gregory followed her with his gun in one hand and her dressing-case in the other. He was just about to cross the threshold when he heard a faint noise behind him. Swinging round he saw that the door of the sitting-room had opened. In it, covering
him
with a gun, stood his old enemy,
Herr Gruppenführer
Grauber.

For once Gregory cursed the acuteness of his hearing. If he had not heard that faint creak as Grauber had opened the sitting-room door he would not have swung round. In consequence, he would still have had the Baroness covered had Grauber called on him to put up his hands; which would at least have
created a stalemate wherein he could have held her life in pawn for his own. But, in turning, he had had to take his eye off the small, dark figure in front of him. At that moment she had produced a little mother-of-pearl gun from somewhere on her person; so on swinging back to her he found that he was now covered from two directions while his own gun was not pointing at either of his opponents.

‘Step back into the room and throw that gun on the bed!’ commanded Grauber in his high, piping voice.

Gregory hesitated. Had it not been for the Baroness he would have risked a shot from Grauber’s pistol while he took one flying leap down the passage; but she was barring his path. Realising that lie was cornered he stepped back into the bedroom, but he did not relinquish his pistol.

‘Drop that gun!’ ordered Grauber again, but Gregory took no notice. He had swiftly decided to play the same game with Grauber as the Baroness had payed with him.

If the Gestapo Chief had known whom he was addressing it is highly probable that he would have shot Gregory out of hand. He could have got away from the hotel with as little likelihood of having to answer for the crime as there would have been of Gregory’s being arrested for the murder of the Baroness had he shot her five minutes earlier: but the silk handkerchief hid the whole of the lower part of Gregory’s face and his hat was pulled well down over his eyes, so Grauber had not yet realised that, by a stroke of sheer luck, the Englishman with whom he had such a long score to settle had fallen into his hands and was entirely at his mercy. He thought, as Gregory had assumed he would, that he was dealing with an hotel thief, and even Gestapo chiefs do not shoot down ordinary burglars without provocation.

Grauber shrugged and came mincing forward into the room. Gregory noted that he had lost none of his bulk since their last encounter and his pale, solitary eye had the same dead look which hid his extraordinarily shrewd intelligence.

‘Since you will not relinquish your gun,’ he purred, ‘I advise you to keep it down; because if you raise it by a hair’s breadth I will put three bullets into your stomach.’

Gregory nodded and, stepping back another pace, lowered his head a little so that his hat brim hid his eyes and would make any chance of recognition less likely.

The Baroness re-entered the room, quietly closing the
passage door behind her, as she said: ‘Thank you,
Herr Gruppenführer,
for disembarrassing me of this creature. It was fortunate that you so kindly agreed to wait until I had done my packing so that you could see me to the air-port.’

Up to that point they had all been speaking in French but the Baroness had addressed Grauber in German and he replied in the same language, assuming either that Gregory did not understand German or that, if he did, a common thief would not be in a position to gather the import of anything that was said. Still covering Gregory with his gun Grauber clicked his heels and bowed.

‘It is a pleasure to have been of service,
gnädige Frau Baronin,
but I fear that this annoying incident will interfere slightly with our arrangements. As you are due to leave the air-port at 2.45 you have no time to lose; you had better carry your bags into the sitting-room while I keep this man covered, then ring for the porter to take them down and leave at once.’

This little speech cheered Gregory considerably, as it implied that neither of his captors wished to be involved in a scene. Evidently Grauber’s intention was to remain with him in the bedroom while the Baroness sent for the night-porter and made her departure. It seemed, therefore, that if he were prepared to surrender the dressing-case, which he was still holding, Grauber might let him go once she was clear of the hotel and could not be delayed as a police witness on account of the attempted burglary. That suited him all right, as his principal anxiety at the moment was to get away before Grauber recognised him and put half a dozen bullets into his body; so when the Baroness stepped up to him and gripped the dressing-case he relinquished it without attempting to grab her and swing her in front of him as cover for his body, as he otherwise might have done.

As she carried the case through the open doorway she said over her shoulder to Grauber: ‘There is no immediate hurry. I am travelling by my own plane so my pilot will await my convenience. I think, therefore, it would be better if I telephone down at once to tell the management about this hotel rat so that I can be here to make the necessary statement when he is handed over to the police.’

‘Damn the woman!’ thought Gregory. ‘Why in Hades couldn’t she let well alone?’ He had no pull with the Dutch Government and no possible explanation for being in the
Baroness’s suite. Moreover, he was standing there masked with a pistol in his hand. There was a perfectly clear case of attempted burglary and menacing with arms against him, which was a very serious matter. If he were once handed over to the police the law would take its course and he would find himself sentenced to a long term in a Dutch prison. But, to his relief, Grauber said:

‘No. That would not be wise,
gnädige Frau Baronin
; you might be held as a material witness in the case, and that would derange all our plans. Also, it is vital that you should leave at the time arranged. As it is, we allowed only a quarter of an hour for you to get clear of Schiepol and well out over the coast, where you will be in no danger of running into an air battle. You are much too valuable to us for us to risk anything of that kind, and our bombers will be over Rotterdam at three o’clock. You are late already; you must not lose another moment.’

‘Hell’s bells!’ thought Gregory. ‘Air battles—bombers over Rotterdam in the next twenty minutes—we’ve been caught napping again, blast it! Hitler is launching his
Blitzkrieg
tonight.’ But in spite of his suppressed excitement there was nothing whatever he could do about it.

The Baroness had carried her other two cases out of the room, and she turned in the doorway to reply swiftly: ‘I had no idea that zero hour was so near, but don’t worry; I shall be off the airport well before three o’clock.’

‘
Gute Reise, gnädige Frau Baronin
.’ Grauber clicked his heels and bowed once more as she closed the door with a muttered, ‘
Danke schön, Herr Gruppenführer
.’

‘Now,’ Grauber addressed Gregory, speaking once again in French as he walked over and perched himself on the end of the bed, ‘one word from you or one movement of that gun during the next ten minutes and I shall shoot you where you stand. I can easily press the trigger of your gun afterwards and say that I suddenly came upon you in the room here and it was you who fired on me first. As you are a masked man who obviously came here with felonious intentions everybody will believe me. So, rat, keep a still tongue if you wish ever to be able to wag it again with your thieves’ fraternity.’