Traitors' Gate (41 page)

From the ancient aspect of the door, he felt certain that its lock would be one of those great iron contraptions made in the middle ages; but as it was set in the wood on the far side of the door he could not even see it, or tell the position of its key-hole. His automatic was only a light one; so if the oak was more than a few inches thick the bullets might embed themselves in it without even reaching the lock and wrecking it so that its tongue could be pushed back.

After a moment he decided that the only chance lay in attempting to blow away a piece of the stone socket into which the tongue of the lock fitted. But that was going to be a tricky and dangerous operation; for the bullets would not bury themselves in the stone but ricochet off it and they, or bits of flying rock, might do him serious injury.

Handing the torch to Sabine, he emptied the canvas bag of its contents; then, holding the small automatic in his right hand, he put both inside it, wrapped it round them and with
his left hand held the loose ends together over his wrist. The leather bottom of the bag and thick canvas now twisted in a wedge round his fist might, he hoped, be just enough protection to stop a small bullet smashing the bones of his hand should it ricochet back on to it. Having placed Sabine where she could shine the torch on to the tongue of the lock without being in the line of danger, he held the pistol close to it and fired three times through the canvas.

There came three spurts of flame and ear-splitting reports in quick succession. As the wisp of smoke cleared they peered eagerly forward. The trick had worked. A big splinter of stone two inches thick in the middle and eight inches long had been smashed off by the bullets on the far side of the tongue of the lock. One push and the heavy door swung open.

It gave on to a narrow flight of stone steps. Without pausing to collect the oddments scattered on the floor, they ran up them and found themselves in a low vaulted chamber. At one end of it there was an altar on which burned a small lamp. With hands outstretched Sabine staggered forward, threw herself on her knees before it and began to babble incoherently.

Gregory’s ideas upon religion were by no means as orthodox as hers; but he was very far from being an agnostic and, although more slowly, he too went on his knees to render thanks for a merciful deliverance.

A few minutes later she was asserting her conviction that it was having devoted one of their precious candles to the Holy Mother, at the altar down in the cavern, which had caused Her to save them, and insisting that he should get the other candles in order that they too could be lit to Her glory; so he went down to fetch them.

On his return he found that Sabine had disappeared, and he was wondering a little anxiously where she could have got to when she emerged from the shadows at the far end of the crypt. She had just explored another stairway that led upward from it, to see if she could identify the church they were in, and had recognised it at once as the great Coronation Church on the top of Buda hill.

When he remarked that in that case he was surprised that the crypt was not larger, she said that it was not the main crypt and was probably part of a much older building. They decided that the cigarette butt they had found must have been
left by some visitor who had been shown the entrance to the caves by a custodian, and had decided to light up there for a few quick puffs before coming back into the church.

While Sabine was lighting the remaining candles, Gregory looked at his watch and saw that it was just on five o’clock; so their ordeal in the caves had lasted over four hours. When she had done she said another prayer then, as she got up, turned to him with a smile:

That’s better! A quarter of an hour ago I was half dead from fatigue and terror. Now, I’m feeling a new woman. I wish I hadn’t had to leave my jewels behind, and had a few more clothes on; but fortunately we have plenty of money.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed soberly. ‘That’s the one thing in our favour; and it may prove the means of our getting away in the long run. But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for a bit before you think of using any of it to buy more clothes.’

She frowned. ‘Of course, it’s Sunday morning, isn’t it? For the moment I’d forgotten that.’

‘Even if it were eleven o’clock on Monday you still wouldn’t be able to go shopping.’

‘Why not—at some little place where I wasn’t known?’

For hours he had been seeing her only in semi-darkness; but now he was looking at her in the full light of six candles. He had known that she must have got dirty and untidy but he had been far from realising her true state. Her face and hands were still blackened with smoke, her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, her hair was matted, her stockings were torn and her shoes were cut almost to ribbons. Apart from the fact that she was wearing a beautiful sable coat, she looked a veritable tramp.

He guessed that he must look equally grubby and villainous, as he said, Take a good look at me; then you can judge what you look like yourself. If you went into any shop as you are, they’d immediately jump to the conclusion that you had just stolen those sables.’

‘Perhaps it’s as well it is Sunday, then.’ She gave a quick shrug. ‘Anyway, my coat is covering enough for decency; and it will serve until we are safely out of Budapest.’

Gregory sighed. ‘You’re taking it for granted that we will be able to get out. Don’t you see that as far as our appearance goes there would be no difference between a clothes shop and
a garage. At the moment we look like a gangster and his moll who have just fought their way out of a shindy in some low night-dive—and my filthy dinner-jacket helps to create the picture. If we go anywhere in our present state and I produce a wad of money in an attempt to buy or hire a car, the people will think that we are a pair of thieves trying to make a getaway. They’ll make some excuse to detain us then telephone the police.’ He paused a second, then added unhappily:

‘And that’s not the worst. You’ve been wonderful, and I hate to have to say this, but it would be stupid to conceal from you what we are up against. Looking as we do, and with you in that ten thousand dollar coat, from the moment we step into the street we’ll be liable to arrest on suspicion.’

As Sabine stared at Gregory she realised that he was right. She might be smoke-begrimed and tousled, but his state was far worse. Within the past thirty-six hours he had been in two gruelling fights. Not only was his face blackened but he had several nasty cuts on it and the swelling round his left eye was now a bluish purple. Even that, and the filth on their hands and faces, would not have mattered if they had been dressed as gypsies or in shoddy old clothes. But his dinner-jacket, however stained, was still a dinner-jacket and, as he had said, it now made him look like a crook who had just had a beating up; while her sables, now that she appeared such a slut, positively demanded questions from the first policeman they met about how she had come by them.

‘What … what are we to do then?’ she stammered. ‘I can’t leave my coat behind.’

He raised a smile. ‘No; as you’ve nothing else to put on you certainly can’t. You’d be arrested for indecency if you did—quite apart from catching your death of cold. What we have to do is to avoid any patrolling policemen like the plague until
we can get under cover with someone willing to help us. Do you know anyone you could trust—really trust—who does not live too far from here?’

After considering for a moment, she shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. You see, my affair with Ribb didn’t exactly put my stock up with my old friends. As you must have gathered for yourself the Hungarian nobility are willing enough to use the Nazis as a buffer against Russia, but they don’t like them; and, although the magnates have used me at times to get concessions for Hungary, most of them look on me as in the Nazi camp.’

‘Yes, I appreciate that. And, anyway, it would be the devil of a job to think up a story to explain to strangers why I am with you. It was only a forlorn hope.’

‘I’ve got it!’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Count Lászlo! His palace is only a few streets away, and he is a friend of both of us. He was with you when we met again, and knows that we’ve known one another for years. We will tell him that I’ve thrown Ribb over for you and that in revenge he’s got the Gestapo to trump up some charge against us. Such a situation is just the thing to tickle the little hunchback’s sense of humour; and I’m sure he will do everything he can to help us get away.’

It was, on the face of it, an inspiration, but there were snags to it of which Sabine was not aware. In the first place, Gregory hoped that Count Lászlo had taken his warning and left the city the day before; in the second, the last people he was willing to risk compromising were the members of the Committee. If one of them were arrested through him, the whole pro-Ally movement might be wrecked; so even if the Count was still in Budapest his palace would have been ruled out as a refuge. Having no intention of disclosing to Sabine the truth about his secret activities, Gregory gave as an objection to her suggestion another almost equally good reason.

‘I’m sure you’re right in thinking Count Lászlo would play; but unfortunately we daren’t go to him. Within a few hours at most now, Grauber’s appeal to Berlin will have forced the Regent to tell the Hungarian police to go after us. The first thing they’ll do is to search the houses of people I’m known to have gone about with while in Budapest; and Lászlo is one of them. So we’d be caught there and he would probably be clapped into jail as well.’

‘But you’ve forgotten our trump card. Pipi was going to tell the Arrow-Cross men that you and I refused to leave the palace and took an overdose rather than be driven out. By now everyone will believe we’re dead. There will be no search for us, and we’ve nothing to fear except being taken up by the police as suspicious characters, and afterwards identified.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re wrong about that. Pipi’s story was only to explain our non-appearance with your servants when they were finally driven out into the street. As we are supposed to have committed suicide, directly the smoke clears enough the police will go in to make a routine investigation. When they fail to find our bodies they’ll know it was a trick, and assume that somehow we got out in disguise. So you see, as far as the police are concerned, we’ll be very much alive again; and before long they’ll be hunting high and low for us.’

‘They are hardly likely to be after us yet. Couldn’t we go to Lászlo’s just for a wash and some fresh clothes? He might even let us have one of his cars.’

‘It would be much sounder to go to someone with whom we could lie up for twenty-four hours. The fact you are feeling in such good form at the moment is due to the reaction at having escaped from those terrifying caves. But after what you’ve been through it can’t last. In an hour or two you’ll be ready to do anything to get some sleep; and, frankly, I’m too done up to drive a car very far, even if we could get one.’

Sabine sighed. ‘I ought to have realised that. And of course I’ll be feeling the full effect of our night out before I’m much older. As a matter of fact I’d give a lot now for a good bed and unlimited time to sleep in it. The awful problem is …’

‘I know,’ Gregory cut her short. ‘And I have one possible answer to it. It’s an idea I’ve been nursing from the beginning; but it means going over to Pest, and I was hoping we might hit on some plan which would save us from having to cross the river, because there are always policemen on the bridges and passing quite close to one of them will be unavoidable. We’ll make for Leon Levianski’s.’

‘Who in the world is he?’

‘He’s a Jewish merchant—a wholesale furrier who lives in the Kertész Utcza.’

‘The man you told me about on Friday? The one whose name was given you in London as a safe contact?’

‘That’s the chap. He said that if I got into trouble he would do his best to help me out. Of course, when it comes to the point he may change his mind, or he may be away from home. Anyway, since you have no better idea, I think we had best head for the Kertész Utcza while the going’s good. Otherwise we’ll miss our chance of getting across one of the bridges while there is still some degree of darkness.’

‘All right, then,’ she agreed and, after a last bob to the altar, she walked quickly with him to the stairs that led up to the church.

Their hurried discussion about what they had better do had occupied only a few minutes, but getting out of the church took them considerably longer. They went from one door to another, but found them all locked; and they had to move round the vast empty building with caution for, even when walking on tiptoe, their footsteps on the ancient stones made whispering echoes that they feared might rouse some somnolent night-watchman. It was, too, getting towards the time when cleaners might arrive to prepare the church for early mass, or a priest appear to carry out some special devotion.

At length, in desperation, Sabine signed to Gregory to follow her to a low door she had noticed behind the organ. It opened at a touch and led, as she had expected, not to the street but to the vestment rooms and, farther on, to the priest’s quarters.

Fearful that at any moment they might run into someone who would take them for thieves, and raise an alarm, they crept down several passages until they came to a side door. It was bolted and locked but had its key in it. Only a moment was needed to turn the key and draw the bolts, then they were out in a small courtyard.

While they were down in the crypt the first flush of dawn had come. Above them the stars were now paling in the sky, and with renewed anxiety they realised that it would soon be full daylight. There was a small archway in the north-west corner of the courtyard. Hurrying through it they found themselves in a side street. They turned left and a walk of a hundred yards brought them to the square, the east side of which was dominated by the front of the church. Its great bulk shut out the growing light from the east, so the ancient square was still in semi-darkness.

As they came stealthily round the corner into the dim deserted open space, a two-wheeled covered cart emerged from a turning opposite. Instead of proceeding through the square, its driver pulled up in front of a stone drinking trough.