Authors: Helen Macinnes
“I’ll scout round, and find the garage,” he suggested. “Don’t wait too long in here: there’s the makings of a thoroughgoing blaze.”
Van Cortlandt looked up as the door closed. “Frances, did you see where he put those papers he was waving at your face?”
“He was at the desk. They must be there.” Unless, she thought, they were a lie, like the other things he had said. He had mixed lie with truth so cunningly. She watched van Cortlandt search once more and then relaxed as he suddenly smiled.
“Well, this might be twisted to suit us,” he said. Frances had never heard his voice so optimistic… And then the telephone rang.
The three of them looked at it as if it were a cobra.
“I might have known,” van Cortlandt said, and the optimistic voice was gone.
Richard left Frances, and walked quickly over to the ’phone. He lifted the receiver. Frances and van Cortlandt, motionless, scarcely breathing, watched him tensely. But the German which he spoke was that of von Aschenhausen. Van Cortlandt
caught Frances’ eye, and nodded slowly, approvingly, before he went on with his careful writing. The waste-paper basket was flaming nicely; the thick-wool carpet smouldered where the fallen candles had burned three round black holes.
Again Frances had the same awareness of unreality which would sometimes grip her for a timeless moment in the middle of a dream, which would drag her back to waking and the hotness of a crumpled pillow. But this was no dream. The high, panelled room was now filled with a stronger light from the leaping flames in the basket beside the desk. The smouldering rug and the guttering candles, and the two bodies lying so quietly on the floor, the rich draperies and carefully arranged flowers, were all as real as the burns on her wrists and the blood which had flowed down her arm like a stream of warm red lava. She looked at the American, working at the other end of the desk; at Richard as he spoke in that excellent, rather hard German. So far, he had said little: he was listening to some story,
And then he cut short the long explanation impatiently. He was giving his own instructions. The American was quite useless. The girl had talked, and he knew nothing at all. He was to be released after he had given them a description of his own car. They would be able to trace that to St. Anton, where the other American van Cortlandt and the Englishman Thornley had gone. That was the meeting place; Myles would reach it tomorrow. They then intended to cross into Switzerland. That frontier was to be carefully watched.
The man at the other end of the wire spoke again. Richard listened impatiently. The flames from the wicker basket lit up his face as he concentrated on the man’s words.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll allow them to stay longer. I shall remain here with Kurt until the investigation is completed. I shall arrive in St. Anton tomorrow morning. Get all three of them, alive if possible. I rely on you.”
Richard replaced the receiver thoughtfully.
“That takes care of your friend, Henry,” he said, “and gives us a breathing-space. The apprentices have had a successful parade, and are now eating heartily before they attend a meeting. I very generously allowed them to stay for that. They will return here by ten o’clock. It’s getting rather warm in here, don’t you think?”
Van Cortlandt rose, and handed him the sheet of paper on which he had just finished applying von Aschenhausen’s seal.
“Not warm enough, yet, but it should be satisfactory by ten o’clock—with a little help.”
He moved to the other end of the desk, and kicked the flaming basket over the smouldering carpet. The desk itself was beginning to glow just where the basket had stood, and a small streak of flame rushed up its side as he heaped the papers from the drawer beside it.
Richard folded the document and put it carefully into his breast-pocket. Von Aschenhausen seemed to have been of some importance, after all.
“Good piece of work, Henry,” he said. The American, placing the other branched candlesticks under the long curtains as he opened the windows, only smiled. It had been easy enough: all he had had to do was to alter a very little to suit their purpose. That was the advantage of dealing with a very systematic and thorough enemy. They made the arrangements and you borrowed them. It had been almost as easy as this. He threw the last candle lightly on to the couch with its pile of cushions.
“Keep moving, fellas,” he said, and picked up the two caps and the jackets from a chair.
They left the doors wide open. Richard, his arm round Frances, turned for one last look. The current of air between the windows and the wide door was serving its purpose.
“Regular Vikings’ funeral,” van Cortlandt said. “Too damn’ good for them.”
They walked in silence down the cool staircase. Behind them they heard the indrawn breath of the flames.
Thornley was waiting for them in the darkness beside a large official-looking car.
“There was another in the garage and some motor bikes. I’ve taken care of them,” he reported.
Richard was putting Frances into the car.
“Darling, we’ve got to get the other car and the stuff inside it. I’ll see you soon.” He turned to Thornley. “We’ll meet you five miles south of this road. Wait for us there.” Thornley nodded, and handed him something. It was the electric torch.
Van Cortlandt threw the caps and jackets into the car. “Better wear those. We’ll only keep you about twenty minutes.”
As the large car moved off, the two men started towards the gardens. As they passed the kitchen door they suddenly remembered the cook. Richard cursed and tried to enter the kitchen. But they had locked the door from the inside, and it was too heavy to break open. Richard swore again.
“If you must; but we’re God-damned fools,” van Cortlandt said, and raced back towards the front entrance of the castle. “God-damned fools,” he repeated when he opened the door into the kitchen. Together they carried the unconscious man into the shrubbery.
“Not too near the other blighter,” the American said. “Hell and damnation, that’s at least five minutes gone.”
They broke into a run across the garden and fields. The woods were dark and silent; it was too early for any moonlight. Richard shaded the torch with his hand as they searched for the path, scrambling along the edge of the trees.
Van Cortlandt said, “Just about here, I think. There was a mound. Rock.”
Richard nodded. He tried to measure the distance to the long dark shape which must be the red-currant bushes. And then the torch showed them the outcrop of stone. The path should be here.
They looked at each other with undisguised relief when they found it. The white slashes on the branches were picked out by the light which Richard held. Their feet stumbled and slipped in the darkness of the ground, but they pressed on hurriedly. They had passed over the crest of the small hill, and they were running and sliding down towards the road, following the trail which Thornley had blazed. They reached the cart track, and the bushes. The car was still there.
“Ten minutes late already,” Van Cortlandt said, but his voice was good-humoured again. He gave a laugh. “And there I was, having a fine joke all to myself about Thornley being the good boy scout.”
Richard found himself relaxing calmly as the car jerked
dangerously over the rough track and then gathered speed on the smoothness of the Brenner road. What would have seemed suicidal only forty-eight hours ago now only appeared all in the day’s work. Van Cortlandt’s driving had results; it was only a matter of minutes before they sighted the large car tactfully drawn up at the side of the road.
The first stars were beginning to appear over the Brenner. The man lounging at the doorway of the custom-house was watching the other side of the white barrier with interest. He wondered what it was this time. All day the Germans had been giving themselves double work. They had stopped the cars coming out of Germany as well as those going in. It was a nuisance, waiting here with your eyes on the headlights, not knowing how long they would be before they came up to you. Sometimes it would be only a matter of minutes. Sometimes a car would be held up for half an hour. Again he wondered what it could be. These Germans never told you much unless it was unimportant. He shifted his weight on to his other leg and glanced back into the brightly lighted office. The man at the desk looked up.
“Anything happening, Corradi?”
“Two still held over there.”
The tall, thin Italian at his desk gave a sardonic smile and went back to his writing. The other heaved a loud sigh, and walked slowly towards the barrier. The tension, on a day like this, always unsettled him. He heard the voices of the others as they came out of the cafe down the street. About time too, he thought moodily. He could do with some coffee himself.
At the doorway of the cafe, the two officials halted. They
stood looking out into the empty village street with its meagre lights. Only the doorway of the custom-house was bright. The younger man shivered, and looked bitterly at the scattered houses, the long wind-swept station, the towering dark shapes on either side of them.
“God-forsaken place,” he said.
“Wait until you have been here for a winter,” advised the other. “You can’t grumble at overwork today, at least. Not with our good friends over the way doing all our work for us.”
He looked at the younger man’s smart uniform, and buttoned his own crumpled jacket. It was just like the young, he thought. They never knew when they were lucky. A few more pretty girls to admire the way he wore his cap, and his young friend would have no doubt found the place tolerable.
“We could have had another coffee,” he suggested, but the young man had already stepped into the street and was waiting impatiently for him.
“When you’ve been here as long as I have,” the older man grumbled, “you will know it is hardly worth our while, on a day like this. Our German cousins don’t leave much to be confiscated.”
The other tilted his hat contemptuously. Here as long as this fat fool, he thought in amusement, who would now be in a comfortable office in a decent town if he had had any brains at all. Even the way he would speak of the Germans, with that sly note in his voice which he thought was funny, showed he had no brains… But curiosity overcame the young man’s contempt.
“Is this usual?” he asked, as they reached the custom-house.
“Whenever someone who shouldn’t be leaving the beloved Fatherland is being ungrateful enough to try to leave.”
“They are fools to try to pass this way.”
“There is only this way, or the mountains, or the railway. The border patrols have been increased, and there is pandemonium on the trains. Have you seen
them
on the trains, today?”
“It is efficient organisation,” the young man said sharply. The fat fool had no brains but he was crafty enough. He always chose his words so carefully that you couldn’t even report him. The tall, thin Italian who had come from the office exchanged amused looks with the older man and ignored the remark. They were both getting a bit tired of the new broom.
They saw the headlights of the two small cars begin to move at last. Behind them a large car advanced authoritatively in the middle of the road. Corradi seemed excited about something. “They didn’t stop this one. Salutes for this one,” he called across to them. “Better not keep this one waiting. They never like it.”
The tall, thin man nodded, and turned to the young one.
“You deal with it and see some of the efficient organisers of efficient organisation. Probably diplomatic pass. You know.”
The young man nodded as casually as he could and moved over to the large car. He didn’t feel casual inside. Corradi had been right. The Germans didn’t like being kept waiting. An officer’s sleeve waved a paper peremptorily to him. He heard a request for urgency which was a command.
The Italian took the document. His German was not so adequate as he pretended, but he knew his salute had been just right. He looked as efficient as possible as he glanced quickly at the paper. The signature on it made him hold his breath… Four people in the car. That was right. He felt the cold impassive stare of the German. Further curiosity would be an impertinence. He folded the paper with a business-like gesture. Speed and courtesy: that would show them efficiency could be found here, too. He held his salute as the officer acknowledged it, and the large black car swept past the raised barrier.
He turned back to the others. Corradi, he noticed, had saluted too. But the other fools were too busy examining and stamping passports, were even wasting good breath making polite replies to three middle-aged Englishmen.
When the two insignificant cars crawled slowly away through the village street, the others joined him.
“Well, who was it? The Archduke von Ribbentrop himself?”
He ignored their smiles. He made his voice as casual as possible.
“Freiherr von Aschenhausen and three others, authorised by…”
But the others had lost interest and gone back to the office.
The young man stood outside and looked at the stars. He forgot the cold wind. There was a warm, comfortable feeling inside him.
The swift journey down the Brenner road was a nightmare to Frances. She was conscious of a stiffening arm, of the burns on her wrist nipped by the cool air. She was so tired that the muscles of her body refused to relax. Thornley, unexpectedly gentle, tried to protect her from the twists and turns of the mountain road. In front of them were Richard and van Cortlandt, both of them silent and grim under the peaked hats. Van Cortlandt’s eyes never left the road. Richard had a map spread over his knees. Although the Brenner was safely passed, there was no relaxing of the strain. Thornley persuaded her to eat something. He was so obviously worried about her that to please him she tried. She was surprised to find that the sick feeling was no worse, that the coldness which had first gripped her as they waited for Richard and van Cortlandt on the Innsbruck-Brenner road began to disappear.