Traitors' Gate

As Sabine pulled the car up, he took her hand, kissed it and said, 'Listen, my sweet. I hate to say it, and more than ever after what you've done for me; but this is goodbye. I'm red-hot now. Or anyway I will be once the Germans hear that I'm a free man again. You'll have quite enough to answer for tomorrow, without having me still on your hands. This day with you has been wonderful, but it has to end like Cinderella's at the ball. My fairy trappings as Commandant Etienne Tavenier are already falling in rags about me, so I've got to run out on you.'

'Say I agree, what will you do?' she asked quickly.

'I think I told you that I had one contact here, a Jewish merchant. He offered to conceal me for a bit if I got into trouble, and could reach his place without being followed. There should be no difficulty about my doing that. Fortunately I've plenty of money on me. I'll get him to buy me some peasant clothes, and leave the city on foot after dark tomorrow.'

'You seem to forget that you can't speak Hungarian.'

'Yes; that is a snag. Still, lots of the better class country people speak German.'

'True, but they speak Hungarian as well, and you don't. You will come under suspicion in the first village you stop at for the night.'

'Then I'll have to sleep in haystacks until the hue and cry dies down. After a few days it should be safe for me to board a train going towards the frontier.'

'What about a passport? You can't use the one you've got.'

'No; I'll have to leave the train before it reaches the border, and get across in some lonely spot at night.'

'Darling, it's no good!' she cried in desperate protest. 'You'll never make it! Living like a vagabond, yet without a word of Hungarian and no passport to produce if you're questioned, you are bound to run into trouble. Long before you reach the frontier you'll find yourself in some village lockup. It is certain that a description of you will be issued to all police stations. Someone will recognize you from it. Then you'll be hauled back to Budapest and handed over to the Germans.'

'That is taking the blackest view. I have been in worse spots before. I'll manage somehow.'

'But why inflict such hardship on yourself and take such a prolonged risk when there is an easy and quick way out?'

'If you know one, tell me of it.'

'It's quite simple. I planned it while on my way to the police station. I have an Italian chauffeur who is fairly near your age and colouring. He has been with me ever since I married Kelemen, and I am sure he will let me have his passport. You can dress up in his uniform and we'll make an early start on Sunday morning just as if I was setting off for Berlin three days earlier than I originally intended. We'll have ample time to reach a town on the Yugoslav frontier before nightfall, and you can drive me straight over it. Once you are safe you can put off the chauffeur's uniform and we can spend a little honeymoon together. Then… well, then I'll recross the frontier on my own at a different place and drive straight to Berlin.'

'Oh, my sweet!' he kissed her hand again. 'It is terribly gallant of you, and terribly tempting. It is a perfect plan, too; but I simply can't let you take such a risk.'

'Don't be silly. The risk is negligible. Ribb got me a diplomatic laissez-passer; so that I should never be put to any inconvenience when crossing frontiers. That frees us from having to fill up any forms, customs' examinations, and formalities about currency. No official would dream of holding us up and questioning us once I've shown him that; so we won't even have to worry about my chauffeur's passport photograph not being very like you.'

'I suppose you are right.' All against his instinct Gregory weakened. After the hour of dread he had just been through, he would not have been human had he rejected outright this alluring prospect of escaping all sorts of difficulties and dangers by driving straight out of the country.

'Of course I'm right,' Sabine insisted, and leaned forward to press the self-starter.

'No; wait!' he caught her hand. 'What is to happen in the meantime?'

'You are coming home with me. You'll be perfectly safe there.'

'I shan't, and neither would you be. As it was you who secured my release and I drove off with you in your car, your house is the first place they'll come to when the balloon goes up in the morning.'

'Really, darling! I think that whack on the head must have temporarily deprived you of your wits. Is it likely that I shouldn't have realized that? I shall say that I was driving you back to the house to change your clothes when you said that having been knocked out had made you feel sick. So I stopped the car for you to get out. Then, to my amazement, instead of being sick, you ran off down a side turning; and I haven't the faintest idea what became of you afterwards. That is entirely in keeping with what would probably have happened if I had really believed you to be Tavenier.'

He nodded. 'Yes; that is just about what I should have done. Knowing that the Germans had got on to me, once you had got me out of prison I should have left you as quickly as I could. In fact, just as I meant to.'

'Exactly. And the very last place you would have let me take you to would have been my house; because they are certain to make enquiries there.'

'Yes, they probably would even if I had got out of prison by some other means. The odds are that they will find out that after I left the Vadaszkürt this afternoon the driver of the carriage took me and my luggage to your palace. That is the sort, of thing that worries me. What reason are you going to give them for having done that?'

'A perfectly straightforward one. I greeted you in front of a table full of people last night as an old friend, and mentioned that I had stayed with your aunt in Paris. I wished to return her hospitality, so asked you to stay for a few days, and you accepted. There is nothing wrong about that.'

Gregory had a feeling that there was somewhere, but another thought struck him and he asked, 'What about Ribb? Won't he kick up rough when he hears that you invited your ex-boyfriend, without his aunt, or a wife or chaperone of any kind, to come and stay with you?'

'No. That is one of Ribb's good points. At times he fools around rather half-heartedly with little film starlets and I never make scenes. But in return I assert my right to go about with whom I like, and he stands for that, because he enjoys my companionship more than anyone else's. Providing I am always on hand when he either wants to talk or show me off to his friends, and I don't let other men make up to me while he is present, he doesn't seem to mind much what I do when he is otherwise engaged.'

'You are a clever girl, and I give you full marks,' Gregory said with a smile. But he at once became serious again, and added, 'All the same, I can't possibly let you run any further risks on my account. At least, not as far as coming back to, your house is concerned. I'll lie low in the city tonight and tomorrow; then, if you are really confident that you can get away with it, we'll do our trip to the frontier on Sunday.'

'No, Gregory; no!' She hit the wheel angrily with the palm of her hand. 'You are being stupid again. My whole plan hangs on your taking my chauffeur's place, and driving me off as though we were setting out for Berlin. How on earth can we do that if I have to pick you up somewhere? And if you came to the house early Sunday morning, you might be spotted entering it. All sorts of complications might crop up. The only certain way for us to pull it off is for you to come back with me to the house now.'

He sighed. 'There is an awful lot in what you say. But I'm so scared that something may go wrong when the police come along to question you about me in the morning. If you tell them that I bolted from you tonight, and after that they find that you are concealing me, you won't have a leg to stand on. You'll be in it up to the neck.'

'There's no reason why they shouldn't believe me.'

'You never can tell. Some little thing may make them suspicious; then they might insist on searching the house.'

'They wouldn't dare!'

'Wouldn't they? You don't know Herr Gruppenführer Grauber.'

'Is he the man who recognized you?'

'Yes; and he is the most ruthlessly efficient swine that ever wielded a rubber truncheon. What is more, he has personal reasons for wanting to take me into little pieces, so he'll stick at nothing to ferret out where I've got to.'

'Where did you come up against him before?'

'Oh, in lots of places. The first time was in England and the last in Russia. But Fate seems to take a special delight in throwing us together, and during the past three years we have done our best to kill one another in half a dozen countries.

'You misled me, then, about your mission to Budapest being a special thing. From what you say, it's clear now that all through the war you have been working against the Germans as a secret agent.'

'No, I didn't mislead you. I simply refrained from telling you about my previous wartime activities because I didn't want to quarrel with you and you had made it clear that you were on the Germans' side.'

'I am. Oh, Gregory!' Her voice held a sob of acute distress. 'Why are you English so blind? Can't you see that the Russians are the real enemy? If we don't destroy them now we have the chance, they'll destroy us later. They are evil, utterly evil; and given time they will grow so powerful that either by peaceful penetration or by war they will become masters of the whole world.'

He sighed. 'You may be right. God knows. I've no illusions about Communism, and the way in which it turns all those who come under it into slaves. But first things must come first. Stalin is little worse than Hitler and…'

'That is not true! I know Hitler is a fanatic about some things, and that his persecution of the Jews is unforgivable, but…'

'No ruler who employs men like Grauber can be allowed to continue to enforce his will on millions of people. But this is not the time for us to wrangle about degrees of evil. What I was about to say was that Grauber is the head of the Gestapo

Foreign Department; so, apart from Himmler, there is no German who has a bigger pull with your police, and they will stick at nothing to get me for him. That is why, if they have the least suspicion that you are lying, they will search your house.'

'I tell you they will not. This is not Germany, you know. First they would have to go away and get a search warrant; so you would have plenty of time to make yourself scarce.'

'They might bring one with them.'

'I should refuse to allow them to execute it until I had telephoned to the Palace. I would get on to Ribb and have him speak to Admiral Horthy; and he would send an order that they were to leave me in peace.'

'If they were hunting for an English spy at the request of the Germans I don't see why Ribb should interfere.'

'Then I'll tell you. The top Nazis hate each other's guts. All of them are always trying to get hold of some piece of dirt that will discredit one of the others with the Fuhrer; and Ribb and Himmler are at daggers drawn. Ribb would accept my version of what had happened and jump to the conclusion that one of Himmler's boys was trying to pull a fast one on him by seizing this excuse to search my house in the hope of finding some thing among my papers that could be used against him later.'

'If that is really so…' Gregory murmured. 'But wait a minute! Ribb is leaving tomorrow afternoon for Berlin and, according to your plan, we don't leave for the frontier until Sunday morning. If the police come back with a search warrant on Saturday night Ribb will no longer be here for you to appeal to.'

For a moment she considered that, then she said, 'I decided on Sunday morning because it is much more natural to set out on the first stage of a long journey with a whole day ahead of one; and anyway I couldn't leave till fairly late on Saturday afternoon because Ribb and I will be lunching together and he will expect me to see him off from the airport afterwards. But, if you like, we will start as soon as we can after he has gone.'

The temptation to leave himself in her hands was overwhelming. She was so completely confident that no harm would come to her through his doing so; and, as far as he was concerned, the alternative held all sorts of dangerous uncertainties. Levianski might be away from Budapest or get cold feet and, after all, refuse to hide him. He was unarmed, hatless and the clothes he was wearing were dirty and torn, showing that he had recently been involved in a fight. He had plenty of money but could not use it till the morning to buy other clothes, and a rucksack to carry essentials in for his journey. Even if he succeeded in getting safely out of Budapest, he would be faced with many hazards before he could reach the frontier; then he would have to run the gauntlet between two lots of guards in getting across it and, as Yugoslavia was controlled by the Germans, still be without a passport that he dared to show. Yet his instinctive caution against committing himself to an easy course made him continue to search his mind for possible holes in her alluring offer. After a moment, he said:

'My clothes. When the police learn tomorrow that I was going to stay with you, they will ask you for them on the chance that I have left something among them which would help to trace me.'

'Pipi, my butler, will pack them up and hand them over. I gave away most of Kelemen's things after he died, but there are still enough of them in various cupboards to fit you out; and he was only an inch or so taller than you are.'

'I gather, then, that Pipi is to be trusted. But what about your other servants? Surely there is a big risk that one of them might give away the fact that I am still in the house.'

'Apart from Mario, my chauffeur, only Pipi and his wife, Magda, need know. She used to be my personal maid until she married Pipi and I made her housekeeper, so that she could remain with him while I am away. When I come to Budapest I leave my new girl Lili in Berlin, and Magda still maids me. All three of them are devoted to me. You will have to stay up in your room, of course; but Pipi and Magda between them will look after you and bring you anything you want. Stop havering, darling. It's having been through such a horrid time that makes you so nervy. Really, you can leave everything to me.'

'It's only that I should never forgive myself if, through trying to save me, you found yourself charged with aiding and abetting an enemy agent.'

'Most men wouldn't give a damn if they saw a good chance of saving their own necks. Your scruples make me love you all the more. That's settled, then. Let's go!'

Gregory made no further effort to stop her. The car slid forward, along the Corso back to the bridge, crossed it and followed a zigzag course up the slope of the Buda hill, until Sabine brought it to a halt in a dark, narrow street. On the right could be seen a row of small palaces; on the left only a stone wall sloping slightly inwards that reared up into the darkness. The section of wall alongside which Sabine pulled up was the great buttress in the hillside which supported the east front of the row of palaces in which hers was one. Flush with it, like a ladder from the water to a ship's deck, was a steep narrow flight of stone stairs. Pointing to them Sabine said:

'That's the way in that lovers of the Tozolto ladies have used for centuries. At the top you will find a gate leading on to the terrace. Wait there until I have taken the car round to the courtyard, then I'll come and let you in.'

Five minutes later she unlocked the gate, led him across the terrace and through French windows into a dark salon. There she took his hand and guided him between the dimly seen furniture to a further door which opened into the vaulted hall. When they came out from under the broad staircase he saw the manservant who had taken his things that evening standing by the outer door, and it was evident that Sabine had told him to wait there.

The butler was a middle-aged man, with a pleasant open, rather round, face and slightly greying hair. As he bowed to his mistress she said with a smile, 'Pipi, this is Herr Commandant Tavenier, who came this afternoon to stay with us. Unfortunately there was a row at the Arizona tonight and he got into trouble with the police. It was a stupid business and will all blow over in a day or two, but it would be embarrassing for him if he had to appear in court. You can tell Magda what I've told you, but I don't want anyone else at all to know that the Herr Commandant is here. Is that understood?'

'Yes, Lady Baroness,' the man replied with a frankness and lack of servility that impressed Gregory very favourably.

'Now,' Sabine went on, 'the police may call tomorrow morning to make enquiries and collect the Herr Commandant's belongings. I want you to go up to his room, pack them all up and bring them downstairs ready to be handed over. Then take up to the room everything you can find of our Baron's things for him to use until this silly affair is cleared up. When you have done, come down and let us know.'

With a murmur of assent the butler left them, and Sabine went over to a trolley of drinks. On its lower shelf, under transparent covers, reposed the usual plates of sandwiches, biscuits and cake, in case she came in late and felt like nibbling something with a nightcap before going to bed.

'As we've had no dinner, we had better eat something,' she said. 'Although I'm not really hungry; I had such a large lunch. How about you? If you would like something more solid Pipi could get it for us.'

'No, thanks; there is plenty here. A couple of sandwiches and a brandy and soda will suit me.'

'Ought you to drink anything? Alcohol, I mean, after that blow on the head.'

He smiled. 'Don't worry. I've been knocked out too often not to know when I'm likely to get delayed concussion. All I need now to make me my own man again is a drink and a good hot bath to get this oily muck off my neck and chest.'

'All the same, your poor head ought to be seen to,' she said solicitously. 'Mix me a brandy and soda too, while I get things to bathe it.'

Having left him for a few minutes she returned with a basin of hot water, lint and ointment. Her examination confirmed that the blow had had no serious effect. Only the skin of his scalp was broken and there was very little clotted blood about the place. After cleaning the wound she applied the ointment, and they settled down to their alfresco supper, eating considerably more than they had at first expected.

They had not long finished when Pipi came back to report that he had carried out his orders. Greatly to Gregory's surprise Sabine stood up and said to him:

'You must still be feeling very groggy after that fight you got mixed up in. What you need is a hot bath and a nice long sleep; so I won't keep you up any longer.' Then she turned to Pipi and added, 'Please see the Herr Commandant up to his room.'

Hardly believing that she could mean it, Gregory thanked her and bowed over her hand. But she confirmed the impression that she really intended him to go to bed by saying, 'Good night; I hope you will feel quite recovered in the morning. We'll have lots of time to talk tomorrow.'

Pipi escorted him up to his room and, having ascertained that there was nothing else he wanted, left him.

Immediately he was alone he went over to the bedside telephone. To his relief he found that it was connected direct with the exchange and, since all the operators spoke German, he had no difficulty in getting Count Laszlo's number. As it was only just on eleven o'clock he feared that the Count might be out, but a moment later he came on the line.

Using French and phrases which would obscure his meaning to anyone who might be listening in, Gregory gave a swift resume of the disaster that had overtaken him that evening, and warned the Count that he should get in touch with their other friends at once, so that on various pretexts they could all leave Budapest before the threatening investigation got properly under way. He then enquired anxiously about the result of that evening's Committee meeting.

In equally roundabout parlance the Count told him that everything had been settled. The Hungarian magnates were prepared to force their Government to break with Germany on the following conditions. An Anglo-American undertaking to guarantee Hungary from Russian aggression allocation to Hungary after the war of the territories already stipulated by the Committee, being the greater part of those of which she had been deprived by the Treaty of Trianon; and that the Anglo-Americans should land a force of not less than fifteen divisions on the Continent, on a date to be agreed, and before the Hungarian Government declared against Hitler.

It was the size of the expeditionary force, which the Hungarians would demand should engage the German forces in the West, that had been in debate, and Gregory felt that fifteen divisions was not unreasonable; so when he put down the receiver he smiled his satisfaction.

Abusing Sabine's hospitality to get in touch with Count Laszlo on a matter that might lead to Germany's defeat had given him a sharp twinge of conscience. But it had been imperative that he should somehow or other warn the Committee of its danger and, if he possibly could, fulfil his duty to his own country by bringing back definite terms upon which the Hungarians would act. To have succeeded in the one and have a good prospect of doing the other took such a load off his mind that he hardly gave Grauber another thought, and became again as full of good spirits as he had been when he had changed to go out some three hours earlier.

Throwing off his soiled clothes, he got into the bath that Pipi had already prepared for him. The warm scented water soon relieved from stiffness those of his muscles he had strained during the struggle, just as the telephone conversation with Count Laszlo had relieved his mind of all immediate worries.

He lay there for quite a long time, acutely conscious that, but for God, the Hungarian Police Captain, Sabine and his lucky stars, he might by now be suffering agonies with Grauber glaring at him, and rendered thanks for his preservation. Then he got out, dried himself, put out the lights and drew back one of the curtains of the bedroom windows.

The moon had risen over Pest, and it brought sharply back to him what Sabine had said when they were kissing in her bedroom before going out. As he got into bed he marvelled at her restraint. Since she had made her feelings for him so plain, he could only suppose that she thought he needed a full night's sleep to recover from the ordeal he had been through, and had resigned herself to wait until the brief 'honeymoon' she had proposed that they should take when they were over the frontier.

Drowsily he wondered if that 'honeymoon' would come off, or if some unforeseen circumstance would arise to prevent it. Now, it almost seemed as if Fate had decreed that, whether he would or not, he should, after all, remain faithful to Erika. He could not make up his mind if he was sorry or not. Then, as thoughts of Sabine lying in bed in the room below him suddenly took possession of his mind, he knew that he was already regretting her having packed him off alone to bed.

It was at that moment that a slight sound made him turn his head. The door had opened and Sabine was closing it behind her. She had on a dressing gown, her face was pale as a magnolia blossom in the moonlight and her dark hair rippled down over her shoulders.

As she came towards him, and he quickly sat up, she said: 'Why didn't you come down to me? You know where my room is.'

I thought…' he stammered. 'You said… You led me to suppose… Damn it! You packed me off to bed as though I was not up to…'

She gave a low laugh. 'You dear idiot! You told me you were feeling perfectly recovered, but I've always thought it only right to preserve the decencies as far as possible in front of the servants. I said good night to you like that simply to keep face with Pipi.'

Untying the belt of her dressing gown, she let the garment slip from her shoulders. She had nothing on underneath it and for a moment stood there, her full beauty revealed in the moonlight. Then, with another low delighted laugh, she slipped into bed beside him.

Exactly nine and a half minutes later the sound of a musical klaxon horn came up to them through the open window.

'Holy Mary!' exclaimed Sabine, wrenching herself from Gregory's embrace. 'That's Ribb. And he told me positively he didn't mean to come here tonight. Oh, God! How utterly damnable!'

Battle of Wits

Chapter 14

Sabine scrambled out of bed and Gregory after her, As he snatched up her dressing gown from the floor and helped her on with it, he said, 'If you are so positive that Ribb did not mean to come and spend the night with you, it must be about me that he's come here.'

'Do you really think so?' She was nearly weeping with rage and frustration. 'It is unlike him to change his mind; but he might have done.'

'Perhaps; but I've a horrid feeling that Grauber has somehow found out that you secured my release, then got on to Ribb and asked him to come and question you.'

'That… that might be the explanation,' she sobbed. 'But oh, God, why couldn't the fool wait till morning!'

It was no laughing matter, but Gregory could not suppress a smile. 'We must give him the benefit of not knowing that you would be otherwise engaged. At least, I hope to goodness we can; if not, we'll both be for the high jump.'

She gave an angry shrug. 'Oh, my story is watertight enough.

You go back to bed. When I've given him a drink and heard what he has to say, I'll get rid of him as soon as I can and come back to you.'

As she hurried towards the door, Gregory said quickly, 'I daren't stay here. It's quite on the cards that Grauber has come with him. If so they may search the house. It would be the end of you if they find me in it. I mean to make the bed, then climb out of the window and down into the street.'

She halted in her tracks. 'No! No! For heaven's sake don't do that! Ribb's car is down there. If his chauffeur sees you climbing out of the window he'll think you are a burglar and raise an alarm. I've told you Ribb would never let them search but, if you're really afraid they may, go up to the attics. There are half a dozen places there where they wouldn't find you if they hunted for hours. Promise me you won't leave the house. Promise me!'

Gregory was loath to give her his promise, but she was right about Ribbentrop's chauffeur, and this was no time to argue; so he said, 'All right; I'll first make the bed then hide somewhere. Maybe Ribb's only come… er, on a courtesy call, after all. Anyhow, good luck!'

As she ran from the room he was already starting on the bed. Immediately he had made it he pulled open the doors of a big old-fashioned wardrobe. In it was a strange assortment of the late Baron's clothes presumably all that Pipi had been able to find for him. They were mostly dress or fancy garments for which, if given to them, poor people would have had little use, but he found a crested blazer to go with a pair of black velvet trousers. In a chest of drawers there were several silk shirts with a coronet and monogram embroidered on them, and a variety of ties to choose from.

While getting dressed at top speed he cursed himself for having allowed Sabine to persuade him to come back there. The past quarter of an hour had put it beyond all doubt that when doing so she had been largely influenced by the desire, which had been growing in her all day, to spend the night with him. But, to be fair, he had to admit that the arguments she had used were sound ones. If she was right about being able to get away with her story, he was much better off where he was than in Levianski's apartment with many days of unforeseen dangers in front of him. That he was out of prison at all he owed to her, and he suddenly decided that he was being extremely mean in setting against the risks she was running for him the fact that she had fallen harder than he had expected for his deliberate arousing of the memories that they shared.

The truth was that though he could find no concrete reason for rejecting her plan he had, all along, instinctively distrusted it. In consequence, Ribbentrop's surprise visit had at once seemed to justify his fears. All the same, they might be quite groundless. After all, Sabine was the Foreign Minister's mistress. As she was not supposed to be leaving until Wednesday and was motoring back to Berlin, it would be the best part of a week before she arrived there. If he had got through his business with the Regent earlier than he expected, there was nothing in the least strange about his deciding to sleep with her instead of at the Palace.

By the time Gregory had stowed in his pockets his money, papers and his little automatic which Pipi had considerately left for him when removing his other things he was feeling very much more optimistic. Nevertheless, he was not the man to take chances. Having stuffed his soiled clothes into the unlit stove, he swiftly tidied the bathroom and the bedroom so that, short of examining the bed and finding its sheets rumpled, no one would realize that the rooms had recently been occupied.

Stepping softly out into the corridor he closed the door behind him and listened intently. No sound disturbed the silence. Turning up the collar of the blazer, so that its lapels would hide the V of pale shirt, he moved like a ghost towards the staircase. He had already decided not to adopt Sabine's suggestion that he should hide up in the attics. If any serious searching was done that was the very place they would ransack for him. Instead he meant, if possible, to get down to the ground floor, and he hoped to find there a small room with a window either giving on to the courtyard or the terrace. Then, if the worst came to the worst, although he would have to break his promise to Sabine, he would at least be well placed to make a bolt for it.

Sitting down on the top step of the stairs, and using his hands as levers, he went from step to step to the bottom swiftly and noiselessly. From beyond the curtain that masked them filtered a faint light. Standing up and peering round it, he saw that the light came from the open door of Sabine's bedroom. But there was still no sound of movement or voices. He guessed, rightly, that, while he had been hurrying into his clothes, Sabine had spent some minutes there touching up her face before going down to open the gate to Ribbentrop. She would have known that once he had seen the light in her room go on, showing that she was at home, he would not mind waiting for those few minutes while she made herself presentable.

Stepping out into the broad corridor, Gregory now saw that the lights were also on in the hall, throwing into sharp relief the balustrade of the gallery which, with the head of the main staircase, formed the central section of the corridor. On tiptoe he ran towards them, hoping that he might get down the stairs while the hall was still unoccupied.

In that he was thwarted. As he reached the head of the stairs, he heard a door close and the murmur of voices. Pulling up he looked quickly about him. At the ends of the gallery there hung two six feet wide velvet curtains on semicircular rails, their purpose being to form a background for the two suits of Turkish armour. With swift catlike strides he reached the nearest curtain and slipped in front of it, then stationed himself behind the armour. The steel and leather shape of a man hid him from anyone who looked up in that direction from the hall, and if Sabine brought Ribbentrop up to her bedroom the curtain would conceal him while they passed behind his back.

He had hardly taken up his position when Sabine and her midnight visitor emerged from under the stairs into his field of vision. The Foreign Minister was wearing undress uniform: a naval type jacket of dark blue with aiguillettes of gold braid draped on his right shoulder, a long row of medals and four stars of various orders on his left breast. Gregory decided that he really was quite a good-looking fellow and took in with silent satisfaction the fact that he had not brought anyone with him.

That was a good omen, yet the atmosphere seemed slightly strained, for the couple crossed the hall without speaking. Sabine again had on her crimson housecoat, her glossy dark hair framed her pale face with no trace of disorder and, as she calmly lit a cigarette before sitting down in an armchair, no one could possibly have supposed that less than ten minutes earlier she had been in bed with a lover.

Ribbentrop walked straight over to the trolley and mixed himself a drink. As he did so Gregory was alarmed to see that on it there still stood two dirty glasses: his own and Sabine's.

That might prove a giveaway. But the tall Foreign Minister did not seem to have noticed. Having swallowed half his drink, he said:

'I'm sorry to have pulled you out of bed on account of such a stupid affair; but I must know what you have been up to with this man Tavenier.'

Gregory's upper teeth closed gently on his lower lip. 'So he had been right. Grauber had got on to Ribbentrop and asked him to question his mistress. Well, it was now up to Sabine.'

Only a trained eye like Gregory's could have spotted any sign of agitation in her. She had her long legs crossed. From beneath the edge of her crimson housecoat the bare ankle of the upper one showed and from the forepart of her foot there dangled a marabou trimmed silver mule. It began to swing back and forth, but her voice was perfectly calm as she answered.

'I told you last night, Joachim. He is an old friend of mine. I saw quite a lot of him before the war, when I was staying with his aunt in Paris. This morning I ran into him again at the Gellert Baths. He offered to give me lunch, and as I had nothing particular to do I accepted. You know how amusing a sophisticated Frenchman can be. But I needn't stress that point. You must have seen for yourself last night what good company Etienne is. As you were tied up with these eternal conferences, we decided to spend the rest of the day together. Then I had the idea that it would be fun to have him to stay for a night or two. I could hardly do less after all the time he had spent taking me round Paris. He collected his things from the Vadaszkürt and came here to change. After a drink we went out to have dinner at the Arizona. You appear to know the rest.'

'I know about your having got him out of the lockup; but what happened after that?'

'We got in the car to drive home…'

'He is here, then!' Ribbentrop's voice held a staccato sharpness.

'No. And that is the only strange part about it. Just before we reached the Swing Bridge he said he felt ill and wanted to be sick; so I stopped the car and he got out. To my amazement, without a word to me, he ran off into an alley. I shouted after him, but he took no notice. I can only suppose that the blow on the head he had had temporarily sent the poor fellow out of his mind. I drove home and waited for some time, hoping that he would get back his wits and remember that he was supposed to be staying here. But he hasn't put in an appearance or telephoned; so I haven't the faintest idea what has become of him.'

'There are grounds for believing him to be an English secret agent.'

'What!' Sabine exclaimed, her big eyes growing round with well feigned astonishment. 'But that is absurd! I know him to be a Frenchman.'

Ribbentrop shrugged. 'Perhaps he is a de Gaullist who is working for the British. Anyhow, after he had been questioned at the police station he knew that he had been recognized as a man wanted by the Gestapo. That would account for his leaving you like that. He knew that if he came back with you he would soon be followed here and rearrested; so as soon as he could he seized on the chance to get away.'

'I can't believe it!'

'I was dubious myself anyhow about his being an Englishman. But Grauber claims that he knows him well; and that he is an ace high British spy named Sallust.'

'Who is Grauber?' Sabine asked with a puzzled frown.

'Have you never heard of him? He is one of Himmler's top men and is responsible for all Gestapo activities outside the Reich. He is in Budapest to investigate rumours that a little clique of anti Nazi Hungarian notables is toying with the idea of entering into negotiations with the enemy. Purely by chance he ran into this man Tavenier, or Sallust, or whoever he is. As you know, they had a fight and were both taken off to the police station. Grauber showed his credentials and wanted to remove his catch to the Villa Petoefer that is the Gestapo Headquarters here but the Hungarians wouldn't let him. So he came up to the Palace, to ask me to get a special permit signed by Admiral Horthy. He was given it, but by the time he got back to the police station you had let the bird out of the cage. Back to the Palace came Grauber, in a fine rage, to demand that special measures should be taken to catch the bird again; and when I heard that you were responsible for the fellow's release I decided that I must see you at once to find out what was behind all this.'

'There is nothing behind it. I have not the least doubt that it is a case of mistaken identity. You had better go back to the Palace and tell this man Grauber so.'

'You will have a chance to tell him so yourself in a few minutes.'

Sabine suddenly sat forward and asked in a voice just a shade higher' than usual, 'What do you mean by that?'

'He left me to collect some of his colleagues who have been mixed up in this thing; but he must be on his way here by now.'

Gregory, peering down from behind the suit of armour, stiffened where he stood. Those last words confirmed his worst fears of the way matters might develop. For a moment he contemplated slipping behind the curtain, hunting round till he found some back stairs, then trying to find a way out of the house; but instead of appearing perturbed Sabine displayed only calculated indifference.

'Am I to understand,' she enquired, raising her eyebrows, 'that you intend to stand quietly by while I am grilled by some Gestapo thug?'

'No! No! Of course not!' he protested quickly. 'But they are entitled to any reasonable help that I can give them. I take it that Pipi has gone to bed?'

'Yes. Why do you ask?'

'I was thinking about letting these people in. It would be better to keep the servants out of this.' As he spoke the Minister walked towards the vestibule, adding over his shoulder, 'It is so warm, it won't matter leaving the front door open; then they will not have to ring.'

Gregory was greatly tempted to step out from behind the armour, lean over the gallery and call softly to Sabine, 'Quick! Get the glass I used out of the way.' But he decided that the risk of Ribbentrop's returning before he could regain his cover was too great. It was just as well, for the Minister was out of sight for barely a minute and, as he re-entered the room, there came the faint sounds of a car driving into the courtyard. Turning, he walked back to the door of the vestibule, returned a loud greeting of 'Heil Hitler,' and led in the visitors. To Gregory's dismay, he saw that Grauber had with him Cochefert, Major Szalasi and Lieutenant Puttony.

Szalasi bowed over Sabine's hand. Grauber and Cochefert were presented to her. The whole middle section of the Frenchman's face was swathed in a great bandage. Only his hooded eyes showed above, and his chin below it. Evidently his nose had been plugged as, when he spoke, it was in a voice so distorted that it sounded as though he had a split palate or acute adenoids. He was so shaky from loss of blood that he was given a chair, but Grauber was not invited to sit, and the pink cheeked Puttony remained modestly in the background. After these greetings, Ribbentrop said in a cold haughty tone:

'Herr Gruppenführer, the Gnadige Frau Baronin has consented to answer any questions you care to put to her. Please be as brief as possible.'

Having bowed his respectful thanks, Grauber asked Sabine to tell them where she had first met the man calling himself Commandant Tavenier, and all that she knew about him.

In a quiet, detached voice, Sabine repeated with a few minor embellishments what she had already told Ribbentrop: such as the address of the apartment at which she had stayed as his aunt's guest in Paris and approximately the date of her stay there. She gave as her reason for the visit that his aunt was a partner in a big French fashion house, and that she had been commissioned by a Hungarian shop to buy models from the firm all of which was quite plausible as, in her poorer days, she had been for a while a professional model.

As Ribbentrop and Szalasi had both been present when she had again met Gregory the previous evening, they had no reason whatever to doubt her veracity, and both nodded confirmation as she went on to give Grauber an outline of what had happened. In the same rather bored manner, she continued with the rest of her story, ending with a positive assertion that, however much Tavenier might resemble the Englishman the Gestapo wanted to catch, he could not possibly be their man.

Having heard her out, Grauber gave her a queer little smile, and said in his high falsetto, 'It is the Gnadige Frau Baronin who is mistaken.' Then he turned to Ribbentrop, and added: 'Herr Reichsaussenminister, we have proof incontrovertible proof. Listen, please, to what M. le Capitaine Cochefert of the Deuxième Bureau has to say.'

From the moment the Frenchman had entered the hall, Gregory had realized that Grauber must have gone to the hospital where Cochefert v/as being treated and, on hearing his revelations have insisted that he should leave his bed to repeat them to Ribbentrop. While arguing with Sabine in her car he had failed to take into account that his two enemies might get together again so quickly, and it was only in the past few minutes that it had struck him how disastrous their collaborations must prove. His instinctive feeling that Sabine's story was not entirely watertight was now to prove only too well-founded and, for both their sakes, he cursed his folly in having allowed her to persuade him into coming back with her.

Snuffling his words, and obviously speaking only with considerable pain, Cochefert gave particulars of Vichy's reply to his routine enquiry and recounted how, when cornered, Gregory had admitted that he was not Tavenier.

Sabine rose splendidly to the occasion. She shrugged and said with a slightly malicious smile, 'In view of the damage that Commandant Tavenier has done to M. le Capitain's face, I can understand his desire to be revenged; but I do not believe one word of his story. It is typical of what one hears of the low morality of the Vichy police, and their servile anxiety to curry favour at any price with the Germans.'

Ribbentrop grinned openly, and Gregory mentally took off his hat to her. But he knew that her broadside had been fired in vain. There was the stocky, wooden faced Puttony standing at attention in the background, and at any moment Grauber could bring him into play.

Cochefert began to splutter with rage, but choked on his own blood, and had to turn away, coughing agonizingly into a big silk handkerchief. Ignoring him, Grauber kept his single eye on Sabine, pursed up his small cruel mouth, and said:

'The Gnadige Frau Baronin's attack upon this officer is entirely unwarranted. Fortunately, we have a witness to his integrity. The Lieutenant of Police whom we have brought with us was present at the interview. He will confirm that your… er, friend confessed to being an impostor.'

'How much are you paying him to do that?' Sabine rapped back. 'Everyone knows that you Gestapo people will stick at nothing to get into your hands any person you suspect.'

'Whatever we do is done in the best interests of the Reich,' Grauber retorted sharply. 'But let me tell you something else. When this "suspect", as you call him, was arrested he secured a new lease of freedom by producing a Gestapo pass, and declaring himself to be Obersturmbannführer Einholtz. To my personal knowledge he murdered the Obersturmbannführer last December. And it is our word and the word of all three of us against yours, Gnadige Frau Baronin.'

It was useless for Gregory to reproach himself for not having foreseen that, should Grauber and Cochefert compare notes, Sabine's story would be blown wide open. He could only strain his ears and eyes to learn how she would face the fatal breach in her defences.

Ribbentrop's swift brain had already summed up the implications. Swinging round on her, he said, 'One can no longer doubt that the Herr Gruppenführer is right. The man who has been passing here as Tavenier is the Englishman Sallust; and that makes nonsense of your assertions that he is a Frenchman with whose aunt you stayed in Paris. There must be some explanation. I can only assume that you knew him to be Sallust all the time, and have been playing some deep game. If this was so, please tell us?'

Sabine took the cue, smiled at him and said, 'How clever of you, Joachim. Of course I knew; but I kept his secret with the idea of finding out what he was up to here. If these fools had not butted in, I was hoping that he might return here, and that before you left tomorrow I would be able to report to you a really valuable piece of counterespionage.'

Gregory heaved an inaudible sigh of relief, and the Minister, having his hopes that his mistress would be able to exonerate herself so swiftly confirmed, exclaimed to Grauber with a laugh, 'There you are, Herr Gruppenführer! And that, I think, puts an end to this annoying affair.'

But Grauber was not the man to be sent about his business so peremptorily. With no trace of sarcasm, but what sounded like genuine humility, he piped, 'I am abashed that I should have forced this disclosure from the Gnadige Frau Baronin. My zeal for the Fuhrer's service must be my excuse; and on that account I feel confident that she will not deny us the results of her endeavours?'

'On the contrary, you are welcome to them,' Sabine replied graciously. 'He came here to investigate the possibility of Hungary's being induced to make a separate peace with the Allies.'

'There!' Ribbentrop exclaimed again. 'That ties up with what you told me of your own mission.'

'Correct, Herr Reichsaussenminister.' Grauber gave a jerky little bow; then turned back to Sabine with a look of deferential interrogation.

She shook her head. 'I am afraid I have little to add. He had been here a fortnight and was convinced that he was wasting his time.'

'Did he make no mention at all of his contacts?'

'He said that he had talked with one or two Jews, and a number of people of some standing with whom he had scraped acquaintance; but he did not disclose the names of any of them to me.'

'Then he was holding out on you, Gnadige Frau Baronin. We have very good reason to believe that a group of magnates is conspiring against the regime. It would be too much of a coincidence if he were not in touch with them.'

'I may yet find out more if he does come back.' She glanced at Ribbentrop. 'It was with that object I invited him to stay here for a few nights.'

Gregory was feeling much easier now. It really looked as if Sabine's confidence in her ability to hold the fort whatever happened was about to be justified, and that Grauber must now retire with his tail between his legs. But almost casually he said:

'As the Gnadige Frau Baronin has tacitly admitted that her story of staying with this man's aunt in Paris was no more than a temporary cover device, perhaps she would be graciously pleased to tell us where she did first meet him?'

Sabine lit a cigarette, and replied truthfully. 'It was in the summer of 1936 at Deauyille. I was at that time in the employ of an international financier named Lord Gavin Fortescue. I did not realize it until later, but Lord Gavin was engaged in criminal activities. He had built up a formidable organization for smuggling not only great quantities of dutiable goods, but also agitators, into England. Mr. Sallust had been given the task of investigating these secret landings by a Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, and…'

'What!' Ribbentrop broke in. 'But he lived only a few doors from our Embassy in Carlton House Terrace. When I was Ambassador in London I knew him well by sight, and on several occasions I ran into him at official receptions. His was an unforgettable personality, and the stories about him were legion. He poses as a sort of damn fool retired Guards Officer, but he had made an immense fortune for himself in the City. His influence is enormous and it is even said that more than once his hand has been behind changes in the Cabinet.'

Grauber gave a quick nod. 'Correct, Herr Reichsaussenminister. According to our records this old Sir Cust has a finger in every pie, and is privy to every secret. It should be added that after Churchill he is Germany's most inveterate enemy. In the past quarter of a century he has a score of times thwarted endeavours to increase the power of the Fatherland.'

Raising her eyebrows, Sabine remarked, 'You both surprise me. He seemed to me an unusually straightforward and very charming old gentleman.'

'You know him, then?' Grauber asked with quick interest.

'Yes; I met him through Mr. Sallust, and he could not have been kinder to me.'

'In what way?' enquired Ribbentrop.

'Well, through going to England and carrying out Lord Gavin's instructions I had made myself liable to arrest by the British Police. Sir Pellinore knew that, although he did not say so at the time. But he told me that if I got into difficulties with the authorities about anything I was not to hesitate to let him know. He also said that whenever I wished to stay in London his house and servants would always be at my disposal.'

'Why should he have taken such a special interest in you?'

'Because he was an old friend of my father's. Both of them were fine horsemen and they used to jump against one another at the Olympia Horse Shows in King Edward VIIs time. Sir Pellinore had also stayed with my parents at our castle for the partridge shooting; but, of course, that was before I was born.'

'And did you escape arrest, or did Sir Pellinore use his lawyers to get you off on some technicality?'

'I escaped arrest, but that I owed to Mr. Sallust. At considerable risk to himself he got me out of the country, and probably saved me from a very unpleasant prison sentence.'

'So!' Grauber exclaimed. 'Then gratitude is the explanation for the Gnadige Frau Baronin's concealing Sallust in her house.'

Gregory caught his breath. For the past few minutes he had been lulled into a false belief that the worst was over. He saw Sabine stiffen, and she asked sharply:

'What do you mean by that?'

Grauber gestured towards the drink trolley. 'That you brought him back with you and have concealed him somewhere. Otherwise why should there be two dirty glasses on that tray?'

'Really, Herr Gruppenführer she gave an impatient shrug. 'You may be a very clever policeman, but this time you are on a false scent. There are two dirty glasses because I had one drink before I went up to bed and another when I came down again.'

Ribbentrop was now looking extremely worried and Gregory wondered if it was because he realized that Sabine was lying. He should have if he cast his mind back over the past twenty minutes, for Sabine had not joined him in a drink when they had come in together. But he made no comment.

Grauber only smiled and walked across to the far side of the staircase where for a few seconds he was hidden from Gregory's view. When he came into it again his back was turned and he was carrying something in front of him. Holding it out to Sabine, he said:

'And this, Gnadige Frau Baronin. How do you account for this?'

Having put the question he moved his arm sideways, so that Ribbentrop could get a better view of the thing he held. Gregory could now also see it. To his horror it was the small basin half full of pinkish water, and with the bloodstained piece of lint in it, that Sabine had used to bathe the cut on his head.

Still undefeated, Sabine stalled again with a half admission. 'I take back what I said just now, Herr Gruppenführer, about your being a poor detective. Mr. Sallust did not run away from me as I told you. He wanted to but I wouldn't let him. I still hoped to get more out of him if I could keep him with me. When we got in I did give him a drink, and I bathed his head. But I couldn't induce him to stay here. He was convinced that, when you learned that it was I who got him out of the police station, you would come here and demand to search the house. As soon as he had finished his drink he told me to give you his compliments and say that he would yet live to see you dangling from a hangman's rope. Then he didn't even stop to collect his things, but asked me to keep them for him till he came back after the war.'

It was so exactly what Gregory might have done that it sounded extremely plausible. But Grauber still had an ace up his sleeve. Shaking his bristly head, he said:

'Gnadige Frau Baronin, that will not do. We know that he is still here.' Then beckoning Puttony forward he said to him, 'Lieutenant, report the help you have given us to the Herr Reichsaussenminister.'

The stocky young Hungarian advanced a few quick paces, came stiffly to attention, then rattled off as though he were giving evidence before a magistrate, 'On completion of my tour of duty I returned to the Station. As I was about to go in I met the Gnadige Frau Baronin and the man who has been passing as Tavenier coming out. He was dishevelled and his clothes were torn. The Station Captain had seen them to the door. I asked him what had been going on. He told me that the man had had a fight in the Arizona with Captain Cochefert and a Gruppenführer of the Gestapo. I had been present when the man had admitted to Captain Cochefert that he was not Tavenier. He had then produced a Gestapo pass in the name of Obersturmbannführer Einholtz and said that he assumed the name of Tavenier only because he was in Budapest on an undercover mission. For him to have fought with a Gestapo Chief and Captain Cochefert made it clear to me that he could not after all be a Gestapo Colonel, and was probably an enemy agent. With enquiring further I ran from the Station and jumped on my motorcycle. I was in time to catch up the Gnadige Frau Baronin's car as it was about to cross the Swing Bridge. She did not cross it but turned off down the Corso and there pulled up. For some time the car remained stationary. While I was keeping it under observation a motorcyclist patrol passed and I called him to my assistance. When the car restarted we followed it here. I sent the patrol round to the lower road with orders to tail the man if he left by that side of the house. Not far from the courtyard entrance there is a telephone kiosk. While using it I was able to continue my watch on the archway. If I had waited to ask the Station Captain why he had just released a man who had attacked a Gruppenführer I should have lost the car; but the more I thought about his having done so the more it puzzled me. In the circumstances I decided not to ask help from him. Instead I telephoned Arrow Cross Headquarters. Fortunately Major Szalasi was there. He volunteered to come himself and arrived a few minutes later with a truckload of his young men. We posted them on both sides of the house and round the whole block. I then telephoned the Station and learned that Captain Cochefert had been taken to hospital. In order to find out exactly what had occurred I went there. With him I found Herr Gruppenführer Grauber, to whom he presented me. I returned here with them. With grim attention Gregory had followed each incisive sentence. He knew now why the outline of the officer they had almost run into on leaving the police station had seemed vaguely familiar, and that Puttony was far from being such a fool as he looked. But for his eagerness to ensure his superior's having made a blunder, Sabine might have got away with it; but now it seemed that her last line of defence was breached. She had put up a splendid show, but the combination of Grauber, Cochefert and Puttony had been too much for her, and there was no way in which Gregory could give her aid. With a sinking heart he watched the pack close in.

'Gut, sehr gut, Herr Leuinant,' Grauber nodded to Puttony. 'And now, Herr Major,' he turned with a gesture of invitation to Szalasi.

The Arrow Cross leader had not so far uttered a word. Now he looked a little uneasily at Ribbentrop, then said half apologetically, 'As far as I am concerned the Lieutenant's report is accurate. He asked me urgently for help to catch a spy. I collected my Headquarters Staff and rushed them here in a wagon. We surrounded the block and I can vouch for it that nobody answering the wanted man's description has left it since our arrival.'

With a smirk of triumph Grauber turned back to Sabine. 'You see, Gnadige Frau Baronin. There is no room for doubt. Sallust is somewhere here in your palace; and I mean to have him. Be good enough to spare us any unpleasantness by giving him up.'

Stubbornly she shook her head. 'You are wrong, Herr Gruppenführer. He left, just as I told you, after I had bathed his head. That Would have been about the time that your friend the Lieutenant was telephoning from the kiosk. By remaining in the shadow thrown by the houses on this side of the street it would not have been difficult to slip away unobserved.'

'Nein!' Grauber's shrill negative cut the tense atmosphere like a knife. 'I have been patient. You abuse your privileged position too far. I will be trifled with no longer. We have plenty of men outside. Give up this man, or I will order the house to be searched.'

Gregory took the little automatic from his pocket, so that there should be no delay in clicking a bullet up into its chamber. He knew that once a search started he could give up all hope of escape. But he did not mean to be caught alive. And he meant to take Grauber with him. This was not the first time that he had had the chance to kill him out of hand; but on those previous occasions, although he had known them to be absurd, scruples had restrained him from shooting down his enemy unawares. Now, he had no such feeling. The circumstances were different, and this was the last throw. If he had to die he could at least rid the world of a monster before he choked out his last breath. With not a ripple of doubt ruffling his conscience about the Tightness of the act, he decided that when the moment came he would put no less and no more than three bullets through Grauber's stomach.

He wondered then if he ought to shoot Ribbentrop as well. After all, Ribbentrop was Nazi No. 4 and, even if indirectly, had been responsible for an incalculable number of deaths and tidal waves of misery. Yet, unlike Grauber, there was nothing positively evil about him. He was rather a pleasant person; an exceptionally gifted playboy whom a strange fate had given the opportunity of jumping on to the biggest of all bandwagons. There was another thing. While he remained alive there was a chance that he might protect Sabine. As Gregory was himself impotent to do so, he decided that, after the gallant fight she had put up on his behalf, the least he could do was to leave her the one man who was powerful enough, and might have the inclination, to save her from the Gestapo.

While these thoughts had been rushing through Gregory's head, Ribbentrop had come to a decision. Turning on Grauber he said sharply, 'Herr Gruppenführer, you forget yourself! The initiation of any action to be taken here rests with me.'

'Herr Reichsaussenminister,' Grauber piped aggressively, 'with due respect I cannot agree. Foreign affairs are your province and Security mine. This is a security matter.'

'More hangs on it than this man's immediate arrest.'

'Much more!' The sneer in Grauber's voice said as plainly as though he had spoken the words. "The proof that this pretty mistress of yours has been harbouring a British spy." Swinging round he cried to Szalasi:

'Herr Major, please bring in your men. We will search this palace from attic to cellar; and if we fail to get our man I'll drink the swine's blood out of that basin before you all.'

'Herr Major!' Ribbentrop's voice held cold fury, but there was just a quaver of panic underlying it. 'We are grateful for the help you have rendered. But this is now a matter between the Herr Gruppenführer and myself. Be pleased to withdraw your men, and take the French Captain and the Lieutenant of Police with you. I need hardly add that, if you wish to retain my goodwill, you will regard this affair as of the highest secrecy.'

Fascinated, Gregory peered down at the two angry men who had squared up to one another in the hall below him the German Foreign Minister, well built, good-looking, suave, authoritative; the Gestapo chief, physically gorilla like, his face a mask of malice, cunning and habitual cruelty, incredibly forceful in his determination not to be baulked of his prey. Upon the outcome of this battle of wills Gregory knew that his life, and probably Sabine's as well, now depended. But, temporarily at least, both of them had put the onus of decision on Szalasi.

The bulky Arrow Cross leader looked desperately uncomfortable. Gregory had no doubt at all that his sympathies were with Grauber, who was obviously carrying out his duty; but Ribbentrop's prestige outweighed that of any Nazi other than Hitler, Goering and Himmler. After a moment's hesitation the Major said:

'Herr Reichsaussenminister. No one can dispute your ability to judge what is right in such a matter. You may rely on my discretion.'

With a quick bow, and another to Sabine, he made a sign to Puttony, who gave a hand to the almost comatose Cochefert, and the three of them left the room.

Gregory was suddenly conscious that his forehead was damp with perspiration. Stuffing the automatic back into his pocket, he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe his face. As he raised his hand, his elbow brushed against the leather surcoat of the armoured figure immediately behind which he was standing. Unseen by him in the darkness, it gave off a small cloud of dust. A moment later he felt a slight tickling in his nostrils.

Ignoring it, he continued to stare down into the hall, still anxious not to miss a single word, but fairly confident that Sabine had now spiked Grauber's guns. She had proved right in her contention that Ribbentrop would not allow the house to be searched; but, at the same time, she had landed both him and herself in an appalling mess. There could be no laughing off the fact that she had aided and concealed, and was presumably still concealing, a British secret agent; and that Ribbentrop had deliberately used his authority to prevent that agent's arrest. He might be able to stop Szaiasi's mouth, but he could not stop Grauber's. What a story it would make; and perhaps, what a nail in his coffin if, next time he had done something to annoy Hitler, Himmler produced it with juicy trimmings as proof that the Foreign Minister was so under the thumb of his Hungarian mistress that he could no longer be trusted to act in the best interests of Germany and the Parti.

No sooner had the door of the vestibule closed upon Puttony than Grauber, made bold by the knowledge of the whip hand he held, put Gregory's thoughts into words. He no longer bothered even to refer to Sabine by her title. His chin thrust forward aggressively, he sneered:

'I had thought you cleverer, Herr Reichsaussenminister, than to suppose that by getting rid of the others you can get the better of me. The man Sallust is my personal enemy, and I mean to have him. This woman of yours has lied and cheated. She is a traitress and…'

'That is enough!' Ribbentrop exclaimed, going pale with anger.

'It is the truth!' Grauber retorted. 'First she led you to believe that Sallust was a Frenchman; yet all the time she knew he was English and, knowing that, she got him out of prison. Then she lied about having brought him back here, but we forced her to confess that she did. Lastly, she still swears that she has not hidden him in this house; yet we have proof that he cannot have left it. For less I have cut off women's breasts and chopped them up and made them swallow the pieces.'

'Stop!' shouted Ribbentrop. 'Stop. I forbid you to speak here of your vile practices.'

'Why should I not?' Grauber shrilled back. 'They are for the furtherance of the cause we both serve. But it seems you have forgotten that cause; so I must remind you of it.'

T have forgotten nothing! I am as good a patriot and Party man as you!'

'That we must leave to be judged by my chief, Herr Himmler, when I report to him the way in which you have thwarted me.'

For the past few moments Gregory had been keeping his teeth tight clenched and a finger pressed hard on the bridge of his nose. The dust like particles into which the soft leather of the ancient surcoat was slowly decaying were now causing acute irritation to his mucous membrane. He feared that at any moment he might give a violent sneeze. If he did he was bound to be discovered; yet he could not bear the thought of missing the denouncement of this explosive altercation.

Ribbentrop suddenly seemed to get his temper under control, and said in a more pacific tone, 'Herr Gruppenführer, I sympathize with your feelings. But there are more ways than one in which we can serve our Führer. For his servants to quarrel among themselves is certainly not one; and subtlety often pays bigger dividends than force. I refrained from asking you to leave with the others because I have a proposal to…"

Gregory heard no more. To have lingered another minute would have been fatal. Now, with his nostrils clamped between finger and thumb, he ducked down below the level of the balustrade and swiftly fumbled his way out round the edge of the curtain. During the whole time he had remained hidden there no one had glanced up in his direction. Now he could only pray that the curtain's movement would not catch Grauber's eye and lead after all to a showdown in which he would have lost the advantage.

Hastening along on tiptoe, he managed to reach the far end of the corridor, then the explosive pressure in his head became too much. The awful sneeze, partly muffled by his grip on his nose, snorted and burbled; he choked and then began to cough. Dreading now that he must be heard, he grasped the handle of the nearest door, turned it and thrust the door open a few inches. The room was in darkness. Slipping inside he closed the door behind him and paid his debt to frustrated nature in an awful bout of gasping, sneezing, weeping, coughing, while the water streamed from his eyes.

It was a good five minutes before he had recovered sufficiently to feel safe in returning to his post of observation, then he had to pad softly back down the corridor and exercise great caution to shake the curtains as little as possible while squirming under it; so he reckoned that he had probably lost about seven minutes of the drama being enacted down in the hall.

As he approached, lower voices had already told him that the crisis was over, but it was not until he could again raise his head and peer out from behind the armour that he realized that Grauber had gone. Ribbentrop and Sabine were now sitting side by side on one of the sofas, and he was saying to her earnestly:

'You are a clever woman, Sabine. I have no fears that you will make a mess of things. By doing as I wish you can save yourself and render me a great service.'

'I know,' she replied. 'I do see that it is the only way in which I can save your face. But you can't expect me to like the idea of leaving everything.'

'Of course not. Neither do I like the thought of losing you. We can only hope that it will not be for very long.'

'I suppose it is the only thing to do?'

'The only thing. I shall have difficulty enough as it is to put over this explanation in the teeth of the report that Grauber will make to Himmler. As you had an affaire with this man Sallust in the past, whatever your true motive in failing to tell us at once that you recognized him, the fact that you did not will make everyone believe you guilty of aiding an English spy. For that you would normally get the death penalty. You know the Führer’s rages, and how he refuses to make the least allowance for other people's personal feelings. If I tried to protect you, he would break me; perhaps even accuse me of betraying our interests to the British myself. The utmost I dare do openly I have done already. The rest is up to you, if you wish to save your neck and ever see Budapest again. Can I rely on your promise to fall in with my proposal?'

She nodded. 'All right. I expect I'll manage to take care of myself, and it will certainly be exciting; but you must brief me very carefully before we start.'

T will get everything for you in the morning special passes from Horthy to prevent the Security Police from holding you up on your dash for the frontier, foreign currency and a permit to take your car out with you. About everything else I can advise you when we get to bed.'

'You mean to stay here the night, then?'

Smiling, he stood up, took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "Why not? This may be the last chance we will get till the war is over.'

Without another word they came up the stairs and passed behind Gregory on their way to her room. When she reached it she pressed a switch which plunged the hall in darkness. For some while Gregory remained where he was, trying to extract all the meaning he could from their conversation.

The gist of it seemed to be that, as Ribbentrop was not powerful enough to protect Sabine, he was sending her abroad for the duration. By 'briefing' her, presumably she had meant advising her what line to take with her friends and servants before leaving the country. Her reluctance to do so was quite understandable; but apart from the fact that her life might depend on it nothing else could save Ribbentrop from being involved in a first-class political scandal. The only rather puzzling thing was that he had spoken of two special passes, and that she had used the plural when speaking of starting. It seemed to Gregory unlikely that Ribbentrop would be willing to connive at his escape, and almost as unlikely that, if Sabine were to leave Hungary for good, she would take her chauffeur with her; yet for whom, other than one of them, could the second pass be?

When at last he crept back to his room he was wondering again if his best chance did not lie in leaving the house, lying low with Levianski for several days, if the furrier would have him, then making a bid to reach the frontier.

On the other hand, it just might be that Sabine had, by some means, persuaded Ribbentrop to let her take him with her. Holding more promise, there was also her original plan for him to take her chauffeur's place. If that was still possible and the second pass was intended for the chauffeur, it was he who would reap the benefit of it.

One thing was certain: in an uneven battle Sabine had shown both courage and great skill. She had not lost her head for a single moment, and it was through no fault of hers that she had twice been caught out. She had not known that Cochefert had already blown Gregory's identity as Tavenier, or that her car had been followed by Puttony. Against ill luck and heavy odds she had stuck to her guns and, in the end, managed to come to some arrangement with Ribbentrop.

In the circumstances Gregory felt that he had no right to suppose that she might have left him out of her latest calculations; and he had promised her that he would not leave the house. That promise could hardly be considered as still binding after all that had happened during the past hour, and Sabine could not be in any way dependent on his help for getting across the frontier but, all the same, he decided to keep it.

The moon was still up and he undressed by its light, then slipped into bed. But he would rather have spent the night prowling the streets than between those soft sheets, for he knew that his life would not be safe until he was out of Budapest, and the strain of lying inactive was hard to bear.

It was not until morning that he dropped into a doze, and he was only fully woken by Pipi's tiptoeing in with his breakfast tray. On it there was a note from Sabine, which Pipi said had been passed on to him by Magda. The single line, scrawled on a flyleaf torn from a book, read:

Make no noise. Stay where you are until I come to you. S.

To abide by her order he denied himself a bath, shaved and dressed with hardly a sound, then sat down in an armchair to wait for her. At a little after half past nine, still in a negligee, she came in to him.

'It's all right now,' she said with a smile. 'Ribb spent the night here. That's why I couldn't come up to you; and Mary be praised, you didn't come down to me. I was terrified you would. He has just gone, and I've fixed everything; but it was touch and go last night.'

'I know,' he smiled back. I saw the whole party. I had hidden myself between the curtains and one of the suits of armour in the gallery. You certainly…'

'What!' She halted in her tracks, and her eyes grew round as saucers. 'D'you… d'you mean that you heard everything we said.'

'Not quite. Some dust got up my nose, and I had to creep away for about six or seven minutes to have a sneezing fit.'

'When…what was happening when you did that?'

'The smaller fry had gone. Ribb had been having one hell of a row with Grauber, but was just about to put some proposition to him.'

'You didn't hear then…what it was?'

'No, what was it?'

'Oh, simply an attempt to bribe him. But all those top Gestapo men have already made fortunes by threats and blackmail; so it didn't come off. What were we doing when you got back from your sneezing fit?'

'You and Ribb were alone. He was persuading you to leave the country for his sake and your own. That is damned hard on you. I'm more sorry than I can say to have been the cause of letting you in for this.'

She gave a heavy sigh. 'It is my own fault for having persuaded you to come back here with me.'

'Anyhow, you put up a marvellous fight. It was the most accursed luck that that fellow Puttony should have run into us just as we were leaving the police station. What else happened while I was not there to listen?'

'Oh nothing… nothing much. Ribb and Grauber went on wrangling. You must have heard everything that mattered; so there is no point in my repeating it all to you.'

'No. The thing I am anxious to hear is what do you propose I should do now?'

Taking a cigarette from the box beside his bed, she went over to him for a light, and said, 'I swore to Ribb that you really did leave the house soon after we got here, and said that you must have slipped past the Lieutenant while he was telephoning to Szalasi. Ribb believes that. At least I think he does. He wouldn't want you to be captured anyway, because, if you were, my name would be dragged into it and involve him in the scandal he is so anxious to avoid. Anyway he is going to give a cooked up version of the affair to the Regent, get him to issue an order to the Hungarian Security Police not to pursue the matter for the moment, and will get from him special passes ordering them not to prevent myself and my chauffeur leaving the country. But he told me that I can count only on temporary protection; so I must get out while the going is good. That means leaving tonight; and you, of course, will be my chauffeur.'

Gregory nodded. 'That looks like an easy get out for me, then.'

She shook her head. 'I'm afraid it may not prove as easy as it sounds. Grauber proved irreconcilable. He will be telephoning to Himmler to exert pressure on the Regent. That is why we must get across the frontier before a new order goes out for our arrest. In the meantime Grauber can raise quite a big bunch of Gestapo men from the Villa Petoefer, and he has a lot of pull with the Arrow Cross people. The last thing he said before he left was that he was convinced that you were still here, and that, dead or alive, he meant to get you; so he may try to intercept us.'

Anxious Hours

Chapter 15

Nothing could have given Gregory greater cause for alarm than the news that Grauber intended to take the law into his own hands. Swiftly he urged that they should start for the frontier at the earliest possible moment, so as to give the enemy the minimum of time in which to take measures that might prevent their leaving the city.

Sabine agreed in theory but was not very helpful in practice. She said that she could not leave without seeing her banker, her solicitor and her jeweller; moreover, as she was not returning to Berlin where she kept a separate wardrobe, but meant to pretend in front of the servants that she was, she must herself pack such clothes as she could take with her.

Gregory deplored the delay but was forced to submit to it; for Sabine pointed out that it would be madness to leave without the papers promised by Ribbentrop, and in order to collect them she had to lunch with him. That meant they would be unable, anyway, to start before mid afternoon; so after some, discussion they decided to put off their departure until early evening, as they would then gain the benefit of twilight, and there would be less likelihood of Grauber's people spotting that the driver of Sabine's car was Gregory dressed up in her chauffeur's uniform.

Again Gregory told her how distressed he was about bringing such trouble upon her and having disrupted her whole life, but she seemed to take the matter with commendable philosophy. Smiling a little wryly, she said that it could not be helped and that, if only they could keep clear of Grauber, she felt sure she would find compensations abroad for all she was being forced to give up. Then she promised to send Gregory something to read, and left him.

Pipi arrived ten minutes later with half a dozen English novels published in the '30s and a German paper printed in Vienna. While he made the bed and tidied the room, Gregory glanced through the paper.

During the past few days a great naval and air battle had been raging in the Solomons between the Americans and the Japanese, and it was now admitted that the Americans had had the best of it.

There were further details about the death of the Duke of Kent, which had occurred on the previous Tuesday. His Royal Highness had been flying in a Sunderland to Iceland on R.A.F. duty when the aircraft had crashed with the loss of all but one of the fifteen men aboard her. Gregory had met the Duke on one occasion and found him charming; so he was able to form an idea of how greatly his loss would be felt by the Royal family.

Colossal battles involving millions of men were still raging in Russia. The Germans admitted withdrawals on the central front, and from the place names mentioned it was clear that General Zhukov's recent counteroffensive had forced them back to positions 320 miles west of Moscow. But Von Bock's offensive across the Don was still making progress, the Germans claimed that their shock troops had broken through the outer defences of Stalingrad, and the threat to the city was now extremely grave.

As Gregory knew only too well, it was Stalingrad that mattered. No successes elsewhere could possibly compensate for its loss. Without it Russia's war economy must collapse, and that could lead to the loss of the war by the Allies or, at' best, a slogging match with no foreseeable end until half the cities in the world were destroyed and the whole of its population starving.

But he wondered now whether, even if he could get back to England safely and quickly, there would still be the time and the means to put his successful negotiations in Budapest to practical use. He had no doubt whatever about the soundness of his plan. If only the Hungarians could be induced to repudiate the Nazis and withdraw their army from the Russian front the Germans, in order to fill the gap, would within a week be compelled to raise the siege of Stalingrad.. First, though, the Hungarians quite reasonably required their guarantees. To secure them meant selling the plan, with all its post-war commitments, to both the Foreign Office and the State Department, then the British and American Chiefs of Staff Committees would have to be consulted on its military implications and, finally, the consent obtained of the War Cabinet and the President. It would mean every person involved in the High Direction of the War on both sides of the

Atlantic being given a chance to have his say at one or more of innumerable committee meetings and the exchange of hundreds of 'Most Secret' cypher telegrams between Washington and London. With the best will in the world on the part of all concerned, a decision could not possibly be hoped for in less than a month.

And that was not the end of it. Given agreement, the operation against Hitler held Europe, demanded by the Hungarians, would still have to be mounted. Even if tentative preparations were begun while the discussions were in progress, could an invasion be launched before the autumn gales rendered the risk entailed too great? Again, had we the forces available and, it we had, after Dieppe, would the Chiefs of Staff be prepared to gamble them in another cross Channel assault?

There could now be no doubt that the Dieppe raid had proved a very costly failure. Apart from the destruction of a few coast defence installations, we had achieved nothing, whereas the enemy had sunk one of our destroyers, accounted for a number of our latest tanks and, worst of all, taken several thousands of our finest Canadian troops prisoner. Even so, those losses might yet pay a handsome long-term dividend by compelling Hitler to keep many divisions, which he would otherwise have sent to Russia, inactive along the European coast. For all Gregory knew, that had been the intention of the operation, and if the initial landings had succeeded, full-scale invasion would have followed. If so, the Chiefs of Staff had already shot their bolt as far as helping Russia was concerned; and, anyway, having alerted the Germans to the dangers of leaving their coast thinly defended was going to make any second attempt to land in force all the more difficult.

Gloomily Gregory decided that the Dieppe raid had probably queered his pitch. Even if Sir Pellinore could get the Hungarian plan adopted it looked as if the odds were all against the required fifteen divisions of Anglo-American troops being launched against the Continent before winter set in, and it now seemed very doubtful whether Stalingrad would be able to hold out until winter. However, he knew that speculating on such matters would get them no further. His job was to reach home as soon as he possibly could in order to submit his report to the people who took the big decisions.

When Pipi left the room, Gregory flung the paper aside and began to think of his own affairs. He and Sabine had got one another into a pretty mess. But for her he would never have gone to the Arizona, and but for that it was very unlikely that he would have come face to face with Grauber. But for him she would never have acted against the interests of the Gestapo, and but for that she would not have been condemned to go into exile.

By bringing them together again Fate had played the very devil with his plans, and had stymied him each time he had tried to wriggle free. That was no fault of hers; it was his for having refrained from following his own judgment and acting with his usual ruthlessness.

He realized now that admiration for the fight she had put up the previous night had led him to act like a sentimental fool. He should not have waited to hear the outcome of Grauber's quarrel with Ribbentrop, or to say goodbye to her, but should have got out while the going was good. He was armed and had plenty of money on him. He should never have listened to her in the first place, after she had got him out of the police station, but gone off on his own. Under cover of darkness he could have got clear of the city at any hour of the night, and by now would have bribed some lorry driver to give him a lift on the way to the frontier.

Getting up, he crossed to the window, and from behind a' partly drawn curtain, peered out. As he had half expected, a knife grinder whom he had seen down below in the street when he had looked out earlier was still there. The man was not now even pretending to sharpen knives against his treadle wheel, or to secure custom from the palaces opposite, but was just leaning against his barrow smoking a cigarette. Obviously he was a Gestapo agent who had been set to keep watch on that side of the Tuzulto Palace.

Returning to his armchair, Gregory began to wonder just how much pull Grauber had in Budapest, and decided that it was probably considerable. The order to the police that Ribbentrop meant to obtain from Admiral Horthy, that they should not interfere with Sabine, would not apply to him and at best it would make them no more than neutral while he was in her company. As long as he remained with her in her palace he would probably be safe; but she had to leave during the coming night at latest, and once out of it he must expect that Grauber would ignore the law and go to any lengths to get him. To attempt a break out on his own now, in daylight would obviously be suicidal; so it seemed that there was no alternative but to wait and go with Sabine. There was just a chance that her plan might succeed, but he was far from happy about it.

He looked through the books Pipi had brought him with the idea of starting one to take his mind off his anxieties. On the jacket of one there was a picture of a slim dark girl pointing a small automatic at a man in a dinner jacket. The girl had a faint resemblance to Sabine and Gregory's thoughts promptly turned from the picture to the lovely passionate girl who had jumped into his bed the night before.

With a smile he recalled the intensity of her fury when Ribbentrop's arrival had interrupted their lovemaking; although he knew that his own fury would have equalled hers had not the necessity for keeping his mind clear to cope with what might prove a new danger forced him to purge it of emotion. Until he actually had her in his arms he had forgotten the feel of the exceptionally satin like quality of that lovely magnolia skin of hers; and that, although her arms and legs were strong, her torso had a yielding softness which gave the impression that except for her spine she had no bones between her shoulders and her lower limbs. All day they had been steadily stoking one another's fires of desire, and the moment her arms closed round his neck the check administered by his ill-fated meeting with Grauber at the Arizona had been wiped from his mind as though it had never occurred. The scent of her had gone like wine to his head and the dew of her mouth was like honey to his lips.

'What a night we would have had! Perhaps better even than our first,' he thought to himself with a sigh, 'if it hadn't been for Ribbentrop.'

He started three books but after a chapter or two of each found that their stories could not hold him. His mind was too occupied with anxiety about the coming bid to get out of Budapest. It was utterly infuriating to think that less than twenty-four hours earlier he could have left without the least trouble, whereas now, if things went wrong, less than another twenty-four hours would see him shanghaied over the frontier to Austria and being taken to pieces in a Gestapo torture chamber. The thought of the lovely young girl who had given him his passport at the S.O.E. Headquarters in London flickered through his mind. Diana; yes, that had been her name, and he had promised himself that he would bring her back the biggest tin of foie gras he could find. No hope of that now.

Somehow he got through the morning and at half past one Pipi brought him up lunch on a tray. He ate it slowly to kill time and, when Pipi had taken the tray away, lay down on the bed hoping that, as he expected to be up all night, he would be able to get a sleep. But sleep would not come. Thoughts of Grauber still plagued him.

It was certain that the Gruppenführer would be spending the day pulling every gun he had with the Hungarians. No doubt he would do his damnedest to get the Police to cooperate with him and, in spite of the Regent's order, hold up Sabine's car when she left in it. They would be loath to offend him, but might search the car on the pretext that they believed her to be helping a wanted criminal to escape by carrying him off in its boot. If they did hold the car up it was a certainty that his thin disguise as Sabine's chauffeur would never get past Grauber.

Even if the police refused their help there was still the Arrow Cross. As they were Nazis and mostly of German or Austrian blood, their first loyalty was not to Admiral Horthy but to Hitler. Major Szalasi had funked offending Ribbentrop on the previous night but it had been plain where his real sympathies lay. He could keep a clean bill himself by not appearing personally in the business and afterwards denying that he had had any hand in it, yet give Grauber the loan of several troops of his young Jew baiters to block the streets.

Last, but by no means least, there were Grauber's own thugs at the Villa Petoefer. They would stick at nothing, and even if one of them committed murder Grauber would only have to call on Berlin for enough pressure to be exerted to have the matter hushed up.

That he stood little risk of being murdered outright was Gregory's one small rag of comfort. If he was once recognized as Sabine's chauffeur, it would be the easiest thing in the world to shoot him from the pavement; but Grauber wanted him alive. There could be no doubt about that, and it would be a poor lookout for the Gestapo man who killed him, or even did him a serious injury, before he was under lock and key.

A little after four o'clock he was at last relieved from further harrowing daydreams by Sabine's coming in to him. As he sat up with a jerk she made straight for the armchair, gave a sigh of tiredness from her exertions, threw herself into it and kicked off her shoes.

Slipping off the bed, he lit a cigarette for her and after a few puffs she reported that so far all had gone well. Ribbentrop had secured all the necessary papers for her and had explained to the Regent that she had fallen foul of the Gestapo, who might endeavour to have her and her chauffeur arrested on their way out of the country. Horthy had promised to give an order personally to his Chief of Police that she was not to be molested, and one of his secretaries had telephoned instructions to Zagreb that she, her man and her car were to be allowed across the frontier without being subjected to any formalities. But Ribbentrop had again warned her that she must not delay her departure beyond the coming night, as it was certain that Grauber would already have appealed to Berlin for help. By the morning at latest Himmler would be making, a personal issue of it with the Regent that Tavenier must be caught and herself hauled in for questioning by the Gestapo.

She had given her solicitor a power of attorney to deal with her affairs and meet her liabilities during her absence, had taken out from her bank in cash all the money that she had immediately available which amounted to about six hundred pounds and had collected, to take with her, the most valuable, of the Tuzolto family jewels.

'By Jove!' Gregory smiled down at her. 'You have had a day! No wonder you're tired. Was anything said about, er your old friend Commandant Tavenier?'

She nodded. 'Ribb is no fool. I'm sure he believes that you are still here; and he probably guesses that I mean to take you out as my chauffeur. Anyhow, he is extremely anxious that you should not be caught, from fear of what the Gestapo boys might screw out of you. It is a hundred to one they would force you to say that I was an enemy agent and make it appear that he had been guilty of confiding secrets to me that only the inner ring of Nazis are supposed to know. He has told Admiral Horthy that you are one of his private operatives and he has special reasons for not wishing the Gestapo to know that; so the Police are being briefed to ignore any request that Grauber may make for help to catch you.'

'Well, that's some comfort. I suppose the next thing is to fix things up with your chauffeur? I only hope to God he doesn't refuse to play.'

'I've already done that.' She gave a tired shrug. 'I had a talk with Mario first thing this morning. I had to in order to get his passport so that it could be specially visa'd.'

'Of course. I realize that. But do you mean that he has agreed to let me have it, and to hand over his uniform?'

'Yes. I felt sure he would. He was one of Kelemen's most trusted servants, and since his master's death he has transferred his allegiance to me. When I told him that helping you meant a great deal to me he agreed at once; and when he knew that it was the Germans we were planning to do in the eye he was absolutely delighted. I had great difficulty in persuading the old boy even to accept a present.'

'The old boy!' Gregory echoed in alarm. 'I'm not exactly in the junior subaltern class myself, but if you really think of him as old, I may have difficulty in passing for him, even in the distance.'

'He is older than you; but not all that much. It's only his hair's having gone grey early that makes me think of him as of Kelemen's generation. You needn't worry about that though. I mean to lightly powder your hair where it will show beneath the cap.' Picking up her bag, she took a packet of papers from it, picked one out, handed it to Gregory, and added 'Look, here is his passport. You had better keep it.'

Opening it quickly Gregory looked at the photograph. To his relief he saw that Sabine had been right. Mario had at least a superficial resemblance to himself. On close examination they could not possibly have been mistaken for one another, but that did not matter as Sabine had a special authorization for passing the frontier with her chauffeur and they would not have to answer any awkward questions. The important thing was that both he and Mario were of the long faced type, with straight noses and good chins; so, with the chauffeur's cap pulled well down, and seated behind the wheel of a car, Gregory felt that after dark there would be a good chance of the watchers outside taking him for the Italian.

Having expressed his satisfaction, he said, 'Now, tell me, when you left the house did you see any suspicious types lurking about the courtyard entrance?'

'Yes. When I first went out, at about half past ten, there was a man with a barrow of tomatoes; and hawkers don't come into these streets as a rule. When I got back, about midday, he had gone but a pavement artist had taken up his position opposite, and I've never known one choose that pitch before. I've been out and back twice since, and he is still there. There seemed to be one or two loungers farther down the street, too, who didn't quite fit into the usual scene.'

'I expected as much. This side of the palace is being watched as well; a knife grinder first thing this morning and later a crippled beggar who is selling matches. When you went out I take it you used your car. Did you drive yourself or have Mario drive you?'

'Mario drove me all three times. I wanted to keep my mind free to think about things, and not have to be bothered with parking.'

'Did anyone attempt to stop you?'

'Oh no, there was nothing of that sort.'

Gregory gave a sigh of relief. 'Thank God for that. It means they are far less likely to now they are used to seeing the car come out with you in it driven by Mario. You've made me much more confident about my chances of passing as him when twilight has fallen.'

'He is going over the car now filling her up and seeing that she is in apple-pie order for a long run.'

'Good! My sweet, you think of everything. You've done a wonderful job.'

She smiled a little wanly and stood up. 'I've got to get you out somehow, and myself; otherwise, as soon as Grauber gets some extra backing from Berlin, it is going to be very unhealthy round here for both of us.'

'You're dead right about that.' He put an arm about her. 'But after your long day, you're all in, darling. Lie down and rest for a bit on the bed.'

Turning her head she gave him a quick kiss, but pulled away before he could return it. 'No. I still have to pack. And when I do next lie on your bed it is going to be for twenty-four hours without a break.'

Catching her arm he jerked her back, held her tightly to him for a moment and gave her a long fierce kiss. As he released her he laughed, 'So you shall, my pet; and that is an earnest of what I'll do to you. If you want a real rest we'd better shut ourselves up for a week as the Spanish peasants do on their honeymoons. I'm told they spend the last twenty-four hours sleeping.'

'Darling!' she gasped, when she could get her breath. 'I'm a fool to admit it, because as soon as we've left Hungary you'll be all I've got; but I'm crazy about you.'

Her words sobered him a little, but he did not show it. Giving her a swift pat on her small behind, he said, 'Get your packing done as quickly as you can, then come back to me. We must have a meal before we start, so let's have it together up here, and while we are eating we can fix up final details.'

She agreed and left him. He then made another attempt to settle down to one of the books. This time, by using considerable concentration, he managed to keep his mind on a novel by Gilbert Frankau called Three Englishmen. After he had been reading for about an hour and a half, Pipi came in carrying a chauffeur's topcoat and a suitcase containing the rest of Mario's uniform. Unpacking the case, he suggested that Gregory should see how the uniform fitted, then pack in the case such of the Baron's things as he wished to take with him.

The uniform proved a little tight across the shoulders and slack round the hips, but as he and Mario were much of a height it was otherwise not a bad fit. There was a tin of talcum powder in the bathroom, so he used some of it to make grey the hair above his ears. Then he went through the wardrobe and chest of drawers again, selected the most useful of the Baron's clothes and packed them into the suitcase.

He had only just finished when Pipi returned with cocktails, and ten minutes later Sabine, having changed her summer frock for a suit of light travelling tweeds, joined him. Now that she could relax, and her mind was no longer occupied with matters it was essential that she should see to, her spirits had fallen to a low ebb. She did not actually reproach Gregory for being the cause of a complete upheaval in her life, but it was clear that she was greatly worried and distressed at having to abandon a position which gave her security, interest and carefree pleasure for a very uncertain future. In the circumstances he could not do less than promise to take care of her, while thrusting into the back of his mind the infernally difficult problem of how he could manage to do so.

After a couple of Martinis she cheered up a little; then Pipi brought in their early dinner on a wheeled tray. She apologized for the meal being cold but said that the kitchen staff were still in ignorance of his presence in the house and had been told that she was dining out; so Magda and Pipi had had to scrounge food for them from the larder. Gregory refrained from remarking that, even so, it was a feast compared with anything that could have been got in a London hotel after three years of war, and did ample justice to the smoked ham, cold duck and foie gras. A bottle of champagne followed by a good ration of very old Baratsch put good heart into them, and they were both feeling fairly optimistic when, soon after eight o'clock, they went downstairs to set out on their hazardous journey.

To assist the illusion that she was being driven out to dinner Sabine did not wear a hat, and had had her sable coat laid on the floor in the back of the car. Instead of it she put on over her tweeds an exotic cape of white ostrich feathers. For the same reason such luggage as they were taking had all been stowed in the boot, with the exception of a pigskin beauty box containing her jewels, which she was carrying herself and could be hidden under the rug she would have over her knees.

The garage was a part of the old stables occupying the whole of the left side of the courtyard, but it could be reached from the main block of the house by an interior passage. Pipi and Magda escorted them to it and Mario was already there giving a last loving polish to the bonnet of the Mercedes. Gregory had driven many cars so he had no doubts about his ability to handle it; but after thanking Mario for his help with the pass, port and uniform he got the Italian to give him a thorough run over its dashboard and the engine. Pipi meanwhile went out to reconnoitre the street and returned to say that it was as quiet as usual at that hour. Gregory ran the engine for a few minutes to get it thoroughly warmed up, Sabine got into the back, the goodbyes were said and 'good luck' called in low voices by the faithful servants. At Gregory's signal Mario pulled up the roller shutter at the exit end of the bay. With a gentle purr the car moved forward, turned and headed for the entrance to the courtyard.

It was a fine warm night. In the distance someone was playing a tizmberlum and the ping a ping ping of its notes came clearly over the air. That and the voice of a woman calling a dog were the only sounds that disturbed the respectable evening hush of this rich residential quarter.

A light over the archway to the street showed that the pavement artist who had occupied a pitch opposite to it all day was now gone. As Gregory cleared the arch, out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a man on the nearside of the road tinkering with a motorcycle. In Hungary, as in England, the unusual custom is followed of driving on the left of the road; so Sabine's car had its steering wheel on the right. Gregory was therefore on the side nearest to the motorcyclist, and it was that window of the car which was lowered.

He was about to turn left, down the hill, but before he had time to look in that direction the man had grasped the handlebars of his machine and begun to waggle them. For a moment the beam of the headlight flickered wildly along the side of the Mercedes, then the man got it focused and Gregory's profile was caught in a blinding glare. Next second a tall blond man sprang out of the nearby telephone kiosk. Thrusting a whistle into his mouth, he blew a piercing blast.

The Kidnappers

Chapter 16

'The balloon was up. Nothing could have shown more certainly that Gregory had been recognized. Tensing his muscles he swung the car round the corner. To his relief the way ahead was clear. He put his foot down on the accelerator. Cornering had carried his head out of the beam of light, but it now shone on the back of the car and its reflection in the windscreen momentarily dazzled him. Swinging round in her seat behind him Sabine swiftly pulled down the blind of the back window.

The dazzle ceased, but Gregory gave a mental groan. A hundred yards down the hill a big lorry was emerging from a side turning. He would have bet his last shilling that it had been lying in wait in the side street, and the whistle had been a signal to bring it on the scene. If he were right and its function was to block the road, at his present speed a head-on crash was inevitable. Taking his foot off the accelerator he put on the brake and for a few seconds kept his apprehensive gaze glued to the lorry. It turned neither to right nor left. Running straight across the road it brought up with a jerk, its fore wheels coming to rest against the curb of the opposite pavement. The road was too narrow for him to pass behind the lorry, and he could not turn into the street from which it had come by mounting the pavement because a lamppost barred the way.

There was only one thing for it. He must try the opposite direction. With a screech of tyres, he brought the car to a halt, threw the gear lever into reverse and began to back in a wild zigzag up the hill. Owing to the narrowness of the street he could turn the car only by backing into the entrance of the courtyard from which he had just emerged. He had nearly made it when the man who had sprung out of the telephone kiosk came rushing at the car. Springing on to its footboard, he seized Gregory by the arm. Gregory tore his arm away. But the violent jerk upon it had wrenched the wheel round too far. There came a crash, a jolt and the car stopped dead. It had just missed clearing the nearest pillar of the archway. To back it further was now impossible, and it had not been backed far enough to make the three-quarter turn needed to drive it up the hill.

Gregory made a desperate grab at the gear lever, to pull it out of reverse so that he could run forward again. But the tall blond man was still on the footboard and again grasped his arm. As they strove together Gregory recognized him as one of the young Gestapo men who had come to collect Grauber from the police station on the previous night. It was he, Gregory realized now, who must have been the eyes of the ambush and in the glare of the motorcycle headlight spotted that Mario had been replaced by the British Agent that the Herr Gruppenführer was after.

Drawing back his left fist Gregory smashed it into the Nazi's face. The man gave a yell, let go the arm to which he was clinging and slipped off the running board. For a moment Gregory again had both hands free. But it was too late now to put the car into gear and run her forward. Another car had pulled up only twenty feet away, sideways on, right in front of her bonnet.

As the Nazi staggered away, his hand held to his bleeding nose, the helmeted motorcyclist ran in, grasped the handle of the car door and dragged it open. As he did so, several more men tumbled out of the car in front. Gregory saw that, if he remained in the Mercedes, within a few moments he would be trapped there.

Sabine had already thrown open the back door on his side of the car and was scrambling out. Having got Gregory's door open, the motorcyclist flung himself at him to drag him from his seat. But he had already swung round in a move to spring out himself. Shooting out his right foot he caught the man a good kick in the stomach. Clutching at his middle he gave a gasp and doubled up. As his helmeted head came forward Gregory kicked again and this time got him in the face. Still winded he could get out only a choking moan, then he fell over sideways.

Thrusting himself from the car, Gregory jumped across the prostrate body. Sabine was now twenty feet inside the archway. As she ran she was shouting at the top of her voice, 'Help! Police! Help!'

Gregory turned to follow her, but his path was barred by the blond Nazi whose nose he had flattened. Blood was streaming from it and tears were running from his eyes. Yet in spite of the injury he had received, he was still a formidable antagonist. He stood a good six feet two and had the shoulders of a professional boxer. As Gregory took a stride towards him he suddenly pulled from the top of his trousers a long rubber truncheon.

Gregory's hand instinctively went to the side pocket in which he was carrying his small automatic. A split second later it flashed into his mind that he dare not use it. If he shot one of these people it would give Grauber just the excuse he needed to insist on the Hungarian police taking immediate action. As things were, if he could get back to the house, he should still be safe for a few hours at least; but if the Nazis could say that he had killed, or near killed, a man, within a quarter of an hour the police would be on their way to arrest him. And once back in prison, Grauber would see to it that he came out again only to be taken on a warrant of extradition to Germany. To go in unarmed against a young giant wielding a rubber truncheon was to ask for trouble, but Gregory had no alternative. Only by getting through the archway could he save himself, and the sound of running footsteps in his rear told him that at any moment the men who had arrived by car would be upon him from behind.

On a sudden impulse he resorted to a ruse which he hoped would give him a temporary advantage. In what almost amounted to one movement he grasped his chauffeur's cap by its peak and flung it from his head into the Nazi's face. Hurling himself forward he followed it up with a blow aimed to land on the Nazi's chin while the cap momentarily blocked out his view of what was coming. Only two paces separated them. The trick should have worked but Sabine, in her haste to get out of the car, had dragged the car rug with her. It had dropped to the ground as she ran towards the archway. Gregory's right foot now caught in a fold of it. He tripped. His impetus was too great for him to save himself. His blow landed short, on the Nazi's chest, and with his feet still tangled in the rug, he went down hard on his knees.

Under the impact the tall thug staggered back. The cap had hit its target but as it fell from his face he saw Gregory kneeling in front of him. With a yell of joy at this chance to take vengeance for his crushed nose he raised the rubber truncheon on high. With a swish it came down in a knockout swipe directed at the top of Gregory's head. He had just time to jerk his head aside and throw up his left arm. The truncheon struck it with a dull thud. For a moment he thought the bone had been smashed. The pain was agonising.

The Nazi was raising his truncheon for a second strike. In utter desperation Gregory flung his good arm round his opponent's legs and, head first, threw his weight against them. They seemed as firmly planted as stanchions, but suddenly they jerked in an attempt to break the grip, the heavy body above them rocked, toppled and came crashing to the ground.

Gregory staggered to his feet. His brief conflict with the blond giant had occupied no more than twenty seconds; yet that had been enough for the men from the car to close in. There were three of them. Before Gregory could kick his feet free from the car rug all three were striking or grabbing at him.

Sabine had halted in the middle of the courtyard. She was still shouting, 'Help! Police! Help!' On the opposite side of the street windows were being thrown up and heads appearing at them. People were calling to one another asking the cause of the commotion. Several passers-by had stopped and were forming the nucleus of a crowd out in the middle of the roadway. There were no police among them and Gregory felt certain that none would show up. Grauber's top man in Budapest would have fixed the local Police Chief or, if he was not amenable to pressure, each individual policeman would, as he went on duty, have been bribed or threatened sufficiently to keep him out of the Szinhay Utcza should he hear any trouble going on there.

But help was arriving from another quarter. Sabine's cries had brought her porter to the door of the lodge he occupied on the left-hand side of the archway. He was a big, bearded fellow, and emerged in his shirtsleeves with an S shaped pipe he had been smoking, while listening to the radio, still dangling from his mouth. Sabine shouted something to him in Hungarian. He dashed back into his lodge to reappear a moment later without his pipe but armed with a stout wooden club.

Meanwhile Gregory was waging a hopeless battle. The blow from the truncheon on his left forearm had rendered it almost useless. With his right fist he continued to strike out at the blurred white faces that ringed him in. The blond Nazi had picked himself up, so had the motorcyclist. It was now five to one. He managed to get his back against the body of the Mercedes, but he was struck, kicked, clawed and, within a few minutes, thrown to the ground.

It was at that moment that Sabine's porter entered the fray. Laying about him with his club, he fractured the arm of the motorcyclist and broke the head of one of the other men. But, with his rubber truncheon, the tall Nazi caught him a blow on the side of the head that sent him reeling into the gutter. The other two men hauled Gregory to his feet and dragged him towards their car.

The driver had reversed it so that it now pointed up hill. Jamming on the brakes he got out, opened the rear door so that Gregory could be pushed inside, then ran forward to lend a hand in hauling him towards it. The porter was up again and battling with the tall Nazi. The club and truncheon smacked together like two short singlesticks, first to one side then to the other. Both men were well above average in weight and strength. The Hungarian was a lot older but the young Nazi had already had a severe handling. The odds looked about even until the German suddenly stepped back, ran in and kicked his antagonist in the crutch. With a roar like that of a wounded bull, the porter fell to the ground, then lay there squirming.

Gregory was still fighting the men sent to kidnap him. Using his weight, he cast himself first in one direction, then, in another. With his elbows he gave sudden savage jabs. Arching his back he splayed his feet wide apart. Every inch of the way he strove to trip, wind, or overthrow one of the three who were lugging him towards the car. He knew that if they once got him into it that would be the beginning of the end of him. Yet, strive as he might, panting and cursing, foot by foot they pulled and pushed him out into the road.

Suddenly he was hit a terrific blow in the small of the back. His feet lost their grip on the cobbles and he was pitched violently forward, dragging his captors with him. Next moment, one after another, they jerked him towards them, then let go their holds on his limbs and garments. In the same few seconds the whole group staggered apart under a deluge of water. Gregory found himself with his head actually inside the car and his hands on the bodywork to prevent his falling into it. But he was no longer held by hostile hands. Straightening himself, he swung about. Only then did he realize what had happened.

Pipi and Mario had a fire hose trained on Grauber's people. Aided by a footman and other servants who had come hurrying out in response to Sabine's cries, they had run out the hose, fixed it to the hydrant in the courtyard and were now using it as police do to break up crowds of rioters. Aimed for the centre of the group, the first smashing jet had struck Gregory; but as soon as the two men holding the nozzle of the hose had found its range they had directed it at the heads or legs of his attackers. Knocked headlong or swept off their feet they fell this way and that in the roadway. Bruised, drenched and blaspheming, as soon as they could they crawled for shelter behind their half swamped car.

Rallying his remaining strength, Gregory came at a lurching run under the arch into the courtyard. Sabine caught him before he fell and supported him, gasping and near exhaustion, to the steps of the porter's lodge. Meanwhile the porter had picked himself up and, cursing like a trooper, had also staggered inside. Mario called to the footman to take his place helping to hold the nozzle of the hose, then sprinted out to the Mercedes. Jumping into the driver's seat, he ran her forward a few feet then backed her into the yard. The moment he had done so, the hose was turned off and a dozen willing hands swung to the big wooden doors that closed the archway.

Five minutes later Gregory sat slumped in an armchair in the hall of the Palace. With Pipi's help Sabine had brought him there; and after telling him that she would be back in a few minutes, they had both left him. He was still a little bemused and felt one big ache all over; but he had been in such scraps often enough to know that he had not sustained any serious injury. For the moment there was nothing he could do, except thank his gods that the attempt to kidnap him had failed, and he was quite content to sit there while his pains gradually localized themselves.

When Sabine returned she was carrying a tray with hot water, bandages and bottles. As she set it down he muttered with a grin, 'This is history repeating itself. I hope it's not going to become a habit for me to get beaten up and you to play ministering angel every night.'

She smiled back a little wryly. 'If we are here for you to be beaten up tomorrow night, I'm afraid it will mean the end of both of us. But let's not talk about that for a moment. Do you think any of your bones are broken?'

'No, thank God. My left forearm is very badly bruised though. It got the full force of a blow from that blond brute's rubber truncheon. I think I'd better have it in a sling. I'm afraid my face is a bit of a mess. I've a nasty kick on the shin, and another on the thigh, and I've wrenched my little finger. Otherwise I'm all right.'

'We'll have to undress you to see the bruises; so to start with I'll just clean up your face. That's a horrid cut on your lip, and you're going to have a whale of a black eye.'

The antiseptic stung but the eau de Cologne with which she bathed his temples freshened him up a lot. Halfway through he asked her for a Baratsch. She brought him one from the tray of drinks that always stood in the hall. After he had swallowed a few gulps and she had completed her ministrations he felt considerably better.

Having helped herself to a brandy and soda, she said, 'I've thanked all the servants for their help, and they have gone back to their quarters; except for Pipi, Magda and Mario, who are waiting to hear what we mean to do now. But I must confess I haven't an idea how we are to get out of the trap we're in.'

'How about Admiral Horthy?' Gregory enquired. 'I gather Ribbentrop implied that he had secured the Regent's protection for you until he had to give way to pressure from Berlin. It might be worth telephoning to ask him to give you a police escort to see you clear of the city.'

She shook her head. 'There are several things against that. In the first place you can bet that via Grauber and his Chief of Police he knows all about us by now. To keep in with Ribb he promised to give me twenty-four hours to get across the frontier and to stop an immediate hue and cry after you. But he must be aware that Grauber will have telephoned to Himmler, and that by tomorrow morning at the latest he'll get a formal demand for our arrest; so the last thing he'll do is to compromise himself further by giving us his active help to get away.'

'I wasn't talking about us, but about you.'

'You implied that in what you said, and it is my second point. Even if he were willing to give official protection to a woman who is accused of sheltering a British Agent, he certainly would not tell his police to let her take with her out of the country a man whom the Gestapo are after. And we are in this thing together.'

Gregory leaned forward and took her hand. 'Darling, I beg you to be sensible. God knows, I've got you into enough trouble already! If there is any chance at all of your getting out on your own you must take it.'

'There is no chance of the Regent's providing me with an escort. I am convinced of that. And if there were I still wouldn't go without you; so please put that idea right out of your mind. Finally, even if I wanted to telephone the Regent I couldn't. The 'phone has been cut off.'

'Has it? When?'

'I imagine it was done to prevent us trying to get help, as soon as the attempt to kidnap you had started. Directly Pipi joined me in the courtyard and saw what was happening he ran in again to telephone the police. But the line was dead, and it still is.'

'Then there is no hope now of getting help of any kind from outside. Not that we could have got it anyhow, except by involving our friends. Still, we might have asked someone to hire or provide a car to meet us somewhere.'

'How would we have got to it?'

'By going out over the roofs and coming down through one of the other houses further up the street.'

'That would mean leaving our luggage behind.'

'I know. But I'm afraid it is the only chance of getting out left to us now. Even that may be closed if they have enough men to cordon off the whole block. But I didn't see any Arrow Cross boys about. If Mario went ahead of us, dressed again in his uniform, anyone keeping watch would now take him for me. By acting as a red herring he could clear the coast for a few minutes, then, unless they are very thick on the ground, we'd be able to slip through.'

Sabine was naturally most loath to leave all her clothes behind; but she agreed that it must be done, and Gregory cheered her a little by a suggestion which might enable her to secure them later. As the railway stations would be watched by Grauber's people their only means of reaching the frontier safely would be in a hired car; but there should be nothing to stop Pipi sending off the baggage by train in the morning, and they should have no difficulty in collecting it at Zagreb, as it would reach there before they did.

While they finished their drinks they discussed this new plan, and the dozen or so palaces that formed the block. At this time of year nearly all the families that lived in them during the winter would still be in the country; so the only inmates they were likely to encounter on coming down from a skylight were a porter or old servants who had been left in charge, and by leaving their illicit entry until after midnight the odds were that all of them would be sound asleep. In any case, it seemed wise to postpone this new attempt to get away until the early hours of the morning as by then, after a long and fruitless vigil, Grauber's men would no longer be so fully alert.

They eventually decided that, if Mario were willing to act as a decoy, he should go out through a palace three doors away down the hill which at present was empty and up for sale. If he was able to walk off unmolested, well and good; if he was spotted, it would draw the enemy off in that direction. Having given him a few minutes' start, the others would come out from a mansion near the top end of the row which was owned by an old Countess whose porter knew Sabine by sight; so he would not take them for burglars should they encounter him.

Five o'clock was fixed as the time for their attempt, as that would impose a whole night of growing weariness upon the waiting enemy, yet still leave an hour of darkness. It had two other advantages; they would not have to wait about for very long before a garage opened at which they could hire a car and, as it was still only a little after nine o'clock, they would get a good six hours in bed to store up new energy before again putting their fortune to a desperate hazard.

The three faithful servants were called in and the plan discussed with them. Mario agreed that the worst that was likely to happen to him if he was caught was that the Germans might give him a beating, and declared himself ready to take that risk. Magda then volunteered to aid the deception by accompanying him in some of her mistress's clothes; but her offer was gratefully declined because it was felt that if Mario was chased he would be able to run farther without her before being caught, and so maintain for longer the illusion that he was Gregory. They thought it most unlikely that the enemy would actually break into the palace, but Pipi announced his intention of staying up all night to keep watch. He said that he would call Magda in ample time to cook a good hot breakfast for them; and, later in the morning, take the luggage to the railway station.

Everything having been settled they all went upstairs to look out of the top windows and see what dispositions had been taken up by the enemy. The street in the front of the house now appeared to be deserted, but the gateway and the arch cut off from their view the nearer section of it; so it was probable that at least one watcher was lurking there, probably in the telephone kiosk. Down in the lower road behind the house a small car was standing stationary with its engine switched off. As there appeared to be no reason for its remaining there, they decided that it almost certainly contained one or more of Grauber's people; but the really comforting thing was there were no signs at all to suggest that the whole row of palaces had been cordoned off.

Pipi accompanied Gregory to his room, helped him to undress, ran a hot bath, then collected the chauffeur's uniform and said, 'Mario will need this to put on directly he gets up. I will look out some other clothes suitable for the Heir Commandant to dress in tomorrow when I call him.'

Gregory thanked him for all he had done, then got into the bath and for twenty minutes eased his bruised limbs in the warm water. He was still drying himself when he heard Sabine, who had said she would come up to see to his hurts, enter the bedroom. She anointed his bruises, made a sling for his left arm, tucked him up in bed, then lightly kissed him good night and left him.

He put out the light at once, and lay for a little while staring up into the darkness, wondering far from happily where he would be at that hour the following night. If his luck held he should be well over the frontier into Yugoslavia; if not, he might be in hiding or, far worse, a prisoner. The previous night he had hardly slept at all, and during the past twenty-four hours he had been through a great deal; so he was very, very tired. Despite his anxieties, within ten minutes he was sound asleep, his last conscious thought having been that at least he would have six hours in a comfortable bed before he was called on to face new dangers.

In that he was wrong. Shortly after midnight Pipi burst into his room shouting, 'Wake up, Herr Commandant Wake up! The palace is on fire! Those devils are throwing fire bombs through the downstairs windows!'

Trapped

Chapter 17

One of the assets that Gregory had found most valuable in his dangerous work was his ability when woken suddenly to be almost instantly conscious of all the circumstances in which he had fallen asleep. In the present instance, before Pipi had finished shouting at him he had flung back the bedclothes and was tumbling out of bed.

'Fire bombs!' he echoed. 'Where? Have they broken through the gate into the courtyard?'

'No,' Pipi panted. 'They are at the back. They have thrown the bombs over the terrace into the big salon. I smelt smoke and found it coming from under the doorway. The room was full of it. I could see nothing; but while I was there another grenade crashed through the window and bounced along the floor. I slammed the door to and dashed upstairs.'

'Have you woken your mistress?'

'Yes, Herr Commandant. I went to her first.'

'Good. Rouse the rest of the household, then get the fire hose going again. I'll be down as soon as I can get some clothes on.'

As Pipi ran from the room Gregory looked quickly about him. Mario's uniform had been taken away by Pipi and, owing to this unforeseen emergency, he had not brought up the suit which was to replace it. All the Baron's clothes that were useable had been packed the previous evening; they were still in the suitcase that had been brought in from the car and left down in the vestibule. Pulling open the wardrobe, Gregory looked inside. All that was left there were a fur trimmed Hussar's jacket, a silk dressing gown, a carnival domino and a Chinese mandarin robe. Suddenly he remembered his own dinner jacket suit. At the time of Ribbentrop's visit, fearing the house might be searched, he had hidden it in the unlit stove.

Hurrying into his underclothes, he pulled the suit from its hiding place. The hair oil had congealed into hideous stains on the satin lapels of the jacket, and it was crumpled to a rag; but that was of no importance at the moment. Within three minutes of Pipi's rousing him he was dressed, had snatched up his wallet and pistol, and was taking the stairs two at a time down to the next floor. Turning left along the broad corridor he ran into Sabine's room.

Unlike Gregory, when in a deep sleep she was difficult to wake. The light was on and she was sitting up in bed with her head lolling against its padded satin backboard. Evidently Pipi's reason for waking her had not penetrated to her brain, and immediately he had run from the room she had dropped off again.

With her dark hair framing her pale face, slim arms and one small firm breast exposed owing to the ribbon of her nightdress having slipped from her shoulder, she still looked a girl scarcely out of her teens. Her long black lashes made fans on her cheeks and her lips were a little parted. The sight of her, even in that hour of fresh peril, made Gregory catch his breath. Instead of calling to her, on a swift impulse he stooped and rewoke her with a kiss on the mouth.

Her eyes flickered open. 'Oh, darling!' she sighed, and threw her arms round his neck.

Gently but swiftly he broke her hold, and said in a low urgent voice, 'My sweet, we're in trouble again. You must get up at once. That swine Grauber has set his thugs to burn down the house. Quick now!'

As he spoke he pulled back the bedclothes. She gave a little shudder; then doubled up her fists and, like a child, began to rub the sleep from her eyes as she muttered, 'Oh, hell! Aren't we ever to have any peace?'

'Come along!' He took one of her arms and gave her a little shake. 'I tell you the house is on fire. For God's sake start getting yourself dressed.'

Swinging her long legs over the side of the bed, she got to her feet. Magda had left her underclothes laid out all ready for her on a nearby chair. She was fully awake now. Running to it she started to pull on her stockings.

Gregory left her and walked swiftly towards the windows. Both of them were French and led out on to the balcony. One was a little open, and he could now smell smoke coming from it. Opening it wide he stepped out on to the balcony. The moon was up, silvering the spires of the Parliament House across the river, and making the scene almost as bright as day.

As Pipi had said, Grauber's people were attacking the back of the palace. Seventy or eighty feet below, down in the road, near the small car that had been parked there earlier, there was now a big wagon. Grouped about it there were a score or more of figures, and Gregory grimly took in the fact that most of them were in the uniform of the Arrow Cross. Then, after the first quick glance, his attention concentrated on the immediate foreground just below him. Two men had come up the steps cut in the steep slope. They were standing just beyond the Iron Gate, and could easily have forced it, but for some reason they had apparently decided not to break through on to the terrace. One was kneeling beside a square box and evidently fusing the grenades. The other had just taken one from him, and as Gregory watched, pitched it through a ground floor window.

Stepping back into the room, Gregory grabbed the first piece of furniture to hand. It happened to be the stool in front of Sabine's dressing table. Running out on to the balcony again he lifted it high above his head and hurled it down at the two men. Both ducked but one of its legs caught the kneeling man a glancing blow on the head and he toppled backwards. The other was holding another bomb ready to throw. He lobbed it up at Gregory. The bomb missed his head by inches, sailed over his shoulder through the open window, and fell with a dull thud in the room.

Swinging round, he ran towards it, hoping to snatch it up and throw it out again before it could explode. It was not a grenade, but a cylindrical tin canister from one end of which sparks were sizzling. As he dived to grab it, there came a loud 'phut' and from the place where the sparks had been there shot out a jet of thick oily smoke. It was pointing towards him, so the smoke fountained up right into his face. Blinded and choking he staggered back, while Sabine let out a scream and ran to him, fearing that he had been seriously injured.

It was a good minute before he could get his breath and his eyes had ceased to water sufficiently to see again. Meanwhile the bomb had been vomiting forth its pitch and sulphur in a steady stream. For several feet around it there billowed a cloud of such denseness that it was no longer even possible to guess where it lay, and to have dived into the smoke again would have been to invite asphyxiation.

As they backed away still further a second bomb hurtled through the window and rolled under the bed. Gregory dropped to his hands and knees and strove to reach it. But again he was a few seconds too late. Before his groping hand could hit upon it the fuse ignited its contents. A moment later clouds of noisome smoke were coiling up in great spirals from under both sides of the bed and from behind its headboard.

By now the far end of the room was totally obscured. The electric light over the dressing table showed as no more than a faint blur in a pea soup fog. In the centre of the room the smoke billowing out from under the bed hid all but its foot and, fearing that they would be cut off from the door, Gregory pushed Sabine round it. When rushing into the room he had left the door a little open; so a gentle draught from the window was causing the smoke to swirl and eddy inwards after them. With incredible swiftness wisps and fingers of it reached out from the two black central masses, while others now struck downwards from clouds of it that had hit and rolled along the ceiling. The eyes of both of them were smarting, their nostrils teasing and their throats full of acrid fumes. Sabine had had time to put on only her stockings, elastic belt, brassiere and shoes; but it was impossible to remain there longer and Gregory thrust her towards the door.

'My jewels!' she gasped. 'My jewels!'

'Where are they?' he cried.

'In my beauty box. By the dressing table. I must…" A violent fit of coughing cut her short.

She had turned to go back for them, but he caught her by the arm. Although he was again choking and gasping he took a couple of paces forward. Then he halted and stepped back. The whole room was now filled with smoke. A few feet in it was so dense that he could no longer see the bed.

'No good!' he spluttered. 'No… no good. Suffocate in there… for… for certain.' Sabine had already stumbled from the room and was bent double in the corridor. Half blinded again he staggered after her, pulling the door shut behind him' with a bang. Gratefully they drew in the clean air; but it was several minutes before their eyes had stopped oozing tears and they had cleared their lungs sufficiently to breathe freely.

As soon as they were able they set off at a run along the broad corridor. At the stair head they paused, still wheezing and weeping. The upper part of the hall was clear, but below, like mist upon a pond, strata of faint bluish haze were floating. It was coming from the back of the hall and under the stairs, filtering in beneath the doors of the big reception rooms that gave on to the terrace.

'My coat!' exclaimed Sabine. 'Holy Mary be praised! That's safe, anyway!' It was still lying on one of the settees where she had left it after Mario had brought it in from the car for her. They hurried down the stairs and as Gregory helped her into it, he remarked:

'By Jove, it's heavy.'

She nodded. 'Sables always are; but it's not only that. I've got a big flask of brandy in one of the pockets, and there's this.' Patting a bulging zip up pocket in the lining, she went on, 'When I am travelling I always keep my passport and papers in here. There's less risk of losing them than in a handbag.'

Gregory wondered grimly if they would ever now have a chance to use their passports; but his mind was swiftly taken off speculations about the future by the doors of the vestibule being thrust open and Pipi appearing in them clasping the nozzle of the hose. Gregory ran forward to help him and Sabine quickly did up her fur coat to hide her semi nakedness.

Several other servants appeared with coats pulled on over their night clothes. Between them, they ran out the long flat snake of canvas through the hall to the door of the saloon. They were all jabbering in Hungarian but, from their gestures as much as anything, Gregory gathered that a shout from Pipi would be relayed to a man in the courtyard who would turn on the water, and that as it spouted from the nozzle the footman was to throw open the door.

Gregory was a little dubious about the wisdom of opening the door, but a fire might be raging behind it; and, if that were the case, in doing so lay the only hope of saving the palace. In the event, his fears proved justified. The water rushed along inside the hose rounding it out in a matter of seconds, the footman flung open the saloon door,, the jet of water erupted into the room; but, at the same instant, there welled from it a great convoluted cloud of stygian blackness that swiftly enveloped them all.

Coughing and cursing, they were forced to give way before it, while Gregory yelled, 'Shut the door! Shut the door!' But no one could now get near enough to do so. An order was passed for the water to be turned off, and the brass hose nozzle was thrown down on the floor, still emitting great gouts of water. Several of the men, Gregory among them, soaked handkerchiefs in it and tied them over their mouths and nostrils; but they were so blinded by the smoke now pouring out through the doorway that they still could not reach it.

The hall was filling rapidly and Sabine had retreated half way up the stairs. Joining her there, Gregory said quickly, 'Listen. It's clear that Grauber is trying to smoke us out. I suppose he hasn't yet got the O.K. to come in and get us, and fears that we'll manage to slip away if he fails to have us in his clutches within the next few hours. These bombs are the sort that troops use to make a smoke screen. They don't give out flames, so unless one sets a carpet or curtain smouldering there is very little risk of fire. If there had been a fire in the saloon we'd have seen the flames through the smoke. But the thing is that they'll go on chucking bombs in until the whole house is rendered untenable and we're driven from it; so if we're to get away at all we've got to make the attempt now.'

Sabine glanced down at her bare chest and said, 'I wish I had a few more clothes on. Still, fortunately it's a warm night; and if you say we've got to go now, we must.'

Gregory had caught a glimpse of Mario out in the vestibule. Choking and spluttering he made his way to it through the smoke and ran the chauffeur to earth just outside in the courtyard. Mario said that he was still willing to act as a decoy. They then told Pipi of their intentions and Gregory asked him to take charge. It was agreed that there was no point in making any further attempt to use the hose unless an outbreak of flame was seen, and that all the servants should be withdrawn to the fresh air of the courtyard until it became possible to re-enter the palace without risk of suffocation. Sabine kissed Magda on the cheek and held out her hand for Pipi to kiss, then the couple wished them luck and, accompanied by Mario, they headed for the clearer atmosphere at the top of the stairs.

Even on the first floor the lights were now made dim by a blue haze thicker than that seen in a nightclub at four in the morning, and it was evident that the smoke up there would soon be as dense as it was on the ground floor. Thick wreaths of it were seeping from under the door of Sabine's bedroom and also from under that of another room, into which a bomb must have been thrown through the window.

Keeping their damped scarves and handkerchiefs pressed over the lower part of their faces, they went on up to the attics. Sabine led them into one which held a big water tank and a wooden ladder leading up to a glass skylight. Before mounting it Gregory said to her and to Mario:

'Now, remember; we must stick to the middle of the line of roofs. If we get too near the edge our silhouettes will show up against the skyline. Then they'll spot us and the game will be up. So keep low. If necessary, get down on your hands and knees and crawl. Sabine, you stick close behind me. Mario, you turn to the right as soon as you are through the skylight. Good luck, and a thousand thanks again for the help you are giving us."

When he reached the top of the ladder, he wrestled for a moment with the rusty lever of the skylight; then he thrust it up and crawled out on to the roof. Sabine went up after him, her head on a level with his heels. When he had crouched there for a whole minute without moving she called impatiently:

'Go on! What are you waiting for?'

Instead of replying he gave only a low hiss to silence her, and waved backwards with his hand for her to remain where she was. Then he crawled a few feet across the roof, raised himself to a crouching position, sank down again, crawled back and thrust his feet over the edge of the skylight with the obvious intention of descending to the attic.

Sabine gave way before him. When he was half way down the ladder he gently lowered the skylight. As he reached the floor she asked in a voice still made hoarse from the smoke she had swallowed:

'What's the matter? What's wrong?'

For a moment he did not reply. Then he said quietly, 'I'm sorry, darling, but it's no good. Grauber's got one ahead of me. I might have guessed he would. He has either bludgeoned or bribed the caretakers in both the next-door houses to let him send men up to their roofs. On either side there are eight or ten of them just waiting for us to walk into their arms.'

To find their escape route blocked at the very outset was a wicked blow, and against such numbers there could be no possibility of forcing a passage. In deep despondency they made their way downstairs again.

On the last lap they narrowly escaped disaster. Down on the ground floor the atmosphere had become so laden with smoke particles that it was only just possible to see a hand held in front of the face. In the pitch black murk they lost their sense of direction, became separated and, for a few terrifying minutes, could find neither the doors nor one another. To regain contact they had to remove the damped covers from their mouths, so that they could shout, and the acrid fumes rasped their throats like red-hot sandpaper. By luck, a moment later, they stumbled into the vestibule, and from it were able to stagger out into the courtyard, but not before they were whooping as though their lungs would burst.

When they had recovered sufficiently they told Pipi how their plan for getting away over the roofs had been thwarted and Gregory suggested that as a forlorn hope they should make another attempt to break out in the car. But Pipi shook his head.

'It would be hopeless, Herr Commandant. Thinking you safely gone old Hunyi, the porter, and I undid the gate a few minutes ago and looked out. The street is blocked both ways by lorries drawn across it and there are the best part of a hundred Arrow Cross men out there.'

'Did they make any move to rush the gate?' Gregory asked.

'No; they only laughed and jeered at us, and said that they were waiting for the Gnadige Frau Baronin and her Frenchman. And that if both of you did not come out soon, they would have to take steps to make us all do so.'

'What about the police?' Sabine enquired hoarsely. 'Were there none there?'

'No, Gnadige Frau Baronin, I did not see any. But there were a few firemen, and there is a fire engine farther down the street. I suppose one of our neighbours telephoned for it, and the Arrow Cross men have refused to let it be brought up to the palace.'

'That's about it,' Gregory agreed. 'I expect they have told the firemen that they are using only smoke bombs; so there is no immediate danger of fire, and all they need do for the present is to stand by.'

Sabine stamped her foot angrily. 'They have no right to prevent the firemen coming in. One of these bombs may quite well start a lire, and in that dense black smoke it might get such a hold before anyone is aware of it that half the block may be burnt down.'

'You ought to know by now the sort of pull these Fascist organizations have,' Gregory could not resist remarking with a trace of bitterness. 'In any country that wants to keep the goodwill of Hitler they are allowed to break up the political meetings of their opponents, and wreck the offices of newspapers that show a tendency to be Leftwing, while police and firemen look the other way.'

She sighed. I suppose you're right, and that really I should be thankful that they haven't broken in and wrecked everything in the place. What I don't understand, though, is why they make no attempt to come in and drag you off to Grauber.'

'I do,' he replied quickly. 'There are still limits to what these types can get away with in Hungary. Throwing smoke bombs can be laughed off as showing disapproval of someone they had been told is concealing an enemy agent; but the Regent might get tough with them if they started taking it on themselves to break into palaces and arrest people. And there is more to it than that. Grauber hoped that his own thugs would catch us in their ambush. When they failed he went to Szalasi and asked for his help. I haven't a doubt that Szalasi replied more or less like this: "No, thank you. I'm not making a deadly enemy of Ribbentrop by snatching his girlfriend and her chum for you; and he'd know that my boys wouldn't dare do a thing like that without my orders. But I tell you what I will do. I'll tip off one of my lieutenants that I'd like enough smoke bombs thrown into the palace to drive everyone out of it. Afterwards, it will be no concern of mine if there is a scrap in the street and, of course, you will have your boys outside mingling with the crowd. It will be up to them to nobble the two birds you're after as soon as they appear, but it should be easy money to do that once they are in the open, and to bring them along to you at the Villa Petoefer." '

'So that's the game slippery Szalasi is playing!' Sabine commented indignantly.

'That, or something very like it.'

'Since he was willing only to take such half measures I wonder that Grauber didn't wait until tomorrow; because it's almost certain that by then he'll be able to get the full cooperation of the police.'

'I don't suppose he could have raised enough men of his own to man the roofs as well as the streets; so if he had waited till tomorrow, the odds are we should have got away. He did the wise thing in securing any help he could while the going was good.'

'If you're right about Szalasi, we may get away yet. When his young men have thrown all their bombs they are going to get bored with waiting about. They've driven us from the house but they seem to have overlooked the fact that we could spend the night here in the courtyard. It's not yet much after midnight. In another couple of hours they'll be thinking about their beds, and if they are not under Grauber's orders they'll pack up and go home. Say it is even three or four o'clock before they throw their hand in; we'll still have plenty of time before dawn to plan another attempt to break out, either over the roofs or wherever Grauber's men seem to be fewest.'

Inwardly Gregory groaned. Squeezing her arm, he said, 'No, darling; I'm afraid it's not going to be like that. Having rendered the palace untenable, their next act will be to do the same with the courtyard and the servants' quarters along either side of it. They must know that by now most of your household has been flushed out into the open, and it won't be long before they start on the job of forcing the lot of us out into the street.'

He had hardly finished speaking when the first tin canister came lolloping through the stone arch above the wooden double gates. It fell near one of the maidservants, who let out a scream, and next moment a spurt of the oily black smoke fountained up from it.

'Holy Mary!' Sabine muttered tearfully. 'What are we to do?'

'We've got to face it,' Gregory replied grimly. 'The game is up. I'm desperately sorry to have let you in for this desperately sorry.'

'It's quite as much my fault,' she admitted huskily. 'If I hadn't persuaded you to come back here after I got you out of the police station; if I'd let you take a chance on your own last night as you wanted to; even if I'd listened to you this morning and agreed to make a break for it without delaying to get papers and things, we wouldn't have been trapped like this.'

He shrugged. 'It is no good considering might have beens, and all you did was to urge the course that you thought at the time would be best for us. But now we've got to resign ourselves to saying goodbye. The only chance of your getting out of this is for you to surrender yourself to the top Arrow Cross boy and demand that he should take you straight to Szalasi. That should give him the feeling that he's one up on the Germans, so it's unlikely he'll refuse. Szalasi is going to be desperately embarrassed when you are handed over to him. The very last thing he wants is for Ribb to be able to pin it on him that it was he who scuppered you. All the odds are that he'll apologize for his boys and send you back here in a car. Then you must jump into the Mercedes and get Mario to drive you hell for leather to the frontier.'

'But what about you?'

'It is me that Grauber is really after, and there is nothing to be gained by my surrendering to Szalasi's boys. Ribb might be annoyed at my being caught, but he couldn't reasonably blame Szalasi for handing me over; so it's a certainty that he would hand me over, otherwise he'd make Grauber his enemy for life. All I can do when the time comes is to attempt to shoot my way through, and hope for a chance to get away up some alley in the darkness.'

He tried to keep his voice light, but he knew now that he was really up against it. The odds against his being able to get the better of half a dozen Gestapo thugs, aided by scores of Arrow Cross men, were fantastic. He could only hope that he would meet his end fighting and not get a knock on the head which would result in his being delivered alive into Grauber's hands.

That the time would soon come when he must take this last gamble with fate was apparent. While he and Sabine had been talking, four more smoke bombs had been pitched through the archway. Pipi had got the fire hose going again and had succeeded in putting two of them out, but the others were belching their evil black smoke and it was obvious that the hose could not be switched quickly enough to douse all of the swift succession of them that were now coming down in the courtyard. The group of eight or ten servants were starting to cough and splutter, and casting anxious glances at their mistress.

Old Hunyi, the bearded porter, came hobbling up. He was still in pain from the kick he had received in the groin and leaning heavily on a thick stick; but he made an awkward bow to Sabine, and said in Hungarian:

'Gracious lady, if we remain here we shall soon all be suffocated. I beg that you will deign to accept the shelter of my lodge.'

She translated to Gregory who gave a sad shake of his head and replied in German, "That would only be to put off the evil moment. From the street they can lob bombs through the windows of the lodge, and they will as soon as they have made the courtyard untenable. I'm afraid there is no possible way for us to keep out of their clutches.'

Hunyi considered for a moment. He understood German and now spoke in it. 'If we could find the trap door leading to the caves the Gnadige Frau Baronin and the Hen Commandant might get away by them.'

'The caves!' Gregory almost shouted. 'What caves?'

'The Buda hill is honeycombed with caves,' the elderly porter replied. 'There are lakes beneath our feet and many of the mineral springs rise in them. Legend has it that our forefathers took refuge down there when the Turks ravished the city in the fifteenth century. Many of the old palaces have ways down into them; and I recall, when I was a boy and Pipi's father was Steward here, hearing him say that there was a way into them through a trapdoor in the cellars.'

For Gregory this possibility meant a chance of life and freedom, and for Sabine escape from the threatening attentions of the Gestapo. He did not attempt to keep the excitement out of his voice, as he cried:

'In the cellars! But where? Could you find it?'

Hunyi shook his head. 'No, Herr Commandant. But Pipi might know where it is.'

Sabine called to Pipi to leave the hose to the footman and come over to them. Quickly they questioned him; but he could not help. He knew of the caves but had never heard his father speak of an entrance to them from the Tuzolto palace.

Gregory's heart sank again. If it was there they should be able to find it. But since its existence was not even known to Pipi it would need careful looking for, and in the cellars of a large building like the palace such a search might take hours.

Rushing from place to place, their hasty conferences, and the wear and tear from constant fits of violent coughing made them feel as if the smoke bomb attack had been going on all night; but, in fact, it was less than half an hour since Pipi had given the first alarm, and there was a quarter of an hour still to go before it would be one o'clock. Given normal conditions, two or three hours should have proved enough to locate the trapdoor. But conditions in the palace were not normal. The rooms on its main floors were now pitch black caverns, and Gregory knew that by this time enough smoke must have seeped down into the basement to asphyxiate anyone who remained there without a mask for more than ten or fifteen minutes.

Nevertheless, as it was that or death outside, and the yard was now becoming thick with smoke, Gregory determined to

* Note: At the end of 1944 Hungary, all too belatedly, repudiated her alliance with Germany and offered to surrender to the Soviet Union. In revenge Hitler ordered the destruction of the capital and, before the Russians arrived, the Germans shelled and bombed into ruins a great part of the beautiful palaces on Buda hill. But many thousands of Hungarians saved their lives by sheltering from the bombardment in the caves referred to here.

try it. The air was clearest near the gate; so most of the servants were now in a huddle by it, under the archway through which the smoke bombs were coming. Mario was among them. Gregory ran over to him and gasped:

'A pair of goggles! Have you a pair of goggles? I am going into the palace again.'

Mario nodded, and they ran together to the garage. At the back of it there was a motorcycle that belonged to him. Snatching a pair of goggles from its handlebars he thrust them at Gregory and panted:

'One moment, I have others. If I can help I will come with you.' Turning to a box of spares he unearthed two older pairs, the elastics of which were stretched, but not too badly for them to be useable.

As they emerged from the garage, Pipi came running towards them. For the first time that night he was laughing. In his round blackened face his teeth flashed like those of a negro. Behind him, by the wrist, he was dragging an old woman. For a moment he was seized with a coughing fit, then he spluttered out:

'I asked the other servants. This is old Ciska, our laundry woman. She knows where it is.'

'Thank God!' exclaimed Gregory. 'Quick! Give her one of ' those pairs of goggles, Mario.'

As she took them, Pipi snatched the other pair and said, 'She speaks only Hungarian; I will go with you to interpret.'

Mario shrugged. 'As you will. You know the cellars better than I do.'

Gregory turned to him. 'You can help in another way. God alone knows what it will be like in the caves. Anyway, we'll need torches, candles, matches. Please collect everything of that kind you can while we are gone.'

'We'll need a crowbar, too,' Pipi added. 'Not having been used for so long, it's certain the trap will be hard to get up.' As he spoke he ran into the machine shop and came out carrying a medium sized jemmy.

Sabine was standing with Magda in an angle of the yard. Hurrying over to her, Gregory told her what he hoped to do, then rejoined the others. Parts of the yard were now two or three inches deep in water from the hose. In it they re-dampened the scarves and tied them afresh over their mouths and nostrils.

With Pipi leading and old Ciska following beside Gregory, they went through a passage at the back of the garage into the main block of the house. The smoke was dense, but troubled them much less now that they wore goggles. Pipi fumbled his way along a corridor and found the stairs to the basement. Down in it there was much less smoke, but enough to justify Gregory's fear that without a mask anyone would be driven from it within a quarter of an hour.

Pipi was snapping the lights on as he advanced and old Ciska kept mumbling to him in Hungarian. They walked in Indian file along several low stone flagged passages, then came into a broader space along one side of which were trestles supporting a row of casks. There they halted, and after a moment Pipi turned to Gregory.

'She said it was in the beer cellar and this is the beer cellar. But now she says that, although it's nearly thirty" years since she's been in this part of the basement, she's sure that the beer cellar she remembers was not like this.'

'Probably she has confused it in her mind with a cellar that holds wine casks,' Gregory suggested. 'Is there one that does?'

'Yes, Herr Commandant.'

'Then let's take her to it.'

For a moment Pipi was silent, then he burst out, 'St Stephen's curse upon it! We cannot. The wine cellars are locked, and I keep the keys in my room upon the second floor. This scarf is not enough protection to go upstairs. I'd be suffocated before I could get back with them.'

'Perhaps we can break down the door. Anyway, let's go and see.'

With a despondent shake of the head Pipi turned about, and led them down a corridor at right angles to the one by which they had come to another open space. Giving a helpless shrug, he pointed to an ancient nail studded door set in a low archway.

Gregory gave vent to a peculiarly blasphemous Italian oath that he used only in times of exceptional stress. The jemmy that Pepi was holding might have been a matchstick for all the good it would have been against such a door. Nothing short of dynamite would have burst its lock or forced it off its hinges.

The wave of evil fury that had rocked his mind was past in a moment. Swiftly he began to assess the chances of his being able to get Pipi's keys himself. It meant going up three flights of stairs back stairs that were unknown to him finding a room somewhere at the opposite end of the house to the one he had occupied a room that he had never entered then in pitch darkness locating solely from its description the right drawer in a bureau or writing table, and finally getting safely back to the cellar again.

'No,' he decided. Pipi was no coward and if, knowing the house from cellar to attic, would not take such a gamble, it would be sheer lunacy for him to attempt it. The sulphur laden air would overcome him and he would be choking his life out before he could even find Pipi's room.

Yet, if they failed to locate the trap door, it could be only a matter of an hour or so and he would be choking his life out in his own blood outside in the street. Either way was going to be extremely painful, and he had an idea that asphyxiation would prove the more so; but it had the advantage that at least he would make sure of not falling alive into Grauber's hands. And, after all, there was always the chance that by some miracle he might succeed in getting the keys.

Old Ciska had been peering uncertainly round her through the bluish haze. Now she muttered something to Pipi. Turning to Gregory he exclaimed excitedly, 'She says this is it! That in the old days the beer cellar used to be here!'

The old crone was nodding her head up and down and pointing with a skinny finger to a wide embrasure about fifteen feet away between two great squat pillars that supported a vaulted arch. 'She says that's where the scantling used to run,' Pipi interpreted, 'and that the trapdoor is in the corner by the left-hand pillar.'

Gregory was already staring in that direction; but instead of joy his face held a worried frown. In more recent years the embrasure had been used as a bin for empty bottles. Hundreds of them were stacked in it, six or eight deep and five feet high. To shift enough of them to get at the floor under any part of the stack was going to be a formidable task. In consternation he said, 'Ask her if she's certain absolutely certain.'

Pipi put the question and, with a muffled cackle of laughter from behind her scarf, Ciska began to babble cheerfully. 'She should know, even after all these years. Bela the pantry man had brought her there when she was a girl, given her too much beer and tossed her petticoats over her head. Afterwards they came there often. Once they had nearly been caught by the cellar master. It was then Bela had shown her the trapdoor. He had pulled it up and made her hide crouching on the steps underneath it until the old boy had gone. Soon after that Bela had been taken for the war, and there had been a child. The old Baroness had been very angry and sent her to live in the country. But there had been plenty of fine fellows there. None of them were such lusty chaps as Bela, though…'

Cutting her short, Pipi told Gregory that he felt sure the old woman knew what she was talking about.

'Come on then!' Gregory flung himself at the left-hand end of the great stack of bottles and began to throw them into the farthest corner. It was gruelling work and terribly exasperating; for no sooner had a space a foot or so deep been cleared at the side of the pillar than more bottles from the centre of the stack rolled down into it. Soon the pile of bottles and broken glass in the corner threatened to block the passage, so they had to start another pile against the cellar door. Smoke was still seeping down from above through all sorts of unsuspected crannies and the atmosphere was stifling.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes had slipped by since they had left' the courtyard. They were still only halfway down the stack, and fresh avalanches set them back every few moments. Gregory began to despair of reaching the floor before they were exhausted. Old Ciska laboured manfully, but Pipi suddenly left them, so Gregory feared he had been forced to throw his hand in. But Pipi returned carrying a bundle of new laths that had been cut for him to bin away the year's making of Baratsch, and with these they succeeded in shoring up the bulk of the remaining bottles in the stack.

After that the work went easier, although Gregory was worried now that soon the courtyard would be getting so thick with smoke that Sabine would either faint from suffocation, or find herself compelled to break out with her servants into the street.

Sweating, half blinded, and with throats like limekilns, they kept at it until the last dozen bottles in the corner where they were delving had been thrown aside. Gregory gave a grunt of relief and joy. They had uncovered a square stone slab with an iron ring in it.

Seizing the ring, he pulled with all his strength; but the stone would not yield. Pipi knelt down and jabbed fiercely with his jemmy at one end of it until the edge of the iron had entered the crack between the stones far enough to hold. Throwing his weight on the jemmy, he heaved. The stone lifted slightly. Another minute and they had it up. A draught of cold clean air hit them in the face. In great gulps they drew it down into their bursting, lacerated lungs.

For a few minutes they were too exhausted to do anything but crouch there, then Gregory said, 'Pipi, tell old Ciska that if I ever get back to Hungary I'll give her a pension for life. Take her up now, and bring down your mistress. And the torches and things Mario was going to collect for me.'

The wait for Sabine seemed interminable, but just bearable now that he had fresh air. When she arrived she was almost fainting, and being supported between Pipi and Mario. They said that except for Magda, who had remained with her mistress, all the other servants had found the smoke bearable no longer and gone out into the street.

The draught from the trapdoor speedily revived Sabine; but she drew back from its dark depths with an expression of horror. Mario handed Gregory a big torch and a canvas bag half full of other things. Gregory said to the two men, 'I'll never be able to repay you both for all you have done. Go up now and out into the street. When you are questioned tell everyone that your mistress and I decided that we would rather die in the palace than be handed over to the Gestapo; and that between us we swallowed the contents of a bottle of sleeping tablets.'

Switching on the torch, he shone it down into the cavity. Its beam showed a flight of crumbling stone steps that merged into darkness.

'I can't!' gasped Sabine. 'I can't! We don't know where it leads. We may never get out!'

'Courage, darling, courage!' Descending the first few steps, Gregory took her hand and drew her after him.

No sooner was her head below the level of the ground than Pipi and Mario shouted after them 'May God keep you! Good luck! Good luck!' then lowered the heavy stone into place.

They had escaped from the Gestapo and from Grauber; but, as the dank cold of the cave struck an instant chill into their bones, even Gregory's heart quailed at the thought of what now lay before them. This uncharted escape route most hold many perils. If the Goddess of Fortune should turn her back, they might die there in the darkness under Buda hill.

In The Caves

Chapter 18

The steps were only about eighteen inches wide, but they 1 were steep and, as Gregory saw from the first flash of his torch, there were well over twenty of them. There was no rail to which to hold on either side. To the left a wall of rough hewn rock rose from them; to the right there was nothing a: sheer drop into unplumbed darkness. One stumble on those narrow stairs and, with nothing to clutch at, it would mean a headlong plunge into the gulf below.

Warily, Gregory tested every step before putting his weight on it. The staircase was far older than the palace above it and had probably been made many hundreds, perhaps even a thousand years ago. In the course of time earth tremors and gradual subsidence had caused some of the steps to crack and loose comers to fall away from them. It looked as if, at any moment, pressure upon one might cause an avalanche, which would send himself and Sabine cascading to the bottom.

Sabine tried to drive from her imagination a picture of both of them with bruised bodies and broken bones, half buried beneath a great pile of stones down on the still unseen floor of the cave. That picture was swiftly succeeded by another. Perhaps the staircase had no ending; its bottom half might already have fallen away. If the gap were too big for them to dare jump down into the cave they would then be forced to retreat: to fight their way again through that searing, blinding smoke, and, after all, fall into the hands of their enemies. But worse. Most ghastly thought of all. Perhaps the stone flag above them was so heavy that they would not be able to lift it from below. In that case these crumbling steps would become a terrible prison from which there was no escape at all.

To steady herself, she had a hand on Gregory's shoulder. As terror flooded through her mind, her grip instinctively tightened. Then a flash of common sense told her that to press upon or encumber him would increase their danger. Exerting all her resolution, she took her hand away. Almost at once her courage was rewarded. With Gregory in front of her she could not see how far the beam of his torch penetrated, but it was now lighting the ground. Quickening his pace he stepped boldly down the last half dozen steps, then turned, shone the torch on the lowest steps for her, and said:

'Well, we're over the first fence in having got safely down that lot.' His hoarse voice came back in a strange hollow echo, while the torch made their shadows huge and menacing on the rock wall beside them.

Taking a grip on herself, she followed the beam of the torch as he shone it up and down and round about. They were in a large tunnel. It was about twenty feet wide and so lofty that the cone of light did not reach the arched roof overhead. The stairway, the top of which was now hidden in the darkness, was no more than an excrescence on one of the walls of the tunnel, which appeared to be of the same dimensions in both directions. The floor was uneven but free of boulders though littered here and there with loose stones. It was quite dry and sloped slightly downwards in the same direction as the steps descended.

Gregory set down the canvas bag that Mario had given him and examined its contents. In it there was another, smaller, torch, three new candles and four partially used ones, a whole new packet of a dozen boxes of matches, a slab of chocolate and a three-quarter full bottle of orangeade.

He felt that Mario had done them well. If used sparingly there was enough lighting material there to keep them going for far longer than they should need to find a way out of the caverns. Yet that might take several hours; so the chocolate and the orange squash had been an excellent thought. The latter particularly was most welcome and their sore eyes lighted up at the sight of it. Each of them had a couple of mouthfuls there and then. It ran down their parched and lacerated throats like nectar, and made them feel once more like human beings instead of half kippered demons just emerged from the sort of Hell invented by the early Christians to frighten their less intelligent enemies and later depicted so admirably by the elder Breughel.

After savouring this unexpected and wonderful refreshment they instinctively turned downhill. Gregory carried the bag in one hand and the torch in the other. He held it pointed forward and a little down and, in order to save the battery, flashed it only at intervals frequent enough to ensure that they did not walk into some obstruction or fall into a crevasse. Sabine held his arm, and now that she was on firm ground she felt far less fearful of unknown dangers. They spoke little as their mouths were still dry and their throats sore from the agonizing effects of the smoke they had swallowed.

As far as they could judge, the tunnel retained the same proportions; but its slope steepened. Gregory felt sure that it was following the contour of the Buda hill, and that they were coming down towards the level of the Danube. He hoped he was right, as he thought it almost certain that the long dead people who had fashioned these caves, or at least adapted them for the use of humans during an emergency, would have seen ' to it that there were several entrances along the banks of the river. His belief that they were approaching water level was borne out by the fact that, as the beam of the torch struck the floor ahead, the stones on it began to shine slightly. Then the ground underfoot became damp and, after another ten yards, the torch showed water.

Coming to a halt, Gregory waved the torch from side to side, then shone it into the impenetrable murk ahead. What they saw filled them with consternation. There was not a ripple on the water but it stretched from one side of the tunnel to' the other and as far before them as the beam of light carried. Apparently, unless they were prepared to swim, it barred their further progress completely, and in its absolute stillness there was something vaguely menacing.

Gregory flicked the torch out. Instantly the darkness closed in upon them like a pall. His voice came with an unconcern he was far from feeling. 'This must be one of the underground lakes old Hunyi mentioned. We'd best turn back. There's certain to be a way round it.'

Swivelling about they set off up the hill. Knowing now that there was no bad break in the floor of the tunnel where a minor earthquake had caused a geological fault to open and become a crevasse, Gregory now flashed his torch from time to time on the walls on either side. Before they had gone far it lit a flight of stairs similar to those down which they had come. Halting again, he said:

'There must be a way out up there. It doesn't matter into whose cellar we come out. It's still the middle of the night and everyone will be asleep; so we should be able to walk out of the front door, or anyhow come out through one of the ground floor windows, without being challenged. Come on; up we go!'

Cautiously but quickly, shining the light on each step ahead of him, he made his way up the stairs, Sabine following close behind. When he reached the top he handed the torch to her; then, stooping his head forward, and bending his knees, he raised his shoulders until they were firmly braced against the square stone immediately above him. Clenching his fists he heaved, endeavouring to straighten himself. The stone slab did not lift. He made another effort, and another; but although he strained, holding his breath for a full minute, it would not yield a fraction of an inch.

Panting slightly, he relaxed and looked back at Sabine. 'Sorry. I'm afraid this one is stuck. Yours would have been too, if anyone had tried it from underneath before we loosened it with the jemmy. I expect most of those that haven't been used for half a century or more will be. But don't worry, we'll find one that isn't.'

With Sabine leading this time they made their way gingerly back down the long flight of stone stairs, then continued to retrace their steps up the slope. By flashing the torch along the walls now and again, in the next hundred yards they came upon two more flights of steps. The trap at the top of the first proved equally impossible to shift, but the second gave at the first heave.

Quickly, Gregory took the torch from Sabine and, keeping the heavy stone raised with one shoulder, shone the beam through the narrow opening across the floor of a cellar. Even as he did so he smelt smoke. Next moment the beam came to rest on a heap of broken glass and empty bottles. Failing to recognize the flight of steps down which they had first come, they had returned to the Tuzolto Palace.

For the time and effort wasted they at least had the consolation of knowing that if the worst came to the worst they could get out that way. That was, if they did not get lost and could again identify that particular stairway. As an aid to recognizing it, when they were safely down they piled on the bottom step a little heap of loose stones.

Continuing on up the slope, they found that the tunnel soon began to narrow and lose height; then it took a curve and just round the bend they came upon another shorter flight of steps. Gregory ran up them while Sabine held the torch but, as he now half expected, the stone in the roof of the cave above the top step was stuck fast.

A little farther on the tunnel ended, and a few minutes' exploration showed that they had emerged into a large open space some eighty feet across and roughly oval in shape. Its ceiling was too lofty for the torch to pick up, and round the sides were openings to seven or eight other tunnels. Between two of these openings at the narrowest end of the oval the rock wall had been worked smooth, and about three feet up a large fan shaped recess, roughly two feet deep, had been hollowed out in it.

As the light flickered over the recess Gregory noticed some ring like marks upon the stone. Stepping nearer they made out the remains of an early wall fresco. The rings were haloes and below them could still be faintly seen the outline of the pointed faces of saints with huge flat almond shaped eyes. Obviously it had once been an altar and the cavern used as a church, perhaps in the days when the infidel Turks were the masters of the city.

Somewhat to Gregory's surprise, Sabine bobbed before it, as though it were an altar in a still used church. Next moment she turned to him and said:

'Give me a candle, please: one of the whole ones. I want to light it to the Virgin.'

'Oh come!' he protested, as the echo of her voice died away. 'No religious rites have been performed here for centuries; and it's possible that later on we may need really badly the few candles we have.'

'I can't help that,' she retorted. 'Please give me one.'

'Sabine, be sensible. We simply can't afford to do this sort of thing. Down in this place candles are more precious than gold.'

'All the more reason we should donate one to the Holy Mother, and secure her protection,' came the swift response. 'You must give me one for her, Gregory! You must!'

Her voice had risen to an hysterical note; so, with considerable reluctance, Gregory got out from the bag one of their precious candles and a box of matches. Taking it from him she set it up in the embrasure, lit it, and knelt for a moment in prayer. Then, taking his arm, she said in a normal voice:

I feel much happier now. Look at our shadows. Aren't they weird? Which way shall we try next?'

The lack of success with which they had so far met in endeavouring to force up stone flags in cellars decided Gregory that their best hope still lay in finding an entrance to the caves somewhere along the river bank; so they set off down the slope of a tunnel next to that from which they had emerged.

After ten minutes' walk they were brought to a halt; the tunnel ended as had the first, with its floor shelving into the underground lake. While going down the tunnel they had noticed several more stone stairways at its side, and on their way back Gregory went up three of these; but his efforts were wasted. It struck him now that probably very few of them any longer led into cellars that were in use. In the past five hundred, years the great majority of the palaces above must have been rebuilt, and the replacement of timbered mansions by ones of stone would have required more solid foundations, so many of the old cellars would have been filled up with rubble and concrete.

On re entering the big cavern they tried a tunnel on its opposite side. That led after only a hundred paces into another cavern, from which four or five lower tunnels fanned out. Afraid now of getting hopelessly lost they decided against exploring any of them, and, retracing their steps, turned into a third tunnel that had a downward slope. In another ten minutes they once again found themselves on the edge of the sinisterly still lake.

In walking up and down the three tunnels and exploring the two caverns Gregory reckoned that they must have walked a good three miles, and he saw from his watch that their explorations, together with the time expended in trying to force up flagstones, had occupied a little over two hours. Sabine had gamely refrained from complaining, but she was clearly tired and was limping a little, as the rough rock floor of the cave was hard going in the thin-soled shoes she was wearing.

He was still convinced that if only they could get down to the river bank they would find a way out and it occurred to him that possibly the lake was shallow enough for them to wade through it.

When he told her his idea she murmured, 'Oh, God! Must we? If it wasn't for my fur coat, and that I've been using my limbs all this time, I'd be frozen already. I expect that water is icy.'

Stooping, he dabbled his hand in it, and replied, 'It's not too bad. And you needn't go in yet. I'll go ahead and find out how deep it is.'

'No, no!' She grabbed him by the arm. 'Don't leave me! Anything but that!'

'You'll be all right,' he soothed her. 'I promise you I won't take any silly risks, or go out of your sight.'

'But there may be a sudden drop in the bottom. You might be drowned.'

'There's no fear of that. You know I'm a good swimmer. At worst I'll get a thorough wetting.' As he spoke he set down the canvas bag, took two stumps of candle from it and, setting them up on a ledge of rock, lit them. When he had done, he added, 'There! Now I won't be leaving you in the dark, and if I do drop the torch I'll be able to see my way back to you. Should you need it the other torch is in the bag. Sit down and rest your poor feet for a bit. I won't be long.'

As she sank wearily down on the floor of the cave he waded cautiously out into the dark water. The slope was gradual and when he had progressed about twenty feet the water was still only midway up his thighs. A few steps farther on it began to get shallower, and he gave a cry of delight. The torch beam had picked up the opposite shore, and he was already more than halfway to it. Turning, he splashed his way back to Sabine.

'We'll make it easily,' he told her. 'Even if there is a hidden clip we can swim the last few yards; but it's very unlikely that well have to. We must try to keep your coat from getting wet though. Take it off and I'll carry it as a bundle on my head.'

Scrambling to her feet she slipped the coat off, giving a quick shiver as the cold air struck the flesh above and below her elastic belt. He put out the two bits of candle, returned them to the bag and took from it the smaller electric torch. Handing it to her, he said:

'You had better take this, just in case I drop the lot.' Then he rolled the bag up in her coat, put the bundle on his head and held it firmly there with his left hand. Side by side they went into the water. It proved no deeper the whole way across than he had found it on his reconnaissance. Within two minutes, and with Sabine's belt still dry, they were safely on the opposite shore. But in her near naked state the dank chill had made her teeth start to chatter; so as soon as Gregory had unrolled her coat he fished the flask of brandy from its pocket and made her take a couple of good swallows.

'That… that's better!' she spluttered. 'Thank goodness I've always made a habit of carrying cognac when I travel.'

As he helped her back into her coat she insisted that he too should have a pull and, seeing that the large flask was still nearly full, he gladly did so. Then they set out again. But they soon realized that they were not in the wide mouth of another cave, and after a dozen paces a flash of the torch showed them more water.

Thinking that they had landed on a curved promontory and that beyond it must lie a tunnel leading riverwards, they turned left and followed the water's edge. It was full of small irregular bays and creeks so its direction was difficult to guess, although in general it seemed to curve more to the left than right. Flashing the torch every few seconds they walked on for about ten minutes, then Gregory halted, shone it on a spur of rock, and exclaimed:

'Damn it! I could swear we passed that pointed bit before.'

Sabine agreed, and after they had gone a little farther they realized with dismay that they were on an island.

Striking inland confirmed their belief, as a bare twenty paces brought them to water again. They guessed the island to be about forty feet wide and about two hundred long and, by the one landmark they had identified, judged that they had walked about one and a half times round it. If they were right about that, having just re-crossed it, the place where they now stood must roughly face the tunnel from which they had come. So they crossed the island yet again and, having again lit two of the candle stumps, Gregory set out on another reconnaissance, to see if he could locate the lake's further shore.

Before he had taken two steps he was knee deep in water.

After a tentative third he drew back quickly, for if he had let his foot reach bottom he would have been in up to the waist. Sabine collected the bag and candles, and he tried at another spot some twenty feet further along. There the downward slope proved even steeper. For seven or eight minutes they wandered up and down, examining each little bay by the light of the torch, and Gregory trying out any that looked at all promising. But it was no use; evidently all along that side of the island there was deep water a few feet out.

Gregory was now beginning to become really worried, but he endeavoured to keep the anxiety out of his voice as he said: 'I could do with a break. Let's sit down and have some of that orange squash and chocolate. Maybe while we're resting some new idea will come to us.'

But neither of them had any new ideas. Having put the torch out to economize its battery, by the light of a single candle they munched the chocolate and took a few swigs from the squash bottle almost in silence. They had nearly finished the modest ration they had allowed themselves when the unearthly stillness was shattered by a loud 'plop.'

'Holy Mary! What… what's that?' Sabine gasped, throwing a terrified glance over her shoulder.

'Only a fish,' Gregory replied calmly.

'It… it might be an octopus,' she quavered. 'They are said to live in subterranean caverns like this.'

'Nonsense,' he laughed. 'That's only in cheap fiction. The sort of caves octopi inhabit are always among rocks beneath the surface of the sea. They never came up rivers; it is unheard of to find them any distance from a coast. The sooner you get that idea right out of your head the better, as we've got to swim for it.'

'Swim for it?'

'Yes. There must be another side to this lake, and it can't be far off. In a minute I'm going to strip and swim over to find it. Then I'll come back for our clothes and things. I may have to do two or three trips to get them all over dry, a few at a time on my head. And on the last trip you'll come over with me.'

'No!' He could hear the shudder in her voice. 'No, darling; I couldn't do it. I'd die of fright. Even if that thing we heard isn't an octopus it may be a sort of shark or a stingray.'

'It is much more likely to have been a trout,' he protested and crossing the deep bit of lake is our only way of getting down to the river.'

'There's no guarantee that we'll find an exit from these caves when we get there. It's only your own pet theory.'

To that he had to agree, but he pointed out that to find an exit anywhere they must leave the island; so she would have to go into the water again anyway.

'Of course,' she replied promptly. 'But it's one thing to wade a few yards as we did before, and quite another to be attacked by some awful monster when out of your depth and naked. There's another thing. If we go back the way we came and all else fails, as a last resort we can climb up into the cellar of my palace tomorrow morning.'

Gregory knew that when people deliberately explored caves such as these they took with them balls of twine which they played out as they advanced; so that they could guide themselves back to their starting point. But the departure of Sabine and himself had been far too hurried for preparations of that kind. He had considerable doubts now if they would be able to find the steps that led up to the Tuzolto cellars; but he refrained from voicing them and, as there was really as much chance of their finding an outlet in one direction as another, he gave way to her pleading that they should try their luck up hill again.

Crossing the island they splashed back through the shallow water. This time Gregory held the bag high, and Sabine threw the skirts of her fur coat over the back of her head to keep them from getting wet. She was now nearly weeping with fright and clung heavily to his arm. Her fears were not lessened when, instead of arriving at the entrance to a cave, the torch, which had gradually been getting dimmer, showed ahead a solid wall of rock.

Turning to the right they ploughed their way through the knee-deep water for thirty or forty feet then, to their relief, they came upon a high arched tunnel. Whether it was one of the three by which they had come down to the lake they could not tell, but thankfully they stepped back on to dry ground.

After another swig of brandy each, to help to drive the cold from their lower limbs, they set off up the gentle slope; but there was nothing they could do about their squelching shoes, and Sabine's limp was now beginning to hamper her. A sudden twist in the tunnel told them that it was not one of those they had traversed before; and, after they had covered two hundred yards, the big torch became so dim as to be almost useless. Evidently it had been used for several hours by Mario before he had handed it over. As Gregory took the smaller torch and switched it on, he prayed fervently that it would last longer. The candles and matches were a sheet anchor, but no more. If one moved at anything exceeding funeral pace with a candle the draught would blow it out. And they might have to cover a lot of ground yet before they found a way of escape from this nightmare labyrinth.