The Black Baroness

'It seems, then, that you were much more interested in Madame than you were in me, Monsieur Pierre?'

remarked Jacqueline pertly.

He smiled and nodded. 'Yes. Madame is my wife—or at least she will be the moment that she can get her divorce!'

Jacqueline frowned. 'She, too, then, was a German spy and not a Norwegian lady at all. I would never have believed it of her.'

'That, my young friend, is none of your business,' Gregory said somewhat sharply, as he produced his pocket-book and took out a five-hundred-franc note. 'And now, please, you will give me the letter that Madame left for me.'

Jacqueline had not meant to say anything about the letter, but with considerable astuteness he had spiked her guns by implying that there had been a definite understanding that Madame should leave a letter for him, and she had it with her in her bag. If she denied all knowledge of it and he took her to the police-station to have her searched she might find herself in a pretty mess when it was discovered; so she swiftly decided that she had better not play any tricks with this particular German and opening her bag she handed it to him.

He ripped it open and read:

Queen Wilhelmina's flight and the news that General Winkelman proposes to surrender in a few hours have affected the situation here, so 1 am moving to Ghent. You will find me at the Hotel de la Poste or if there are no rooms to be had 1 will leave my address with the manager there. God keep you and protect you, my darling. All my love, Erika.

'Thank you,' said Gregory, passing over the five-hundred-franc note. 'You were right about the day Madame left, as this letter is dated Tuesday the 14th. How long after that was it that you were bombed?'

'That was on the Thursday night. The Germans had been bombing the neighbourhood of the Palace for some days. Poor Cook was killed but I had a very lucky escape. I spent the evening at home with my father and mother and they would not let me go back through the streets while the air-raid was going on, so I didn't know anything about it until the following morning.'

'Good,' said Gregory. 'I'm sorry about Cook; she was a decent old soul; but let's hope that your luck continues through this wretched war; then you'll be able to tell your grandchildren how once upon a time you shared your pantry with a German Staff-Colonel and cleaned his silver for him while he went out to make love to your mistress. Au revoir, ma petite Jacqueline, and take good care of yourself.' With a smart salute he turned away and set off down the street, beaming with happiness at the surprised passers-by.

By seven o'clock he was back at the Metropole singing as he packed his bag; by a quarter-past he was downstairs paying his bill, and by half-past he was at the Gare du Nord. To travel he should have had a military railway voucher, but to secure one he would have had to have given an account of himself to the railway transport officer, which would have been a very tricky business and, in any case, caused him considerable delay, so he decided to travel without one.

Having found out that the next train for the west was leaving from Platform Number Five he took cover behind a tobacco kiosk where he could not be seen from the barrier but could keep his eye upon the train. The second that it started to move he came dashing out, frantically waving aside the Belgian railway official and German military police, who were standing at the barrier. Seeing his high rank at a glance the military police did not attempt to stop him but flung the barrier wide and he was just in time to leap on to the step of the guard's van.

Panting a little, but decidedly pleased with himself, he remained there until the train had cleared the station, then he went along the corridor to see if he could find himself a seat. The whole train was packed with troops going up to the front, but a junior officer promptly surrendered his place and thanking him politely Gregory sat down.

He could still hardly believe the marvellous news he had received about Erika, yet now, in a way, he wondered that he had so readily taken her death for granted. On considering the matter he came to the conclusion that it was the combination of circumstances which had caused him to do so. As far as he could then judge there had been no reason at all for her to leave Brussels until the Friday, and the bomb had fallen on the Thursday night at a time when she would normally have been in bed, or at least in the block, and the bomb had demolished the whole building, killing, as the old ghoul had told him, twenty people. Oblivious of his surroundings he now sat there in the crowded railway carriage positively glowing with happiness.

The train chugged on into the dusk, stopping for no apparent reason every ten minutes, as is the habit of military trains behind all battle-fronts. In normal times the journey from Brussels to Ghent would not have taken more than an hour, but it was past ten when they reached Alost, which was only about half-way, and everybody was ordered out as the train was going no further, having reached rail-head.

Gregory was now within sound of the guns again and the principal activity seemed to be to the south, although he had only a vague idea as to the position of the constantly-changing front. As far as he had been able to gather, the British had put up a magnificent show during the last eight days and had been forced back only to about thirty miles south and west of Brussels, but, although they were heavily outnumbered, the greatest hammer-blows of the Germans were not being directed against them. The enemy's maximum effort, after they had reached the coast, had been directed against the French in the Rethel area, south of the Maginot Line, and in the extreme north against the Belgians. The Belgians were said to have been standing well, but on the previous night the Germans had forced them back and captured Ghent, so it seemed that the B.E.F. who were holding the line of the Scheldt were now in some danger of being outflanked both from the north and from the south; but that was as far as he could assess the position.

Outside the station there were a number of military cars and going up to one of them which had only two officers in it he asked its occupants if they could give him a lift in the direction of Ghent. They said that they were going there and would be happy to oblige the Herr Oberst, so he got in and they moved off into the long line of German mechanised vehicles which for many days now had been streaming without cessation towards the west.

The officer who was driving took every advantage that he could in slipping past slower vehicles and long columns of marching infantry, but even so, their pace was appallingly slow. Gregory swapped cigarettes and stories with his two companions but he was burning with impatience to get to Ghent. Erika would not be there any longer as the Germans had entered the town the previous night, but once he reached Ghent he felt confident that he would be able to secure fresh tidings of her.

Twice on their way they had to pull up and take shelter in the nearest ditch, as the R.A.F. were strafing the German lines of communication; and for minutes at a time bombs whined, crashed and thudded a few hundred yards away on or near the road. In each case the raids caused further delay as wrecked tanks, lorries and guns had to be hauled from the road afterwards and the casualties collected before the column could move on again; but shortly after midnight they reached their destination.

The sound of the guns was much louder now as a night bombardment was taking place only a few miles away. Gregory thanked the two officers who had given him a lift and left them in the Butter Market to hurry to the Hotel de la Poste. Ghent had suffered severely from German air-raids and in several parts of the city fires were still burning, but to his relief he found the hotel undamaged. There were no civilian guests in it, but it was crowded with German officers snatching a hasty meal and a drink before going forward to join their regiments or turning in for a few hours' sleep, and it looked as though the over-worked staff would be kept up all night.

After some little delay Gregory succeeded in getting hold of the manager. He recalled Erika perfectly and said that he had not been able to accommodate her in the hotel, but had secured a room for her near the University, at Number 17 Rue des Foulons; he had, however, seen nothing of her since. Carrying his suitcase, Gregory then picked his way through streets littered with broken glass, tiles and rubble round to the Rue des Foulons and finding Number 17, after some difficulty, hammered on the door.

It was opened to him almost immediately by an elderly, bespectacled man who looked like a University professor. Although it was getting on for one o'clock in the morning he and his wife were still up, as a few days before their only daughter had been seriously wounded in an air-raid and they were watching by the poor girl's bedside while she hovered between life and death.

Having described Erika, Gregory asked for news of her, and the owner of the house said at once that the beautiful Norwegian lady had occupied their spare room by arrangement with the hotel from the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th until midday on the previous Thursday, when she had left in a great hurry.

He and his wife had been out at the time and although it was possible that the lady had left a message with his daughter, there was no means of knowing if that was so, as she had been wounded little more than an hour afterwards and had been unconscious ever since.

Gregory had naturally expected that Erika would have left another note for him to say for what town she was making, but if she had had to get out in a great hurry it was possible that she had not known herself where she would next be able to take up her quarters with a reasonable chance of keeping out of the clutches of the enemy for some days. It then occurred to him that she might have considered it unwise to leave any written message for him with these people but had left some indication of her general intentions which would be plain to him; so he asked politely if he might see the room that she had occupied.

The professorial-looking Belgian nodded and, his shoulders bowed from weariness, led Gregory upstairs to a pleasantly-furnished bedroom at the back of the house. It was just as Erika had left it since, with a dying daughter on their hands, the people of the house had been much too occupied to make the bed or tidy things up.

Gregory would have liked to have buried his face in the pillow where Erika's lovely head had rested, but he was too self-conscious to do so in the presence of the Belgian. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought that he could just catch the faintest lingering breath of the perfume that she used in the room, which seemed to bring her very close to him and, recalling his recent despair, he felt that Fate had dealt a little harshly with him in allowing him to pass through Ghent with Peachie Fostoun on Friday the 17th when, had he only known that Erika had already taken up her quarters there, he would have been spared those nine days in Brussels and an infinity of misery.

The householder recalled him to the present by asking if, having seen the room, he was satisfied.

Gregory shook his head and, stepping forward, began to open all the drawers in the handsome old chests one after another; but there was nothing in any of them.

For the next ten minutes he poked around, looking behind pictures and in cupboards, still hoping that he would find some indication as to where Erika had made for; but he could see nothing at all in the room which might hold a clue until his eye fell upon a pack of patience cards lying on a small side-table.

They were Erika's and he knew that during his absences from her she often played patience far into the night to keep her mind off her anxieties; so it seemed strange that she should have forgotten to pack them. At the second glance he noticed that although the cards were in a neat stack the top one was torn clean in half. That could hardly have been an accident, with a sudden rising sense of excitement he felt that Erika must have left the little pack of cards there with the top one deliberately torn across to attract his attention to some message that they held.

He picked them up and looked through them. There was no slip of paper concealed between them, but when he counted the pack he found that it was three cards short. Rapidly checking them through he found that it was the Queen of Hearts, the Queen of Spades and the King of Diamonds which were missing.

Turning this over in his mind he could not make head or tail of it, so he began a new search of the room to see if he could find anything which might tie up with the missing cards. He had no luck until it occurred to him to pull the bed away from the wall, and there, concealed till then by the headboard of the bed, were the three cards. They were stuck up in a row with drawing-pins over a long pencilled arrow pointing to the right. The King of Diamonds was above the point of the arrow, the Queen of Spades came next and the Queen of Hearts last.

Sitting down on the end of the bed Gregory lit a cigarette and stared at this queer cryptogram, which he was quite convinced held some hidden message intended specially for him. According to card lore only very fair-haired people are Diamonds and Erika's hair was a rich, ripe golden colour. Her eyes, too, were not China-blue but deep sapphire, so she was undoubtedly the Queen of Hearts. Paula was probably the Queen of Spades and Kuporovitch the King of Diamonds; but that did not seem to infer anything. Why should the two girls be running after Kuporovitch? Moreover, although Kuporovitch's hair was grey his eyebrows were startlingly black and he had brown eyes, so he was not a Diamond person.

Again, although Paula was a brunette her hair was not jet-black so she really came into the category of Clubs. The thought 'jet-black' released a spring in Gregory's brain. Paula was not a true Spade type but he knew somebody who was. The Queen of Spades was the Black Baroness.

So far, so good. Erika was on the trail of La Baronne Noire; but in that case who was the Diamond gentleman? A fair-haired, blue-eyed man, evidently. Could it be Paula's friend, the Comte de Werbomont? Never having seen the Count, Gregory did not know if he was fair or dark, but the thought released another spring in his brain. The Count was attached to the Royal household. With a sudden laugh Gregory snapped his fingers. The King of Diamonds was The King—Leopold of Belgium. The Black Baroness was after him and Erika was after the Black Baroness. Here was the explanation why Erika had not left any more definite message. She did not know where the King would next set up his headquarters, but if he could find the King both Erika and the Baroness would not be far away.

Thanking the owner of the house, he expressed his earnest hope that the daughter would recover and walked downstairs. Just as he picked up his bag it occurred to him that his next move must be to work his way back across the battle-zone, and that he would once again stand much more chance of getting through without injury in daylight than while darkness lasted; so turning to the Belgian he asked him if he would be good enough to let him for the remainder of the night the room that Erika had occupied.

As the elderly man hesitated he added quickly: 'I shan't be the least trouble to you as I don't want any meals cooked or clean sheets or anything of that kind. It's just that I must get a few hours' sleep somewhere and if you don't mind my hiring the room that will save me stumbling round in the dark for an hour or so looking for one in the town.'

Although the Belgian had no cause whatever to love the Germans he could hardly refuse; so Gregory carried his suitcase straight upstairs. Taking off his uniform he slipped into the bed, where the impression of Erika's body could still be seen, to bury his face in her pillow where he was now quite certain that he could smell the perfume that recalled for him such glorious memories.

When he awoke at seven o'clock the sun was already streaming through the window. It was Sunday again, May the 26th, and although it had been consistently fine for three solid weeks there was not a trace of any break in the weather, which seemed to have been ordered specially for Hitler.

Having washed and shaved in the fixed basin he dressed himself in the old lounge-suit that had now seen so many vicissitudes, and packed the Colonel's uniform into his suitcase; then, after leaving some money on the dressing-table for his night's lodging, he cautiously opened the door and peered out. He thought it probable that the anxious father would be sleeping now after his night's vigil by his daughter's bedside and that the mother would be sitting with the girl; but in a well-furnished house of that size it seemed almost certain that there would be at least one maid, and he was anxious that anyone who knew that a German officer had occupied the spare room for the night should not see him leave the house in civilian clothes.

Stealthily he crept down the stairs, which fortunately were old and solid. In the small hallway he caught the sound of pots and pans from a back room, but in a couple of swift strides he had crossed the hall and, lifting the old-fashioned latch of the front door, he let himself out.

Striking away from the centre of the town he headed west and having no further use for the Colonel's uniform, his first concern was to rid himself of his bag as an unnecessary encumbrance. After ten minutes'

fast walking he came to an empty, boarded-up plot between two houses so, having given a hasty glance round to see that he was not observed, he pushed the suitcase through a gap in the fence and hurried on.

Outside the town he got on to the Bruges road as, in view of the fact that Antwerp in the north had fallen days before and that the situation to the south was so obscure, Bruges-Ostend seemed the most likely line of retreat for the Belgian Royal Party. The German columns were still trundling westward but nobody took any notice of him as here and there other civilians were walking along the road or standing in front of their cottages watching the seemingly inexhaustible forces of the invader.

After he had covered about three miles, shells from the Allies' batteries began to pitch on to the road and into the fields on either side of it. The German column was then broken by its transport officers into sections with a two-hundred-yard gap between each so that the sections could be rushed one at a time through the zones in which the shells were bursting. As he advanced still further the column seemed to dissolve altogether; infantry and artillery units deployed into the fields or turned up side-tracks while only tanks continued down the highway. At the entrance to a shattered village he was halted by a patrol so he produced his German passport and said that he was an Intelligence Officer going forward in civilian clothes with the intention of penetrating the British lines and securing such information as he could about their strength and battery positions.

This statement proved to be a bad break as it transpired that the Germans were not up against the British in this sector, but the Belgians, and a suspicious sergeant insisted on holding him until an officer could question him further.

On being taken before a young Captain, Gregory endeavoured to lie his way out of the difficulty by saying that he had come direct from Corps Headquarters where they had definite information that certain British units had been moved up into that area during the night.

The Captain denied this and looked as if he were going to become extremely troublesome but Gregory was on the top of his form again. He put on his most authoritative Colonel-Baron manner and declared that for the present purposes it did not in the least matter whether British or Belgians were holding that sector of the line. What did matter was that he should get through as quickly as possible so that he could assess their strength himself, and that if he were delayed in his mission the Corps Commander would hold the Captain responsible. At this threat, delivered with icy Prussian arrogance, the young officer caved in and allowed him to proceed on his way.

He could, he knew, have avoided such potentially dangerous encounters by having retained his Colonel's uniform, but he had felt that he might have great difficulty in finding any suitable place in which to change into civilian clothes in broad daylight when he reached no-man's-land and, although he might have succeeded in getting himself quietly taken prisoner by the British or the Belgians, to advance into the Allies' lines dressed as a German officer was positively asking to be shot on sight; so he had preferred to face the trouble of satisfying any German patrol who chose to hold him up. In the next mile he was challenged four more times, but his passport as Colonel-Baron von Lutz and his impeccable German got him through on each occasion.

The sunny landscape now presented a most misleading appearance. The road stretched away empty towards the horizon. Not a soul nor any sign of human activity was to be seen on either side of it except for the occasional flash of a camouflaged gun or the puff of smoke from a shell-burst; yet Gregory knew that the countryside was alive with men lying in ditches and concealed trenches. For the last hour he had been following the roadside ditch and a dozen times had had to fling himself down into it in order to escape shell fragments; but now he followed the tactics he had employed when crossing the battle-zone between Uccle and Brussels, going boldly forward in the centre of the road, except when it was positively dangerous to do so, and making himself as conspicuous as possible. After fifteen minutes' swift, and distinctly nerve-racking, walk he crossed a low ridge and drew level with some bushes. Suddenly a voice with a strong Lancashire accent cried:

'Hi, lad, coom 'ere an' giv' an account o' thyself!'

Switching round he saw that a British Tommy was covering him with a rifle. The man had not expected that his words would be understood, as he naturally imagined Gregory to be a Belgian, but his tone and attitude conveyed his meaning clearly enough. To the soldier's intense surprise Gregory replied: 'Ay, lad, I'll coom quietly if thou'llst take me to Colonel.'

'Ba goom!' The astounded Tommy grinned at three companions who had risen beside him to peer over the bushes. ' 'E coomes from Lancashire.'

'Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a Londoner,' Gregory smiled. 'I'm an Intelligence Officer and I want to see your Colonel as quickly as possible.'

The manner of the lad from Lancashire immediately changed to friendly respect and joining Gregory on the road he accompanied him another quarter of a mile along it until they reached a small wood.

Concealed in the wood lay a company headquarters and the Captain, having had a few words with Gregory, attached a runner to him to take him back to battalion headquarters.

Having covered half a mile with his new guide, during which they availed themselves of all the cover they possibly could to avoid being machine-gunned by German aircraft which had suddenly arrived overhead, they reached a barn inside which a Colonel and his adjutant were seated at a rickety table studying a map. Gregory said that he had just come through the enemy lines after having spent over a week in Brussels so he wished to make a report upon what he had seen of the enemy's activities there.

The Colonel replied that such information would be much more useful to Divisional Intelligence than to himself. Gregory agreed, but he spent ten minutes telling the Colonel all he could of the disposition of the German forces immediately opposite to him; then with yet another guide he set off once more.

Some way further on they had to cross a slightly higher ridge and, on looking back, Gregory could see the whole of the local battle-front spread out before him. Shells were bursting much more frequently now on both sides of no-man's-land and away to the right a German attack was developing. He could make out about thirty tanks, like huge fast-moving slugs, bumping their way over hedges and ditches. As he watched several of them were suddenly obscured by splashes of flame and clouds of smoke. A British battery had got their range and was giving it to them hot and strong. In spite of his anxiety to be on his way he felt that he must stay to witness the end of the action and five minutes later, when the smoke had cleared, he saw that a dozen of the German tanks had stopped and were burning fiercely while the others had turned tail and were hurrying back to the shelter of a nearby wood; yet another German attack had been broken.

On the far side of the hill they came to the remnants of a village which had been almost blasted to pieces and was still being shelled by the German heavies. Making a circle round it through the fields they regained the road on its far side and found there, under cover in an orchard, a number of small cars and motor-cycle combinations. The runner who was acting as Gregory's guide handed him over to one of the motor-cyclists, and when Gregory was comfortably installed in a side-car they set off at a good pace down the road. Soon they were passing other vehicles but their progress was delayed from time to time by having to dismount and take shelter from the machine-gunners of the German planes that were harassing the road; but a little over an hour later, having bumped along several curving side-roads, they pulled up at a small, white chateau.

After a short wait an orderly took Gregory in to a Staff-Captain and he spent the next hour dictating a long report, giving all the particulars he could about the German forces that were operating in the neighbourhood of Brussels. When he had done the Staff-Captain asked him to wait for a moment and left the room. Ten minutes later he returned to say that the Divisional Commander would like to see him.

'That's good,' Gregory smiled, standing up, 'as I was going to ask you if he could spare a moment to see me.'

The General looked a little tired but was as unhurried in his speech and as carefully groomed as though he were sitting in an office in Whitehall. For about a quarter of an hour he asked many penetrating questions, which Gregory answered clearly and briefly to the best of his ability. He then said:

'You know, sir, it was a surprise to find that the British were holding this sector. The Germans are under the impression that they're fighting the Belgians up here.'

The General nodded. 'That's quite understandable. Until early yesterday we were holding the line of the Scheldt, but the Belgians received such a terrific hammering that they were driven pell-mell out of Ghent; which exposed our flank. We had to retire to positions on the Lys and my division was sent north to support the Belgian left only last night.'

'What sort of view do you take of things, sir?' Gregory asked.

'They might be worse.' The General smiled a little thinly. 'Our men are proving magnificent. Nine out of ten of them have never seen active service before; but they're behaving like veterans. The trouble is the French having let us down so badly in the south and the enormous superiority which the Germans have in numbers. At Oudenarde, yesterday, where there was the hardest fighting that we've so far seen in the war, we estimated that the Germans had a superiority of at least four to one in men and more than that in tanks and guns. But I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me now because I have a lot to do.'

Gregory stood up at once. 'As you've gathered, sir, my job is Intelligence, and it's of the utmost importance that I should reach King Leopold's headquarters at the earliest possible moment. Can you tell me where they are situated now?'

The General frowned. 'It's being kept highly secret, because the poor fellow is being bombed so badly.

The same applies to Lord Gort's headquarters. These damned Fifth Columnists seem to smell us out wherever we go; almost before we've got our papers unpacked the bombers come over on information received from their spies. No, I'm afraid I can't tell you that.'

'Just as you like, sir, but the King's life may depend on it,' Gregory lied quietly. 'There's a plot against him, and if I don't get there in time we may all have reason to regret it.'

By the General's expression he saw that the trick was working, so he added: 'Naturally, it's up to you to take every precaution, and I can't offer you any real proof that I am not a German spy myself but...'

'That's just the trouble,' the General cut in frankly. "The information you've brought in checks with what we know already or suspect, so naturally one's inclined to accept you at your own valuation. But you have no credentials and admit yourself that you're not operating in any of the M.I. services; so you can hardly expect me to trust you with an important military secret.'

Gregory smiled. 'I was about to say, sir, that there must be some things few German agents could possibly know; for instance, how the rooms are arranged in some of our West-End clubs, the best years for vintage port, the etiquette of the hunting field, and what takes place during a levee at St. James's Palace. If you care to test me out with a few questions of that kind I think you'll find you can satisfy yourself that I'm all right.'

The General accepted the suggestion and for a few minutes he fired questions at Gregory until they found that they had several mutual acquaintances, details about whose idiosyncrasies and relatives brushed away the General's lingering hesitation, so he said: 'Well, as far as I know, King Leopold is now at Ostend, but more than that I can't tell you.'

'Thanks. Now, how d'you suggest that I should get there?'

'If the matter is as urgent as you say, I'd better lend you a car and a driver.'

'I'd be very grateful if you could, sir.'

'Come with me and I'll fix it up.' The General led Gregory outside and handed him over to the divisional transport officer, who waved him away ten minutes later.

It was now three o'clock in the afternoon and as Ostend was only some thirty miles away they should have got there under the hour, but the journey took three times that time, as the German planes barely left the traffic on the road alone for more than ten consecutive minutes, and after they had passed through Bruges they had to come down to walking pace because refugees from the city, which was now being bombed almost hourly, blocked the roads once more.

In Ostend the driver was going to set Gregory down on the promenade in front of the big hotels, many of which had now been turned by the Belgians into temporary Government offices; but he told the man that he would require the car until he located King Leopold's headquarters. A long and tiring inquiry then ensued.

The King was not at his Palace on the Plage and, whether they knew the situation of the King's headquarters or not, officers and officials denied all knowledge of it; so Gregory was reduced to driving round the town looking for groups of military motor-cars, on the theory that wherever a number of military cars are gathered together there is a headquarters. His main worry was that even if he succeeded in finding the right place, unless he actually happened to see the King through a window—which was most unlikely—everybody would deny that the King was there, so he might go on all night searching in vain; but he hoped that by the cars outside the place he might be able to establish whether the King was within.

After they had combed the town for an hour and a half unsuccessfully he ordered the driver to try the roads first to the north and then to the south, as far as the nearest villages upon each; and his first choice proved lucky. Some distance to the left of the road, about three miles to the north of Ostend and just at the entrance to the little inland village of Breedene, he noticed several cars lined up outside the gate of a big private house standing in its own grounds, so he told the chauffeur to drive down the side-road towards them. One of the cars was a complete give-away; on its bonnet it carried the Belgian Royal Standard. That was quite enough to inform him that he had located the King. The next thing was to find Erika.

Ordering the car back to the main road he stopped it there, got out, thanked the driver and sent him off; then he turned towards the houses. The light was now failing so he put his best foot forward and kept a sharp look-out to right and left as he hurried into the centre of the village to see if it contained a small hotel or pension. He had just drawn level with an epicerie when a familiar figure came out of the door carrying four bottles of wine—it was Kuporovitch. And with a shout of relief Gregory bounded forward to greet the amiable Russian.

Kuporovitch turned and, recognising him, in spite of his grubby appearance from having spent much of the day crouching in ditches, hailed him with delight. Five minutes later they entered a small house a hundred yards down the street and Gregory had Erika in his arms.

For half an hour they sat in a garishly-furnished little ground-floor sitting-room, holding hands, as they told each other of their experiences and narrow escapes during the past sixteen unforgettable days, while Kuporovitch remained discreetly withdrawn in an upper chamber; but they had only given each other an outline of their doings when the woman of the house came in to lay the table for supper.

Over the meal, which Kuporovitch shared with them, Gregory went into further details of his adventures but it was not until they had finished and their buxom landlady had cleared away that Gregory asked if he had been right in assuming that Erika was on the track of the Black Baroness.

She nodded. 'Yes. She is here in Breedene, and she's staying at the Chateau with the King.'

'That's bad,' said Gregory quickly.

'It is even worse than you think,' Kuporovitch cut in, and Erika added:

'Yes, Gregory; we're really up against it this time. Leopold has been driven half-crazy by sixteen days and nights of perpetual bombing. If we can't do something about it, I believe that in another twenty-four hours he will surrender, and Belgium will be out of the war.'

CHAPTER 19

A Night of Terror

'God!' exclaimed Gregory. 'But if the Belgian Army lays down its arms the northern flank of the B.E.F.

will be left naked in the air.'

Kuporovitch nodded. 'They are already outflanked in the south, where the Germans have reached Lille and St. Omer. If the Belgian Army cease fire the British will find themselves fighting on three fronts and will have no alternative but to abandon the coast they are defending and cut their way through, back to the main French Army.'

Gregory looked at Erika. 'Tell me what's been going on. I suppose the Baroness has been working on Leopold to make him chuck his hand in?'

'That's it; and I've been working on Leopold to make him stay the course.'

'You?'

Erika smiled. 'Yes. I'm Leopold's new girl-friend.'

Gregory made a grimace. 'I'm not at all certain that I like that. It's trying my patriotism a bit high.'

'You stupid darling!' Erika laughed. "The poor man is much too occupied with events and overwrought by what has happened to his country to make love to anyone; but it seems that he likes blondes. It was the Baroness's idea that his mind could be taken off the war for a little each evening if he was removed from his advisers for an hour or two into the more restful atmosphere of female society, and I put in for the job of the female. But, of course, the black lady's real intention was that while he was out of the clutch of his patriotic General Staff I should instil sweet poison into his ears and persuade him that he would serve his country better by throwing in the sponge.'

'You're a wonder,' Gregory grinned. 'But how on earth did you manage to persuade the Baroness that you were the right person for such a job?'

'It wasn't very difficult, my sweet. Paula is completely under Stefan's thumb, and when we heard that her boy-friend the Comte de Werbomont was evacuating to Ghent it stood out a mile long that Leopold was going there too. Then Stefan learnt that the Baroness was also to be of the party. It seemed to me then that you must have slipped up somewhere in Rotterdam, so I decided that I had better take a hand in the game, and when we reached Ghent I arranged for Paula to introduce me to the Baroness.'

'Wasn't that mighty dangerous?' Gregory hazarded. 'Paula knows that you're not a Norwegian at all but Erika von Epp; and if the Baroness learnt that she would put the Gestapo thugs on your tail in no time.'

'Paula knows; but she will not mention it,' Kuporovitch cut in. 'I have told her that if she lets out Erika's real identity I will wring her pretty neck.'

'I see. You've got Paula into the state of mind where she's prepared to double-cross her paymasters.'

The Russian's smile was cherubic as he replied: 'She does not know any longer if she is standing on her heels or her head; and believe me, she looks just as lovely in one position as in the other when she has no clothes on; the only thing she knows is that while I do not interfere with her ordinary duties she must do just as I tell her in all other ways.'

'Good,' muttered Gregory, turning back to Erika. 'So you were introduced to the Baroness. What then?'

'She took a fancy to me and when Paula vouched for me as pro-Nazi I could almost see the Baroness's brain turning over as to what way she could best make use of me. On the next day she sounded my feelings and having found that I was willing to give myself body and soul in the service of that scum, Adolf Hitler, she proceeded to tell me how the air-raids were making such havoc of poor Leopold's nerves and hinted that what he needed was a little relaxation from his tiresome Generals in the company of someone just like myself.'

'Yes; I get the layout now,' Gregory agreed swiftly; 'but what I don't quite see is why she should have chosen you—a comparative stranger to her—for such a vitally important job.'

'There are several reasons,' Erika told him. 'Firstly, you must remember that Paula vouched for my pro-Nazi sentiments. Secondly, while Belgium was still neutral, no special comment would have been aroused if Leopold had taken to himself a German or Austrian girl-friend, but now Belgium is at war his entourage would make the position of such a lady difficult if not impossible; whereas, they could raise no objection to a Norwegian. Thirdly, the Baronne's choice is probably very limited now that the country is in a state of upheaval from end to end. Lastly, although you may not have observed it yourself, quite a number of people have remarked that I am passably good-looking.'

'Pax—pax!' laughed Gregory. 'You win hands down. Of course, the second the Baroness set eyes upon your loveliness she must have realised that if you were willing to take on the job you were God's gift from Heaven; no man, half-crazy from bombing or not, could possibly fail to fall for you. But what sort of state did you find him in?'

Erika shook her head. 'Very difficult. The trouble is that the Nazis have been at him for years. After his wife died they planted a German mistress on him; then there's Professor Teirlinck of Heidelberg University, who is one of his closest friends, and that old tutor of his, de Man; both are rabid pro-Nazis and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, is as bad as either of them. All these people have preached the greatness of Hitler to him, and told him for so long that National Socialism is the cure for all ills, that his will to fight had already been seriously undermined before Belgium was invaded. He admires the Germans, their efficiency and particularly their Army, while he despises the French because their politicians are so crooked and their aristocracy is so decadent. He is very religious and he entered the war in all honesty, utterly shocked and disillusioned at the thought that the Nazis, whom he's been taught to regard as heroes, should have wantonly attacked him; but his Fifth Column friends have been dinning it into him that Hitler only invaded Belgium as a matter of strategic necessity and is perfectly willing to give him a decent deal any time he likes to ask for terms. As he is half convinced that Hitler will win anyhow, mine hasn't been an easy row to hoe; but fortunately his Cabinet and most of his Generals are pro-Ally so we've been managing to keep our end up, though how long we'll be able to do so now his Ministers have gone to Paris, God alone knows.'

'And what is the present situation?' Gregory asked.

'The situation is that in two minutes I must leave you for my evening's spell of duty. I shall be away for about an hour and a half. These sessions really last longer but I sit with him each evening now for about that length of time somewhere between ten o'clock and midnight. He is still keeping a brave face in front of his Generals and I think only the Baroness and myself, with one or two members of his personal entourage, realise the mental stresses that he's bottling up inside himself. He lets it all out to me, though, and for several days past he's been veering nearer and nearer to facing his staff and telling them that he means to quit. I'll let you know the latest directly I get back.'

As Erika stood up Kuporovitch and Gregory stood up with her and, having helped her on with her outdoor things, saw her off down the street.

When she had gone the two men settled down to drink some more of the Burgundy that Kuporovitch had bought earlier in the evening and Gregory asked the Russian to bring him up to date with the uncensored news which he had no opportunity of obtaining during his stay in Brussels.

Kuporovitch said that according to the British broadcasts the R.A.F. had been doing terrific work on the German troop concentrations and that at last they were going out practically every night to bomb the German cities. Hamburg and Bremen had already received several visits and during the previous week the power-station at Leipzig had been blown up. The British fighter aircraft were also very active and although they were greatly outnumbered by the enemy it was stated that Germany had lost 1,500 planes since the Blitzkrieg on the Low Countries had opened. In one case eleven Hurricanes had attacked ninety Junkers and Messerschmitts and had the best of the encounter. The British aircraft factories were now said to be working twenty-four hours a day and Lord Beaverbrook was performing prodigies of organisation which had called forth a magnificent response from the workers.

The Russian was a little vague about a new Act which the British Parliament had passed but said that the headlines had given it great prominence. Apparently, it virtually converted Britain into a totalitarian state, as the House had given the Government control over all persons and all property. They had also passed a Treachery Bill which made him laugh a lot, as it seemed quite inconceivable to him, having come from the land of the Ogpu, that Britain had been at war for nearly nine months without her judges having the power to pass the death sentence upon a German spy—even if he wounded Mr. Churchill so seriously that he was no longer in a fit state to carry on the nation's business but did not kill him, or elected to blow up Buckingham Palace provided that he did not cause actual loss of life by so doing. As a result of certain clauses in this bill Sir Oswald Mosley had been arrested with a number of other British Union of Fascist Leaders and also a Member of Parliament named Captain Maule Ramsay.

The invasion of the Low Countries had done in the United States the work that our own propaganda should have done many months earlier; it had brought home to the Americans the true facts about the world menace which the Allies were fighting, and the bombing of the hospitals, the machine-gunning of refugees and other acts of Nazi terrorism had swung American opinion to the point where the great Democracy in all but declaring war had now openly sided with Hitler's enemies. As had been expected by those who understood Russian policy, Hitler's successes in the Low Countries had caused Stalin to adjust the balance to the best of his ability by showing a cold shoulder to the Nazis and encouraging the Balkan States to resist further attempts by Berlin to dominate them.

On the previous evening fifteen French Generals had been dismissed from their commands and the French were now taking a new line with their war communiques. Instead of censoring all news except for official statements that everything was going splendidly, and that every withdrawal was according to plan, they admitted frankly that they had been taken by surprise in the Sedan sector by Hitler's heavy tanks and suffered grave reverses; but they declared that there was no cause for undue alarm as the position was well in hand and everything could be left with absolute confidence in the capable hands of their master strategist, General Weygand.

The British meanwhile appeared to have woken up to the fact that now that the Germans were in possession of the Channel ports it was quite possible that Britain might be invaded. In an extraordinarily short time they had formed a Home Defence army of men who had either not been called up or were over military age, and it had been announced that morning that a new evacuation was to take place in which all children were to be removed from the east and south-east coasts. In the same bulletin the news had gone forth that bluff General Ironside had been superseded by the younger, and reputedly more brilliant, Sir John Dill as Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

Kuporovitch had hardly finished giving Gregory these details when Paula came in. Up till that moment Gregory had not realised that she was staying in the same house, but accommodation in the village was extremely limited and the camp-followers of the Royal party were far too numerous to be accommodated in the Chatea. Paula's Count had managed to get off for a couple of hours that evening to give her dinner at the local estaminet but after a walk on the dunes, which lay between the village and the sea coast, he had had to drag himself away from his charmer to be in attendance in case the King required him.

Gregory did not wonder that the poor Count was badly smitten, for in spite of the nerve-racking experiences through which she was living Paula was glowing with youth and beauty.

She still believed that Gregory was Colonel-Baron von Lutz of the German Secret Service, so he regaled her with an interesting but entirely fictitious account of his doings since they had last met in Norway. He had, he said, got back to Germany in time for the invasion of the Low Countries, and with his splendid inventive powers he described the scenes of battle as the wedge of the German Army—which he had never seen—drove its way through central Holland to Rotterdam. He had just got to a description of the city as he had actually seen it in flaming ruins when a nearby church bell began to peal.

'Sacre nom!' exclaimed Kuporovitch. 'Another air-raid! Someone has given away the position of that wretched King yet again!'

'What do we do?' asked Gregory. 'Is there a cellar in this house where we can take cover?'

The Russian shook his head. 'No. I inquired of the landlady directly we arrived, but there is no cellar here, and not even a trench in the garden. We must just remain where we are and fortify ourselves with some more of this passably good Burgundy.'

As the planes moaned overhead they fell a little silent. It is one thing to be on a broad battle-field, or in some great city, when enemy planes come over and the chances are several thousand to one against their dropping their bombs within a mile of you, but it is a very different matter to be sitting in a small village within a few hundred yards of a building which you know to be the bull's-eye of a deliberately chosen enemy target.

Crump—crump—crump. Three bombs came down in rapid succession somewhere to the south, on the sand dunes. The windows rattled and the floor quivered a little, but no damage was done.

Crash! Another fell—much nearer. The floor-boards seemed to jump, the window shattered and the broken glass tinkled down behind the drawn curtains. Paula leant forward across the table and bit her thumb hard; she had gone very white. Gregory made no bones about it himself—he did not like it a little bit. Old soldiers never do. And as he caught Kuporovitch's eye they both knew that they were feeling the same about things; although the only way in which they showed their feelings was that they puffed a little more quickly at their cigarettes.

Suddenly a low whine overhead increased to a positive scream, there was an ear-splitting detonation followed by a reverberating roar. The whole house rocked, and for a second the table left the floor to fall back again with a thud as the glasses and bottles on it fell, rolled and smashed. Gregory was thrown sideways to the floor and Kuporovitch, in his seat opposite the window, was blown backwards so that his head hit the polished boards with a heavy thud. Paula gave one scream and collapsed across the table. A bomb had fallen in the street not a dozen yards from the window.

Half-stunned, Gregory and Kuporovitch picked themselves up, while fresh whines and crashes sounded further afield as the bomber passed over, but Paula did not stir. Her head was buried on her arms, which were splayed out among the spilt wine, and blood was gushing from her side. A bomb fragment had whizzed through the window and caught her under the left arm as she was leaning on the table. It had smashed her ribs and penetrated her heart, killing her almost instantly.

Kuporovitch stood over her, gently stroking her dark hair while he murmured, 'So young—so beautiful,'

and Gregory saw that large tears were streaming down his weather-beaten cheeks. In spite of the callous, casual way in which he had treated her, according to his own strange lights upon human relationships, the Russian had grown very fond of the beautiful German girl and it was obvious that he was suffering acutely at the thought that she was never to laugh again.

'Poor little devil,' Gregory said softly. 'None of us can blame her for what she was doing. It was those rotten Nazi swine who forced her to become a whore; it's pretty lousy, though, to think that in spite of all she did for them they got her in the end, Let's take her upstairs.'

Gently they carried her up to her bedroom and drew the coverlet over her warm-hued face which was now drained of blood but looked even more lovely in the peace of death. She could have felt little pain and she was gone now to a place where there were no Gestapo bullies to compel her to sell her body in exchange for her brother's life.

When they got downstairs again Kuporovitch took a bottle of brandy out of a cupboard and said: 'This is not my war, Gregory, but these Nazi swine shall pay for that. Not yet, though. You must not count upon me for help tonight in anything that you may decide to do; because I'm going to get drunk —I am going to get very drunk indeed—as drunk as only a Russian knows how.'

'O.K.,' said Gregory quietly. 'I'd keep you company and show you what an Englishman can do in that direction if it weren't that I may have to go out on the job when Erika gets back.'

Kuporovitch half-filled a tumbler with neat brandy and swigged the whole lot down, then he said: 'You'll notice, by the way, that they didn't bomb the Chateau.'

'No. Apparently not,' Gregory agreed. 'But what d'you infer from that?'

'Simply that they didn't mean to. Ever since we reached Ghent I've been living within a few hundred yards of King Leopold. I can't remember how many air-raids we've been through; I've lost count of them; but it's shown me one thing— they don't want to get the King—their game is to scare him. They drop the bombs any damned place where it's near enough for him to hear them crashing and they don't mind whom they kill in the meantime, but they haven't dropped a bomb yet that's even been remotely dangerous to him.'

'I get you,' Gregory nodded. 'If they blew him to bits the little Duke of Brabant would succeed, and he would simply be a puppet in the hands of his Ministers. Belgium would fight on, and that is not according to the Germans' programme. They want the Belgians out of the war so that they can encircle the British Army. Their game is not to bomb Leopold but to drop so many bombs all round him that he gets the jitters and lets his Allies down.'

'That's the game,' Kuporovitch agreed, tipping another quadruple brandy into his tumbler. 'Well, here's luck to you people who don't like Hitler! But now little Paula's dead and you're back with Erika there's not much point in my staying here. I can probably do just as good work for the Allies in France now the battle has become general. I think I'll set out for Paris tomorrow morning. D'you realise, Gregory, that it's May again—just think of it, Paris in May.'

'Just as you like, Stefan. You've been a good friend to us. I'll be truly sorry to lose touch with you, but maybe we'll come across each other later on.'

The door behind them opened suddenly and Erika stood there. 'Thank God you're both safe!' she whispered, and sat down with a little sigh.

'We're all right, but we had one casualty, and a fatal one, here just now,' Gregory told her, breaking the news as gently as possible.

'What?' Erika's eyebrows went up. 'The old landlady—or— or—Paula?'

'Yes, Paula. One of those damned bombs fell in the street and a splinter sailed through the window; it got her through the ribs, went right into her heart. Don't take it too badly, sweetheart; she could hardly have known what hit her. It was all over in ten seconds and she was dead before we could touch her.'

Great tears came into Erika's eyes as she murmured: 'Poor Paula—she was very young—and those Gestapo devils threatened they'd kill her brother if she didn't do just what they told her to do.'

T know,' Gregory nodded. 'But in some way she's well out of it. We're going to beat the Nazis yet—you know that—and what sort of future was there in store for her? Tell me about Leopold. I wouldn't ask you at the moment, but the lives of a quarter of a million British soldiers may hang upon it.'

Erika choked back her tears. 'He's worse—nearly at the end of his tether. He's one of those artistic, highly-strung people; he adored his wife, Astrid, you know, and he's never really got over her loss, although it's said that before the war he had an English mistress of whom he saw a lot on his visits to London. He knows perfectly well that he ought to fight on, and the memory of his father seems to haunt him; but so many people round him have always told him that Hitler is great and wise and good. He feels that every Belgian is being as badly bombed as he is and that he only has to ask the magnanimous Fuehrer for honourable terms and he'll get them and save his people from this nightly horror. That's why he sent his Cabinet to Paris. He's clever enough to realise that if they were with him they would bully him into holding out, and intimate pretty plainly that he was a coward if he even suggested caving in. But they're out of the way now, and the final decision lies entirely with him. He's only got to sign an order and the Belgian Army will pack up. It was all I could do tonight to make him promise me that he wouldn't do anything until he had seen a friend of mine.'

Kuporovitch emptied another quarter bottle of brandy into his tumbler as Gregory looked up inquiringly.

'Yes,' Erika said, 'it's you I mean. You've got to talk to him. He's not even mentioned what he's feeling to his Generals or to the high Allied officers who are attached to his person; he's terrified of what they might say to him, but he'll take it from an outside person who is introduced by myself. You're a wonderful psychologist, darling, and you understand the tortuous ways of the human heart better than anybody that I've ever met— even Hugo, who was so marvellous. He's a pathetic figure, Gregory, showing a brave face each day and breaking down each night. You've got to hold his hands and put your immense strength into him to save him from himself and from the shame that will attach to him for all time if he surrenders.'

'All right,' Gregory said gently. 'If you feel that it's up to me, I'll do everything I possibly can. When am I to see him?'

'Not until tomorrow morning. He hasn't slept for nights, but when I left him he was going to turn in and his doctor had promised to give him a really strong dose of Medinol. Orders are being given that he's not to be woken, however grave any fresh news that may come in, so it's to be hoped that in spite of the bombs he may sleep right through and be more his own man tomorrow.'

'In that case,' said Gregory, 'we'd better try to get some sleep ourselves.'

Erika sighed as she stood up. 'Yes, darling. If only those devils Goering is sending over will let us.'

Kuporovitch emptied the remaining contents of the brandy bottle into his glass and grinned at them.

'Sleep well, my children; I'm staying where I am. By the grace of God there are another three bottles of brandy in that cupboard and either I'll finish them or they'll finish me.'

He raised his glass on high, and added: 'Blessings on you; we'll meet in Paris yet—Paris in the sunshine, eh?'

'Pray God we may,' Gregory muttered.

Erika said: 'Goodnight, Stefan dear,' and Gregory followed her out into the passage and up to her bedroom on the first floor.

In the last days they had become so used to the scores of tragedies that were occurring every minute within a few miles of them that normally, having found each other again, they would have shut the tortured world around them out of their minds for a few hours to rejoice in being together once more; but Paula's death had brought things so near to them that it had robbed them both of any desire for love-making. As at any moment they might find themselves in the midst of another air raid, they took off only their shoes and outer garments, then lay down together on the bed. The night was so sultry that they did not even draw the coverlet over them.

The raiders came again, again and again; casting their bombs sometimes into the fields north of the Chateau, sometimes on the sand dunes and sometimes right into the village itself. In intervals between their clinging together as the louder crashes reverberated and the whole house shook they dozed, until at last the grey daylight began to filter through the drawn blind. The air-raids eased a little after that and for a couple of hours they slept, but awoke again with a start to the sound of more exploding bombs quite close to them. As full daylight had now come, they washed and tidied themselves as well as they could in the poky little bedroom that in a normal year would have been occupied by some holiday-maker whose resources were extremely limited.

On going downstairs they found Kuporovitch lying sprawled across the sitting-room table in a drunken slumber; but he had beaten the brandy. All four bottles stood in a neat row before him—empty.

They tried to wake him to get him up to bed, but he was absolutely and completely out. Had a bomb fallen in the room he would have known nothing about it, but been blown to pieces in his sleep. Gregory got him over his shoulders, carried him upstairs, undressed him and put him in Erika's bed, since the only other lodger's room was that which he had shared with Paula and now sacred to its lone, still occupant.

Meanwhile Erika went in search of breakfast and as she was investigating the contents of a cupboard in the small kitchen the woman who owned the house came in. She had spent the night in a neighbour's cellar and on Erika's telling her of Paula's death she promised to go and fetch the village undertaker when she had heated up some coffee and cooked some eggs for them. While the meal was being prepared Erika and Gregory tidied the garishly-furnished sitting-room. The hot coffee revived them a little and they forced themselves to eat the eggs although they did not feel in the least hungry. Afterwards Erika said she would go round to the Chateau and find out when the King would receive Gregory, while he saw the undertaker and made arrangements about Paula's funeral.

Breedene was only a little place and the undertaker proved to be the village carpenter. He said that he already had seven orders for coffins on his hands and so could not possibly promise to furnish one for Paula until the next day. But Gregory felt that all of them would like to see Paula properly buried, and Heaven alone knew where the following day would find them, so he produced a thousand-franc note, at the sight of which the carpenter promised to give his order priority and have everything ready for the funeral to take place at midday.

Shortly afterwards Erika returned. She had not been able to see the King but had sent in a message by the Comte de Werbomont, after breaking the news of Paula's death to him. The Count had been terribly cut up but he had pulled himself together and seen King Leopold, returning with a written message for Erika, which read:

‘I had a good night's sleep and am feeling better. There will be conferences going on all day so I cannot see you before this evening, but as you are so insistent that I should talk to your friend bring him to the Chateau at ten o'clock. I give you my word that in the meantime I will not take any final decision.'

It was a perturbing thought that they must wait twelve long hours before anything further could be done to strengthen the King's will to resistance when so much hung in the balance; but they could only endeavour to possess themselves in patience.

'Do you happen to know Paula's religion?' Gregory asked.

'She came from a south German family and I'm certain that she was a Catholic,' Erika replied at once.

Gregory nodded. 'That's fortunate, as I don't expect we'd be able to find a Protestant pastor without going to Ostend. As it is, the local man can bury her; I'll go and fix matters up with him.'

While he was away Erika performed the last rites for her friend. The carpenter arrived at midday with the coffin and four villagers to act as bearers, with a farm wagon for hearse. One of them was sent off to tell the Comte de Werbomont that the funeral was about to take place and he joined them at the churchyard. Gregory kept himself well in the background, among the little group of villagers who had gathered round the open grave, in order to avoid any necessity arising for Erika to introduce him to the Count, a tail, thin man who with her took the place of chief mourner. Kuporovitch was still lying in a drunken stupor.

Erika and the Count walked back along the village street together, with Gregory following at a distance.

The Count left her at the door of the house in which she was staying and Gregory joined her inside two minutes later. When he asked if she had any news as to how things were going she said:

'The Count told me just now that the French are still holding the line of the Somme in the south and that further north the Germans seem to have been halted at Calais, but their corridor from Luxemburg to the coast is now about fifty miles wide. The Northern Armies have been forced into a compact triangle with only a short base along the strip of coast between Zeebrugge and Gravelines, and such a succession of hammer-blows are being delivered against the left side of the triangle it is feared that the Belgian Armies there may be battered to pieces.'

There had been only two air-raids during the morning, but during the afternoon they came almost hourly.

The landlady had disappeared again and Gregory did not like to leave Kuporovitch, who was still sleeping off his debauch, but he tried to persuade Erika to take refuge in the crypt of the church. She flatly refused, saying that if Fate ordained that he was to be killed she would rather die with him than live on without him, so they curled up on the sofa and got what rest they could, not knowing what activities the night might hold in store for them.

At seven o'clock they went downstairs and cooked themselves a meal; then they sat smoking in the sitting-room until a little before ten, when it was time for them to go to the Chateau. As darkness had fallen the raids had become still more intensive. Many buildings were down and the northern end of the village was on fire. Fortunately the wind was blowing from the south and Gregory did not think that there was any likelihood of the fire's spreading in the direction of their house so that Kuporovitch might be burnt in bed while he still slept, but he was considerably worried as to the effect that this almost continuous aerial bombardment might be having upon the mind of the King.

At the Chateau the servants, who knew Erika, let her pass but they would not allow Gregory through, so she sent in for de Werbomont and taking him aside told him that Gregory must remain nameless but the King had expressed a desire to see him. The Count then gave instructions that Gregory was to be allowed to enter, but the Captain of the Guard asked him to hand over any weapon that he might be carrying, so he had to surrender his pistol; de Werbomont then took them both into a small writing-room and left them.

A few minutes later he returned to fetch them and they followed him through the main hall. The Chateau was being used as the headquarters of the Belgian Army and Staff Officers were constantly coming and going through the passages; but they passed from the bustle and ringing of telephone bells down a short staircase to a basement corridor where everything was divided into two by a pair of heavy curtains. In normal times it had evidently been used as a recreation room, as a billiards table had been pushed up against one wall and an archery target still stood against another; but the place was now half filled with the King's luggage and personal belongings. Signing to Erika and Gregory to wait, de Werbomont tiptoed forward, parted the curtains, and said something in a low voice; then he held one of the curtains aside and beckoned the others to go through.

Although the day had once more been as warm as midsummer the King was almost crouching in an armchair near a tiled stove. Erika made her curtsy and Gregory bowed as the curtains closed behind them. The King smiled feebly and motioned them to come forward. He looked incredibly tired and very ill. Gregory had always thought of him as a young man—almost a boy—but in spite of his slim figure and fair, curling hair he now looked well on into middle age.

Erika placed her finger on her lips and they all remained silent for a moment; then she stepped back and looked through the curtains. That's all right,' she said, without any ceremony, 'de Werbomont has gone. I thought he might be listening. Have I your permission, sir, to tell the sentry on the door that we are not to be disturbed?'

'Yes, Yonnie; yes, tell him that if you wish.'

Gregory suppressed a start at hearing the King call Erika Yonnie; he had forgotten for the moment that Leopold knew her only as the Norwegian, Yonnie Rostedal.

While Erika was absent Gregory remained silent, waiting to be addressed; but the King seemed hardly to be aware of his presence and sat staring at the floor. When Erika came back she said at once: 'May I present to Your Majesty Mr. Gregory Sallust? If you will talk to him as you have talked to me, I feel certain that you will find him a wise counsellor.'

Leopold roused himself and spoke with some dignity: 'I am sorry not to have been able to receive you, Mr. Sallust, at a happier time. I understand that Madame Rostedal has told you how I feel, but perhaps it would be better if I put my position to you myself. Please sit down, both of you, and help yourselves to cigarettes. There are drinks on the side-table, too, if you want them.'

Gregory and Erika both took cigarettes but they declined the drinks, and as they seated themselves Leopold went on: 'Four-fifths of my country, including its capital and all its principal cities, with the exception of Bruges and Ostend, are now in the hands of the enemy. For seventeen days and nights the people have been bombed, shelled and machine-gunned unmercifully. Apart from Brussels, which we saved from any serious damage by declaring it an open town, two-thirds of my cities are in ruins and a million of my people lie dead or wounded. Only a little over thirty miles to the north of us my Armies are still holding out, but the casualties they have suffered are utterly appalling and fresh German divisions are constantly being hurled against them. No one can say that Belgium has failed in her obligation to her Allies when she called them to her assistance. She has been martyred from end to end, and the resistance of her people has been an epic of heroism. They have endured beyond anything that was believed possible.

How can I ask them to endure yet further? I feel now that this murder of a whole nation cannot be allowed to go on one moment longer.'

'Sire,' said Gregory, 'the world knows what Belgium has done and honours her for it, but what will be the use of this great sacrifice your people have already made if for want of enduring to the end they are to be cast into slavery? You say that four-fifths of your country is already in the hands of the enemy but last time, when nineteen-twentieths was in the hands of the enemy, your great father still fought on.'

Leopold made an impatient gesture. 'My father—my father —everybody throws my father at my head.

We all know that he was a lionhearted saint, but I'm sick to death of being told so.'

Seeing that he had got on to the wrong tack Gregory tried another. 'Tell me, sir; which side do you think really has the best chance of emerging victorious from the present war?'

'How can one possibly say?' the King shrugged. 'At the time of Munich I would have put every cent I had on Hitler, but Chamberlain got you a year to prepare. Even last September I considered the odds to be two to one in favour of Germany. Hitler has welded the German nation into such a magnificent weapon and his Air Force was at least three times the size of those of Britain and France combined. It seemed that when he struck his blow must prove irresistible; but for some reason best known to himself he did not strike, and you gained a further eight months. Every day gained by Britain lessened the chance of a Blitzkrieg succeeding, and Hitler can't stand a long war, so by April I felt that the odds had become quite a bit in favour of the Allies. But look what the Germans have done in the last three weeks; it's fantastic, almost unbelievable, yet not really so very different from what de Man always told me they would do. The eight-months' respite Hitler gave you doesn't seem to have made the least difference. At the rate you've been going it will be years before you can put as many planes in the air as Goering, and if Hitler goes on as he has been going it looks as if he'll put the whole lot of us out of the war in another month.'

Gregory shook his head. 'I'm afraid, sir, that you're taking only the short view. When you look at the map of Europe Britain is only a very small place compared with the territory that Hitler now dominates; but if you look at the map of the world, you see a very different picture. Even the whole Continent of Europe then becomes a small place; whereas the might of Britain stretches out over six continents and the seven seas. As long as the British Navy rules the waves Hitler will never conquer Britain. It may, as you say, take us years to build up a great Air Force and a great Army, but in the meantime the blockade will be doing our work for us, and while Britain is growing in strength things will be getting worse and worse in Germany, so that when at last we are able to take the offensive Hitler's defeat will be absolutely inevitable.'

'I know, I know.' With his hands clasped round his knees Leopold rocked from side to side. 'But what is to happen in the meantime? Men, women and children are being killed by the thousand, and I can't allow it to go on.'

'You admit, though, sir, that sooner or later the Allies are bound to triumph?'

'Perhaps. Yes, I suppose so. In all but an open declaration they've got America behind them now, so if they can stick it they'll probably Wear Hitler down in the end.'

'Then, it comes to a question as to when that end is to be. Britain will certainly not make peace until the Nazis are finished, so the only way of stopping the slaughter is for all of us to concentrate our efforts on defeating them at the earliest possible moment.'

'Of course—of course. But Belgium has already done everything of which she is capable.'

'No,' said Gregory. 'There, sir, I can't agree. It still lies in your hands as to whether the war is to be brought to a victorious conclusion in one or two years or not for three or four; and think of the hundreds of thousands of deaths that will lie at your door if it is allowed to drag on for that extra year or two.'

'I don't understand you. How can what I decide make such an enormous difference? I doubt if my Armies can hold out for another two or three days.'

'But it is just those two or three days which may mean the difference of two or three years later on. You see, sir, if you order your troops to cease fire now, the British and the three northern French Armies will be outflanked from the north as well as from the south, and they may sustain a major defeat in consequence. If Britain lost, say, fifty per cent of the B.E.F. in one great military disaster the damage to our future war effort would be almost incalculable. It is upon those regular troops that we rely to stiffen arid lead our militiamen, when their training at home has been sufficiently advanced for them to be sent overseas. If thousands of our most experienced officers and N.C.O.s are killed fighting a desperate rearguard action it is going to take us three times as long to make our new Armies effective in the field.

That is why it is absolutely imperative to the Allied cause that you should fight on and by further sacrifices enable us to shorten the length of the war.'

The King took out a handkerchief and wearily mopped his face. 'Yes; I see plainly enough that if the British first-line Army is destroyed it will take you years to build up another of anything like its quality, but it wasn't my fault that the French gave way in the south; and that's the real trouble. Now that the Northern Armies are cut off it is impossible to reinforce them, so you can consider the B.E.F. as good as lost. The fact of my Army's fighting on for another few days won't save it.'

'But it will,' Gregory insisted, 'if immediate action is taken. The B.E.F., the three French Armies and the Belgian Army together, must number at least a million fighting men. Hitler is said to have four million men under arms but more than half of them must be fighting on the southern front or doing garrison duty at home, in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway and Holland. The odds against the Northern Armies can't really be more than two to one, so nothing like sufficient to overwhelm the huge force we have at our disposal, in a few days' fighting.

'Listen, sir.' Gregory sat forward and went on. 'What I suggest is that you should get on to Lord Gort, the French Commander and your own C.-in-C. and make them settle a new plan between them to throw the whole weight of this million-strong Army in the direction of Menin and Lille, with a breakthrough to the Somme as their objective. I fully appreciate that owing to its present position your own Army will have to form the rearguard and that in such a movement many thousands of men are bound to be killed and captured, but the Germans are now fighting on such a long front that they couldn't possibly resist the weight of a million men hurled at one thirty-mile sector between Bailleul and Tournai. The Northern Armies might lose a hundred thousand—two hundred thousand—men, and you'd have to give up all that is left to you of Belgium, but in such a case even such frightful sacrifices are of comparatively little moment. The thing is that at least three-quarters of a million men would get through, they would win a great victory by cutting off all the German divisions between Albert and the coast and within a week they would have stabilised a new, solid Allied front in the fortified zone which was being held by the British and French before you called them in to help you.'

'It might be done—it might be done,' muttered the King; 'but think of the slaughter.'

Under his breath Gregory cursed. He had caught the sound of planes again, and a moment later the bombs roared down. Leopold sat there, his hands clasped tightly together, his knuckles showing white.

Suddenly he sprang up, crying:

'No, no! What's the use? My own Army would be absolutely cut to ribbons. I'll not do it! I'm going to save what's left of it.'

Gregory too had risen. 'Listen, Sire,' he pleaded. 'I'm absolutely convinced that if you ordered the bulk of your Army to retire secretly tonight while a number of units were sacrificed to keep the Germans occupied, and if the British and French commanders gave orders for every man they've got to be flung at the enemy at dawn tomorrow, we'd take the Germans by surprise and make a break-through. But if you won't do that, at least hang on for a few more days to give the French a chance to come to our assistance.'

Leopold shook his head. 'They won't do that.'

'Why not? Two-thirds of the French Army have not yet been in action, and it's eight days since Weygand was appointed Generalissimo. He's had time by now to make new dispositions for a counter-offensive. The Germans have been going all out for seventeen days. By this time their lines of communication must be stretched practically to breaking point and their effort almost exhausted.

Weygand is perhaps the finest strategist in the world. It's virtually certain that he will have been massing a Reserve army somewhere west of Paris and the moment the Germans show signs of weakening he'll launch it north, on Lille. You simply must hang on to give him his chance to restore the whole situation, by breaking through to us since you're not willing to try and break through to him.'

'So you trust Weygand?' the King asked suddenly.

'Good God, why not?' Gregory exclaimed in astonishment.

'I don't. I've never liked the French. That's why I didn't want my Ministers to go to Paris; but they overruled me. You British are too trusting. You think that the French are heart and soul in this with you because Reynaud and Daladier have made some fine speeches; but half the French politicians are rotten, or in Hitler's pay, and if they had the chance they'd stab you in the back tomorrow. If you have any influence with your own Government, tell them to watch the French—and Weygand in particular. There, now I've warned you.'

'Really, sir,' Gregory protested with a smile, 'I think you're taking rather an exaggerated view of things.

We all know that there are pro-Nazis like Bonnet among the French, but I find it very difficult to believe that their greatest living General is a traitor.'

Leopold shrugged. 'All right; I don't blame you—I don't know myself what to believe—that's just the trouble. Half my friends say one thing and half another. There's the Baroness. She's far better informed than most people, and she's been at me for days to chuck my hand in. She says that Hitler has no quarrel with me, or the French, but that it's the British he's determined to smash once and for all. She says that if I ask for an Armistice Hitler will give me decent terms, re-establish my pre-war frontiers and leave me in peace to rule my people. She even adds that he will help me to rebuild my shattered country. On the other hand, there's Yonnie here, who's fooled the Baroness into believing that she's a Nazi. She says that having called the Allies to my assistance, and exposed them to the full onslaught of the superior German forces in open country, I am in honour bound to carry on the war as long as there is a Belgian soldier left capable of standing upright with a rifle in his hand. She tells me that it is better that I should lose every square mile of my country— perhaps for years—perhaps for ever— than that I should lose my soul.

What am I to do? Who am I to believe? I don't know—/ don't know!'

'Sir,' said Gregory. 'Why not leave the country? Your co-ruler, the Queen of Holland, has provided you with an admirable precedent; why shouldn't you take the same course? Come with us now in one of your cars to Ostend. There are British ships in the harbour. Within four hours we'll have you in London, where you'll be free of these damnable air-raids. Then you'll be able to think clearly. Let your Commander-in-Chief carry on for the moment, then tomorrow you can take the final decision in an atmosphere of calm; which is so absolutely essential to weighing such a weighty question.'

The King stood up. For a moment Gregory thought that he had won. If only he could get Leopold to London, Churchill would imbue him with his lion's spirit and there would be no more talk of Belgium's going out of the war. But once more the accursed droning of aeroplanes came overhead and the bombs crashed and thundered in the fields a few hundred yards away.

'I can't—I can't!' cried the distraught King. 'They're killing my people throughout the length and breadth of Belgium as we sit here. No—no—no! The German emissaries are waiting upstairs to hear my decision. I've kept my word to you, Yonnie. I promised that I wouldn't sign anything until I had seen your friend, but now I'm through—I'm going to make an end before they kill us all.'

Suddenly starting from his chair Leopold dashed through the curtains and above the roar of the bombs that were still falling they heard him at the door shouting an order.

Erika and Gregory looked at each other. 'What can we do? What can we do?' she murmured.

Gregory made a little helpless gesture with his hands. 'If Hitler's representatives are here already, God knows; but we must make a last effort to stop him somehow.'

CHAPTER 20

Between Life and Death

For a few moments they stood there racking their brains in anxious silence; then the King returned, followed by two strangers. Both were obviously German. The one had the thin, shrewd face of a diplomat; the other looked curiously out of his element in the dark lounge-suit that he was wearing, and Gregory felt certain that he was a General. They both bowed formally to Erika and marched stiffly behind the King to a desk in one corner of the low room, at which he plumped himself down, exclaiming:

'Well, give it to me.'

The German who looked like a diplomat unlocked a flat black satchel that he was carrying and took from it two sheets of paper. One was a handwritten letter; probably, Gregory thought, a personal assurance from Hitler that if Leopold asked for an Armistice Belgium would receive generous treatment.

The other had only a few lines of typescript on it and looked like a formal and unconditional request for a cessation of hostilities.

The King read the letter through, unlocked a drawer in his desk, slipped the letter inside and relocked it.

He then picked up the other paper and reached out his hand for his pen. Suddenly Erika started towards him:

'Not yet,' she gasped. T beg you not to sign that paper yet.'

The German in the dark lounge-suit took a step forward as though about to lay a hand upon her, but Gregory placed himself between them and stood there scowling at him.

'Sire,' Erika hurried on, 'if you once put your signature to that paper you will go down in history as a traitor and a coward. You mustn't do it—you mustn't! If you cannot face the obligations into which you have entered you must let others do so for you.'

Leopold turned to stare at her. His face looked old and haggard, but his mouth was now set in a hard, wilful line that his entourage knew well as marking the pig-headed moods to which he was often subject.

For a moment he remained silent, then he spoke:

'I know perfectly well what I'm doing. This is my business— my responsibility. You and your friend ....'

The rest of his sentence was drowned in the roar of a bomb.

Erika had gone round behind the desk and was close beside the King. As the bomb crashed she had been fumbling in her handbag. Suddenly, her blue eyes blazing, she pulled out a small automatic and thrust it at him.

'Here,' she cried, 'Rather than betray your Allies, it is better that you should blow out your brains; and if you haven't the courage to do that I'll do it for you.'

Gregory heard her words but he was still facing the Germans and had his back towards her. He never knew if she was actually threatening the King with the pistol. At that instant, out of the corner of his eye he saw the curtains move. The Black Baroness stepped through them and in her hand she, too, held a pistol.

Even as Gregory sprang forward it flashed twice. Erika screamed, stood swaying beside the King for a moment, then fell right across him.

Gregory swung round in an agony of fear. He was just in time to see her fall before the two Germans flung themselves upon him. He stalled one of them off with a glancing blow across the face; but the other closed with him and for a moment they struggled wildly. There was a trampling of heavy feet; the sound of the shots had alarmed the armed sentry on the door. Thrusting the Baroness aside he dashed into the room and, covering both Gregory and the German with his rifle, yelled at them to put up their hands.

Flushed and cursing they relaxed their holds. Erika had lost consciousness and the King now stood with her limp form in his arms.

'You've killed her! You've killed her!' he screamed hysterically at the Baroness. 'I'll have you shot for this.'

She had slipped the automatic back into the pocket of a little silk coat that she was wearing and she curtsied as calmly as though Leopold had offered to take her in to dinner.

'As it please Your Majesty,' she said in her soft, musical voice, 'but when I came into the room I saw Madame Rostedal threatening you with a pistol and I was under the impression that I had saved your life.'

'That's a lie—a lie!' roared Gregory. 'You shot her deliberately, because you knew that she was trying to persuade the King not to sign that accursed paper. But I'll deal with you later. For God's sake, somebody get a doctor!'

Ignoring the threat of the sentry's rifle he strode across to Leopold. Almost snatching Erika from the King's arms, he carried her over to a sofa, where he knelt down beside her to see if she was dead or only badly wounded. There were two little round holes in her breast that were oozing blood, and as he knelt there staring at them there came the drone of a fresh flight of German bombers. The King, now overwrought beyond endurance, yelled at the sentry:

'Get out! Get out—and fetch a doctor!' Then swinging on the Baroness. 'You, too, get out, I say.

Perhaps you meant to save my life—perhaps you didn't—how do I know? But get out of this room—get out, all of you!'

The Baroness bobbed again and withdrew without any sign of hurry, while the sentry ran to get the King's doctor; but the two Germans did not move. The one who looked like a diplomat pointed at the paper on the desk, and said: 'If you will sign that now, sir, we can take it with us.'

The building shook as a new stick of bombs rained down, this time on the village. Seizing a pen, the King scrawled his signature, flung the pen down and shouted above the din: 'There! Take it! And for God's sake stop this ghastly bombing!'

'At once, sir.' The German bowed stiffly as he picked up the paper. 'We can get a message through to our headquarters in about ten minutes.' His companion also clicked his heels and bowed, then they both marched from the room.

The King took out his handkerchief, mopped his perspiring face and walked over to Gregory^

'How is she?' he muttered.

'Not dead—thank God!' Gregory murmured. 'But I'm afraid for her—terribly afraid. Both bullets got her through the left lung and it's on the knees of the gods as to whether she'll live or die.'

A moment later the doctor came hurrying in. He made a swift examination and said: 'We must get her to bed at once.'

'That's it,' nodded Leopold. 'That's it; do everything you possibly can for her. I shall be leaving in half an hour; this place has too many awful memories for me to stay here a moment longer than I have to, but I wish you to remain. Don't leave Madame Rostedal until she is out of danger or—or. . .' he trailed off miserably.

'Thank you, sir,' Gregory said quickly. 'But by your recent act you have altered the whole situation; the Germans are now the masters in this part of Belgium. The Baronne de Porte heard what Madame Rostedal said to you. That will be reported; if she lives the Germans will take her into custody and directly she is well enough they'll execute her. If she can possibly be moved I must get her away before they arrive here; so if you're leaving yourself I should be grateful if you would have a car and chauffeur left at my disposal.'

The doctor shook his head. 'Even if she survives she won't be fit to be moved for several weeks.'

'Never mind!' snapped Gregory. 'That is the least that His Majesty can do for her.'

Leopold nodded. 'Certainly. Doctor Hobenthal, please to give orders that my ambulance is to remain behind with you.'

Two servants were summoned. They fetched a tall, threefold screen, which they placed on the floor near the couch, then they laid Erika gently on it and using it as a makeshift stretcher carried her from the room.

The doctor had gone ahead and Gregory brought up the rear of the little procession; just as he reached the curtain he turned. The King was now alone and they faced each other across the room as Gregory said:

'I understand why you did what you have done, and I am not without sympathy for you. It was quite plain to all of us that in your hour of trial you were not great enough as a man to bear the strain that fell upon the King—but the world will not understand; and for all the years that are left to you your name will be held in contempt by all decent people.' Then with bowed shoulders he stumbled after the stretcher-bearers who carried the dear, still, white-faced figure that was more to him than his own life.

All through the night he sat by Erika's bedside while a hospital nurse, who was now in attendance, waited at its foot and the doctor tiptoed in every hour or so to make a new estimate of the patient's chances. She was out of her physical body and attached to it only by the slender, silver cord, the breaking of which means the difference between sleep and death. It was impossible to say if it would snap and she would never be able to reanimate her physical form or if that tenuous, spiritual thread would hold and she would once again open her lips to smile or sigh.

When morning came there was no change, but the doctor and nurse could not persuade Gregory to go to bed, or even to lie down. As he sat there he was not thinking of anything—his brain seemed numb—but he felt no need of sleep and sat on, unmoving, as the hours drifted by. The air-raids had ceased by the time they had got Erika to bed and the King had departed with his entourage a quarter of an hour later, so it was now very silent in the Chateau.

Shortly after midday Erika opened her eyes and moaned. The nurse sent a housemaid running for the doctor. For ten awful minutes Gregory waited for the verdict. Then the doctor said:

'There is nothing to tell you, my friend, except that now she has come round she stands a fifty-fifty chance. We shan't know which way matters will go for at least another twenty-four hours, unless she has a sudden collapse, so I insist that you must now go to bed.'

Gregory agreed quite meekly, but with Erika's temporary return to semi-consciousness his own mental powers came back to him and he wondered if Kuporovitch had survived the air raids of the previous night, so he asked the doctor to send somebody to find out; then he undressed and got into a bed which had been made up for him in the next room.

He awoke at ten o'clock that night and found that somebody had put a dressing-gown on a nearby chair for him, so he got up, put it on and went in to see if there was any news of Erika. He found a different nurse, and Kuporovitch looking extremely woebegone, in the room, but the nurse had nothing fresh to report about Erika's state, so he beckoned to Kuporovitch and they went outside to converse in whispers.

The Russian was suffering from such an appalling hangover that he could hardly think coherently, but he said that directly he had heard what had happened he made up his mind not to go to Paris yet; he could not desert his friends at such a time.

Gregory was glad to have his company and very grateful, but he pointed out that now that the Belgian Army had surrendered the Germans might be entering Ostend at any hour. Kuporovitch shrugged his broad shoulders and said that, after all, the Germans had nothing against him, so he had nothing to fear from them. On the contrary, it was Gregory whose life would be forfeit if he were captured. Gregory knew that well enough, but wild horses would not have dragged him from Erika's side. All the same, he was extremely anxious to know how long they had, so he sent Kuporovitch off to pick up what news he could.

The Russian was away for about half an hour. When he returned he said that there were still a few officers of the Staff downstairs, who had told him that they did not think that the Germans would be in Ostend until the following afternoon. He had also arranged about a bed for himself in the now almost empty Chateau, and after partaking of a scratch meal with the doctor they went to bed about midnight.

Having slept his fill that afternoon and evening, Gregory got up several times during the night to inquire about Erika, but the nurse had nothing new to tell him. Early on the Wednesday morning, however, Erika became conscious for longer spells and was in great pain.

At eleven o'clock Gregory saw the doctor, who said that he thought that the patient now had a 3 to 1

chance of recovery.

'And what will it be if we move her?' Gregory asked almost in a whisper.

The doctor gave a little shrug. 'If you were to do that the odds would be the other way; a 3 to 1 chance of death. I know the difficulty you are in but I cannot possibly take any responsibility for her life if you move her so soon.'

Gregory then had to make the most difficult decision he had ever been called upon to take. If she were once caught behind the German lines he knew that with all his ingenuity he would never be able to get her through, semi-conscious and at death's door as she was; and he had not the least doubt that the Black Baroness had already reported her to the Gestapo for endeavouring to prevent King Leopold from signing the request for an armistice. Within an hour of German troops arriving on the scene Grauber's men would have her in their clutches, her real identity would soon be discovered, and when that came out there would not be one chance in a thousand of her escaping execution when she was well enough to walk to the headman's block.

It was that mental assessment 'once chance in a thousand' which decided Gregory. Twenty-five chances in a hundred were infinitely better, so he must take this horrible risk even though by his own decision he might bring about her death. Turning to the doctor, he said:

'If she remains here the Germans will execute her for certain. Therefore she must be moved. Will you ask one of the servants to pack up some cold food for us from anything that remains in the larder and make arrangements for us to start at twelve o'clock.'

The Royal ambulance was a spacious and thoroughly up-to-date affair so there was ample room for the two nurses to travel inside with the doctor while Gregory and Kuporovitch sat beside the driver. With deliberate slowness they crawled along the coast-road back to Ostend and through it towards Nieuport and Furnes, making no more than ten miles an hour, and even less where they struck a bumpy piece of road. At Nieuport they pulled up and the doctor spent some time in a telephone booth. He came back to say that every hospital and nursing-home in Furnes was crowded with British wounded but that some friends of his had agreed to take Erika into their private house.

They proceeded on their journey, arriving at Furnes shortly after three o'clock. The doctor's friends were a Monsieur and Madame Blanchard, a plump, prosperous, middle-aged couple, who received them with great kindness and did everything in their power to make the party comfortable. Erika was carried up to a bright bedroom hung with gay chintz, and the doctor and nurses were accommodated in the house. But there was not enough room for the others so it was decided that Gregory, Kuporovitch and the driver should sleep on three of the stretchers in the ambulance, which was housed in Monsieur Blanchard's garage.

All things considered, the doctor thought that Erika had sported the journey well, but one of her wounds had begun to bleed again, and he told Gregory that moving her had set her back to a fifty-fifty chance.

That night she grew worse; from a slight internal haemorrhage, and Gregory was once more driven almost crazy with anxiety as he sat at her bedside all through the long hours of darkness.

It was not until midday the following day that the crisis had passed and during that afternoon and evening she took a decided turn for the better. On the Thursday night, for the first time since reaching Furnes, Gregory was able to crawl into his stretcher-bed and sleep.

On Friday morning Erika was definitely better, so Gregory was at last able to switch his thoughts to what was going on outside his immediate surroundings. Erika had been shot on Monday, the 27th, and the following morning Leopold had been denounced for his treachery by the French Premier, Paul Reynaud.

World-wide indignation at the King's act had been magnified by the fact that he had not even warned the British or French Armies of his intention, so that when his own Army had laid down its arms at midnight on the Monday the unfortunate British immediately to the south of them had had no opportunity to alter their dispositions to cover their suddenly-exposed flank. However, although the Belgian Army had surrendered the Belgian people had repudiated their King and the Belgian Government had declared its intention of fighting on with the new slogan, 'Le Roi est mort—vive la Belgique!'

With the defection of the Belgians the Northern Allied Army had been left in a position of grave peril. It was now fighting on three fronts and in considerable danger of being totally surrounded; so it seemed more obvious than ever to Gregory that Lord Gort and his French colleague would fling their armies forward in a determined attempt to break through and reach the Somme. They were reported to have some 400,000 men between them and with such a mass it was impossible to believe that under determined leadership a break-through could not be accomplished.

But by Thursday morning it had become clear that Lord Gort had no such intention. British units were already streaming back through Furnes towards the coast, and, in the afternoon Kuporovitch came back from a short walk to say that he had seen British troops occupied in destroying several supply-depots which had been established in the town.

He added that he had just heard that Narvik had been captured by a combined force of Norwegians and British, which made Gregory laugh for the first time in days. A small German force had hung out there for seven weeks in hostile country with the Norwegians shelling them from the surrounding mountains, and the mighty British Navy shelling them from the sea, while Allied troops perpetually harassed them from both shores of the fjord. Whatever German had commanded that show deserved a whole row of Iron Crosses and it was just one more feather in Hitler's helmet.

When, on the Friday, it seemed that Erika's youth and health would save her, Gregory went out to learn what he could about the situation. More and more British troops were pouring into the town down the road from Dixmude and Ypres and at the latter place a fierce battle was said to be raging. Having talked to several of the almost exhausted officers and men he learnt that Dunkirk was now the only port remaining in British hands, and, to his amazement, that an attempt was to be made to evacuate the whole of the B.E.F. from it.

This news gave him furiously to think. It now appeared that by moving Erika from Breedene to Furnes they had only gained a few days' grace instead of securing her safety for a considerably longer period as he had hoped would be the case.

When it had become clear that no break-through was to be attempted Gregory had naturally assumed that the B.E.F. would dig in and hold the coast behind it until it could be reinforced from England. Its situation would then have been analogous to that of the Naval Division which Mr. Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty had deliberately flung into Antwerp with great acumen and daring in the early weeks of the last Great War, only some twenty times stronger. That small force of almost untrained volunteers—the only land-force not under the control of the static Generals—had, under the personal leadership of the brilliant descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, played a not inconsiderable part in saving the Channel ports. The Germans, not knowing when it might be reinforced, had been compelled to detach three Army Corps to deal with it, as they dared not leave such a dangerous enemy bridge-head in their rear while they advanced into France. Now, one would have thought, this great Northern Allied Army could have constituted an infinitely graver threat if dug in round Dunkirk; but apparently it did not intend to threaten anybody; if it could get there, it was going home.

Whether it succeeded or whether the bulk of it was destroyed before it could be embarked, the thing that affected Gregory personally as a result of the strange and alarming new 'strategy' was that the Germans would enter Furnes at latest before the week-end was past. Once more he had to face the agonising problem—should he just hope for the best and allow Erika to continue the good progress she was making, or should he again risk her life by attempting to evacuate her with the B.E.F.?

Dunkirk was only about eleven miles away along the coast so that afternoon he decided to go there and see for himself what was going on.

After lunch he and Kuporovitch managed to get a lift on a lorry and joined the slow, apparently endless procession of British Army vehicles which was now meandering along at the best pace it could make towards the west. Great havoc was being made among the columns by the German planes but, as they neared Dunkirk, for the first time they saw British planes in action.

The German air-armada was so great that it was impossible to count even a portion of it. There were several hundred planes in the air all at one time, but for once they were not having it all their own way; the British fighters streaked out of the cloudless sky at them, flattened out, circled, zoomed up and dived again with their machine-guns spitting, and barely five minutes passed without a Nazi plane being brought down.

They arrived in Dunkirk at about half-past two but halted outside the town as bombs had reduced it to a complete ruin. Walking up on to the dunes to the right of the road, they saw an incredible spectacle.

Scores of British destroyers and hundreds of small craft were standing in as near as they could to the long, sandy beaches. There were ferries, pleasure-steamers, private yachts, launches, fishing trawlers, life-boats and every conceivable type of vessel that could be driven by steam or oil, and snaky lines of khaki-clad figures were wading out through the shallow waters to be pulled on board them.

Yet for every man who was taken into a boat there were a dozen or more coming over the dunes from inland. Gunners, sappers, infantry, tank corps, A.S.C. drivers, officers, N.C.O.s and men were all inextricably muddled together in vast khaki crowds and it seemed utterly impossible that one-tenth of them could be saved by the little figures out in the boats who were working so desperately hard to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy.

In the sky above a thousand planes turned and twisted in furious combat. Fleets of bombers came over escorted by fighter aircraft and were broken up by the pom-poms of the warships. The bombs were released haphazard and few hit their mark, but the Messerschmitts swooped to machine-gun the beaches until the Hurricanes and Spitfires chivvied them away or sent them reeling down in a smoky spiral.

Gregory thought that it must be the greatest air-battle that had ever taken place and he was overjoyed to see that although the British planes were far fewer in numbers they were decidedly getting the best of it.

The Navy too, was doing a magnificent and entirely impromptu job of work with the help of those hundreds of volunteer seamen, but it yet remained to be seen if those organising the rescue would prove up to the task of getting away more than a fraction of the helpless soldiers who were now mere mobs of men with neither arms to fight nor any further stretch of land over which to run.

Gregory and Kuporovitch agreed that no military evacuation on so great a scale could ever before have been attempted and the only thing which made its success even remotely possible was the unbeatable resource of the British Navy, in which Churchill had so clearly placed his confidence when faced with the collapse of the Army. They watched the astonishing, ever-changing scene for over an hour, then turned for home.

As there were no lorries going away from Dunkirk they had to trudge most of the way back to Furnes, but for the last few miles they got a lift in a Staff car. Gregory asked the officer who was in it how long he thought that the evacuation would take, and he replied: 'It only started last night and if we can get 100,000 a day off it will be doing marvels, so it's bound to be going on right over the week-end.'

It was clear now that if Erika was to be saved from the Germans the risk of moving her must be taken once more, but this piece of information decided Gregory to hang on for another day or two, so as to give her the maximum possible chance of regaining a little strength after her set-back.

All through the long, hot Saturday the B.E.F. staggered back through Belgium, many of them wounded and great numbers limping badly because they were so footsore from the terrific forced march that they had performed.

'At all events, they've got good boots,' remarked Kuporovitch, with the eye of a professional soldier, as he watched them from the garden gate.

'Yes,' sneered Gregory angrily; 'our Generals learnt that it was necessary to equip their men with good boots in the Boer War, so perhaps they'll equip them with tommy-guns when we have to fight the Germans again somewhere about 1960 and the Huns have armed themselves with something much more lethal.'

By Sunday afternoon Gregory felt that he dared delay no longer. The defences of Dunkirk had been reinforced by flooding, but at Furnes the stream of khaki had come down to a trickle of footsore soldiers.

The ambulance was got out from the garage, and Erika was carried down to it; then, having taken leave of their kind Belgian hosts, they set off towards Dunkirk.

When they reached the outskirts of the town Gregory and Kuporovitch saw yet another fantastic sight.

For miles and miles there stretched the baggage and the weapons of the once glorious British Army.

Huge masses of supplies were being burnt and sabotage parties were putting tanks and guns out of action by removing their more delicate parts and smashing them with pick-axes; but not one-fiftieth of that vast sea of vehicles, which had cost Britain hundreds of millions of pounds and months of toil by her sweating factory-workers, could be rendered permanently useless.

There was no bombing now. The R.A.F. had won a magnificent victory against the terrific odds and driven the Nazis out of the sky. Even the gunfire to the east had slackened as Hitler, having inflicted on the British Army the most crushing defeat in its history, had swung the weight of his main attack south once more, contemptuously leaving the remnants of the B.E.F. to get home as best they could.

They drove the ambulance slowly up to the crest of the sand dunes. The spectacle beyond differed little from what it had been on Friday, except that instead of tens of thousands there were now only scattered thousands of men on the beaches, and that the foreshore was now black with countless thousands of rifles, tin hats, gas masks, haversacks, water-bottles and other items of the British soldiers' fighting kit.

The destroyers and the gallant little boats, manned by every type of seaman and civilian, were still standing by hauling soldier after soldier up out of the sea as though they had never stopped during the whole of the forty-eight hours since Gregory had first seen them.

Taking out the stretcher, they carried Erika down to the water's edge, where every few hundred yards long strings of khaki-clad men were patiently queuing up and wading out chest-deep into the sea. Some were wounded, all were dirty and unshaven, but in spite of their plight their unquenchable spirit remained and they were still exchanging the typical witticisms which come from the British Tommy even in the grimmest circumstances; little cracks about 'free bathing' and 'bringing the wife to Dunkirk for a holiday next summer'.

There were no formalities, no customs or passport controls here, but some of the men turned to stare curiously as Gregory's party approached, for although there were quite a number of French and Belgian soldiers among the rabble, civilians were a rarity upon that hellish shore.

On that account Gregory felt that some difficulty might arise about his party being taken on board, so he waded in up to the knees and hailed a naval officer who was sitting in a small motor-boat near one of the queues, regulating its advance into the water.

The N.O. put in a little nearer to the shore to see what he wanted, and lying with complete unscrupulousness, Gregory told him that his party consisted of an English lady who was hovering between life and death, a Russian who was attached to the British Secret Service, and four Belgians, a doctor, two nurses and an army chauffeur; and asked if they could be taken off.

His request was granted at once and the naval officer brought his own boat even closer in so that Erika's stretcher could be carried out to it.

Ploughing his way back through the gently-creaming foam, Gregory knelt for a minute beside the stretcher to see how Erika was. There could be no argument any more about her accepting the hospitality of Britain while the war continued but she did not even know what was going on, as her lungs pained her terribly and the doctor had forbidden her to talk in case she brought on another internal haemorrhage.

Her face was dead-white and her eyes closed.

After a moment he stood up and said to Kuporovitch: 'You carry her out with the chauffeur, Stefan; I forgot to sabotage the car so I'm going back to wreck the engine, because I'm damned if I'm going to leave even an ambulance in running order for those blasted Nazis. Don't wait for me but get Erika on board as quickly as you can. I'll be seeing you later.' With a nod to the rest of them he turned and strode off up the beach towards the ambulance.

When he got there he did not lift the bonnet of the engine but sat down on the crest of the dunes to watch the embarkation. He saw Erika's stretcher lifted into the stern of the motor-boat and the two nurses, the doctor, Kuporovitch and the chauffeur hauled up out of the water after it. The motor-boat turned and sped out to a fishing-trawler that had the marks of German machine-gun bullets spattered all over its funnel. He saw the little party taken on board by bareheaded men in dark-blue sweaters. They were only little figures now and he could still make out Kuporovitch, who was standing at the rail in the stern of the ship, evidently anxiously waiting for him to join them; but he did not stir.

For over an hour the trawler remained there taking survivors of the routed Army on board, then puffs of smoke issued from its funnel. It slowly turned and headed for England.

The sun was sinking but the evacuation still went on; as some of the boats sailed for home, others arrived to take off yet more and more men. Gregory kept his eyes fixed upon the trawler until it became a little speck hidden by the gathering darkness, then at last he stood up and began to tramp through the heavy sand, towards the road. He would have given all that he possessed to be on that trawler with Erika, but the Black Baroness was still at large to wreak her evil will and he remembered Sir Pellinore's injunction.

It was his business to 'seek out and destroy the enemy'.

CHAPTER 21

The Road to Paris

Gregory slept in a shallow dip among the sand dunes. When he awoke dawn was just breaking.

Seaward and to the west, where England lay, the scene was still obscured by semi-darkness, but to the east against the fore glow of the sunrise the silhouettes of little groups of troops already stood out upon the higher ground.

By the time he had roused himself daylight had come to reveal once more the remnants of the shattered Army. For four days now the B.E.F., once lauded as the finest land-force, for its size, in the world, had been evacuating and only its tail-end now remained to be taken off. The men were sitting glum and silent in little groups along the grassy dunes or were straggling down to the shore, where with the coming of dawn the armada of small craft had once more appeared. Gregory distributed half his cigarettes among a group of them and spent a few minutes listening to their stories.

There was nothing splendid about them, nothing heroic; they were just beaten—beaten by marching—marching for mile after mile through those grilling days and ghastly nights— while being chivvied from pillar to post by the superior forces of a well-organised enemy. No blame to them. They had been game enough when they had marched into Belgium, and where they had met the enemy they had fought with stubborn courage. Gregory knew from those to whom he talked that if at any time on that retreat they had been ordered to stand they would have stood; but they had not been so ordered and they were only regimental officers or rank and file and they could do no more than obey the order to reach the coast somehow, destroy their equipment and get home.

The heroes of that chapter in British history were in the sky above, driving off Goering's air-armada, and on the sea, in all those little boats manned by old salts from Deal or Dover, by young boys from the Kent and Essex coasts, by week-end yachtsmen, by chaps who had just 'wanted to come too', and by the indomitable personnel of the Royal Navy, the R.N.V.R. and the Mercantile Marine.

Gregory knew perfectly well that had the roles been reversed the scene would have been just the same.

After days of marching and strafing without sleep the sailors and the volunteers would have sat with a woebegone expression, examining their blistered and bleeding feet, while had the soldiers been the men manning the little boats they would have proved just as gallant rescuers. Their tragedy was that they had lacked brilliant, or even distinguished, leadership.

The captain of their ship, General Lord Gort, had gone home two days before, when the evacuation was still in full swing, because, as one haggard, wounded subaltern put it to Gregory somewhat cynically, 'it was not considered that the men still remaining on the beaches constituted a command fitting for an officer of such senior rank'. He had been ordered home by the Government to report.

That report would doubtless appear years later in the history books, but Gregory did not feel that Mr.

Churchill needed very much telling what had happened, and he did feel, remembering Nelson at Copenhagen, that there was a time to obey orders and a time to ignore them. He remembered, too, Marshal Ney, who had commanded the rearguard in the ghastly retreat of Napoleon's Army from Moscow, and that Ney, personally, had been the last man to fire the last musket on the bridge of Kovno, after he had conveyed the remaining stragglers of the Grande Armee on to the safety of Polish soil.

He also thought of the Old Contemptibles: the men of Mons, Le Cateau and the Marne. That B.E.F. of 1914 had been only one-third of the size of the B.E.F. of 1940. The German equipment had been just as much superior then as it was superior now. The odds in favour of the Germans had been just as heavy, in proportion, against General French as they had been against Lord Gort, but French had fought the Germans to a standstill; Gort had gone home to report.

Almost physically sick with bitterness and fury Gregory left the men to whom he had been talking and plodded across the sand dunes until he reached a rise from which he could see the scene of desolation inland. Tanks, guns, ambulances, lorries, cars, motor-cycles, searchlights, Bren-gun carriers, repair vans, aircraft tenders, listening apparatus, heavy howitzers, field cookers, petrol wagons, and every other conceivable type of army vehicle littered the scene in one vast higgledy-piggledy jumble for miles on either side of him and as far as he could see.

On reaching the road to Furnes he walked up to an abandoned tank, got the lid open and peered inside.

Someone had evidently pitched two or three Mills bombs inside before leaving it, as the interior was just a mass of tangled and twisted machinery. He examined three or four others but they were all in the same state. At least the Germans would not be able to use them, but the number of tanks and guns abandoned there was so great that when they had the leisure the Nazis would be able to transport them home and present one to practically every town and village in Germany as an optical demonstration of the Fuehrer's complete and devastating victory over the hated British.

He walked on for about half a mile and came to another group of tanks, but these had had their tractors smashed so were also useless. A little further on, among a line of lorries which were half in and half out of the ditch, he saw another tank and had a look at that. At first sight it seemed to be all right, so he began a more thorough and very cautious investigation, as he thought it probable that some form of booby-trap might have been left inside it; but ten minutes' careful inspection satisfied him that nothing in or near the solitary tank was liable to go off and blow him up. Getting into the driver's seat, he proceeded to try to make it work.

He had never been inside a tank before and the mechanism looked horribly complicated, but he felt sure that a tank must function on the same principles as any other motor-driven vehicle. After experimenting for some time with the various switches and levers he gradually got the hang of the thing and, with a frightful jolting, succeeded in getting it out of the ditch on to the road.

The next thing was petrol, as the tank's supply was very low; but that presented no difficulty as there were thousands of reserve tins near at hand on the abandoned lorries. It took him three-quarters of an hour carting the tins before he had the tank filled to capacity and had also collected a good supply of iron rations. He then picked up a piece of chalk from the roadside, got into the tank, closed down the lid and set off.

At first he found the vehicle terrifyingly unwieldy. It had an odd habit of swerving suddenly and heading for the nearest ditch, as though it preferred ditches to a metalled surface. After a few miles he accustomed himself to its idiosyncrasies but found the heat inside it stifling, and by the time he had reached the outskirts of Furnes he was sweating like a pig; so he stopped, opened the lid and stripped himself to the waist.

His idea was to try to reach Paris, since he felt that he would stand a better chance there than anywhere else of getting on the track of the Black Baroness, but he had only a most rudimentary idea as to what was happening in his immediate vicinity. The officers with whom he had talked on the beach had told him that the French who had been cut off with them were covering the British evacuation by a rearguard action in the neighbourhood of the Mont des Cats, and he had no desire at all to run into the battle; so although it had meant going away from Paris he had thought it better to head for Furnes rather than inland, but at Furnes he felt that he could turn south-east towards Ypres without any great risk of becoming embroiled in the last desperate stand that was being made by the French.

The eighteen miles between Furnes and Ypres showed many traces of the British retreat. Here and there army vehicles which had been damaged by shell-fire had been left on the roadside. Once he passed a little group, a sergeant and seven men, wearily plodding towards the coast. Evidently they were the remnant of a party which had got cut off somewhere a few days before but had managed to make their way through the German lines under cover of night. A little further on a solitary officer came pedalling by on what was obviously a borrowed or stolen civilian push-bike, while every half-mile or so there were stragglers who from wounds or weariness had not been able to keep up with their units but were still doggedly endeavouring to escape from the Germans. By eleven o'clock, without any untoward incident, he entered Ypres.

A number of the houses had been wrecked by bombs or shell-fire, but by comparison with the tumbled heap of debris which Gregory remembered there in 1917 the town had hardly suffered at all. Turning south-west, out of the Cloth Hall, Square, he took the road to Bailleul and, after a mile, seeing no more English or French, he knew that he was now coming into an area where at any time he might run up against the Germans. Pulling up, he got out and with the piece of chalk scrawled in large letters on the front of the tank: 'NACH PARIS. HEIL HITLER!' then got in again.

The Germans, he knew, would recognise the tank as of a British pattern but he had chosen it in preference to a car for the very simple reason that as long as he remained inside it nobody whom he passed would be able to see that it was driven by a man without a uniform, and he hoped that when the Germans saw the inscription they would assume that it was one of their own people driving a tank which had been captured from the British. It soon transpired that he had rightly judged his time in labelling the tank, as a few miles further on he came upon several parties of German infantry. Away to his right, beyond the higher ground, a battle was in progress. Out there towards Cassel the French were still making their last splendid stand and the Germans were moving fresh troops north-west, across the Ypres-Bailleul road, for the destruction or capture of this remnant of the great Allied Northern Armies which it had been decided to sacrifice in order to save Lord Gort's forces.

In Bailleul he found much greater numbers of Germans, as an armoured column was passing west, from Armentieres towards Saint Omer, so he was held up in the square for some time. But nobody challenged him and by half-past twelve he was out of the little town, made immortal to the old B.E.F. by the presence at its estaminet of the glamorous Tina, sweetheart of ten thousand British officers, who, so it was said, in the last months of the War had been shot as a German spy.

From that point on the roads were rarely free of Germans and now and again parties of them were marching back groups of disconsolate-looking French prisoners. Between Bailleul and Arras he was twice halted by German military police who wanted to know what he was doing with a captured British tank, but shoving up the lid he popped out his head and naked, sweating shoulders to call a cheery greeting to them in his fluent German and laughingly declare that the tank was a personal war souvenir of his General, who had ordered him to bring it along for the victory celebrations.

Arras was in poor shape as the British had fought there about ten days before, when the Germans were still pushing troops towards the coast. There had been hand-to-hand fighting in the streets and the Germans had bombed the town severely. Not a pane of glass was left in any of the windows and many of the streets were half-blocked with rubble from the demolished houses; but that made Gregory more pleased with himself than ever that he had decided to journey to Paris—or as near as he could get to it—in a private tank, as the unwieldy old tin can could bump and clatter its way over all sorts of obstacles which would have been quite impossible for a car.

Even half-naked as he was, and with the lid up all the time, the heat in the tank was almost unbearable, so outside the town he drove off the road into a small wood and got out to have a rest. His trousers were wet through with perspiration and steaming from the heat, while he felt as limp and heady as though he had spent several hours in the hottest room of a Turkish bath. When he had recovered a little he made a meal off some of his iron rations then lay down in the shade of a tree. For over an hour he rested there out of the broiling sun and it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon when he once more climbed into his sardine tin, got it back on the road and headed for Bapaume.

At Bapaume, where he again ran into many Germans, he could hear the guns, somewhere to the south; so it seemed as though the French were still holding the line of the Somme and he knew that his next job was to find a way of crossing it. The road to Paris lay through Peronne, which was actually on the Somme, and he hoped that if the Germans had already captured the town he might succeed in crossing the river there; but as he advanced with one of the German columns he found many indications that he was once more nearing a battle-front. The column gradually dissolved to deploy into positions to which each unit had been directed. Carefully-concealed heavy batteries boomed from the fringe of the woods on either side, many of the fields were occupied by infantry who were resting, and further on the sharp crack of field-guns came from the dips between the rolling downs, while German aircraft were again circling directly overhead.

By seven-thirty he had reached the outskirts of Peronne to find that it was in the hands of the Germans, but evidently they had not yet succeeded in establishing a bridge-head across the river and the French were pounding the town so heavily that it was out of the question to attempt to go through it.

Turning off the road Gregory headed west and went on for about two miles, keeping a small ridge between himself and the river, then ran the tank up to the crest of the ridge to see what he could make of the situation. He was not long left in doubt. A French .75, concealed in a wood somewhere on the opposite bank, immediately blazed off at him. One shell screeched over and burst about ten yards to his rear; a second pitched thirty yards in front of him and dead on the line. He did not wait to make any further investigation but, heaving the tank round, rattled off back down the far side of the ridge again.

Driving to the edge of a small coppice, he dressed himself and, having taken a good look round to see that there were no Germans about, got out.

He was loath to leave the tank which had proved such a good friend to him and which, in spite of his very rudimentary knowledge of its workings, was such an excellent piece of British craftsmanship that it had not once let him down during the whole of his ninety-mile journey; but it was clear that he could not cross the river in it and so must take to his feet once more.

It was now past eight o'clock. With only about another hour of daylight to go and with his previous experience of crossing battle-fronts still fresh in his mind he felt that, dressed as a civilian, he would stand much more chance of making a safe crossing in the daytime, so having collected some of his iron rations he went through the trees to the far side of the coppice and sat down to make his evening meal.

No major action was in progress in the locality and such Germans as passed from time to time took him to be one of the innumerable homeless refugees who were wandering about the country, and after a bare glance in his direction went on. The night was warm and fine; as twilight fell he hunted round until he found a little dip in the ground which would provide a rough pillow for his head and, thoroughly tired out after his fatiguing day, soon fell into a sound sleep.

Shortly after dawn he was up again and making his way towards the river. He noticed that during the night the Germans had brought up a lot more troops and in one valley he saw a large concentration of tanks waiting to go into action, but he knew that before they could do so the German engineers would somehow have to fling a pontoon bridge over the river, which would not prove easy as the French had it under fire from the far bank.

At two points he was turned back by German sentries and, having decided against producing his German passport unless it proved absolutely necessary, he meekly submitted to their order, retracing his steps each time then making a wide semicircle which brought him back towards the river again. At the third attempt he succeeded in slipping between the German outposts and reaching the river-bank at a place where it shelved steeply and where for several hundred yards the actual water of the stream was not under observation by the Germans in his rear. Slipping off his clothes, he tied them up in a bundle and entered the water for what proved to be a short and not un-enjoyable swim, as a full four weeks of sunshine had warmed the Somme to a pleasant temperature.

On the far shore he scrambled out and, having dried himself as well as he could on his shirt, dressed again. No one challenged him and he crawled up the steep bank on his hands and knees. The second he put his head over the top a rifle cracked and a bullet whistled past his ear.

Ducking down, he lay there on the edge of the slope and began to call out as loudly as he could in French. A distant voice answered him saying that it was no good playing any of those tricks as he had better swim home to his friends; but now that he had made contact he was, for him, considering the earliness of the hour, in a most cheerful frame of mind. As he possessed a considerable mastery of French argot he told the troops ahead, in their own pet expressions, that he was not a German but a refugee from Lille; then he told them a dirty story which had been current during his last visit to Paris, and ended up his shouted monologue with the request that he might be allowed to come forward as he could tell them about the German dispositions on the other bank.

He was told to stay where he was and a few moments later a new voice called to him to advance with his open hands stretched up above his head. He promptly obeyed and walked forward into a landscape that did not appear to have a living soul in it, but when he had covered a hundred yards a poilu, who appeared to have grass growing out of his tin hat, raised his head a little and, covering him with a rifle, told him to jump down into a nearby ditch.

There were six men there in a cunningly-concealed machine-gun nest, and by a devious route one of them took him a few hundred yards further back, to Company Headquarters, where he was questioned by a morose-looking Captain.

Gregory told him what he had seen on the other side of the river and managed to convince his questioner that his slight accent was attributable to the fact that, although a Frenchman of Lille, he was of Belgian extraction. During the past fortnight there had been such an enormous number of civilians wandering about in the French battle-zone that the Army had long since given up arresting anyone against whom they had not definite grounds for suspicion, so after he had said his piece he was allowed to go, and set off across country in the direction of Nesle.

The Germans had begun their preparatory bombardment, which they were supporting with an aerial attack, so the first few miles proved dangerous going and—just as in Belgium— Gregory frequently had to take cover in the nearest ditch. At length, however, he got on to a side-road in a somewhat quieter area and was able to put his best foot forward; but by the time he was half-way to Nesle he was already regretting the loss of his tank. On him he had no credentials of any kind by which he might have persuaded the French Army to provide him with transport, neither could he use any form of personal touch such as he had employed with excellent effect when trying to induce the British General to lend him a Staff car to take him into Ostend; and apart from army vehicles the only traffic moving along the road consisted of an occasional farm-cart already appallingly overloaded with the belongings, women and children of some peasant family escaping from the battle-zone—and it was over ninety miles to Paris.

All through the long, hot morning he trudged on and it was after one o'clock before he reached Nesle.

Although the little town was crowded with both troops and civilians he managed to secure a passable meal at a small restaurant, but soon found that there was no means of getting any form of transport which would help him on his journey. Nesle was on a branch line running between Amiens and Laon, which now formed the first line of lateral communications behind the new French front. The only trains working on it were packed with troops, and even if he could have secured standing-room on one it would not have carried him any nearer Paris; so at three o'clock in the afternoon he set off to walk to Roye.

It was nearly six o'clock when he got there but, when he did, he had better luck. The station was on the direct line for Paris and a booking-clerk informed him that, although the trains were no longer running to schedule, one upon which civilians could travel would be leaving in the next hour or so. He had another snack and a bottle of red wine in the station buffet and at about half-past seven a train came in on which he managed to get a seat in a compartment that was crammed to capacity. All traffic had been entirely upset by the military requirements so the train was appallingly slow, but he stepped out on to a platform of the Gare du Nord a few minutes before ten o'clock. The journey from Dunkirk had taken him forty hours, but, all things considered, he thought that it had been remarkably good going.

He took a taxi straight to the Hotel Saint Regis in the Rue Jean Goujon, just off the Champs Elysees, where he always stayed when he was in the French capital; and when the English manager recognised his old patron in the dirty, dishevelled figure that came up to the desk to ask for a room he immediately took Gregory up to one of the delightful apartments which were so different from the ordinary hotel-bedrooms through being furnished with individual pieces many of which were antiques of considerable value.

Gregory's first necessity was to get news of Erika, so he put through a personal call to Sir Pellinore at Carlton House Terrace, knowing that Kuporovitch would have taken her there on landing. He then ordered a light meal and a bottle of champagne, and turned on a hot bath. In spite of his trying day he was not unduly exhausted, because he had had over nine hours' good sleep in the wood near Peronne the previous night, and although he would have much preferred to sink into the comfortable bed after his bath he felt that not a moment should be lost in getting on the track of Madame la Baronne Noire.

Although it was nearly eleven o'clock he thought that there was a good chance that in times like these Colonel Lacroix, the Chief of the famous Deuxieme Bureau, would still be at work at that hour, so he rang up the Surete-Generale. The Colonel was there, and on Gregory's saying that the matter was urgent Lacroix told him to come round as soon as he liked.

He spent a quarter of an hour refreshing himself in the marble bath while the valet cleaned up his clothes as well as possible and found him a razor. Having dressed again he fortified himself with the bottle of bubbly and an omelette aux champignons.

Half-way through his meal the call came through. Erika had survived the journey but seasickness had caused a further haemorrhage, and she was very low. Sir Pellinore did his best to be optimistic but Gregory sensed his anxiety and decided that for himself only work could drug his acute distress and worry.

Ten minutes later he left the hotel. At a quarter to twelve he was taken up to the top floor of the big building on the south bank of the Seine and shown into the fine room which during the daytime had such a lovely view of the spires and domes of Paris.

At a big desk near the wide windows a tiny, grey-haired man, whose lined face resembled that of a monkey, was sitting. His hands were clasped over his stomach and his eyes were cast down in an attitude of Buddhistic contemplation. The desk was remarkable only for the fact that it had not a single paper on it and it seemed to Gregory almost as though the famous Chief of the French Secret Police had not even moved since he had last seen him.

'So you're back from Brussels?' said the Colonel in his gentle voice, suddenly glancing up.

Gregory smiled. 'And how did you know that I had been in Brussels, mon Colonel?’

Motioning Gregory to a chair the little man gave a faint sigh. 'I know so many things, mon ami, that sometimes I almost feel that I know too much, but agents of your ability and courage are not so common in the dark web at the centre of which I sit for me to lose track of one. Through the good Sir Pellinore I have followed your perilous journeys with the greatest interest.'

'I see. Then you'll know of the part I played in the November Putsch and how I succeeded in getting Goering to send me to Finland afterwards?'

'Yes. And I am happy at last to have the opportunity of felicitating you upon the many splendid services that you have rendered to the Allied cause.'

'That's kind of you, sir, and I shall never forget that when I fell down on my first big job it was you who gave me a second chance. A lot of water has flowed under the bridges of the Seine since then, though.'

Suddenly Lacroix's monkey-like little face changed from amiable passivity to black anger. 'Oui. Much water has passed beneath the bridges of the Seine, also many British soldiers have crossed the Channel in the wrong direction.'

Gregory spread out his hands with a peculiarly French gesture that he often made when using that language. 'What would you, mon Colonel? He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. Our men are still alive and free, which, after all, is very much better than if they were prisoners or dead. The B.E.F. will soon be reconstituted and sent back to France.'

'And in the meantime?' asked Lacroix angrily.

'In the meantime things don't look particularly rosy,' Gregory had to admit. 'Still, presumably you're bringing back from Africa every single man you've got, to form an army of manoeuvre in Central France; and with Weygand at the helm I imagine that the people of Paris can still sleep soundly in their beds.'

'They may sleep, but not soundly. Did you know that between one-fifteen and two-fifteen today Paris was raided by two hundred and fifty Nazi planes?'

'The manager of the Saint Regis did mention that you'd had an air-raid but I got into Paris only at ten o'clock and I've seen no signs of any damage that may have been done.'

'They dropped 1,000 bombs, 254 people were killed and 652 injured. Now they have started this sort of thing it is likely to continue. From this point on we must anticipate that at least 1,000 Parisians will become casualties daily; which will lead to a great lowering in the morale and the war effort of the capital.

And do you know why we must submit to this new blow? I will tell you. It is because the British Air Force was withdrawn to protect your Army during its evacuation from Dunkirk and will henceforth be occupied in defending England instead of being able to carry out its allotted task of defending Paris.'

Gregory shrugged. 'Really, sir, it's hardly fair to blame us because during the last few years your own Government has been so criminally slack that you haven't enough planes to protect yourselves.'

'But it was part of the agreement,' said the Colonel in a tired voice. 'France spent 70,000,000 of your pounds sterling upon her great Maginot Line. While Europe was still at peace 6,000,000 of her sons left their normal occupations which were productive to become non-productive for many months, but to fit themselves to defend their country in her hour of need. That was France's contribution. Britain refused to introduce conscription, but her part was to hold the seas and to create an Air Force which should have been strong enough to balance that of Germany, while we held the great German Army at bay on land.

Can you wonder that today in Paris everybody is saying that the English have let us down?'

'Surely, sir,' Gregory replied patiently, 'if we're going to hold an inquest we must go back to the beginning of the present trouble? There would have been no break-through towards the coast, and so no evacuation and no withdrawal of our Air Force, if your Generals Giraud and Huntziger had not made an incredible mess of things at Sedan and allowed the bridges across the Meuse to fall into the enemy's hands.'

Lacroix nodded. 'I give you that. But in spite of the German break-through there need have been no great military disaster had not the British lost their heads. They panicked and they ran.'

Gregory stood up. 'I'm sorry, but I can't remain here if you're going to say things like that. At Louvain, at Oudenarde, at Arras, they fought magnificently, but they were outflanked in the south entirely owing to the incompetence of your own General Staff and they were outflanked in the north through King Leopold throwing his hand in without even warning them. Finding themselves surrounded on three sides by German Armies which were enormously superior in both equipment and numbers, what else could they do but retreat?'

The little Colonel suddenly leapt to his feet; his black eyes flashed; he banged his small, brown fist on his empty desk and almost screamed:

'Mon dieu, mon dieu, mon dieu! What could they do? Why, cut their way through, of course. Gort had a quarter of a million men. With him were three French Armies and many Belgian units who refused to lay down their arms even when they were called upon to do so. The German corridor was only thirty miles in width for several days. Had the whole of that great army been flung against one fifty-mile sector of the corridor, how could the Germans in it possibly have failed to collapse under such a blow?'

'For the simple reason that the Germans had eight armoured divisions in the gap,' Gregory replied promptly.

'Eight divisions,' sneered the Colonel; 'and what is that? 150,000 men at most, even with Corps and Army troops. Do you suggest to me that 500,000 men could not have smashed them whether they were armoured or not? If Gort and the others had lost 100,000 men in casualties—one-fifth of the Anglo-French force—they would have won a great victory by cutting off the Germans between Arras and the coast, and would still have come through with an Anglo-French Army of 400,000 men complete with tanks, guns and equipment. That force would then have been with us to hold the line of the Somme and defend Paris. But where is it now? Gone—vanished—dispersed—in confusion and disgrace, leaving behind it two-thirds of the peace-time output of your military armaments factories and leaving us naked to bear the whole brunt of the German onslaught.'

Gregory knew the whole sad story only too well himself and it sounded even worse when put by an indignant and bewildered Frenchman, yet he was not prepared to admit it. Instead, he said quietly:

'I'm sure that your information is much better than mine, but—without any information at all—It's quite apparent that your Generals were responsible for the break-through in the first place and that since then General Weygand has not signalised his appointment to the Supreme Command by initiating any counter-offensive which would have assisted the British move that you suggest. But surely no good can now come of mutual recrimination? Isn't it up to us to stop abusing our respective Generals and, instead, to strain every nerve to pull our countries out of the ghastly mess in which they have landed us?'

Lacroix suddenly sat down and Gregory was surprised to see an amiable smile dawn on his wrinkled, monkey-like features. 'I congratulate you, mon ami,' he said quietly. 'You stood up very well to my abuse of your countrymen; and now I will confess to you that I consider mine were every bit as much to blame.'

'Why, then,' said Gregory, also sitting down again, 'did you —er—turn on the heat?'

'Because it is important that you, as an Englishman who has many contacts, should fully appreciate what my countrymen are saying and feeling at the present time. Your people will be told one end of the story; mine are being told another. It is for both of us—we who can see the whole picture—to do our utmost to counteract this most unfortunate feeling of distrust which has now arisen. We have already sacked Gamelin and fifteen other Generals; it is to be hoped that your Government also will soon dismiss those of your military commanders who were responsible for this most ignominious retreat. Then we must tell our peoples that under new leadership matters will be very different, because, unless we are to lose this war, mutual confidence between France and Britain must be maintained at all costs'

Gregory beamed. 'How right you are, sir; I absolutely agree. But what is the present situation?'

Again folding his hands across his small stomach the Colonel said quietly: 'Owing to the stamina and the marching power of your soldiers, coupled with the brilliant performance of your Air Force and your sailors, your Army got away. They had nothing left but their shirts, but in due course the great majority of them will be able to take the field again. On the third day of the evacuation the Germans realised that their prey was slipping through their fingers so, like the military geniuses that they are, they expended no more effort in endeavouring to catch the British. Instead they proceeded, without the loss of a moment, to the huge task of rearranging their dispositions so that instead of facing west they faced south and east, with a view to launching another onslaught while the main French Army was still in a state of flux.

'It took them a few days to form new concentrations but they have now massed behind the Somme and as far south as Laon with the intention of attacking the Oise-Aisne Canal and seizing the road through Soissons to Paris. Many of our divisions must, of necessity, continue to hold the Maginot Line, if it is to remain effective, and the departure of the B.E.F. has left a most alarming gap in our line further west between Montmedy and the coast, which we are now doing our utmost to fill. I will reveal to you, because I know that you are trustworthy, that there is virtually no army of reserve.'

'Good God!' Gregory interjected. 'For days I've been living on the belief that you've been shipping over from Algiers and Morocco every man who can hold a rifle, to form behind Paris a great army of manoeuvre which can be rushed up into the battle when the time is ripe.'

Lacroix shook his head. 'No. Every man, every gun that we can get hold of, is being thrown in upon the Somme to hold that portion of the line which the British should have held. According to my latest information the Germans will launch their attack tomorrow and the battle for Paris will be on.'

'What chance d'you think we've got?'

The Colonel hunched his shoulders eloquently. 'Fifty-fifty— not more. The British still have a few thousand men at their main depots in Le Havre and Rouen, but they are a mere bagatelle—they simply do not count. For all practical purposes Britain is just as much out of the game as Belgium or Holland. In this great land-battle, which may well prove decisive, France stands alone; and she has neither the numbers nor the weight of arms possessed by her enemies.'

'The situation is, then, absolutely critical?'

'Yes. All we can do now is to hope and pray. But tell me about yourself. What was it that you wished to see me about so urgently?'

'I have an account to settle with the Baroness de Porte. Having lost track of her I came to you, feeling sure that you would be able to inform me of her present whereabouts—or at least how I could get on her trail.'

'Mon ami, you are wasting your time,' said the Colonel gravely. 'There is nothing evil that you can tell me about La Baronne Noire which I am not prepared to believe. Had any ordinary person been responsible for one-tenth of her acts during the past few years I should have had her locked up in a fortress long ago.

But she is not an ordinary person, and her protectors are so powerful that even I, with all my resources as the Supreme Chief of the Deauxieme Bureau, cannot get under her guard. No warrant against her would ever be executed, because someone to whom there could be no answer would intervene.

However much evidence might be collected against her, no charge could be substantiated; pressure would be exerted from above. If resignations were offered by way of protest they would be accepted; witnesses would be bribed, intimidated or eliminated; the case would never come into open court. That woman is above and beyond the law.'

'Above human law, perhaps,' murmured Gregory.

'Do you mean'—Lacroix leant forward ever so slightly— 'that you are prepared to kill her?'

Gregory drew heavily on his cigarette. 'However black her record may have been when she was first mentioned to me, I would have much preferred that somebody else should be her executioner, but eight days ago she shot a woman who means more to me than anything else in the world.'

'Erika von Epp?'

'Yes—Erika. I managed to get her off at Dunkirk, but it's still uncertain as to whether she'll live or die on account of her injuries; so, although she doesn't yet realise it, the Black Baroness has started a party out of which only one of us will emerge alive.'

Lacroix slowly nodded his head. 'Whatever may be said for or against her motives, it is Madame de Porte's avowed intention to destroy the French Republic as it is at present constituted, and she is utterly unscrupulous in the means she employs to further her end. I am the servant of the French Republic as it is at present constituted, therefore I will give you every assistance in my power; but great discretion must be used, otherwise I shall find myself dismissed, and then I should no longer be able to render any help either to you or to France.'

'Merci, mon Colonel. Do you know where she is at the moment?'

'She is in Italy; and you can guess what she is trying to do there.'

'To make Mussolini screw up his courage to the point of stabbing France in the back now that on land she has lost the aid of Britain and is fighting for her very existence?'

'Sans doute! Mussolini still wavers. He would never have dared to come out against us in the open, face to face, but now he is greedy to snatch a cheap triumph from us while our backs are turned; yet he knows how terribly vulnerable his new Empire is. Italy's African Colonies contain a considerable portion of her Army, which would be cut off from the homeland by the Mediterranean in the event of war; since, whatever may happen in France, Mussolini would still have to reckon with the British Navy. If wise counsels prevail there is still a chance that he may not come in, but if La Baronne Noire is left a free hand to pour her poison into the ears of all his satellites it is almost certain that Italy will enter the war against us. If you are prepared to kill the Baronne you may prevent that; therefore, such an act would be the highest service that you could render at the present time to both our countries.'

'All right.' Gregory smiled grimly. 'Time is obviously of immense importance. I'm game to start for Italy at the earliest possible moment.'

'Does the Baronne know you?'

'Hardly. She saw me face to face only for a few seconds, just after she shot Erika.'

'Even so, the odds are that she will recognise you again. You must adopt some form of disguise; otherwise immediately you enter her presence she will take alarm and, perhaps, shoot you first. Also, she guards herself very carefully so you will not find it by any means easy to approach her unless you can do so with special credentials which will cause her to believe that you are a friend.'

'What d'you propose?' Gregory asked.

After a moment's thought the little Colonel replied. 'I think it would be best if you assumed a new identity. Have you ever heard of the Reverend Eustace Arberson?'

'No.'

'He was a prominent member of the Nordic League and is one of Britain's most dangerous Fifth Columnists. He is about your height and age, and although there is no real resemblance between you I think you could be made up to look passably like him. As his hair is dark and he wears it a la Hitler that would hide the old scar on your forehead. A full, black moustache such as Pere Arberson's would alter the appearance of your mouth, and if your eyebrows were plucked to resemble his they would no longer tend to turn up at the corners. To my certain knowledge the Baronne has not been in England for the past four years and, as far as I know, the Reverend Eustace has never travelled on the Continent, so it is most unlikely that the two have ever met, but they would almost certainly know of each other, and it is quite possible that if the Reverend Eustace were in Rome he would take the opportunity to meet her. Time, as you so rightly say, is now a vital factor, so during the course of the night I will have a letter forged which you can use by way of introduction, and the signature on the letter will be that of the ambitious Mayor of Bordeaux, one of Madame la Baronne's most trusted friends.'

Gregory nodded. 'Good. I shall be able to start for Rome tomorrow, then?'

'Yes. You will also require a passport in the Reverend Eustace's name, but I have a photograph of him which can be touched up to make it appear not unlike yourself, and I will then have it re-photographed for passport purposes. The Baroness's headquarters in Italy are the Villa Godolfo, in the Alban Hills, just outside Rome, and I expect you will find her there. In any case, you will first go to Antoine Collimard, in Rome. He is a barber and has a shop; Numero 25 Via Veneto. Collimard is a master in the art of make-up and he is also one of my best agents, so you may safely leave yourself in his hands, and he will give you all the help he can. The passport, the forged letter of introduction and a line to Collimard will all be ready by midday. As the matter is urgent I shall place a pilot and a plane at your disposal to take you to Rome; and in view of the risk that you are running they had better wait there to get you out of the country immediately your job is done. Have an early lunch and your old friend Ribaud will call for you at one o'clock; he will deliver the papers to you personally and will run you out to the private aerodrome a few miles south of Paris from which you will start.'

The little Colonel stood up and, extending his hand, added: 'Bonne chance, mon ami, and, should the qualms natural to a chivalrous man at the thought of killing a woman make you hesitate at the last moment, remember now that France has lost one Army through the defection—or shall we say indecision?—of your countrymen it may lie with you to prevent the Army of another great Power being added to her enemies.'

Gregory nodded gravely. 'I shall not forget.' And taking Lacroix's hand he shook it with the same earnestness as if he were signing a solemn pact.

As he went downstairs a few moments later he knew that on the following day he would be setting out upon the most horrible mission that he had ever undertaken. He was going to the country of assassins to become an assassin. In his heart of hearts during these last days he had doubted if even his urge to revenge Erika would ever bring him really to that point; but now, in order that the cause of justice, toleration and liberty should not have the weight of 50,000,000 Italians flung against it in its darkest hour, it was necessary that the Little Black Baroness should die.

CHAPTER 22

The Assassin

On the following morning, Wednesday, June the 5th, Gregory slept late and lunched early. At twelve-thirty he received a telegram from Sir Pellinore, which read: ERIKA NO WORSE NO BETTER

DON'T PHONE WILL WIRE YOU IF SHE SHOWS ANY CHANGE: and with this cold comfort he had to be content for the time being.

Punctually at one o'clock the porter at the Saint Regis rang up to say that a Monsieur Ribaud had called for him in a car, and on going down Gregory exchanged warm greetings with the fat little French detective who had arrested and later cooperated with him in the previous October.

As they drove through the sunny streets of the capital, which was much more crowded than when Gregory had last seen it, owing to the great influx of refugees, they exchanged views upon the war, but neither had anything very cheerful to say so Gregory was glad when they turned off the main road into the grounds of a small chateau outside Choisy and he saw a solitary aeroplane standing outside a hangar.

Ribaud introduced him to the pilot, Raoul Desaix, a lean, lantern-jawed, middle-aged man, and five minutes later he was waving good-bye to the detective as the plane took off.

It was a four-seater civil aircraft with a cruising speed of 160 miles an hour so Gregory knew that it would be about four o'clock before they reached the Mediterranean. There was little aerial activity south of Paris. The skies were a clear, bright blue and they were flying at no great height, so he was able to amuse himself by watching the landscape unfold beneath them.

From 2,000 feet there was no indication of war at all. The fields, villages and isolated chateaux looked very peaceful and it was an utterly different world from that other part of France through which he had passed by tank, on foot and in the train during the two preceding days. By half-past three the main colour of the patchwork quilt of fields and woods below had begun to change from a greenish hue to the greyish-brown of the olive orchards and myrtle scrub of Provence. They left Avignon, with its great Papal Palace and broken bridge across the Loire, on their left, and Nimes, with its Roman amphitheatre on their right, to pass right over Aries, and a few moments later the plane came down on a private landing-ground just north of Marseilles. They refuelled there and went on, following the line of the coast until they passed over Hyeres, with its islands, then, leaving the Cote d'Azur with its miles of famous pleasure-beaches on their left, they passed out over the Mediterranean.

The colouring of the scene—the deep blue sea creaming upon the shore in a tiny white line, the gold of the beaches, the greens and the browns of the scrub, vineyards and woods, then far away to the north the mountains with the white-capped peaks of the Italian Alps standing out against a sapphire sky—was as vivid as that on a picture postcard. They had hardly left France behind when Corsica rose out of the sea ahead of them. It was perfect flying weather and the only bump they had was caused by the currents rushing up the ridge of mountains in the northern neck of the island, and as they passed over the sun baked volcanic stone Gregory felt that he could have reached down and touched it with his hand. Five minutes later they could see Elba, a little island as flat as a pancake set in the wine-dark sea on their left, and Monte Cristo's Island, little more than a huge rock, right below them; then the coast of Italy loomed up, and a little before half-past six they came down on the airport outside Rome.

Gregory used his own English passport and Desaix having made arrangements for garaging the plane they drove to the Hotel Ambassador, where they both booked rooms, and Gregory then went at once to make contact with Monsieur Antoine Collimard. The shop was shut but he was fortunate enough to find the French hairdresser at home above it, which suited him much better than being seen entering the shop by a number of assistants when it was open.

Collimard proved to be a Basque. He was small, dark-complexioned, with a little hook nose and quick, intelligent brown eyes. Gregory presented Colonel Lacroix's chit which had attached to it the original photograph of the Reverend Eustace Arberson.

The Frenchman studied Gregory's face carefully for a moment and said: 'I think I can do it well enough for a casual acquaintance to mistake you for this man at a distance, at all events, and naturally the clergyman's clothes will help a lot. But you must appreciate that, while I could make your face into a mask which would be the image of his in semi-darkness it is impossible to use make-up which would alter the shape of your nose, chin and forehead in daylight.'

'I quite understand that,' Gregory smiled, 'but, to the best of our belief, the Baroness has never set eyes on the Reverend Eustace so a superficial resemblance is all that is required, and it's more a matter of altering my own face—which she has seen for just one moment—than of making it resemble his. Do you know if she's still at the Villa Godolfo?'

'No. But I will find out. In any case, you can do nothing tonight as it will take me some hours to prepare the moustache and to study the matter of the eyebrows. There is also the question of clothes. You will see to that yourself, I take it?'

'Yes. Rome bristles with shops that sell clerical outfits, so I should have no difficulty in finding things to fit me tomorrow morning.'

'Bon! Come here a little after twelve, bringing your things in a suit-case, and by the time you leave I will have transformed you as far as lies in my power into the Reverend Eustace.'

Gregory thanked him and, returning to the Ambassador's, tried to put a telephone call through to London but he was told that there would be at least six hours' delay, so he booked one for the following morning. That night he had dinner with Desaix, whom he found to be an amiable though not particularly gifted man whose only grouse was that as he was over forty they would not let him fly a fighter plane in the service of his country.

Gregory endeavoured to console him by saying that he was doing every bit as good work by making secret trips like the present for Colonel Lacroix, and he explained that he did not know how long he would be in Rome but that he might have to leave in a great hurry. It was agreed that he should vacate his room the following morning and that they should see nothing of each other until the time came for a quick get-out to France; also that the airman should remain at the Ambassador's, going out only to places from which he could return in twenty minutes and leaving with the hall-porter the telephone number of the place at which he could be found.

Afterwards, up in his room, Gregory read the forged letter of introduction from the pro-Nazi Mayor of Bordeaux to the Baroness, together with the particulars of the Mayor and the Reverend Eustace which had been in the packet from Lacroix that Ribaud had handed him that morning. In an hour and a half he had committed to memory all the available data about the man he was to impersonate and went to bed.

Having spent a restless night, due to worry over Erika, Gregory took his London call only to learn that she was still in grave danger. He then paid his bill and went out to do his shopping. Since he had abandoned his suit-case in Ghent eleven days earlier his only luggage had consisted of shaving and washing gear which he carried slung around his shoulders in a small gas-mask container; so, after changing some of his English bank-notes for Italian lira, it was a joy to be able to re-equip himself with fresh underclothes, dressing-gown, brushes and pyjamas as well as the black suit, black slouch hat and clerical collars necessary to his new role. With the whole of his purchases packed into a large Revelation suit-case he arrived at Collimard's at a quarter-past twelve.

'I fear that I have some bad news for you,' was the Frenchman's greeting. 'La Baronne Noire is in Rome no longer; she has left her villa out at Marino and gone north; one assumes to keep in touch with Il Duce, who is said now to be inspecting his troops in the Cottian Alps and other places on the French frontier.'

'Damnation!' muttered Gregory. 'Still, I suppose Mussolini is pretty certain to make his headquarters in Turin, so if I go there I ought to be able to get on her track.'

Collimard shrugged. 'Who can say? She left Rome only last night, but she may quite well be back here in a day or two. Il Duce is not a man to stay in one place for long and he moves very swiftly; if you go north you may pass her on her way south again.'

'That's true.'

'Also, you will find your disguise uncomfortable and worrying at first, so it is far better that you should wear it for forty-eight hours before putting it to the test.'

'But the matter is so frightfully urgent.'

'All right; go if you wish, but you would be far wiser to wait at least until I have been able to secure further news for you. By tomorrow I may have fresh information about II Duce's intentions.'

'You're right,' Gregory admitted reluctantly. 'There's no sense in my setting off on a wild-goose chase without even knowing for certain where she is.'

Collimard then set about changing Gregory's appearance. He washed and set his hair a la Adolf Hitler so that it hid the scar over his eye, then he proceeded to pluck his eyebrows in one place and add single hairs, with minute particles of very strong gum, in another, until their shape was completely altered. He next opened a packet of false eyelashes and trimming them to half their length added them one by one to Gregory's own so that although his did not appear longer they became very much thicker. After that he placed more false hairs just in front of his ears, thereby giving him short side-whiskers, and, lastly, he attended to the moustache.

'There!' he exclaimed in triumph when he had done. 'You must use only a very soft brush each morning, and you are bound to moult a little as you turn in your sleep each night, so you must come to me to be touched up every two or three days, but I do not believe that your best friend would know you.' And when he looked in the mirror Gregory had to agree that his face had been changed beyond anything he would have believed possible.

Having dressed in his clergyman's clothes he thanked Collimard for his artistry and, going out, took a taxi to the station, where he mingled with the crowd, and a few minutes later took another one to the Hotel Excelsior, as though he had just arrived by train.

After registering there as the Reverend Eustace Arberson, and handing in his passport in that name for the usual police check-up, he wrote a note to the Baroness, on the hotel paper, saying that he was in Rome for some days and asking permission to call. Enclosing the letter of introduction with it, he posted it in the hall, then purchased the latest papers and sat down in the lounge to see how the war was going.

Lacroix's belief that the German preparations for the next stage of their offensive had been completed on the Tuesday night had proved correct. On Wednesday morning, June the 5th, the battle for France had opened at 9 a.m. On a hundred-and-twenty-mile front, from the Somme to the Aisne, the Germans had attacked with great masses of troops supported by over a thousand dive-bombers. Hitler's weather still held in France, but the paper said that the smoke of battle had been so thick that it had blotted out the bright June sun. The enemy had made no progress until the afternoon, but they had then succeeded in securing bridge-heads across the river and their tank columns had struck through Amiens, Peronne and Laon towards Paris. The French Cabinet had met to discuss the new crisis shortly before midnight.

That evening Churchill had made a statement in the House in which he had frankly referred to Dunkirk as a 'colossal military disaster' sustained by the British Army, which had enabled the enemy to acquire strategic bases of great importance and many of France's most valuable industrial areas. Britain had lost vast quantities of material and over 30,000 killed, wounded and missing, but 335,000 British, French and Belgians had been saved and the RAP. had covered themselves with glory. The B.E.F. was to be reconstituted and, said Mr. Churchill, Britain would never surrender.

Owing to the pro-German bias of the Italians the Government-controlled Press had printed Mr.

Churchill's speech only in small type on the back page of the paper. The front page was devoted to that day's news; the announcement of a new French Cabinet in which Daladier, the sworn enemy of Italy, was out altogether, Reynaud's taking over Foreign Affairs as well as the Premiership; and a statement that although the French centre was reported to be holding for the moment it must soon give way, since the Germans had hurled 2,000 tanks into the battle.

Another headline on the front page announced Italy's declaration that a band of twelve miles round her coast and that of Albania must now be regarded as dangerous to shipping and that exit permits would be distributed to foreigners who guaranteed to leave Italy within two days.

Gregory's Italian was by no means as perfect as his German or French but he knew quite enough to read the paper with reasonable ease and its contents were extremely perturbing. The matter of issuing special exit permits might be only one more measure designed to scare the Allies and there was no suggestion that foreigners who did not take advantage of it would be interned; but the whole tone of the paper was openly threatening and it looked as though Mussolini was now very near the brink.

On the Friday morning, the third day of the battle, the news looked somewhat better. The French were reported to have destroyed at least four hundred German tanks and although at some points they had made withdrawals they had succeeded in throwing back the enemy forces which had reached the south bank of the Aisne.

Gregory rang up Collimard but the Frenchman had as yet no news and urged him to wait another day, as by that time either the Baroness would be on her way back to Rome or else he would have definite information of her whereabouts. He also tried to get through to London, but, owing to the crisis, the Exchange refused to take his call.

A small item in one of the afternoon papers caught Gregory's eye and he saw that Captain B. A. W.

Warburton-Lee, of H.M. destroyer Hardy, had posthumously been awarded the first Victoria Cross of the war for his gallant attack on Narvik. The action had taken place barely eight weeks before, but Gregory thought sadly how far away Narvik seemed now and how utterly unimportant compared with the vast struggle which was at that moment taking place in Northern France.

The headline of the paper was to the effect that all Italian ships had been ordered to the nearest home or neutral port, which seemed to Gregory really sinister. Mussolini had been filling his money-bags by working his merchant fleet for all it was worth during the past nine months while his peace-time competitors were compelled to use theirs for war purposes. For him to have cancelled all future sailings was therefore showing the red light in earnest. That evening bands of excited young Fascists marched through the streets of Rome calling for war and hurling abuse at France and Britain.

On the Saturday morning Gregory telephoned Collimard again and learnt that both Mussolini and the Baroness were in Genoa, so he decided to go north at once. Having paid his bill he went to Collimard's, where he spent an hour having his disguise touched-up. At first its strangeness had irritated him exceedingly, particularly the moustache, which was the very devil while eating, but he was getting accustomed to it now and Collimard expressed his satisfaction at the way in which it had stood up to two days' wear and tear. Gregory then drove to the station and before catching his train bought all the papers— Italian, British, French and German—that he could lay his hands on to read during his journey.

The Germans had launched a new attack on a sixty-mile front, from Aumale to Noyon. To the forty divisions already engaged they had hurled in seven fresh armoured divisions and twenty new infantry divisions. The Nazis were now using 4,000 tanks, 2,500 planes and 1,000,000 men.

The British Admiralty had announced that after nine months of war the balance of naval strength in our favour was greater than ever before and that nearly a million tons of warships were building in British shipyards. That little paragraph made cheering reading, but the trouble was that it was of very little help to the French at the moment.

He arrived at Genoa at 6.30 in the evening and immediately bought fresh papers. The stop-press told him that the new enemy attack had sent the French reeling back from the Aumale-Noyon line and that the Germans had secured a small bridgehead over the Aisne but had not succeeded in actually breaking through; there was a rumour that Mussolini would speak on the following day.

He drove up the hill to the Hotel Miramar and, having secured a room, set about making tactful inquiries as to the whereabouts of Mussolini, representing himself as an American parson, since feeling was now running very high against the English. No one seemed to know anything for certain although the Italians—polite as ever—were willing enough to gratify the goggle-eyed foreigner's obvious desire to catch a glimpse of the great man. Il Duce had certainly been in Genoa that morning but he was living on his special train, which had moved out of its siding at half-past two in the afternoon; the probability was that he had gone up again to inspect other units on the potential battle-front. A little after midnight Gregory went to bed depressed and miserable. The awful uncertainty about Erika was preying on his mind, and he knew that it was hopeless to look for the Baroness until he had managed to locate Il Duce.

On the Sunday morning Gregory was up and out early. He found that the whole great city was alive with troops and pulsing with activity. Sailors, soldiers, airmen, Blackshirts, singly and in groups, crowded the hot pavements; aeroplanes hummed overhead, tanks, guns and lorries clattered through the streets or bounced along on their big balloon tyres. Genoa was the nearest Italian port of any size to the French Riviera so it was naturally a base of the first importance and it already had the appearance of a war-time city.

From the morning papers it seemed that the German war machine was at last losing its impetus and between Montdidier and Noyon the attack was certainly less incisive. It was not until after midday that he learnt definitely that Mussolini was now in Turin, so he took the afternoon train there and sat sweltering in his shirt-sleeves while the train wound its way up through the mountains and across the plain of Piedmont.

On arriving, he learned to his delight that // Duce's train was actually on a siding just outside the town but he soon found that he could not get within half a mile of it; every approach was guarded by both Fascists in their black-and-silver and the picturesque Carabinieri with their comic-opera hats and fierce-looking black mostaccios. However, he thought it unlikely that the Baroness was on the train and spent the evening combing every hotel in the city to try to get news of her.

Turin was also packed with troops and, if possible, even more of an armed camp than Genoa, Mussolini had not yet spoken, but it was thought that at any hour he might do so.

It was the fifth day of the battle for France, and for the Allies it might well have been termed Black Sunday. As Gregory listened to the last radio broadcast in his hotel that night he realised that for the French things were very black indeed. Near the coast a force of three hundred enemy tanks had penetrated the Bresle defences the day before. They had now reached the outskirts of Rouen and Pont de Larche, on the Seine. The Germans were within fifty miles of Paris and the French radio announced that all schools in the capital were to be closed and the children sent out of the city.

That morning at dawn a new attack had been launched on a wide front, from Chateau-Porcien to the Argonne. The French had stemmed it, but 2,000,000 men and 3,500 tanks were now storming their line along the entire front from the sea to Montmedy, and General Weygand, the hope of France, had spoken, saying: 'We have reached the last quarter of the vital hour.'

Italy's entry into the battle was unquestionably imminent, but Gregory felt that if only he could find and kill the Black Baroness there was just a chance that, with her evil influence removed from Mussolini's immediate followers, wiser counsels might yet prevail.

That night, therefore, he went back to the station for another endeavour to get near enough to Il Duce's train to question some of the people on it. He felt that, as the Italians are very open to bribery, if only he could get hold of one of the cooks or attendants they might be induced to tell him whether the Baroness had visited the train, or give him some fresh line to work on; but when he got to the station the train was no longer there. Il Duce was on his way back to Rome.

Weary, angry and despondent, Gregory inquired about the first train south by which he could follow and found that the next did not leave until 5.40 in the morning. For a moment he considered ringing up Desaix to ask him to fly north and take him back to Rome in his plane, but he abandoned the project almost as soon as it entered his head. Desaix was a Frenchman and he, as the Reverend Eustace, was travelling on an English passport. Turin was now a military area and it was certain that the Italian authorities would not allow aircraft belonging to their potential enemies to come and go freely from it any longer. The two of them might even be arrested on suspicion and detained. If that happened it might be days before they could get free again, or if Italy entered the war they might find themselves in a concentration-camp for good. He went back to the hotel, slept naked on account of the torrid heat, and caught the train south just as dawn was breaking.

He had come to loathe the sight of his thick, black clergyman's clothes and during the seemingly endless morning they proved almost unendurable. By mid-day the steel train was like a furnace and his clerical dog-collar had been reduced to a limp rag.

The papers that he bought in stations where the train stopped informed him that the French Army was still intact and that for the last few days fresh British forces which had been landed in France had been holding a sector on the French left flank. Churchill had sent a message to Reynaud promising that every available man should be rushed across from those units which still had arms and equipment, and calling upon the French to hold fast.

The Italian Press was now openly screaming for war. 'Nice, Corsica, Tunis!' they cried in union, aching to get their dirty fingers on the loot, like a sneak-thief who sees a householder at night already being bludgeoned by a powerful burglar. To add to the overflowing cup, the British aircraft-carrier Glorious and the destroyers Asarta and Ardente had been sunk while pulling the Army's chestnuts out of the fire in another 'skilfully conducted' evacuation. After all the shouting we had abandoned Narvik and left to their fate all that remained of the wretched Norwegians, who apparently had covered our withdrawal by a gallant action.

Arrived in Rome, Gregory drove straight to the Excelsior, and from there rang up the Villa Godolfo. A manservant answered him and he asked if Madame la Baronne was at home. To his immense relief he learned that she was, so he gave his name as the Reverend Eustace Arberson and asked the man to find out if the Baronne had received a letter of introduction which he had sent her some days before.

The man left the line and after being away some minutes returned to say that Madame la Baronne regretted her apparent discourtesy in not having acknowledged Pere Arberson's letter, but that she had been away for several days and had got back only early that morning. Unfortunately she was leaving the Villa Godolfo again that evening so she could not ask him to lunch or dine, but if he cared to come out that afternoon she would be most happy to see him.

Gregory thanked the man, said that he would certainly come out that afternoon and hung up. He telephoned Collimard that he would be round in half an hour, had a quick bath to freshen himself up after his journey, and took a taxi to the Via Veneto. After having had the very minor ravages which had occurred in his numerous patches of false hair during his two days absence from Rome made good he rang up Desaix to warn him to go to the air-port, get ready to take off at once and stand by there until further orders. Collimard, whose part it was to take him to the Villa and get him away again swiftly, then led him round to a garage where a car was in readiness. Gregory got in the back and the Frenchman took the wheel as though he was the driver of a car that had been hired for the afternoon. Shortly before three they set off for the Villa Godolfo.

The sun was still grilling down and Gregory dared not mop his face except with the greatest care, for fear of deranging Collimard's excellent work; but in other respects the journey was a pleasant one, as it lay along the famous 'Via Appia' for thirteen miles towards Alban, then round the shore of the Albano Lake to the little town of Marino. Half a mile past the town Collimard pointed out the Villa.

It was a lovely house set on the hill among terraced gardens and cypresses, looking right out over the lake. A short, private road led round to its entrance on the other side of the building. Gregory was hating with all his heart the thought of the task that lay before him; nevertheless he was determined to go through with it. As they pulled up he leant forward to Collimard and said in a low voice:

'I don't think I shall be long, as I mean to do the job immediately we're alone together. Be ready to start the second you see me coming out of the front door, and drive like blazes for the air-port.'

Collimard nodded. 'Bien, mon ami. We may both be executed for this, but, by God, it will be worth it.

Bonne chance!'

A black-clad servant had already appeared in the doorway, and immediately Gregory gave the name of the Reverend Eustace Arberson he was led inside, through a wide hall to a fine room, the tall windows of which had a lovely view across the lake. The little Black Baroness was sitting there curled up on a sofa and she extended her hand to him with a charming smile.

As he took it his whole instinct was to get the terrible thing that he had to do over, whip away his hand and pull out his gun; but he knew that the servant was still standing in the doorway behind him. He must at least play the part of the Reverend Eustace long enough for the man to close the door and get away to his own quarters.

Half Gregory's mind was now obsessed with the murder he was about to commit. Was his gun loose enough in its shoulder-holster for a quick draw? Would the silencer on it work properly? Would he be able to make a quick, clean job of it and shoot her through the heart before she realised his purpose? Or would she leap up the second she saw him produce his gun and endeavour to escape so that he had to shoot her in the back, perhaps several times, before she died? If that happened, her screams might rouse the household and his escape would be seriously jeopardised. That must not occur if it could possibly be avoided. The only thing to do, then, to make quite certain that she did not scream before she died was to wait until her back was turned and shoot her through the heart from behind.

While those thoughts were racing through his brain she had been saying: 'Mon cher Fere Arberson, how very nice to see you. I am desolated beyond words that you should have been in Rome for five days while I was in the north and that now I have to go again so soon I cannot entertain you properly, but I have heard so much about you from our mutual friends that even the opportunity of a brief meeting gives me the greatest pleasure. Come and sit down and tell me about the wonderful work which I hear you have been doing for us in that most difficult of all countries—England.'

Gregory felt his face crease into a smile and it was almost in surprise that he found himself saying in an unctuous voice well-suited to the part he was playing: 'It's most kind of you to receive me at all when you're here for only a few hours. I've been wanting to meet you simply for ages on account of the admiration I feel for one who has done so much for the cause that we all hold so dear.'

As he sat down he heard the manservant say: 'Shall I bring tea, Madame la Baronne, or would you prefer to wait until your usual hour?'

She glanced at her diamond wrist-watch and replied quickly: 'It is early yet—only half-past three. But wait. .. .' She suddenly broke off and smiled at Gregory. 'You will forgive me, I know, if I say that I did not expect that you would get out here quite so soon, although it is a compliment which I appreciate. I have one telephone-call that I must make before we settle down to enjoy a really interesting talk. Since it is a trunk-call it may take a little time, because the lines are so congested now that the crisis has reached its height, but I will be as quick as I possibly can. In the meantime, I am sure you would like to sit out in the garden, and as there is almost an hour to go until teatime you will have a glass of iced wine to refresh you after your journey.'

As she stood up, Gregory rose too, murmuring that he perfectly understood but inwardly cursing at the thought of this most inopportune telephone-call; which meant that for minutes that would seem hours he would have to sit contemplating in advance this ghastly thing that he had to do when she rejoined him.

The Baroness moved towards the door, a small, neat figure, and as Gregory stared at her back, through which he meant to put a bullet at the first suitable opportunity, it seemed impossible to believe that she was over fifty. When she reached the door she said to the manservant: 'Take Pere Arberson down to the lower terrace and bring him some of the Lacrima Christi or any other refreshment that he may prefer.'

The man bowed her out and, turning to Gregory, murmured : 'Would you please to follow me, sir.'

With the feeling that he was acting in a play, or was the subject of some nightmare dream, Gregory followed the man through the french windows out on to the balustraded terrace, down some ancient stone steps at either side of which a fountain was playing, and along the sloping paths of the formal Italian garden until they reached a second terrace about fifty feet below the level of the house. They turned left along it until at its end they passed through an archway in a tall yew hedge and came out on a circular extension of the terrace which was shaded from the sun by tall cypresses and had a table and garden-chairs arranged upon it.

Gregory sat down and stared out over the placid blue waters of the lake below. It was very quiet there and cut off by the trees from the sight of any other house along the lake-shore. Not a thing was moving and the only evidence of the handiwork of man in the whole panorama was the lemon-yellow villas just discernible in the distance upon the further shore and the ancient moss-covered, stone balustrade immediately in front of him. It occurred to him that the scene must have been just the same nearly 2,000

years before when some Roman patrician had perhaps entertained his Caesar there.

The black-clad manservant had disappeared as Gregory sat down, but he returned with a large, flagon-shaped decanter which had a narrow spout rising out of one side of it like that of a teapot, and on the other a sausage-shaped hole which went right down into the centre of the flagon and was packed full of crushed ice so that the wine was cooled without the ice getting into and diluting it.