The Black Baroness

The man poured the golden wine into a cone-shaped crystal goblet and handed it on a salver to Gregory. With a nod of thanks he took the glass and drank. It was a light, dry Italian wine, deliciously cool and refreshing after his hot journey, but with a slight taste of sulphur about it which has prevented such Italian wines ever becoming popular in England.

He set the glass down and began to think again of the grim work before him. When the Baroness joined him where would she sit? Probably in that chair there, as it was beside his own and faced the view. How would he then be able to get behind her? How utterly revolting the whole business was, but it must be done—it must be done. The lives of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen, the happiness or misery of literally millions of families, the fate of two great nations perhaps hung upon it.

He drank some more of the refreshing wine and with a momentary flash of his old cynicism thought how fate had played into his hands in the matter of the Baroness's trunk-call. In this secluded spot which could not be seen from the house or observed from the roadway it would be infinitely easier for him to do the thing he had to do, without any risk of being caught in the act. No doubt there was a path leading round the house which would make it unnecessary for him to go back through it. With luck he would be able to slip away unobserved and the Baroness's body might not be discovered until he was well on his way back to Rome or perhaps hours later when with Collimard and Desaix he was in the plane heading for Paris once more.

He suddenly realised that he was feeling very tired; the strain of the last two months, and particularly of the past four weeks, had been appalling. It was not only his own work which had taken it out of him so much, but the frightful mental stress of watching the world-tragedy unfold, with victory after victory going to Hitler. Norway seized, Holland overrun, Belgium smashed to her knees and now France in dire peril—yet there had seemed so little that one could do to halt the onward sweep of the mighty German war-machine.

He was sitting in the shadow, but the strong sunshine on the waters of the lake tired his eyes and he closed them for a moment. It was very pleasant there—so utterly peaceful and far removed from all the turmoil and the killing that was going on under the same sun far away to the north. For a little he remained between sleeping and waking; he did not hear her come, but when he opened his eyes again the Baroness was standing in front of him.

She was now dressed for travelling, in a light tweed coat-and-skirt. Her old-young face expressed none of the easy social charm with which she had greeted him on his arrival. Her dead-black eyes were staring down at him with a queer expression of mixed amusement and contempt.

'Well, Englishman?' A harsh note had crept into her soft voice as she addressed him. 'Are you the best thing that the British Government could find to send against me? Did you think for one moment that stupid clerical collar would deceive such eyes as mine?'

Gregory sat staring at her, his mouth a little open, as she went on mockingly: 'Your name is Sallust, isn't it? I think that was what Grauber said when I described you to him after that night when you tried to dissuade Leopold from surrendering and I had to shoot your little girl-friend who turned out to be the traitoress Erika von Epp.'

The moment Gregory had opened his eyes he had attempted to spring to his feet, but although his brain was still working perfectly clearly it seemed that it no longer controlled his body. All that happened was that after a slight jerk forward his feet slithered a little on the stones; but even by exerting all his willpower he could not lever himself up out of the chair. The awful truth came home to him with blinding suddenness—the wine had been drugged.

The Baroness lit a cigarette and went on calmly: 'I only caught a glimpse of you when we were with Leopold and the things someone has done to your face are very effective; but Grauber told me, too, that it was you who was the masked man that broke into my suite at the Hotel Weimar, and we stood within a few feet of each other for the best part of ten minutes then. It is useless to cover or alter your face unless you also do something about your hands—and you have very nice hands, Mr. Sallust; the moment you came into the room this afternoon I knew you by them for the man of Rotterdam.'

In vain Gregory wriggled, making superhuman efforts to get up, but it needed every ounce of concentration he had to move one limb at a time. He could raise either his hands or feet a few inches, but then it flopped back again and he was as fast in his chair as though he had been bound to it.

'Stop squirming!' she admonished him suddenly. 'It will do you no good. What you came here to do I don't know, but you have been caught by quicker wits than your own. Into the wine you drank I put an old and subtle Italian poison which is almost tasteless and leaves no trace. Its first symptoms you already know, the later ones you will learn in due course; I should think, judging by the amount you have drunk, in about two hours. No one will disturb you here; I sent a message out to your chauffeur that you had changed your plans and would not require him until ten o'clock, so he has gone back to Rome, My work in Italy is done and I am leaving now to hear Mussolini speak, before flying home. Count Ciano is already on his way to inform the French and British Ambassadors that Italy will enter the war on the side of Germany at midnight. Good-bye, Mr. Sallust; you will die quite peacefully and in no great pain.'

CHAPTER 23

Poison

Having picked up the goblet and tossed its remaining contents into the bushes the Baroness had collected the decanter and gone; removing with her the only evidence as to the manner in which he might have met his death.

The partial paralysis which had Gregory in its grip had prevented his uttering a single word. He could move his lips and his tongue but only enough to mutter incoherently and, strive as he would, it was utterly impossible for him to emit a shout for help; yet he now knew that every moment that he remained there the poison would be working through his body, making less his chance of life.

If only he had not been so eager to make a quick get-away and had left the car out on the road a few hundred yards away from the Villa, Collimard would have become suspicious at his non-appearance after he had been in the house for over an hour, and when another hour had passed he would probably have made up his mind to come in and investigate; but by driving up to the front door in the car Gregory realised that he had made his own line of retreat extremely vulnerable.

Even had the Baroness sent out to tell Collimard that she was, herself, motoring her guest back to Rome, he would have smelt a rat; but on being told to return at ten o'clock he would assume that for some good reason, after having seen the layout for himself, Gregory had decided not to make his attempt upon her life until after dark. By squinting sideways Gregory could just see his watch. It was twelve minutes past four; the Baroness had given him two hours; by ten o'clock he would have been dead for over three hours.

He felt that if only he could have stood up there would have been some chance for him to counteract the toxin; because a subtle type that does not work quickly can nearly always be countered by an emetic if it is taken before the poison has had time to get right down into the system. Concentrating all his will-power, he first brought his head forward a few inches then raised his right hand to his mouth in an endeavour to put his finger down his throat to make himself sick, but, strive as he would, he could not make his finger do more than fumble at his lower lip. After what seemed an interminable time of agonising strain his arm suddenly relaxed and his hand dropped back into his lap.

He was sweating profusely and although his eyes were wide open and staring they no longer took in the placid scene before him. Every faculty he had remaining to him was concentrated in one awful struggle to think of some way in which he might save his life; yet each fresh thought seemed only to lead back to a nightmare circle. The poison was working in him; time was now his deadly enemy and with every second that ticked away his state of helplessness would increase.

After an interval of minutes that seemed like hours the sight of a little green lizard darting from side to side along the sun-warmed stone of the balustrade caused him to remember that when animals were ill or poisoned a natural instinct led them to a herb the eating of which provided an antidote to their complaint; yet, there again, he was stuck. As he could not get up he could not reach anything to eat even had he known of a plant in the garden which would have served as a remedy.

The golden-green lizard sat there now, basking in the sunshine and watching him with cautious curiosity from its little dark, beady eyes. Suddenly a small, crested bird dropped out of the sky. Fearing attack, the lizard instantly dived for cover, but as it shot along the stone its foreleg caught in a crevice, flinging it right over on its back so that for a second its pale-green tummy was exposed. In a single wriggle it was up again and had streaked away out of sight. Its tumble gave Gregory the germ of another idea. He could not stand up but he might be able to fall out of his chair.

Once more concentrating all his mental strength he got one foot up until it rested on the leg of the table in front of him; then, after pausing for a moment, he flung every ounce of willpower that he had into a sideways thrust. The chair tipped, hovered for an instant and crashed sideways, sending him rolling along the ground.

When he recovered from the fall he found that he was within a few inches of the yew hedge and, lifting his head, he began a titanic struggle to eat some of the sprigs of yew. He had no idea if they would serve his purpose but he felt that if he could get a few mouthfuls of the prickly herbage down they might upset him or irritate his throat to the point of causing him to vomit.

He seemed to have more strength in his jaws than in his lips and his teeth were good. The yew tasted horrible and when he strove to swallow the first mouthful it stuck in his gullet. With growing hope he tore some more sprigs from the hedge with his teeth and, filling his mouth, tried to force them down. Suddenly the muscles of his throat contracted, his stomach heaved and to his incredible relief the sprigs of yew came choking up with some of the liquid that he had drunk.

For a few moments he lay there panting and exhausted but he knew that he was as yet very far from having saved himself, as the great bulk of the poison must still be in his stomach. Sweating, straining, he forced himself to fresh exertions. Every time he opened and shut his mouth it was as though he was striving to shift a ton weight with his teeth, but such was his tenacity of purpose that three times more he filled his mouth with the prickly shoots of yew, tried to force them down and was sick in consequence, before he collapsed and passed into a stupor.

When he came round it was night, and from a faint jolting he knew that he was moving, but his mind was practically a blank; he was conscious only that he felt desperately ill without being able to remember how he had become so. After a time he realised that he was half-sitting, half-lying, on the back seat of a car, but he had no idea where he was being taken or even what country he was in. His eyes ached intolerably and his head seemed to split in half with every jolt of the vehicle, which was moving at high speed.

He lay there comatose until the car suddenly pulled up and he slid off the seat on to the floor. The door was flung open, hands seized and shook him, then as he pleaded to be left alone a voice addressed him urgently in French:

'It is I, Collimard—Collimard, the barber. I went back at ten and the butler said that you had left hours before but that he had not seen you go. I felt certain then that something had gone wrong so I held him up with my gun and forced him to tell me what had happened from the moment that you entered the house.

He led me to the lower terrace and we found you there. What happened? You do not appear to be wounded. Did she suspect and give you a doped cigarette?'

'Poison,' Gregory moaned, as the whole series of events came back to him, 'poisoned wine.' Then the realisation that he had spoken, and all that it meant, dawned in his tortured brain. If he had got back the use of his facial muscles sufficiently to speak, the effects of the poison were wearing off, but, even so, he felt almost as though he were in extremis as he muttered: 'Doctor—get me to a doctor.'

'Listen,' said Collimard swiftly; 'Mussolini spoke at six o'clock. It is war. Italy will be at war with France and Britain on the stroke of midnight, and it is already nearly eleven o'clock. We are just outside the air-port. Desaix will be waiting there. If you can make the effort to pass the officials we still have time to get away in the plane, but if we delay to try to find a doctor we shall be caught here and arrested as enemy aliens. How bad are you? Do you feel that you could survive the journey, or are you so bad that if you do not have proper attention in the next few hours you will die? It is for you to judge, and we will stay or go—whichever you decide.'

Gregory closed his eyes and tried to think. It was nearly eleven o'clock. Then, some seven hours had elapsed since he had drunk the poison. If he had survived so long, the odds were that a doctor could do little for him but ease his pain and it was now only a matter of time before the poison worked itself out of his system. He would have given a fortune, had he possessed one, to have had cool poultices placed round his aching head, with a soothing drink to ease his parched throat, and to have been able to relax his tortured limbs between clean sheets, but there were Collimard and Desaix to think of as well as himself; and even had they not been involved his every instinct would have been to face any agony rather than become the inmate of an Italian concentration-camp.

He nodded and gasped. 'I'll be all right; we must get off— at once.'

'Can you stand?' asked Collimard anxiously. 'The airport people may not let you through if they think that you are desperately ill or perhaps drugged, and that Desaix and I are taking you somewhere against your will.'

Gregory tested his limbs, knelt up and managed to struggle back on to the seat. 'I'm pretty groggy,' he muttered, 'but I'll manage somehow. Knees may give a bit, an'—difficult to hold up my head. Better tell them I've been on the binge—drunk.'

Collimard shut the door of the car, got back into the driver's seat and drove on for a few hundred yards until he reached the entrance to the airport. Getting down again, he opened the door to help Gregory out and, as he did so, he began to sing The Marseillaise.

Two Italian policemen came hurrying up with a small crowd of other people and one of the officers addressed Collimard indignantly, asking him how he dared to sing the national anthem of France when in little over an hour France and Italy would be at war.

Collimard hiccoughed and declared drunkenly: 'I sing because I am a Frenchman and I go home to fight for la belle France. This'—he thumped Gregory hard on the chest—'is my gallant ally. He goes to fight by my side although he is a clergyman. But he is no ordinary clergyman—he is as drunk as I am. No; he is much more drunk than I am, because he can no longer sing. Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves.

Come! let us pass—lead me to my fiery steed—bring me my bow and my arrows tipped with gold—we'll show you—we'll show all of you.'

This extraordinary declamation was received in astonished silence by the group of Italians. It was a bold policy to declare oneself so openly, when groups of blackguardly young Fascists were lynching French and British subjects in the streets. But— war or no war—all the world has a slightly cynical but nevertheless soft spot for a drunken man providing that his drunkenness is neither beastly nor quarrelsome. Several of the bystanders began to laugh and pushing his way forward the Italian policeman said, not unkindly:

'I'm afraid you stayed too long in the bar, my friend. The last plane for France has gone.'

'Ah,' said Collimard, wagging his finger, 'that's where you're wrong; I have my own plane. Come and look at my plane; I will show it to you.' As he stumbled forward, supporting Gregory under one arm, the policeman said:

'Wait a minute; you can't leave your car here, you know.'

'My car—but why not? I cannot take my car with me in the plane and, if I could, my car could not fight for la belle France as my friend, the clergyman, is about to do; so why should I not leave my car here?'

'It's against regulations,' said the policeman. 'You should have sold it or given it away before leaving.'

'Ha, that's an idea!' Collimard exclaimed triumphantly. 'The war is one thing; personal feelings are another. I have worked ill Italy for years, I have earned good money here. Although I go to fight for France I shall still love Italy. To Italy I give my car. You shall sell it for the Italian Red Cross.'

This generous announcement completed his drunken conquest of the crowd. Some good-hearted fellow said: 'Come on! There's no time to lose; we must get these fellows off or they'll be interned here. After all, we're not at war with them yet.'

With voluble offers of assistance the little crowd then surrounded Collimard and Gregory, talked to the airport officials on their behalf, found Desaix, who was in the waiting-room, and, to the airman's amazement, took them all out on to the flying-ground, where they were given a send-off as though they were national heroes instead of three potential enemies.

Owing to Collimard's aid Gregory had somehow managed to keep his feet while their passports were being examined and they were making their way across the landing-ground, but immediately he got into the plane he collapsed.

Hours later he learnt that when they had landed to refuel at Marseilles, Collimard and Desaix had held an agitated consultation as to whether they should take him to a hospital there or fly on with him to Paris; but both of them had to get to the capital, and as Gregory had appeared no worse they had decided to take him on with them. When he came-to on being lifted out of the plane he found that they were back at the private aerodrome at Choisy. Desaix asked him if he would like to be put to bed at once in the house, but as Choisy was only a little over five miles outside Paris he said that he would rather be taken to the Saint Regis, as the manager there knew him and would take all further responsibility for him off their hands. Collimard telephoned the Saint Regis to have a doctor there to meet them while Desaix got out a car, and by five o'clock Gregory was tucked up in bed in his old room at the hotel with a professional nurse in attendance.

When he awoke it was two o'clock in the afternoon. The first thing that struck him was that he could once more hear the rumble of guns, then he realised that he was back in Paris. He remembered little of the journey of the night before and nothing at all of having been examined by the doctor; but seeing that he was awake the nurse, a pretty, dark girl who told him that her name was Sister Madeleine, gave him something to drink which eased his throat, and gave him a telegram that had been waiting for him.

It had been handed in the previous Saturday and read:'

ERIKA TOOK TURN FOR BETTER YESTERDAY STOP IN VIEW OF CRISIS CANNOT

SUFFICIENTLY STRESS URGENCY OF YOUR COMPLETING JOB STOP GWAINE-CUST.

Gregory lay back and closed his eyes. Erika had turned the corner—Erika had turned the corner. That blessed thought kept playing like human music through his brain and he was still revelling in the marvellous relief of it twenty minutes later when the doctor arrived!

Apart from a certain haziness as to events after he had drunk the poison, Gregory could remember every detail of the events which had led up to his almost fatal experience and he knew enough about medicine to be quite certain that the professional skill could do nothing for him except keep him in bed until he had regained his health and strength; so he listened patiently to the doctor's humming and hawing while making his own mental reservations as to what he meant to do.

He felt very weak but the pains had left him and he could now use his limbs quite freely again. Sir Pellinore's telegram only confirmed his own feeling that for any man, however ill, who could stand on his own feet this was no time to lie abed, and the first step was to inform himself of what was going on; so when the doctor had gone he sent for the papers.

He saw with relief that Turkey had reaffirmed her obligations to the Allies on Italy's entry into the war the previous midnight and that President Roosevelt had made a great speech condemning Mussolini and implying that American neutrality was dead. Malta had that morning been bombed by the Italians, while the R.A.F. had carried out raids on Libya and Italian East Africa, but he knew that all these things could have little bearing on the titanic struggle which was taking place close at hand.

It was Tuesday, June the 11th, the seventh day of the battle for France, and the French had been forced to withdraw to new positions south of the Marne. Just eight nights before Lacroix had told him the awful secret that General Weygand had no army of reserve, as every available man had had to be thrown in on the line of the Somme; Gregory could only pray that during the past week that had been rectified. In seven days it should have been possible to have brought over large bodies of troops from France's North African possessions as well as many units which had not formed part of the original B.E.F.—and so still had their equipment—from Britain. If such a force was being concentrated somewhere south of Paris there was still hope, and Gregory felt that it must be so. Surely while France was in danger all other theatres of war entirely lost their significance. What did it matter if Mussolini invaded Tunisia or the Western Desert or the Sudan or Somaliland and gained a temporary foothold in any or all of these places, if only France could be saved? He could always be slung out afterwards.

It was now 14 days since the surrender of Belgium, 27 days since the capitulation of Holland and 32

days since the opening of the Blitzkrieg; so for nearly five weeks the Germans had been sustaining their incredible offensive at maximum pressure. It was said that they had already lost half a million dead, with thousands of tanks and planes. It simply was not possible for them to continue that way for very much longer; they must be nearing exhaustion point. If only they could now be halted, and a counter-offensive launched, there was a real hope that the vast, overstrained machine might collapse upon itself and even that the war might be brought to a victorious conclusion by one well-planned counter-offensive.

At half-past four he got out of bed and told pretty Sister Madeleine that she must help him dress. The poor girl was horrified, but he smilingly told her that he knew perfectly well what he was up to and that it was no good sending for the doctor because the doctor was only his paid adviser and had no power whatever to restrain him from going out if he decided to do so on his own responsibility.

Seeing that nothing would dissuade him from his purpose, she helped him on with his clerical suit—the only clothes that he had with him—and once he was up he found that although he was a little shaky he was quite capable of walking about without assistance. She saw him downstairs and on the porter's securing him a taxi he drove to the Surete Generale. Having sent up his name to Lacroix he waited patiently in a room downstairs until nearly six o'clock, when at last a messenger came in to say that the Colonel would see him.

For once the little man was not seated behind his desk but was walking slowly up and down with his hands clasped behind his back. As Gregory was shown in he turned and, having stared at him for a moment, exclaimed:

'Sacre Nom! But what has happened to you, my poor friend? You look as though you have just got up out of your coffin. Sit down at once.'

'Thanks.' Gregory sank into a chair. 'You're right, sir; I have just got up out of my coffin—or near enough. I spent six days chasing that damned woman round Italy and when I at last ran her to earth she made a complete fool of me. Collimard's disguise was admirable, but my hands gave me away. She knew who I was from the word "go" and she put poison in my wine— the hell cat! This time last night I was as near death as makes no difference, out at her villa on Lake Albano, but I managed to save myself by the skin of my teeth, and Collimard behaved magnificently; he and Desaix managed to get me home.'

'But, mon ami, you ought to be in bed.'

'Of course,' Gregory shrugged. 'But how could anyone who has the strength to walk remain in bed at a time like this? I had to know what's happening and I've come back to you again as a failure; but I mean to get that woman if I die for it. She's here in France again—at least, she was leaving for France when I last saw her.'

Lacroix nodded. 'She flew from Italy yesterday evening and arrived back at her chateau in the Forest of Fontainebleau just before midnight. Directly I heard that I knew that you must have failed, so I'm having her watched; but, as you know, there is nothing that I can do against her.'

Gregory laughed a little weakly. 'Maybe. But I'm still game to go after her. I'll drive out there tonight. I've a feeling that she's not going to be so lucky the third time that I get her on her own.'

'I forbid you to do so,' said the Colonel sharply. 'You are in no fit state to undertake any such venture.'

Gregory's chin came out in a stubborn line. 'Forgive me, but I'm not under your orders, mon Colonel.

I'm a free man and I shall make my own decision as to how and when I tackle Madame la Baronne. Still, before I go I'd consider it a real kindness if you'd let me into how things are shaping. The papers say so little.'

Lacroix flung out his small brown hands. 'Matters could hardly be worse. It has been decided to declare Paris an open town, in order to save it from devastation. If it proves necessary our forces will be ordered to withdraw to fresh positions south of the city.'

'Good God!' Gregory exclaimed. 'But the moral effect on your troops will be positively appalling. Paris is now a great, natural bastion in the very centre of your line. If every building in the suburbs were made a machine-gun nest the Germans would never be able to take the city, short of starving it into surrender.

You could hold it for months while the old B.E.F. is being re-equipped and a far greater one being shipped over week by week to your assistance.'

'And in the meantime?' asked Lacroix. 'We are no longer in 1870. The city suffered badly enough then from the German bombardments, but that is nothing compared to what the Germans could do today with both guns and aeroplanes.'

'But Paris covers a huge area. If the Germans bomb and shell it for weeks they may do quite a lot of damage but they couldn't destroy it beyond repair.'

'Would you, I wonder, take the same view if it were London that was threatened with destruction?'

'Yes,' cried Gregory angrily. 'I'm only saying what any Londoner would say when I tell you that I would rather die fighting among the ruins of Piccadilly than live to see the Germans march down it in triumph.'

'I believe you. And many Frenchmen—myself among them —would prefer to die crushed under the ruins of the Arc de Triomphe than allow the Germans to pass through it; but it is not to be.'

'Think what such a surrender means,' Gregory went on urgently. 'It's not only the moral uplift that the capture of the city will give to the whole German nation, and the disastrous effect that it will have on the mind of every Frenchman throughout the world, but if it is to be given up to save its buildings from destruction we won't be able to bomb it afterwards. A million Germans will be able to live here in perfect security, immune from all attack, and its great railway network will give the enemy an enormous advantage for future operations. In the Paris area there are great munition-plants and innumerable factories. All these will fall unharmed into the Nazis' hands and the loot that Hitler will collect is almost beyond imagination.'

The Colonel shrugged wearily. 'I know, my friend, I know; but that is the decision of the High Command and the Government is leaving Paris tonight.'

"Where for?'

'I do not yet know. I am now waiting to hear from de Gaulle.'

'Who is he?'

'You have not heard of him, eh? Well, he is one of our younger Generals and a man in whom I, personally, have great faith. He is Under-Secretary for War and Reynaud's general military adviser.'

'Is it he who has advised the abandonment of Paris?'

'On the contrary. He fought tooth and nail against it, but he was overruled. Today another great battle has been raging— a secret battle in which victory will go to those who succeed in influencing Reynaud to accept their policy. De Gaulle, Georges Mandel, who is the spiritual heir of Clemenceau, and their friends wish the Government to move to Quimpier, in Brittany, and to withdraw our forces to a line from Rouen to Orleans, and thence south-east along the Loire, so that we can make a last stand with our backs to the English Channel. His opponents wish the Government to retire to Bordeaux, where they would be further removed from the influence of the English should it become necessary to accept defeat and capitulate.'

'Capitulate?' cried Gregory. 'But this is ghastly!—unthinkable ! What in God's name can Weygand be thinking of to permit even the suggestion of capitulation to be mentioned in the French War Cabinet?'

Lacroix looked up sadly. 'Mon ami, it is best that you should know the truth. It is Weygand who heads the party that is urging Reynaud to move to Bordeaux.'

Gregory mopped his forehead as he murmured: 'Weygand— France's hope; and Leopold warned me, yet I was fool enough to laugh at him. Is there nobody whom one can trust?'

'You may trust de Gaulle; but Weygand must from now on be counted among the enemy. Almost hourly, from Sunday last—Black Sunday—he has been telephoning Reynaud to say that there is no more than he can do and urging the Government to leave Paris. Today we reach the crisis. This morning Reynaud actually signed the order for the move to Bordeaux, but de Gaulle made him countermand it and preparations are still going forward for a move to Quimpier. But it was necessary for de Gaulle to remain with Reynaud in his office all day in order to ensure that he was not got at and that he did not change his mind once more. Then, an hour ago, your friend, the Baroness arrived there.'

'Oh hell! I thought you said she was at Fontainebleau?'

'She was. And it is virtually certain that she will return there tonight to collect her papers and valuables before moving south out of the new battle area, of which Fontainebleau will now automatically become a part; but this afternoon she did something which she has never done before—she came openly to the Ministry and demanded to see Reynaud in his office. At first de Gaulle made him refuse to see her, but no one dared to stop her and she forced her way into his room. She insisted on seeing Reynaud alone, but de Gaulle would not leave; and, as far as I know, they are still in conference. Those are the facts; I had them from de Gaulle's secretary, who left the room only after the Baroness had forced her way into it.'

Gregory had overestimated his strength when he left the hotel and he was now feeling desperately ill and weak again. 'I thought,' he said slowly, 'that the Baronne's affair with Reynaud was all over, long ago?'

'It is, I believe, many years since they were lovers but they have always remained close friends; and unfortunately she still has great influence with him.'

'God! That woman! How I wish I'd shot her in Rotterdam when I had the chance. If I can't manage to do something about it soon she'll hand us all over, bound hand and foot, to the Nazis. But can't you telephone—find out if there's anything fresh? To wait here like this is simply intolerable.'

Lacroix glanced at his watch. 'I should have been informed at once if any definite decision had been taken; but it's over an hour since I had the last report so I'll inquire how things are going.' He moved over to his telephone and asked for a number.

They waited in silence for a few moments while Gregory closed his eyes and mopped the perspiration from his forehead; then Lacroix made a series of meaningless ejaculations. Replacing the receiver he turned back to Gregory.

'They have just come out. De Gaulle remained in the room all the time but they persuaded him to stand by the window so that he was practically out of earshot. Five minutes ago Reynaud suddenly snatched up his hat and stick. He pushed the Baroness out of the room and exclaimed as he followed her: "De Gaulle, it will be the South after all—and this is final." '

Gregory roused himself and nodded. 'That, of course, means Bordeaux; so the Baroness wins once again. But I mean to see to it that she doesn't live to enjoy her triumph.'

'You are determined to go down to Fontainebleau tonight, then?'

'Yes. What's the name of her house?"

'It is the Pavilion de Chasse, Mirabeau, and you will find it deep in the forest, down a side-turning to the right of the main road, some three miles this side of Fontainebleau.'

The Colonel paused for a moment. Gregory felt positively deathly. There seemed to be a great weight on his chest and he could no longer see clearly, but he heard Lacroix go on:

'Since you are set on making this attempt let us derive all the benefit possible from it. Whatever may be the outcome of the present battle, you may take it that there are many men like General de Gaulle and myself who will fight on. Among the Baroness's papers there must be many letters and other documents which will inform us whom we can, and whom we cannot, trust. Those papers must already be packed for removal; if you can secure them you will have rendered us a service of the utmost importance.'

Gregory mopped his head again. 'All right,' he said; 'I'll go now—I—I. . ..' As he stood up the room seemed to sway about him. He rocked unsteadily for a moment then crashed to the floor, unconscious.

CHAPTER 24

Death in the Sunshine

As he knelt down beside the still body the little Colonel sadly shook his head. He knew that Madame la Baronne Noire was not destined to die by Gregory's hand that night and he felt that it might be many days—vital days—before Gregory was again fit to strike a blow at the enemy. Standing up, he rang his bell, and when it was answered, gave swift instructions for Gregory's removal in a police ambulance to his hotel.

Gregory came out of his faint before they reached the Saint Regis and by the time he was carried up to his room he had recovered sufficiently, in spite of his anger with himself at his own weakness, to be faintly amused at the reception accorded him by his pretty nurse.

'Mechant, mechant!' she upbraided him, wagging a slim finger in his face before proceeding to help him back to bed. 'What children men are! They think there is no limit to their strength, and that however ill they are the world will cease to turn if for one moment they must give up the new games with which they amuse themselves when they are too old any longer to play with their lead soldiers and their model aeroplanes. If women ruled the world your nasty dangerous toys would be taken from you for good and all, then there would be some peace and happiness for a change.'

For a moment Gregory wondered if there was not a great fundamental truth in what she said. Women ask very little of life except a mate and security in which to bring up their offspring. It is men who are the dreamers for good or ill, and for every outstanding male who lifts the human race by some great scientific or artistic achievement there is always an Attila, a Napoleon or a Hitler whose visions lead him to inflict untold misery upon his fellow-men. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better if, like the ants or bees, the human race were content to Jive under a matriarchy, where there was no progress, no ambition, but work and food for all; yet somehow he could not believe that, because if one rejected all hope of advancement as the price of permanent peace it meant the death of the spirit, by the possession of which alone man differs from the insects and the animals.

He slept well and woke the following morning still weak but better and with the knowledge that work lay before him which must be done.

Even with dissension rife among France's War Cabinet and a defeatist spirit in the very person of her Commander-in-Chief, that spirit had not yet spread to her junior Generals, her regimental officers or her soldiers, who were still fighting gamely; so France might yet be saved.

Reynaud had given in to the Baroness on the previous afternoon, but only after many days of constant pressure from her associates. It was quite on the cards that he might change his mind once again when the Government was removed from the atmosphere of Paris, which was now flooded with the defeatism brought by a million refugees from France's northern provinces. It needed only a slight weakening of the German effort --which by all reasoning was already overdue—a small counter-offensive launched with success in some sector by a Corps Commander, or even a Divisional General, to make the fighting spirit of de Gaulle once again paramount in the counsels of the wavering Premier; but as long as the Black Baroness lived she was a constant menace to any such last-moment recovery. She had to die, and it was Gregory's business to bring about her death.

After he had breakfasted he told Sister Madeleine quietly but firmly that his good night's rest had really given him the strength to carry on, this time, and that he meant to get up; but he was not destined to do so. With a superior air she lifted the receiver of his bedside telephone and asked for the agent de ville to be sent up.

'Come, come,' Gregory laughed. 'The law doesn't give you power to keep a sick man in bed against his will, so it's no good sending for the police.'

"They're here already,' she smiled, 'and what powers they have you will soon learn for yourself.'

When the agent de ville arrived he was very tactful, but it transpired that he was acting under the orders of Colonel Lacroix. He had been instructed to tell Gregory that the Colonel did not consider him in a fit state to operate for the time being and that if he attempted to leave his bed he was to be placed under arrest; also that Paris was in no immediate danger, but should the capture of the city become imminent the invalid would be evacuated before there was any risk of his becoming a prisoner. In the meantime, Lacroix sent his best wishes for Gregory's speedy recovery and a promise that he would be allowed his freedom the moment that the doctor's reports showed him well enough not to abuse it.

This was a state of things against which it was difficult to take counter-measures. Gregory knew Lacroix too well to believe that the Colonel would succumb to pleas or argument, and he realised that he was really not yet up to tackling the job of evading both Sister Madeleine and the agent de ville. In his heart of hearts he knew, too, that Lacroix's decision had been a wise one; so he resigned himself to accept it, but he sent for a war map and followed every fresh bulletin with the greatest anxiety.

It was known that the Germans were now within twenty miles of Paris. By mid-day news came in that their armoured divisions had smashed through on the Lower Oise to Persan and Beaumont. To the East they were now endeavouring to drive a spear-head behind the Maginot Line; around Rheims the pressure was increasing hourly, and they succeeded in forcing the Passage of the Marne at Chateau-Thierry. West of Paris the situation was equally critical; between Rouen and Vernon the Germans had established bridge-heads across the Lower Seine and by evening it was learnt that Le Havre was in peril.

This last piece of news seemed to Gregory especially grave. Le Havre was the main British war base and there stocks of millions of shells, thousands of lorries, hundreds of guns and colossal quantities of other equipment had been steadily built up during the whole nine months of the war. As long as Le Havre remained in our possession these could be used to re-equip fresh units sent from home; but their quantity was far too great for them to be moved, so if the Germans succeeded in forcing their way down the coast this incalculably valuable accumulation of brand new war material must be either destroyed or captured.

There had been little movement on France's Italian front, so it looked as though Mussolini was chary of testing out the valour of his Fascists, but the R.A.F. had bombed Turin, Genoa, Milan, Tobruk and Italy's Abyssinian bases, with good effect. Spain had made a formal announcement of non-belligerency in favour of the Axis, so evidently our new Ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, had cut little ice with General Franco as yet.

On the Thursday Gregory telephoned a store for some ready-made clothes on approval and from them selected an outfit to replace his clergyman's gear. The morning papers said that the French had made counter-attacks at Persan and Beaumont, winning back five miles of ground, but that further west, at Rouen, the situation was worsening hourly. The Germans were now throwing in their unarmoured infantry with utter recklessness and their troops were pouring over their bridge-heads across the lower Seine.

East of Paris, Rheims had fallen and the new German thrust to outflank the Maginot Line was making rapid progress.

During that day the enemy were steadily closing in on the western, northern and eastern approaches to Paris, and General Weygand formally declared it an open city. At night Reynaud broadcast a last desperate appeal to President Roosevelt while the B.B.C. proclaimed that Britain's factories were now working night and day without cessation to equip a new army, the advance units of which were sailing hour by hour as rifles and gas-masks could be placed in the hands of the men who had been saved from Dunkirk.

On the Friday, Gregory had so far recovered that even Sister Madeleine agreed that he was sufficiently well to get up, and after breakfast he was just about to do so when, having left the room for a moment, she returned to announce a visitor. To Gregory's surprise and delight Kuporovitch walked in.

The Russian was in gigantic spirits. He had flown from England that morning and at last achieved his ambition of reaching Paris again after twenty-six years of exile from his beloved holiday resort.

Even the sound of the battle which was raging outside the city, and the sight of the streams of refugees passing through it, could not altogether rob him of his joy. From his taxi he had seen many of the old familiar landmarks—the Opera, the Madeleine, the Rue Royale, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysees and the Petit Palais. Central Paris as yet had not suffered sufficient damage for the effect of the German air raids to be apparent and the cafes, the crowded pavements and the gardens had seemed to him little altered, except for the change of fashion and the great increase in motor traffic, since he had seen them over a quarter of a century before.

To Gregory's anxious inquiry about Erika he replied at once: 'Be of good cheer. For some days after we reached London her state was again critical, but she turned the corner on the Friday after we left Dunkirk and this last week has made a vast difference. At last she is able to talk a little and she says that it was her will to live for you which brought her through the dark places when she so nearly died; so you may be certain that she will not slip back now.'

'Thank God!' Gregory sighed. 'And I'm eternally grateful to you, Stefan, for the way in which you looked after her.'

Kuporovitch shrugged. 'It was a joy, my friend. The good Sir Pellinore, to whom I took her immediately we reached London, has entertained me in a most princely fashion. To live in that great house of his is, except for some slight differences in national custom, to be back again in the mansion of a Russian nobleman as we lived before the Revolution. I had no idea that even in England such a state of things still survived outside the story-books, and London, too, is a revelation. In spite of everything the people lunch and dine in the crowded restaurants and go about their business as if there were no threat to their security at all; yet things are being done there now. Churchill, Beaverbrook, Bevin and some others are cutting the red tape at last and underneath the casualness one senses the iron will of the people to defeat Hitler whatever it may cost them.'

'I've never doubted that,' said Gregory. 'It seems always to take a frightful knocking about really to rouse the fighting spirit in us; but once it's there woe betide the enemy. Things are in a pretty bad way here, though.'

'So I have gathered. But who is to blame for that? The British were responsible for holding a great sector of the Allied line; instead of doing so they went home with little but their shirts. That left a great gap which the British could have filled again if they had broken through, or counterbalanced if they had dug themselves in on the coast as a threat to the German rear. But they did neither, and the French were left to get out of the mess as best they could, alone.'

'I thought that too,' Gregory agreed, 'until I learned that the British had good reason for going home when they did. The French High Command is rotten, Stefan. Weygand is not the great man we thought him. There is treachery right up at the very top. I've now come to the conclusion that our Government must have known that and decided to get our men out alive, before the French ratted on them and they were left to face the whole weight of the German Army on their own, which would have meant absolute annihilation.'

Kuporovitch shook his head. 'No, Gregory; you are wrong there. The evacuation from Dunkirk was ordered on May the 29th and it is now June the 14th. As you and I sit here, the British Government is shipping troops back to France as hard as it can go. Do you believe for one moment that they would be doing that if they had already formed the conclusion sixteen days ago that the French meant to throw their hand in?'

'I suppose you're right,' Gregory sighed. 'If they brought the men off from Dunkirk because they feared the French were going to do a "Leopold" on us they could hardly be sending them back again while the situation remains so uncertain.'

'A "Leopold", eh?' Kuporovitch's dark eyebrows went up with a quizzical expression. 'I hope you realise, my friend, that when the history of this war comes to be written Leopold and the people responsible for Dunkirk are going to be lumped together. Whatever the English school-books may say, the school-books of the rest of the world will record that after seventeen days' fighting the Belgians ratted on the British and that after nineteen days' fighting the British ratted on the French. What other word can be applied to the fact that, while still whole and undefeated, one of the finest armies that your country has ever put into the field gave up any further attempt to wage war upon the enemy and abandoned its Ally?'

'I suppose one can't blame the French for looking at things that way,' Gregory admitted. 'The retreat and evacuation has certainly given Hitler's Fifth Column in France just the ammunition they required for their work of severing the Allies, and it's quite on the cards now that within a few days France may make a separate Peace.'

'True. But there is still hope that they may be induced to carry on the fight. Even now our good Sir Pellinore is with Mr. Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook, who are on their way to Bordeaux to see if they cannot bolster up the shaking edifice.'

'Is that what you came to tell me?'

Kuporovitch nodded. 'Now that Erika is out of danger I at last felt justified in appeasing my desire to see Paris again, and when I told Sir Pellinore that he said to me: "Find Gregory, if you can, and tell him how uncertain things are now with the French. If they decide to fight on—well and good; but if they surrender there is a risk that he might be caught in France. Tell him to make his way to Bordeaux and to join me at the Hotel Julius Caesar; then I shall be able to get him safely out of the country should France collapse." '

'And what view does Sir Pellinore take of things?'

The Russian hunched his shoulders. 'He is by no means optimistic. The loss of Paris will be a grave blow to France and he gave me the impression that he felt that only a miracle could save her now.'

Gregory frowned. T believe I might have pulled off that miracle three nights ago, but that little fiend, La Baronne Noire, poisoned me when I was in Italy and I've been laid by the heels ever since.'

'Poisoned you, eh? Tell me about that.'

Gregory gave a resume of what had befallen him since he had parted from Kuporovitch on the beach at Dunkirk, and when he had finished, the Russian said:

'There is only one thing for it; we must get this woman, Gregory, and those papers of which Lacroix spoke. They are becoming of more importance every moment, now that with each hour there becomes more likelihood of France going out of the war.'

Gregory nodded. 'Lacroix can't keep me here much longer, because the Germans are at the gates, and I'm expecting to have a word from him at any time telling me that I can go. I'm quite fit enough again now to have another crack at the Black Lady and it will help a lot to have you with me; but it's rotten luck that you should have to leave Paris because the Germans are about to enter it the very day that you get here.'

Kuporovitch smiled ruefully. 'Yes; it is hard indeed. Perhaps now I shall never again see Montmartre, or the Luxemburg Gardens, or the Bois; but one thing I shall regret above all— and that is, not to have taken my aperitif with a pretty girl on a sunny morning outside Wagner's on the pavements of the Rue Royale.'

'Well, that at least is not impossible,' Gregory laughed. 'It's eleven o'clock in the morning, you could hardly have a sunnier day, and I imagine that the cafes are still open. As for the pretty girl—why not ask my nurse, Sister Madeleine? You can get there in ten minutes in a taxi. Take her out and give her a drink while I telephone Lacroix and get dressed.'

The Russian beamed; Sister Madeleine smilingly accepted his invitation when she learned how far he had travelled for the pleasure of once more visiting her native city, and they set off together while Gregory got up to have his bath.

When he had finished he was just about to telephone Lacroix; but he had no need to do so as a messenger arrived for him at that moment with a letter from the Colonel, which read:

'I hear from your doctor that you are now fit enough to travel, which is good news indeed at such a time of grief. Our troops have now completed their withdrawal and only armed police to prevent looting are left in the capital. The salle Boche will once again pollute the Champs Elysees by a formal entry at three o'clock this afternoon. Therefore, you should leave at once.

'The lady of whom we spoke when I last saw you left Fontainebleau on Wednesday morning. Perhaps she feared that the sight of an expensive car might attract unwelcome attention from the more desperate of our refugees; or it may be that she had another reason. In any case, she left, with her chauffeur only, on the box of a blue Ford van lettered in gold "Maison Pasquette—Blanchisserie".

'It is virtually certain that she will have followed the Government to Tours and Bordeaux but she has a villa in the South of France. It is called Les Roches and is at Pointe des Issambres between Saint Maxime and Saint Raphael, so later she may go there with her baggage.

'May the good God have you in his keeping in these difficult hours and grant that in happier times we may meet again.'

The bare facts in the letter would have conveyed little to a casual reader, but to Gregory they conveyed a lot. The reason that the Black Baroness had elected to journey south by van instead of by car was plain enough. A Ford van could move just as quickly as a car on a road choked with refugees, and she had no intention of leaving her most valued possessions to be destroyed by shell-fire or looted in her absence. In the van there would be much more room to take pictures, furs, jewels and letter-files than in a car, and the underlining of the word 'baggage' clearly inferred that Lacroix hoped that now Gregory was fit again he would go after those letter-files; and that, quite definitely, was what he meant to do.

Leaving a message for Kuporovitch that he would be back by half-past one, he went out to make his arrangements. Paris was a sad sight that morning. Half the shops were already shut and those inhabitants who had decided to remain were pulling down their blinds in anticipation of the triumphant entry of the Germans that afternoon. All the main streets were crowded with sorrowing, gesticulating people packing bag and baggage on to their cars in preparation for making the journey, in most cases, into the unknown.

Refugees had now been streaming south for many days, but there were still tens of thousands who had hung on until the last moment hoping against hope that they would not have to go after all, and these were now working at frantic speed lest they had left it too late and should be caught by the on-coming enemy.

He found it impossible to hire or buy a private car but at a garage with which he had done business in the past he managed to make what amounted to a hire-purchase arrangement with the owner-driver of a taxi-cab. The garage proprietor was no longer observing petrol restrictions as he was only too anxious to unload as much of his stock as he could before the Germans arrived; so Gregory was able to have the taxi's tank filled and to buy a dozen spare bidons in addition. He told the driver to run over the engine as thoroughly as possible in the short time available and to bring the cab round to the Saint Regis at half-past one: then he made a few purchases and, returning to the now almost empty hotel, ordered a large picnic basket to be made up.

At twenty to two he paid his bill, said good-bye to the sad-faced manager and went out on to the doorstep. The taxi was there but there was no sign of Kuporovitch. With considerable annoyance, Gregory assumed that the Russian amorist had found little Sister Madeleine so responsive to his blandishments that he had forgotten all about the time; but ten minutes later he had grave reason to regret his unworthy suspicions.

Sister Madeleine drove up in a taxi. As she jumped out he saw that tears were streaming down her face.

Running down the steps he asked her with a sudden sense of alarm what had happened to bring her back in such a state.

Grasping his arm she sobbed out: 'It was an accident. Just as we were leaving he stepped off the pavement too soon and a car knocked him down. Oh, how tragic—how tragic! To think that for all these years he had longed for Paris and that he should come back only to die.'

Gregory moaned. For a moment he could hardly realise that the amiable Russian, who had been so full of life only that morning, would never laugh again. For over two months now he had been an almost constant witness of destruction and death in Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, so that the corpses he had seen in the blasted villages and on the roadsides in his recent journeys had come to mean little to him, but the thought that his friend had died in an ordinary street-accident had a peculiar bitterness all its own.

There was only one small consolation—Stefan Kuporovitch had at least achieved his ambition before he died. Just for an hour or so he had seen again the Paris with which he had fallen in love when he was young. He had even drunk his Vermouth-Cassis with a pretty Parisienne in the sunshine on the pavement of the Rue Royale. Then he had stepped off that pavement into oblivion as far as the things of this world were concerned. Gregory knew only too well that there were many less pleasant circumstances in which a man could die, and after a moment he pulled himself together to ask Sister Madeleine for particulars.

Although she was a nurse the tragedy had so upset her that she was bordering on hysteria, and it was only towards the end of her account that Gregory realised that Kuporovitch was not actually dead. His skull had been fractured in two places and she had no doubt at all that his injuries were fatal, but he had still been alive when they had taken him in an ambulance to the Hospital Saint Pierre.

Gregory paid off her taxi and grabbing her by the arm led her towards his own, as he said: 'Quick! We must go there at once and hear the doctor's report.'

She warned him that the Russian's case was hopeless and when they reached the hospital a white-coated doctor confirmed her view. Kuporovitch had not regained consciousness but might last a few hours, though the doctor considered it most unlikely that he would live through the night.

Although he would have liked to stay, Gregory knew that it was of the utmost importance that he should go south after the Black Baroness with the least possible delay; so he asked Sister Madeleine if she intended to remain in Paris during the occupation.

'Yes,' she said with a sigh. 'I have an old mother who is too infirm to travel, and with the train-loads of wounded that are constantly arriving there will be plenty of work for me to do.'

Taking some bank-notes from his wallet he asked her if she would come to the hospital on the following day and make the necessary arrangements to provide Kuporovitch with a decent funeral. She took the money and agreed at once; then he thanked her for her care of him and, still half-dazed by the tragedy, sadly walked out into the sunny street.

April the 8th to June the 14th. It was just sixty-seven days since Hitler had swooped by night on unsuspecting Norway, and Gregory was thinking of the hideous chapters of history that had been made in that short time.

King Haakon and Queen Wilhelmina had been driven from their thrones. Leopold of Belgium was now branded for ever as a traitor. A million soldiers and civilians had died and another million lay wounded in the hospitals. Ten million people had been rendered homeless and another twenty million had fallen under the brutal domination of the Nazis. Paris had fallen and the enemy were in possession of the Channel ports, which brought their bombers within twenty-five miles of England. It had been one long nightmare tale of incompetent leadership, disaster, treachery and defeat.

Even in his own small world, Erika had only narrowly escaped death, Paula had died before his eyes.

Lacroix had become virtually a fugitive. And now poor Kuporovitch was dead.

He, too, had suffered three major defeats at the hands of the woman who was his enemy, and one of them had very nearly cost him his life. He was very tired after these weeks of stress and now quite alone.

But he knew that there could be no giving-up until he was dead or his battle was won.

Stepping into the taxi he said: 'Drive to Bordeaux.'

CHAPTER 25

The Black Baroness

It was just on three o'clock; the hour at which the Germans were due to march in triumph down the Champs Elysees. The sounds of battle had receded to a distant rumble, so faint that it was hardly perceptible unless one deliberately listened for it; while in the city itself there was a strange and terrible silence. The last of those who meant to leave had gone; the streets were now deserted; bowed and weeping behind locked doors and shuttered windows, the people of Paris awaited in submission the coming of the conqueror.

As Gregory drove through the once gay streets he thought of the scenes which they were soon certain to witness. Thousands of German officers and Nazi officials would bring their families out of the bombed areas of Germany to live in the comfort and security of Paris now that it was a captive city yet must remain immune from aerial attack. In his imagination he could already see the crowds of fat, stupid, ugly, vulgar German women swarming in the Rue de la Paix, the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, and the Rivoli, pushing and thrusting to get at the silk stockings, the hats, the frocks, the linens and the brocades; while their men jostled one another in the restaurants and bought up all the supplies in the tobacco and wine shops.

Their Fuehrer had denied them butter that they might have guns, and now they were to be given their reward. They would loot Paris of her vast store of the luxuries which they had not seen for years, and for which—if they paid at all—they would pay only in worthless paper.

Yet while those German hogs guzzled in the trough they would not realise that even this abundance must be absorbed in a few months and that the Parisian goose once having been cooked could lay no more golden eggs. The coming winter would find them cold and hungry once again, but for the time being the riches of the conquered territory would still their questioning and whet their appetites for further conquests. Dr. Goebbels would not fail to point the moral of the Blitzkrieg. He would say:

‘In Germany for two generations we have scraped and starved, but now you have seen for yourselves how the rich Dutch and Belgians and French have glutted themselves with good things through all those years. And why? Because they had Empire while Germany had not. It is our turn now, and once the final victory is won Germany's people will live in plenty for evermore. Heil Hitler! On with the war! Kill, crush, destroy!'

False premises, lying sophistry perhaps, but a subtle, poisonous doctrine which Gregory knew would find a ready hearing in the reddish, protruding ears of a host of blond, waxy-faced, pot-bellied Huns.

His driver was a dour, uncommunicative fellow, but the taxi was a good one and Gregory had promised the man a handsome bonus if he got the best mileage possible out of it, allowing for the conditions they met on the road; with the proviso that for any breakdown that might occur on the journey south twenty per cent was to be deducted from the promised reward. So the man had done his utmost during such time as he had had to ensure that his engine was in the best possible running order.

They ran smoothly through the deserted streets of Paris and out of the city through Mont Rouge and Bourg-la-Reine. A trickle of people was still moving along the road but not in sufficient numbers to prevent the taxi-man getting the maximum speed out of his car. As they reached the open country Gregory began to keep a good look-out for German patrols, since their advance units were reported already to be fifteen miles beyond the city; but the surrender of the whole Paris area had left a great vacuum in the battle-line so the country through which he was passing was for the moment no-man's-land. The first troops that he saw proved to be French detachments wearily marching south, so it seemed that the Germans, having been occupied all day in advancing through uncontested territory, had not yet caught up with their enemies.

Ten minutes after passing the first batch of French troops the taxi entered Etamps. The town was crowded with the retreating Army and Gregory thought that the men looked hopelessly beaten as they lay in groups on the pavements or stood drooping with weariness beside their vehicles. From that point on he was constantly passing units which were falling back to take up fresh positions behind the Loire, and he had also caught up with the tail-end of the vast civilian army that bad left Paris on foot the preceding day or in the slower vehicles that morning. The refugees were inextricably mixed with the retreating troops, causing great delay and confusion. Nevertheless, the taxi-man managed to keep up a fairly good pace by winding his way in and out among the moving column and they reached Orleans at seven o'clock.

The town had been bombed and a large part of the main street lay in ruins so they had to circumvent it by taking side-turnings until they reached the great bridge over the Loire, which was badly choked by the retiring troops. It was three-quarters of an hour before Gregory could get across; and the road south of the bridge was little better. At any moment he expected an officer to order him off the road altogether as it was a matter of vital necessity that the troops should reach their new battle positions before dawn, but apparently the refugees were so numerous and the military so tired that the officers responsible for keeping some sort of order on the roads had long since abandoned the uneven struggle.

He who shouted and swore got through, while he who did not got pushed into the ditch. Fortunately for Gregory his driver possessed a fine flow of argot and, urged on by the thought of the promised reward, he cursed without discrimination the unfortunate civilians and the weary soldiers who got in his way.

Twenty miles south of Orleans the pressure eased a little, as the troops became less numerous, and now that night was falling many of the refugees had drawn off the road to snatch a few hours' sleep before proceeding further. From ten miles an hour they were able to increase their pace to fifteen, and at a little before midnight they entered Tours. In spite of their good start the first hundred and twenty miles of their journey had taken them nine hours.

Tours had been the headquarters of the French Government for a short time after it had left Paris and in consequence the town had suffered appallingly. Many fires were still burning and several streets in the centre of the town were now only a mass of ruins. Weaving a way through the columns of refugees had been tiring work, and although Gregory had been feeding his driver with some of the things in his picnics-basket, by pushing them through the front window of the cab, he felt that the man deserved a rest; so they pulled up at a small cafe that had remained undamaged and was still open.

It was crowded with refugees, rich and poor jostling together; haggard-eyed women in expensive fur-coats, pot-bellied bourgeois round-shouldered Jews, officers, soldiers, workmen in blue overalls and children of all classes and all ages; some pathetically silent and some angrily complaining of their woes.

Among them Gregory saw a British R.A. Captain, so, having secured cups of hot coffee for his taciturn driver and himself, he asked the gunner if he had any news.

It transpired that he had heard the nine o'clock broadcast issued by the B.B.C. That morning the Germans had launched a fresh attack, west of the Saar, against the Maginot Line, but it had been repulsed with heavy losses. The 17,000-ton armed liner Scotstoun had been sunk by a U-boat, but a British airman had succeeded in getting a direct hit with a heavy bomb on the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst while she was lying in Trondheim harbour. On balance it sounded not a bad day, if one ignored the fact that the Germans had that afternoon entered Paris.

However, the Gunner Captain was in a state of angry gloom or which he had good reason. He had been detached from the 51st Division some days previously, for special duties, and when he had endeavoured to rejoin his unit he had learnt that practically the whole Division had been scuppered.

British troops which had been re-landed early in the week had done their utmost to hold a line from Barentin, along the little River Saone, to the sea, in order to prevent the Germans reaching Le Havre; but the French on their right had let them down and, although the bulk of the British had been got off in a new evacuation, two brigades of the 51st Division had been cornered at Saint Valery. Some of Britain's most famous regiments had been there, including the Gordons and the Black Watch, and with the utmost valour they had fought unbroken in a desperate ring; but when at last their ammunition had run out their commander, Major-General V. M. Fortune, had been compelled to surrender, so six thousand of our best men had fallen into the hands of the enemy.

Gregory felt that this was a very different business from the ignominy of Dunkirk, where a quarter of a million men had been ordered to throw away their guns and baggage. In this case there had been tremendous odds against a few thousand infantry unsupported by tanks, heavy artillery or aircraft, and having fired their last shot before surrendering those splendid Highlanders had done all that was humanly possible, maintaining untarnished the magnificent record of the Glorious 51st. Nevertheless, it was yet one more grim act in the colossal tragedy which had been unfolding before his very eyes day after day these past terrible weeks.

He offered the Gunner a lift in his taxi to Bordeaux, which was gladly accepted, and running again through side-streets they came out on the road to Poitiers. It was now one o'clock in the morning and Gregory thanked his gods that he was making this part of his journey at night, as he had reached the area where even greater numbers of the refugees who had left Paris ahead of him were making their way south.

The road was never entirely clear of that endless column which had its origins in all the desolated cities of Holland, Belgium and Northern France, to be swollen during more recent days by another two million evacuees from Paris; but thousands of them were now passing the night in the fields, as could be seen from the small 'bivie' fires and moving lights Which from time to time threw up stationary cars, vans and carts piled with baggage and household belongings; and Gregory knew that had it been daytime their numbers would have rendered the roads absolutely impassable.

At dawn they passed through Poitiers and, halting south of the town, had some more food from Gregory's hamper to sustain themselves. Daylight now revealed the full tragedy that the last week of the war had brought about. The procession of luxury cars alternated with aged farm-carts; yet every few hundred yards vans, cars and lorries had been abandoned because they had run out of petrol, and on both sides of the road the endless ribbon of higgledy-piggledy makeshift camps continued.

All through the long, hot morning they stopped and started, stopped and started, but by mid-day they reached Angouleme, where during a short halt they picked up an R.A.F. sergeant-pilot and an A.S.C.

private, both of whom had got themselves hopelessly lost.

In the cafe where they had found these two Gregory learnt that the new German thrust, directed at the western end of the Maginot Line on the previous day, had, after all, proved a success. The Huns were clean through, and their armoured columns were now racing east in an attempt to cut the whole Line off from the main French Army.

After leaving Angouleme the traffic became a little less congested and at a quarter to five in the afternoon the taxi pulled up outside the Hotel Julius Caesar on the outskirts of Bordeaux.

Taking leave of the three men to whom he had given a lift, Gregory handed the taxi-driver his bonus.

They had accomplished the three-hundred-and-sixty-mile journey in just under twenty-six hours without a single breakdown and he felt that, considering the appalling conditions on the road, the man had well earned the money.

At the desk Gregory learnt, to his relief, that Sir Pellinore was in the hotel, and having sent up his name he was at once asked to go up to the Baronet's suite.

Sir Pellinore was delighted to see him, but he was not in one of his chaffing moods and was much too busy on a pile of papers spread out in front of him to enter upon long dissertations. After telling Gregory that Erika was now progressing well, and expressing his sorrow when he was told of Kuporovitch's death, he gave a bare outline of the state of things at the moment.

On this the eleventh day of the battle for France the situation had become absolutely desperate. After terrific fighting at Saarbruecken the Germans had gone clean through that ghastly white elephant, the Maginot Line, which had tied a great portion of the French Army to it during these last terrible weeks yet had failed in the end to fulfil its vaunted function as an impassable barrier. The German thrust had deepened alarmingly in the last twenty-four hours and their armoured units had penetrated as far east as Saint Dizier. They also claimed the capture of Verdun. That mighty fortress, the Glory of France, which in the last war had for months withstood the hammer-blows of the German Crown Prince's Army, had now fallen to Hitler's fanatical youth in a single day.

In the centre the French were giving way all along the line, and in the west Le Havre had fallen. Its huge stores of armaments and supplies, brand-new from the British factories, had been captured before there had been time to burn or destroy one-tenth of them. The only hope which now remained to France was that the German effort might at last peter out from utter exhaustion.

'And what of the political situation?' Gregory asked.

'God knows!' Sir Pellinore flung up his big hands in a weary gesture. 'We wrangled with them all last night and all this morning. Churchill and Beaverbrook have just left for home, but I understand that their intention is to discuss with the War Cabinet a last bid to keep the French from throwing their hand in. The suggestion is that we should offer them a solemn Act of Union by which all French citizens will in future enjoy the rights of British citizenship in addition to their own and vice versa; so that the two great Empires become insolubly united and each will benefit from the assets of the other.'

'By Jove!' murmured Gregory. 'Only a man like Churchill is capable of such great statesmanship. It may even be the beginning of a new world-order in which nation after nation unites to pool the whole world's resources.'

'Yes,' Sir Pellinore nodded. 'If it goes through, history will be made in the next few hours; but even if we make the offer, will the French accept it? The price is that they fight on, and it doesn't seem to me that they've got much fight left in them. But I can't stay gossiping with you. Tell me, as briefly as you can, what you've been up to.'

'I had a free trip to sunny Italy and afternoon-tea, consisting of poisoned wine, with that modern replica of Lucrezia Borgia, your little friend the Black Baroness.'

'The devil you did!'

'Two of Lacroix's men flew me back to Paris just in time to save me from being bottled up in an Italian concentration-camp and when I got back I was out of the game for three days owing to the effects of the poison.'

'Anything to show for it?'

'No; not a damned thing. I've even lost track now of the Baroness, but I'm hoping that she's here in Bordeaux.'

'She is. She's staying in this hotel.'

'Thank God for that! I've got a long score to settle with that little fiend, and I'll settle it tonight.'

'You'll do nothing of the kind,' boomed Sir Pellinore. 'She's already done all the damage that she can and, as a matter of fact, I happen to know that she's leaving Bordeaux this evening.'

'But since this is the centre of the whirlpool why on earth should she do that?'

'Because Petain and Weygand have now openly taken over from her and are advocating surrender.'

'What, Petain, too?'

'Yes. The old fool is absolutely gaga, and the others have persuaded him that he should fill the role of the white-headed martyr who saved his country from herself and further French poilus from being massacred by having the courage to face the obloquy of asking for an armistice. The Baroness is wise enough to know that any suggestion of petticoat influence now might be just the one thing that would swing matters the other way, so she's leaving matters in the hands of the men who actually sit at the Council table.'

'All the same, I tell you that I've got a score to settle with her.'

'Don't be a fool, Gregory. If you could have eliminated her somehow a month ago—a week ago—even yesterday—it would have been worth your while to run the risk of paying with your life for that pleasure; but not now. Her death cannot help us one iota, and since by the Grace of God you've come through these frightful weeks alive, I mean to take you home with me to Erika tomorrow.'

'I'm sorry,' said Gregory slowly, 'but I couldn't leave with a quiet conscience; because, quite apart from settling with her personally, there's still a job of work to be done.' He then told Sir Pellinore what Lacroix had said about the Baroness's letter-files and the Ford van which she had almost certainly used to remove them to Bordeaux.

'Hmm; that alters matters,' grunted Sir Pellinore after a moment. 'Even if the Government give in, I've no doubt that many of the best elements among the French will elect to fight on with us, particularly in the French Colonies, and we can't afford to have untrustworthy men among them. Yes, you must get those files, Gregory, and if you find an opportunity to give that woman the works without being caught yourself, by all means do so; she deserves a bullet more than any criminal in the whole of Europe who still remains un-hanged.'

'Have you any idea what time she's leaving?' Gregory asked.

'Yes. At seven o'clock. I actually heard her giving instructions to the head waiter for a picnic-basket to be ready for her at that hour.'

'D'you know where she's going?'

Sir Pellinore passed a hand over his white hair. 'No; I haven't the faintest notion.'

'She has a villa at Pointe des Issambres, so she's probably going there. At such short notice it would be almost suicidal for me to attempt to tackle her here in the hotel, so I think the best thing would be for me to try to hold her up at some lonely spot outside the town.'

'That's it,' Sir Pellinore nodded; but don't let her get too far, Gregory, because I'm sailing tomorrow at midnight and I want to take you home with me.'

'With luck,' said Gregory, 'I'll be back long before that. I know how busy you are, and as it's now nearly six o'clock I haven't any too much time to make my preparations; so I'll get along.'

When Sir Pellinore had gripped his hand and wished him luck he went downstairs and strolled out to the hotel garage.

Outside it were two mechanics and a little group of chauffeurs discussing the crisis with such animation that they were completely absorbed, and Gregory had no difficulty in slipping past without any of them noticing him.

There were several lines of cars inside the building but he soon found the Ford. It was the only commercial vehicle among the whole fleet of automobiles, and as he peered at it from between two other cars, he saw that a tough-looking fellow was sitting on the driver's seat with his head pillowed on his arms, drowsing at the wheel. This did not at all surprise him, as he had not for one moment imagined that Madame la Baronne would leave the pseudo laundry-van—which probably contained a fortune—unguarded.

Gregory's first intention, having identified the van, had been to go on ahead and choose some suitable spot for holding the Baroness up, but he was quick to realise that he had no guarantee whatever that she was actually going to Pointe des Issambres. She had a villa there but she might quite possibly be going somewhere else, in which case she would probably take a different road and he would then miss her altogether, It therefore seemed that his only safe course was to follow her when she set off until they reached a deserted stretch of road where he could puncture her back tyres by shooting at them and bring her to a standstill.

But a more careful scrutiny at the van showed him that, although it had the appearance of a Ford, it was not a Ford at all. The exhaust pipe was much too big, so evidently the Baroness had a far more powerful engine fitted under the Ford bonnet. That presented a nasty snag as, given clear roads— which were probable if she were crossing France from Bordeaux to the South through an area where few refugees would be moving—his taxi would never be able to keep up with her.

It then occurred to him that his best chance of achieving his end was, if he could, to conceal himself in the van and travel with her. As she was leaving at seven o'clock it was reasonable to suppose that she would put in only three or four hours' driving then pull up somewhere for the night. If that somewhere proved to be one of the many excellent wayside hostelries that line the roads of France he would have a much better opportunity of dealing with her and getting away afterwards than he could possibly have in Bordeaux, and he would still be back in plenty of time to sail with Sir Pellinore for England the following night.

Treading very cautiously, so as not to rouse the driver, he worked his way round behind several cars until he reached the back of the van; but, as he had feared, the doors had a good solid lock which it would have been quite impossible to force without alarming the man at the wheel.

For a few moments Gregory stood there deep in thought, then he tiptoed round to a car in front of and to the left of the van. The car had been left unlocked so that the garage men could move it. Opening the far door, Gregory crawled inside and gently lowered the opposite window. By squinting from it he could just see the driver without being seen himself. Taking out his automatic, he clicked a bullet up into the chamber, knelt down, rested the barrel on the ledge of the window and, aiming carefully so as not to hit the man, pressed the trigger.

Owing to its silencer the report of the pistol was no more than a cough, and, as Gregory had intended, the shot shattered the windscreen of the van just above the man's head. Ducking down so that he was completely hidden, he held his breath and waited.

The sound of tinkling glass was instantly followed by a yell of fright and rage, then louder shouts which brought the garage hands and chauffeurs running in from outside. In the excited conversation that followed Gregory gathered that the driver had no idea at all what had happened and was under the impression that somebody must have thrown a brickbat at the windscreen while he was dozing; but the others assured him that nobody had entered the garage, and Gregory soon learnt that his ruse had succeeded. The driver had been cut by the flying glass and was being led off by his companions to have his slight injuries doctored.

As soon as the coast was clear Gregory left his hiding-place, went straight to the back of the van and with two more shots from his pistol shattered its lock. Pulling open the doors he rapidly surveyed the van's contents. There were half a dozen medium-sized pictures in gilt frames, several packing-cases—

doubtless containing other objets d'art—two Louis Vinton wardrobe-trunks, three suitcases, the rawhide dressing-case that he well remembered seeing in Rotterdam, six large japanned-steel deed boxes and five or six valuable fur coats thrown on the top of the pile.

It was the deed-boxes that he was after, but he could not possibly make off with all six of them, as he could distinctly catch the murmur of quick voices and knew that several of the chauffeurs must have remained outside the garage to discuss the extraordinary incident that had just occurred.

In ten seconds he had decided that he dared not attempt to burgle the van and must carry out his original idea of travelling in it; but the smashed lock, when discovered, would almost certainly lead to a search of the van's interior unless some explanation were offered for it, so the obvious thing was to make the whole episode appear like a carefully-planned theft.

Snatching up the fur coats, he hurried with them to an aged, semi-derelict Citroen that he had noticed at the back of the garage and pushed them into its boot, where it was unlikely that they would be discovered for some time; then, hurrying back to the van, he made a few rapid readjustments to its contents.

He did not alter the general layout of the various articles but drew them all a little nearer to the back of the van so that a space was left behind the driver's seat in which he could lie down without being observed by anyone who looked inside. Then, leaving the doors wide open, he took off his coat to form a pillow for his head and settled down to make himself as comfortable as he could.

He found that he was very tired now, and in spite of the hard boards upon which he was lying he dropped off to sleep; but he was soon roused by angry, excited voices. Evidently the driver had returned and discovered that the van had been broken into. There was silence for a time as the man went away, doubtless to report the theft of the fur coats, for when he returned Gregory could hear the Baroness talking to him.

At first her voice showed acute anxiety, but on ascertaining that only the furs had gone she quietened down and arranged with one of the garage hands to affix a padlock to replace the shattered lock, and a quarter of an hour later Gregory found himself a prisoner.

He did not mind that in the least. The great thing was that he had escaped observation. The Baroness would probably unlock the doors herself in due course, which would provide him with an excellent opportunity of coming face to face with her if he so wished; or, alternatively, if the van were left locked up for the night he felt confident that he would manage to break out of it. A few moments later the van began to jolt and drove out of the garage. They were on their way.

Apart from the fact that he suffered acute discomfort Gregory knew nothing of that strange journey. For a time they bumped over the pave streets of the city, then evidently came out upon an open road, as the van began to run more smoothly and considerably increased its pace. Gregory then knew that he had been right about the engine, as on certain stretches the van appeared to develop the speed of a racing-car and was certainly doing well over eighty miles an hour.

Soon after they started he made himself more comfortable by sitting up and rearranging some of the things about him to prevent his being jolted quite so badly. A crack of light coming through the door was just enough for him to see by and he arranged matters so that although the contents of the van were to some extent altered around he was still hidden by the pictures, if at any time a halt was made without warning and the van doors suddenly opened.

Gradually, as night fell, the crack of light dimmed. When they had been on the road for two hours it was only a faint line, and after another hour the interior of the van was unrelieved Stygian blackness. Swaying a little from side to side as the van raced on into the night, Gregory thought of Erika and wondered if the gods who had so often favoured him would grant him one more slice of luck so that he might be finished with his business soon and in another few days be back with her in England. Then he slept.

He was wakened by the van jerking to a halt, and looking at the luminous dial of his watch he saw that it was five-past one. They had been on the road for over six hours so it seemed highly probable that the Baroness had accomplished the first stage of her journey and meant to remain for the rest of the night at whatever place they had reached; but Gregory was soon disillusioned in his hopes of this. Five minutes later the van started off again; evidently it had stopped only for petrol. Their pace, he noted, was now considerably slower but they were steadily eating up the miles and after drearily rocking from side to side, for what seemed a long time, he again dropped off to sleep.

When he next woke he could see the line of light again, but from the sounds around him he felt sure that they had pulled up in a street. His watch showed him that it was a quarter to six, but even at that early hour there was a considerable amount of traffic about. He could hear the hum of passing motor-cars and occasionally the hoot of horns, so, although the van remained stationary for some time, he did not feel that it was as yet advisable to attempt breaking out.

The fact that the Baroness had not stopped anywhere on the road to sleep considerably perturbed him, for it looked, now that morning was come, as if she intended to go straight through to her destination; and every mile that they covered meant another mile for him to traverse on his return journey to rejoin Sir Pellinore. They had now been nearly eleven hours on the road, so even if he had been in a position to turn back at once he could not have reached Bordeaux before five o'clock in the afternoon, and Sir Pellinore was sailing that night.

Gregory had a good memory for maps and distances, and assuming that the Baroness was heading for Pointe des Issambres he tried to work out how far they might have got. Taking into consideration the speed at which they had been going during the early part of the journey, he came to the conclusion that they had crossed from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean coast of France during the night and were now probably in Nimes or Avignon.

Evidently the Baroness had been refreshing herself with petit dejeuner at some hotel, as soon after seven o'clock the van jolted into motion again. Their pace was now much slower; he judged it to be not more than twenty miles an hour and could guess the reason. If, as he supposed, they were travelling east on the Route Nationale, which links Nimes and Avignon with Cannes and Monte Carlo, at the two former cities they would have come into the streams of refugees which for days had been heading towards the South of France.

As time went on the streak of light became quite dazzling against the surrounding darkness and the strong sunshine beat down relentlessly on the roof, making the interior of the van intolerably hot. Gregory would have given anything for an iced drink, but he had to content himself with a pull at the lukewarm brandy-and-water in his flask and a couple of bars of chocolate for his breakfast.

At ten o'clock the van stopped again, but only for a few minutes, evidently once more to fill up with petrol, and it seemed as though this interminable journey would never end. By that time they had been on the road for fifteen hours so Gregory had reluctantly had to give up any hope of getting back to Bordeaux in time to sail with Sir Pellinore. A little grimly he realised that if France went out of the war he would have to make his way back to England as best he could. By mid-day the van had obviously left the main road. Its pace was no quicker but it constantly twisted from side to side and went up and down steep hills, so Gregory felt certain that they must have reached the coast.

It was a little before three in the afternoon when, after a halt of only one minute, the golden streak of light suddenly went out as though it had been turned off by a switch, then came on again quite dimly as the van was brought to a standstill. With a sigh of relief Gregory felt convinced that they must have reached their journey's end, as the difference in the light indicated that the van had been driven into a garage.

Rousing himself at once, he got out his gun and crouched there behind the small stack of pictures. The van was unlocked; he could hear the Baroness and her man unloading and carrying away a portion of its contents. They made three trips, then the van was relocked without his presence in it having been discovered. Two sets of garage doors, one behind and one in front of the van, were slammed, and there was silence.

Standing up, he climbed over the intervening packages and set about breaking out of his prison. As the padlock was a temporary affair and its hinges had only been screwed on, he did not anticipate much difficulty in forcing it. The third time he threw his weight against the doors there was a tearing of wood and they flew open. He just managed to save himself from pitching out, and jumped down on to the garage floor. The doors were shut but there was plenty of light to see by, so he picked up the few screws that had fallen from the padlock staple and, closing the van doors, reinserted them in their holes so that if anyone entered the garage it would not be noticed, at a casual glance, that the temporary lock had been interfered with; then he tiptoed forward and, cautiously opening the door at the back of the garage, peered out.

The garage backed on to a garden. To his left, where the house lay, was a wide terrace with gaily-coloured sun-umbrellas and basket chairs. Below the terrace the garden paths twisted away among some dwarf pines, dropping steeply to a little cove which was lapped by the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean. To one side there was a promontory of huge green rocks, which was probably what gave the house its name, Les Roches.

Opening the door a little, he slipped out and warily made his way along to the terrace. Two wide french windows stood open there. Peering into the nearest he saw that they opened out of a large lounge-room that ran the full depth of the house and had other windows looking out on its far side. The room was empty, but at one side of it were stacked the six steel deed-boxes and other things that had been taken from the van. No sounds indicated the whereabouts of the Baroness or her man.

Gregory's brain was racing now that he had reached the end of the long chase, but he knew that he must act with caution or he might yet bungle matters. By now the man would almost certainly have gone to his room in the servants' quarters, which were on the far side of the house, to sleep after his nineteen-hour journey, and the Baroness had probably gone straight up to her room to tidy herself and rest. The problem was how to get at her, or lure her downstairs, without running into any other servants who might be about the place;

On consideration he decided that the best thing to do would be to go round to the front of the house, appear as an ordinary caller and ask to see her on the excuse that he had arrived with an urgent personal message from someone like Weygand or Reynaud. The probability was that he would be shown into the room which he had seen, and that she would then come downstairs. If she was alone—well and good; if a servant was with her—that could not be helped. This time Gregory was taking no chances and he meant to have his gun in his hand as she entered the room.

Tiptoeing back to the garage, he went through to its front entrance but found that the Baroness had locked that behind her, so he came out, and scrambling over a portion of the rock-garden that ran along the side of the garage he reached a low wall over which he could see that both the garage and the house gave direct on to the coast road.

He was just about to climb over the wall when a car appeared round the bend, moving at a great speed, but it braked as it roared up the slope and in a swirl of dust pulled up outside the house. Gregory's heart almost missed a beat from the sudden stress of mixed emotions—surprise—delight—consternation. In it was his old enemy, Herr Gruppenfuhrer Grauber.

His surprise was short-lived. There was, after all, nothing particularly extraordinary in the Chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.—I, moving freely about in an enemy country in plain clothes, or that he should have had a rendezvous with his friend, Die Schwartze Baronin, to receive in person her report of the momentous conferences which had taken place in the last few days.

His delight came from this unexpected opportunity to settle accounts, once and for all, with this murderous pervert who had climbed to power over the tortured bodies of a thousand victims and was the living symbol of all that was most foul and loathsome about the Nazi tyranny.

His consternation was due to the fact that he knew the Baroness to be as subtle and poisonous as a female cobra and considered her quite enough to tackle single-handed without having to take on her equally redoubtable ally at the same time.

Gregory possessed immense self-confidence, but even he doubted his capability to overcome that ruthless pair in open daylight when there was at least one servant, and perhaps more, in the house who might come to their assistance. But just as the British destroyers had gone in against a superior force of Germans in the first battle of Narvik he also was determined to go in. Nevertheless, knowing that he would almost certainly be outgunned and that Grauber, at least, would get away, he decided to do his best to sabotage the Gestapo Chief's line of retreat.

Grauber had backed his car up to the front of the garage, where it was not visible from the house; then, getting out, he had gone to the front door where someone had let him in. Slipping over the wall and down into the roadway, Gregory opened the boot of the car, hunted round until he found a greasy leather tool-sack and took out a pair of pliers. Getting down on his hands and knees, he crawled under the car and partially cut through one of the wires of the steering gear. If Grauber did succeed in escaping a bullet he was not going to get very far on that twisting coast road without having a nasty smash; and, with luck, he would go right over the precipice to meet his death on the rocks below.

Crawling out, Gregory replaced the pair of pliers, shut the boot, scrambled back over the low wall and through the shrubs at the side of the garage to its garden end. He paused for a moment to regain his breath, then once more crept with catlike step along to the terrace, his pistol drawn ready in his hand.

Very, very cautiously he knelt down by the open French window, then gave one swift glance inside.

Grauber was there, and Gregory's heart thrilled again. A merciful God had at last delivered his enemy, bound, into his hands.

Evidently the Gestapo Chief had asked for the Baroness and had been shown into the big lounge-room to wait until she came downstairs. He was sitting in a low armchair, facing the door and with his back to the window. His fleshy pink neck, which protruded in ugly rolls above his collar, was on a level with Gregory's head and only a few feet away.

There was not a second to be lost. At any moment the Baroness might appear, then Gregory would have lost his God-given opportunity. He had no scruples about what he was going to do. Grauber would have killed him or Erika without warning or compunction, just as he had already killed scores of other people. Reversing his pistol, Gregory took a firm grip of the barrel. Rising to his full height he took one step forward and brought the butt of the pistol crashing down on Grauber's skull.

Grauber slumped forward without a sound. Not even a moan issued from his lips as the blood began to ooze up through the broken skin of his cranium. Jamming his pistol back in its holster, Gregory seized the Gestapo Chief by the back of the collar and, hauling him out of the chair, dragged his body behind a nearby sofa where it could not be seen from the door of the room. Then he pulled out his gun again and tiptoed across the parquet to take up his position behind the door.

His hand that held the pistol was steady but his heart was thumping. For once the big cards in the pack had been dealt to him. Not only had he put one enemy out of the game already, but the coming of that enemy so unexpectedly had solved for him the tricky problem of getting the Baroness downstairs without her suspicions being aroused by the announcement that a stranger was asking to see her and without any of her servants yet being aware of his presence there.

He had hardly placed himself when the door opened and the Baroness came in. From his post of vantage Gregory was immediately behind her as she walked into the room. With his free hand he gave her a swift push in the back; with his foot he kicked-to the door. She gave a little cry, stumbled and swung round to find herself looking down the barrel of his automatic.

Her dead-white face, framed in its bell of jet-black hair, could go no whiter but he saw shock and dismay dawn in her dark eyes.

'I've got you now,' he said quietly; 'and don't imagine that the Herr Gruppenfuhrer will come to your assistance this time, I've already dealt with him.'

She stared at him like a small, ferocious, trapped animal for a moment, then she murmured: 'I thought—I thought . . .'

'Yes,' Gregory went on for her, 'you thought that I was dead, but I survived your hospitality and I've come back from the gates of Death to claim you.'

'What—what d'you mean to do?' she breathed. 'Are you going to kill me?'

He nodded. 'As the price of your treachery you no doubt anticipate great rewards from your Fuehrer, but you're not going to get them. You are the woman who sold France to her enemies, and for that you are going to die.'

A new expression came into her face, neither resignation nor fear, nor determination to fight for her life, but a strange spiritual flame that lit up her whole countenance, as she cried in ringing protest: 'That's a lie!

I did not sell France; and I shall go down in history not as the woman who betrayed France but as the woman who saved her.'

Gregory was so taken aback by this extraordinary declaration that he could only stammer: 'You—you've done your damnedest to ensure that France shall surrender and desert her Ally.'

'Her Ally!' she sneered. 'For nearly a thousand years England was our hereditary enemy, and the Entente Cordiale is a thing of yesterday, based on false premises. That unnatural alliance will pass as swiftly as it came and will soon be forgotten. Deep down in you the truth is as plain to you as it is to me. The French and the English neither like nor understand each other and their paths lie in opposite directions. For a few decades Britain has used France as the weaker partner to be her bulwark against Germany. France suffered inconceivably more than Britain in the last war and, once again, she is being martyred in this one, while the English sit at home in their cities, safe and secure. But that is finished. Henceforth Britain must fight her own battles and France will go back as an integral part of the Continent to which she belongs.'

'I see,' snapped Gregory. 'It's not, after all, that you're pro-Hitler but that you're anti-British. Yet you worked on Leopold, who was just as much France's Ally as Britain's, to make him throw his hand in; and you helped to persuade Mussolini to stab France in the back. Your hatred of the English must have unbalanced your brain if just for the sake of making things difficult for us you've gone to the length of betraying France to the Nazis. Damn it, you must be crazy!'

'You fool!' she spat at him. 'I tell you I have saved France— saved her from herself—and if you knew the things that I know you would realise it.'

A sudden spate of words poured from her scarlet lips. 'France in our time has become decadent, vile, rotten to the core. Look at our great families—the aristocrats and the intelligentsia who should think for and lead the nation—how do they spend their lives? Money-grabbing at the expense of the workers so that Communism has become rife throughout the land. At all times in history the ruling caste has had its own code of morals, yet used a cloak of some decency to screen its love affairs. But not these people.

They are not even content to sleep with one another openly, like dogs and bitches rutting in a field. Half of them are perverts, homosexuals, Lesbians, and they have so little shame that they proclaim their vices from the housetops. The other half are so degraded that they marry only as a matter of convenience, and their idea of amusement is to take their own wives to a brothel to witness every vile practice that the mind can conceive. A desire for children, the home, real love, have become things to snigger at. Dope, gambling, and the private cinema at which even bestiality is shown, have taken their place as the occupations of the rich. And what the rich do today the masses do tomorrow. That is why the ruling caste of France must die the death. It is to bring about their downfall that men like Weygand and Baudouin have striven with me. France must be purged for ever of this scum in order that the spirit of France which lives on in the common people may revivify her and make her once again a great nation.'

Hardly pausing for breath, she raced on: 'Communism could not do that; but National Socialism could.

And however much you English may hate Hitler, I know him to be a great man. For a year—two years, perhaps—France will be occupied by a conqueror, but what is such a period in the hundreds of years of her history? Hitler will know how to deal with the real traitors; the wealthy parasites who have battened on the resources of the nation and paved the way for her downfall by the vile example they have set to her other classes. He will know, too, how to deal with the Communists and dangerous visionaries who preach their unworkable theories that all men are equal, which is fundamentally untrue.

'Out of chaos will come order. Under National Socialism we shall re-establish the ideal of the Family and reorganise our industrial resources so that the greatest good comes to the greatest number. For a time France must know the weight of a captive's chains in order that she may know how to utilise her freedom when she regains it once more. The people may suffer bitterness, humiliation, misery, but these things will pass, and when the time is ripe a new France will arise, reborn from the ashes of the old—a France clean in mind, strong in spirit and conscious of her glorious destiny.

'It is for this that I have lied and tricked and soiled my hands with blood, but you know that I speak the truth and you dare not call me a traitor now.'

For a moment Gregory did not reply. Her torrent of words had come crashing on to his brain, revealing her to be an utterly different personality from what he had thought her. Right or wrong, according to her own lights this small dark woman was a great patriot.

He knew that what she had said of the Entente Cordiale being an unnatural alliance was true. He knew that what she had said of the degeneracy of French society was true. He knew that any German occupation of France could not last indefinitely; and, however appalling it might sound, the Baroness's plan was, perhaps, the one and only way of restoring health and a new vitality to the moribund French nation. Yet he also knew that she had made one vital miscalculation.

'Do you realise,' he asked, 'that your vision of a new France will remain only a vision unless Hitler can secure Peace? For without Peace it will be impossible for him to reorganise Europe,'

She shrugged. 'With Hitler as master of Europe from northern Norway to the Pyrenees, Britain will not be able to carry on the war alone.'

Gregory shook his head. 'You're wrong there. Every man, woman and child in Britain knows that we dare not make a patched-up peace. Now that the war is on we are determined to fight it to a finish, because if we gave Hitler even a few months' breathing-space we should be completely at his mercy later on. You're much too clever a woman, Baroness, not to realise the truth of that.'

She shrugged again. 'Yes. You may fight on for a little, but what chance have you got? With the whole coast of France in his hands Hitler will be able to wear you down with intensive bombings until you are so weak that you will not be able to resist an invasion.'

'No, Baroness; there you're wrong again. He can bomb our cities but we shall stand up to the bombing somehow, even if we have to live in holes in the ground; and as long as the British Navy is paramount upon the seas he will never be able to land an invading force of sufficient strength to quell us. No threats, no terror, will be great enough to break the heart of Britain. And the worse things get the more determined we shall become to see matters through.'

As she stared at him he went on, speaking out of an unshakable conviction that radiated from him. 'I do not seek to belittle the gallantry of your people when I remind you that great areas of France have been conquered many times by the English and the Spaniards as well as by the Germans, and this would not be the first time if France is now compelled to accept the humiliation of a complete surrender; but in all their long history my people have never been conquered and have never surrendered, We broke the might of Spain; we fought your own King, Louis XIV, to a standstill. A Dutch fleet once entered the Thames, but we threw the Dutch out of the New World and broke their Sea Power for ever. Even when Britain stood alone against Napoleon she did not despair; she fought on until a British frigate took the former master of Europe into lonely exile.'

For the first time he saw a shadow of doubt enter the Baroness's dark eyes even as she protested. 'But this time it will be different. The English are effete; they've been pampered too long. They ran at Dunkirk.

They'll give in—they'll give in.'

He smiled then, and he did not mean his smile to be patronising, but there was something in it which drives all foreigners into a frenzy.

'Oh, no, they won't,' he said quietly. 'As a race we haven't altered. You mustn't allow yourself to be misled by what happened in Norway and Belgium. We're born muddlers, and in every war it takes us a little time to find our feet. You see, we're not like Continental countries; we're not organised for war, so our peace-time leaders are never any good when it comes to a scrap. But sooner or later we sift out the people at the top and things begin to happen. Last time we had Asquith, but he was replaced by Lloyd George, who, whatever may be said against him, was a great war leader. This time we had Chamberlain, but now Churchill has taken his place, and later on among the younger men we'll find some real live Generals.'

'Churchill!' she cried bitterly. 'Yes; he would still wish to fight if London were in ruins. But the people are not of the same metal; they'll revolt, throw Churchill overboard and sue for peace.'

'Don't you believe it!' His smile became a pitying grin. 'Churchill is England. He typifies the spirit of the Empire more than any other living man. He is what all of us would like to be, and ninety-nine per cent of us are ready to fight with him to the last ditch. Yet even if a bomb or a bullet robbed us of him it would make no difference to the final outcome of the war, because other leaders would arise and we should fight on just the same. It was your own Napoleon who said that the British don't know when they're beaten; and that's the truth. It will be a long, hard road, but in the end the triumph of Britain is as certain as the rising of tomorrow's sun.'

'I don't believe it.' She nervously clasped and unclasped her hands, now openly doubting, but striving to resist any acceptance of the belief that he was forcing home on her.

'Oh, yes, you do,' he contradicted her. 'We've won the last battle in every war. That may be a cliche, but it's a fact; and it's going to be just the same this time. That is where you have made a terrible miscalculation, and, if you think for a moment, you will see how by Britain's refusal to accept a patched-up peace all your dreams must fall to pieces. Hitler may make himself lord of Europe; Goering may send his bombers to destroy our homes; Goebbels may lie and rage and threaten; but all the time the Blockade will go on, and sooner or later the Nazis will not know which way to turn for war materials and food. Then those who have aided Hitler, and millions of innocent people as well, must pay the price of his damnable ambitions,, And as long as France is Hitler's vassal she, too, must pay.'

'Stop!' cried the Baroness. 'Stop! I will not listen.' But he went on to point the moral with inexorable, relentless logic.

'Even if the Nazis destroyed our air-ports and our factories we should still fight on from Canada; and the United States are behind us now. All the vast resources of that great Democracy will be placed at our disposal to help us smash the Nazis. Our Navy and Air Force will render your ports useless for years to come; the shipping in them must lie idle because you will be cut off from your colonies and your world markets. Every industry in France will be ruined through lack of fuel and raw materials, and the machinery in your factories will rust. Your great Army will have to be disbanded, but there will be no work for the men to do. By next winter you will have ten million unemployed. Your herds and your livestock will die because there will not be enough cattle-food to feed them. To keep their own people from revolt the Germans will be forced to seize the bulk of your agricultural produce. The spectre of famine will enter every home from Calais to Marseilles, and disease will take its terrible toll from Strasbourg to Biarritz. There will be riots and street-fighting in the towns and cities; the starving crowds will wreck the food trains which are taking your crops into Germany and they will murder the Nazi officials who are set over them. Then there will be ghastly reprisals—huge fines—and your most spirited young men—those who should be your leaders of tomorrow—will be shot in batches against the wall of your German-occupied barracks. Whole towns may be given over to destruction in a ruthless attempt to keep you under, and the country will fall into the same state of lawlessness that made life so terrible in the Middle Ages. Bands of desperate, hungry men will roam the country, breaking into houses, killing people who oppose them and torturing others in the hope that they will give away the hiding-places of secret stores of food. The very children upon whom you are counting to grow up as the citizens of the new France that you have planned will die in their cradles, or only reach maturity warped in mind from the horrors that they have witnessed and crippled in body from malnutrition. That, Madame la Baronne, is what you will have done to France.'

She cowered away from him, her scarlet mouth a little open, her black eyes wide, then she whispered:

'This is a ghastly picture that you paint, Monsieur.'

'Yet it is true,' Gregory insisted. 'All that I have said is absolutely inevitable if Britain fights on—and Britain will fight on.'

Suddenly her red mouth twitched and she cried: 'I hate you —I hate you! Never before have I been shaken in my belief, but you have made me doubt, and if I am wrong I deserve to die.'

Gregory put up his pistol and shook his head. 'No. I'm not going to shoot you now. Whatever you may have done in the past, you have convinced me today that you did it believing that it was for the good of your country. I only wish, though, that we had talked together months ago, because I believe that I could have shown you that you were wrong and persuaded you to use your great powers for good instead of ill; but it's too late now.'

'Too late,' she repeated. Then a new expression suddenly lit her dark eyes. 'I wonder. The military situation in France is now beyond repair, but if France could be kept in the war the Fleet could be saved—and the colonies.'

In a flash Gregory saw that he had achieved the seemingly impossible. The swift, cold brain of this extraordinary woman had not only analysed and accepted his arguments but had gone on to estimate future possibilities in the light of a new conviction. Without any telling she had grasped the fact that, although France was lost, if Britain fought on the only hope of saving her country from the horrors he had pictured lay in aiding Britain to smash Hitler as rapidly as possible so that France might be freed again before she fell into a state of anarchy.

Starting forward, he seized her by the arm. 'If there is the faintest hope still remaining we mustn't lose an instant.'

'Let me think.' She closed her eyes for a moment 'What time is it?'

'It's getting on for four o'clock.'

'Four. Then Reynaud is overdue; he should have been here half an hour ago.'

'Here?' Gregory exclaimed. 'But the Government is still in Bordeaux. Surely he would never leave it at a time like this?'

'You don't understand,' she cried impatiently. 'It was part of the plan that he should resign and hand over to Petain. He's been fighting against it for days but we've all been at him, and before I left Bordeaux yesterday his resignation had been assured.'

"Then, if he's no longer in power it's too late for him to do anything.'

'Not necessarily. Paul's instinct has always been to fight to the last ditch. I have only to say the word to him in order to reanimate him with the fighting spirit once again. When he arrives I could go with him to the local post-office, where we could get a priority call through to Bordeaux. If he could get in touch with de Gaulle and Mandel and the other leaders of the war party he could summon them to join him in Avignon. They could render the new Bordeaux Cabinet still-born by denouncing Petain as a usurper, or at least proclaim an Independent Government from there, which would have Britain and at least half France behind it.'

Before Gregory had time to reply they both caught the sound of a motor horn, and ran to the window.

One glance at the small, solitary figure getting out of the dust-covered car that had driven up in front of the house was enough for Gregory to recognise Paul Reynaud.

'Stand back,' said the Baroness quickly. 'Leave this to me. Your presence will only complicate matters.'

As Gregory stepped behind the curtains he heard Reynaud's voice calling up to the Baroness. 'It is finished. I resigned at eleven-thirty this morning and Petain is forming a new Cabinet with Weygand as Vice-President. I took a plane to Toulon and hired a car from there. Thank God it is over!'

'Wait, Paul!' the Baroness called back. 'Don't come into the house—I am coming out to you. I have much to tell you but we can talk as we go. You must drive me down to the post-office at once.'

Turning from the window she said to Gregory: 'Stay where you are. Poor fellow, he looks so tired that he will be as putty in my hands. We may not be back for an hour or more, but wait here.'

She was already at the door before she had finished speaking and next moment she was running from the house. For a few minutes Gregory remained deep in thought, trying to assess the new possibilities which had arisen from that extraordinary interchange of views that had taken place between himself and the Baroness. Then he lit a cigarette and stepped out from behind the curtains. To his surprise he saw that Reynaud's car was still outside the house yet he could have sworn that he had heard it drive off. Next second he noticed that the rear off-wheel of Reynaud's car was deflated. He must have had a puncture and driven the last few miles on a flat tyre. Thrusting his head out of the window Gregory saw another car streaking down the hill. They had taken Grauber's.

'Stop! Stop!' he yelled at the top of his voice. 'For God's sake stop!' But at that very moment the steering-gear with which he had tampered gave way. The car suddenly swerved across the road. With a horrid clang of iron on brick and the sound of shattered glass it charged straight into the wall of a villa at the bottom of the hill.

Swinging round, Gregory dashed out of the house and ran at the top of his speed down the slope. When he reached the villa its occupants had already come out and were lifting two bleeding bodies from the wreckage. Reynaud was badly cut about the head and face, and unconscious but still alive. The little Black Baroness was dead.

After he had given what help he could he sadly retraced his steps. There would be no new fighting Government of France proclaimed from Avignon now.

******

When he reached Les Roches the villa was still silent and apparently deserted. The servants were in the far wing of the house and none of them put in an appearance while Gregory was carrying the steel deed-boxes and other things round to the van. At twenty to five he set off on his long journey back to Bordeaux.

The whole of that lovely south coast of France which had been a joy to so many million holiday-makers was now a terrible spectacle. There had always been little camps, but gay affairs, with girls in beach-pyjamas and men in coloured shirts. Now the camps stretched through every wood adjacent to the beaches; but there were no beach-pyjamas and no gaily-coloured shirts. Five million homeless and foodless people had streamed into the area. They had reached the sea and they could go no further. The sun would warm them, but how they were to live and how many would survive the dark future no man could say.

But Gregory had no leisure now to speculate upon the awful fate that La Baronne Noire had brought upon her country and he had eyes only for the road ahead. Between ten to five and seven o'clock, when the post-offices shut, he made six halts at different points along his route and from each he sent a telegram, with the same message, to Sir Pellinore:

'GIVE ME UNTIL MIDDAY TOMORROW IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN.'

In the south and west communications had not been interrupted, apart from the congestion of the lines, and he could only hope that one of his wires might get through to Sir Pellinore before he left Bordeaux that night.

After that he made only two other stops, at Montpelier and Cahors, to fill up with petrol and to snatch a cup of coffee from a wayside buffet. All through the evening, all through the night, all through the early hours of the Monday morning, he drove on and on, crouched over his wheel, eating up the miles that lay between him and the Atlantic coast. If it had not been for the powerful Mercedes-Benz engine hidden beneath the bonnet of the van he could never have done it, but he pulled up in front of the Hotel Julius Caesar at twenty-five minutes to twelve.

Sir Pellinore was standing there on the steps, smoking a big cigar, in the bright sunshine. Beside him were two suitcases. The moment he saw Gregory he picked up the bags, ran down the steps and scrambled up beside him.

Gregory grinned wearily. 'So my telegrams got through?'

'Yes. I had two from you last night, and two more came in this morning. But we've got to get out of this place before it becomes too hot to hold us; we're in enemy territory now. Off you go! Straight to the docks. I'll direct you.'

As they drove through the streets Sir Pellinore gave Gregory the last grim bulletin. It was the seventeenth of June and the thirteenth day of the battle for France. The Army had collapsed and was now falling back in every sector, from its easternmost positions, near Dijon, to the sea. The last great German strategic operation, initiated five days before, had proved overwhelmingly successful. Hitler's iron columns had battered their way east, from Saint Dizier, through Chaumont, across the Plateau de Langres, to Gray and Besancon, on the Swiss frontier, thereby cutting the entire Maginot Line off from Central France.

That morning Marshal Petain had broadcast that on the previous night he had asked for an armistice. The mighty five-week drama had at last reached its terrible conclusion and the curtain was about to be rung down.

At the dock gates some petty French officials refused to allow the van to pass, but Sir Pellinore had already made arrangements to be met in case he had trouble in getting on board. A British naval lieutenant came out of the gates almost before the argument had got under way, and behind him was a squad of armed bluejackets. Unceremoniously they brushed the French aside, jumped on to the running-boards of the van and took it through to the dockside, where a small cargo ship, crowded with English refugees, was tied up.

The naval officer had not bargained for the van, but his orders were to do all in his power to render Sir Pellinore any assistance required. The French dockers refused to load the van so the British seamen hoisted it with a derrick; the fore-well of the ship was cleared and roped off, then the van was lowered into it. Ten minutes later the hawsers were cast off and the ship put to sea.

As they steamed out into the broad Gironde, Gregory said: 'Well, it looks as though we're in for pretty tough times ahead.'

Sir Pellinore drew slowly on his cigar. 'Yes; but there are always two sides to a question. You've read your history, Gregory, and you know a bit about military campaigns. Hasn't it often struck you that it's not so much numbers that win wars as singleness of purpose? When we fought Louis of France half Marlborough's trouble was getting the German princes and the Dutch—and all sorts of other people—to line up with him; and it was just the same when we fought Napoleon—one after another of our Allies let us down. Allies mean divided councils. The weakness of one hampers the war effort of the others, so I'm not at all certain that what has happened isn't for the best. We have no more Allies left to rat on us; but we have ourselves and the Empire. We can take all that's coming to us—you may be sure of that; then, when the time is ripe, we shall be able to strike when, how and where we will. But tell me,' he lowered his voice, 'did you get that woman?'

Gregory shook his head. 'No. I've an extraordinary story to tell you, but that will have to wait. Since I left Finland, thirteen weeks ago, I've travelled some seven thousand miles. That's well over five hundred miles a week on average, and fourteen hundred of it have been done in the last three days, over roads choked with French refugees; so I'm pretty well all in.'

'Of course, my boy,' Sir Pellinore nodded. 'I'll see that naval feller and, whoever else has to be turned out, he'll fix you a berth. But even if you didn't get her you haven't come away empty-handed; you got the van.'

'Yes; I got the van, with the letter-files that now mean so much to us, and a splendid fortune including a good hundred-thousand-pounds' worth of old masters. There's one there that I'd rather like you to have a look at before I turn in.'

They went down the ladder to the fore-well where the van had been chocked up, and wrenching away the broken padlock Gregory pulled open the doors. Its contents were exactly the same as when the van had left the garage of the Julius Caesar, but for one addition. A big, bloated, paunchy man, with his wrists and ankles tied, was lying on the floor, breathing stertorously in a half-conscious state.

'Hitler has won his battle,' smiled Gregory, 'but I've won mine. I don't think you've met my prisoner—Herr Gruppenfuhrer Grauber.'

******

A little over eight hours later Sir Pellinore shook Gregory out of a deep sleep. 'I wouldn't have wakened you,' he said, 'but we've just had it over the radio that Churchill is going to broadcast at nine o'clock. It's an historic occasion that I felt you wouldn't want to miss and you can turn in again immediately afterwards.'

When Gregory came up the companionway he saw that the ship had passed the river-mouth and left the French coast behind. The stars of the summer night were coming out as dusk closed down upon the sea.

In the little saloon of the ship they sat with long glasses in their hands as the voice of the 'Lion of England'

came clearly to them across the broad waters that are Britain's heritage.

'What has happened in France makes no difference to British faith and purpose. We have become the sole champion now in arms to defend the world cause. We shall defend our island and with the British Empire around us we shall fight on, unconquerable, until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of men.'

THE END