‘That would be splendid,’ agreed the Duke, but he added after a moment—’if it were not for this wretched war.’
‘I know. It’s a disgusting trick that Fate has played on us, isn’t it? Still, I see no reason why we shouldn’t get married all the same, if only Jan can get himself out of this scrape that he got himself into with that treacherous brute upstairs.’
‘I’ve already attended to that. I made Mack sign a statement this morning that Jan’s attack on him was the result of a complete misunderstanding, and I don’t think he’ll be able to revoke it. Jan may not like the quite untrue inference that he didn’t know what he was up to, but if he is wise he will make no bones about it, as the document should give him complete immunity from any trouble that may be boiling up for him and—er— enable him to rejoin his squadron.’
‘Yes, I suppose he will have to do that,’ said Lucretia sadly. ‘Oh, what things I could do to that filthy Hitler! But Jan will get leave after a few weeks, won’t he? And we could be married then.’
‘My dear,’ said the Duke gently, ‘I have been trying to break it to you that for Poland this will not be like an ordinary war. I have been through too many wars and know too much of military affairs to be deceived at my age. The Nazi campaign will be swift, ruthless and terrible. The Polish Army will go down, fighting bravely to the last perhaps, but under a series of overwhelming blows delivered simultaneously from the north, west and south. There will be no leave for anybody, and I fear few Polish fighting-men will see their homes again until some final pacification releases them from the German prisoner-of-war camps.’
‘It is most unlikely that Spain will enter the war, so as a neutral I could stay on here to be near Jan, even if the Germans occupy Warsaw.’
‘Yes, I think the Germans will refrain from molesting neutrals —at all events to start with. If, however, you had married Jan in the meantime, as his wife you would have assumed Polish nationality, and I prefer not to think what might happen to you in a German-occupied city. Wouldn’t it really be best for you to leave Warsaw with us this afternoon, and, somehow or other, even if it means coming back here after the Polish collapse, Rex and I and the other two would get Jan out for you so that you could marry him in England?’
‘Oh, darling, I know you would! But I couldn’t possibly leave Warsaw without seeing Jan again. I simply couldn’t do it.’
‘Jan will, I hope, be bringing Richard and Simon here in the course of an hour or two. You will see him then.’
Lucretia put a slim hand to her white forehead. ‘I love him so very much. I don’t know what to do. Give me a little time to think things over.’
Much perturbed, but realising that he could do no more for the moment, de Richleau left her and went downstairs again. Soon afterwards Borki returned, bringing with him irritating tidings of an unforeseen, but probably only temporary, hitch in their plans.
It transpired that the night before, after the air raid, Jan had gone out to join a volunteer first aid squad that was dealing with the casualties in his district. Apparently he had worked all night and telephoned the professor that morning to say that he was dead-beat, so he was accepting a bed at the house of one of his fellow workers and would not be back until early evening. As his old tutor did not know from where he had rung up, or the name of his host, it was impossible to get in touch with him until he turned up again.
Borki had left the two documents with the professor, requesting him to give them to Jan the moment he came in and to ask him to act on the one concerning the two English prisoners immediately.
The delay was annoying, but it could not be helped, and when they had lunched they pressed forward with their other arrangements for departure. Mack, having been confined to his room after their morning session, was once more out of the way, so Rex was free to overhaul the car—a big Mercédès-Benz—and fill it up with oil and petrol. De Richleau visited his prisoner to extract from him a short statement that Borki had assisted his captors with reluctance and only under compulsion, for the major-domo’s protection after they had gone; but, on giving it to the faithful retainer, the Duke urged him to take the extra precaution of leaving for his master’s estate in the country that night. About the other servants he was not worried, as none of them had played any part in Mack’s detention and were, in fact, still unaware of it. He then arranged with Borki and Marie Lou about food for the journey and assisted in packing a hamper with a plentiful supply.
It was decided that they should have an early dinner as Jan might arrive with their friends any time after eight o’clock, and the Duke wanted to get out of the city before dark, if possible, in case there was another air raid. The afternoon passed quite quickly, and they went in to dinner at seven o’clock. By eight the luggage was being carried down, and Rex was strapping it on to the grid at the back of the car.
De Richleau went up to pay a last visit to his captive and, for once, smiled quite pleasantly at him, as he said:
‘We are expecting our friends at any moment now, so we shall be leaving quite shortly. I have given Borki instructions to release you at midnight. That will give us the best part of four hours’ start in case you are so ill-advised as to play us any tricks. I should like to have kept you locked up for another twenty-four hours, but I want Borki to be able to say, without appearing to stretch the truth too far, that he came up to let you out as soon as he was reasonably certain that we should not return and flay him alive. In view of your transactions at Lubieszow, I trust you will see the wisdom of letting sleeping dogs lie. To explain away all the documents you have signed you would have to give a full account of your kidnapping, and once that goes on an official file all sorts of questions may arise which you would find difficult to answer satisfactorily; and, now Poland is actually at war with Germany, things would not be made very comfortable for anyone who was even suspected of having tried to climb over to the other side of the fence.’
‘I’m not a fool,’ grated Mack, ‘and the sooner you get out the better, I only hope that you all break your necks.’
‘I could not reciprocate any wish more heartily,’ replied the Duke, and opening the door, locked it swiftly behind him.
On his way downstairs he met Lucretia, carrying her dressing-case. ‘So you’ve decided to come with us!’ he exclaimed in delight.
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve only prepared to do so—so as not to delay you if I do decide to go; but I haven’t decided yet. I mean to put the matter to Jan and tell him that, if he wants me to stay here, I’m ready to marry him tomorrow morning. On the other hand, if he thinks it wiser to wait, I’ll do as you wish.’
De Richleau heaved an inaudible sigh of relief. He felt that Jan was not the sort of man to place the woman he loved in danger, and that, however confident he might be of a Polish victory, he would insist on Lucretia’s leaving Warsaw—at least for the time being—with friends who could look after her, rather than allow her to remain on virtually alone in a city now subject to enemy bombing attacks.
As they reached the hall, Borki was just opening the front door. A smart little box-van stood outside, gaily painted pale blue and bearing in silver script the trademark of a well-known Warsaw florist. Jan was already halfway up the front-door steps, and Simon was scrambling out of the back of the van.
The Duke’s heart warmed within him, and he mentally congratulated himself on the success of all his schemes. It has been a difficult and exhausting three days, but they had managed to evade many dangers, and by his skilful manipulation of Mack he had reunited the five people he loved best in the world. He felt reasonably confident that, for his own sake, Mack would not raise the issue of his kidnapping, and that the papers he had signed would carry them safely over the frontier. Given reasonable luck they might all be laughing over a good dinner at the Donapalata, in Budapest, in twenty-four hours’ time.
As Lucretia flung herself into Jan’s arms the Duke called out: ‘Hello, Simon! Thank God you’re back with us! I’ve secured safe-conduc
ts for us all, and we’ve got a car. Now you and Richard have arrived we shall be leaving for the frontier in a quarter of an hour’s time.’
Simon came rather slowly up the steps, and on his thin face there was only the shadow of a smile.
‘Ner,’ he said, shaking his birdlike head as he uttered the curious negative he often used. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but we can’t possibly leave tonight.’
‘Where’s Richard?’ demanded the Duke abruptly. ‘Didn’t you bring him with you? I was expecting to see him jump out of the back of that van after you.’
‘He’s in there all right. But he won’t jump out. I’ve taken the hell of a risk in bringing him at all. Our car crashed, and he’s pretty bad. As a matter of fact, he’s still unconscious.’
9 - The Indomitable Four go to War
For a moment de Richleau stood there speechless. He had felt so confident that, provided Jan met with no hitch in securing the release of the two prisoners, all would be well; and now, in one brief sentence, Simon had brought his edifice of skilful planning tumbling like a pack of cards about his head. But his disappointment was almost instantly submerged in his concern for Richard.
‘What happened?’ he asked, advancing at once to the open door. ‘What sort of injuries has Richard suffered?’
‘We had to pull up at an all-night garage in Brest-Litovsk for more petrol. Chap there gave it to us without any fuss, but for some reason or other it seems that the police were out to catch us. They may have learned from him later of our stop there, which would account for their knowing which road we were using. We met our first spot of bother at the outskirts of a place called Baila Pedlas, about three o’clock in the morning. Lights were flashed at us on the road ahead. I pulled up, thinking it was only some workmen doing repairs. But it was the police. One of them jumped on the running-board and told me in broken English to drive on slowly into the town. Richard pushed him off, and I put my foot on the gas. It was dead easy, and we got away. We tumbled to it that there’d been a slip-up somewhere, and that the balloon had gone up much earlier than we expected. For a bit we thought of getting on to a side road, but we decided against it. Thought we’d probably get ourselves lost and waste too much time. At Siedlce, about fifty miles from Warsaw, another squad of police was waiting for us. Richard was driving then. He accelerated and drove right through them, but they fired on us. Shot burst one of our tyres, and we were doing eighty. Poor old Richard couldn’t hold her. We piled up against a telegraph pole. By a miracle I was flung through the roof. Didn’t get a scratch except for a nasty jolt and some bruises. But Richard’s head went through the windscreen, and his hip was smashed by the steering-wheel. They patched him up at the local hospital, then took us straight on to Warsaw. He’s been in the prison infirmary ever since.’
While Simon had been giving his account of their misadventures, the driver of the emergency ambulance and another man from inside it had been lifting out a stretcher, and Richard’s still form was carried into the house.
Rex and Marie Lou had now appeared, and, with a suddenly strained, white face, Marie Lou bent over the stretcher for a moment before running upstairs with Lucretia to prepare a bed.
‘In spite of his critical state, we thought it best to bring him,’ announced Jan. ‘If we’d left him in the prison infirmary there might have been some hitch about getting him out later on. The doctor was strongly opposed to his being moved at all, but I said that I’d get my own man to look at him the moment I got home; so I’ll telephone at once.’
‘Yes,’ said the Duke. ‘Yes. We must find out the full extent of his injuries as soon as possible, and get him the best medical attention that Warsaw can provide.’
‘Let’s go get the medico in the car,’ Rex suggested to Jan. ‘After last night’s bombing he’s probably got his hands full, but we can run him to earth and bring him back.’
When they had gone, Richard was carried upstairs and put to bed. He lay utterly still, scarcely breathing, and from the whiteness of such parts of his face as could be seen between the bandages it was clear that he had lost much blood. De Richleau spoke of his comparative youth and excellent state of fitness as factors which would ensure his recovery, with a confidence he was far from feeling, but in an effort to comfort poor Marie Lou. Dry-eyed, but with ashen face, she settled herself by her husband’s pillow and asked to be left alone with him.
Simon, Lucretia and the Duke went downstairs to await the return of the others with the doctor, and they came hurrying in with him a quarter of an hour later. For another half-hour they waited in acute suspense for his verdict, then he came down to the small sitting-room and gave it to them.
Richard had cracked his skull and received a dangerous cut over his right eye. If he recovered he would be scarred for life unless he placed himself in the hands of a first-class plastic surgeon. His right ear had been practically severed, but this was only a flesh wound which would heal in time. The injury to his hip was the most severe, as it was a compound fracture, and might be causing an internal haemorrhage. X-ray photographs, which it was proposed should be taken the following morning would give more exact data. In the meantime, although he would not commit himself, the doctor thought that, unless there was serious internal bleeding, Richard’s excellent constitution would pull him through.
By the time he left it was past ten o’clock, but none of them was now even thinking of departure. Given the best possible care, it would be three or four weeks at the very least before Richard had recovered sufficiently to face a long journey, and in the meantime Marie Lou would not leave him, even if the Devil himself announced his imminent appearance in Warsaw; and none of their friends had the remotest intention of doing so neither. Alone among them, Lucretia’s distress at Richard’s misfortune was to some extent qualified. It solved her problem and, fond as she was of Richard, the overwhelming stress of her love for Jan made her feel a guilty relief that there was now no longer any chance of her being torn away from him and hurried off to Budapest.
For an hour they sat there giving one another accounts of all that had befallen them while they had been separated, then Jan produced a pretext for carrying Lucretia off into another room, Simon said he thought he would go up and sit for a bit with Marie Lou, and de Richleau suggested to Rex that, in view of the changed circumstances, they had better have another interview with their prisoner.
In the turret room they found Mack sitting in an armchair fully dressed and apparently counting the moments until Borki came to set him free.
At the sight of his visitors he jumped to his feet and stared at them in surprise and consternation. ‘The devil!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ve not gone after all. What has happened to prevent your leaving?’
De Richleau told him, adding: ‘So you see, it is now necessary for us to reconsider the whole position.’
‘But you can’t keep me a prisoner here for three or four weeks,’ Mack asserted. ‘That’s impossible. If the Warsaw police are not looking for me already, they certainly will be in another twenty-four hours. That order of release you made me sign this morning purported to have been written at Polish Army Headquarters. They will soon find out that I’ve never been there, and they’re not fools. They’ll trace the number from which I put through those telephone calls, and if they find me locked up here that will be the end of you.’
Taking a box of matches from his pocket, the Duke lit one and put it to the big porcelain stove that occupied one corner of the room, as he replied: ‘Yes, I was fully conscious that we might be laying a trail back to ourselves when I made you put those calls through; but, in view of the nature of the calls, I thought it unlikely that any of your friends would endeavour to trace them until it was too late, so I decided to take that risk. However, I agree that it would be dangerous to keep Your Excellency here much longer, and I will pay your police the compliment of assuming that they would pretty soon find you if we endeavoured to conceal you anywhere else in Poland. In consequence, I have decided to let you go.�
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Thank God that you are seeing sense at last! But, if you have come to release me, why bother to light the fire?’
De Richleau left the question unanswered, merely remarking: ‘I only trust that Your Excellency will be as sensible as you now appear to consider me.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mack’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘Obviously, if we had been able to place any faith in your word, we should have let you go before. Since we cannot, and we are now compelled to remain in Warsaw for some weeks at least, I propose that your departure should be preceded by the placing in our hands of certain guarantees.’
Mack shrugged. ‘What guarantees can I give you, other than my word that I will refrain from molesting you? Of course, I could sign a statement to the effect that I have voluntarily remained in your company for these past few days; but I don’t see that that would do you much good if I should choose to turn nasty afterwards and state that it was extracted from me by threats of violence.’
‘You almost read my thoughts,’ said the Duke amiably. ‘However, it is a statement that I want you to write and sign for us— and one which you would find it very difficult to explain away afterwards.’ Producing a fountain-pen and some paper, he laid them on the table, and added: ‘With a little prompting from me you are now going to set down a detailed account of your visit to Lubieszow and your dealings with the Nazis.’
Mack’s tired eyes flashed with sudden courage. To hell with you! I’ll be damned if I do!’
De Richleau picked up the poker with quiet deliberation, slid back the iron shutter at the bottom of the stove, from which a merry crackling now sounded, poked the fire gently and left the poker in it; remarking as he did so: ‘It will be my uncongenial task to give you a foretaste of what we are taught to believe that damnation is like, if you don’t.’
‘Torture!’ gasped Mack. ‘No, no! You can’t mean to torture me! Why, even the Nazis wouldn’t dare do that to a Cabinet Minister.’
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