They Used Dark Forces

by Dennis Wheatley

  Leaning forward, Grauber snapped, ‘What do you know of that?’

  ‘Enough to be certain that if we were way back in 1940 and Britain had really been at her last gasp Churchill would still not have negotiated with a swine like Himmler. As things are, it’s already been announced that he and his kind are to be tried as war criminals. That goes for you and it won’t be long before you are dangling from a beam by a rope round the neck.’

  ‘Others may, but not I.’ Grauber shook his massive head. ‘Again you underrate me. About Himmler you are right. He is a brilliant organiser but in all other respects a fool, and he has always gone about with his head in the clouds. Now he has become almost as mad as Hitler. His acceptance of Schellenberg’s belief that the Allies would treat with him through Count Bernadotte is the proof of it. I’ve no intention of mixing myself up with such a pack of dreamers.’

  ‘Whether you do or don’t the Allies will get you,’ Gregory said tersely. ‘You are too big a fish for them to allow you to slip into obscurity. They will comb Germany for you; and you’ve plenty of enemies here. Sooner or later the Allies’ agents will catch up with you or someone will give you away.’

  Grauber’s pasty face took on a cunning look. ‘You are wrong. I shall be neither caught nor betrayed, because I shall not be here. There are many good Nazis in our Navy and I made my preparations weeks ago. A U-boat is waiting to take me to South America, where I have a large ranch and sufficient money invested for me to live as a rich man for the rest of my life.’

  To that Gregory could find no reply. Von Below had said that there was no justice in the world and if, instead of paying the penalty for his crimes, this arch-fiend was to enjoy an old age of comfort and plenty it seemed that von Below had been right.

  ‘And now about yourself,’ Grauber went on. ‘I have always promised myself that if I caught you I would cause you to die very gradually and very painfully, with the best medical attention between whiles; and I should have considered myself unlucky if your heart had given out in less than a month. But present circumstances render that impossible, as I must leave here in about an hour. In consequence I have decided to let you live.’

  Gregory swallowed hard. That Grauber should show mercy and, of all people, to him, was beyond belief. He stammered, ‘You … you’re playing with me.’

  ‘No. I assure you that I am not. Within an hour you shall leave here a free man.’

  It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Despite his every instinct Gregory could not prevent a sudden lifting of the heart. ‘I … you really mean … to … to let me go?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grauber’s small mouth twisted into a smile. ‘But there is a little matter we must attend to first. You will recall that in November ’39, you bashed out my left eye with a pistol butt. You therefore owe me an eye and I propose to claim that debt. Since it has been so long outstanding it is only fair that I should receive interest, and the destruction of your other eye seems appropriate for that.’

  Gregory felt a cold shiver run through him as Grauber went smoothly on. ‘That evens up our score. But I must also protect myself; for you have made it clear that you will run to our crazy Führer and complain about me. I greatly doubt if he could now have me caught once I have left Berlin; but you and I have survived all these years of war only because it has become second nature to us to take precautions. In the present case I must prevent you from talking. I’ve seen a tongue torn out by the roots, but doubt my ability to perform such an act; and anyway it would be a very messy business. I shall therefore break a small phial of vitriol on your tongue. After that you will tell no tales for many months to come—if ever again.’

  In vain Gregory strove to prevent himself from listening. His hands were tied down so he could not stop his ears, and the gloating effeminate voice continued to penetrate his brain. ‘Lastly, I have always had a passion for thoroughness and I should not feel happy if we parted without my having made a proper job of you. I shall therefore pierce both your eardrums with a knitting needle.’

  For a moment Grauber was silent, then he added, ‘So, you see, although I must deny myself the pleasure of actually watching you scream for mercy daily for some weeks, I shall be able to think of you during my voyage to South America undergoing a mental stress greater than that caused solely by physical inflictions. As I promised, in less than an hour you will be a free man. I shall remove your uniform tunic and put you out into the street; but you will be blind, deaf and dumb. Then I shall pray for you.’ Suddenly he gave a high, cackling laugh. ‘I shall pray that you are not killed by a bomb or a Russian shell.’

  At that Gregory’s control snapped. Hurling curses and abuse at Grauber he violently wrenched with wrists and ankles at the cords that bound him to the chair. But it was of Jacobean design with a high strong back made of heavy ebony. The most he could do was to rock it and the Obergruppenführer ignored him. With his mincing gait he walked over to a cabinet, took from it a box of cigars, selected one and, sitting down in front of his prisoner, held it up.

  ‘One of my best Havanas,’ he said, his solitary eye gleaming with sadistic delight. ‘To bash out your eyes with the butt of a pistol would be much too crude. Instead I intend to burn them out with the lighted end of this excellent cigar. But not yet. Oh no, not yet. When it has singed your eyeballs it would have an unpleasant flavour; so first I shall smoke three-quarters of it. You see, we still have plenty of time; time for you to think about what I mean to do to you, time in which you can watch the cigar gradually burning down until there is just enough of it left for me to deprive you of your sight for ever.’

  It was the last refinement of cruelty. Gregory was compelled to sit there, sweating with terror. As no-one in the bunker knew where he was he had no possible hope of rescue. The underground room was heavy with a pregnant silence. Down there even the bombardment could be heard only as a faint rumble, and exploding bombs did no more than cause the floor occasionally to give a slight quiver. Obviously Grauber had sent away the men who had kidnapped Gregory, so there was no-one to whom he could appeal for help, even had they been willing to listen. The knots in the thin cord that held him to the chair had been tied by experts and, strain as he might, he could not even ease them.

  To attempt to bargain with Grauber was as futile as to ask him for mercy. Had he been going to join Himmler, Gregory could and would have used all his powers to drive home the fact that within a short while now Germany must collapse, and that soon after their victory the Allies would bring to trial and hang all the Chiefs of the Gestapo. Then, counting on Sir Pellinore’s great influence, of which Grauber was aware, he would have offered to guarantee his life if allowed to go unharmed. But Grauber was going to South America, where a fine estate and ample money awaited him. So he had nothing to fear, and Gregory nothing to offer.

  Maddeningly, a clock on a bookcase ticked away the minutes. Grauber continued placidly to smoke his cigar. The blue haze of the smoke and admirable aroma began to fill the room. Three times he carefully tapped an inch of ash from the cigar end into an ashtray on a nearby table. Each time he did so he looked critically at the cigar, then at Gregory. After removing the ash for the third time he said, ‘We are getting on. About another five minutes, I think.’

  It was at that moment that a bell rang. The sound acted like an electric shock on Gregory. His heart missed a beat and his muscles tensed. Grauber gave a swift, surprised look towards the door. But he did not move.

  The bell shrilled again. Still Grauber did not move. With a frown he looked at Gregory and said softly, ‘Don’t delude yourself with false hopes, my friend. It is only some neighbour making a chance call. If I don’t answer it he will go away.’

  For some twenty minutes Gregory had been almost out of his mind from visualising the awful torments that Grauber intended to inflict on him. Suddenly his wits came back and he opened his mouth to shout. In one catlike spring Grauber was upon him and had seized his nose between a finger and thumb. Dropping the butt of
his cigar, he pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket with his other hand and thrust it into Gregory’s open mouth, effectively gagging him.

  Again the bell rang, this time insistently. Evidently whoever it was had his finger firmly pressed on the button.

  Picking up the cigar butt Grauber stood in front of Gregory, mouthing curses below his breath.

  The bell stopped ringing but after a moment there came the muffled sound of heavy blows on the outer door.

  For nearly two minutes Grauber remained irresolute. But the blows did not cease and it became evident that someone was endeavouring to break in the door.

  With a blasphemous oath Grauber stepped over to the sitting-room door and pulled it open. From where Gregory was sitting, trussed and helpless, he could see that it gave on to a narrow hall. The noise of the blows now came louder to him; then the sound of splintering wood. There followed a confusion of raised voices. Grauber had evidently unbolted the door and was shouting, ‘What in thunder do you mean by this?’ Someone else cried, ‘The light showing under the door told us you must be here.’

  His nerves as taut as violin strings, Gregory wondered who these people who had forced their way in could be. As he made desperate efforts with his tongue to force the handkerchief out of his mouth, he prayed frantically that they would save him. A heated argument was going on outside in the passage. He was petrified with fear that it would be settled and that before he could shout for help Grauber would have got rid of his unwelcome callers.

  Stretching his mouth to tearing point, Gregory did his utmost to vomit. The effort ejected a part of the handkerchief but the silk of the remainder clung to his gums. He was now able to gurgle, but not loud enough to be heard outside the room. Thwarted in his attempts to shout, he flung all his weight sideways. The heavy chair tipped, hovered, then went over with a crash. His head hit the floor. It had still been aching intolerably from his having been coshed. This second blow sent such a violent pain searing through it that he passed out. But only for a few moments.

  He caught the tramp of feet. When his mind cleared the room was full of S.S. men. At the sight of their black uniforms he groaned. These were Grauber’s people. The noise of the chair going over must have brought them in from the passage, but his hopes of rescue had been vain.

  Two of them heaved the chair upright. Then Gregory saw Grauber and an S.S. officer facing one another in the open doorway. The latter had his back turned, but Gregory heard him ask sharply, ‘What has been going on here?’

  ‘A private matter,’ piped Grauber angrily. ‘A private matter. I have been interrogating an English spy.’

  The officer turned and looked at Gregory. Instantly they recognised one another. He was S.S. Standartenführer Hoegl, the Chief of Hitler’s personal bodyguard, and he exclaimed:

  ‘Donnerwetter! It is Major Protze! He is no spy!’

  ‘He is!’ insisted Grauber. ‘He is a pig of an Englishman.’

  ‘You can tell that to the Führer,’ retorted Hoegl. Then he added to his men, ‘Release the Herr Major.’

  Half fainting from strain, shock and relief, Gregory was untied and stumbled to his feet. Meanwhile a furious altercation was taking place between Grauber and the Standartenführer.

  ‘How dare you address me in this way!’ shrilled Grauber. ‘I demand that you treat me with the respect due to an Obergruppenführer.’

  ‘Not while you are in those clothes,’ sneered Hoegl.

  ‘What I wear is my business. I am about to change back into uniform.’

  ‘Oh no you’re not. You are coming with me as you are.’

  ‘I’ll not take orders from you.’

  ‘Yes you will. The Führer asked for you this evening. You weren’t to be found in any of the bunkers. He sent me to fetch you. Naturally, we expected to find you at the Albrecht Strasse. You weren’t there but they said you might be at this underground apartment of yours. And here you are. What game you were about to play in civilian clothes and with that suitcase already packed that I see over there it is not for me to judge, but——’

  ‘My Chief, the Reichsführer, has sent for me to join him.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to wait until you’ve seen the Führer and explained to him why you left the bunker without his permission. He will want to know, too, what you have been up to with Major Protze. Come along now.’

  Two minutes later they had emerged from a deep basement and were all packed into a big S.S. car that had been waiting outside the ruined block. By the flashes of the ack-ack guns Gregory saw that they were driving along the north side of the Tiergarten, but his head was still splitting and he was so exhausted that he was hardly conscious during the journey.

  When they arrived at the Chancellery he asked if the car might take him on to Goering’s house. As it was not he for whom the Führer had sent and he was obviously near collapse, Hoegl agreed. With an S.S. man on either side of him Grauber, white and shaking, was hustled into the building to face the wrath of the Führer. The car drove off and within ten minutes Gregory, between gulps of brandy, was giving Erika an account of his ghastly experience.

  But his trials that night were not yet over. At half past four in the morning there was a terrific detonation. Both he and Erika were blown out of bed. Picking themselves up they put on their coats and went through the wrecked doorway to find out the extent of the damage. A Russian shell had blown in a part of the back of the house. The kitchen quarters were wrecked and the Hofbecks, who slept in a room adjacent to them, had both been killed. Malacou, although sleeping in the room above them, the outer wall of which had collapsed, had, miraculously, come to no harm.

  When they had helped him move his bedding downstairs to the small dining room he told Gregory that the previous day he had found Sabine still at Seeaussicht and handed him a letter from her. It read;

  My dear,

  Poor old Kurt having been wounded explains why he never came for me. These past two days I’ve been in half a mind to set off with Trudi on our own, but everyone says there are now thousands of Russians to the south of here, so I haven’t had the courage to risk it. I must have been out of my mind not to have gone weeks ago, when you tried to persuade me to. But I’m sure you can’t mean to stay in Berlin to be captured, and you have always been so full of resource. When you leave, I implore you to come here first and take me with you.

  Always your devoted Sabine.

  Having shown the note to Erika, Gregory said, ‘I don’t wonder that having left it so late she’s scared to run the gauntlet on her own. But the Russians can’t be very thick on the ground to the south of the city yet. And this can’t go on much longer. If I find that Hitler is still set on doing himself in we’ll leave this coming night and pick up Sabine on our way out.’

  After another few hours’ sleep, weary, haggard and with his head still aching, shortly before midday Gregory went to the bunker. There he learned that on the previous evening Goebbels had raised the question of the Prominente. Not the German Prominente, with whom Gregory had for a time been a prisoner. Of them Goerdeler, Popitz, Nebe and others had been executed several weeks earlier. The remainder had been transferred to Flossenbürg and, on orders given by Hitler on April 9th, Canaris, Bonhoeffer, Oster, Dohnanyi and the majority of the others had been butchered. Goebbels, thirsting for blood, had referred to the other group of Prominente, which consisted of the most distinguished British and American prisoners of war. The latter had been removed from Colditz and were now being held as hostages in Bavaria. At his mentioned them Hitler had gone purple in the face and, his whole body trembling, yelled:

  ‘Shoot them all! Shoot them all!’

  It was to transmit orders for this massacre that Grauber had been sent for and, on learning that he had disappeared, the Führer, now ever ready to suspect treachery, had sent Hoegl to try to find him. When he had been brought in there had been another scene, but his wits had saved his life. He had said that his Führer’s need of reliable troops was much greater than the Reichsf
ührer’s and that Himmler’s personal bodyguard, consisting of a whole battalion of crack S.S. men, was at Hohenlychen doing nothing. His idea had been to go and fetch it and he was in civilian clothes because that would give him a better chance of getting through the Russian lines.

  Hoegl had begun to report having found Gregory tied to a chair in Grauber’s apartment. But by then Hitler had appeared so near collapse that Eva Braun had insisted that he should go to bed. Supported by her he had staggered off, but shouted over his shoulder that Grauber was to be deprived of his rank and placed under arrest until his questionable conduct could be gone into further. So the ex-Obergruppenführer was now a prisoner locked in a cell in one of the outer bunkers.

  The news that came in continued to be as black as ever. The Allies were advancing rapidly on all fronts, Russian shells were now falling in the Chancellery garden and their troops were said to have captured Potsdam. Yet Hitler continued to cling to the idea that General Wenck’s Army would rescue him.

  Then in the evening he received his most terrible blow. Heinz Lorenz arrived from the ruins of the Propaganda Ministry. With him he brought a transcript of a broadcast that had just been put out by the B.B.C. It was a full report of Himmler’s negotiations with Count Bernadotte.

  When given the news by the eager Bormann, Hitler broke into agonising wails. ‘Der treue Heinrich,’ of all people, had betrayed him. It was unthinkable, yet incontestable. Soon his distress gave place to fury. As he mouthed curses, his face became almost unrecognisable. He saw everything now. Steiner was one of Himmler’s men. It was on Himmler’s orders that the General had refrained from launching the attack that could have saved Berlin. It had been a deliberate plot to ruin him. Suddenly he remembered Grauber and gave orders that Heinrich Mueller, the Chief of the Political Police, should interrogate him.