‘Can it!’ snapped Rex, but their prisoner’s voice continued to mock them through the semi-darkness.
‘As a matter of fact, we rather pride ourselves on our police in Poland. Their organisation is good, and most of them are excellent shots. Perhaps your friends are not in prison after all. They seem of have been much the same type of audacious brigands as yourselves, so they probably refused to stop when challenged. In that case, of course, it is quite likely that one or both of them is dead.’
‘You’ll be dead yourself in another few minutes unless you stop talking!’ de Richleau snarled with sudden fury.
For a moment Mack was silent, but he could not resist a final turn of the screw. ‘When you yourselves are arrested, as you undoubtedly will be, the police will take you to the mortuary to identify your friends’ bodies.’
‘Oh, stop him!’ wailed Marie Lou. ‘For God’s sake, stop him!’ She suddenly burst into a flood of tears.
Rex had jumped to his feet. Bursting into the inner room, he seized the squatting prisoner by the neck and banged his head violently against the wooden side of the shack until he went limp, then threw him down in his corner.
But they could not forget his words. Every one of them had been charged with such horrible plausibility that they seemed to be the actual truth, and shattered at a blow the frail illusions, built on wishful thinking, with which Marie Lou and her friends had been striving to comfort themselves through the long hours of the day.
In a few moments these brutal sentences had done what the long hours had failed to do. Marie Lou’s friends knew well the courageous heart that beat in her beautiful little body; but now she was utterly undone, and she wept unrestrainedly, until, at last, with her head on the Duke’s chest, she sobbed herself to sleep, while he and Rex still lay staring grimly into the darkness.
Having gone to rest early, they woke next morning with the dawn, again ill refreshed and still dejected. For an hour or so they stood about, clinging desperately to the hope that had braced them the previous day—that their friends had reached the woods, but had become lost in them, and would yet find their way to the rendezvous.
But as they paced restlessly up and down, even their anxiety was no longer enough to starve off their pangs of hunger. Their last square meal had been dinner at Lubieszow on Tuesday, the 29th of August, and it was now Friday, the 1st of September. Since, they had had nothing to eat at all, apart from a few ounces apiece of the mess of pastries which Marie Lou had brought with her and Rex’s slab of chocolate. The forest was mainly larch and pine; there were no nut trees, the blackberries were still unripe, and they could find no edible roots that they might have cooked over a fire.
Mack added to their pangs by not allowing them to forget their empty stomachs for more than a few moments. A devil seemed to have entered into the man, and he now kept up an almost constant stream of shouted abuse, mingled with such tormenting questions as:
‘How would you like a mushroom omelette now? Or what about some ham fried with eggs? But as we had no lunch yesterday, or dinner either, why confine ourselves to breakfast dishes? Do you prefer sole done with lobster or fresh broiled trout? Personally, I rather favour grilled salmon; it’s more satisfying. Then a saddle of lamb with green peas and mint sauce, to be followed by a duck with salade Japonaise. Or better still, perhaps a roast goose! Could you still manage a soufflé Grand Meunier after that, and a Poire Hélène? I think you could. But perhaps you’re not hungry?’
From such patrician dishes he passed to more homely but not less tempting fare, fried bread and bacon, boiled new-laid eggs, hot toast and butter, dripping scones, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, a big juicy steak with sauté potatoes and fried onions.
In vain, Rex bellowed at him to hold his tongue, and even renewed banging of his head against the wooden wall silenced him for only a few moments, so, eventually, to stop his maddening flow of suggestions, they were forced to gag him again with his handkerchief.
By ten o’clock they were so ravenous that the Duke proposed that, whatever, the risk he should go in search of supplies. As far as he remembered from his rides, the nearest farm was almost two miles distant. It was a lonely place, and if the people there proved hostile, through having been warned to keep a lookout for them, he felt confident that he would be able to secure all he wanted at the point of his pistol. The probability that, even if they proved friendly, they would speak of his visit locally and thus cause the woods to be beaten for the fugitives was a danger which he felt must be accepted in such pressing circumstances.
Since the others agreed with him, he set off at once, having, promised to be back by one o’clock or sooner if possible. When he had gone Rex endeavoured to distract Marie Lou’s attention from her worries by a description of his holiday at Biarritz, and she gradually responded by giving him a more detailed account of all that had happened at Lubieszow before his arrival, adding as much as she knew of Jan and Lucretia’s love affair. But the morning seemed interminable, and they now had the additional anxiety of whether the Duke would accomplish his mission safely or have the ill-fortune to fall in with some armed party which might already be searching for them.
Shortly before one, however, they heard a distant rustling of leaves underfoot and speedily concealed themselves in the hut, where they waited with beating hearts to see if it were a search party, their friends from Warsaw, or the Duke.
The Duke it proved to be, with a fine heavy sack slung over his shoulder, but, even as he set it down, he distracted their attention from it by his first words.
‘Hitler has annexed Danzig, and the German Armies invaded Poland at dawn this morning.’
‘So—so it’s come then!’ gasped Marie Lou. Somehow, in spite of all the bellicose pronouncements of the Nazis and the pessimism of her friends, she had never really believed that Europe’s statesmen, all of whom had witnessed the world-shaking catastrophe of 1914-18, would fail to find some way to avert a second period of perhaps even more appalling suffering for the millions of helpless and innocent people for whose well-being they were responsible.
‘Any details?’ asked Rex.
De Richleau shook his head. ‘No, just the bare announcement issued over the wireless about nine o’clock this morning. The Poles are resisting, of course, and have called on their allies to assist them in their fight against unprovoked aggression, which they have pledged themselves to continue, even alone if need be, as long as one German remains on Polish soil.’
‘Good for them! I take it there’s no doubt about Britain coming in?’
‘None at all, I think. Chamberlain will almost certainly attempt to bring about a last-minute reconciliation before the real bloodletting starts. But now the German Army has the bit between its teeth I doubt if even Hitler could call it off; and nothing less than a complete withdrawal would satisfy the Poles. If the Chamberlain Government attempts to evade its obligations now it will fall. Nine tenths of the British people would have gone to war last year for the Czechs if the choice had lain with them. They know little of how ill-prepared we still are, and, even if they did, I doubt if they would stand for any more appeasement.’
‘How about France?’
‘God knows! Every Frenchman is aware that we used them as a buffer last time and that France was compelled to bleed herself white while Britain mustered the resources of her Empire and trained her citizen armies. Any nation might hesitate before committing itself to the same appalling sacrifice of its depleted manpower a second time. Yet, what is the alternative? If she does not come in with us, Hitler will simply find an excuse to attack her whenever it suits him best, and within a few months she will be overrun.’
‘They have their Maginot Line,’ hazarded Marie Lou.
‘Its invulnerability has yet to be proved, Princess, and Hitler may elect to outflank it by way of the Low Countries or Switzerland. In any case, no war was ever won by sitting behind fixed defences. How do you think the United States will react, Rex?’
The big Am
erican gave a gloomy shrug. ‘The best of us will be in this thing heart and soul with you from the very beginning—just as happened last time. But that doesn’t go for the bulk of the people in the States. They don’t see why they should be lugged into these European muddles, and, after all, Poland’s as far from the Middle West as Manchukuo is from Britain. If Britain and France can stick it for a year or two, Uncle Sam will come in—just as he did before. But the folk back home have got to be educated. They’ll be belligerent enough and fight like hell once they’re gotten to know what it’s all about; but that takes time, and I reckon the European democracies will have to stand the racket on their own for quite a bit before Uncle Sam gets out his big stick.’
‘Yes, that’s my view, too,’ agreed the Duke. ‘Well, there is nothing we can do about it at present, and you must both be dying for a meal.’
‘How did you hit it off with the folk at the farm?’ enquired Rex, as they emptied out the contents of the sack—bacon, eggs, butter, a loaf of rye bread, two bottles of home-made cider and a score or so of fine ripe plums.
‘Excellently,’ de Richleau smiled. ‘I told them that our car had broken down after an all-night drive from Lwow, and they couldn’t do enough for me. You see, these simple, honest people have taken it for granted that Britain is already in the war with them, and directly they learned that I was an Englishman they refused to let me pay for anything.’
‘D’you think they’ll spill the beans about your visit?’
‘That’s a chance we’ll have to take. I dared not ask them to refrain from mentioning it, as they were in such an excited state that they might easily have jumped to the conclusion that I was a foreign spy.’
‘Then we may not be safe here for much longer?’
‘I know; but I’m afraid we must accept it now that something serious must have happened to prevent our friends getting here. I feel that the time has come for us to find out what that something is.’
Marie Lou heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I’m so glad you think that, Greyeyes. This uncertainty and interminable waiting is simply killing me.’
Rex patted her hand. ‘We’ve both been wise to that; but we’d have been crazy guys to beat it outta here while there was a fair-chance they’d turn up. But now I’m with Greyeyes every time. Soon as we’ve fed let’s get going.’
Since the Duke had emptied his sack all three of them had been collecting kindling and small fallen branches to make a fire. Soon it was blazing merrily. De Richleau scraped some clay from the bank of a brook that ran through the clearing and carefully encased the eggs in it ready for baking in the hot ashes, while the other two cooked the bacon by holding it over the fire on long pointed sticks.
When they had done they brought their prisoner out to share this woodland banquet, which in their half-famished state tasted better to them than any meal they could remember; and for the first time Mack showed signs of geniality.
‘I gather from your remarks,’ he said after his sixth plum, ‘that you intend to go in search of your friends. I assume that means you will take the road to Warsaw?’
‘Yes,’ replied the Duke, ‘and, if the car has remained undiscovered, we shall be happy to offer Your Excellency a lift.’
‘Thanks,’ the lean statesman replied drily. ‘As it is my car it seems rather that it is I who will be giving you a lift. However, since war has actually broken out, I am naturally more anxious than ever to get back to the capital, so we will not quibble over technicalities. Whether I drive or am driven it will give me no small pleasure when we get there to see you all safely directed to Police Headquarters.’
‘Thank you,’ smiled de Richleau, ‘for presenting us with a valuable piece of information. Until you spoke I was not aware that it was your car that we had—er—borrowed. That it is should prove of considerable help in persuading any suspicious policeman who may pull us up that you are indeed giving us a lift, and that we have the felicity to be under your personal protection.’
Mack grimaced. ‘I had an idea that was what you might have in mind; but you can’t play that sort of game indefinitely, you know.’
‘Alas! No pleasure can be prolonged indefinitely,’ philosophised the Duke. ‘However, I am sure you will see the wisdom of continuing to give us your protection during our journey to the capital, as I need hardly add that your life hangs upon our reaching Warsaw in safety.’
‘And then?’
‘Surely the fact that several million people, although apparently with long lives before them yesterday, are now being killed by one another with long-range guns, bombs, bullets and possibly poison gas, is sufficient demonstration that none of us can foresee what fate has in store for us tomorrow?’
‘Oh, come on!’ cut in Rex impatiently. ‘Let’s get going.’
‘Patience, my friend,’ rejoined the Duke. ‘Even if the forest is now being beaten for us, it’s so large that the chances are all against our being located for several hours.’
‘Surely you don’t mean we must stay here all the afternoon?’ Marie Lou cried in protest.
‘No, Princess. Only for another hour or so. You see, it may well be that the place to which we are going is already in the hands of those who wish us no good, or under observation; therefore, it would be wise for us to approach it with the utmost caution. It follows that the most suitable condition would be under cover of darkness.’
Mack’s little niggling laugh echoed through the glade. ‘Thank you, Duke, for a piece of valuable information. You have as good as confirmed my guess that you are going to Jan’s house, the Lubieszow mansion, to see if the beautiful Contessa Cordoba y Coralles can give you any news of your missing friends.’
‘How considerate of you, Excellency,’ purred the Duke, ‘to present us with the extent of your knowledge of our private affairs. It seems that, even at Lubieszow, you were not too heavily immersed in affairs of state to take an interest in our activities. Permit me, though, to remind you of the old tag which warns us that “a little learning is a dangerous thing”. However, as I was saying to my friends, reasonable precaution dictates that we should not arrive in Warsaw much before midnight. It will be to Your Excellency’s interest to see that we aren’t held up on the journey, so we ought to do the trip in eight hours. We will allow an hour to reach the car, so if we leave here at three o’clock, barring any unfortunate accident which would prove fatal to yourself, we should do it nicely.’
It was already past two, so they had no great while to wait, and they employed it selecting suitable phrases for a note they intended to leave in the hut for Richard, Simon and Lucretia, should they, after all, succeed in making a belated appearance at the rendezvous. To the uninitated the final document would have proved extremely misleading, but its authors were fully satisfied that their friends would read between the lines and do their best either to follow them with all speed to the capital or make for the Hungarian frontier—the choice of action being left to them.
Leaving the letter on the table, they repacked their two suitcases and set out, in the same order as that in which they had arrived, for the place where they had left the car. Now that it was daylight the Duke was able to find his way more easily, and in well under an hour, to their considerable relief, they saw between the trees ahead the big pile of branches, under which they had hidden the car, still undisturbed.
Five minutes were sufficient to disembarrass it of its camouflage, and in another five it was slowly rolling through the fringe of wood towards the road.
‘You quite understand?’ the Duke said quickly to his prisoner. ‘Under my coat I have a fully loaded pistol. If we are halted you will feel its barrel as a hard lump pressing into your side. You will answer all questions—and do not forget that I understand Polish pretty thoroughly. This is your own car, and you are hurrying back to Warsaw in it; you are giving two of Poland’s English allies and a friendly American a lift. If any officious policeman shows doubt and speaks of a rumour that you have been kidnapped against your will by just suc
h a party you will laugh him to scorn. If he still hesitates to let us pass until he has consulted his superiors, you will say that your presence is required in the capital with the utmost urgency, and order my friend van Ryn to drive on. In no circumstances will you attempt to leave the car, even if requested to do so. Any divergence from these instructions will result in your immediate death.’
By way of reply Mack only grunted and began to settle himself in his corner to go to sleep; but later it became fully apparent that he had taken the Duke’s warning to heart; as when they were challenged for the first time at Niewierz, a small town on the Prypec about a third of the way to Brest-Litovsk, he played the rôle assigned to him, that of a Cabinet Minister in a desperate hurry, in a way that gave his companions complete satisfaction.
They were stopped again at Dwyn, Nowoziolki and Brest-Litovsk, and at several places after that; but Mack’s long, grey face, so well known to the Polish people through his photographs in the press, the top priority sign on his car, and, above all, the authority vested in him, carried them safely past all posts after only the briefest delay and one slightly longer halt for petrol
In a few cases their questioners remarked that they were stopping all cars in the hope of catching three foreign spies, but none of Mack’s companions gave away their non-Polish origin by speaking and no suggestion was made that he had been, or possibly still was, the victim of kidnappers; so it seemed that his friends had decided that it would be wisest to suppress this part of their story.
With the muzzle of de Richleau’s gun pressing into his ribs their hostage impatiently waved aside all mention of these foreigners, and owing to the fact that war had broken out that day, the police had many other urgent matters to which to attend. In consequence, they reached the outskirts of Warsaw without serious molestation a little before half past seven that night.
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