‘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.’
‘It has yet to be proved that the feet of an Aryan statesman are more sensitive than those of some unfortunate Jew,’ said the Duke. ‘If my reading is to be relied upon, the soles of the feet are a good place to start with; but, of course, there are more sensitive parts, and if you persist in your refusal to do as I wish we could go on to those.’
‘But this is frightful!’ Mack’s voice rose to a quavering wail. ‘You can’t do this! You can’t!’
‘I can and I will.’ A harsher note had suddenly crept into de Richleau’s voice. The lives of my friends now depend on your giving me that statement, and I mean to have it. Yes, even If I must stoop to Nazi tricks and later answer for that in hell myself. Rex, gag the prisoner and remove his boots.’
As Rex moved forward, powerful and menacing, Mack sprang away, backed into the corner of the room furthest from the stove and crouched there, gibbering:
‘Don’t touch me! I’ll do as you wish! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!’
As Rex paused, the Pole drew himself a little more upright stood panting in his corner for a moment, then spoke again.
‘Listen. I’ll do it if you force me to, but what use will such a statement be to you when you have it? I can always say afterwards that the whole thing was a tissue of lies concocted by yourselves and that you compelled me to write it by these appalling threats. The people who count in Poland would take my word against yours on any matter. You can be quite certain of that.’
‘Not on any matter,’ countered the Duke. ‘You seem to forget that Jan, Baron Lubieszow and his son Stanilas, all honourable Poles, were witnesses to the culminating scene at Lubieszow when your treachery was publicly exposed. It was clear, too, that not until then were the majority of your own staff aware of the full extent of your infamy. All their names will go into your statement and you will find it impossible to prevent any considerable proportion of them from testifying against you. Some will do so from patriotic motives, and others in the belief that, by putting the whole blame on you, they will save their own skins.’
‘You forget that in my position I shall be able to prevent any enquiry from taking place. The whole story will sound fantastic to any of the authorities that it might reach. It will be easy to persuade them of the absurdity of wasting time in investigating a charge of such palpable falsity while Poland is fighting for her life.’
‘You underrate my intelligence,’ de Richleau snapped. ‘The document will be sent under seal to the British Embassy, with a covering letter requesting our Ambassador to open and read it in certain eventualities. I shall also ask that, if he does so, he will then have copies made and, while retaining the original, send these copies to your Government with a formal demand that a full enquiry should be held, at which he and his French colleague will be represented.’
‘I won’t do it! I refuse to ruin myself!’ cried Mack.
‘You can do the Nazis little good now, so you won’t be ruined unless you play us false.’
‘You swear that?’
‘I swear nothing. But you may rest assured that I place the safety of my friends and myself far higher than any desire to see you meet the just deserts of your treachery. Your absence during the crisis has probably already cost you your dominant position in the Cabinet. Both Hitler and Poland are far too heavily committed now for any machinations of yours to stop the war before the German Army has proved itself by securing a resounding victory. It is unlikely that the Government to which you belong will even exist a month from now. So in any case, your career is virtually at an end, and I have written you off as harmless.’
‘You refuse to trust me; why should I trust you?’
‘You have no option.’
‘I won’t do it. I am at your mercy, and you can kill me now. But I refuse to place my life in jeopardy for an unlimited period by committing myself to paper.’
‘I don’t propose to kill you. I am about to test the resistance of certain parts of your body to red-hot iron. This argument has gone on too long. Rex, grab him!’
Rex took two swift strides forward, seized the wretched man by the scruff of the neck and threw him face downwards on the bed. As he began to scream Rex muffled his cries by forcing his head down among the pillows. De Richleau grasped one of his ankles and, despite his kicking, began to undo his boot.
As Rex climbed astride Mack’s body to pin him down more easily, the prisoner got his head free for a moment and grasped: ‘All right, you swine! I’ll do it! For God’s sake, let me go!’
‘Shall we gag him and give him a taste of the iron just to show we mean business?’ asked Rex.
‘No, no!’ came the half-stifled gasps. ‘I’ll do it! I swear I will, by the Blessed Virgin!’
‘One moment,’ said the Duke. ‘Your Excellency no doubt appreciates that my American friend has become bored by our conversation. If I ask him to let you go, there must be no more nonsense. You will write, and write what I tell you to, without protest. Otherwise, if we are put to the trouble of holding you down a second time, I shall adopt his suggestion.’
‘I’ve told you—I’ll do it!’ panted Mack. ‘I mean that! I swear I do!’
They let him get up, and, with his hair still rumpled, he sat down to write as he was bid. The language employed was French, in order that the Duke could be certain that his prisoner did not play him any tricks during its composition; but he made him add at the bottom of it in Polish: ‘I have written this my confession in French, having a full knowlede of that language, and because it is more widely understood than my native tongue.’ De Richleau’s Polish was good enough for him to vet this simple statement, and Mack then affixed his proper signature and seal, whereupon his captors expressed themselves as satisfied.
As Mack began to tidy himself up, preparatory to his departure, the Duke said, not unkindly: ‘I’m sorry to have to disappoint you again, but we shall not be able to release you for an hour or so yet. I mean to take no chance of your raiding the house within the next half-hour with the idea of recovering your statemen
t: I am going to write the covering letter now and take both papers round to the Embassy. As soon as I get back we will set you free.’
The prisoner was not, however, destined to breathe the free air of the street until nearly three in the morning. It had been close on midnight when his confession was completed, and soon afterwards another air raid temporarily upset the Duke’s plans. Marie Lou refused to leave Richard, so the Duke remained with her, but he persuaded the others to go down into the cellars by the extremely sound argument that it was absurd for them all to risk being wiped out or injured by a single bomb. His visit to the Embassy did not take place, therefore, until the night was well advanced. Even so, he found half the staff still there, at work decoding urgent telegrams; but they could give him no information, except that Britain had issued an ultimatum to Hitler, a fact which the Duke had already learnt from Jan’s account of a news bulletin to which he had listened at midnight. Having left his packet in the care of the First Secretary, de Richleau returned to Jan’s house and duly released his captive. In the meantime, a hospital nurse, sent by the doctor, had arrived, and thoroughly tired out, they all went to bed.
The earlier part of the following morning was occupied by the comings and goings of doctors to see Richard. Jan’s man had called in two specialists. Their preliminary reports were encouraging. Richard’s heart and lungs were sound, his early treatment by the prison doctors had been efficient, and there was no indication of gangrene in his wounds. It would be a long time before he was a fit man again, but they hoped to pull him through.
Soon after breakfast the news had come in that the British Prime Minister was to broadcast at eleven o’clock, and shortly before that hour they all gathered round the wireless in Jan’s study. The transmission was not good, but by listening intently they could hear enough of Mr. Neville Chamberlain’s thin, distant voice to gather that Britain was now at war with Germany.
Jan told Borki to bring up some magnums of champagne, and the Duke was called on to propose the toast of ‘Victory’.
‘Let us drink,’ he said, ‘not only to a speedy victory over our enemies but to the hope that those that we love may come safely through this struggle, however long and desperate it may prove; and that Poland and Britain, with all the other nations who may share with them in the fight against tyranny, may emerge more closely wed than ever to the principles of justice, liberty and toleration, having destroyed for ever the power of the beast of Europe—as from its long history of treachery and aggression we may well term the German nation—to bring the curse of war upon innocent and peace-loving people.’
‘And to hell with Hitler!’ added Rex laconically, upon which they all drank deep of the good wine.
Shortly afterwards, another doctor arrived with X-ray apparatus from the hospital, so Jan accompanied Marie Lou up to the sick-room to act as interpreter, and the whole party did not have any opportunity of discussing the war together until after lunch.
When coffee and liqueurs had been served in the small sitting-room Jan opened the ball by saying: ‘I don’t think our late, reluctant guest is likely to go back on the papers he has signed, so I’m sure you’ll all understand if I leave here tonight to report back to my squadron. Needless to say, the house and all that is in it are entirely at your disposal for as long as you care to stay.’
Lucretia’s knuckles showed white as she clenched her slender hands, but she said nothing, as Jan had already told her that morning that now he could consider himself reasonably immune from arrest he must return to his duty as soon as possible.
There was a general murmur of thanks, then the Duke asked: ‘Do you know where the squadron is? If it has been moved to the front we shall naturally follow the fighting in your sector with special interest.’
Jan shook his round head. ‘No. During the past few days it may have been moved from Eastern Poland, but I shall go to the Ministry first to find out, and it’s quite possible that they may send me as a casualty replacement to a squadron at the front.’
Rex lifted his glass of Souverain. ‘Well, here’s to our meeting before very long in the skies over Berlin.’
‘This isn’t your show yet,’ laughed Jan.
‘Shucks to that! My second name’s Mackintosh, and I’m in this thing as much as any of you. A lot of the boys back home’ll just be killing themselves to get into it as well, so maybe they’ll give us permission to form a special squadron. If not, the moment I can get back to England I shall volunteer for the Royal Air Force—if they’ll have me.’
Marie Lou smiled for the first time in hours. ‘I’m sure they’d be glad to have an air pilot like you, Rex; and, although Richard is not in your class, I’m certain he would have volunteered also, if it hadn’t been for this terrible accident.’
‘I want to join a first-aid squad, here in Warsaw,’ Lucretia said suddenly. ‘I saw so many terrible things in Spain that I’m no longer afraid of losing my nerve at the sight of even the most ghastly wounds; and I’m a trained nurse.’
De Richleau sighed. ‘This is going to be a young people’s war, and I fear my grey hairs will rule me out for anything except some dreary office job when I get back to London. Still, as long as we are here I can go out with Lucretia as a stretcher-bearer.’
‘Nonsense!’ interjected Simon abruptly. ‘All talking through your hats. The younger people will have to fight the war, poor devils, but it’s the brains of the older generations that will be needed to win it. We’re cleverer than the Nazis—much cleverer. We’ll think of ways to even up the odds against us. Ways to gain time. Ways to economise man-power and prevent wasteful slaughter. Ways to develop an economic stranglehold on Germany and deliver thrusts at Hitler where it’s likely to hurt him most. Rex’s father is one of the richest men in America, and we know he’ll be behind us. Lucretia is a millionairess in her own right. My firm is not exactly the poorest in the City of London. None of us is lacking in grey matter, either. I’m willing enough to carry a stretcher with the rest of you. But that’s not our real job. We’ve got to make our money fight, use our brains to think up some way in which it can be employed to give a real headache to Hitler.’
The Duke looked at him with an affectionate smile. ‘You are absolutely right, my Simon. The gallantry of youth at the prow, but age and experience at the helm. That’s the way to win wars.’
‘But we’re not the Allied Governments,’ objected Rex, ‘and I reckon it’s they who’ll be doing most of the planning.’
‘Um,’ Simon nodded. ‘Of course. But the machinery of all governments is slow and cumbersome—particularly those of the democracies. While the bureaucrats at home are pigeonholing most of the best schemes put up to them for further consideration in 1941, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get down to it and start a side-show on our own.’
‘Had you any particular thing in mind?’ asked the Duke.
‘Nickel,’ replied Simon promptly. ‘Means some of us going to Finland to buy up the nickel mines there, but the Germans have practically none of their own, so it’s bound to be one of their worst shortages.’
‘Have you any idea of their present stocks?’
‘Ner. But Krupps will need nickel for every fuse they make.’
‘True. All the same, we should be gambling with an unknown factor if we have no idea how many millions of shells they have already made and put away.’
‘Big guns take much longer to make than shells,’ said Lucretia, ‘so the Nazis are much more likely to be understocked with them. I think it would be sounder for us to try to corner some essential element for hardening the special steel used for gun barrels: Spanish wolfram, for instance. I own large holdings in the Rio Tinto mines, and many of the other big Spanish mine-owners are personal friends of mine; so I could help you there.’
‘Or chrome, for that matter,’ put in Rex. ‘My old man has quite a pull in Turkey.’
De Richleau shook his head. ‘Much the same snag as applies to nickel also applies to these other metals, and tungsten, mol
ybdenum and bauxite, too. Even if the Nazis have not yet had time to manufacture all the bigger weapons of war they would like to have, we can be certain they have laid in considerable stores of these raw materials. If the war is a comparatively short one, they may not even require to import another ton. I fear we should be dissipating our efforts against too elusive a target.’
‘The Germans are awfully clever, too,’ added Marie Lou. ‘I mean their scientists. They seem to be able to find a substitute for everything.’
‘The Princess is right,’ declared the Duke. ‘Even if their stocks of such metals are limited, they will manage to evolve substitutes for them. I think we should set ourselves a bigger objective. Let us at least consider the basic requirements for waging war: the things of which vast quantities are used every day, and for which no ersatz product can be substituted, because the basis of the substitute is too expensive or in even shorter supply than the genuine article.’
‘Coal, iron, corn, oil and cotton,’ said Simon at once. ‘They are the five essentials of fighting a modern war.’
‘Might as well add whisky and lipstick for all the hope we’ve got of cornering any of those,’ laughed Rex. ‘Tell you what, though, we could buy up all the asafoetida grass in South America. That would put all the belligerents out of business in a month.’
Simon and the Duke smiled, as Marie Lou asked innocently: ‘What is asafoetida grass and why would the lack of it stop the war?’
Codeword Golden Fleece Page 16