CHAPTER XII
CHEMIN DU NORD
THE following evening, soon after eight o'clock, three of us sat in the doctor's room waiting.
Giselle had just left, unhappy but resolute, to meet Passy, at the Deux Frères and we could not expect her back in less than two hours.
Carnac, with that icy calm he seemed to maintain on such occasions, was cleaning his revolver, and a clip of cartridges lay on the table in front of him; the doctor was absorbed in a game of cards, while I sat and fidgeted and then paced up and down the room. Waiting for a show to begin is torture for me; once it is well under way I feel much better.
The minutes dragged on.
Shortly after nine o'clock there was a tap on the door.
“Yes?” said d'Angelay sharply. Carnac slipped the clip into his revolver.
A man's voice replied from outside. “Pardon, mon capitaine, there is a telephone call for you.”
“Very well,” said d'Angelay. We looked at each other anxiously, wondering if anything had gone wrong at the last moment.
The doctor went out. Carnac lit another cigarette and we waited on tenterhooks.
The sound of rapid footsteps came up the corridor and d'Angelay entered again. Something had gone wrong; disaster was plain on his face.
“Giselle,” he said quietly. “She has met our friend. He is going to Berlin tonight. He says he has just received instructions this afternoon.”
Carnac crashed his fist on the table with a furious exclamation.
“At the last moment!” he cried. “Sacre Dieu, but that is too bad! Did she know the train?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “The night train—it leaves here at 21.40. She is going down to the station with him now.”
I glanced at my watch.
“We could just make it if we dash. There might somehow be a chance to fix him on the train.”
“You'll have to walk,” said d'Angelay. “I dare not take an ambulance.”
Carnac stuffed the revolver in his pocket. “Allons!” he said, and we ran out of the room and tore along the corridor.
Once outside we slowed down to a brisk walk and Carnac turned to the doctor. “I think you had better stay here and tell Giselle what we are doing. And if you don't hear from us within a week then try somehow to get word through to Air Ministry in London that we failed.”
d'Angelay didn't reply for a moment. I knew he wanted like hell to be in at the kill and this request was most unwelcome. However he took it philosophically and said quietly:
“Very well, but I hope that won't be necessary. Bonne chance”—and he turned round and walked back towards the hospital.
Carnac smiled slightly. “Poor old d'Angelay. He hates that.”
I grunted agreement and we strode on. It was nearly two miles to the station and I never covered the distance in better time; past the great shadow of the cathedral, down the hill and into the station. Four minutes to go.
Carnac said curtly, “Wait a minute,” and he disappeared in the direction of the booking office. The station was as crowded as ever and hordes of French refugees jostled with a grey mass of German soldiers in their efforts to return home.
Through the stream of people I fancied for a moment that I saw Konrath with several other Luftwaffe officers walking on to the platform, but they were some distance away and in the fleeting glimpse that I caught it was quite possible to be mistaken, particularly so as I had noticed several times recently that under the incessant strain of the last few weeks my imagination was liable to run right out of control, a somewhat disturbing development.
Carnac elbowed his way back and handed me a ticket. “Liege,” he remarked, “last stop before the German frontier —it's as far as we can go. Come on.”
We went quickly on to the platform and I looked up and down for Passy or Giselle, but couldn't see them at all in the crowd.
I said to Carnac in a low voice, “I can't see them.”
“I can't either. You get in this carriage and I'll walk up the train. He might recognise you.” He left me and I climbed on board.
He had booked third class, probably reckoning that we should be less likely to come up against any Germans there, and I found a third-class compartment, sat down on the hard wooden seat and waited. My travelling companions were a mixed bunch, mostly elderly peasants clad in their black clothes and sitting bolt upright on those abominable seats. Next to me in the corner sat a girl, shabbily dressed, tired looking, holding a baby on her lap. She caught my eye and smiled at me wearily. Poor girl, she looked desperately tired.
The train started with a jerk and we drew out of the station. A minute later Carnac appeared in the corridor. He came into the compartment, wedged himself on the seat beside me and said in an undertone:
“I saw them on the platform. He was standing by the end door of the first class carriages up by the engine, but just then the train started and I had to jump on.”
“You don't know which compartment he's in?”
“No. I walked up the corridor but the communicating door into the first class is locked, probably to let the Boches travel in peace.”
“What do we do now?”
“Wait till dark and then get through.”
“It's the only way.”
There was silence, broken only by the crying of the baby who was now awake.
Carnac said reflectively, “Our friend is an unpleasant looking devil, isn't he?” and I realised that it was the first time he had seen Passy.
An old man with a large basket of vegetables on his knee started gabbling away to the woman next to him. I couldn't follow their patois, but I noticed that Carnac suddenly became very interested and when they paused for a moment he leaned forward and said, “Pardon, monsieur, is there a control on this train?”
The old man rattled off an unintelligible reply with a wealth of emphatic gestures.
Carnac nodded and then leaned across to me again and said softly. “You know there's a Boche military control on all long-distance trains? The old man says it starts on this train at Laon—three N.C.O.s get on here and work right through the whole train.”
“What do they want?”
“Identity cards, travel permits, leave passes for German personnel—everything.”
“How does the old gaffer know where the control starts?”
“He says he's done the journey twice in the last week.”
“Well,” I said, “we're sunk if they catch us without papers.” Why must everything go wrong for us, I thought savagely.
To avoid the control by jumping off the train was to acknowledge final defeat; we had got to stay on somehow and yet without papers it seemed hopeless.
A long-forgotten picture emerged from the recesses of my mind, a picture of two hilarious young Englishmen being chased along the step of a mountain railway by an irate Swiss official as the train rattled into the tunnel above Lauterbrunnen. What I had done once in an excess of joie de vivre might perhaps work again in very different circumstances.
I said in a low voice, “We'll have to climb out of the carriage.”
“I was just thinking of that myself, but there's a big risk.”
“Not if we're careful.”
“Yes if we go through a station they'll probably see us hanging on and telephone the next station.”
“I hadn't thought of that,” I said slowly. We'll have to try and get out just before they come, hop back quickly after they have gone through this coach and hope to hell we don't pass any stations just then.”
“We need a little help,” said Carnac. “Somebody to stand at the end of the corridor and tell us when the Boche is coming.” He glanced round the compartment and rested on the girl with the baby. “Perhaps madame—”
“O.K.” I said. I turned round to the girl and said in a low voice, “Madame will you help us? My friend and I have to get to Liege, but we have no papers to get past the control. Would you stand in the corridor at the end of the coach and tell us when the Boche is getting near?
”
She nodded. “Which way do they come?” she said.
I hadn't thought of that. Carnac repeated the question to the old man, who jerked his head towards the engine and gabbled off a string of words like a Browning gun.
“From the front of the train,” I said.
She nodded again and struggled to get up. “Let me take your baby,” I said. She hesitated a moment and then, smiling, handed it over to me and went out into the corridor.
Carnac grinned at me. He always seemed to be particularly cheerful when things were looking sticky.
“What you would call holding the baby, eh?” he remarked.
I didn't feel in the mood for backchat and replied sourly that the joke would be on us if the Germans reversed their usual procedure and started at the back of the train for once.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I don't think so. That's probably why the door up the train was locked, to stop people moving in and out while they work through that section. It may be unlocked later.”
The baby was a pleasant little thing and laughed and dribbled and clutched at me with great gusto, to the amusement of the rest of the compartment.
Half-an-hour went by. I was .getting somewhat restive, and so was the baby who evidently considered that it was time for a little refreshment quite outside my powers to provide. I was just about to make some facetious remark to Carnac when the girl darted in again.
“They're in the next coach now,” she said quickly.
I got up and handed the baby back, surveying ruefully a large damp patch on my trousers and reflecting, not for the first time, that life as a spy had its seamy side.
I started to whisper my thanks to her when another point occurred to me. “Will you do one more thing?” I said. “When the Boches have passed through this carriage go and open the window at the end of the corridor” —I jerked my head in the direction—“and let us know that it's safe to come in again. We shall be hanging on outside.”
She was quick in the uptake.
“Very well,” she said, “I'll put my head out of the window and sing.”
“Thanks awfully. Goodbye.”
Carnac looked cautiously into the corridor and then we slipped out and turned down towards the back of the train till we came to the end of the carriage.
“Well,” he said. “Here we go.” He opened the window and looked out and then, evidently satisfied that the coast was clear, he opened the door carefully, edged out on to the step and climbed round the corner out of sight.
I followed him and shut the door behind me. The wind and dust in my eyes made it very difficult to see but I managed the traverse in safety and joined him in the gap between two carriages, standing somewhat precariously on the buffers.
We hung on there for what seemed an age, the dust blowing up in great eddies from the track, waiting tensely for any sign that things had gone wrong. After a time Carnac leaned across and shouted in my ear. “We're coming into a town. We shall have to get in again before the station.”
It was quite true. We were on the outskirts of a town, rattling along between interminable rows of houses. Three or four minutes more and we should be in the station, two dusty men hanging on to the buffers for everybody to see. We should have to drop off before then. Surely those blasted Huns must have gone down the train by now. We started to slow down and Carnac shouted, “We'll get back inside and trust to luck.”
He was just clambering round the corner when I heard above the clatter of the wheels a girl's voice singing “Madelon.”
“Come on!” said Carnac. “Quick!”
He climbed round the corner, wrenched open the door and was inside in a flash with me behind him. The brakes went on and we drew into Charleroi station.
We looked at each other and laughed. The girl laughed too. “Shaky do, that,” I said. “Now what?”
He glanced at his watch. “It will be dark soon,” he said. “We'll wait for half-an-hour and then pay our friend a visit.”
Pursuit of Passy Page 30