Erika lay there, moaning, where she had fallen. Already she was wishing that she were dead, yet knew that she had not yet gone through one hundredth part of what they meant to do to her. When Grauber again ordered her to get up she made no attempt to do so, hoping now that if he kicked her enough it might result in some internal injury that would carry her off quickly.
Instead of kicking her again he stooped, thrust his great hand into her mop of tumbled hair, clutched a big handful of it and began to drag her bodily towards the door.
She screamed, but he paid no attention to her yells. Levering herself up with one foot, she swung her head round and bit him savagely in the hand.
He let go her hair with a curse, sucked at his hand for a minute, then, stooping again, grabbed one of her ankles. As he pulled her after him once more her head and shoulders bumped along the boards, then out on to the gravel path.
“Let me go!” she panted. “Let me go and I’ll walk! I’ll walk, I promise you!”
“That’s better,” he chuckled, releasing his grip, and, staggering to her feet, Erika lurched up the path between them.
At the gate a Mercedes-Benz, with a uniformed chauffeur at its wheel, was waiting. Grauber said to Einholtz:
“We had better go into Friedrichshafen and have that wound of yours attended to at the local headquarters.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer,” muttered Einholtz, sullenly.
With a word to the driver Grauber pushed Erika into the car and climbed in after her. It was a big car, but he was such a bulky man that there was not room for more than the two of them on the back seat, so Einholtz let down one of the small seats opposite. The two men pulled down the blinds of the car, Grauber switched on a little blue light in its roof, and the driver let in the clutch.
Einholtz wiped some of the blood that was still trickling down his face away from the corner of his mouth, glared at Erika, and suddenly jabbed his heel down hard on her instep.
“You little bitch!” he snarled, as she jerked away her foot. “You thought you’d been so damned clever, didn’t you, getting that old woman to hide you? But I had the tapes on you from the very first morning. If you’d had any sense you might have guessed that any maid who had to serve that old cow would hate her guts, and that Helga would prove no exception.”
He chuckled suddenly, and went on. “Anyhow, that girl would give away her own mother for a good healthy man like me. How we laughed, up in her room every night, to think of you down there so smugly thinking you’d put a fast one over the Gestapo. I could have pulled you in any time, but there was no hurry about that, and as I was having my fun I thought I’d wait till you made your breakaway. There’s no sport like catching the bird just as it thinks it’s out of the cage.”
“If you’re not careful you’ll try that once too often,” lisped Grauber.
“I knew you were behind her, Herr Gruppenführer,” grunted Einholtz sourly.
“Perhaps. But that wouldn’t have stopped you getting a bullet through your brain instead of through your hat. You wouldn’t have a headache now if you had been willing to stop their car at the crossroads where I picked you up. I let you have your way because I know this little spitfire better than you do, and I had an idea that she might teach you a lesson.”
Einholtz relapsed into sullen silence and neither of them spoke again until, in a back street of Friedrichshafen, the car sounded its klaxon twice, upon which a pair of high gates were opened for it and, driving through, it pulled up in a courtyard.
“Out you get,” said Grauber, as the driver threw open the door nearest Erika, so she followed Einholtz from the car and up a few steps into a hall where several smart S.S. men were lounging. The moment they saw Grauber they sprang to rigid attention, but he was in a good humour, and piping: “Guten Abend, meine Herrn” motioned them to relax.
With a muttered word about seeing the doctor, Einholtz went up a stone staircase, while Grauber laid a hand on Erika’s shoulder and gave her a push towards the open door of one of the ground floor rooms. As she entered it she saw that it was just a bleak sparsely furnished apartment which might have been the interviewing room in any police-station. Closing the door behind him, he waved her to one of the wooden chairs, then took out a cigar, lit it and sat down himself.
Leaning his elbows on the bare table he stared fixedly at her for a full minute, then, at last, when her eyes dropped before his gaze, he said:
“I want some information from you, and you know enough about the sort of thing that goes on in such places as this to imagine what will happen to you if I don’t get it. So you’d better talk, and tell the truth, bearing in mind that I have enough facts already to check your story. Now! Where’s your boy friend—that snake Sallust?”
“I don’t know,” replied Erika.
“Oh yes you do. Why didn’t he come with you to Switzerland?”
“Because I couldn’t get in touch with him. I don’t know where he is.”
“When did you see him last?”
“A little over a month ago.”
“Where were you then?”
“In a hospital, at which I was working in England.”
“Did he tell you that he was going away again?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say where to?”
“No.”
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Let me refresh your memory. He told you that he was going to Russia. You see, I know where he’s gone. Do you remember Karl Zensdorff who was with me in London? But no, that was before you met Sallust. Anyhow, Karl was one of my men and a very fine professional knife-thrower. He and Sallust ran across one another at the house of a little Jew called Rosenbaum up in Hampstead. Karl crucified the Jew and practised his knife-throwing on him afterwards, very prettily, I remember. Well, Karl is now in Damascus. He reported to me only two days ago that Sallust had just passed through and, according to our French friends in the passport control, is on his way to Russia. You see how small the world is and how we get to hear of these little things. Naturally, my agents in Russia have been duly instructed to keep an eye on Mr. Sallust, so I shall be able to verify a great part of the statement you are about to make to me. Now—you’d better not try to lead me up the garden path.”
He paused, obviously expecting Erika to reply to him, so, after a moment she said, dully: “I can’t make any statement about that. How can I, when he didn’t even tell me where he was going?”
Grauber stood up. “Now listen to me. Sallust is in love with you, and you’ve been in the game with him, so he tells you most things—everything, in fact, that he does not consider to be a vital secret. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t; and I am confident that he would not regard this mission to a country allied to Britain as of particular secrecy. I am now going to leave you for ten minutes, while I have a drink in the officers’ club upstairs. I give you this last chance to think matters over. When I return, unless you are an imbecile, you will tell me what I wish to know.”
His jack-boots rang heavily on the boards as he strode to the door. As it slammed behind him Erika let her head fall forward on the table. Her jaw ached, the back of her neck ached, her shin ached, her instep ached, and her left eye was rapidly closing up from the blow that Einholtz had given her. She tried to collect her thoughts, but she felt absolutely ghastly, and her mind remained blank to everything except the pains shooting through her body. It seemed to her only a moment before she once more heard Grauber’s heavy footfalls as he came in again.
A carafe of drinking-water and a glass stood on the table. Filling the glass, he flung its contents over her bowed head. As the cold water splashed on to the back of her neck and ran down her spine she shuddered and straightened up.
“Well,” he said, “are you going to talk?”
She knew that she would have to sooner or later. They would do things to her that no human will could resist; but she felt that she owed it to her own integrity to r
efuse as long as she had the power to do so. She mutely shook her head.
At that moment the door opened and Einholtz came in, his face now clean and the top of his head swathed in a turban of white bandages.
“There’s a show on downstairs,” he said to Grauber. “If she’s proving stubborn it might soften her up if we took her down to see it.”
Grauber considered for a moment, then he nodded. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” and taking Erika’s arm he jerked her to her feet.
Between them they hustled her out into the hall and down a flight of stone steps into the basement. The corridor was lit only by small red electric bulbs at intervals along its ceiling. Einholtz pushed open a door flush with the wall and they entered a large, low-ceilinged room. It was furnished only with a table, upon which stood some electrical apparatus, a kind of wooden throne that stood in the middle of the floor, and a few hard-seated chairs. In one corner there was an iron stove, roaring away, which made the place stiflingly hot and on the far wall there was a rack upon which hung a score or more curious-looking iron implements.
A man in a white surgeon’s smock, with heavy lensed spectacles, sat at one end of the table and at the other sat an S.S. officer with a writing-pad in front of him. Two S.S. troopers were standing near the throne, and between them stood a woman of about thirty, stark naked.
The officer stood up as Grauber came in but the Gruppenführer signed to him to get on with his business. He then pushed Erika into a chair, took another himself, and the show began.
The woman was a German and a coarse-looking creature, but she had a decent, honest face, and as the interrogation proceeded Erika learnt the cause of her being there. She was a local prostitute and she had sheltered a British airman who had made a forced landing after his aircraft had been hit during a raid on Friedrichshafen. She had not known that when he picked her up, as he had already secured workmen’s clothes by breaking into a farmhouse, near which he had landed. He also spoke fairly good German and had represented himself as a Belgian who had been brought into Germany for forced labour. He had quite a bit of money and had treated her much better than most of her casual customers. Later, when he had been trying to get a boat to smuggle him across Lake Constance, the truth had come out, but by that time he had been living with her for a week and she had grown too fond of him to betray him to the authorities. With her help he had arranged about a boat, but they had both been caught just as he was leaving.
The Gestapo thought it possible, although improbable, that the man had talked to her about his job as an R.A.F. pilot, so she might be able to give information about the technique of the British air raids and the station upon which his squadron was based. Although the woman protested again and again that he had said nothing at all about such matters, they thought it worth while to go right through with a routine grilling on the offchance that her ravings might disclose something of interest.
The oral examination having produced nothing, at an order from the officer the two troopers seized the woman and thrust her on to the throne. While they were strapping her wrists and ankles to its arms and legs, the man in white left the table and, uncoiling two rolls of electric flex as he went, walked over to the woman carrying their large specially fashioned terminals.
Erika saw with horror that the throne was a form of electric chair, but that instead of the shock being administered as usual by knee pads and a headband the terminals were designed for the impalement of the wretched woman. The two troopers stood by making lewd jokes while the other man thrust them into her writhing body.
Having adjusted them so that she could not force them out, he went back to the table and flicked over a switch. Instantly the woman was galvanised. Her mouth opened and let out a piercing scream. Her eyes started from her head.
The operator switched off the current and the investigating officer said: “Well, what have you got to tell us?”
The woman was tough, and instead of inventing any story that might have postponed further torment, let fly a spate of obscene curses at him.
They were abruptly cut short by the current being turned on again. As the woman’s limbs went rigid, Erika closed her eyes to shut out the awful sight and put her hands over her ears, but she could not shut out the screams that echoed round the sombre chamber. The current was kept on for longer this time, and when they turned it off the woman hung limp for a moment, only held in place by her hands. Her body was glistening all over, and the sweat was streaming down it. Suddenly she vomited.
“Now!” came the staccato voice of the officer. “Another two goes of the heat and you’ll never again be any good for your old job. Out with it.”
“He was an Australian,” she moaned. “I told you that—and it’s all I know.”
“Think again!” The officer leant over and this time turned on the current himself; but he kept his finger on the switch and for a full three minutes alternately flicked it up and down. During the whole ghastly proceeding the victim never ceased to jerk convulsively and emit heartrending screams except when the current was cut off, and then she gibbered and moaned with her head rolling piteously from side to side.
In the brief intervals of applying the current the officer had continued to hurl questions at her, without result, and apparently coming to the conclusion that he was flogging a dead horse, he suddenly sat back, barking out an order to the guards to release her.
As they undid the straps she fell forward, a flabby mass of writhing pink flesh, on to the floor. Unceremoniously they picked her up, flung her on to a stretcher, and carted her away.
At the slam of the door Erika took her fingers from her ears and opened her eyes. She found Grauber looking at her.
“Well,” he said, “how would you like to try a taste of our new toy?”
She shuddered, lowered her eyes and made no reply. The room was appallingly hot and now stank foully from a mixture of sick, sweat and excrement and iodoform. There were beads of perspiration standing out on Erika’s forehead and her chemise was sticking to her back.
Grauber’s voice came again. “If you’re not prepared to talk now, in ten minutes’ time you’ll be carried out of here in the same state as that woman.”
Erika felt that she was going to faint, but she still sat silent with her head hanging down on her chest.
“What you’ve seen isn’t one tenth of it,” Grauber’s voice went on. “Those toys inflict internal burns, you know. For months afterwards you’ll wish you’d never been born, and you’ll never be fit for much again.”
She closed her eyes, swayed slightly, and slid sideways to the floor.
“Donnerwetter! She’s fainted,” growled Grauber.
But Erika was not quite out. As she lay there, sweating and terrified, she could still hear the voices above her.
“Bring your things here, Herr Doktor,” Einholtz called. “We’ll pull her clothes out of the way and give her a shot where she lies. That will soon bring her round.”
As Einholtz stepped forward to grasp the edge of her skirt, Grauber said sharply: “Stay where you are, both of you.”
There was a pause, during which Grauber seemed to be considering, and Erika could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Then he spoke again in a lower tone, evidently to Einholtz.
“I know this woman. I’ve had her through my hands before. She’s the highly strung type and needs special treatment. We’ll do better with her in a more artistic setting.” He raised his voice: “Herr Doktor, I wish you to come with us, and bring your instrument.”
As he finished speaking, he stooped, seized Erika in his strong arms and lifting her, flung her over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
Directly the fresh air from the ground floor reached Erika’s nostrils she began to feel slightly better, but she gave no sign of returning consciousness, as her apparent faint seemed to be a temporary protection.
In the hall Grauber lowered her to a bench. There was a short wait while he left her to give some orders about his car, then,
on his return, as she still showed no sign of coming round, he shook her.
She opened her good eye—the other was now almost entirely closed. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going to take you for a little midnight excursion.”
With an effort she got to her feet and stumbled before him down the steps out to the now waiting car. They sat side by side in the back, as before. Einholtz and the doctor took the smaller seats. The high gates were opened, the blinds of the car were pulled down, and it drove off.
Her pains had now merged into one dull ache that gripped her whole body, with occasional stabs from the specially tender places whenever the car swayed or jolted. Her mind was still half bemused by terror and physical exhaustion, but the fresh night air gradually cleared it a little. She could neither see nor guess where they were going but knew that wherever it might be their journey boded no good to herself. Any attempt to escape would have been so utterly hopeless that it did not even occur to her. She lay limp in her corner with the cold perspiration drying on her body. The car droned on and on until it seemed that she had been sitting there for hours, but she had lost all sense of time, and to her the journey was like some never-ending nightmare.
She was roused from her semi-stupor by a more violent series of twists and jerks than usual, and it came to her vaguely that the car must be winding its way up a steep hill. Two minutes later it pulled up. Einholtz and the doctor got out and Grauber pushed her after them. She saw then that she was standing in the courtyard of Schloss Niederfels.
The shock of the unexpected stimulated her brain a little. She had thought they were taking her to some concentration camp. Why, she wondered, should they bring her here? Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the sinister doctor, standing only a few feet away from her with the big leather case that contained the fiendish instrument. Of course, they could use it at Niederfels as well as anywhere else, and Grauber’s remark about a “more artistic setting” came back to her. Yet why should he have the idea that she would yield up more readily any secrets she possessed in the banqueting hall or a well-furnished bedroom of the castle than in a reeking concrete cellar?
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