The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Perhaps it will be better if we postpone our business until we get back to your house. In the meantime we shall have our work cut out to prevent ourselves tripping over kerbstones in this black-out.’

  After this they walked on in silence until they reached the Pastor’s house. He let himself in with his own key and led Gregory upstairs to a comfortable book-lined sitting-room on the first floor. As the housekeeper did not appear Gregory assumed that she had either gone to bed or was somewhere in the lower regions.

  Directly they were in the room and the door had closed behind them, Gregory displayed the golden swastika in the palm of his hand.

  ‘The symbol of peace opens all doors among the right-thinking,’ said Wachmuller, and added with a smile: ‘I thought you must be one of us as you came from Julius Rheinhardt, but one can’t be too careful. Make yourself comfortable, please, and tell me what I can do for you.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Gregory unbuttoned his great-coat and took it off, glad of the opportunity to get rid of the rain-sodden garment. He then sat down and said quietly: ‘As you may have noticed from my badges, I am a General of Engineers, but I’ve been dug out from my retirement for this accursed war and have as yet no actual command. In consequence certain of my superiors who know my views selected me as a suitable man to send on a tour of the Rhineland; ostensibly to inspect bridges and so on, but actually to contact our civilian friends and find out the state of public opinion in this part of the country.’

  Wachmuller had produced a bottle of Schnapps and some glasses from a cupboard. Having poured out two portions he sat himself down in an arm-chair which had its back to a door, in the wall between the bookshelves, which evidently led into another room or a large cupboard.

  ‘They made an admirable choice, I’m sure,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Prosit! Herr General.’

  ‘Prosit! Herr Pastor,’ replied Gregory, lifting his, and after they had drunk together Wachmuller went on:

  ‘As our Army leaders are watched night and day by the Inner Gestapo I quite understand that for any of them to make contact with a number of well-known civilians would immediately lay them open to suspicion.’

  Gregory nodded. ‘The difficulties of communication are immense, but nevertheless if anything is to be done it’s essential that there must be the closest possible co-operation between the Army, the industrialists and the Social Democrats.’

  ‘Something must be done,’ said Wachmuller firmly. ‘We cannot allow this war to go on, bringing as it must unspeakable horrors in its train to the whole German people.’

  ‘Do you honestly believe that a really considerable proportion of the people feel that way about it, as well as our own group?’

  ‘I’m certain of it. As you may know, I have some reputation as a preacher. In consequence I am asked to address many congregations from the pulpit and constantly visit such towns as Cologne, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Mainz and Wiesbaden, besides many smaller places. That enables me to form a very shrewd opinion of the state of things in this part of Germany. Hitler may have given the people uniforms and bread, but he has robbed them of even the shadow of freedom.

  ‘Only the week before the war broke out a little girl in my parochial school quite innocently let it out to her teacher that her father had complained that morning of the margarine at breakfast and had grumbled that they hardly ever saw butter on their table any more. The teacher is a Nazi, of course, as all who are entrusted with the formation of the opinions of German youth must be if they wish to retain their jobs. She reported what the child had said; she would herself have got into serious trouble if she had not done so and it had leaked out. The following day the father was arrested. None of his family know what has happened to him or where he is. He has just disappeared; to a concentration-camp, of course, in which he will be confined indefinitely for correctional punishment without being tried by any court or even being given an opportunity to state his case. What, I ask you, can his friends and relatives feel about a régime under which such things can happen; knowing all the time that they themselves may be the next to disappear for some equally trivial criticism of the Government?

  ‘That episode is typical of the sort of thing that is happening all over Germany. The people live in terror of being reported by one another, it is true; but such terror is dangerous to the Government because the natural reaction has now begun. In spite of the announcement of most appalling penalties if found out they seize every opportunity to listen-in to the forbidden foreign broadcasts and to read the subversive literature which is being distributed in secret by revolutionary organisations.’

  ‘You feel convinced then, that we would have the support of a large proportion of the masses?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Even those who fell into the snare of Goebbels’ propaganda and were in favour of a war of liberation to regain our old Polish provinces are taking a very different attitude now that they know we are faced with another war against the great Democracies.’

  ‘It is as well, then, that we took no premature action when the orders were issued for a march into Poland.’

  ‘At the time it was a disappointment that you did not, Herr General. We were hoping for a lead from the Army when the crisis was at its height, as the Generals would then have had a good case to present to the people—that they had carried out their Putsch as the only method of saving the nation from being plunged into war. But in some respects their hand has been strengthened by waiting. Even those who were not at that time averse to the Polish adventure and did not believe that the Democracies would come in against us now realise that Hitler has burnt all his boats and has involved us in another struggle which may all but destroy the whole nation.’

  Gregory murmured his agreement, but his mind was swiftly planning his next move. Having got so far, he was now faced with an extraordinarily difficult task, for he had to try to trick the Pastor into naming one or more of those very Army leaders whose emissary he was representing himself to be. The only chance of doing so seemed to be to keep him talking on general lines in the hope that sooner or later he would let something out, so Gregory continued:

  ‘All that you say tallies with what I have heard from other quarters, so if the Putsch can be carried out efficiently, I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that the country will rise against the Nazis. Hitler has made so many enemies; the Communists, the Social Democrats, the Czechs; it was madness to overrun Czechoslovakia. The second we act the Czechs will murder every Nazi in their country. As it is we have to keep sixty thousand men there to prevent open revolution.’

  ‘Neither have the Austrians any love for their Nazi overlords.’

  ‘Quite so. Then there are the Jews. In spite of the deportations there are still five million left in Germany and there must be thousands of them who would cheerfully give their own lives in an attempt to destroy Hitler, if they were not afraid of reprisals against their whole race. Once we have arrested the Führer and issued a proclamation disbanding the Nazi Party, the lower-class Jews in the great centres of population will fall upon local Nazi leaders like packs of wolves.’

  The Pastor nodded. ‘Lynching is a horrible thing to contemplate, and mob rule will have to be put down as soon as possible afterwards, but not a Nazi will be safe unless he is inside a prison or at his local headquarters. That should have the effect of rounding them up for us so that once the Army takes over they can be tried for their crimes by proper tribunals. But as you say, many of them will be assassinated in the meantime at their homes or in the streets, by the Communists and the unfortunate Jews whom they have so terribly persecuted.’

  ‘I have no particular liking for the Jews myself,’ said Gregory, expressing the views that he would be expected to hold as a Prussian Army officer, ‘but their persecution has injured Germany enormously. If the war goes on, thousands of lives will be lost among our wounded solely because we are so short of doctors owing to the Nazis’ expulsion of the Jews from the medical profession. Moreover, we have lost innum
erable financiers, writers and scientists, all of whom contributed to the life of the country.’

  ‘The Jews are not the only ones who have suffered amongst the intellectuals,’ Wachmuller took him up quickly. ‘Every writer of importance who has had the courage to use his pen to protest against our lack of liberty is either dead or behind barbed-wire in a concentration-camp. Those who are still free are silent only through fear of a similar fate; they have not forgotten the terrible things that have been done to their brethren. Apart from unscrupulous climbers who have joined forces with the Nazis there is not an intellectual in Germany who would hesitate to acclaim with joy the arrest of Hitler and his satellites.’

  Gregory listened attentively. He knew that they were only exchanging platitudes, but he hoped that in time those platitudes might lead somewhere, and in order to keep the Pastor talking he led the conversation to matters which had a close personal interest for his host.

  ‘Then the Churches—’ he began. The Catholics who form so large a proportion of the South German people have suffered severely by the restrictions imposed upon them. Their Bishops will certainly support us against the Nazis and they will undoubtedly have the full approval of Rome.’

  Full of righteous indignation the Pastor stood up and continued angrily: ‘It is not upon political grounds alone that my poor brethren are marked down. It is because the Nazi doctrine conflicts with that of Christianity. Hitler knows, and we know, that in spite of his legions of police spies he will never be the real master of Germany until he has destroyed all Christian belief within Germany’s boundaries.

  ‘I am a man of God, Herr General; yet I pray to God that an assassin’s bullet may find Adolf Hitler before this year is out, unless you and your associates put him before a brick wall and shoot him for the murderer and anti-Christ he is.’

  From where Gregory was sitting he could just see the handle of the door in front of which the Pastor was standing. Owing to its heavy shade the light was not too good, but he suddenly had the impression that the door-knob was slowly turning.

  Instantly his hand slid to his pistol holster. His fingers had barely touched it when the Pastor went on:

  ‘When you see General Gra …’

  At that second the door behind the Pastor was thrown open. Gregory had just time to glimpse a vague, black-uniformed figure in the shadows before there was a blinding flash and a report that sounded like a thunder-clap in the silence of the quiet room. Pastor Wachmuller threw up his chin; his mouth fell open; his eyes bulged hideously. His knees sagged and he collapsed, face-downwards on the carpet, without uttering a sound.

  Gregory flung himself sideways at the very moment that the shot was fired. A second bullet thudded dully into the back of the arm-chair in which he had been sitting a fraction of a second earlier. As he had fallen to the floor he had lugged out his automatic, and lying there on his back he blazed off with it at the figure in the darkened doorway.

  There was a cry and then a moan, followed by the thud of a pistol as it fell on the polished boards. Slowly the figure in the shadows crumpled and slid to the floor.

  Wriggling to his knees, Gregory covered the assassin with his still smoking gun, but it was unnecessary for him to use another bullet. His first had taken the man in the shoulder and the second had got him through the heart.

  He turned to stare down at the Pastor, but Wachmuller was beyond all human aid. He had been shot at close-range through the back of the head, and the base of his skull was smashed in as though it had been hit with a sledge-hammer. Blood, brains and splintered bone seeped from the hideous cavity.

  As Gregory got to his feet and stood for a moment in silence he was thinking, not of the unfortunate Pastor, who, like himself, was only a pawn in the game, but with bitter fury of the fact that he should have been shot down at that particular instant. If the assassin had held his hand for even one second longer Gregory would have learned the name of one of the Army leaders in the conspiracy, which would have been of immense importance to him.

  Although he was now on the run himself he might still have been able to avoid capture and get in touch with the General whom Wachmuller had been just about to name; or if that had proved to be impossible he could at least have endeavoured by a dozen different methods to evade the censorship and get the all-important name back through some neutral country to Sir Pellinore.

  His eye switched to the dead Nazi, who was in the black uniform of an S.S. officer. He had a large, reddish, stupid face and an absurd little fair moustache. With angry frustration Gregory cursed the dead man for a brainless fool. Evidently he had been listening-in to their conversation, hidden, behind the door. Had he waited only a second longer before killing Wachmuller he, too, would have learned the name of the anti-Nazi Army leader—information of incalculable value to his Party—but it was typical of that type of German to put his foot in it. After weeks or months of the most conscientious preparation they always loosed off their guns at the wrong moment, losing half the benefit of their carefully laid plans by ill-timed action.

  Snatching up his overcoat he slipped it on and strode to the door, his gun still in his right hand. Opening the door quietly but quickly he slipped out on to the landing and stood listening. Excited voices came up from the hall below, followed by the sound of a footfall on the lower stairs.

  One cautious glance over the landing-rail showed him the tops of uniform caps worn by men who were already running up towards him with drawn guns in their hands. The Nazi whom he had shot must have secreted himself in the room adjoining the library and left his men below to guard the exits of the house. Gregory was trapped: his only chance of escape lay in getting away over the roof-tops before the Nazis had time to search the building.

  With catlike swiftness he tiptoed to the foot of the upper stairs; then, crouched and silent, he began to ascend. He had just reached a bend in the flight when the leading Nazis arrived with a rush on the landing below. By an evil chance one of them happened to glance up, and caught sight of him moving in the semi-darkness.

  With a shout of ‘Da ist jemand!’ he raised his automatic and fired.

  The bullet crashed into the baluster-rail a few inches above the crouching Gregory’s shoulder and sent splinters of woodwork flying into his face.

  Then his own automatic spat as he pressed the trigger, firing between the balusters. The Nazi clutched at his throat: blood oozed between his fingers and spurted suddenly from his mouth. With a half-choked scream he fell back among his comrades.

  The next second a fusillade of shots crashed out as the others blazed away into the gloom, but by that time Gregory was round the bend. As he sprang on to the upper landing he heard the killers come pounding up behind him.

  10

  The Fight for Life

  In the dim light on the upper landing Gregory could just make out three doors, one of which was lower than the other two. He had to make an instantaneous choice. If the room he chose had a skylight there would still be the fraction of a chance that he might get away; if not, he would be cornered and captured, or more probably dead, within the next few minutes.

  Grabbing the handle of the lower door Gregory wrenched at it and flung himself inside. For a second he could see nothing. The place was as black as pitch, but jerking his head upward with frantic anxiety he saw a long rectangle of dimmish light above him. It was a skylight; he had been granted that hundredth chance of getting out alive.

  Pouching his gun he reached down and groped about in the darkness. His hands came in contact first with a perambulator, then with a heavy wooden box. As he stooped to lift this and fling it against the door another fusillade of shots rang out. The house was old and the door a thick one, but even so several of the bullets penetrated the panels, and the fact that he had stooped just at that instant probably saved his life.

  The heavy box now temporarily held the door, but the Nazis were already battering on it and a faint crack of light showed that their first assault had opened it a crack. Lying full
length on the floor Gregory set his shoulder against the box and drew his gun again. Raising it and placing it against a panel on a level with his head he pulled the trigger twice to give his pursuers a taste of their own medicine. There was a yelp of pain followed by a blasphemous spate of curses, and the pressure on the door eased a little. As it did so he wriggled back until his feet touched something, and reaching behind him he found that it was a ladder.

  The Nazis charged the door again. It creaked under their weight and the sudden broadening of the band of light showed that they had now forced it open a good six inches. Judging from its weight the box was probably full of books; it had taken a big effort for Gregory to heave it against the door. But there was nothing but its weight to hold it in position, so a series of determined assaults would soon force it back.

  One of the Nazis emptied the remaining contents of his pistol through the panel of the door and the bullets streamed over Gregory’s head. Immediately the smacking of bullets into the far wall had ceased Gregory swung round, grabbed a rung of the ladder and launched himself up it.

  Another crash below told him that his pursuers had made a further assault on the door, but by that time he was crouching at the top of the ladder and fumbling frantically with the perforated iron strip by which the skylight could be adjusted at various angles.

  As he thrust up the skylight he glanced down and saw that the door was now open a foot. A black patch, shoulder-high in the band of light down its edge, could only be a man’s arm thrust round it. There came a rapid succession of flashes which lit up the whole room as the owner of the arm sprayed it blind with his pistol.

  Gregory had always prided himself upon his marksmanship. Raising his automatic he aimed carefully and let the fellow have one in the shoulder. There was a cry and the pistol dropped from a nerveless hand. Gregory heard it crash to the floorboards as he wriggled out on to the roof.

  Drawing the fresh night air gratefully into his lungs he let the skylight fall back with a bang and looked swiftly around him. The houses in the row were of the old German type with sloping roofs and many gables; dangerous, tricky ground for any man to attempt to negotiate in the darkness; but darkness was his friend, and if only he could manage to avoid slipping and falling headlong to the street they would afford excellent cover.