The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  In his extremity all Gregory’s senses had become hyperacute. The rank smell of the garbage in the alley-way seemed to stink to high Heaven; his ears magnified Summers’ heavy tread until each step the thug took sounded like the knell of doom. He could hear the footsteps of Archer and Ben, who followed close behind. But there was yet another noise, slightly more distant. It was a stealthy padding in the darkness behind Archer’s back.

  Suddenly a horrible, choking gurgle broke the stillness of the night; then came a cry of fear.

  Halting in his tracks, Summers let Gregory slide to the ground and swung round to face something that leaped at him out of the darkness.

  For the next few minutes the alley was a scene of wild-confusion. Gregory was trampled on as men fought blindly in the blackness. Someone screamed curses in an Asiatic tongue, another voice ordered silence in blasphemous English.

  All at once the sounds of thumping blows and slithering feet subsided. A torch with a shaded bulb shone out on the ground near-by, the spot of light flickering until it came to rest on Gregory.

  ‘’Ere’s the bhoy we’re after,’ said a gruff voice. ‘Pick ’im up, now, and put ’im in the van. Jump to it, ye lazy spalpeens!’

  Hands out of the darkness clutched at Gregory’s limbs. He was hauled upright and half-carried, half-dragged back along the alley towards the street. What was going on he had no idea; neither did he care. The only thing that mattered at the moment was that for reasons at which he could not even guess some gang of roughs had attacked Archer’s party and had thus been the means of saving his life.

  As he was dragged from the mouth of the dark passage the moonlight filtering through the heavy clouds made it just possible for him to discern the outline of a Ford van. Its doors were already open, and after pushing him inside the two men who had dragged him there scrambled in behind him.

  When he pitched forward on the floor of the van his knees came into contact with the hard boards, but he fell with his face on something soft and yielding which was covered with what felt like cloth. As he turned his head his ear touched a cold, hard, uneven object like a small chain. Next moment one of the men who had attacked Archer’s party struck a match to light his cigarette. Gregory saw then that his head was pillowed upon a man’s middle, and he at once recognised the hard object against his ear as Archer’s gold Albert.

  Whether Archer was dead, unconscious, or only gagged and bound like himself he did not know, and in any case the Marxist’s condition did not concern him; he was more interested in the brief glimpse of the interior of the Ford that he was able to obtain before an angry voice barked: ‘Put that ruddy light out!’

  It was empty save for Archer and himself on the floor and five men who occupied the seats running along either side. One of these looked like a Lascar, another like a Malay, while the others seemed to be Europeans.

  As the smoker hurriedly put out his match the doors were slammed to, someone ran round to the driver’s seat and the van started off with a jolt.

  Gregory was still half-suffocated by the gag and his first thought was to take advantage of the darkness to try and get the handkerchief out of his mouth. His hands were tied behind him, but he remembered that Archer had been wearing a horseshoe tie-pin and, wriggling his head a little higher, he felt about with his lips until he succeeded in finding the tie-pin and getting it caught up in a fold of the handkerchief. Fortunately the tie-pin was held in place by a safety-clip, so by jerking gently he was able to draw part of the handkerchief from between his teeth and loosen its pressure sufficiently to force the rest of it out with his tongue. But even when he was free of it he decided that his best policy was to suppress his curiosity and not to speak until he was spoken to.

  For what seemed a long time the van ran through the darkness, twisting and turning down a score of streets until Gregory soon lost all sense of the direction in which they were going, but at length one of the men said to another:

  ‘I ’ope Bill ain’t forgot to drop us orf at Euston.’

  ‘Don’t you fret,’ came the reply; ‘we ain’t there yet, not by a long chalk.’

  This scrap of conversation told Gregory that they had crossed the Thames and were heading northwards, and it was obviously at Euston that the van pulled up five minutes later to let the two men get out.

  Soon after the van had started off again it began to run uphill, so Gregory guessed that they were still going north towards Highgate or Hampstead. Some twenty minutes after the two men had been dropped at Euston the van pulled up, The doors were opened, Gregory was hauled out, lowered to his feet and held upright. By what little light there was he saw that they were in a private drive before the porch of a large house.

  The driver and the man by his side, who appeared to be the leader of the party, got down and assisted the others to carry Gregory and Archer through the front door, past a black-out curtain and into a spacious, well-lighted hall where Gregory had a chance to look at all his captors for the first time.

  The leader of the gang was a thick-set, red-headed man, and from the cut of his jib as well as from the slight brogue which blurred his Cockney accent Gregory was certain that he was an Irishman who had lived for a long time in London. The driver of the van was a crinkly-haired, hooked-nosed individual. The other white man had untidy, ash-blond hair with very light eyebrows and blue eyes. He looked like a Nordic seaman, and the inclusion of the Lascar and the Malay in the party showed that it was composed of a gang of dock-rats.

  Gregory asked himself what in the world these toughs could want with him. It seemed inexplicable, yet as the torch had been flashed on his face in the alley he had distinctly heard their leader say; ’ ‘Ere’s the bhoy we’re after; pick ‘im up, now, and put ‘im in the van;’ words which showed clearly that he had been taken on this midnight ride by design and not by accident.

  Archer was not gagged and was moaning now, but no wound showed on his body and no blood streaked his greying hair, so it looked as though he had been sandbagged and was just coming round. What sort of unguessed-at enemy could it conceivably be, Gregory wondered, who had put this bunch of dock-rats on to kidnap both Archer and himself? And why had they been brought to this big house, which he was pretty sure was in Hampstead? The thing did not make sense.

  All he could do was to await enlightenment with an acute interest. Another man, a tall, long-chinned fellow with high cheek-bones, streaky, black hair plastered across a bald pate and the dark clothes of a servant, had just closed the front door and now appeared round the edge of the black-out curtain. He passed the group in the hall, opened a handsome, mahogany door on their right, and motioned them to go in. The Irishman led the way; the others followed, supporting Gregory and Archer between them.

  The room they entered was unusually lofty and of splendid proportions. Book-cases containing many rows of handsomely bound volumes lined the two longest walls, and at the far end a staircase at one corner led up to a minstrels’ gallery beneath which was a huge table-desk inlaid with many rare woods. It was a flamboyant piece but obviously an antique, and Gregory estimated that it would fetch three figures at any auction sale.

  At the desk there sat a little, wisened man with a big, fleshy nose and a semi-bald head. He was dressed very neatly in smart city clothes, and as he moved his head the lights glinted on the lenses of the pince-nez which were perched upon his beak.

  The other furnishings, including the Persian rugs scattered over the parquet floor, were all upon the same scale of opulence as the books and the desk, but Gregory had hardly time to take them in before he and Archer were dumped down in two chairs and the Irishman addressed the man at the desk.

  ‘’I was easy. We trailed ’im to Archer’s ’ouse; then down to a pub Bermondsey way. ’E was there ’arf an hour and they ’ad a bit of a disagreement. We ’eard ’em ’aving a daisy of a quarrel upstairs, then out they come again with the boy-o trussed like a turkey, an’ it’s my belief they meant to chuck ’im in the river. There was two others with
’im then, as well as Archer, but we took the lot on an’ ’twas a grand surprise we give ’em, The other lads were a pair of numskulls by the look of ’em, so we left ’em lying there, but there’re the two of you wanted an’ ’twas no trouble at all.’

  The man at the desk nodded and said: ’You’re quite sure that you were not followed by the police?’

  ‘Och! Certain as I am of me own name. You’ve no need to worry.’

  Taking an envelope from a drawer of his desk, he handed it across. There you are, then. That was the sum agreed upon.’

  The Irishman ripped open the envelope with a dirty thumb, pulled out a wad of notes and counted them, then grinned and lifted a finger to his checked cap by way of acknowledgement. ‘Any other little jobs an’ I’ll be ’earing from you, Mr, Rosenbaum. You know where to find me and the bhoys.’

  ‘Thanks, You can take your men away now.’

  The Irishman signed to the rest of his gang, who had congregated by the doorway, and they all trooped out into the hall. The man, who they now knew to be called Rosenbaum, no further notice of his prisoners for the moment, but picking up his pen reverted to writing a letter on which he had been engaged when they had been brought into the room. Gregory heard the front door slam, and at the return of the repulsive-looking servant after seeing out the dock-rats Rosenbaum looked up and said:

  ‘You had better go up and tell him that both of them have been brought in.’

  The man’s extreme thinness, together with his bony face and abnormally long chin, gave him the appearance of a funeral mute, but his dangling, simian arms suggested a powerful grip. As he left them and went up the stairs to the minstrels’ gallery Gregory wondered who was meant by the ‘him’ he had been sent to fetch. What conceivable motive could anyone have for kidnapping two people of views and interests so divergent as Archer’s and his own?

  He looked across at Archer and saw that his eyes were open. The Marxist was lying askew in an arm-chair with his hands bound behind his back, but he had raised his head a little and was looking stupidly about him, as yet hardly aware of what had happened and clearly every bit as puzzled as Gregory to find himself in his present situation. As he caught sight of Gregory his mouth fell slightly open. Evidently his first idea on coming round had been that Gregory had finally turned the tables on him and his two thugs by managing, through some means unknown to get some Government agents to lie in wait outside the Bermondsey public-house and attack them. The fact that Gregory was still bound hand and foot obviously made him more bewildered than ever.

  Gregory was so elated at having escaped a watery grave that he did not care very much what happened now, and on an impish impulse he put out his tongue at the Marxist. It was a gesture of derision which he was to regret before he was an hour older.

  Archer wriggled himself into a more comfortable position and sat up. Staring angrily he retorted, irritably. Who was still writing busily, he suddenly bellowed: What the hell’s the meaning of this?’

  ‘Quiet, man, quiet!’ said the Jew irritably. ‘You’ll know in good time and it isn’t the slightest use to make a fuss.’

  At that moment the attention of both prisoners was caught by sounds from the minstrels’ gallery, and they looked up to see that a new figure had appeared upon the scene; a plumpish man of about forty, with his hair cut en brosse, who moved with a curiously light, cat-like step in spite of his bulk. He had a heavy jowl, and from between small, light eyes set much too close together there protruded a thin, sharp nose. With the tall servant behind him he padded almost silently down the stairs and stood for a moment at their foot, surveying the prisoners while he puffed at an expensive-looking cigar.

  Rosenbaum had risen immediately he had caught the faint creak of the stairs, and vacating the chair behind the desk he stepped aside. With stooping shoulders and hands clasped in front of him he stood in a deferential attitude, waiting for the plump man to speak.

  ‘So! Rosenbaum, you’ve got them for me,’ said the newcomer, speaking German in a high-pitched, effeminate voice. ‘Das ist gut, mein kleiner Jakob, sehr gut.’ With a self-satisfied swagger the fat man padded forward and lowered himself carefully into Rosenbaum’s chair.

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Grauber.’ Rosenbaum smiled blandly as he gave him the gist of the Irishman’s report.

  Gregory thought with some satisfaction that the position was at last becoming clearer. Even had the plump man not of Rosenbaum, and he was German, Gregory would have guessed his nationality from the cut of his hair and the shape of his head.

  The Irishman had said that his gang had trailed Gregory to Archer’s house before following them both down to Bermondsey. That must have been done on the instructions of the Jew, and the Jew was obviously the lieutenant of the German. Gregory realised that by some means which he could not even attempt to guess the German Secret Service agents in London had got on to him and for their own reasons had arranged for him to be kidnapped. That being so, the position did not look any too healthy, for if Archer had been willing to resort to murder to prevent Gregory’s leaving the Marxist headquarters and reporting its whereabouts, the German espionage agents whose activities were covered by this house would be hardly likely to quibble at using equally desperate methods to prevent his going out of it now that he knew its situation and secret.

  As he reached this depressing conclusion Archer’s voice boomed out again.

  ‘What the hell d’you mean by bringing me here?’ he roared. ‘Undo these cords, and let me out of this house at once.’

  ‘Silence!’ snarled the German with sudden venom, but in English that betrayed not a trace of accent. ‘Speak only when you are spoken to, you Marxist scum.’

  ‘Scum yourself!’ snapped back Archer, reduced to impotent tu quoque.

  ‘Do you wish me to remain, Herr Grauber?’ asked the elderly, round-shouldered man.

  ‘Ja. Stay where you are, my little Jacob; stay where you are,’ Grauber replied in a caressing voice, but he did not look at Rosenbaum as he spoke. He was studying Gregory intently with the pale eyes that peered out of his pink face from under silvery blond eyebrows.

  ‘So you are Gregory Sallust,’ he said suddenly, ‘alias General von Lettow, alias General von Heintisch, alias Soldat Johannes Heckt. I am most interested to meet you.’

  ‘Thanks’ said Gregory. ‘I’d be better able to show my appreciation if I had the use of my limbs. It’s a little difficult to get up and bow with one’s hands and feet tied.’

  ‘I see no reason why we should have to carry either of you about.’ The German stabbed out his half-smoked cigar and casually picked up another from a large silver box on Rosenbaum’s desk. ‘Karl, untie the feet of both of them, but leave their hands bound in case Mr. Sallust is tempted to give us an exhibition of heroics. Mr. Sallust is a very agile man, and stronger than you might think to look at him. He’s dangerous, too, and we don’t want any little parties like that to which he recently treated some of our people on the roofs of a block of houses in Ems.’

  ‘So you know about that?’ said Gregory, with a grin, as the gaunt-faced servant untied his feet. The fact that his legs were being freed was not much, but it was something, and in any case he felt that he could not make matters worse by putting a cheerful face on things.

  ‘Of course I know,’ the German replied in his high, staccato treble; ‘it is my business to know such things, and there is now very little that I do not know about how you employed your time during those few days during which you were in Germany”.

  ‘Good for you!’ remarked Gregory, and when Karl had undone the cords that bound his feet he stood up, gave a formal bow, and asked: ‘May I have the honour to know with whom I am talking? I didn’t quite catch the name. Was it Herr Glauber?’

  ‘Grauber,’ the German corrected him, ‘Gruppenführer Grauber of the Gestapo, if you please. I am the chief of Department U.A.—1.’

  ‘I don’t mind a bit,’ said Gregory amiably, ‘but I can imagine that there are plenty of other people
in London whom it might not please at all.’

  ‘Ach! You choose to be funny, Mr. Sallust!’

  ‘You won’t find it funny if M.1.5 catch you here now there’s a war on.’

  ‘Please do not concern yourself for me. I am very well placed for looking after my affairs. Do not think, either, that you English are the only people who can come and go between your own country and one with which you are at war without passing the frontier in an ordinary manner.’

  ‘So you’re just over here for a day or two to get a few good square meals? Nice change, I should imagine.’

  ‘Not unpleasant. But the principal reason for my visit was an irrepressible desire to meet you.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with bringing me here?’ Archer cut in angrily.

  ‘You,’ said Grauber icily, ‘are one of the lice which crawl upon the bodies of carnivorous animals. Mr. Sallust has at least the courage of an animal, if not its cunning. Since you were with him when he was brought in you were brought in also. Be silent now, or I will have you gagged.’

  ‘May I hear how you got on to me?’ Gregory inquired.

  The Gestapo chief smiled; it evidently tickled his vanity to give details of the neat job of work he had supervised. Preening himself a little, he replied: ‘When Heckt was found in the car outside Cologne dressed in the uniform of a General—the nearest, I fear, that so undistinguished a man will ever get to achieving that rank—it was clear to us that the foreign agent whom we then knew to be masquerading as the worthy but defunct General von Lettow, and whom we later identified with yourself, had changed clothes with him. A few days later we received information from Holland that a deserter using Heckt’s name and papers was in the concentration-camp at Nijmegen. Obviously that deserter was the same foreign agent; yourself, in other words; and you had succeeded in getting out of Germany. But the arm of the Gestapo is long. We knew that so active and foolhardy a person would not be content to remain in a concentration-camp for the duration of the war, so our agents in Holland were instructed to keep a careful watch. We learned of your transfer to the camp for British internees at Groningen within an hour of your setting out on the journey, but our agents at Groningen were much mystified because the prisoner delivered there had no resemblance whatever to the descriptions we had issued of you. Fortunately, however, we have good friends in the Dutch passport office to whom we put through an inquiry for any foreigner resembling yourself who had left Holland during the day following that on which you left Nijmegen. The number of travellers is now limited, and our friends were able to identify you for us without difficulty. A passport had been visa’d that morning, at the request of the British Consul at The Hague, for a man named Gregory Sallust, and a man answering to your true description had left Rotterdam that day by the midday boat.