The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Our agents in London found your name in the telephone book—a very easy thing to do—and a watch was kept upon your flat in Gloucester Road. Once more the description of the Mr. Gregory Sallust who lived there tallied with your own. Having found our hare, it only remained for us to catch it and cook it. Had you not left your flat tonight in a taxicab you would have been sandbagged and brought in earlier. As it was your little trip down to the docks provided an admirable opportunity to bring you here without any fuss.’

  ‘Very neat,’ admitted Gregory, ‘very neat indeed. And now you’ve got me here what d’you propose to do with me?’

  ‘Your ultimate fate is a matter of no importance. What concerns me is this little talk for which I have taken the trouble to come all the way from Germany. I am here to obtain from you particulars of the conspiracy which we both know to exist and which has as its object the destruction of the Government of the Third Reich.’

  ‘If you know about it, why ask me?’ Gregory shrugged.

  ‘I know quite a lot about it but I am anxious to know more.’

  ‘So am I. It sounds a most interesting and praiseworthy affair, but this is the first I’ve heard of any such conspiracy.’

  ‘You lie,’ said the German quietly. ‘You went to Germany with the definite object of getting in touch with these rats of Marxists and other disaffected elements which plot to stab us in the back. Papers found in the houses of both Rheinhardt and Wachmuller prove that they were interested in such a movement. It has no chance, of course; the rats will never dare to leave their holes and come out into the open; but it would be foolish to treat them with the contempt they deserve, because in petty ways they contaminate their immediate circles. Purely as a routine measure, and for the purification of the State, they must be hunted out and eliminated.’

  Gregory heaved a mental sigh of relief. Evidently no papers connecting the movement with the Army chiefs had been found in the houses of Rheinhardt or Wachmuller. The Gestapo still believed that they had to deal merely with another crop of their hereditary enemies, the Communists and intellectuals. That, at least, was something.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘like everybody else I know that a quite considerable proportion of Germans hate your lousy Government. The secret broadcasting station of the People’s Freedom Movement that you’ve failed to trace proves that, and while I was in Germany I certainly learned that the same old plots against the Government were going on, but they were only minor conspiracies. I found no trace of any concerted movement.’

  ‘So you won’t talk, eh? That is very foolish. Unfortunately we lack the refinements here which we possess at Dachau and some other of our concentration-camps …’ Herr Grauber paused for a moment, then his dull, pale eyes seemed to light up in his face as he went on: ‘… but even without such aids to the loosening of unwilling tongues I can promise you, Mr. Sallust, that unless you provide me with the information for which I have come to England I will make you scream for mercy, courageous man though you may be, merely by the application to your eyeballs of the glowing end of this very excellent cigar.’

  19

  Men Without Mercy

  Gregory felt himself going moist under the collar. Nobody knew where he was, so there was no possibility whatever of his being rescued. Having had one unbelievably lucky break that night because Herr Grauber’s plans had happened to run contrary to Tom Archer’s he could hardly expect another. In this quiet house at Hampstead he was entirely at the mercy of the German.

  He glanced up covertly at Rosenbaum, who appeared to be regarding Grauber with deferential attention, while Karl’s dour, bony face was even more forbidding than that of his master. It was quite clear that no help could be expected from either of them while however loud he might yell for help it was most unlikely that anyone outside would hear him, as the house was some distance from the road.

  His racing brain flirted for a moment with the idea of making a bid for liberty, but he realised that as his hands were still tied behind his back it would be impossible for him to turn the knob of the door. The big windows behind him were heavily curtained. They were probably fitted with additional black-out curtains behind those he could see, and he had no idea which, if any, of them were open. It was equally hopeless, therefore, to contemplate making a dash for one of them in an attempt to throw himself out into the garden.

  There are limits to human endurance, and although Gregory was more than normally stout-hearted he knew that a burning cigar-end placed against one of his eyeballs would make him scream and whimper like a child. Such agony, he felt sure, would reduce him to a state in which he would give anything away rather than continue to endure it and lose the sight of his other eye.

  Grauber had been regarding him intently. After a moment he seemed to have summed up Gregory’s reactions accurately, since he said: ‘So! You are prepared to talk?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gregory admitted reluctantly. ‘I don’t see the point of having my eyes burnt out if I can prevent it. You’re quite right about there being an anti-Nazi movement in Germany; I was sent out to try to assess it strength and possibilities. The British Government are naturally anxious to encourage it as far as they can, even if it only leads to a certain amount of sabotage and necessitates reserved troops being kept from the Front to police the big cities. I was given Rheinhardt’s name and that was all I had to go on.

  ‘From Rheinhardt I learned of Wachmuller and I was just on the point of finding out a little more about the Movement from him when one of your idiot storm-troopers shot him dead. You know what happened after that. I was exceedingly lucky to escape from Germany, but I had to come home with my tail between my legs and I don’t know a thing more about the business than when I started. That’s the truth.’

  ‘Plausible, Mr. Sallust—but unsatisfactory. Even the British Government could not have been so stupid as to send you out to Germany on quite such a slender trail. There must have been other people besides Rheinhardt whom they intended you to contact if you had not had to make a bolt for it after enjoying our beautiful Rhineland scenery for only four days. Do you give me the names of these others, or do I apply the end of my cigar to one of your eyes?’

  ‘Damn it! I’m speaking the truth, I tell you!’ Gregory exclaimed. He knew how weak his statement must sound, and was sick with the thought of what the German might do to him in an effort to extract further information, which he would be utterly unable to give for the simple reason that he did not possess it.

  Grauber stood up slowly and advanced with a mincing step until he was standing beside Gregory, who got a whiff of some sickly scent the German was using. For a full minute he said nothing, but gazed down into Gregory’s face with his curiously light eyes while he significantly twiddled the cigar.

  At last he spoke. ‘It is unfortunate, Mr. Sallust, that only by applying a very stringent test of your veracity can I ascertain whether or not you are speaking the truth. If you still maintain that you know nothing more when both your eyeballs are charred I shall have to accept your statement, but I should be failing in my duty were I to neglect any measure which might induce you to remember a little more.’

  With a swift, unexpected movement he jabbed the cigar lightly at Gregory’s right eye, brushing its ash off on the eyelid, so that although Gregory was not burnt he felt the heat of the glowing end as he jerked back in his chair.

  ‘Stop that you swine!’ cried Archer in a sudden effort to intervene. ‘He’s speaking the truth; he doesn’t know a thing.’

  The Gestapo chief turned to stare at the Marxist. ‘I told you to remain silent,’ he commented icily.

  ‘Is it likely that I’m going to sit here saying nothing while I watch you torturing a defenceless man? He’s a secret agent all right, but a damned bad one! And if you were to roast him alive over a slow fire he still couldn’t tell you anything,’

  ‘You say that to try to save him.’

  ‘I say it because I know what I’m talking about. He came to see me with the idea t
hat I might be able to put him on to something, but after mentioning the names of those two Germans you spoke of just now he petered out. If he’d known the names of any others, wouldn’t he have mentioned them too, hoping to strike one with whom I might have had some dealings in the past? Of course he would. But he didn’t. You won’t get any more out of him whatever you do,’

  ‘Warten Sie einen Augenblick!’ Grauber began to pace up and down as he went on thoughtfully: ‘I have not yet had time to consider what part you play in this. Let us think about that a little and put two and two together before depriving Mr. Sallust of his eyesight.

  ‘When I heard that he had gone down to see you I naturally concluded that you were working together and that his visit was for the purpose of letting you know how some of your friends in Germany were getting on. Apparently I was wrong. You tell me now that, on the contrary, he came to you for the purpose of obtaining information about those Comrades of yours. Did he get it?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. I don’t know any more than he does about this Movement you speak of.’

  ‘Yet Rosenbaum tells me that the gang of thugs he employed at my suggestion caught you carrying Mr. Sallust, gagged and bound, down to the dockside with the evident intention of murdering him. Tell me, please; why should you suddenly decide to do that?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. It was purely a Party matter, We’re on one side of the fence and since he’s an agent of the Capitalist Government he’s on the other. He’d have sabotaged our organisation if we’d let him go, so we made up our minds to put him out of the way.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr. Archer, if I say that I find your explanation rather thin. In Germany, in Russia, in many other countries Party hatreds are carried to such lengths, but in Britain—no. In this country people do not commit murder from political motives, however bitterly they may feel about their opponents.’ Grauber paused for a moment, while his pale eyes flickered from one to the other of his prisoners, ‘I wonder if either of you have any papers on you which might throw some light upon this interesting matter? Rosenbaum, search them both.’

  While Grauber continued to pad softly up and down Rosenbaum ran through Gregory’s pockets, drawing a complete blank. From Archer, however, he removed a miscellaneous collection of articles, amongst which was a faked photograph.

  Immediately Grauber saw the photograph he began to snigger. ‘What a pretty picture, and what a find! I will see to it that this is reproduced and circulated so that the Marxist leaders in other countries can see how the English leaders of the working-class movement really live.’

  ‘It’s a fake,’ growled Archer. ‘The girl’s my ward and I’ve never set a finger on her in my life. She’s a mannequin. That’s how they got that picture of her in her underclothes, and the filthy skunks imposed it with one of me on that bedroom-scene background.’

  ‘The filthy skunks to whom you refer are, of course, Mr. Sallust and his friends?’

  ‘Yes. A pretty example of how the high-principled British Government goes to work. When all else fails they even stoop to blackmail.’

  ‘I begin to see daylight,’ murmured Grauber meditatively. ‘Mr. Sallust arrives at your house this evening and asks you for certain information regarding your friends abroad. When you refuse to give it he produces this very cleverly faked photograph and threatens to circulate it among your associates. That, of course, provides an adequate motive for your deciding to murder him. Let us suppose that you pretend to give way and promise to take him to some place where he will get the information that he requires. Thus you succeed in luring him down to the docks where you can have him quietly eliminated.’

  ‘One up to you,’ said Gregory. ‘Now you know exactly what happened and I hope you’re satisfied.’

  ‘But I am not satisfied. Mr. Archer is an important figure in Britain’s national life, so naturally our agents here took the trouble to collect a lot of data about him before the war. When one of Rosenbaum’s people telephoned to say that you were at his house tonight I had his dossier turned up and found from it that, apart from his misguided political beliefs, Mr. Archer is a man of extremely high principles. I do not believe that he would soil his hands with murder from any purely personal motive. What, then, could this motive have been? Was it, perhaps, that your blackmail succeeded? That in a moment of weakness he gave you the information you required but later decided that he would murder you to prevent your making use of it?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ rumbled Archer. ‘I’ve told you already that I had no information to give.’

  Herr Grauber shook his head. ‘The more I think about it the less I am inclined to believe that. As an International Marxist of such extremely Left-Wing tendencies that even the official British Communists refuse to have anything to do with you, you must have connections with the leaders of subversive movements all over the world. Many of those in Germany would quite definitely be known to you. To protect yourself from the attentions of Scotland Yard you must have secret methods of communicating with your friends abroad; you would need them even in normal times. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that although our countries are now at war such lines of communication are still open.

  ‘Let us consider the situation a little further. Mr. Sailust is sent to Germany by the British Government to make any trouble that he can for the German Government. He tells us that he has had to return without having fulfilled his mission. When he gets back, what does he do? He says to himself: “I have made a mess of things and I have blotted my copybook by getting Wachmuller—who was the only lead to this conspiracy that I had—killed. As I am a tenacious person, however, I am determined to have another go; I must therefore get some more leads. Comrade Archer must be in touch with all the principal German Anarchists, so I will go and see him and I will either persuade or force him to give me some more names to work on”.’

  Gregory lowered his eyes. It was extraordinarily interesting to follow Herr Grauber’s mental processes, but the German was now getting too near the truth for comfort and Gregory had begun to fear that the outcome of his deliberations might prove most unpleasant for Archer and himself.

  Still padding up and down Grauber went on in his high, piping voice: ‘Let us for a moment put ourselves in the place of Comrade Archer. When he learns Mr. Sallust’s business with him he is anything but pleased and he stoutly refuses to give the information required, his reason for doing so being that he has no love for Government agents and is greatly alarmed for his German friends. He may or may not know that Mr. Sallust’s first visit to Germany had had such disastrous consequences for those with whom he got into touch there, but he has in any case no confidence in the tact and discretion of British secret agents. He is afraid that if he tells Mr. Sallust the names of his friends in Berlin, Hamburg, the Ruhr and other manufacturing centres where the discontented are most numerous, Mr. Sallust will go blundering in like your proverbial bull in a china-shop and get those friends shot-up by my colleagues of the Gestapo.

  ‘In the end, however, Comrade Archer is forced to give the names of certain of his friends by Mr. Sallust’s threatening to use this pretty photograph, but a little later he regrets having been panicked into doing so and decides that rather than risk his friends being given away to the Gestapo through Mr. Sallust’s stupidity he will eliminate Mr. Sallust. That, I think, is the real situation.’

  ‘The theory’s sound enough,’ said Gregory, ‘but the facts are entirely wrong. I did exert pressure on Archer but he refused to tell me anything and convinced me that he could not do so only because there was nothing that he could tell.’

  Herr Grauber shook his head. ‘I do not believe that, but as it happens the point is quite immaterial. Whether he decided to murder you because he had given you information which he did not wish you to use or because he would stop at nothing to prevent your circulating this interesting photograph no longer interests me. One fact—one fact, Mr. Sallust—now emerges to me with perfect clarity. Such photographs as this cost time, trouble a
nd money to make, for unless they are supremely well done it can easily be detected that they are faked. If you were only trying Comrade Archer as a shot in the dark you would never have undertaken such elaborate preparations in order to blackmail him. You did so only because you already knew, from facts which you had secured from some other source, that he could tell you what you wanted to know.

  ‘Whether he actually told you anything or not does not now concern me at all. It is clear that Comrade Archer has information which it was worth your while to take a great deal of trouble to obtain. That being so he has information which it would—in other circumstances—be worth while for me also to go to a great deal of trouble to obtain. As it is, I am in the fortunate position of not having to bother to employ experts to fake photographs. Why should I waste my good cigar on your eyes, Mr. Sallust, when Comrade Archer’s eyes are equally close at hand?’

  ‘You swine!’ said Gregory.

  ‘You are ungrateful, Mr. Sallust. You owe it to my excellent reasoning powers that I do not propose to devote any more time to you now that I find I can tap the actual source of the information that you sought. After all, it is to that that you will owe the preservation of your sight—for a little while, at all events.’