The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  Gregory began to speak, but Madame Dubois cut him short and hurried on.

  ‘Let us suppose that there is a revolution in Germany. You have mentioned that certain Army chiefs might lead it. Do you think that if the revolution is successful the Prussian Junkers will give the German working-people a fair deal? No, no! That is too much to hope. They may combine to settle Hitler’s business, but afterwards they will begin to quarrel. The Army chiefs will try to arrest the Marxist leaders and unless the common soldiers side with us the Generals will come out on top. The British and French Governments will not wish Germany to go Communist, and I know, my friend, how these things are done. Your Scotland Yard and the Sûreté-Générale will send lists of those German Marxists about whom they have information to the German Generals. If I give you the names of my friends their names will be on those lists and their situation will be no better than it is under Hitler.’

  ‘Listen, Madame.’ Gregory leaned forward and used his most persuasive tone. ‘You are a Red. I have always believed that a fair deal could be secured for the workers without their resorting to desperate measures, but you are quite justified in considering me as a White. Nevertheless, in this business we have got to sink our differences and combine. Whatever happens, the German workers’ situation could not be worse than it is under Hitler. Let the future take care of itself. If only the war can be brought to a successful conclusion I think we may rest assured that the democratic Governments of France and Britain will insist that a democratic Government be set up in Germany, and that will curb the power of the Generals. Under a true Democracy the majority of the people will decide which form of Government they prefer and …’

  ‘Under a true Democracy.’ Madame Dubois cut him short. ‘And you consider, I suppose, that France and England are true Democracies, although Chamberlain and Daladier have been ruling for months with all the power of self-appointed Dictators?’

  ‘I know for a fact, Madame, that the man in the street in both Britain and France has infinitely more freedom than his counterpart in Germany.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it is not enough—it is not enough. Private ownership, the banks, hereditary privilege of every description must all go.’

  Gregory shrugged. ‘Madame, it can serve no useful purpose for us to discuss such problems now. The French and British Governments are out to destroy the Nazi system, which we both agree to be utterly evil. Surely, therefore, you will not let party politics sway your judgment and prevent your giving me your co-operation.’

  She shook her head. ‘I do not know. There is much in what you say, but we have worked for so long, for so many years, to bring real freedom to the peoples of Europe and the world. Many of my friends in Germany are entirely unsuspected. Even in the event of revolution they would remain behind the scenes and a new Government formed under the aegis of the Generals would know nothing of them. If I give you their names I jeopardise their whole future and the great work for humanity which they may do when things have settled down again.’

  She hesitated for a moment, then went on in a tired voice: ‘For me it is unusual not to see clearly the line that I should follow, but this injury to my head has robbed me of my powers of concentration. Perhaps, after all, we should attend to first things first, as you say, and bend all our energies to getting rid of the Nazis, whatever price we have to pay for it later. But I can give no decision now. I must think it out quietly. Yes; when I am alone I must think. Come to see me again tomorrow.’

  With that Gregory had to be content for the time being, as he saw that it was useless to press her further at the moment, so, making his adieux, he went downstairs and took a taxi to the Sûreté.

  On the way he thought over his recent interview. Had he been able to approach Madame Dubois according to his plan, as a friend of Archer’s and a Marxist sympathiser, he might have got the information he wanted. On the other hand, he might have failed to do so, since he had no letter such as that extorted from Rheinhardt by Grauber with which to convince her of his good faith.

  Two thoughts, however, remained to console him: first, that as she evidently knew nothing of any Army chiefs involved in the conspiracy she could not have given away anything about them to Grauber, so at all events they were safe; second, that as far as the German Freedom Party was concerned, she held all the threads in her hands—threads which would certainly lead him somewhere if only he could lay hold of them. From her last words, too, he felt that there would be a very good chance of persuading her to line up with him at the interview arranged for the following day.

  On arriving at the Sûreté he sent up his name to Colonel Lacroix, and after a wait of some twenty minutes he was taken up to the big room on the sixth floor.

  ‘So our bird escaped us,’ the Colonel said at once.

  Gregory nodded. ‘Yes, sir. He must have had someone planted in the hotel to watch his room, but the things I found in the false bottom of his suitcase will, I hope, prove a lucky haul.’

  ‘They have been handed to the deciphering office, and I had word only a few minutes ago that the sheets of figures form the key to a new code which had so far defeated our experts. That is extremely valuable and I am happy to offer you my congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Gregory smiled. ‘Our failure to catch Grauber was damnably disappointing, though.’

  ‘We may get him yet. Unless he has a secret landing-ground somewhere and can fly to and from Germany as he wishes he will find it extremely difficult to leave France. The moment you telephoned yesterday I gave instructions for a special watch to be kept on the frontiers for a Heer van Zelden and his description has been widely circulated in case he has several passports and tries to get out under a different alias. I take it you’ve been to see Madame Dubois again this afternoon? What luck have you had with that troublesome lady?’

  Gregory gave particulars of his interview with Madame, and said he felt almost certain that with a little more persuasion she could be induced to see reason.

  ‘If your interview with her tomorrow is successful, what d’you propose to do afterwards?’

  ‘Go back into Germany, sir.’

  ‘How?’

  Gregory smiled. ‘That, sir, is where I’d like to avail myself of the assistance which you so kindly offered me yesterday.’

  Lacroix nodded. ‘I have no doubt that we can arrange matters, but the choice of an identity suitable for the work you have to do must lie with yourself. The Army did not prove a very happy experiment as far as you were concerned, either in the commissioned or non-commissioned ranks, but unfortunately every fit man of your years in Germany will be in some kind of uniform by this time.

  ‘We could, of course, give you a false hump which would demonstrate to all who saw you the reason for your not being in any of the fighting services, and you could carry the papers of a commercial traveller, which would justify your moving freely about from town to town, but the objection to providing you with any such marked deformity is that it would make you very easily traceable if some act of yours arouses their suspicions and they wish to rope you in for questioning.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to think the matter over very carefully before coming to a decision.’

  ‘But certainly! You life will depend upon your choice, my friend, so I hope that you will take as much time as you need. I …’

  The Colonel was interrupted by the gentle burring of a telephone. He picked up the receiver, listened for several minutes, saying ‘Bon! Bon!’ at intervals, and replacing it, smiled across his desk at Gregory.

  ‘Good news. We’ve got Grauber!’

  ‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Gregory. ‘What a grand surprise! A big man like that has so many underlings he can utilise that I felt quite convinced he’d get away. Did he come back to the hotel, after all, or did they pick him up at one of the frontiers?’

  ‘Neither. He managed to get out of France, but the Deuxième Bureau knows no frontiers when it is after enemy spies. He left on the Amsterdam plane t
his morning, dressed as a woman. You mentioned, I think, that he has a high-pitched effeminate voice, so he is probably used to playing such a part. He fooled the airport police here, at all events, but as several of the air services are now operating again, I warned our agents in Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy to keep a look-out for him when any planes arrived from France.

  ‘You told me also that he had friends in the Dutch Passport Office, but he is not the only one to have friends there. Knowing that he had been staying here as a Dutchman I requested my friends in that office to make a particularly careful examination of any people purporting to be their own nationals who might come in by plane during the next twenty-four hours. Grauber was carrying the passport of a Vrouw Gotwinder of Haarlem and it was all in order, but one of the Dutch passport officials happened to come from Haarlam and to know that Vrouw Gotwinder died a few weeks ago. An examination by police matrons revealed that the lady carrying her passport was not a lady at all.’

  ‘Grand!’ murmured Gregory. ‘But I suppose you can’t extradite him?’

  The Colonel shook his head. ‘No. That we cannot do, but he will be charged with carrying a false passport and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The Dutch are extremely anxious to preserve their neutrality, and the activities of people like Grauber are apt to jeopardise it. As we shall be able to provide them with particulars of his true identity I think we may rest assured that the sentence will be a heavy one, putting our friend Grauber out of the game for some time to come.’

  ‘Hang on, sir!’ Gregory suddenly slapped his knee. ‘That’s given me an idea. As Grauber has been knocked out of the ring and we’ve got his Gestapo chief’s Identity-card, why shouldn’t I go into Germany as Grauber?’

  Colonel Lacroix’s dark eyes twinkled in quick appreciation of the idea. ‘Why not?’ he murmured. ‘He stole your identity so why should you not borrow his for a little? His offence makes him liable to imprisonment, not internment, so the German Legation will not be informed of his presence in Holland, and his associates in Germany will believe him to be still in France.’

  ‘How about his trial, though?’ Gregory asked, with sudden doubt. ‘If that’s reported in the papers, the Germans are certain to see it. The people in the German Legation at The Hague are bound to hear about it, at all events.’

  ‘Perhaps the French Minister might be able to arrange for the case to be censored. He’s on very good terms with the Dutch Government, and as a courtesy to him they would probably agree to Grauber’s name not being mentioned at his trial. There would be nothing contrary to precedent in their trying him as an alien who had attempted to enter Holland with a stolen passport. The passport could not possibly have been issued to him owing to his sex, which makes the case a very simple one, and I see no reason at all for his real name to be given during the hearing.’

  ‘If you could arrange that,’ Gregory said, ‘I’d have a clear run. I’d have to chance coming up against some other Gestapo man who knew Grauber personally, of course, but that risk would be altogether outweighed by the enormous advantages I’d gain by assuming his status and privileges. I’d be able to travel on any train I wished merely by showing my pass, to commandeer cars and to lord it over everybody without one chance in ten thousand of meeting a man bigger than myself in the Nazi hierarchy who would dare to challenge me. I suppose you can get me the right kind of uniform?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’ll be no difficulty about that, but while I could smuggle you into Germany as a civilian by a dozen different methods I don’t see for the moment how I could do so if you were dressed as a Group Leader of Black Guards.’

  ‘That is the snag,’ Gregory admitted. ‘They never wear their uniforms outside Germany. How about landing me behind the lines at night from an aeroplane?’

  ‘Perhaps that could be done, but it would be very risky. When you made your first trip the war was only a week old, Germany’s eyes were fixed on Poland and it was no very difficult matter for the British to land you unobserved in the flat country north-east of Cologne, but the situation has changed a lot since then.

  ‘Over fifty Divisions have now been moved from the Eastern to the Western Front to support the twelve already there. The whole country for miles behind the Siegfried Line swarms with troops, and that applies also to the country further north, between Cologne and Aachen, as there are very heavy concentrations of enemy forces on the Dutch border. You would now stand a much graver risk of landing in a field which, unknown to us, had been occupied perhaps only a few hours before as a bivouac for troops on the march.

  ‘More important still, there is now ten times the aerial activity over Western Germany that there was six weeks ago. The British planes still fly over very high at night, but any unidentified aircraft would certainly be challenged if it flew at less than twenty thousand feet, so you would probably find yourself being escorted down by a flight of Messerschmitts. No. Such a project would be doomed to almost certain failure and I cannot advise it.’

  ‘Say I took the uniform through in my luggage?’ Gregory suggested.

  Lacroix grimaced. ‘I don’t like that either. All luggage is now most carefully examined, not only for contraband but also for newspapers and documents. They turn everything out of the trunks and the Customs people go through them with a fine-toothed comb. If you attempted to enter Germany either as a neutral or as a German civilian the discovery of a S.S. chief’s uniform in your baggage would lead to your immediate arrest. If on the other hand I had a passport and other documents faked up for you purporting to show that you were actually Grauber, the news of your arrival in Germany would get back via the frontier people to Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. When you failed to report they would immediately become suspicious and send out a broadcast call for you. When you still failed to turn up you would find yourself once again a hunted man.’

  ‘Supposing I had an outside suit of civilian clothes made and wore the Gestapo uniform under it; then stripped off the civilian things when I had passed the frontier. How about that?’

  ‘No, my friend, no. Now that Germany is in a state of war she treats all her visitors outside her frontiers most unceremoniously. They have to strip in the Customs sheds and are searched to their skins, so if you tried that dodge you would be a dead man before you had been in the country twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I have it!’ Gregory exclaimed suddenly. ‘I’ve been wanting to compare a bit of the Maginot Line with a bit of the Seigfried Line for a long time now.’

  ‘Ha, ha!’ cried the Colonel. ‘I get you. It is an old trick and a good one. If you had been going over dressed as a German officer or private I would have suggested it myself. But you must remember that Gestapo chiefs are far too careful of their skins to go wandering about in the battle-zone, and since the Army detest the S.S. they would jump at the chance of hauling you up if they found you in their own territory.’

  ‘No, wait. You provide me with the uniform of a German soldier taken from one of your most recently captured prisoners so that it is that of a man belonging to a Division which is still in the Line. We pack my S.S. uniform into a knapsack and with a big mackintosh covering the whole caboodle one of your Military Intelligence people takes me up into the French trenches.

  ‘During a night-attack I slip out into no-man’s land, shed the mackintosh and get across into the Boche front line looking like an ordinary Jerry with a two-day’s growth of beard, then make my way back through the communication trenches to the rear of the German battle-zone. Once I’m out of the military area I find a quiet spot where I can shed my soldier’s uniform unobserved and put on that of a Gestapo chief, after which I can set about my business and use Grauber’s card of authority without running any Immediate risk of his apparent return from abroad being reported to Berlin.’

  The Colonel nodded. ‘That is good, my friend, really good. But you will have to risk being killed or wounded by a shell when you cross no-man’s-land and you must not minimise the danger of running into somebody who kn
ows Grauber even if you succeed in entering Germany.’

  ‘The first risk is no worse than any soldier has to face in a night attack and the second can’t be avoided. As an enemy agent inside Germany I’d be liable to be challenged at any moment whatever identity I might assume, and going as Grauber at least gives me a tremendous pull in that I can move about the country as quickly as trains and cars can take me and with absolute freedom, which is more than one out of a hundred thousand Germans can do at the present moment.’

  ‘Yes, that advantage is immense. So be it, then. See Ribaud on your way out and ask him to have you measured for an S.S. uniform. The S.S. are vain fellows and very smart, so it must fit you perfectly. The fit of the captured soldier’s uniform is not so important and it will be best to have one which has been soiled in battle taken from an actual prisoner. I will get in touch with our Military Intelligence people about that.’

  Gregory smiled as he stood up. ‘I hope we’re not trying to run before we can walk, sir, because it’ll be no good my going back into Germany like a blindfolded man, without a single clue to work on—and that’ll be the position if Madame Dubois makes up her mind that she’s not going to tell me anything tomorrow. If she does I’m afraid we’ll have to wash the whole thing up and consider the game played out.’

  ‘But I thought you felt reasonably certain that you could persuade her to talk?’

  ‘I do, sir. She struck me as being a fine woman, but if I can’t do it any other way I propose that with your permission we issue a warrant for her arrest.’

  ‘H’m,’ the Colonel grunted. ‘I fear that won’t do much good. Madame Dubois is a woman of great character. Owing to her subversive activities she has been in prison on numerous occasions already, so if she makes up her mind not to talk I don’t think for one moment that you’ll succeed in opening her mouth by trying to bully her.’