The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  All he could hope for after this second brief meeting was that fate might ordain that their paths should cross yet again. His immediate concern must be to get out of the place as quickly as he possibly could, since now that he had left the dance-floor Grauber might recognise him from the far end of the room. It would be the height of folly even to approach the few yards necessary to regain his own table and linger there the couple of minutes requisite to pay his bill. Keeping his face turned sideways as though he was looking for somebody he walked quickly behind the band to a second exit from the ballroom and slipped outside.

  In the passage-way he paused to light a cigarette and steady his nerves. How in thunder Grauber could have appeared in Munich when he was supposed to be a prisoner in Holland was past Gregory’s comprehension. He had certainly been in a Dutch gaol four days earlier. Colonel Lacroix was not the man to make mistakes about that sort of thing. However, the manner in which he had escaped or secured his release was of no importance for the moment. The thing that was causing Gregory’s brain to rev. like a dynamo was the disastrous effect that Grauber’s unexpected return to Germany might have on his own situation.

  Although the one glimpse that Gregory had caught of him had hardly lasted more than a second he was absolutely certain that this was no case of mistaken identity. The lovely Lady of the Limousine had specifically said that she could not spend the evening with him because her work demanded that she should devote it to a high official of the Nazi Party, and if that hadn’t been enough the man to whom she had drawn his attention was wearing a uniform identical with his own. There was no doubt whatever that the Nazi whom his lovely lady had gone to join back there in the ballroom was Grauber; and not Grauber the secret agent slinking about in a London black-out or on the run in the Clichy district of Paris, but Grauber back in his own country, in his own native Germany and vested with the almost limitless authority wielded by the real chief of Gestapo Department U.A.-1.

  Was Grauber staying in the hotel? If he were, Gregory considered that his own number was as good as up already. When the Gestapo chief had first entered the place the people at the desk would have been amazed to learn that a second Herr Gruppenführer Grauber existed. Explanations would have ensued and a squad of Black Guards was probably waiting in the hall upstairs to arrest him immediately he appeared.

  On the other hand, if Grauber were staying at the almost equally luxurious Bayerischehoff, a few doors away down the Square, and had only come into the Regina Palast for a few hours’ amusement, there was a chance that he might get away.

  But for how long could he hope to remain at liberty? Nazi Group leaders were of even more importance than he had assumed, as was clearly demonstrated by the servile manner with which he had been received everywhere in the country since he had donned his S.S. uniform.

  The managers, hall-porters, head waiters and all sorts of people at the Bayerischehoff were certain to know their opposite numbers at the Regina Palast. Even as he stood there puffing heavily upon his straw-filled cigarette—which was already nearly consumed—two such members of the staffs might be comparing notes, each boasting that his hotel had received the patronage of a powerful Gestapo official, and the result of any such exchange of information was quite certain to be catastrophic as far as he was concerned.

  Now that the real Grauber had arrived in Munich it could only be a matter of hours—or, at most, the night—before his own impersonation was discovered. In any case, every minute was vital if he hoped to save his skin, and the sooner he made his attempt to get out of the hotel the better.

  He would never even have considered wasting precious moments in going up to his room to fetch any of his belongings if it had not been for the fact that his cap and greatcoat were still there, but he could not possibly walk about the streets in an S.S. uniform without them. If Grauber were staying in the Regina Palast a squad of S.S. men might already be up in the bedroom, but Gregory felt he must risk that. If he could find some way to alter his rank-badges and so make himself a less conspicuous personage he might be able to remain at liberty for some days, given his cap; without it, once his description had been circulated, he would easily be identified by any policeman.

  Having made his decision he walked to the lift and told the one-armed liftman to take him up to the third floor. Leaving the lift there he came cautiously down the back stairs to the first floor, on which his room was situated, thus avoiding any Nazis who might have been posted in the hall or on the lower staircase to watch for him.

  Peering round a corner along the main corridor, which ran the whole length of the hotel, he saw that it was empty except for an elderly woman in a quilted dressing-gown. Immediately she had disappeared into her room he undid his pistol holster, put his hand on the butt of his automatic and tiptoed forward along the passage.

  Pausing outside the door of his room he threw a quick glance in the direction of the landing. To his relief, no Storm-Troopers were posted there. For a minute he listened with his ear pressed to the panel of the door. No sound came from inside it. Drawing his gun, he unlocked the door, and boldly flung it open.

  The room was in darkness, and flicking on the light with his free hand he saw that it was empty. He saw, too, how it was that he had so far remained unsuspected.

  On a small table there were several parcels; they were the things he had ordered from various shops that afternoon. But at the foot of the bed there were two large, pig-skin suitcases and these were marked with black initials which showed that they belonged to Grauber.

  He must have sent his luggage straight from the station to the hotel without bothering to telephone for a room. Doubtless he knew that however full the place was accommodation would be provided for him. On closer inspection Gregory saw that a printed label was tied to the handle of each suitcase giving the Group Leader’s name in full. When the bags arrived the hotel porters had naturally imagined them to be Gregory’s luggage and taken them straight up to his room. Grauber, meanwhile, had probably had some business to transact, or a private dinner party, to which he had gone direct from the station, and arriving late for his appointment with the Lady of the Limousine at the Regina Palast he had not yet spoken to anyone at the desk but had gone straight into the lounge where he knew she would be waiting for him.

  Dearly as Gregory would have loved to examine the contents of those two bags he knew that he would be insane to attempt it. With swift, sound reasoning he saw at once that if he left the bags alone there was just a chance that Grauber might not learn anything about him until the morning, as he would assume that the other things in the bedroom belonged to some ordinary German citizen who had been turned out of it; whereas if he found that his suitcases had been tampered with he would send for the management right away. The cat would be out of the bag and a description of the man who had posed as him would be winging its way over the telephones and wireless five minutes later.

  For Gregory deliberately to have robbed himself of the few hours’ start he might get would have been sheer craziness, Seizing up his cap and greatcoat he dashed into the bathroom for his shaving things, stuffed them in his pocket, switched out the lights and cautiously emerged into the corridor again.

  The sight of Grauber’s bags in his room had assured him that he was reasonably safe for the moment. If the management already suspected him there would have been Black Guards there and others on the staircase. He did not know of any side-entrance to the hotel but he felt certain that he could count upon his lovely lady detaining Grauber down in the ballroom upon her business for some time yet, so bracing his shoulders he strode downstairs and across the main hall as though he owned it.

  Except to step aside for him as usual nobody took any particular notice of him, and two minutes after leaving his bedroom he was out in the street.

  ‘What the hell do I do now?’ he thought desperately. ‘I dare not go to another hotel, in this town at all events. I suppose my best plan is to make straight for the station and take the first train out for
anywhere; then head once more, with my tail between my legs, for the nearest neutral frontier. But that means abandoning any hope of seeing Erika von Epp. Hell and damnation! What infernal, god-forsaken luck!’

  He was already moving in the direction of the Mittelbahnhof but with every step he took his bitter despondency became more deeply coloured with obstinate rebellion. What a tale to have to tell Colonel Lacroix who had put such faith in him! How could he face Sir Pellinore after bringing about so many deaths and then abandoning his mission when having come so near to achieving his objective? Rheinhardt, Wachmuller, Archer, Rosenbaum and Madame Dubois had all paid the penalty of having known him. That had not been altogether his fault, but only two days before Lieutenant Gautier and other French soldiers had laid down their lives to ensure him a fresh start. How, with the thought of that in his mind could he ever again look at himself in a mirror unless he returned to France with something to show for their sacrifice? He was damned if he was going to turn tail and run this time!

  It was already half-past nine. Erika von Epp’s maid had said that her mistress would probably be home by eleven. In another two hours, if only he stuck to his guns, he might at last be in possession of the vital information which he had sought for so many weeks.

  By remaining in the neighbourhood of Munich for the night he enormously lessened his chances of getting away safely the next day. Erika von Epp might be willing to help him, but he had brought disaster upon too many people to be willing to accept assistance from her which might lead to her arrest. If he stayed in Munich he must depend upon his own wits to get him out of the city the following morning. But stay he would. He was now determined to do so, and to hear what Erika von Epp had to say, even if he were afterwards caught and shot before he had had an opportunity to use anything he had got out of her and to bring his mission to a successful conclusion.

  In this state of cussed-mindedness he reached the station and instead of turning into the main hall he walked to the barrier beyond which the local trains ran out. Owing to the war evening services had been restricted and he found that he would have to wait twenty-five minutes before a train was due to depart. The platform was almost deserted, and walking to its extreme end, where there were no lights at all, he sat down on the last seat, secure there from the casual glances of any passengers who might gather later on the platform near its barrier end.

  His thoughts reverted to the lovely girl he had just left. How strange that he should run into her again! And yet, perhaps, not so strange after all. Outside their private houses the rich move in a very limited circle, frequenting only half a dozen or so great hotels in each capital or pleasure-resort, and one or two, at most, in other large towns. He had often noticed when travelling abroad that it was almost impossible to walk into a luxury hotel without meeting somebody that he knew, or at least recognised from having run up against them somewhere else, so as the Lady of the Limousine was now in Munich it was not really a very startling coincidence that he should have encountered her in the smartest public centre of Munich’s social life.

  He realised now that he had been thinking of her much more frequently during these past weeks than he had admitted to himself. Perhaps that was partly due to the strange circumstances in which they had first met, but it was not altogether that. The lovely lines of her face rose again, clearly now before his mental vision, and she was even more beautiful than he had pictured her when dropping off to sleep or in dreamy reverie before getting up each morning during the inactive periods that he had spent in the concentration-camp at Nijmegen and in prison in Paris.

  He always considered himself extremely hardboiled about women, and although he had had many affairs it was a long time since he had been in love, yet he admitted to himself that he was in love again now. Curious, he thought, how one never really grows out of that sort of thing, and in fact, how one’s longing is intensified by age and experience. In the late thirties one can so easily become a callow youth again, and positively long for the touch of one woman’s hand. He knew the symptoms well enough and they were all there. Somehow or other he had got to find her again, and hold her in his arms once more. But there was little chance of a third fortuitous meeting, and although, owing to her beauty, she should not be difficult to trace, any attempt to run her to earth was absolutely out of the question at the moment. He dared not linger in Munich a single second longer than was absolutely necessary, or even return at any time while the war lasted to the Regina Palast where his inquiry must start without grave risk. But immediately the war was over it would be safe for him to do so. Therefore a personal reason was added to his urge to complete his mission at the earliest possible moment. The electric train ran smoothly in, and by twenty-past ten he was out at Prinz Ludwig’s Höhe.

  The October moon had waxed and waned while he was in Paris, so this first week of November found the warring nations plunged in nightly darkness once again. Munich had already had a leaflet raid, and now that all hope of peace had faded the folk of the Bavarian capital were in constant fear that next time the British came over they might drop bombs. In consequence, the black-out restrictions were very severe.

  In the main streets of the city traffic signals and dimmed motor headlights still gave pedestrians enough light to find their way about without difficulty, but here in this wealthy residential suburb it was a very different matter. Only the blacker outline of tall trees against the dark sky indicated the walls of the gardens where they ended at the side of the road. Not a chink of light showed from any of the houses and the few cars that were about crawled along with their lights heavily hooded.

  Gregory’s sense of locality was normally excellent, and having walked to the house only that morning he had felt certain that he could find his way there again, but the black-out defeated him. It was only after he had lost his way twice and had had to inquire of other pedestrians whom he passed groping their way through the shadows, that he eventually found Das Kleine Schloss and realised that he had not set out any too early after all, as it was now past eleven.

  The same trim maid opened the door to him, and said at once that her mistress had not yet returned.

  ‘All right,’ said Gregory, stepping past her into a tiled vestibule, ‘I’ll wait for her.’

  ‘As you wish, Herr Gruppenführer’ replied the girl timidly, and led him across a big, richly-furnished hall, from which a broad staircase ran up to the floor above, to a lounge-room with book-lined walls and comfortable sofas.

  When Gregory had seated himself in an arm-chair she said, ‘I am afraid you may have to wait some time, Herr Gruppenführer, because the Frau Gräfin telephoned a little after ten to say that she was going on somewhere and would not be back until late, so we were not to wait up for her. The other servants have already gone up to bed, but as I knew you were coming I stayed downstairs to let you in.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gregory thoughtfully. ‘Well, you’d better run off to bed now. But wait a minute; I suppose the Frau Gräfin will return alone?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say, Herr Gruppenführer. Sometimes the gentlemen who see her back come in for a few minutes and sometimes she brings several friends in for a last drink on their way home. Drinks and sandwiches are always left out for her when she’s returning late.’

  The possibility that Erika von Epp might bring back a crowd of friends, or even a single male companion did not suit Gregory’s book at all. If she had been in when he arrived he had intended to tell the maid to inform her that he wished to see her alone on urgent private business, so that even if people had been with her she would have left them to receive him in some other room. Now, however, believing all her servants to be in bed, the Countess Erika would let herself in with her own key, and anybody who was with her would almost certainly come on him sitting there at the same time as she did.

  Standing up again, he said abruptly. ‘It’s most important that I should see the Frau Gräfin alone, and that none of her friends should suspect my presence here. I suppose I may ta
ke it that, even if she does return with an escort, having given him a drink she’ll be alone when she goes up to her bedroom?’

  The maid looked slightly embarrassed. ‘It has not always been so, Herr Gruppenführer. The Frau Gräfin is a good mistress and it is not for us servants to criticise what she does, but it’s some time since any gentleman except the Herr Graf has stayed here, and he’s away at the Krupp factories in Essen now.’

  Gregory smiled. ‘Well, I’ll have to chance it. You can put the lights out here, and take me up to her room.’

  The girl was obviously terrified of him, and she replied with immediate submissiveness: ‘Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer, if you will please to follow me.’

  Switching out the lights in the lounge and leaving only one burning in the hall, she led him up the broad staircase and along a thickly-carpeted corridor to a huge room at the back of the house.

  In an alcove at the far end of it there was a vast, low bed with rose-satin draperies that fell gracefully round its head from a big gilt coronet supported by two golden cupids. The ceiling was washed with pale pink, which gave the room warmth, and it was furnished with every luxury that limitless money and rich taste could devise. There were two other doors at the far end of the room, one either side of the great bed. Walking over he found that the nearer door led to a bathroom. It was almost as big as a good-sized bedroom. The walls were painted sea-green with brightly-coloured tropical fish, coral fans and waving seaweeds, so that the whole formed an undersea scene, and at one end of the room there was a huge, tiled, sunken bath. He admired Erika’s taste and her love of luxury. The other door gave on to a clothes-closet, a long, narrow room where rows and rows of dresses, tweeds and furs—at least a hundred in number—hung shrouded in transparent, dust-proof coverings. After a glance inside he stepped back into the bedroom.