The Black Baroness gs-4

by Dennis Wheatley

  But he was not a jewel thief and it was his duty to put this dangerous woman out of business just as much as it is a sentry's duty to fire upon an enemy whom he may see creeping towards him across no-man's-land. It was a perfect opportunity to settle the matter once and for all. The silencer on his gun would prevent the shot being heard. Within two minutes he could be back in his bedroom. In ten, abandoning his suitcase and its contents which had no marks by which he could be identified, he could be out of the hotel; and he could take her jewels to provide a motive for the murder. Travel presented no difficulties in these countries which were still at peace and long before her body was discovered he would be over the Belgian frontier. Certain interested parties might guess that the Baroness had not been killed purely for the sake of her jewellery, but they had good reasons for keeping their mouths shut. When he reappeared in Brussels as Erika's butler there would be nothing whatever to connect him with the crime.

  He was very tempted to squeeze the trigger of his automatic.

  Yet somehow he could not do it. If she had attempted to reach the bell or to grab any weapon that she might have had in her open dressing-case she would have been a dead woman; but she did nothing of the kind; she just stood there staring at him, and the only expression which he could fathom in her eyes was a look of interested curiosity as to whether he meant to shoot or not.

  'All right,' he said. 'I'm not shooting for the moment; but I will if you move your lips by as much as a millimetre. Stand back from that case and put your hands up!'

  She did as he had ordered and, stepping forward, he slammed down the lid of Mae case, pressed home the locks and picked it up.

  Her lips twitched into a sudden smile. 'It is not, then, my rings and my pearls that you are after?'

  For a second he debated whether he should continue his bluff and forcibly strip the rings from her fingers or if he should content himself with the suitcase, thereby giving away the fact that he had really come for her papers, and get out as quickly as he could. But in either case she would raise the alarm the moment he had left her suite, so he had somehow to render her incapable of doing that until he was at least clear of the hotel. It occurred to him that the easiest way to do so was to get her into the bathroom, where there was a good supply of large towels. By gripping her throat with one hand he could prevent her screaming until he had pouched his gun; then he could wrap one large towel round her head and tie her up with the others. So he said:

  'All in good time. I'll have the rings and the pearls in a minute, but I expect you've got some other trinkets in this case so I'm taking that as well.'

  He brandished the gun again. 'Now, you've got it coming to you this time unless you obey me. Quick march! Out of here and along the passage to the bathroom!'

  Somewhat to his surprise, she did not again refuse to be intimidated, but walked unhurriedly past the foot of the bed and across the room to the door leading into the passage.

  As she opened it Gregory followed her with his gun in one hand and her dressing-case in the other. He was just about to cross the threshold when he heard a faint noise behind him. Swinging round he saw that the door of the sitting-room had opened. In it, covering him with a gun, stood his old enemy, Herr Gruppenfuhrer Grauber.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Hurricane Breaks

  For once Gregory cursed the acuteness of his hearing. If he had not heard that faint creak as Grauber had opened the sitting-room door he would not have swung round. In consequence, he would still have had the Baroness covered had Grauber called on him to put up his hands; which would at least have created a stalemate wherein he could have held her life in pawn for his own. But, in turning, he had had to take his eye off the small, dark figure in front of him. At that moment she had produced a little mother-of-pearl gun from somewhere on her person; so on swinging back to her he found that he was now covered from two directions while his own gun was not pointing at either of his opponents.

  'Step back into the room and throw that gun on the bed!' commanded Grauber in his high, piping voice.

  Gregory hesitated. Had it not been for the Baroness he would have risked a shot from Grauber's pistol while he took one flying leap down the passage; but she was barring his path. Realising that he was cornered he stepped back into the bedroom, but he did not relinquish his pistol.

  'Drop that gun!' ordered Grauber again, but Gregory took no notice. He had swiftly decided to play the same game with Grauber as the Baroness had played with him.

  If the Gestapo Chief had known whom he was addressing it is highly probable that he would have shot Gregory out of hand. He could have got away from the hotel with as little likelihood of having to answer for the crime as there would have been of Gregory's being arrested for the murder of the Baroness had he shot her five minutes earlier: but the silk handkerchief hid the whole of the lower part of Gregory's face and his hat was pulled well down over his eyes, so Grauber had not yet realised that, by a stroke of sheer luck, the Englishman with whom he had such a long score to settle had fallen into his hands and was entirely at his mercy. He thought, as Gregory had assumed he would, that he was dealing with an hotel thief, and even Gestapo chiefs do not shoot down ordinary burglars without provocation.

  Grauber shrugged and came mincing forward into the room. Gregory noted that he had lost none of his bulk since their last encounter and his pale, solitary eye had the same dead look which hid his extraordinarily shrewd intelligence.

  'Since you will not relinquish your gun,' he purred, 'I advise you to keep it down; because if you raise it by a hair's breadth I will put three bullets into your stomach.'

  Gregory nodded and, stepping back another pace, lowered his head a little so that his hat brim hid his eyes and would make any chance of recognition less likely.

  The Baroness re-entered the room, quietly closing the passage door behind her, as she said: 'Thank you, Herr Gruppenfuhrer, for disembarrassing me of this creature. It was fortunate that you so kindly agreed to wait until I had done my packing so that you could see me to the air-port.'

  Up to that point they had all been speaking in French but the Baroness had addressed Grauber in German and he replied in the same language, assuming either that Gregory did not understand German or that, if he did, a common thief would not be in a position to gather the import of anything that was said.

  Still covering Gregory with his gun Grauber clicked his heels and bowed.

  'It is a pleasure to have been of service, Gnadigefrau Baronin, but I fear that this annoying incident will interfere slightly with our arrangements. As you are due to leave the air-port at 2.45 you have no time to lose; you had better carry your bags into the sitting-room while I keep this man covered, then ring for the porter to take them down and leave at once.'

  This little speech cheered Gregory considerably, as it implied that neither of his captors wished to be involved in a scene. Evidently Grauber's intention was to remain with him in the bedroom while the Baroness sent for the night-porter and made her departure. It seemed, therefore, that if he were prepared to surrender the dressing-case, which he was still holding, Grauber might let him go once she was clear of the hotel and could not be delayed as a police witness on account of the attempted burglary. That suited him all right, as his principal anxiety at the moment was to get away before Grauber recognised him and put half a dozen bullets into his body; so when the Baroness stepped up to him and gripped the dressing-case he relinquished it without attempting to grab her and swing her in front of him as cover for his body, as he otherwise might have done.

  As she carried the case through the open doorway she said over her shoulder to Grauber: 'There is no immediate hurry. I am travelling by my own plane so my pilot will await my convenience. I think, therefore, it would be better if I telephone down at once to tell the management about this hotel rat so that I can be here to make the necessary statement when he is handed over to the police.'

  'Damn the woman!' thought Gregory. 'Why in Hades couldn't she let w
ell alone?' He had no pull with the Dutch Government and no possible explanation for being in the Baroness's suite. Moreover, he was standing there masked with a pistol in his hand. There was a perfectly clear case of attempted burglary and menacing with arms against him, which was a very serious matter. If he were once handed over to the police the law would take its course and he would find himself sentenced to a long term in a Dutch prison. But, to his relief, Grauber said:

  'No. That would not be wise, Gnadigefrau Baronin; you might be held as a material witness in the case, and that would derange all our plans. Also, it is vital that you should leave at the time arranged. As it is, we allowed only a quarter of an hour for you to get clear of Schiepol and well out over the coast, where you will be in no danger of running into an air battle. You are much too valuable to us for us to risk anything of that kind, and our bombers will be over Rotterdam at three o'clock. You are late already; you must not lose another moment.'

  'Hell's bells!' thought Gregory. 'Air battles—bombers over Rotterdam in the next twenty minutes—we've been caught napping again, blast it! Hitler is launching his Blitzkrieg tonight.' But in spite of his suppressed excitement there was nothing whatever he could do about it.

  The Baroness had carried her other two cases out of the room, and she turned in the doorway to reply swiftly: 'I had no idea that zero hour was so near, but don't worry; I shall be off the airport well before three o'clock.'

  'Gate reiser, Gnadigefrau Baronin.' Grauber clicked his heels and bowed once more as she closed the door with a muttered, 'Danke Schon, Herr Gruppenfuhrer.'

  'Now,' Grauber addressed Gregory, speaking once again in French as he walked over and perched himself on the end of the bed, 'one word from you or one movement of that gun during the next ten minutes and I shall shoot you where you stand. I can easily press the trigger of your gun afterwards and say that I suddenly came upon you in the room here and it was you who fired on me first. As you are a masked man who obviously came here with felonious intentions everybody will believe me. So, rat, keep a still tongue if you wish ever to be able to wag it again with your thieves fraternity.'

  Gregory nodded, indicating that he understood, but he did not trust himself to speak in case Grauber recognised his voice, and for several minutes they remained eyeing each other but practically unmoving, while various sounds coming through the sitting-room door told of the porter's arrival and then, by a loud slam of the outer door of the suite, that both the porter and the Baroness had departed.

  For another five minutes Grauber remained sitting there and during them Gregory, who still had his own gun in his hand, was sorely tempted suddenly to bring it up and shoot him; but the Gestapo Chief had the drop on him, as his automatic was already levelled and he had only to press its trigger. Gregory might have killed his enemy or perhaps, as his aim would necessarily be wild, have only wounded him, but at that point-blank range it was quite certain that he would have paid for his fun with his life and it did not seem to him that the game was worth the candle.

  A gilded sun-pattern electric clock set in the wall above the sitting-room door stood at seven minutes to three when Grauber, evidently considering that the Baroness had had ample time to get clear of the hotel, stood up again and piped in his effeminate falsetto: 'Now that there is no longer any danger of my friend being involved in this business I propose to hand you over to the police.'

  Gregory bit his lip with annoyance. During those moments of waiting he had become confident that Grauber intended to let him go so as to save himself trouble. With a German invasion due to break at any moment it had seemed that a Gestapo Chief would have a score of urgent matters to occupy him, and the last thing he would want at such an hour of crisis was to spend his time dictating statements to Dutch policemen about a common burglar who, after all, had not even succeeded in getting away with anything.

  But Gregory remembered with dismay that Grauber and his colleagues had a habit of perfecting all their arrangements down to the last detail beforehand, so the real probability was that now that the balloon was actually due to go up he had nothing whatever to do but sit back and watch the well-oiled wheels of the Nazi machine begin to turn as it roared forward on the lines that had been so carefully laid down for it.

  For a second he thought of trying to argue Grauber out of his decision. He knew well enough that no plea for mercy would have any effect, but if he said that he spoke German, had understood Grauber's remarks that the Blitzkrieg was being launched at that moment and that he was a German Fifth Columnist who had work to do for Germany, there was just a possibility that Grauber might have let him go; particularly as Fifth Columnists in countries outside Germany were largely recruited from the criminal classes, which would lend a certain plausibility to such a story. But the trouble was that if he once opened his mouth Grauber still might recognise him and, as they were alone, kill him without further argument; so he decided that he dare not risk it.

  Having spoken on the bedside telephone to the man on duty downstairs, while never taking his solitary eye off Gregory for a single second, Grauber replaced the receiver. With his free hand he took out his handkerchief and dabbed at a small boil on his chin, and Gregory caught a whiff of the rather sickly perfume that he always affected. Then the German perched himself on the end of the bed once more as they waited for the night-porter and the police to arrive.

  Gregory, meanwhile, was wondering frantically how he could get out of this wretched mess in which he had landed himself; but the evidence against him as he stood there was so obvious that any plea of innocence would only be laughable. The Dutch police were efficient and it was most unlikely that they would allow a burglar who had been caught with a weapon in his hand the least loophole for escape on the way to the police-station; in fact, he would almost certainly be handcuffed to one of them. In the course of the next few days he would come up for trial, as even an invasion was unlikely to interfere with the normal criminal procedure in a coast city like Rotterdam that was many miles from the German frontier. Then he would be sent down for two or three years' hard labour, and he did not see how even Sir Pellinore would be able to help him.

  He had got thus far in his gloomy speculations when there was the sound of a pass-key turning the lock of the outer door and a moment later the night-porter entered the room with a plain-clothes man, who had 'hotel detective' written all over him, and two uniformed policemen.

  Grauber immediately addressed the plain-clothes man in French. 'As you probably know, my friend, Madame de Swarle, has just left the hotel. I had to see her on urgent business but I could not get here before two o'clock. I have had no opportunity to secure accommodation for myself, so she said before leaving that I had better take over her suite and sleep in this room for what is left of the night. She had hardly been gone five minutes when I went into the bathroom and caught this fellow in the act of wriggling through the window. Fortunately, I had a gun on me so I was able to hold him up, but you will notice that he is armed; and if I had not drawn my own weapon very quickly he would have shot me. Kindly remove him. I will visit the police-station in the morning to charge him with felonious entry.'

  The detective looked at Gregory. 'Have you anything to say?'

  Gregory silently shook his head, but from under the brim of his hat he snatched a glance at the clock; its long hand now had only half a minute to go before it reached the hour.

  'Right, then,' the detective nodded to the policemen. 'You'd better take him along, boys.'

  Grauber had lowered his gun at the entry of the police. Gregory suddenly stepped back and raised his, pointing it not at the police but at Grauber. 'One moment!' he cried, using the husky voice in which he had spoken to the Baroness. 'Remain quite still all of you, or I will kill this man,'

  The night-porter had started forward, but he checked himself. For half a moment all six men remained rigid, like a set tableau. Gregory was listening with all his ears for the hum of aeroplane engines, praying that the Germans would be on time. The
others were staring at him, wondering what he meant to do. A full minute passed, but no sound broke the stillness.

  'Well?' exclaimed Grauber at last, turning with a sneer towards the two policemen. 'Are you going to remain standing there all night while this man threatens me?'

  In vain Gregory strained his ears. For once the Germans were late in launching their programme.

  Knowing that he could hold the situation no longer he played another card. Lifting his free hand, he jerked down the handkerchief that covered the lower part of his face.

  'Gott in Himmel! Sallust!' With a shout Grauber sprang up from the bed. But Gregory had him covered, so he could only stand there snarling with anger at the thought of the opportunity to revenge himself that he had now lost.

  'So you recognise me at last,' Gregory said smoothly. 'I am glad of that, because I wanted these gentlemen to be given clear proof that I'm somebody who is known to you.' He swung round to the others. 'Now let me make it clear what has been happening here. I am not a burglar; I've stolen nothing; and the only thing with which this man can charge me is with breaking into Madame de Swarle's suite. If he does that I shall counter-charge him, because I challenge him to prove that he has any right here either.