The Black Baroness gs-4

by Dennis Wheatley

  Stumbling to his feet he went forward more cautiously until at the end of the street he saw a German sentry. He had barely started to consider whether he dared risk a bullet by going on or had better turn back when the matter was settled for him. Above the dull rumble of the bombardment there came a solitary whip-like crack and for a second a stab of fire lit a second-floor window just ahead of him. The German sentry, shot from above through the back, reeled suddenly and pitched face-forward into the gutter.

  A few streets further on he had to crouch in a dark archway for some moments while a German tank column rattled and bumped its way over the debris in the direction of the barricades, and ten minutes later he had to hide again from a company of infantry; but at last he reached the Zoological Gardens, right on the outskirts of the city, and it seemed that he had got clear of the Germans. Turning south-west he started to make his way through the residential district of Beukelsdijk. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning when he got on to a main road down which scattered groups of people were moving, and he realised that as they were all making in one direction they must be refugees who were heading for the coast.

  The last five hours had been both nerve-racking and tiring work but as he had just spent the best part of five days either in bed or lying down he had plenty of reserves of energy, so he put his best foot forward and, taking a short rest every half-hour, passed group after group of wearily-plodding people. At about half-past three he came to a main crossroads right out in the open country and the signpost showed him that the road he had been on led to The Hook while that which cut into it from the north went to Delft.

  Down this was trickling another stream of refugees and as the two streams mingled at the crossroads some groups took the road south while others went west towards The Hook. Under the signpost Gregory sat down to rest again and smoke a cigarette while he considered the situation.

  He had long since given up any hope of getting through or round Rotterdam with a view to trying to cross the Dutch frontier into Belgium, and it was now quite clear that his only means of getting out of Holland was by sea. The question was which road offered him the best prospect? That to the south led to the broad mouth of the river, which was less than three miles away, and he might succeed in getting a small boat there at a village on the coast; but it was said that the Germans had mined the estuary, and there was no proper port along the shore where ships would be embarking refugees. On the other hand he was pretty tired now, The Hook was still seven miles distant and he had only his legs to carry him; but, unless the Germans had got there already, in the big harbour he was much more likely to find a ship that would take him to England. Grimly he decided to face the longer journey and stubbing out his cigarette stood up to tramp on again.

  He spoke to nobody, for he felt that the Dutch must now have very good reason to suspect all foreigners of being Fifth Columnists, and he had no intention of risking being lynched, or arrested again and confined in another police-station while inquiries were being made about him. If he had not considered that discretion was so very necessary he might possibly have bought a lift for part of the way, as a number of cars and carts were constantly passing, but he preferred to make quite certain of retaining his liberty, so he did the whole distance on foot, arriving at The Hook at seven in the morning. Since leaving the Rotterdam Police Headquarters, some eleven hours earlier, he reckoned that he must have covered well over twenty miles and he was seriously feeling the effects of his exertions; but on entering the town he was immensely cheered by the sight of British sailors and marines.

  They appeared to have taken charge of the traffic and the whole harbour area. Some were directing the stream of refugees towards the docks while others were carting ashore large cases, which Gregory guessed contained explosives. As he had been approaching the port he had heard several heavy detonations, but such sounds had become a normal background to his life during these past few days so, tired as he was, he had not taken any special notice of them, assuming that as German planes were once again circling overhead they were bombing the harbour; but he had hardly reached the docks when there was a terrific crash and a whole wharf about half a mile distant seemed to disintegrate in a sheet of blinding flame. The Navy knew their business and were seeing to it that there would not be much left in the way of harbour works by the time the Germans got there.

  Good-humouredly, but firmly, the British sailors and marines herded the never-ceasing flow of refugees into the long customs sheds while Dutch interpreters who were working with them told the crowds of grimy, despondent people that they must abandon their cars, vans, wagons and all their contents as, in order that the ships which were leaving could take the maximum number of passengers, they could not be allowed to retain anything but hand luggage.

  For over an hour Gregory waited in the customs shed, resting his weary limbs by lying at full length along one of the benches with his head pillowed on his arms. While he lay there further shocks more like earthquake tremors rocked the building and a number of lesser bumps together with anti-aircraft fire showed that the Nazi planes were strafing the refugees and their rescuers. From time to time batches of the patient, sad-eyed crowd were shepherded out on to the quayside, and at last came Gregory's turn to be taken on board a cargo vessel.

  Now that he had a proper chance to look round he saw that one side of the fairway had already been blocked by the sinking of a dredger and two trawlers and that other vessels lying near by were evidently in readiness to be used for closing the gap, when the last evacuee ship had cleared the harbour mouth.

  The great steel gates of an inner lock were half-submerged and twisted almost beyond recognition, and in many places fires were burning where the British had dynamited port-authority buildings and warehouses.

  Every now and again waves of German bombers came over to add their quota to the racket but most of their bombs fell harmlessly in the sea. Once on board Gregory found himself a corner among the crowd where he could sit on the deck with his back to the engine-room hatch, and, like many others of the exhausted refugees who were past caring about the bombs, dropped off to sleep.

  When he awoke he had the curious sensation that something strange was going on, but after a moment he realised that it was only the silence which seemed unnatural. The ship was out of sight of land and for the first time in six days the crash of bombs and the rumble of guns were no longer audible. He found that it was half-past two in the afternoon but it was not until eleven o'clock that night that they put into Harwich, and even then, in spite of his British passport and reiterated statements that he was not a refugee, he had to submit to a rigorous examination by the Security Police who were exercising every possible precaution to prevent German Fifth Columnists entering Britain with the genuine victims of Nazi persecution. It was past one before he was able to get away from his unfortunate fellow-travellers, who were being specially catered for, and nearly two when he flopped into bed at the Station Hotel.

  He did not wake till ten o'clock on the Thursday morning but he had hardly opened his eyes before he recalled the urgent necessity of getting back to Brussels, and to Erika, now that the Blitzkrieg was on, without losing a moment. He knew, without inquiring, that all passenger sailings would have been cancelled, so he at once got on to London and was fortunate enough to catch Sir Pellinore at home.

  Having told his elderly friend the gist of his news he asked if permission could be obtained for him to be taken on board any naval vessel which might be leaving Harwich for Belgian waters. Sir Pellinore said that he thought matters could be arranged and that he would get in touch with the Admiralty at once.

  On reaching the hotel Gregory had been too utterly weary for more than a rough clean-up, so, having telephoned down for breakfast to be brought in half an hour, he lay for a bit in a hot bath, soaking off the rest of the smoke and grime of Rotterdam. His breakfast, which consisted of China tea, smoked haddock with a poached egg, and mushrooms on toast, was a special order given on his old principle t
hat the best meal obtainable was never too good if there was no knowing when one was going to get another. When he had finished it he felt distinctly better and turned his attention to the morning papers.

  On the previous day the whole of Holland had been submerged beneath the Nazi flood and the Dutch were now holding out only in the island of Zeeland. The Allies were maintaining their line from Antwerp to Namur but further south enormous pressure was being exerted on the French. German armoured columns had broken through at three points between Namur and Sedan and were still attacking in spite of the fact that 150 Allied planes had spent the entire day going backwards and forwards to their bases for relays of bombs which they had hurled on the advancing Germans and the road junctions.

  At midday he dressed and went out into the town where, although the weather showed no signs of breaking, he bought himself a rubber raincoat as a precaution against a choppy crossing, then he returned to await events in the hotel lounge. At two o'clock a message arrived for him from the port authorities to say that instructions had been received from the Admiralty that he was to be given passage in one of His Majesty's ships which would be proceeding to Belgium, and that he was to report to the Admiralty Building, Harwich, at eight-fifteen that night. He cursed the delay but knew that he was lucky to have enough pull through Sir Pellinore to get taken across at all.

  In the evening the news was no better. From Namur to Sedan there were a million men fast locked in battle and at the southern end of this vital sector the Germans were obviously getting the best of it. They were exploiting the breaches made in the French line on the previous day. It seemed that somebody had failed to blow up the bridges across the Meuse in the face of the advancing enemy so that they were now well over the river and had captured Rocroi, Mezieres, Sedan and Montmedy; while their advance units were now several miles south and west of these places, thereby creating a most dangerous bulge in the Allied line. However, the fact that the Germans had reached Louvain, in Belgium, gave Gregory considerably more concern. Louvain was less than twenty miles from Brussels, and Erika was in Brussels.

  He arrived at the Admiralty Building punctually but his temper was not improved by the fact that he was left to kick his heels in a bare waiting-room for two and a quarter hours. At last a naval Petty Officer took him down to the dock and on board a destroyer where a genial Lieutenant-Commander received him and installed him in the wardroom with the casual invitation to order anything that he wanted from the steward. At 11.10 the destroyer put to sea.

  After a little he dozed to the hiss of the water rushing past her portholes and to the monotonous whirr of the turbines. At one o'clock two officers came in so he roused up, drank pink gins with them and discussed the Blitzkrieg. They did not stay long and when they had gone he took another cat-nap. At a quarter to four the steward brought him bacon and eggs, toast, marmalade, and coffee. Soon after he had completed his meal the ship swung round in a wide curve and on looking out of one of the portholes he saw harbour lights paling in the dawn. Ten minutes later, having thanked his hosts, he was on the quayside at Ostend.

  A passport officer gave him the latest news. The Belgian Army was fighting splendidly in the north and the British were holding the German attacks in the centre. The situation further south, however, gave cause for anxiety as the French Armies in the neighbourhood of Sedan were giving up more and more ground and seemed quite incapable of holding the terrific German attacks which were being launched against them.

  Even at that hour the quayside was a bustle of activity. Hundreds of Belgian refugees were waiting to get away in the ships that were sailing for England or France. Among them moved many khaki figures, French and British officers and details who during these past few days had been making all the innumerable arrangements necessary for converting Ostend into a new forward base for the Allied Armies. Just as Gregory was passing out he heard his name called and turned to find that he was being hailed by a Guards Captain of his acquaintance, one 'Peachie' Fostoun.

  'What the hell are you doing here?' grinned Peachie.

  'Same as you, presumably,' Gregory grunted amiably; 'only I have somewhat more subtle methods of waging war. Have you just come down from the line, or have they made you a permanent base wallah?'

  'They wouldn't dare.' Peachie flicked open his cigarette-case. 'I graciously consented to come down to arrange the Brigades' supply of caviare, but I'm going up again in about an hour's time.'

  As it was still technically before dawn Gregory managed to raise a laugh. 'Don't tell me that the Army has at last gone in for code words, otherwise for "caviare" I shall write in reinforcements.'

  'Have it which way you like,' Peachie shrugged.

  'How are things going?' asked Gregory.

  'They're lousy. This Fifth Column stuff would take the grin off the face of a clown in a pantomime. When we went into Belgium on Friday morning everything was grand; in every village the populace was waiting to give us the big hand. They chucked cigarettes and chocolate at us by the bucketful and at every halt the women kissed the troops until you couldn't see their mouths for lipstick, but by nightfall things weren't quite so rosy. There was still a hundred miles between us and the Germans but all sorts of nasty low-down tikes began to snipe us from the house-tops. Some of them even chucked hand-grenades in the path of our Bren gun-carriers, from the woods through which we were passing, and we began to think that it wasn't quite the sort of war that we had bargained for.

  'The following day things became really unpleasant. German parachute-troops started to float down out of the sky by the hundred; the nearest ones provided good sport for some of our better marksmen with their Brens but the devils came over in such numbers that we couldn't account for one-tenth of them.

  Then, apparently, the Boche started landing troop-carriers with horrid little howitzers and while the troops were proceeding along the road soulfully singing "Little Sir Echo, Hullo! Hullo!" you could never tell from one moment to the next when one of these things would start blazing off from a farmyard or behind a haystack.'

  Gregory nodded sympathetically and the garrulous Peachie went on:

  'I don't mind telling you, it got on our nerves a bit as, after all, it wasn't like real war at all, but just a sort of dirty assassination party. The further we went, the worse it got, until every time a young woman threw us a bunch of flowers we ducked as though there was a Mills bomb concealed in it; but at least it had one good effect—it made the men so angry that they were screaming mad to get at the Jerries.

  'By Monday we'd contacted the enemy, and you can take my word for it that once the party started it was war with the lid off. We hardly saw a German but they came over in their tanks by the train-load.

  We held the tanks all right, but the thing that is a bit shattering is their Air Force. Heaven knows what's happened to ours—we've hardly seen a British plane— but Goering's chaps are as numerous as grouse in August. The moment one has held a tank attack they come hurtling down out of the sky to play merry hell with their bombs; and they're not content with that, either; if they see a trace of movement they let fly with their machine-guns. It seems to me as though they are using dive-bombers for artillery. Anyhow, it makes it devilish difficult to hold on to any one position for any length of time; and if one gets a lot of casualties which necessitate a retirement their tanks immediately come on again; added to which, with all this trouble going on behind the lines one never knows when one's going to be shot in the back. It's not at all like any war that we've been taught to anticipate.'

  'Naturally,' said Gregory; 'since you're a quarter of a century behind the times. Never mind, my young fellow-me-lad, we can be quite certain that the good old British spirit will stand up to the strain. After all, surely you don't expect modern equipment and modern training. That would be letting the old school down and asking much too much of your tutors.'

  'We shall manage somehow,' said Peachie, a trifle huffily.

  'Of course you will,' Gregory beamed. 'Anyhow, the best
of luck! I've got to get along to the station.'

  'Where are you off to?' Peachie inquired.

  'Brussels.'

  'Have you a special permit?'

  'No. I didn't know that one was required.'

  'It is; and it would take you days to get one. We're doing our best to make the battlefronts a closed area. You can come out, and welcome, but you can't get in unless you prove that you're Winston Churchill or Anthony Eden.'

  That's awkward; I've got very urgent reasons for wanting to get back to Brussels.'

  'Well, you won't—I'll bet you a pony. Unless . . .' Peachie hesitated. 'I suppose you really are doing a job of work?'

  'Sure thing,' Gregory nodded. 'I'm not wearing my beard or my rubber-soled shoes at the moment but I've got the hell of a sting in my tail for all that.'

  'In that case I could get you through by giving you a lift in my car. I shall have done all I can here in another couple of hours, then I'm going straight back. Meet me in the lounge of the Splendide at seven o'clock.'

  'Thanks, Peachie, that's darned good of you; and, joking apart, I am helping a bit to push the old boat along.'

  As Peachie Fostoun hurried off Gregory made his way to the great luxury hotel on the sea-front. For him it called up pleasant memories of a week he had spent there long ago with a lady who had loved him very dearly and whom at that time he had considered to be the most desirable among all women; a happy state of affairs for two young people who with one war then only a memory, and another not even visualised as a remote possibility, had been able to devote themselves without let or hindrance to the entirely engrossing subject of each other.