The Black Baroness gs-4

by Dennis Wheatley

  In spite of the early hour the hotel was as busy as if it were mid-morning on a day in race week. There had been three air raids on Ostend that night so many people had come down from their rooms to sit in the lounge and their number was constantly being added to by refugees arriving from Brussels, which somewhat perturbed Gregory.

  When Peachie turned up they went into the bar to have one for the road and Gregory asked: 'What is the latest authentic information? Is there any likelihood of Brussels falling within the next twelve hours?'

  Peachie shrugged. 'We're not actually trampling our way over the German dead to victory, but it's quite fair to say that we're holding our own. The Boche gave Louvain hell yesterday, but it didn't get them anywhere. Now the fight is on out men are behaving magnificently and you can sneer at the equipment as much as you like, but such as it is, we've got no complaints about it. Maybe we haven't gangster weapons like the Jerries but our stuff's better quality and we've already found that when our lads get face to face with the enemy they're worth three to one of them every time. I don't think there's the least likelihood of a withdrawal to Brussels unless it's suddenly made necessary by either of our flanks caving in, and the Belgians are putting up a splendid show in the north.'

  No papers were available but a British Naval Officer who was in the bar told them that things were reported to have taken a turn for the better. Apparently a telegram from the Generals Giraud and Huntziger to Monsieur Reynaud had been published and in it the two commanders who were responsible for the Sedan area, where the Germans had broken through, stated categorically that they were getting the situation in their sectors under control. With this distinctly cheering item of information Gregory and Peachie went out to the car, which Peachie was driving himself, and set off.

  Bruges was no great distance, and normally they should have reached it in less than three-quarters of an hour, but an unending stream of traffic moving towards the coast made a normal speed impossible, so it took them double that time. From Bruges they went on along the straight, poplar-fringed road towards Ghent, but their pace came down to a crawl as in addition to the refugee column, which occupied more than half the road, they now encountered a great number of breakdowns which, with the west-bound traffic moving round them, blocked the road entirely. They had expected to be in Brussels by lunch-time but it was one o'clock when they entered Ghent. As they had already been on the road for over five hours' most exasperating driving they pulled up at a restaurant on the Place d'Armes to snatch a quick meal. Just after they had given their order a Major, who was a friend of Peachie's, came in and they asked him to join them.

  The Major took a by no means cheerful view of things and, as he was a G.S.O.2, attached to the Second Corps, his information could be considered as authentic as any that could be secured in the sea of rumours that were flying round. He said that the Germans had surprised both the French and the British by the direction of their thrust, the weight of their tanks and the numbers of their aircraft.

  Apparently the Meuse sector had now become a deep bulge and a number of German armoured columns were right through, having penetrated the whole depth of the fortified zone at the western end of the Maginot Line. Most alarming of all, this threat to the southern flank of the Allied Armies operating in Belgium had become so serious that an order for their withdrawal had been issued early that morning and the British were now retiring to fresh positions west of Brussels.

  Greatly perturbed by this new and disconcerting possibility that the Germans might be in Brussels before him Gregory urged haste on Peachie and having bolted their meal they hurried back to the car; but the time saved proved of little value as outside Ghent their pace came down to a positive crawl. Evidently the news that the capital was to be abandoned had sent half a million Belgians scurrying out of it along the roads to the west and south, so that the procession of refugees had now swollen to a triple line of crawling vehicles and patiently-plodding people. In vain Peachie pounded at his Klaxon while Gregory cursed and swore. The sullen-looking, sad-eyed crowds either would not or could not get out of the way and the long, hot afternoon developed into a kind of treadmill which sometimes afflicts one in a dream, where one is striving very hard to get somewhere but finds that one's legs will not obey one's will.

  Nevertheless, mile by mile they made gradual headway, reaching Alost at six o'clock. They snatched a drink at the crowded hostelry there then pressed on again by the evening light.

  Now they were well within the sound of the guns and occasionally a German plane came over to unload its bombs on railway sidings or the villages through which they passed. By eight o'clock they were within six miles of Brussels and met the first of the retiring troops. All day, here and there in the endless procession, they had seen cars, ambulances and supply-wagons which belonged to the French and British Armies, but this group of weary, dust-covered men had a totally different appearance; they had obviously been in the thick of it, and Peachie pulled up to ask an officer if he could give him any particulars of his own unit.

  The officer said that he had not run across the Guards Brigade for several days. He knew nothing of the general situation as he and his men had been ordered out of the line only that morning, after three days'

  very hard fighting, as they thought to rest; but they had no sooner reached the billets allotted to them at Nosseghem than they had been ordered out again with new instructions to retire through Brussels to Assche. 'Hence,' he added with a smile, 'our rather part-worn appearance; it's four days since we've had a chance to clean up.' From that point on they passed many units of the B.E.F. Some, which had borne the brunt of the early fighting, looked pretty war-worn, while others were spick and span, being units of reserve divisions that had not yet been thrown into the battle. As the twilight deepened the numbers of refugees gradually lessened, until the road became almost entirely occupied by the military. Peachie was now pulling up at every hundred yards or so to ask passing officers if they knew the whereabouts of his unit and at last on a crossroad, among a group of officers who were standing there studying their maps, he saw his own Colonel.

  The Colonel told him that the Guards were at Uccle, just south-west of the capital, and that if he took the road to the right he would find the village about three miles along it. Peachie then introduced his passenger and said that Gregory was anxious to get through to Brussels as he had work of importance to do there.

  'I'm afraid it's too late to do that,' said the Colonel promptly; 'the Germans have already occupied the city.'

  'That won't stop me,' Gregory replied. 'I speak German fluently and I have a German passport, so I could easily pass myself off as a German agent.'

  The Colonel brushed up his moustache and eyed Gregory with considerably more interest. 'In that case it's up to you, but I'd strongly advise you to wait until morning.'

  'Why, sir?'

  'Because, although the whole front is in a state of flux, we have established some sort of line just behind Brussels, so there's a mile or two of territory outside the suburbs which is more or less no-man's-land at the moment. It will be dark by the time you get there and during the night the sentries on both sides will be potting at any moving object they may see, so the fact that you're in civilian clothes won't be the least protection to you. But if you wait until daylight you should be able to walk straight through the battle-zone and you only have to risk being killed by a stray shot or shell, as neither side is likely deliberately to shoot down a civilian.'

  Gregory immediately saw the sense of this argument. Ever since he had been released from the Police Headquarters in Rotterdam he had been cursing the succession of delays which had prevented his getting back to Erika, but now that the Germans had got to Brussels before him there was no longer quite as much point in his pressing forward without the loss of a moment. He felt confident that she would have had the sense to evacuate before the Germans arrived, and was probably now somewhere among one of the columns of refugees that had left Brussels that morning; so
his only reason now for wishing to get into the city was because he felt sure that she would have left some message for him in her flat to say where she intended to go.

  Once he knew that, even with the country in its present state of confusion, he would probably be able to reach her in another twenty-four hours; but as long as he had no idea at all where she had gone, with every form of communication broken down, it might take him days—or even weeks—to find her. It seemed, therefore, that for the sake of securing any message she might have left him it was not worth risking being shot in a night-crossing of no-man's-land, when by waiting for a further eight or ten hours he would be able to cross it with comparatively little danger.

  Peachie suggested that Gregory had better come with him to Uccle and take pot-luck for the night about any accommodation that might be going there; so on Gregory's agreeing they took leave of the Colonel and turned down the side-road.

  At the village they found Peachie's battalion temporarily resting, as there was now a lull in the fighting, the Germans being fully occupied with the take-over of the Belgian capital. A Mess had been established in a large farmhouse and while Gregory and Peachie ate a meal there they listened to the accounts given by several officers of the last two days' fighting. All of them were extremely bitter about the Fifth Column activities in Belgium. One of their brother-officers had been shot through the back of the neck and killed when walking down a road miles behind the line, and another had halted his car in a quiet area to offer two Belgian peasant women a lift, upon which one of the women had pulled out a pistol and shot him through the head.

  They said that we had no weapon at all to compete with the Germans' small, quick-firing howitzer and that at short range our old-fashioned rifles were almost useless against the tommy-guns which were carried by every German infantry-man. On the other hand, everyone present agreed that the Germans were a poor lot when it came to hand-to-hand fighting; thy would not face the bayonet at any price and, in spite of constant bombardment and machine-gunning from the air, every time our men got a chance to get at the enemy they were putting up a magnificent performance.

  In the Mess Gregory saw a copy of the order that General Gamelin had issued that day. It said: 'Any soldier who cannot advance should allow himself to be killed rather than abandon that part of our national soil which has been entrusted to him.' So, clearly, for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies to have played his last card by such a backs-to-the-wall command, the situation was really critical.

  The farmhouse was filled to capacity but Peachie managed to secure a double bed for Gregory and himself in a cottage near by, and they slept on it in their clothes, ready to be up and doing at a moment's notice in any emergency.

  At five o'clock they were wakened by shells screaming into the village and knew that the battle was on again. The Germans had taken Brussels in their stride and now that daylight was approaching they were launching new attacks upon the hard-pressed British. In the farmhouse the Mess orderlies were going about their business quite unperturbed and to Gregory's surprise and pleasure he was given bacon and eggs for breakfast as well as lashings of hot tea. Reports had come in from the advance company that German tanks were approaching so the remainder of the battalion was already mustering in the village street. Gregory saw no cause to delay any further and knew that he would only be in the way of the others if he did, so he thanked his hosts and, wishing them luck, set out along the road to Brussels.

  There were a number of other civilians about, mostly villagers or refugees from the city. With what appeared to Gregory the height of foolhardiness, they ignored the German planes which were once more buzzing overhead and the shells which were bursting only a few hundred yards away, to stand about on the higher ground so that they could get a good view of the battle that was opening, but their presence suited him very well as it meant that he was in no way conspicuous.

  He had scarcely covered half a mile when the planes dive-bombed the village; but fortunately, by that time, the troops had moved out of it, scattering to north and south to take up their positions. A few hundred yards further on a crossroad was being crumped every few moments by the shells of a German heavy battery, so he took to the fields and gave it a wide berth. Five minutes later a British Tommy popped up from behind a hedge and called on him to halt, threatening him with a rifle; but Gregory spoke to him in English, giving him the names of half a dozen officers of his battalion, and told him that it was his job to go forward to get information.

  'Crikey!' exclaimed the Tommy. 'You don't mean to say we've got a Fifth Column too?'

  'Yes; I'm it,' Gregory laughed.

  'Right-oh; pass, chum; but you've got your work cut put against half the German Army dressed as Belgians.' The man put up the rifle and waved him on.

  Twice more he was challenged by solitary Guardsmen but each time they let him through and although a few bullets were now whistling about he continued to walk forward, considering that to display himself openly in his civilian clothes was his best protection. Yet on crossing a field towards a group of houses he had a narrow squeak; a machine-gun opened fire, tearing up the grass about ten yards to his left. He could not tell if the gun was badly aimed or if it was fired by a Jerry who thought it would be fun to scare the wits out of a solitary Belgian, but he leapt for the ditch and lay there until the gunner ceased fire; then he cautiously crawled forward on his hands and knees until he came to the nearest house. Standing up, he walked round it, and on turning the corner to get on to the road again he ran straight into a patrol of German infantry.

  A Feldwebel immediately pointed an automatic at him so he shot up his hands and spoke in German. 'It's all right, Sergeant; I am a German officer on special service. Hold your fire for a minute while I show you my passport,' and slipping his hand into his breast-pocket he produced the now much-worn document which had so often established his identity as Oberst-Baron von Lutz.

  The Corporal glanced at it, called his men sharply to attention and saluted. Gregory pocketed the passport again and with a little nod to the group walked on. British shells were now screaming overhead and the staccato rattle of machine-guns interspersed by the occasional crack of rifles showed that the battle had been joined in earnest behind him; but now that he had crossed no-man's-land the most perilous part of his dangerous morning walk was over.

  As he advanced the houses became more frequent and many of their occupants were standing at their windows or in the street, so the further group of Germans that he met took no notice of him. A long column of tanks clattered by and from the dents and scars upon them he saw that they had already done considerable service. By eight o'clock he had left the suburbs and penetrated to the centre of Brussels. It had taken him just seventy-two hours to do the journey from Rotterdam which he should normally have accomplished in an hour and a half.

  It was a very different city to that which he had left fourteen days earlier. The streets were almost deserted except for the columns of German troops. Shops and houses were closed and shuttered, but he noticed with relief that the city did not seem to have suffered much from aerial attack. Here and there a bomb had wrecked a building or blown a hole in the road but the damage was not one-thousandth part of that which had been done in Rotterdam.

  In the neighbourhood of the Royal Palace the damage was more severe, so it seemed that the Germans had been up to their old game of endeavouring to eliminate the Head of the State, but as he turned into the Rue Montoyer he saw that it was practically untouched. There was only one great gap among the houses, where a bomb had cut like a knife clean through the block.

  Suddenly he looked again and halted, utterly aghast. The empty air above that great pile of debris was where Erika's flat had been; the whole building had been blown to fragments.

  CHAPTER 17

  Dark Days in Brussels

  For a long time Gregory was too stunned to do anything but stand there, staring at the empty gap between the houses where Erika's apartment had been. He was very f
ar from a pessimist by nature yet, perhaps because they had escaped so many dangers, it had never occurred to him that Erika might be the casual victim of an air-raid. As he stared he began to suffer untold agonies, one symptom of which was a real physical pain right down in the pit of his stomach, at the thought that she was irretrievably lost to him.

  Unnoticed by him an elderly man had shuffled up behind him, and he started as a thin, quavering voice at his elbow said in French: 'That was a big one—that was. I live three streets away, but we heard it above all the rest, and I said to my wife, I said: "That's a big one—that is" —and sure enough I was right.

  Twenty bodies they took out of that pile of ruins, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's more of them buried there yet.'

  'Go away!' snapped Gregory, turning on the old ghoul furiously.

  'All right, all right.' The elderly man looked slightly offended. 'I'm only telling you what I saw. Six men, nine women and five children they brought out, though most of them were in bits, and I don't doubt there's more bodies under that heap yet.'