The Black Baroness gs-4

by Dennis Wheatley

  'Never mind about him, said Gregory impatiently; 'it is about Madame that I wish to hear.'

  Jacqueline stamped her neat little foot. 'But I'm telling you— as quickly as I can, and I'm trying to remember if it was on the Tuesday or the Wednesday that Madame packed and went away.'

  'Went away?' cried Gregory, and the street seemed to reel around him. 'Do you mean—do you mean that she wasn't killed by the bomb that destroyed the whole building?'

  'Mais non!' She stared at him with wildly open eyes. 'Madame had left Brussels days before. Yes, I'm certain now, it was on the Monday night that the Russian gentleman knocked us up, then first thing on Tuesday morning Madame gave us a month's wages and went off, bag and baggage, saying that Cook and I could remain on in the apartment if we liked.'

  'Thank God!' murmured Gregory. 'Oh, thank God!'

  'It seems, then, that you were much more interested in Madame than you were in me, Monsieur Pierre?'

  remarked Jacqueline pertly.

  He smiled and nodded. 'Yes. Madame is my wife—or at least she will be the moment that she can get her divorce!'

  Jacqueline frowned. 'She, too, then, was a German spy and not a Norwegian lady at all. I would never have believed it of her.'

  'That, my young friend, is none of your business,' Gregory said somewhat sharply, as he produced his pocket-book and took out a five-hundred-franc note. 'And now, please, you will give me the letter that Madame left for me.'

  Jacqueline had not meant to say anything about the letter, but with considerable astuteness he had spiked her guns by implying that there had been a definite understanding that Madame should leave a letter for him, and she had it with her in her bag. If she denied all knowledge of it and he took her to the police-station to have her searched she might find herself in a pretty mess when it was discovered; so she swiftly decided that she had better not play any tricks with this particular German and opening her bag she handed it to him.

  He ripped it open and read:

  Queen Wilhelmina's flight and the news that General Winkelman proposes to surrender in a few hours have affected the situation here, so 1 am moving to Ghent. You will find me at the Hotel de la Poste or if there are no rooms to be had 1 will leave my address with the manager there. God keep you and protect you, my darling. All my love, Erika.

  'Thank you,' said Gregory, passing over the five-hundred-franc note. 'You were right about the day Madame left, as this letter is dated Tuesday the 14th. How long after that was it that you were bombed?'

  'That was on the Thursday night. The Germans had been bombing the neighbourhood of the Palace for some days. Poor Cook was killed but I had a very lucky escape. I spent the evening at home with my father and mother and they would not let me go back through the streets while the air-raid was going on, so I didn't know anything about it until the following morning.'

  'Good,' said Gregory. 'I'm sorry about Cook; she was a decent old soul; but let's hope that your luck continues through this wretched war; then you'll be able to tell your grandchildren how once upon a time you shared your pantry with a German Staff-Colonel and cleaned his silver for him while he went out to make love to your mistress. Au revoir, ma petite Jacqueline, and take good care of yourself.' With a smart salute he turned away and set off down the street, beaming with happiness at the surprised passers-by.

  By seven o'clock he was back at the Metropole singing as he packed his bag; by a quarter-past he was downstairs paying his bill, and by half-past he was at the Gare du Nord. To travel he should have had a military railway voucher, but to secure one he would have had to have given an account of himself to the railway transport officer, which would have been a very tricky business and, in any case, caused him considerable delay, so he decided to travel without one.

  Having found out that the next train for the west was leaving from Platform Number Five he took cover behind a tobacco kiosk where he could not be seen from the barrier but could keep his eye upon the train. The second that it started to move he came dashing out, frantically waving aside the Belgian railway official and German military police, who were standing at the barrier. Seeing his high rank at a glance the military police did not attempt to stop him but flung the barrier wide and he was just in time to leap on to the step of the guard's van.

  Panting a little, but decidedly pleased with himself, he remained there until the train had cleared the station, then he went along the corridor to see if he could find himself a seat. The whole train was packed with troops going up to the front, but a junior officer promptly surrendered his place and thanking him politely Gregory sat down.

  He could still hardly believe the marvellous news he had received about Erika, yet now, in a way, he wondered that he had so readily taken her death for granted. On considering the matter he came to the conclusion that it was the combination of circumstances which had caused him to do so. As far as he could then judge there had been no reason at all for her to leave Brussels until the Friday, and the bomb had fallen on the Thursday night at a time when she would normally have been in bed, or at least in the block, and the bomb had demolished the whole building, killing, as the old ghoul had told him, twenty people. Oblivious of his surroundings he now sat there in the crowded railway carriage positively glowing with happiness.

  The train chugged on into the dusk, stopping for no apparent reason every ten minutes, as is the habit of military trains behind all battle-fronts. In normal times the journey from Brussels to Ghent would not have taken more than an hour, but it was past ten when they reached Alost, which was only about half-way, and everybody was ordered out as the train was going no further, having reached rail-head.

  Gregory was now within sound of the guns again and the principal activity seemed to be to the south, although he had only a vague idea as to the position of the constantly-changing front. As far as he had been able to gather, the British had put up a magnificent show during the last eight days and had been forced back only to about thirty miles south and west of Brussels, but, although they were heavily outnumbered, the greatest hammer-blows of the Germans were not being directed against them. The enemy's maximum effort, after they had reached the coast, had been directed against the French in the Rethel area, south of the Maginot Line, and in the extreme north against the Belgians. The Belgians were said to have been standing well, but on the previous night the Germans had forced them back and captured Ghent, so it seemed that the B.E.F. who were holding the line of the Scheldt were now in some danger of being outflanked both from the north and from the south; but that was as far as he could assess the position.

  Outside the station there were a number of military cars and going up to one of them which had only two officers in it he asked its occupants if they could give him a lift in the direction of Ghent. They said that they were going there and would be happy to oblige the Herr Oberst, so he got in and they moved off into the long line of German mechanised vehicles which for many days now had been streaming without cessation towards the west.

  The officer who was driving took every advantage that he could in slipping past slower vehicles and long columns of marching infantry, but even so, their pace was appallingly slow. Gregory swapped cigarettes and stories with his two companions but he was burning with impatience to get to Ghent. Erika would not be there any longer as the Germans had entered the town the previous night, but once he reached Ghent he felt confident that he would be able to secure fresh tidings of her.

  Twice on their way they had to pull up and take shelter in the nearest ditch, as the R.A.F. were strafing the German lines of communication; and for minutes at a time bombs whined, crashed and thudded a few hundred yards away on or near the road. In each case the raids caused further delay as wrecked tanks, lorries and guns had to be hauled from the road afterwards and the casualties collected before the column could move on again; but shortly after midnight they reached their destination.

  The sound of the guns was much louder now as a night bombardment was taking place only a few mil
es away. Gregory thanked the two officers who had given him a lift and left them in the Butter Market to hurry to the Hotel de la Poste. Ghent had suffered severely from German air-raids and in several parts of the city fires were still burning, but to his relief he found the hotel undamaged. There were no civilian guests in it, but it was crowded with German officers snatching a hasty meal and a drink before going forward to join their regiments or turning in for a few hours' sleep, and it looked as though the over-worked staff would be kept up all night.

  After some little delay Gregory succeeded in getting hold of the manager. He recalled Erika perfectly and said that he had not been able to accommodate her in the hotel, but had secured a room for her near the University, at Number 17 Rue des Foulons; he had, however, seen nothing of her since. Carrying his suitcase, Gregory then picked his way through streets littered with broken glass, tiles and rubble round to the Rue des Foulons and finding Number 17, after some difficulty, hammered on the door.

  It was opened to him almost immediately by an elderly, bespectacled man who looked like a University professor. Although it was getting on for one o'clock in the morning he and his wife were still up, as a few days before their only daughter had been seriously wounded in an air-raid and they were watching by the poor girl's bedside while she hovered between life and death.

  Having described Erika, Gregory asked for news of her, and the owner of the house said at once that the beautiful Norwegian lady had occupied their spare room by arrangement with the hotel from the afternoon of Tuesday the 14th until midday on the previous Thursday, when she had left in a great hurry.

  He and his wife had been out at the time and although it was possible that the lady had left a message with his daughter, there was no means of knowing if that was so, as she had been wounded little more than an hour afterwards and had been unconscious ever since.

  Gregory had naturally expected that Erika would have left another note for him to say for what town she was making, but if she had had to get out in a great hurry it was possible that she had not known herself where she would next be able to take up her quarters with a reasonable chance of keeping out of the clutches of the enemy for some days. It then occurred to him that she might have considered it unwise to leave any written message for him with these people but had left some indication of her general intentions which would be plain to him; so he asked politely if he might see the room that she had occupied.

  The professorial-looking Belgian nodded and, his shoulders bowed from weariness, led Gregory upstairs to a pleasantly-furnished bedroom at the back of the house. It was just as Erika had left it since, with a dying daughter on their hands, the people of the house had been much too occupied to make the bed or tidy things up.

  Gregory would have liked to have buried his face in the pillow where Erika's lovely head had rested, but he was too self-conscious to do so in the presence of the Belgian. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought that he could just catch the faintest lingering breath of the perfume that she used in the room, which seemed to bring her very close to him and, recalling his recent despair, he felt that Fate had dealt a little harshly with him in allowing him to pass through Ghent with Peachie Fostoun on Friday the 17th when, had he only known that Erika had already taken up her quarters there, he would have been spared those nine days in Brussels and an infinity of misery.

  The householder recalled him to the present by asking if, having seen the room, he was satisfied.

  Gregory shook his head and, stepping forward, began to open all the drawers in the handsome old chests one after another; but there was nothing in any of them.

  For the next ten minutes he poked around, looking behind pictures and in cupboards, still hoping that he would find some indication as to where Erika had made for; but he could see nothing at all in the room which might hold a clue until his eye fell upon a pack of patience cards lying on a small side-table.

  They were Erika's and he knew that during his absences from her she often played patience far into the night to keep her mind off her anxieties; so it seemed strange that she should have forgotten to pack them. At the second glance he noticed that although the cards were in a neat stack the top one was torn clean in half. That could hardly have been an accident, with a sudden rising sense of excitement he felt that Erika must have left the little pack of cards there with the top one deliberately torn across to attract his attention to some message that they held.

  He picked them up and looked through them. There was no slip of paper concealed between them, but when he counted the pack he found that it was three cards short. Rapidly checking them through he found that it was the Queen of Hearts, the Queen of Spades and the King of Diamonds which were missing.

  Turning this over in his mind he could not make head or tail of it, so he began a new search of the room to see if he could find anything which might tie up with the missing cards. He had no luck until it occurred to him to pull the bed away from the wall, and there, concealed till then by the headboard of the bed, were the three cards. They were stuck up in a row with drawing-pins over a long pencilled arrow pointing to the right. The King of Diamonds was above the point of the arrow, the Queen of Spades came next and the Queen of Hearts last.

  Sitting down on the end of the bed Gregory lit a cigarette and stared at this queer cryptogram, which he was quite convinced held some hidden message intended specially for him. According to card lore only very fair-haired people are Diamonds and Erika's hair was a rich, ripe golden colour. Her eyes, too, were not China-blue but deep sapphire, so she was undoubtedly the Queen of Hearts. Paula was probably the Queen of Spades and Kuporovitch the King of Diamonds; but that did not seem to infer anything. Why should the two girls be running after Kuporovitch? Moreover, although Kuporovitch's hair was grey his eyebrows were startlingly black and he had brown eyes, so he was not a Diamond person.

  Again, although Paula was a brunette her hair was not jet-black so she really came into the category of Clubs. The thought 'jet-black' released a spring in Gregory's brain. Paula was not a true Spade type but he knew somebody who was. The Queen of Spades was the Black Baroness.

  So far, so good. Erika was on the trail of La Baronne Noire; but in that case who was the Diamond gentleman? A fair-haired, blue-eyed man, evidently. Could it be Paula's friend, the Comte de Werbomont? Never having seen the Count, Gregory did not know if he was fair or dark, but the thought released another spring in his brain. The Count was attached to the Royal household. With a sudden laugh Gregory snapped his fingers. The King of Diamonds was The King—Leopold of Belgium. The Black Baroness was after him and Erika was after the Black Baroness. Here was the explanation why Erika had not left any more definite message. She did not know where the King would next set up his headquarters, but if he could find the King both Erika and the Baroness would not be far away.

  Thanking the owner of the house, he expressed his earnest hope that the daughter would recover and walked downstairs. Just as he picked up his bag it occurred to him that his next move must be to work his way back across the battle-zone, and that he would once again stand much more chance of getting through without injury in daylight than while darkness lasted; so turning to the Belgian he asked him if he would be good enough to let him for the remainder of the night the room that Erika had occupied.

  As the elderly man hesitated he added quickly: 'I shan't be the least trouble to you as I don't want any meals cooked or clean sheets or anything of that kind. It's just that I must get a few hours' sleep somewhere and if you don't mind my hiring the room that will save me stumbling round in the dark for an hour or so looking for one in the town.'

  Although the Belgian had no cause whatever to love the Germans he could hardly refuse; so Gregory carried his suitcase straight upstairs. Taking off his uniform he slipped into the bed, where the impression of Erika's body could still be seen, to bury his face in her pillow where he was now quite certain that he could smell the perfume that recalled for him such glorious memories.

/>   When he awoke at seven o'clock the sun was already streaming through the window. It was Sunday again, May the 26th, and although it had been consistently fine for three solid weeks there was not a trace of any break in the weather, which seemed to have been ordered specially for Hitler.

  Having washed and shaved in the fixed basin he dressed himself in the old lounge-suit that had now seen so many vicissitudes, and packed the Colonel's uniform into his suitcase; then, after leaving some money on the dressing-table for his night's lodging, he cautiously opened the door and peered out. He thought it probable that the anxious father would be sleeping now after his night's vigil by his daughter's bedside and that the mother would be sitting with the girl; but in a well-furnished house of that size it seemed almost certain that there would be at least one maid, and he was anxious that anyone who knew that a German officer had occupied the spare room for the night should not see him leave the house in civilian clothes.

  Stealthily he crept down the stairs, which fortunately were old and solid. In the small hallway he caught the sound of pots and pans from a back room, but in a couple of swift strides he had crossed the hall and, lifting the old-fashioned latch of the front door, he let himself out.

  Striking away from the centre of the town he headed west and having no further use for the Colonel's uniform, his first concern was to rid himself of his bag as an unnecessary encumbrance. After ten minutes'