The Black Baroness gs-4

by Dennis Wheatley

  All through the night he sat by Erika's bedside while a hospital nurse, who was now in attendance, waited at its foot and the doctor tiptoed in every hour or so to make a new estimate of the patient's chances. She was out of her physical body and attached to it only by the slender, silver cord, the breaking of which means the difference between sleep and death. It was impossible to say if it would snap and she would never be able to reanimate her physical form or if that tenuous, spiritual thread would hold and she would once again open her lips to smile or sigh.

  When morning came there was no change, but the doctor and nurse could not persuade Gregory to go to bed, or even to lie down. As he sat there he was not thinking of anything—his brain seemed numb—but he felt no need of sleep and sat on, unmoving, as the hours drifted by. The air-raids had ceased by the time they had got Erika to bed and the King had departed with his entourage a quarter of an hour later, so it was now very silent in the Chateau.

  Shortly after midday Erika opened her eyes and moaned. The nurse sent a housemaid running for the doctor. For ten awful minutes Gregory waited for the verdict. Then the doctor said:

  'There is nothing to tell you, my friend, except that now she has come round she stands a fifty-fifty chance. We shan't know which way matters will go for at least another twenty-four hours, unless she has a sudden collapse, so I insist that you must now go to bed.'

  Gregory agreed quite meekly, but with Erika's temporary return to semi-consciousness his own mental powers came back to him and he wondered if Kuporovitch had survived the air raids of the previous night, so he asked the doctor to send somebody to find out; then he undressed and got into a bed which had been made up for him in the next room.

  He awoke at ten o'clock that night and found that somebody had put a dressing-gown on a nearby chair for him, so he got up, put it on and went in to see if there was any news of Erika. He found a different nurse, and Kuporovitch looking extremely woebegone, in the room, but the nurse had nothing fresh to report about Erika's state, so he beckoned to Kuporovitch and they went outside to converse in whispers.

  The Russian was suffering from such an appalling hangover that he could hardly think coherently, but he said that directly he had heard what had happened he made up his mind not to go to Paris yet; he could not desert his friends at such a time.

  Gregory was glad to have his company and very grateful, but he pointed out that now that the Belgian Army had surrendered the Germans might be entering Ostend at any hour. Kuporovitch shrugged his broad shoulders and said that, after all, the Germans had nothing against him, so he had nothing to fear from them. On the contrary, it was Gregory whose life would be forfeit if he were captured. Gregory knew that well enough, but wild horses would not have dragged him from Erika's side. All the same, he was extremely anxious to know how long they had, so he sent Kuporovitch off to pick up what news he could.

  The Russian was away for about half an hour. When he returned he said that there were still a few officers of the Staff downstairs, who had told him that they did not think that the Germans would be in Ostend until the following afternoon. He had also arranged about a bed for himself in the now almost empty Chateau, and after partaking of a scratch meal with the doctor they went to bed about midnight.

  Having slept his fill that afternoon and evening, Gregory got up several times during the night to inquire about Erika, but the nurse had nothing new to tell him. Early on the Wednesday morning, however, Erika became conscious for longer spells and was in great pain.

  At eleven o'clock Gregory saw the doctor, who said that he thought that the patient now had a 3 to 1

  chance of recovery.

  'And what will it be if we move her?' Gregory asked almost in a whisper.

  The doctor gave a little shrug. 'If you were to do that the odds would be the other way; a 3 to 1 chance of death. I know the difficulty you are in but I cannot possibly take any responsibility for her life if you move her so soon.'

  Gregory then had to make the most difficult decision he had ever been called upon to take. If she were once caught behind the German lines he knew that with all his ingenuity he would never be able to get her through, semi-conscious and at death's door as she was; and he had not the least doubt that the Black Baroness had already reported her to the Gestapo for endeavouring to prevent King Leopold from signing the request for an armistice. Within an hour of German troops arriving on the scene Grauber's men would have her in their clutches, her real identity would soon be discovered, and when that came out there would not be one chance in a thousand of her escaping execution when she was well enough to walk to the headman's block.

  It was that mental assessment 'once chance in a thousand' which decided Gregory. Twenty-five chances in a hundred were infinitely better, so he must take this horrible risk even though by his own decision he might bring about her death. Turning to the doctor, he said:

  'If she remains here the Germans will execute her for certain. Therefore she must be moved. Will you ask one of the servants to pack up some cold food for us from anything that remains in the larder and make arrangements for us to start at twelve o'clock.'

  The Royal ambulance was a spacious and thoroughly up-to-date affair so there was ample room for the two nurses to travel inside with the doctor while Gregory and Kuporovitch sat beside the driver. With deliberate slowness they crawled along the coast-road back to Ostend and through it towards Nieuport and Furnes, making no more than ten miles an hour, and even less where they struck a bumpy piece of road. At Nieuport they pulled up and the doctor spent some time in a telephone booth. He came back to say that every hospital and nursing-home in Furnes was crowded with British wounded but that some friends of his had agreed to take Erika into their private house.

  They proceeded on their journey, arriving at Furnes shortly after three o'clock. The doctor's friends were a Monsieur and Madame Blanchard, a plump, prosperous, middle-aged couple, who received them with great kindness and did everything in their power to make the party comfortable. Erika was carried up to a bright bedroom hung with gay chintz, and the doctor and nurses were accommodated in the house. But there was not enough room for the others so it was decided that Gregory, Kuporovitch and the driver should sleep on three of the stretchers in the ambulance, which was housed in Monsieur Blanchard's garage.

  All things considered, the doctor thought that Erika had sported the journey well, but one of her wounds had begun to bleed again, and he told Gregory that moving her had set her back to a fifty-fifty chance.

  That night she grew worse; from a slight internal haemorrhage, and Gregory was once more driven almost crazy with anxiety as he sat at her bedside all through the long hours of darkness.

  It was not until midday the following day that the crisis had passed and during that afternoon and evening she took a decided turn for the better. On the Thursday night, for the first time since reaching Furnes, Gregory was able to crawl into his stretcher-bed and sleep.

  On Friday morning Erika was definitely better, so Gregory was at last able to switch his thoughts to what was going on outside his immediate surroundings. Erika had been shot on Monday, the 27th, and the following morning Leopold had been denounced for his treachery by the French Premier, Paul Reynaud.

  World-wide indignation at the King's act had been magnified by the fact that he had not even warned the British or French Armies of his intention, so that when his own Army had laid down its arms at midnight on the Monday the unfortunate British immediately to the south of them had had no opportunity to alter their dispositions to cover their suddenly-exposed flank. However, although the Belgian Army had surrendered the Belgian people had repudiated their King and the Belgian Government had declared its intention of fighting on with the new slogan, 'Le Roi est mort—vive la Belgique!'

  With the defection of the Belgians the Northern Allied Army had been left in a position of grave peril. It was now fighting on three fronts and in considerable danger of being totally surrounded; so it seemed more obvious t
han ever to Gregory that Lord Gort and his French colleague would fling their armies forward in a determined attempt to break through and reach the Somme. They were reported to have some 400,000 men between them and with such a mass it was impossible to believe that under determined leadership a break-through could not be accomplished.

  But by Thursday morning it had become clear that Lord Gort had no such intention. British units were already streaming back through Furnes towards the coast, and, in the afternoon Kuporovitch came back from a short walk to say that he had seen British troops occupied in destroying several supply-depots which had been established in the town.

  He added that he had just heard that Narvik had been captured by a combined force of Norwegians and British, which made Gregory laugh for the first time in days. A small German force had hung out there for seven weeks in hostile country with the Norwegians shelling them from the surrounding mountains, and the mighty British Navy shelling them from the sea, while Allied troops perpetually harassed them from both shores of the fjord. Whatever German had commanded that show deserved a whole row of Iron Crosses and it was just one more feather in Hitler's helmet.

  When, on the Friday, it seemed that Erika's youth and health would save her, Gregory went out to learn what he could about the situation. More and more British troops were pouring into the town down the road from Dixmude and Ypres and at the latter place a fierce battle was said to be raging. Having talked to several of the almost exhausted officers and men he learnt that Dunkirk was now the only port remaining in British hands, and, to his amazement, that an attempt was to be made to evacuate the whole of the B.E.F. from it.

  This news gave him furiously to think. It now appeared that by moving Erika from Breedene to Furnes they had only gained a few days' grace instead of securing her safety for a considerably longer period as he had hoped would be the case.

  When it had become clear that no break-through was to be attempted Gregory had naturally assumed that the B.E.F. would dig in and hold the coast behind it until it could be reinforced from England. Its situation would then have been analogous to that of the Naval Division which Mr. Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty had deliberately flung into Antwerp with great acumen and daring in the early weeks of the last Great War, only some twenty times stronger. That small force of almost untrained volunteers—the only land-force not under the control of the static Generals—had, under the personal leadership of the brilliant descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, played a not inconsiderable part in saving the Channel ports. The Germans, not knowing when it might be reinforced, had been compelled to detach three Army Corps to deal with it, as they dared not leave such a dangerous enemy bridge-head in their rear while they advanced into France. Now, one would have thought, this great Northern Allied Army could have constituted an infinitely graver threat if dug in round Dunkirk; but apparently it did not intend to threaten anybody; if it could get there, it was going home.

  Whether it succeeded or whether the bulk of it was destroyed before it could be embarked, the thing that affected Gregory personally as a result of the strange and alarming new 'strategy' was that the Germans would enter Furnes at latest before the week-end was past. Once more he had to face the agonising problem—should he just hope for the best and allow Erika to continue the good progress she was making, or should he again risk her life by attempting to evacuate her with the B.E.F.?

  Dunkirk was only about eleven miles away along the coast so that afternoon he decided to go there and see for himself what was going on.

  After lunch he and Kuporovitch managed to get a lift on a lorry and joined the slow, apparently endless procession of British Army vehicles which was now meandering along at the best pace it could make towards the west. Great havoc was being made among the columns by the German planes but, as they neared Dunkirk, for the first time they saw British planes in action.

  The German air-armada was so great that it was impossible to count even a portion of it. There were several hundred planes in the air all at one time, but for once they were not having it all their own way; the British fighters streaked out of the cloudless sky at them, flattened out, circled, zoomed up and dived again with their machine-guns spitting, and barely five minutes passed without a Nazi plane being brought down.

  They arrived in Dunkirk at about half-past two but halted outside the town as bombs had reduced it to a complete ruin. Walking up on to the dunes to the right of the road, they saw an incredible spectacle.

  Scores of British destroyers and hundreds of small craft were standing in as near as they could to the long, sandy beaches. There were ferries, pleasure-steamers, private yachts, launches, fishing trawlers, life-boats and every conceivable type of vessel that could be driven by steam or oil, and snaky lines of khaki-clad figures were wading out through the shallow waters to be pulled on board them.

  Yet for every man who was taken into a boat there were a dozen or more coming over the dunes from inland. Gunners, sappers, infantry, tank corps, A.S.C. drivers, officers, N.C.O.s and men were all inextricably muddled together in vast khaki crowds and it seemed utterly impossible that one-tenth of them could be saved by the little figures out in the boats who were working so desperately hard to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy.

  In the sky above a thousand planes turned and twisted in furious combat. Fleets of bombers came over escorted by fighter aircraft and were broken up by the pom-poms of the warships. The bombs were released haphazard and few hit their mark, but the Messerschmitts swooped to machine-gun the beaches until the Hurricanes and Spitfires chivvied them away or sent them reeling down in a smoky spiral.

  Gregory thought that it must be the greatest air-battle that had ever taken place and he was overjoyed to see that although the British planes were far fewer in numbers they were decidedly getting the best of it.

  The Navy too, was doing a magnificent and entirely impromptu job of work with the help of those hundreds of volunteer seamen, but it yet remained to be seen if those organising the rescue would prove up to the task of getting away more than a fraction of the helpless soldiers who were now mere mobs of men with neither arms to fight nor any further stretch of land over which to run.

  Gregory and Kuporovitch agreed that no military evacuation on so great a scale could ever before have been attempted and the only thing which made its success even remotely possible was the unbeatable resource of the British Navy, in which Churchill had so clearly placed his confidence when faced with the collapse of the Army. They watched the astonishing, ever-changing scene for over an hour, then turned for home.

  As there were no lorries going away from Dunkirk they had to trudge most of the way back to Furnes, but for the last few miles they got a lift in a Staff car. Gregory asked the officer who was in it how long he thought that the evacuation would take, and he replied: 'It only started last night and if we can get 100,000 a day off it will be doing marvels, so it's bound to be going on right over the week-end.'

  It was clear now that if Erika was to be saved from the Germans the risk of moving her must be taken once more, but this piece of information decided Gregory to hang on for another day or two, so as to give her the maximum possible chance of regaining a little strength after her set-back.

  All through the long, hot Saturday the B.E.F. staggered back through Belgium, many of them wounded and great numbers limping badly because they were so footsore from the terrific forced march that they had performed.

  'At all events, they've got good boots,' remarked Kuporovitch, with the eye of a professional soldier, as he watched them from the garden gate.

  'Yes,' sneered Gregory angrily; 'our Generals learnt that it was necessary to equip their men with good boots in the Boer War, so perhaps they'll equip them with tommy-guns when we have to fight the Germans again somewhere about 1960 and the Huns have armed themselves with something much more lethal.'

  By Sunday afternoon Gregory felt that he dared delay no longer. The defences of Dunkirk had been reinforced by f
looding, but at Furnes the stream of khaki had come down to a trickle of footsore soldiers.

  The ambulance was got out from the garage, and Erika was carried down to it; then, having taken leave of their kind Belgian hosts, they set off towards Dunkirk.

  When they reached the outskirts of the town Gregory and Kuporovitch saw yet another fantastic sight.

  For miles and miles there stretched the baggage and the weapons of the once glorious British Army.

  Huge masses of supplies were being burnt and sabotage parties were putting tanks and guns out of action by removing their more delicate parts and smashing them with pick-axes; but not one-fiftieth of that vast sea of vehicles, which had cost Britain hundreds of millions of pounds and months of toil by her sweating factory-workers, could be rendered permanently useless.

  There was no bombing now. The R.A.F. had won a magnificent victory against the terrific odds and driven the Nazis out of the sky. Even the gunfire to the east had slackened as Hitler, having inflicted on the British Army the most crushing defeat in its history, had swung the weight of his main attack south once more, contemptuously leaving the remnants of the B.E.F. to get home as best they could.