Curtain of Fear

by Dennis Wheatley

  But the delay caused by his having tripped over Konečný proved fatal to his chance of escape. Vaněk’s first shouts had alarmed the house, and even the few moments occupied by the recent melée on the floor had been sufficient for several people to reach the scene of the trouble.

  As Nicholas made his second attempt to reach the doorway, a hard-faced middle-aged woman appeared blocking his way. Close on her heels came Rufus and a big blond man with china-blue eyes. They were followed by another, very fat woman, wearing a check apron, and an elderly man with a drooping moustache, whose hands were black with printer’s ink.

  In a matter of seconds Nicholas was surrounded. Several people struck him at once, and he was temporarily too exhausted to do more than ward off the most savage blows. Fortunately for him, the good-natured Rufus saw that he was incapable of serious resistance, so thrust the others aside and pushed him into a chair; then, more in sorrow than in anger, proceeded to read him a lecture:

  “Mister Bilto. Didn’t ai warn you not to start nothin’? What for d’you wanta go actin’ so an’ gettin’ you’self hurt? They tell me that way down in your heart you’s one of us, an’ it’s all wrong for us proletarian-ideologists to go gettin’ at cross purposes. ’Tain’t sense for you to pretend you’s not you’self and don’ wanta go to Prague no more. That’s where duty calls you; an’ doin’ our duty is what qualifies us to be equal members of one great big happy family. Yes, sir, we must all do that if we’s to see the fine new Communist world that Comrade Stalin is workin’ so hard to create for all the poor simple folks who can’t create nothin’ for themselves. Now Comrade Stalin, I reckon he’d be mighty hurt if he knew how you been behavin’ this evenin’.”

  “Oh, go to hell!” groaned Nicholas, sinking his aching head between his hands. But he could not shut out the babble of voices that now filled the room. Most of them were using Czech, but he caught snatches of English and German. The hard-faced woman was dabbing with a handkerchief at Vaněk’s cut mouth. The fat one, whose apron suggested that she had come from the kitchen, was fussing over Konečný. The big fair man and the old fellow with the drooping moustache were asking the Hořovská girl for details of the trouble. Then, after a minute or two, Vaněk was helped back into the chair behind his desk, and he called for silence.

  As the din subsided, he gave Nicholas a malevolent look and said, “If you were not so eagerly awaited in Prague, I would have you disciplined for this; but in order to get you to the airport on time I must deny myself that pleasure. We have wasted enough time already and must now work fast.” Turning to his subordinates, he added:

  “Comrade Konečný, your bag is already packed. Put some things in another for Professor Novák and take them both to the car. You, Comrade Hořovská, will pack a bag as I told you, and join him there. Comrade Abombo, take a firm hold of the Professor, so that Comrade Lubitsch can proceed with the injection. The rest of you can return to your duties.”

  As they began to file from the room, Rufus stepped round behind the chair in which Nicholas was sitting, grabbed the lapels of his jacket, and in one swift movement pulled it back over his shoulders. The trick had the effect of pinioning his arms at the level of the elbows and exposing his shirt from a little above the waist upwards. Setting his teeth, he jerked himself forward and made an attempt to rise; but by pressing down hard on his jacket the powerful negro was able easily to prevent him from struggling up out of the chair.

  Meanwhile, the fair man who had been addressed as Comrade Lubitsch opened a small attaché case that he had been clutching as he ran into the room, and laid out on the table the things needed for an injection. Vaněk came from behind his desk and, as Nicholas was still squirming from side to side, took a firm grip of his right ear. Giving it a sharp twist, he said:

  “Be still now! You will only make matters worse for yourself if you jerk about and cause the needle to snap off in your arm.”

  Tears of pain had already started to Nicholas’ eyes at the tug on his ear; and seeing the sense of the admonition, he reluctantly decided that, for the moment, discretion was the better part of valour.

  Lubitsch produced a pair of scissors, made a four-inch slit with them in his victim’s shirt, jerked up the short sleeve of his vest, dabbed the skin with surgical spirit and pressed home the hypodermic. As the needle came out Rufus relaxed his grip on the jacket and slid it back round the prisoner’s shoulders. The speed and efficiency with which they did the job suggested to Nicholas that it was by no means the first time that the two of them had collaborated in giving an injection to a patient who might have made difficulties about partially undressing; and now that he had a few moments to think in, he wondered grimly how many unwilling people had been similarly treated at this apparently derelict house hidden away in a once respectable part of central London.

  For some minutes he felt no effect from the drug at all, and by the time Vaněk went to the door to shout in Czech an impatient enquiry if the others were ready, he was contemplating making another attempt to get away as they led him out through the garden to the car. However seedy the district might be, there could be no doubt that the majority of its inhabitants would be honest citizens, and that like any other it must be patrolled by the police. Even if he was unable to break free and run for it, if he began to shout for all he was worth just as they reached the gate it seemed a certainty that help would arrive before he could be forcibly carried off.

  In response to Vaněk’s shouts someone could be heard clattering down a flight of uncarpeted stairs, and next moment Konečný appeared in the doorway. Leading him over to the desk, Vaněk unlocked a drawer in it, took out a bundle of five-pound notes, counted several off, and as he gave them to him said:

  “Here is money for an extra seat on the plane. If there is not one free you must give yours up to Comrade Hořovská; but I would prefer you to go with them as far as Paris in case she needs your help. There you will be met by someone from our Embassy, and as arranged you can hand over. But she must continue on to Prague with him, in case the Paris-Prague plane has to make an unexpected landing and it is necessary to explain his state.”

  During the next few minutes Nicholas began to feel a little drowsy; so that when the Hořovská girl came hurrying along the passage carrying a suit-case, and Vaněk went to the door to give her a batch of papers, he felt that he could not be bothered to strain his ears sufficiently to make sense of the Czech phrases they were using.

  As the sharp tapping of her high-heeled shoes receded towards the garden door, Vaněk turned and made a sign to Rufus. The negro put a hand beneath Nicholas’ arm and helped him to his feet. Lubitsch then stepped up to him and gave him a hard slap in the face.

  In spite of all that had gone before, Nicholas’ immediate impulse was to return the blow. Instinctively he sought to raise his fists, but he found that it needed a great effort even to drag them from his sides, and that his knees were now distinctly shaky. While he swayed there ineffectively glowering and thickly muttering curses, the big blond man gave a contemptuous laugh, said in German to Vaněk, “He will do, Comrade,” and, stepping back, lit a cigarette.

  Vaněk nodded and said to Rufus, “You can take him to the car now, Comrade Abombo. Report to me on your return.” Then he stood aside for the negro to lead Nicholas from the room.

  While going down the passage, Nicholas made a resolute effort to rally his resources for the attempt to escape that he had been contemplating; but it was fated to die stillborn. As soon as he got out into the fresh air, instead of it reviving him each breath he took seemed to make him fainter and more giddy. His footsteps faltered, he was almost overcome by a feeling of acute nausea, and even had he forced a shout, the weak sort of cry which was all he could have managed would not have been heard by a passer-by, for Rufus did not take him within sight of the street, but through some stunted bushes at the back of the house straight to a side entrance of the garage. As he stumbled into it he felt that nothing he did could now prevent these people from ca
rrying him off to the other side of the Iron Curtain.

  CHAPTER VII

  UNHAPPY LANDING

  From that point Nicholas’ limbs continued to function only lethargically and a little eccentrically, while his mind became distinctly hazy. He knew fairly well what was happening round him at any given moment, but his sense of time deserted him, and between fighting down bouts of nausea a variety of scenes seemed to telescope into one another.

  Konečný and the girl put him in the back of the car between them. Again he found himself staring at Rufus’ broad shoulders and flat chauffeur’s cap. Somewhere they pulled up and all got out while he was sick as a dog at the side of the road. When they arrived at the airport Konečný left them, and Rufus carried their bags to the reception counter. While his blonde companion produced the tickets Nicholas leaned against the desk, dull-eyed and breathing heavily.

  He felt very drunk, and the place seemed to be going up and down like a ship on a slowly heaving sea. At the back of his mind he knew that it was terribly important that he should say something, but he could not think what. With difficulty he focused the pretty face of the receptionist. She was eyeing him with disapproval, and as she handed the tickets back she said:

  “I take it that as you are travelling together, Madam, you will be responsible for this gentleman. We have the right to refuse to accept passengers who might prove troublesome in the aircraft.”

  “He won’t be any trouble.” The Hořovská girl gave a rueful smile. “I’m used to him. Once he’s on board he’ll settle down to sleep.”

  The girl gave her a sympathetic glance, weighed their bags, then said that as their flight had been signalled they could go straight through. Rufus handed the bags over to a porter, wished them a good journey, touched his peaked cap like a well-trained servant and turned away.

  At the emigration desk Nicholas made another desperate attempt to control his wandering mind. The sight of the passports gave him a vague clue, and in his head the words ‘I am not Bilto, I am Nicholas’ formed themselves; but when he strove to get them out, his tongue felt like a lump of leather in his mouth and he could only mumble incoherently.

  After staring at him for a moment, the officer looked at the pale-faced girl who was supporting him, and asked, “What’s the matter with your friend?”

  “He’s been ill,” she replied calmly. “Nervous breakdown following severe shock; and to-night when my back was turned he got at the whisky bottle.”

  “It is against regulations to allow persons ‘under the influence’ to board an aircraft,” the man remarked rather dubiously.

  “He is not drunk in the ordinary sense, and he has to go abroad to complete his cure. I am his nurse, and will be responsible for him.”

  “Very well, then.” The official shrugged and stamped their passports.

  In the customs room Konečný caught them up, but did not immediately approach them. Instead, he waited until Nicholas, on turning away from the bench, staggered slightly. Then, playing the part of a stranger, he raised his hat politely and offered his help to get him to the plane.

  On the way to it, Nicholas was sick again, and so racked with physical suffering that he was rendered temporarily incapable of even registering what was taking place round him. Only his legs continued to function sufficiently for him to be helped on board without actually collapsing, and once he had been lowered into his seat he drifted off into a coma.

  His next impressions were even vaguer than those of his transit through the airport. Physically his condition had improved, as his stomach had settled down, but his brain was still leaden from the drug and he no longer felt any impulse to fight it. As though in a dream he saw arc-lights alternating with patches of darkness, felt himself walking with the stilted gait of a somnambulist, and knew that he was being transferred from one aircraft to another in the middle of the night. He could hear people talking in French, and was aware that a short fat man had taken Konečný’s place. The movement made his head ache intolerable, and it was an incredible relief when he was able to relax again in the second aircraft. It seemed much smaller than the first, and the half-dozen people in it all kept staring at him while chattering together excitedly in Czech. Soon after it had taken off the Hořovská girl opened her bag, and taking some tablets from it, forced two of them into his mouth. He closed his aching eyes, and slept.

  He was woken by her shaking him. Morning had come and bright sunlight was streaming through the ports. He wondered how on earth he came to be in an aeroplane; then as he turned his head and found himself looking into her green eyes, everything flooded back to him.

  His mouth tasted frightful, but his brain was now perfectly clear again. In fact it seemed to have a special clarity, as though he were subject to one of those happy hangovers induced by drinking only wine, which cause the toper to call gaily on his friends to renew the carousel on the morning after. Having flexed his limbs he decided that all he needed was a drink to cleanse his mouth, and he would then be as fit as a fiddle. Momentarily, relief at finding that Vaněk had not lied about the temporary effects of the drug occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else, and he found himself smiling into the green eyes that were watching him so intently, with the intention of asking if he could have a pot of tea.

  Before he could open his mouth, she put a finger to her lips, made an anxious grimace enjoining silence, then passed him a slip of paper. On it was written:

  “We shall soon be coming into Prague. Both of us are in great danger. You must pretend that you have not yet recovered from the drug. Say nothing whatever, and do exactly as I tell you. Destroy this at once.”

  Slowly he tore the note into fragments and pushed them into the ash holder. Pleasure at his sense of physical well-being was swiftly crowded into the background by a host of questions crying out to be answered, and the resurrection of acute anxiety about the future. So much had happened in so short a time before he passed out that he had never really had a chance to sort the awful muddle and get things in their right perspective.

  He had himself to blame for starting the chain of events; but they need not have brought him here, several thousand feet up in the air somewhere over western Czechoslovakia, had it not been for the girl. It was she who had browbeaten the Sinznicks, and had him carried off against his will to the secret headquarters somewhere in the decayed part of north-west Kensington. It was she who, when his identity had been in doubt, had falsely established it as Bilto’s by positively declaring that she was his mistress. For some purpose of her own she had deliberately got him into this mess, and in order to do so had deceived her own people. Now, apparently, she was in a mess herself and hoped to get out of it by persuading him voluntarily to continue the deception. But why? Why? Why?

  The carefree light-headedness, sometimes resulting from a glass too much of champagne, came over him again. Fishing in the inside pocket of his jacket he found that his private papers and Biro pencil had been put back there; so he took out a letter, tore a piece off the envelope and wrote on it:

  “Dear Comrade in Imaginary Sin. My present inclination is to take the first opportunity of throwing you to any wolves who may be chasing you. But I have a kind heart and am susceptible to bribery. Get me a pot of tea and I will reconsider the matter.”

  When she had read what he had written she gave him a look in which anger was mingled with alarm and impatience. Then she wrote on another piece of paper:

  “This is no time for fooling. Our situation is much too serious. Beg you to do as I ask.”

  To that he replied on another strip of envelope. “Only pot of tea will induce me to listen to reasons why I should play your game.”

  After reading it, if looks could have killed her glance would have slain him. She sucked the point of her pencil for a moment, then produced a third effort.

  “We are on Czech diplomatic plane. To order drink would indicate your partial recovery. Imperative you continue to appear in semi-stupor. Only possible chance for me to get you
on plane returning Paris.”

  That had the effect of putting an abrupt end to Nicholas’ levity. Visions of long interrogations, possible imprisonment, and the prospect of worries and difficulties of all kinds when called on by the Czech authorities to explain how he came to be in his present situation, again surged to the forefront of his mind. If only she could save him from that by having him promptly flown out of Prague, what matter the axe she was grinding on her own account. He nodded, scribbled on his last piece of envelope: “All right, I’ll play”, then settled back in his seat once more.

  Lack of movement on the part of the other occupants of the plane suggested that they were still dozing, but as it began to descend they roused up and started getting their things together. Nicholas then closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep; so he did not see from the air, as they came in to land, the fine city he had last visited when a boy.

  A gentle series of bumps told him that the aircraft had landed, and again he felt himself shaken by the arm. His memories of his feelings while being shepherded through the airport the previous night were still so vivid that he had no difficulty in counterfeiting a slightly milder version of the appearance he must have presented. Wide-eyed and mumbling a little, he allowed the cause of all his troubles, and the short, fat man who had joined her in Paris, to help him from the plane.

  The latter’s name, Nicholas learned, was Kmoch. He had soft spaniel-like brown eyes and was wearing a light overcoat that was much too long for him. Evidently he was a Comrade of authority, as he carried a small badge that he had only to flash under the noses of the immigration and customs officials for himself and his companions to be passed straight through; but as soon as these brief formalities were completed and they reached the main hall of the airport, a violent argument arose between Nicholas’ male and female escorts. As he leaned against a pillar there, he appeared incapable of taking in what was said; but actually he found his Czech quite good enough to follow their wrangle, and listened with intense interest to it.