The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  It came to them in one form at least, for one of the first things that Philip found when they resumed their examination of the cargo after breakfasting off sweet corn and grapefruit juice was the crate containing the oil-stoves. They proved to be of two patterns. There were a dozen of the simple round variety used for heating, and six double stoves measuring about two foot six by one foot six and standing about three feet high, designed for the use as cookers in holiday camps. Their joy was almost as great as if a rescue party had suddenly appeared alongside, since, having plenty of oil, there was now nothing to prevent, their boiling kettles of sea water to get supplies of fresh water, so that they could make coffee, as well as heat up some of the bully beef and sweet corn for a hot meal.

  While Philip was taking his midday observation, they again saw the British aircraft of the day before, or one exactly like it, but once more it failed to see them, and, as Gloria pointed out, they had no proof that it was actually looking, since it might quite well be employed on any of a dozen forms of war activity.

  Philip’s reckoning showed that, although the storm had now entirely abated, they were still drifting south, and this increased the anxiety that he had been feeling for the past twenty-four hours as to where they would now fetch up. The Gulf Stream, having warmed the shores of Northern Europe and dissipated its force against them, merges with other currents, the principal one of which flows south along the coast of Portugal towards North-West Africa. The storm having prevented the Gulf Stream from depositing Philip and Gloria on some part of the Channel coast, it now looked as if, caught up in this other current, they were liable, unless they were rescued fairly soon, to be carried down to the Tropics. On the other hand, since the winds in these parts were extremely variable it was quite useless to set fresh sails and unless they got into the North-East Trades, they might drift about for weeks.

  Since the going down of the storm they had sighted quite a number of ships, mostly in the distance; but two that had been coming towards them appeared almost deliberately to have turned out of their course. A third did the same on the day following the discovery of the oil-stove, and a reason for this strange behaviour was given to them in a most unpleasant manner. The cargo ship concerned, after approaching to within a mile of them, suddenly veered sharply away and two minutes later brought a gun into action against them.

  ‘Holy St. Bridget, is it mad they are!’ exclaimed Gloria, as a shell whistled overhead and burst behind them, sending up a great spout of white foam.

  ‘No,’ replied Philip, pulling her down into the dubious safety of the cargo container. ‘This raft is so low in the water that it can’t be seen properly from that distance, and those jittery fools have taken it for a U-Boat.’

  Only two more shells were fired at them, both of which landed several hundred yards away: no doubt the gunners at that stage of the war were still somewhat amateurish; but Philip knew now that only a warship would risk approaching them, and if one did there was a most perturbing chance that they would be shelled much more accurately long before the ship’s crew realised that their target was only a raft.

  On the fifth night after the sinking of the storm they saw a distant light emitting regular flashes which swept like arcs across the darkened sky, and Philip identified it from his manual as the Lighthouse of Cape Finisterre on the north-west corner of Spain. When morning came they could see the Spanish coast as a vague bluish blur on the horizon. For an hour or so their hopes ran high that the raft would be washed up there, but the coastline gradually receded until, by early afternoon, they had lost sight of it altogether.

  Some days later their hopes were again raised when a large British seaplane, after flying right over them, turned round and flew back to have another look before resuming her original course. Philip said it was a Short Sunderland on the Lisbon-Southampton run and would definitely report the rafts on its arrival at base, so their rescue within a few days was now certain. They would most probably be picked up by a lifeboat or tug which the British authorities would arrange to have sent out from Lisbon. But the days passed, and no rescue craft appeared.

  It was possible that the aircraft had been shot down before getting back to its base in England, or that its crew had seen the raft but not the people on it. If the latter were the case, the fact that no launch was reported as in company with the rafts would lead to the assumption that it had been sunk and Philip drowned in the storm that had come up so quickly after the receipt of his message by the Admiralty. The British Navy had more important things to do during a major war than send valuable personnel to inspect a derelict string of rafts, and Philip, realising this, now began to feel despondent of their chances. If he were believed dead, all further search for him would cease, and he had to accept the possibility that by this time his family had been told that the launch was missing, presumed lost, and that there was therefore small hope of his own survival.

  The thing which infuriated him much more than being a castaway was the loss to Britain of his idea just as it had been proved practical. If only the authorities could have seen the excellent shape in which the Raft Convoy had arrived off Land’s End, he felt sure they would have taken it up; but now that it had failed to complete its voyage and been scattered on the first autumn gale, it was highly probable that the whole scheme would be pigeon-holed and forgotten. He was fretting badly too about both his inability to get home and join up and the fact that he no longer even had any idea how the war was going. As part of his cargo he had shipped three of a new make of American radio, but so far he had failed to find the cases in which they were packed, so, since abandoning the launch, they had had no news of the outer world at all.

  Meanwhile, as they slowly drifted south a hundred miles or so off the coast of Portugal, they were gradually adapting their curious accommodation to their needs and making it more comfortable. They had converted the limited surplus space in the cargo-container in which they had first taken refuge into a kitchen; that of another into a sitting-place lined with rugs and home-made cushions, consisting of raw cotton tied up in tablecloths; and that of a third into a bedroom which, having slept in company for so long in the cabin of the launch, they shared without giving the matter a second thought. The fourth container smelt too disagreeably of oil for them to enter it except when they needed a fresh supply of fuel for their cooking-stove, but on its top Philip had rigged up a canvas bath out of some of the spare sails, and he was intrigued to see that Gloria used it as often as he did.

  It seemed that, nothing daunted by her now somewhat uncertain prospects of a safe and speedy arrival in Paris, she was determined to pursue her social education. A score of times a day she said to Philip: ‘How would you say so-and-so?’ until there were moments when he almost regretted having aroused her interest in her mode of speaking. She questioned him, too, upon innumerable points of behaviour in the life of the upper classes, many of which he found it by no means easy to answer; but there was little work to do on the raft and, apart from swimming every morning, talking was their sole recreation during the long hours that they sat in the October sunshine watching for a ship or aircraft to come near enough for them to signal.

  He found her mind an amazing jumble of mainly unrelated facts and absurd misconceptions scarred like a gruyère cheese with pockets of abysmal ignorance. Her strong suit was the lives of famous painters, which she admitted was the only serious reading she had ever done, and upon this subject she was infinitely better informed than Philip. It had, as a by-product, given her a patchy background of certain periods of European history since the Renaissance. Her father, the French-Canadian-British journalist, also seemed to have passed on to her a considerable store of miscellaneous knowledge; but, after leaving Europe, Alphonse Smith appeared to have lost interest in world events, so Gloria knew little of what had happened outside the United States since the 1914–18 war; and it was clear that from the time of his death, in her fourteenth year, all trace of British sympathies had been removed. No doubt owing to the infl
uence of her Irish mother, she had come to regard the British as a greedy and unscrupulous race whose Machiavellian statesmen had been the fly in the ointment.

  By the time they had been drifting south for a fortnight they had opened up enough of the cargo to provide themselves with a good range of tinned meats, fruits and soups, as well as a supply of flour, oatmeal and soap, but the further they penetrated among the closely packed stacks of goods the more difficult it became to get at the ones still further from the hatches, and, now having most things they required readily available, they would not have persisted further had it not been for their mutual desire to unearth one of the radios.

  After almost three weeks of unbroken sunshine the weather began to deteriorate again as they reached the latitude of Gibraltar. It was not rough but misty, and with the mist came a damp chill that drove them off their sun-deck to seek shelter and occupation in another examination of their cargo. At about four o’clock in the afternoon Philip gave a cry of triumph; a case that he was opening had revealed one of the radio sets for which they had sought so long in vain. Lifting it carefully from its packing, he carried it out to the well of the raft, where the light was better, fetched the dry batteries of which he had already unearthed a store, and began to adjust it.

  He was just about to switch it on when Gloria, who was kneeling beside him, suddenly exclaimed: ‘Listen!’

  A second before she spoke he, too, had caught the sound of voices.

  She sprang to her feet, but he seized her arm and pulled her down again. The speakers were talking in German.

  Placing a finger to his lips to enjoin silence, he let her rise cautiously until they could just peep over the edge of the cargo container. Not more than fifty yards away, and only slightly obscured by the mist, was the conning-tower of a U-boat.

  The submarine had surfaced and was lying still upon the water. On her deck near the base of the conning-tower stood a little group of sailors. It was they who were talking as they peered through the mist towards the raft.

  Although he realised his complete inability to do any material harm to the great undersea warship, wild plans for attempts to sabotage her were already beginning to bubble in his brain, when, to his horror, he heard Gloria give a low cry of delight.

  ‘We’re saved, Boy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Saved at last! Come on, let’s …’

  She got no further. Clapping a hand over her mouth, he dragged her down and positively hissed into her ear:

  ‘You little fool! D’you think I’m prepared to be taken prisoner and carted off to Germany for the duration? I’d rather die first.’

  ‘Let me go!’ she spluttered, wrenching her head sideways. ‘You’ve got no choice. ‘Tis coming here they are, in a boat!’

  Her words confirmed what Philip had suspected and feared from his last glimpse of the submarine. Even through the murk the large object that some of the Germans were handling had looked vaguely like a dinghy that they were about to put over the side.

  ‘They’re not going to get me if I can help it!’ Philip snarled. ‘Or you either!’ He gave her a push towards one of the manholes. ‘Go on—in you go!’

  As he pushed her head first through the opening she began to cry out in protest but her voice was muffled because her body almost filled the aperture. The moment she was through he scrambled after her.

  ‘I’ll not be kept here!’ she was declaring angrily. ‘Anything’s better than being stuck for ever on this lousy raft. They’ll land me some place, and I don’t give a dime if it is in Germany.’

  ‘They’ll more probably rape you first and chuck you to the fishes afterwards,’ snapped Philip.

  ‘You’re nuts! I’m a citizen of the United States of America. They wouldn’t dare lay a hand on me. They wouldn’t dare!’

  Philip caught the faint splash of oars breaking the eerie silence created by the mist outside. The approaching menace was now too near to waste further precious time in argument. He and Gloria were standing face to face, their shoulders stooped and heads bent, owing to the low roof of the cargo-container. Clenching his right fist, he jerked it up, jabbing her hard on the side of the jaw. Her head hit the roof with a bang. She made a little choking noise, and pitched forward against his knees; then she rolled over and lay still.

  Having pulled the manhole shut, he fumbled for Gloria’s wrists in the darkness and, finding them, began to drag her away from the opening, in among the cargo. As they had now lived in these confined quarters for close on a month, he knew the warren of narrow passages they had so far made among the bales and boxes as well as he did the situation of each piece of furniture in his own bedroom at home. Within two minutes he had pulled her to the furthest extremity of the deepest alleyway. Another minute was sufficient for him to drag a big bale across it, so that they were completely hidden from anyone standing at its entrance. Yet even as he worked, bruising his hands and tearing his nails in the blackness, he could hear the hated guttural voices again, now coming to him deadened by the shell of the cargo-container. Then there came the clatter of boots on metal above.

  ‘Jemand zu hauser?’ shouted a voice, and Philip’s heart almost missed a beat. The suddenness of the emergency and Gloria’s obstreperous conduct had given him little time to think. He had taken it for granted that, if the Germans did not actually see the raft’s occupants they would naturally assume it had been abandoned. He had forgotten that the apparatus which he had fixed up above one of the heating stoves to give a small but constant supply of fresh water was always kept going, and that his unwelcome visitors had only to glance through the manhole of the next compartment, the entrance to which formed Gloria’s ‘kitchen’, to see her cooker alight and the tinned stew of steak and carrots which they had selected for that day’s lunch already heating upon it. No wonder they were shouting: ‘Anyone at home? Come out and let’s have a look at you! Come along! It’ll be the worse for you if we have to fetch you!’

  The voice that was bawling in German became more angry and imperative, then it suddenly ceased. There was a long silence, broken only by an occasional muffled cry or the sound of a bump. Gradually the noises drew nearer until Philip realised that his enemies were searching among the cargo in the next compartment; then they stopped altogether.

  Crouching there in the stuffy darkness, Philip waited for what he felt to be at least an hour, although, actually, it was less than a quarter of that time. He began to hope that the Germans had given up the search and gone, but he feared that they might be busy still in hunting among the cargo in the container on the opposite side of the raft, so he did not yet dare to move.

  Suddenly Gloria groaned. Philip started as though he had been stung. His mind had been so concentrated on listening for sounds of the enemy that he had momentarily forgotten all about her.

  ‘Hush!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Hush!’

  She groaned again and muttered: ‘Holy—holy Saints, where am I?’

  ‘You’re all right. But for God’s sake keep quiet, or the Germans may hear you!’ As Philip spoke he heard them again himself. They had not left the raft, and some of them were now talking together in its central well.

  ‘The Germans!’ exclaimed Gloria, struggling up into a sitting position.

  At that moment the manhole was flung open with a clang, and there followed the sounds of someone struggling through it.

  In the darkness Philip reached out with both his hands. They touched Gloria’s shoulders, and a moment later closed round her throat. ‘If you make one sound,’ he breathed, ‘I’ll choke you. D’you hear? I’ll wring your neck—if it’s the last thing I ever do!’

  The darkness had become a faint greyness. There were the sounds of trampling feet, then chinks of light from an electric torch shone between the boxes.

  ‘Kommen zie aus!’ suddenly barked a voice, and it went on in German: ‘Come on! Come out of that! We know you’re there!’

  9

  The Unsought Bacchanalia

  Philip strove to control his breathing.
His hands were light but firm on Gloria’s throat. He knew that, if she did decide to risk a scream, he could not possibly check it before the damage was done and the first half of it had given away their position. He knew, too, that Gloria was no fool and would be quick to realise that no man, however powerful, could strangle a physically fit young woman without the sound of the struggle and the kicking of her heels against the nearby boxes being heard by the searchers, who at the very most could be only thirty feet away.

  ‘Come now! We have searched the others, so we know that you must be in this one,’ the German voice went on. ‘If you come out and answer our questions, we will treat you fairly. But if we have to fetch you we will give you a beating that you will not forget.’

  There was a pause; and Philip felt the muscles of Gloria’s throat swelling under his hands.

  The voice came again. ‘I will give you while I count ten—Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier!’

  Philip knew that Gloria’s mouth was opening. He could feel the pressure of her chin upon his thumbs, but did not dare to squeeze her throat lest he should check her breathing and precipitate the dénouement which he dreaded.

  ‘Fünf! Sechs! Sieben! Acht!’ went on the voice.

  Suddenly, on the inspiration of the moment, although he knew that Gloria’s throat was already tensed for the cry which might bring about his death, he released his grip on it and, leaning forward so that his face was within a few inches of hers, breathed: ‘Please—oh, Gloria, please!’

  ‘Neun! … Zehn!’ cried the German, but Gloria made no sound.

  After a second’s pause the officer in charge of the party shouted at his sailors: ‘Get busy, you men! They must be here somewhere. Ferret them out, and be quick about it!’

  There followed the same bumping and scraping of boxes as Philip had heard half an hour before, but it was much nearer now. He wondered miserably if he had been justified in first forcing and then entreating Gloria to keep silent. Had he allowed her to disclose herself in the first place, they might have treated her with more leniency than they would when they found her after their long and tiring search. Yet he felt certain that his judgment had been right when he had sought to conceal her, even against her will. He had not thought then that any search would be made for them, much less one so thorough, and every instinct he possessed cried out against allowing a girl to place any reliance on the chivalry of a crowd of young Nazified German sailors.