No Entry

by Manning Coles

  Hambledon instantly bent his head down and put his hands behind him lest the light falling on them should betray his presence, but the man in the doorway merely looked up and down the road, listened for a moment, and said: “All clear. Come on,” to someone behind him.

  Two more men came out. One was of medium height or less, like the first, but the third was tall and slim and even in that dim light it could be seen that he moved and held himself differently from the others. He turned back to speak in a low tone to whoever was shutting the door after them and someone wrung him by the hand.

  “Never,” said the tall young man, “never, so long as I live,” and only Hambledon’s preternaturally sharp hearing enabled him to catch the words.

  The tall man turned away just as one of his companions put out his hand to pull his arm and all three walked off up the street, with their heavy boots clumping on the dry road. The tall man was in the middle, the shorter ones upon either side and Hambledon, in his soft crepe-rubber soles, followed silently after.

  “It is extremely good of you,” said the tall young man, “to take all this trouble——”

  “Shut your trap,” said one of the men roughly. “Give us away at once if anyone hears. Nobody talks like that in these parts. And stroll, don’t walk so fast. Nobody strides along this time of night.”

  The young man said no more and the three went on without speaking; Hambledon, following behind, had plenty to think about. No doubt the underground movement continually sheltered men on the run for one reason or another; hid them in attics and passed them from place to place by night. Where there is tyranny there will always be men evading it. It would be unwise to assume that this man was necessarily Micklejohn, though there was that about him which strongly suggested it. He walked, even in those boots, with a lighter step than the others, he had the loose-limbed balanced swing of the natural athlete, not the heavy-footed tramp of the labourer, and he carried his head high like a free man. But it was his voice which had startled Hambledon. The young man’s German was excellent; fluent, grammatical, and carefully pronounced. Too good, as the other man had said; extremely well taught, in fact, and almost certainly not his native tongue. It was not guttural enough; it was much too clear.

  If the message about trusting Ludwig Kirsch had gone astray, this man could very well be Micklejohn.

  At this moment some inner prompting urged Hambledon to drop back and let the three get further ahead: he slowed up and stopped by the entrance to a yard.

  The three men ahead of him were much too far off for Hambledon to hear anything that was said in a low tone, or even, in that darkness, to observe small movements. One of the two shorter men had taken to glancing over his shoulder and the other noticed it.

  “What’s the matter, Franz?” he asked in a low tone, peering round the young man in the middle.

  “I think we’re being followed,” answered the other, in an equally low voice.

  “Why, did you hear anything?”

  They all stopped together and listened intently; Hambledon, thirty yards behind them, slipped like a prowling cat into the yard and waited.

  “Didn’t hear nothing,” said Franz. “I just felt there was someone.”

  “I hear absolutely nothing except the leaves rustling,” said the tall young man.

  “Wait here,” said Franz. “I’ll go back.”

  Hambledon heard him coming, one man alone, and went to ground behind the gatepost. The man passed the yard entrance, went a little further along the street, and paused for a moment before he turned and came past again to rejoin his companions.

  “Find anyone?” said Franz’s friend.

  “No.”

  “Satisfied, then?” said the tall man.

  “No.”

  Hambledon did not move from his place until he heard them all start walking again. When he put his head cautiously round the gatepost he saw them, against a lighted window, looking back over their shoulders.

  Hambledon cursed under his breath, for now he would have to keep so far behind that it would be quite easy in the dark to lose them altogether. He went on with the most extreme caution, following only the sound of their footsteps until they passed out of the village and walked on along the road. He followed them for some distance, nearly half a mile, before the footsteps stopped and there came the clash of an iron gate being closed. After that, silence. Hambledon held his breath; a moment later he heard, very faintly, the sound of a closing door.

  He moved more easily now that they were within some building which might, with luck, be identifiable by the iron gate. In any case, they would have to make some sort of light and no house is really lightproof.

  The night was less dark by now; the sky had cleared and somewhere behind the hills the moon was rising. Hambledon came to a fence enclosing a big yard, weedy and overgrown with disuse and he remembered passing it earlier that day, when he first came. It had a faded and broken notice board still standing; since he had been looking for a sausage factory, he had read what was left of the inscription. Möbelfabrik. Not sausages. Furniture.

  Hambledon climbed over the gate, there was a large shed across the yard, facing him. There were some balks of timber stacked up to his left, on his right a broken-down timber tug. He walked on to the big shed and circled round it. There was the door by which they had entered. The shed was built of wood and some of the planks were rotten and slipping. Further along, at the back, there was a faint light showing through a slit, a candle on a table, and three men round it.

  Hambledon leaned his ear against the slit and listened.

  “—have to stay here tonight,” one of the German voices was saying. “Such short notice as that, no time to work out a plan, nothing arranged.” The usual German discomfiture if every detail is not settled beforehand.

  “I am very greatly obliged to you,” began the educated voice, but Franz interrupted him.

  “Not good of us at all,” he said grumpily. “We only done it because you are a danger to all of us. If you’d been caught there, there’d have been shootings against a wall and we’ve had too many already.”

  “But I still find it hard to believe”—the young voice again—“that just because a man comes and asks for Ehrlich—he was told Ehrlich was not here and never had been——”

  “Ach, but it was the man who came! It was that Ludwig Kirsch as bold as brass, giving his name as though we had never heard of him! We know about him, the Russian spy in Goslar, he’s here only to make trouble, he is. Hobnobbing with the Russian Army in Magdeburg. They gave him a banquet the other night, pity it didn’t poison the lot of them. If you can’t see nothing wrong you’ve got no sense.”

  “Well, you’ll have to stay here tonight and we’ll see about getting you away in the morning. You can sleep in the wood drier. Nobody will look for you there and you can have some sacks to sleep on.”

  “I hope there’s a little more room than there was over the Vopo headquarters,” said the young man cheerfully. “I couldn’t move.”

  “Was that where old Neumann put you? Well, what a place! How did you get there?”

  “Up into the roof and through an attic partition, you know; just planks between, but they’d got it all stacked up with boxes and I dared not move them.”

  “When was this, then?”

  “When that man first came, Kirsch, you know. Muller rattled the handle of his door and shut it twice, that was the signal somebody was asking for me and I’d better clear out. If Kirsch had gone to the Vopos they might have searched the houses and that was one place we were sure they would not look into.”

  Hambledon abandoned his listening post, for he had heard enough. The tall young man was Micklejohn and the next thing to do was to go in and get him without being shot at sight. He made his way round to the door, slipping out his picklocks as he went, because if the door was not locked it ought to be. It was the only outer door in the place except for the great double doors in front, which had not been opened for four long yea
rs. He tried the handle of the small door and was rather indignant than otherwise when it opened at once.

  “These amateur conspirators,” he muttered, and closed the door carefully behind him—he could not lock it, there was no key.

  The door had admitted him to a vast workshop; furniture making takes a lot of room. The three men were in a small room at the far end, probably once the manager’s office, and the light from the candle showed through the broken glass panels of the office door. Hambledon, keeping close to the wall, thought it safe to switch on for a moment at a time the tiny pencil torch which kept him clear of disused machines and odd stacks of unidentifiable rubbish. He reached the door without attracting attention, turned the handle, and walked straight in.

  “Good evening,” he began.

  The three men whirled round to face him, the two Germans with guns in their hands and their mouths open, but Hambledon went straight on.

  “My name is Hambledon and I am an Englishman, come here to take out one George Micklejohn. You, I think, are George Micklejohn, are you not? We have never met but I have seen your photograph. I think——”

  He was interrupted by a sort of muffled bellow from Franz.

  “That is a damned lie! You are the Russian spy from the other side, Ludwig Kirsch. I saw you in the village this afternoon.”

  “Ludwig Kirsch is in gaol in Goslar. I came over here on his papers.”

  “Another lie. Kirsch was in Magdeburg the other day, sucking up to the Russians. They gave him a banquet——”

  “They gave me a banquet,” said Hambledon mildly, “but I am still not Ludwig Kirsch.”

  “Are you trying to tell us nobody noticed you’d changed your face?”

  “They had never seen Kirsch,” said Hambledon. “He has never been over this side.”

  Micklejohn intervened. “I will speak to him in English, I shall know at once if he is not an Englishman.” He changed to English. “Mr. Hambledon, is this really true? I heard that there was someone of that name come to Goslar to look for me.”

  “Perfectly true. Your father asked for someone to be sent out and I got the job. You heard I was there, then, but you didn’t get another message telling you to trust Ludwig Kirsch?”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t. But there was some trouble one day last week, somebody got shot. I expect——”

  “That would be it,” said Hambledon. “Damn those trigger-happy Vopos.”

  “Chattering away,” said Franz angrily, “and we don’t understand a word of it. How are we to know what you’re saying?”

  Micklejohn reverted to German.

  “He’s English all right—by the way, wait a minute. I’ve got a photograph in my wallet. Here it is. The Vopos took this when you went up to The Wire, Herr Hambledon, and a copy was passed to me asking if I knew you. I didn’t, of course.” He gave the print to the Germans, who peered at it under the candlelight. “You can see it’s the same man.”

  “It’s a Vopo photograph all right,” said Franz’s companion. “I’ve seen the like of that before.”

  “Yes, maybe, but that don’t prove he isn’t Kirsch,” said Franz obstinately. “You’re too simple, Ernst. Kirsch could have gone up to The Wire, like anybody else on the other side, couldn’t he?”

  Hambledon said: “Micklejohn, do you believe me?”

  “I do, yes. I don’t understand how you could have got away with impersonating Kirsch, but I’m perfectly certain you are English and not German.

  “I don’t like it,” said Franz, but his friend Ernst, who never said much at any time, took the floor for once. He spoke a dialect so thick that Micklejohn had difficulty in following him.

  “I don’t see,” said Ernst slowly, “as it matters to us, Franz. As I see it, we was asked to get him out of here because Kirsch was after him. Well, now, if he”—pointing a gnarled forefinger at Micklejohn—“is satisfied, if he wants to go with this man as says he isn’t Kirsch, why should we stop him? We don’t want him here, do we?”

  “No,” said Franz, “that’s right. You’re right, Ernst. You come over here,” he went on, addressing Micklejohn, “wandering across, only der lieber Gott knows how, and you have to be fed and sheltered and hidden away and all of us in danger on your account as though we hadn’t enough to worry about without you——”

  “Believe me,” said Micklejohn passionately, “I realise all that perfectly well, and when I think what some of you people have done for me, I—I can’t——”

  “All right, all right,” said Franz, not unkindly. “So long as you do realise it. Well, if you want to go with this Herr Whatever-it-is, I say, go.”

  Ernst nodded agreement.

  “Well, that’s all right,” said Hambledon. “I don’t anticipate much trouble in getting you out, Micklejohn, you are my new assistant and I have permission to take you back into Western Germany with——”

  The door at the far end of the shed opened without precaution against noise and a man came running, with an electric torch to guide his steps. He called out something as he came and Franz said: “All right. It’s only Walter.”

  He came up to the door of the little office, looked round him at Hambledon and Micklejohn, and said: “Ach, good. I am in time, then.” He leaned against the doorpost, panting. “I have run all the way.”

  21: X37

  He was a weaselly little man, thin and in poor condition, but his eyes glittered in the candlelight. “There is news,” he said, “from Magdeburg. Wilhelm Greiger’s son August, you know? He works at the Russian Headquarters at Magdeburg, he is a waiter.”

  Franz was impatient. “That is no news, he has been there for weeks.”

  “Ach! As though I run to tell you that! This is something he heard while he was serving vodka to that Russian pig of a general and his guests. The news is that the Englander who came over here got back again the same day and went home to England at once, and the proof of that is that the Russians have called off the search for him and all their soldiers have gone back to their kennels. So, this man you all think an innocent Englander, what is he? A police spy. A police spy. Living here among us all——”

  “Absolute nonsense,” said Micklejohn sharply. “I am the Englander of whom you speak and I have never been a spy in my life.”

  “I myself,” said Hambledon, “told the Russians that lie for the express purpose of having the search cancelled.” But they were not listening to him, the damage was done. The three Germans were standing together by the door. Ernst’s and Franz’s guns were out again and all their faces were alive with fear and suspicion.

  “Put your hands up!” bellowed Franz suddenly. “And get back the other side of the table! I never did trust either of you, and Gottes Wort, I was right!”

  “Who is that?” asked Walter, the newcomer, pointing at Hambledon.

  “Ludwig Kirsch.”

  “Ach! He who told the Russians the Englander had gone. Now he says he is not gone, eh? Very clever man, Ludwig Kirsch, it is said. He does not look so clever now, does he?”

  “What do we do with them?” asked Ernst. “Take them outside and kill them? It will make a mess in here and leave marks on the floor.”

  “Quatsch!” said Walter. “There is plenty of sawdust and wood shavings on the floor. They will soak up the blood. Shoot them in here, I say; if we take them outside, they might escape.”

  Hambledon looked at Micklejohn, who had turned a little green, for it is one thing to face death with a decent degree of fortitude and quite another to hear oneself described as a mess on the floor. However, he managed a valiant if rather sickly grin.

  Franz, whose weapon was a Russian-made automatic, told Ernst to keep the prisoners covered while he wrestled with his gun and something which he had taken from his pocket.

  “What is that?” asked Walter.

  “Silencer. Without it, these guns make so loud a noise, if there is anyone within half a mile—ach! These Russian weapons! If only I had one of our good German weapons, but this is——”
The silencer jammed and refused to move on or off and Franz threw it down on the table. “I cannot see,” he said angrily. “I get a light,” and stumped out of the room.

  “If I can make any sort of diversion,” said Hambledon in English to Micklejohn, “go flat on the floor by the table. I shall do much better if I haven’t got to worry about you.”

  “I’ve done some amateur boxing,” said Micklejohn helpfully, “it seems a pity not to use it.”

  Hambledon grinned. “You can always bob up again, can’t you?”

  “Quiet there!” said Walter commandingly. “I do not like your jabbering together.”

  “And remember,” added Hambledon, still in English, “no Queensberry Rules here. Kick first and apologise afterwards!”

  There came from outside the room the sound of someone pumping vigorously; a moment later a bright light entered the room, carried by Franz, who set it down on the table.

  “That petrol lamp,” said Ernst uneasily, “it is not safe in here. Those things explode.”

  “Only when they become overheated,” said Franz, picking up his gun again. “I can’t see without it.” He wrenched at the silencer and Walter came close to watch him. “Ach! The devil-damned thing——”

  Even Ernst, who had kept his eyes and his gun steadily upon the Englishman, could not any longer resist. He looked down at Franz’s gun——

  Instantly Hambledon moved forward and his knee came up under the table, tilting it away from him; the lamp fell over, rolled off the table between Walter and Ernst, and exploded. Burning petrol ran about the floor, the trampled shavings caught fire, and the flames began to spread. Hambledon threw the table over upon Walter, who failed to withstand it and cannoned into Franz just at the moment when Micklejohn dodged round the table and hit him violently on the ear and the nose and finally in the eye. He forgot Hambledon’s warning about kicking, but Franz reminded him with a hack on the shin which brought him down.