The Black Baroness (41 page)

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 puzzling 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’ fast walking he came to an empty, boarded-up plot between two houses so, having given a hasty glance round to see that he was not observed, he pushed the suitcase through a gap in the fence and hurried on.

Outside the town he got on to the Bruges road as, in view of the fact that Antwerp in the north had fallen days before and that the situation to the south was so obscure, Bruges-Ostend seemed the most likely line of retreat for the Belgian Royal Party. The German columns were still trundling westward but nobody took any notice of him as here and there other civilians were walking along the road or standing in front of their cottages watching the seemingly inexhaustible forces of the invader.

After he had covered about three miles, shells from the Allies’ batteries began to pitch on to the road and into the fields on either side of it. The German column was then broken by its transport officers into sections with a two-hundred-yard gap between each so that the sections could be rushed one at a time
through the zones in which the shells were bursting. As he advanced still further the column seemed to dissolve altogether; infantry and artillery units deployed into the fields or turned up side-tracks while only tanks continued down the highway. At the entrance to a shattered village he was halted by a patrol so he produced his German passport and said that he was an Intelligence Officer going forward in civilian clothes with the intention of penetrating the British lines and securing such information as he could about their strength and battery positions.

This statement proved to be a bad break as it transpired that the Germans were not up against the British in this sector, but the Belgians, and a suspicious sergeant insisted on holding him until an officer could question him further.

On being taken before a young Captain, Gregory endeavoured to lie his way out of the difficulty by saying that he had come direct from Corps Headquarters where they had definite information that certain British units had been moved up into that area during the night.

The Captain denied this and looked as if he were going to become extremely troublesome but Gregory was on the top of his form again. He put on his most authoritative Colonel-Baron manner and declared that for the present purposes it did not in the least matter whether British or Belgians were holding that sector of the line. What
did
matter was that he should get through as quickly as possible so that he could assess their strength himself, and that if he were delayed in his mission the Corps Commander would hold the Captain responsible. At this threat, delivered with icy Prussian arrogance, the young officer caved in and allowed him to proceed on his way.

He could, he knew, have avoided such potentially dangerous encounters by having retained his Colonel’s uniform, but he had felt that he might have great difficulty in finding any suitable place in which to change into civilian clothes in broad daylight when he reached no-man’s-land and, although he might have succeeded in getting himself quietly taken prisoner bv the British or the Belgians, to advance into the Allies’ lines dressed as a German officer was positively asking to be shot on sight; so he had preferred to face the trouble of satisfying any German patrol who chose to hold him up. In the next mile he was challenged four more times, but his passport as Colonel-Baron
von Lutz and his impeccable German got him through on each occasion.

The sunny landscape now presented a most misleading appearance. The road stretched away empty towards the horizon. Not a soul nor any sign of human acitivity was to be seen on either side of it except for the occasional flash of a camouflaged gun or the puff of smoke from a shell-burst; yet Gregory knew that the countryside was alive with men lying in ditches and concealed trenches. For the last hour he had been following the roadside ditch and a dozen times had had to fling himself down into it in order to escape shell fragments; but now he followed the tactics he had employed when crossing the battle-zone between Uccle and Brussels, going boldly forward in the centre of the road, except when it was positively dangerous to do so, and making himself as conspicuous as possible. After fifteen minutes’ swift, and distinctly nerve-racking, walk he crossed a low ridge and drew level with some bushes. Suddenly a voice with a strong Lancashire accent cried:

‘Hi, lad, coom ’ere an’ giv’ an account o’ thyself!’

Switching round he saw that a British Tommy was covering him with a rifle. The man had not expected that his words would be understood, as he naturally imagined Gregory to be a Belgian, but his tone and attitude conveyed his meaning clearly enough. To the soldier’s intense surprise Gregory replied: ‘Ay, lad, I’ll coom quietly if thou’llst take me to Colonel.’

‘Ba goom!’ The astounded Tommy grinned at three companions who had risen beside him to peer over the bushes. ‘ ’E coomes from Lancashire.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m a Londoner,’ Gregory smiled. ‘I’m an Intelligence Officer and I want to see your Colonel as quickly as possible.’

The manner of the lad from Lancashire immediately changed to friendly respect and joining Gregory on the road he accompanied him another quarter of a mile along it until they reached a small wood. Concealed in the wood lay a company headquarters and the Captain, having had a few words with Gregory, attached a runner to him to take him back to battalion headquarters.

Having covered half a mile with his new guide, during which they availed themselves of all the cover they possibly could to avoid being machine-gunned by German aircraft which had suddenly arrived overhead, they reached a barn inside which a
Colonel and his adjutant were seated at a rickety table studying a map. Gregory said that he had just come through the enemy lines after having spent over a week in Brussels so he wished to make a report upon what he had seen of the enemy’s activities there.

The Colonel replied that such information would be much more useful to Divisional Intelligence than to himself. Gregory agreed, but he spent ten minutes telling the Colonel all he could of the disposition of the German forces immediately opposite to him; then with yet another guide he set off once more.

Some way further on they had to cross a slightly higher ridge and, on looking back, Gregory could see the whole of the local battle-front spread out before him. Shells were bursting much more frequently now on both sides of no-man’s-land and away to the right a German attack was developing. He could make out about thirty tanks, like huge fast-moving slugs, bumping their way over hedges and ditches. As he watched several of them were suddenly obscured by splashes of flame and clouds of smoke. A British battery had got their range and was giving it to them hot and strong. In spite of his anxiety to be on his way he felt that he must stay to witness the end of the action and rive minutes later, when the smoke had cleared, he saw that a dozen of the German tanks had stopped and were burning fiercely while the others had turned tail and were hurrying back to the shelter of a nearby wood; yet another German attack had been broken.