The Black Baroness (56 page)

When the
agent de ville
arrived he was very tactful, but it transpired that he was acting under the orders of Colonel Lacroix. He had been instructed to tell Gregory that the Colonel did not consider him in a fit state to operate for the time being and that if he attempted to leave his bed he was to be placed under arrest; also that Paris was in no immediate danger, but should the capture of the city become imminent the invalid would be evacuated before there was any risk of his becoming a prisoner. In the meantime, Lacroix sent his best wishes for Gregory’s speedy recovery and a promise that he would be allowed his freedom the moment that the doctor’s reports showed him well enough not to abuse it.

This was a state of things against which it was difficult to take counter-measures. Gregory knew Lacroix too well to believe that the Colonel would succumb to pleas or argument, and he realised that he was really not yet up to tackling the job of evading both Sister Madeleine and the
agent de ville
. In his heart of hearts he knew, too, that Lacroix’s decision had been a wise one; so he resigned himself to accept it, but he sent for a war map and followed every fresh bulletin with the greatest anxiety.

It was known that the Germans were now within twenty miles of Paris. By mid-day news came in that their armoured divisions had smashed through on the Lower Oise to Persan and Beaumont. To the East they were now endeavouring to drive a spear-head behind the Maginot Line; around Rheims the pressure was increasing hourly, and they succeeded in forcing the Passage of the Marne at Château-Thierry. West of Paris the situation was equally critical; between Rouen and Vernon the Germans had established bridge-heads across the Lower Seine and by evening it was learnt that Le Havre was in peril.

This last piece of news seemed to Gregory especially grave. Le Havre was the main British war base and there stocks of millions of shells, thousands of lorries, hundreds of guns and colossal quantities of other equipment had been steadily built up during the whole nine months of the war. As long as Le Havre remained in our possession these could be used to re-equip fresh units sent from home; but their quantity was far too great for them to be moved, so if the Germans succeeded in
forcing their way down the coast this incalculably valuable accumulation of brand new war material must be either destroyed or captured.

There had been little movement on France’s Italian front, so it looked as though Mussolini was chary of testing out the valour of his Fascists, but the R.A.F, had bombed Turin, Genoa, Milan, Tobruk and Italy’s Abyssinian bases, with good effect. Spain had made a formal announcement of nonbelligerency in favour of the Axis, so evidently our new Ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, had cut little ice with General Franco as yet.

On the Thursday Gregory telephoned a store for some ready-made clothes on approval and from them selected an outfit to replace his clergyman’s gear. The morning papers said that the French had made counter-attacks at Persan and Beaumont, winning back five miles of ground, but that further west, at Rouen, the situation was worsening hourly. The Germans were now throwing in their unarmoured infantry with utter recklessness and their troops were pouring over their bridge-heads across the lower Seine. East of Paris, Rheims had fallen and the new German thrust to outflank the Maginot Line was making rapid progress.

During that day the enemy were steadily closing in on the western, northern and eastern approaches to Paris, and General Weygand formally declared it an open city. At night Reynaud broadcast a last desperate appeal to President Roosevelt while the B.B.C. proclaimed that Britain’s factories were now working night and day without cessation to equip a new army, the advance units of which were sailing hour by hour as rifles and gas-masks could be placed in the hands of the mea who had been saved from Dunkirk.

On the Friday, Gregory had so far recovered that even Sister Madeleine agreed that he was sufficiently well to get up, and after breakfast he was just about to do so when, having left the room for a moment, she returned to announce a visitor. To Gregory’s surprise and delight Kuporovitch walked in.

The Russian was in gigantic spirits. He had flown from England that morning and at last achieved his ambition of reaching Paris again after twenty-six years of exile from his beloved holiday resort.

Even the sound of the battle which was raging outside the city, and the sight of the streams of refugees passing through it,
could not altogether rob him of his joy. From his taxi he had seen many of the old familiar landmarks—the Opéra, the Madeleine, the Rue Royale, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées and the Petit Palais. Central Paris as yet had not suffered sufficient damage for the effect of the German air-raids to be apparent and the cafés, the crowded pavements and the gardens had seemed to him little altered, except for the change of fashion and the great increase in motor traffic, since he had seen them over a quarter of a century before.

To Gregory’s anxious inquiry about Erika he replied at once: ‘Be of good cheer. For some days after we reached London her state was again critical, but she turned the corner on the Friday after we left Dunkirk and this last week has made a vast difference. At last she is able to talk a little and she says that it was her will to live for you which brought her through the dark places when she so nearly died; so you may be certain that she will not slip back now.’

‘Thank God!’ Gregory sighed. ‘And I’m eternally grateful to you, Stefan, for the way in which you looked after her.’

Kuporovitch shrugged. ‘It was a joy, my friend. The good Sir Peliinore, to whom I took her immediately we reached London, has entertained me in a most princely fashion. To live in that great house of his is, except for some slight differences in national custom, to be back again in the mansion of a Prussian nobleman as we lived before the Revolution. I had no idea that even in England such a state of things still survived outside the story-books, and London, too, is a revelation. In spite of everything the people lunch and dine in the crowded restaurants and go about their business as if there were no threat to their security at all; yet things are being done there now. Churchill, Beaverbrook, Bevin and some others are cutting the red tape at last and underneath the casualness one senses the iron will of the people to defeat Hitler whatever it may cost them.’

‘I’ve never doubted that,’ said Gregory. ‘It seems always to take a frightful knocking about really to rouse the fighting spirit in us; but once it’s there woe betide the enemy. Things are in a pretty bad way here, though.’

‘So I have gathered. But who is to blame for that? The British were responsible for holding a great sector of the Allied line; instead of doing so they went home with little but their shirts. That left a great gap which the British could have filled again if they had broken through, or counterbalanced if they
had dug themselves in on the coast as a threat to the German rear. But they did neither, and the French were left to get out of the mess as best they could, alone.’

‘I thought that too,’ Gregory agreed, ‘until I learned that the British had good reason for going home when they did. The French High Command is rotten, Stefan. Weygand is not the great man we thought him. There is treachery right up at the very top. I’ve now come to the conclusion that our Government must have known that and decided to get our men out alive, before the French ratted on them and they were left to face the whole weight of the German Army on their own, which would have meant absolute annihilation.’

Kuporovitch shook his head. ‘No, Gregory; you are wrong there. The evacuation from Dunkirk was ordered on May the 29th and it is now June the 14th. As you and I sit here, the British Government is shipping troops back to France as hard as it can go. Do you believe for one moment that they would be doing that if they had already formed the conclusion sixteen days ago that the French meant to throw their hand in?’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Gregory sighed. ‘If they brought the men off from Dunkirk because they feared the French were going to do a “Leopold” on us they could hardly be sending them back again while the situation remains so uncertain.’

‘A “Leopold”, eh?’ Kuporovitch’s dark eyebrows went up with a quizzical expression. ‘I hope you realise, my friend, that when the history of this war comes to be written Leopold and the people responsible for Dunkirk are going to be lumped together. Whatever the English school-books may say, the school-books of the rest of the world will record that after seventeen days’ fighting the Belgians ratted on the British and that after nineteen days’ fighting the British ratted on the French. What other word can be applied to the fact that, while still whole and undefeated, one of the finest armies that your country has ever put into the field gave up any further attempt to wage war upon the enemy and abandoned its Ally?’

‘I suppose one can’t blame the French for looking at things that way,’ Gregory admitted. ‘The retreat and evacuation has certainly given Hitler’s Fifth Column in France just the ammunition they required for their work of severing the Allies, and it’s quite on the cards now that within a few days France may make a separate Peace.’

‘True. But there is still hope that they may be induced to
carry on the fight. Even now our good Sir Pellinore is with Mr. Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook, who are on their way to Bordeaux to see if they cannot bolster up the shaking edifice.’

‘Is that what you came to tell me?’

Kuporovitch nodded. ‘Now that Erika is out of danger I at last felt justified in appeasing my desire to see Paris again, and when I told Sir Pellinore that he said to me: “Find Gregory, if you can, and tell him how uncertain things are now with the French. If they decide to fight on—well and good; but if they surrender there is a risk that he might be caught in France. Tell him to make his way to Bordeaux and to join me at the Hotel Julius Caesar; then I shall be able to get him safely out of the country should France collapse.”’

‘And what view does Sir Pellinore take of things?’

The Russian hunched his shoulders. ‘He is by no means optimistic. The loss of Paris will be a grave blow to France and he gave me the impression that he felt that only a miracle could save her now.’

Gregory frowned. ‘I believe I might have pulled off that miracle three nights ago, but that little fiend,
La Baronne Noire,
poisoned me when I was in Italy and I’ve been laid by the heels ever since.’

‘Poisoned you, eh? Tell me about that.’

Gregory gave a resumé of what had befallen him since he had parted from Kuporovitch on the beach at Dunkirk, and when he had finished, the Russian said:

‘There is only one thing for it; we must get this woman, Gregory, and those papers of which Lacroix spoke. They are becoming of more importance every moment, now that with each hour there becomes more likelihood of France going out of the war.’

Gregory nodded. ‘Lacroix can’t keep me here much longer, because the Germans are at the gates, and I’m expecting to have a word from him at any time telling me that I can go. I’m quite fit enough again now to have another crack at the Black Lady and it will help a lot to have you with me; but it’s rotten luck that you should have to leave Paris because the Germans are about to enter it the very day that you get here.’

Kuporovitch smiled ruefully. ‘Yes; it is hard indeed. Perhaps now I shall never again see Montmartre, or the Luxemburg Gardens, or the Bois; but one thing I shall regret above all—
and that is, not to have taken my
apéritif
with a pretty girl on a sunny morning outside Wagner’s on the pavements of the Rue Royale.’

‘Well, that at least is not impossible,’ Gregory laughed. ‘It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, you could hardly have a sunnier day, and I imagine that the cafés are still open. As for the pretty girl—why not ask my nurse, Sister Madeleine? You can get there in ten minutes in a taxi. Take her out and give her a drink while I telephone Lacroix and get dressed.’

The Russian beamed; Sister Madeleine smilingly accepted his invitation when she learned how far he had travelled for the pleasure of once more visiting her native city, and they set off together while Gregory got up to have his bath.

When he had finished he was just about to telephone Lacroix; but he had no need to
do
so as a messenger arrived for him at that moment with a letter from the Colonel, which read:

‘
I hear from your doctor that you are now fit enough to travel, which is good news indeed at such a time of grief. Our troops have now completed their withdrawal and only armed police to prevent looting are left in the capital. The salle Boche will once again pollute the Champs Elysées by a formal entry at three o’clock this afternoon. Therefore, you should leave at once
.

‘
The lady of whom we spoke when I last saw you left Fontainebleau on Wednesday morning. Perhaps she feared that the sight of an expensive car might attract unwelcome attention from the more desperate of our refugees; or it may be that she had another reason. In any case, she left, with her chauffeur only, on the box of a blue Ford van lettered in gold
“Maison Pasquette—Blanchisserie”.

‘
It is virtually certain that she will have followed the Government to Tours and Bordeaux but she has a villa in the South of France. It is called Les Roches and is at Pointe des Issambres between Saint Maxime and Saint Raphael, so later she may go there with her baggage
.

‘
May the good God have you in his keeping in these difficult hours and grant that in happier times we may meet again.
’

The bare facts in the letter would have conveyed little to a casual reader, but to Gregory they conveyed a lot. The reason that the Black Baroness had elected to journey south by van
instead of by car was plain enough. A Ford van could move just as quickly as a car on a road choked with refugees, and she had no intention of leaving her most valued possessions to be destroyed by shell-fire or looted in her absence. In the van there would be much more room to take pictures, furs, jewels and letter-files than in a car, and the underlining of the word ‘baggage’ clearly inferred that Lacroix hoped that now Gregory was fit again he would go after those letter-files; and that, quite definitely, was what he meant to do.