The Black Baroness (59 page)

Owing to its silencer the report of the pistol was no more than a cough, and, as Gregory had intended, the shot shattered the windscreen of the van just above the man’s head. Ducking down so that he was completely hidden, he held his breath and waited.

The sound of tinkling glass was instantly followed by a yell of fright and rage, then louder shouts which brought the garage hands and chauffeurs running in from outside. In the excited conversation that followed Gregory gathered that the driver had no idea at all what had happened and was under the impression that somebody must have thrown a brickbat at the windscreen while he was dozing; but the others assured him that nobody had entered the garage, and Gregory soon learnt that his ruse had succeeded. The driver had been cut by the Hying glass and was being led off by his companions to have his slight injuries doctored.

As soon as the coast was clear Gregory left his hiding-place, went straight to the back of the van and with two more shots
from his pistol shattered its lock. Pulling open the doors he rapidly surveyed the van’s contents. There were half a dozen medium-sized pictures in gilt frames, several packing-cases—doubtless containing other
objets d’art
—two Louis Vuitton wardrobe-trunks, three suitcases, the rawhide dressing-case that be well remembered seeing in Rotterdam, six large japanned-steel deed boxes and five or six valuable fur coats thrown on the top of the pile.

It was the deed-boxes that he was after, but he could not possibly make off with all six of them, as he could distinctly catch the murmur of quick voices and knew that several of the chauffeurs must have remained outside the garage to discuss the extraordinary incident that had just occurred.

In ten seconds he had decided that he dared not attempt to burgle the van and must carry out his original idea of travelling in it; but the smashed lock, when discovered, would almost certainly lead to a search of the van’s interior unless some explanation were offered for it, so the obvious thing was to make the whole episode appear like a carefully-planned theft.

Snatching up the fur coats, he hurried with them to an aged, semi-derelict Citroën that he had noticed at the back of the garage and pushed them into its boot, where it was unlikely that they would be discovered tor some time; then, hurrying back to the van, he made a few rapid readjustments to its contents.

He did not alter the general layout of the various articles but drew them all a little nearer to the back of the van so that a space was left behind the driver’s seat in which he could lie down without being observed by anyone who looked inside. Then, leaving the doors wide open, he took off his coat to form a pillow for his head and settled down to make himself as comfortable as he could.

He found that he was very tired now, and in spite of the hard boards upon which he was lying he dropped off to sleep; but he was soon roused by angry, excited voices. Evidently the driver had returned and discovered that the van had been broken into. There was silence for a time as the man went away, doubtless to report the theft of the fur coats, for when he returned Gregory could hear the Baroness talking to him.

At first her voice showed acute anxiety, but on ascertaining that only the furs had gone she quietened down and arranged with one of the garage hands to affix a padlock to replace the
shattered lock, and a quarter of an hour later Gregory found himself a prisoner.

He did not mind that in the least. The great thing was that he had escaped observation. The Baroness would probably unlock the doors herself in due course, which would provide him with an excellent opportunity of coming face to face with her if he so wished; or, alternatively, if the van were left locked up for the night he felt confident that he would manage to break out of it. A few moments later the van began to jolt and drove out of the garage. They were on their way.

Anart from the fact that he suffered acute discomfort Gregory knew nothing of that strange journey. For a time they bumped over the pavé streets of the city, then evidently came out upon an open road, as the van began to run more smoothly and considerably increased its pace. Gregory then knew that he had been right about the engine, as on certain stretches the van appeared to develop the speed of a racing-car and was certainly doing well over eighty miles an hour.

Soon after they started he made himself more comfortable by sitting up and rearranging some of the things about him to prevent his being jolted quite so badly. A crack of light coming through the door was just enough for him to see by and he arranged matters so that although the contents of the van were to some extent altered around he was still hidden by the pictures, if at any time a halt was made without warning and the van doors suddenly opened.

Gradually, as night fell, the crack of light dimmed. When they had been on the road for two hours it was only a faint line, and after another hour the interior of the van was unrelieved Stygian blackness. Swaying a little from side to side as the van raced on into the night, Gregory thought of Erika and wondered if the gods who had so often favoured him would grant him one more slice of luck so that he might be finished with his business soon and in another few days be back with her in England. Then he slept.

He was wakened by the van jerking to a halt, and looking at the luminous dial of his watch he saw that it was five-past one. They had been on the road for over six hours so it seemed highly probable that the Baroness had accomplished the first stage of her journey and meant to remain for the rest of the night at whatever place they had reached; but Gregory was soon disillusioned in his hopes of this. Five minutes later the
van started off again; evidently it had stopped only for petrol. Their pace, he noted, was now considerably slower but they were steadily eating up the miles and after drearily rocking from side to side, for what seemed a long time, he again dropped off to sleep.

When he next woke he could see the line of light again, but from the sounds around him he felt sure that they had pulled up in a street. His watch showed him that it was a quarter to six, but even at that early hour there was a considerable amount of traffic about. He could hear the hum of passing motor-cars and occasionally the hoot of horns, so, although the van remained stationary for some time, he did not feel that it was as yet advisable to attempt breaking out.

The fact that the Baroness had not stopped anywhere on the road to sleep considerably perturbed him, for it looked, now that morning was come, as if she intended to go straight through to her destination; and every mile that they covered meant another mile for him to traverse on his return journey to rejoin Sir Pellinore. They had now been nearly eleven hours on the road, so even if he had been in a position to turn back at once he could not have reached Bordeaux before five o’clock in the afternoon, and Sir Pellinore was sailing that night.

Gregory had a good memory for maps and distances, and assuming that the Baroness was heading for Pointe des Issambres he tried to work out how far they might have got. Taking into consideration the speed at which they had been going during the early part of the journey, he came to the conclusion that they had crossed from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean coast of France during the night and were now probably in Nimes or Avignon.

Evidently the Baroness had been refreshing herself with
petit déjeuner
at some hotel, as soon after seven o’clock the van jolted into motion again. Their pace was now much slower; he judged it to be not more than twenty miles an hour and could guess the reason. If, as he supposed, they were travelling east on the Route Nationale, which links Nimes and Avignon with Cannes and Monte Carlo, at the two former cities they would have come into the streams of refugees which for days had been heading towards the South of France.

As time went on the streak of light became quite dazzling against the surrounding darkness and the strong sunshine beat down relentlessly on the roof, making the interior of the van
intolerably hot. Gregory would have given anything for an iced drink, but he had to content himself with a pull at the lukewarm brandy-and-water in his flask and a couple of bars of chocolate for his breakfast.

At ten o’clock the van stopped again, but only for a few minutes, evidently once more to fill up with petrol, and it seemed as though this interminable journey would never end. By that time they had been on the road for fifteen hours so Gregory had reluctantly had to give up any hope of getting back to Bordeaux in time to sail with Sir Pellinore, A little grimly he realised that if France went out of the war he would have to make his way back to England as best he could. By mid-day the van had obviously left the main road. Its pace was no quicker but it constantly twisted from side to side and went up and down steep hills, so Gregory felt certain that they must have reached the coast.

It was a little before three in the afternoon when, after a halt of only one minute, the golden streak of light suddenly went out as though it had been turned off by a switch, then came on again quite dimly as the van was brought to a standstill. With a sigh of relief Gregory felt convinced that they must have reached their journey’s end, as the difference in the light indicated that the van had been driven into a garage.

Rousing himself at once, he got out his gun and crouched there behind the small stack of pictures. The van was unlocked; he could hear the Baroness and her man unloading and carrying away a portion of its contents. They made three trips, then the van was relocked without his presence in it having been discovered. Two sets of garage doors, one behind and one in front of the van, were slammed, and there was silence.

Standing up, he climbed over the intervening packages and set about breaking out of his prison. As the padlock was a temporary affair and its hinges had only been screwed on, he did not anticipate much difficulty in forcing it. The third time he threw his weight against the doors there was a tearing of wood and they flew open. He just managed to save himself from pitching out, and jumped down on to the garage floor. The doors were shut but there was plenty of light to see by, so he picked up the few screws that had fallen from the padlock staple and, closing the van doors, reinserted them in their holes so that if anyone entered the garage it would not be noticed, at a casual glance, that the temporary lock had been interfered
with; then he tiptoed forward and, cautiously opening the door at the back of the garage, peered out.

The garage backed on to a garden. To his left, where the house lay, was a wide terrace with gaily-coloured sun-umbrellas and basket chairs. Below the terrace the garden paths twisted away among some dwarf pines, dropping steeply to a little cove which was lapped by the sparkling blue waters of the Mediterranean. To one side there was a promontory of huge green rocks, which was probably what gave the house its name,
Les Roches
.

Opening the door a little, he slipped out and warily made his way along to the terrace. Two wide french windows stood open there. Peering into the nearest he saw that they opened out of a large lounge-room that ran the full depth of the house and had other windows looking out on its far side. The room was empty, but at one side of it were stacked the six steel deed-boxes and other things that had been taken from the van. No sounds indicated the whereabouts of the Baroness or her man.

Gregory’s brain was racing now that he had reached the end of the long chase, but he knew that he must act with caution or he might yet bungle matters. By now the man would almost certainly have gone to his room in the servants’ quarters, which were on the far side of the house, to sleep after his nineteen-hour journey, and the Baroness had probably gone straight up to her room to tidy herself and rest. The problem was how to get at her, or lure her downstairs, without running into any other servants who might be about the place.

On consideration he decided that the best thing to do would be to go round to the front of the house, appear as an ordinary caller and ask to see her on the excuse that he had arrived with an urgent personal message from someone like Weygand or Reynaud. The probability was that he would be shown into the room which he had seen, and that she would then come downstairs. If she was alone—well and good; if a servant was with her—that could not be helped. This time Gregory was taking no chances and he meant to have his gun in his hand as she entered the room.

Tiptoeing back to the garage, he went through to its front entrance but found that the Baroness had locked that behind her, so he came out, and scrambling over a portion of the rock-garden that ran along the side of the garage he reached a low wall over which he could see that both the garage and the house
gave direct on to the coast road.

He was just about to climb over the wall when a car appeared round the bend, moving at a great speed, but it braked as it roared up the slope and in a swirl of dust pulled up outside the house. Gregory’s heart almost missed a beat from the sudden stress of mixed emotions—surprise—delight—consternation. In it was his old enemy,
Herr Gruppenführer
Grauber.

His surprise was short-lived. There was, after all, nothing particularly extraordinary in the Chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.-l, moving freely about in an enemy country in plain clothes, or that he should have had a rendezvous with his friend,
Die schwarze Baronin,
to receive in person her report of the momentous conferences which had taken place in the last few days.

His delight came from this unexpected opportunity to settle accounts, once and for all, with this murderous pervert who had climbed to power over the tortured bodies of a thousand victims and was the living symbol of all that was most foul and loathsome about the Nazi tyranny.

His consternation was due to the fact that he knew the Baroness to be as subtle and poisonous as a female cobra and considered her quite enough to tackle single-handed without having to take on her equally redoubtable ally at the same time.

Gregory possessed immense self-confidence, but even he doubted his capability to overcome that ruthless pair in open daylight when there was at least one servant, and perhaps more, in the house who might come to their assistance. But just as the British destroyers had gone in against a superior force of Germans in the first battle of Narvik he also was determined to go in. Nevertheless, knowing that he would almost certainly be outgunned and that Grauber, at least, would get away, he decided to do his best to sabotage the Gestapo Chief’s line of retreat.