Dennis Wheatley - Mayhem in Greece

Mahogany Brown grinned broadly. 'Sure. I put them on to you.'

'You what?' exclaimed Robbie indignantly, pushing himself up with his good elbow. With an 'ouch' of pain, he quickly sank back again as the American replied:

'If you'd lunched at the Ariadne, as you told me you were going to, you'd have still more to thank me for. You'd have escaped getting a bullet through the arm and what I gather must have been a pretty sticky time while Barak had you cornered. I tipped off the police to pick you up at the Ariadne. As you weren't there and didn't come into the Candia Palace at seven o'clock, they alerted all stations to keep a look-out for you. They might not have found you for days, but for a lucky break. Your girl friend left her car with the lights on in the middle of a quarter of a mile of rubble. A patrolman went over to investigate, checked the car number with the one I'd given when I filed your description, and jumped to it that the pair of you must be somewhere in the offing. He telephoned his H.Q., and they sent out a search party. They spotted chinks of light coming from your hide-out and that was that.'

'But why?' Robbie asked in a puzzled voice. 'What conceivable reason had you for turning me in?'

'It wasn't you I was worried about. It was Mrs. B. who had to be put out of circulation. You admitted to me that you'd told her about your earthquake theory, and I wasn't trusting you not to tell her that I had fallen for it. Knowing that, she might have managed to get a message through to her pals, alerting the whole set-up that we were on to them. If a tip-off had got through, they could have dumped their bombs in the sea before our people had the chance to get them with the goods.'

'You're talking nonsense,' Robbie protested. 'She was on our side and doing her utmost to help me.'

The American gave a disbelieving shrug. 'She was Barak's wife and we knew that she was being used to keep tabs on you.'

'She was to begin with; but, as I told you, Barak tried to kill her. Naturally, that altered everything. After that--'

'It altered nothing. Communists, like other people, may change their sex relationships, but they don't stop being Communists. She was still selling you down the river.'

'She was not! I swear she wasn't!' Robbie cried indignantly.

'She was. We have proof of that. On Barak's body the police found a letter. It was from her, admitting that she'd slipped up, but asking to be taken back into the good books of the Party. As the price of her pardon, she offered to sell you out to him.'

'But . . . but,' Robbie stammered, 'she wrote that with my knowledge. We'd planned to lure Barak here and get the truth out of him, but he turned the tables on us. That's how it was that our car happened to be left outside for so long with the lights on. He prevented her from coming out and driving off in it.'

'Where were you at that time?'

'Hiding just outside. Our plan was that she should tell Barak that I'd be back in half an hour, and then leave him there. We hadn't counted on his bringing another man with him. We thought that, after he had waited there for a couple of hours and I hadn't shown up, he'd get sick of waiting and come out on his own. Then I meant to sand-bag him from behind.'

'Very nice. But it didn't work, eh? And I don't have to be a crystal-gazer to tell you what happened. Instead of coming out, she stayed there chatting with him about this and that for a while. Then he told her to open her pretty mouth and let out a yodel or two, so that you'd hear and think he was beating her up. You fell for it and came bursting in to rescue her. Isn't that just what you did?'

'Yes. That's why I went in. But you are utterly wrong about her. She didn't lure me into an ambush. The cries I heard were because she was being tortured.'

'So you say.'

After thinking hard for a moment, Robbie exclaimed triumphantly: 'Her hand is the proof of it. That fiend Barak had broken two of her fingers. When they lugged me up into that room, her hand was all out of shape and bleeding. You have only to go over to the woman's ward to check on that. When I came to in the night and asked about her, the nurse told me that Stephanie had suffered no other injury but, as I feared, some fingers on one of her hands were broken.'

Mahogany Brown stood up. 'I've a lot to do, so I must get along now. But listen, pal. You say the nurse told you about this hand. Well, it could easily have been crushed by a falling brick, and there's only your word for it that she got her injury any other way. I know you're nuts about this dame, and you're not the first guy who's been prepared to swear black is white in the hope of getting his sweetie out of trouble. But it's just no good. She's in this up to the neck.'

Robbie was appalled at the thought that Stephanie was believed to have aided her husband and that there might be no way in which her innocence could be proved. 'What . . . what d'you mean to do with her?' he asked hoarsely.

The American's reply was shattering. 'Why, she'll be shipped back to Athens with the other saboteurs we've caught in Crete. Maybe she'll get a prison sentence, maybe the Greeks will be satisfied by ordering that she's to be repatriated to her own country. Anyhow, except in a Court of Justice, you won't be seeing her again, so the sooner you forget her, the better.'

Epilogue

It was a week later, the 7th of May. Robbie had been back in Athens for two days. On his second day in hospital in Crete, a senior police official had taken a long statement from him. The following morning the British Consul had come to see him, with a message from his uncle that his case would be put in good hands and that he was not to worry. The Consul had then offered his services, if there was anything he could do. Robbie had asked him to find out about Stephanie, and had later received a note informing him that she was being flown back to Athens under escort that evening, with the other Czech prisoners.

His wound was clean and mending well. On the Sunday he had been pronounced fit to travel and, also under escort, had followed her that afternoon. At the Athens airport he had been met by his uncle's P.A., and it then transpired that Sir Finsterhorn had entered into recognizance for him. His escort handed him over and he found himself a free man or, at least, in the position of one on bail.

Six weeks earlier, the knowledge that he would have to give an account of himself to his uncle would have made him sweat with fear, but the Robbie Grenn who had left Athens towards the end of March was an utterly* different person from the one who returned there early in May. During those few weeks he had changed from a shy, overgrown adolescent to a self-confident, mature young man.

He had accepted his uncle's message as a normal expression of esprit de corps , to be expected from an older relative when a member of his family was in trouble in a foreign country. However, he took it for granted that Sir Finsterhorn would resent most strongly his having got himself into a situation where he had killed a man and been hunted by the police. Mahogany Brown had, he imagined, taken all the credit for solving the riddle of the oil-prospecting by the Czechs, so he had no expectation of receiving praise for that; but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that, however angry his uncle might be with him, he would now be able to face a dressing-down with complete indifference.

In consequence, when he reached the Embassy he was all the more surprised by his reception. Lady Grenn had returned from England. She greeted him like a long-lost son, saying how worried she had been about him, and showing great concern over his wound. Sir Finsterhorn stood beside her, patted him twice on his unwounded arm and said: 'We haven't had the full story yet, Robbie, but we've heard enough to be very proud of you.'