Dennis Wheatley - Traitors' Gate

He began to wonder about Sabine, and if she had learned that he had fallen foul of a Gestapo man, or knew only that he had been run in for participating in a brawl. In any case, his arrest was tough luck on her, because his efforts, during their long day together, to restrain her from wrecking his mission had succeeded only through their appeal to her emotions. There had been setbacks from time to time, but by evening she was clearly thinking of him again as a lover whose presence filled her with ardent desire; and when they had been together for those few minutes in her bedroom, she had made it plain that she was longing for the night of passion that she then believed lay before her.

She was going to be bitterly disappointed and so, for that matter, was he; although the loss of a night's pleasure to her was a microscopic infliction compared with what he had to expect from the cause of their enforced separation. With Grauber's threats in the forefront of his mind he was too much of a realist to take any comfort from the thought that the Gruppenführer had preserved his moral rectitude by forcing him to remain faithful to Erika. She, he knew, would have preferred that he should sleep with a dozen other women rather than that he should pass one night at the mercy of Grauber.

For some time he thought of her with that deep, abiding warmth of affection which is the essence of real love. Then his thoughts turned again to Sabine. He hoped that she was not going to become involved in his disaster, and thought it unlikely that she would be. It was not as though they had been carrying on a long intrigue, as it was barely twenty-four hours since they had recognized one another at the Piccadilly. Her association with Ribbentrop would protect her from any prolonged cross-questioning about him; and if the worst came to the worst she could always explain having spent the day with him by saying that she had known all the time that he was an Englishman, and had decided to do a little counterespionage work herself by trying to get out of him what he was up to in Budapest.

About Count Laszlo, Colonel Janos and the others he felt there was much more cause for worry. Fortunately, his reply to Grauber about the people he had met while in Budapest had been only a slight exaggeration of the truth. In the past fortnight he had made many new acquaintances; so investigation of his activities would pinpoint the conspirators. Since the formation of the Committee he had, too, constantly impressed on its members the necessity for secrecy, and they had taken serious notice of his warnings. But there remained the danger to them from that first conference at the Nobles Club to which Count Zapolya had indiscreetly invited such a large number of his friends. It must have been through either someone who had been present at that meeting, or one of the Club servants, that Grauber had got wind of the affair, and if the former then that person, having witnessed the election of the Committee, might also give away the names of its’ members.

As there was no way in which Gregory could send them a warning, he could only hope that when Count Laszlo called at Sabine's as arranged, at nine o'clock next morning, on hearing of his arrest he would take fright, then swiftly warn the others, so that they could all go into hiding until the danger was past. But that they would do so on the bare information that he had been pulled in on account of a row in a nightclub seemed unlikely, and by the time they learned more of the matter it might be too late.

Gregory was still speculating on the point when he heard a jingle of keys out in the corridor, the door of his cell was unlocked, and the warder signed to him to get up.

With an inward groan he obeyed. After Grauber's departure he had thought himself safe at least until after he had been taken before a magistrate, but only about an hour had elapsed since he had been brought to the station. There could be only one reason for rousing him up while the night was still young. Grauber must have gone straight to some higher authority and had now returned with an authorization to collect him. He might have known that his old enemy was not the man tamely to accept defeat, or let the grass grow under his feet in rectifying a temporary setback. At the thought of what he might now have to suffer before morning, Gregory's hands grew damp his mouth dry, and as he followed the warder down the corridor his feet seemed as though made of lead.

To his utter astonishment and boundless relief, as he stepped through the door of the waiting room he saw that beside the Police Captain stood, not Grauber, but Sabine.

The chunky faced Captain looked from him to her and asked, 'Baroness, do you definitely identify this man as Commandant Etienne Tavenier?'

'I do,' she replied with a smile at Gregory.

The Captain smiled at him too, and said, 'My friend, your luck is in after all. This lady with whom you went to the Arizona has taken steps to secure your release. Please sign this declaration that nothing has been taken from you while in custody, and you are free to go.'

Almost in a daze, Gregory signed the paper, thanked the Captain, and followed Sabine out to the main office. A policeman politely opened the front door of the station for them and they stepped from the bright light into semidarkness, nearly colliding with another officer who was about to enter. He stood aside then turned to stare after them for a moment before going in. Sabine's Mercedes was standing at the curb in the narrow street, and as Gregory sank into the seat beside her he let out a great sigh of thankfulness.

Before driving off she lit a cigarette, then turned to him and said, 'You are looking terribly groggy, darling. Did you get badly hurt?'

'No,' he murmured. 'No. I'll be all right in a minute. I was hit over the head with a bottle of hair oil; but I've got a thick enough skull to stand much worse things than that. I was unconscious for only a few minutes, and I've hardly a trace of a headache left. If I look queer it is from the pleasantest shock I've ever had. You can have no idea what you have saved me from. I'll be in your debt till my dying day.'

As she slipped in the clutch and the car moved off, she replied, 'I was right, then, in my surmise that you were arrested as a spy, and not just taken up, as they said at the Arizona, for getting mixed up in some silly fight.'

'Yes and no. I haven't been spying here. I told you the truth about that. And I was only charged with a breach of the peace. But I had the accursed ill luck to run into one of the top boys of the Gestapo who knows me to be an Englishman.

In the morning, when I was taken to court, he meant to charge me with espionage and secure my extradition to Germany.'

'Thank God I got you out then! Tomorrow morning would have been too late, and I wouldn't have been able to.'

I marvel that they let me go tonight. The Captain was a decent chap; he protected me from the Germans and kept an open mind. But he knew they believed me to be an English agent named Sallust; so it really is surprising that he should have released me simply because you said that you knew me as Commandant Tavenier.'

'He didn't; and I don't suppose for a moment that he would have in the ordinary way. He was only verifying that I was satisfied that you were the person referred to in the paper I had brought.'

'What paper?'

Sabine laughed. 'I told you this morning that I could get most things I wanted done for me in any of the Government Departments because, like it or not, they have to play along with the Germans. When I heard you had been run in, as the Ministry of Justice was closed I went to the house of Erdelyi, the Minister. He wasn't too pleased at being dragged from a game of bridge; but I told him what had happened, declared that it was not your fault because, being a foreigner, you had misunderstood some remark that was passed about me, and that I was determined you should not spend a night in jug through acting as my champion; so he must give me an order for your release. As a further inducement to make him play, I added that we were expecting Ribb to join us for supper and he would be terribly annoyed if you weren't there, as it was his last chance to see you before returning to Germany. Of course, I've known old Butyi Erdelyi for years, and there was no reason for him to suspect that there might be more behind your being detained than just a fist fight; so he wrote me out a note to take to the Police Station.'