Dennis Wheatley - Traitors' Gate

'Yes,' Gregory nodded. I can get away pretty well any time by swopping tours of duty with my colleagues in the War Room.' He hesitated a moment, then asked, 'What do you think they will give her?'

The big man shrugged. 'In peace time the maximum is ten years; but as we are at war she is liable to the death penalty. We have never shot a woman yet but we may do in this instance. Women agents are just as dangerous as men if not more so. In the early days foreign women gave us a lot of trouble and they were allowed to get away with internment, or a prison sentence. But the Germans are behaving with complete callousness. They have done in any number of British and French women. As a matter of policy it might be a good thing to show for once that we can be equally tough. That would make some of the other women living here as refugees think twice about trying to ferret secrets out of serving officers. I am not saying I would advocate the death penalty myself; but it might come to that. Anyway, it is not for me to decide. That will be up to the Home Secretary.'

Gregory was about to ask where Sabine was being held, but the Colonel got abruptly to his feet. 'I'm afraid I can't spare you any more time now. I have an I.S.S.B. meeting at the War Office, and I've a number of papers to run through first. See you on Friday.'

His concern for Sabine now graver than ever, and frustrated in his attempt to see her, Gregory had no alternative but to take his leave. For the next two days there was nothing he could do, and in his off duty hours he brooded miserably upon the terrible situation that Sabine had got herself into, and the wrecking of his reconciliation with Erika.

Friday came at last, and after lunch Colonel 'Himmler' received him with his usual briskness. Coming to the point at once, he said:

'Glad to see you. My people haven't got very far; so I've decided to let you try your hand. She is in the Tower and I have here an authority for the Resident Governor to admit you to her. I also have here a list of questions to which I should particularly like answers. Study it carefully and memorize them. Your best chance is to cheer her up as much as you can by recalling pleasant times you had together, then work in these questions at intervals quite casually. I'd like you to report to me here some time before seven thirty.'

Greatly relieved that Sabine had proved stubborn enough to justify his being called in to help in her interrogation; Gregory took the papers and promised to do his best. Outside he picked up a taxi, told its driver to take him to the Tower of London, and on the way there read through the list of questions. Most of them were to do with the Moldavian Embassy and some seemed such straightforward ones he was a little surprised that Sabine had so far refused to answer them.

At the entrance to the precincts of the Tower he paid off his, taxi. The sentry on the iron gate saluted him and a Yeoman Warder, wearing the flat black cap and picturesque red and black uniform dating from Tudor times, opened it to ask his business. He had not realized that the Tower was closed to the public, but the Yeoman told him that in wartime the only unofficial visitors allowed in were Service men who had made a special application to go round in one of the daily conducted tours, between either eleven and midday, or two thirty and three thirty in the afternoon. Gregory produced his letter for the Resident Governor and the Yeoman took him through to the little office where in peacetime the public buy their tickets of admission. There he signed a book and was issued with a temporary pass. Another 'Beefeater' then acted as his escort to the Governor's office.

First they walked down the slope to the twin towers that guard the entrance to the fortress proper, through the great arched gate between them and on to the bridge across the wide dry moat. Gregory glanced into it and quickly looked away again. In peacetime soldiers of the garrison played football down in it; but it was there, so he had been told, that on certain grim dawns spies caught during the war had been put up against the casement wall and executed by a firing squad.

A moment later they passed through a second great gateway, under the Byward Tower, and entered what seemed like a sunken road, as forty foot walls rose on either side, almost shutting out the dim light of the late October afternoon.

From long habit, his Yeoman guide remarked, 'The river used to run here once, sir. That's why it's called Water Lane. The Normans built only the White Tower and the great Inner Wall on our left. It was Richard I, 11891199, who pushed the river back by dumping thousands of tons of earth here taken from widening the moat. The great Outer Wall on our right, with its five additional towers facing the river, was not completed till Edward I, 1272-1307.'

A hundred yards farther on Water Lane passed through an archway between the huge cylindrical Wakefield Tower and, on the river side, an oblong block as big as a small castle in itself, with smaller towers at each of its outer corners. This was called St. Thomas's Tower and held, perhaps, more fascination for visitors than any other. Centrally beneath it ran a high vaulted tunnel which could be reached by a flight of steps down into a part of the moat. The Tower had been built to defend the tunnel, as until Victorian times it had been the entrance by river to the fortress, famous for centuries as Traitors' Gate.

After a glance at the great ten feet high double gates with their crossbars of stout timber, Gregory turned with his guide towards the Inner Wall and accompanied him through it by yet another great gate which ran immediately under the Bloody Tower. As they walked up the steep slope on the far side of the gate he could now see the splendid cube of the White Tower to his right front. Unlike the other seventeen towers there was nothing in the least grim about William the Conqueror's original Palace keep, yet its battlements and four domed turrets dwarfed all the rest into insignificance.

Turning away from it, his guide led him up a flight of steps set in a wall, to higher ground, and across an open space in which trees were growing, to a half-timbered Tudor building called 'The King's House.' Having rung the front door bell he handed Gregory over to another Yeoman Warder, who took his name, asked him to wait in a pleasantly furnished hall, and returned almost at once to say:

'Colonel Faviell will see you, sir. Please come this way.' The Yeoman then ushered him into a ground floor office.

Gregory produced his letter. As soon as the Governor had read it, he reached for his cap and said, 'That is clear enough. I'll take you across to her.'

As they left the house he went on, 'I don't mind telling you, this business has been quite a headache to us. The night of her arrest they put her in Brixton Prison, and why they couldn't have left her there, goodness knows. Perhaps the Government have some idea of making an example of her for propaganda purposes and feel that "Woman Spy Sentenced after Court Martial in the Tower" would ring a bigger bell with other young women who have an itch to do the Nazis' dirty work for them. Anyway, fathering her on us presented me with a tricky problem. You see, there hasn't been a woman prisoner in the Tower since the Lord knows when, and the question was where to put her.'

'Providing you imported a couple of wardresses to look after her, what would have been wrong with putting her in one of the ordinary cells?' Gregory asked.

The Colonel laughed. 'That's just it. There aren't any. People still think of the Tower as a State Prison; but it has long since ceased to be used for that purpose.'

'How about Baillie Stewart; he was confined here?'

'Oh, Baillie Stewart was confined in a first floor tower room in that building over there.' The Colonel pointed beyond the White Tower at a comparatively modern block in the northeast corner of the great quadrangle. 'It contains the Officers' Mess and sleeping quarters. Washing arrangements and so on ruled it out entirely as accommodation for a woman.'