Dennis Wheatley - Traitors' Gate

'So that's how it was. It was certainly a clever scheme if it had come off.'

'But it hasn't. Where I slipped up, I don't know; but they caught me red-handed.' A sudden note of anxiety came to her voice. 'What will they do to me, Gregory? What will they do to me?'

'My dear, I don't know. You'll be tried in camera, and by a military court, I suppose. But let's not talk of that for the moment. Tell me about your contacts. I want to hear all you can tell me about the Moldavian Embassy.'

Sabine shook her head, 'No, my dear, no. I've told you my personal part in the story; and if you care to pass that on I've no objection. I see no reason why it should make my case worse. But I'm not giving away other people. As far as my activities since I've been in London are concerned, the Duke's dictum still stands: "Never explain".'

'That's all very well, but I'm afraid you've got to if I'm to help you.'

'Help me!' She made a little gesture of despair. 'I'm sure you want to. But with the best will in the world, how can you. Having brought me here must have made you to some extent suspect. I take it that they regard you as having been completely fooled by me; but now I've been caught anything you may say on my behalf could only make them doubt your veracity, and it wouldn't do me any good.'

He stood up and took her hand. 'I don't intend to say things but to do them.'

She looked up at him with a puzzled frown. 'Do? What can you do?'

'God knows! But no sentence they can inflict on you would be half as bad as what Grauber would have done to me if you hadn't saved me from him in Budapest. So I'll still owe you something if I can get you out of this. I mean to gamble everything on planning your escape.'

Chivalry in Our Day

Chapter 23

Oh, Gregory!' Sabine came quickly to her feet. She laid her free hand on his shoulder and tears started to her eyes. 'How wonderful of you! But do you think it's really possible?'

He looked away from her, a shade uncomfortably. 'Honestly, I don't know. In some ways it should be easier to escape from a place like this than from a modern prison. In them they have all sorts of checking systems cells that can be looked into at any hour of the day or night without the doors being opened, electric rays which if broken by anyone passing through them instantly set off alarm bells, and that sort of thing whereas in the past they simply relied on big locks and thick bolts and bars. If this were an ordinary old fortress I'd back myself to get you out of it; but the trouble is, it's not. It's the size of a small town. To pull the wool over the wardresses' eyes and pinch the key to your room would be only a beginning. I'd, still have three gates to get you through before we reached the street. At night they are locked, and as the Tower is now closed to the public any strange woman going through them during the daytime would be certain to be challenged. Perhaps it was wrong of me to rouse your hopes prematurely. I can only say that I mean to try.'

'I saw what a warren of towers and gates the place is when they brought me in here,' Sabine volunteered. Then she pointed to the windows. 'But there's nothing on that side. It overlooks an embankment and the river. Perhaps you could let me down with a rope?'

'That's a possibility,' he agreed. 'I've had no chance yet to make a detailed study of the place. We mustn't rush our fences, and I mean to pay you several visits so as to acquire a thorough knowledge of the setup before deciding on a plan. That is why I want you to answer some questions about the Moldavians. I was specifically instructed to get out of you all I could about them, and if I go back empty-handed I may not be allowed to see you again.'

'In that case I'll try not to be too cagey. What exactly do they wish to know?'

He took out the list and handed it to her. Several of the questions were about members of the Embassy staff what views they expressed on the course of the war, whether they appeared to be short of money, etc.; others were about frequent visitors to the Embassy; and others again about people not connected with it but with whom Sabine had been seen while she was being watched.

'These are the sort of things they have been asking me for the past three days,' Sabine commented. 'Some of the answers I don't know, but I could have answered most of them and only refrained because I thought it wiser to refuse to talk at all. As it is going to help I'll tell you all I can.'

For some minutes he took notes of the information with which she furnished him; then he asked, 'Was it to Colonel Kasdar that you actually gave your stuff?'

'None of the questions on the paper ask me definitely to incriminate anyone,' she protested, 'so why should you ask me to?'

'That last question was off the record, and I should have told you so. I have a very good reason for wanting to know which of the Moldavians it is who is acting as a Nazi agent, and you must trust me. I suggested Kasdar because he is the M.A. and I chanced to see you dining out with him. Am I right?'

'Yes, it was Vladan Kasdar. But he is a nice person; and I should hate to get him into trouble.'

'As he is sheltering behind diplomatic privilege the worst that could happen to him is that our F.O. should declare him non persona grata, and ask for him to be sent home. Anyway, you need lose no sleep about him, because now I know that he was your contact I mean to keep him in the clear. I shall cast suspicion on someone else: probably that nasty piece of work the Second Secretary, Nichoulic. Now, I want you to write a line for me to Kasdar.'

'Must I?'

'Yes. After I have got you out of here that is, if I can without his aid there would be very little chance of your avoiding recapture.' As Gregory spoke he pushed along the table his fountain pen and a sheet of the paper he had been using to make notes. Then he told her that all he needed was a few lines addressed to Kasdar, saying that she had seen him that day and he was completely to be trusted.

When she had written them and passed the paper back, she remarked, 'How nice you look in uniform. I thought so that night I saw you in the Cafe Royal. What rank do those three rings on your arm give you?'

'Wing Commander.'

'That is Colonel de I'Air, isn't it?'

'Yes; though I'm a very phoney one, and have nothing to do with aircraft. It is simply that the system here, generally speaking, is that the rank one holds goes with the job one does. Mine is a Wing Commander's post; so, although I was temporarily seconded for special duty abroad, they kept on putting me up a rank a month until I reached it.'

Gregory asked her then how she was being treated.

She replied that the food was awful, and that she would give anything for some good warming wine to drink in the evenings as the fog which rose from the river most afternoons seemed to penetrate everywhere, and made her cold and miserable. But she had no legitimate complaints, and preferred being there to the one night she had spent in Brixton with its awful smell of cooked cabbage and disinfectant.

From his pocket he produced a box of pills, and said as he gave them to her. 'Hoping that I'd be allowed to see you, I had these made up yesterday. They'll do you no permanent harm, but if you take them according to the instructions on the box they will cause you to run a temperature. Take care that neither of the wardresses sees them and make a start tonight.'

'Of course, if you wish me to.' She raised her dark eyebrows. 'But what is the idea?'

'I want you to appear too ill to stand up to further interrogation for a few days. You see, even if I succeed in getting you out of the Tower that alone won't save you. The police would catch you and pop you back in again unless I can first arrange for you to go to some really safe hideout, or get you shipped off abroad. To make those sort of arrangements takes time. I am confident that M.I.5 won't send you to trial until they think they have got all they can out of you, but there is a limit to the spread over that I can manage with the information you can give me. So this is a device for postponing our next talk till, say, Thursday. We had better not risk a longer interval than that in case a specialist is called in and tumbles to it that you have been doping yourself.'