Dennis Wheatley - The Black Baroness

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 dejeuner 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 Gruppenfuhrer Grauber.