Dennis Wheatley - The Black Baroness

'Stop!' cried the Baroness. 'Stop! I will not listen.' But he went on to point the moral with inexorable, relentless logic.

'Even if the Nazis destroyed our air-ports and our factories we should still fight on from Canada; and the United States are behind us now. All the vast resources of that great Democracy will be placed at our disposal to help us smash the Nazis. Our Navy and Air Force will render your ports useless for years to come; the shipping in them must lie idle because you will be cut off from your colonies and your world markets. Every industry in France will be ruined through lack of fuel and raw materials, and the machinery in your factories will rust. Your great Army will have to be disbanded, but there will be no work for the men to do. By next winter you will have ten million unemployed. Your herds and your livestock will die because there will not be enough cattle-food to feed them. To keep their own people from revolt the Germans will be forced to seize the bulk of your agricultural produce. The spectre of famine will enter every home from Calais to Marseilles, and disease will take its terrible toll from Strasbourg to Biarritz. There will be riots and street-fighting in the towns and cities; the starving crowds will wreck the food trains which are taking your crops into Germany and they will murder the Nazi officials who are set over them. Then there will be ghastly reprisals—huge fines—and your most spirited young men—those who should be your leaders of tomorrow—will be shot in batches against the wall of your German-occupied barracks. Whole towns may be given over to destruction in a ruthless attempt to keep you under, and the country will fall into the same state of lawlessness that made life so terrible in the Middle Ages. Bands of desperate, hungry men will roam the country, breaking into houses, killing people who oppose them and torturing others in the hope that they will give away the hiding-places of secret stores of food. The very children upon whom you are counting to grow up as the citizens of the new France that you have planned will die in their cradles, or only reach maturity warped in mind from the horrors that they have witnessed and crippled in body from malnutrition. That, Madame la Baronne, is what you will have done to France.'

She cowered away from him, her scarlet mouth a little open, her black eyes wide, then she whispered:

'This is a ghastly picture that you paint, Monsieur.'

'Yet it is true,' Gregory insisted. 'All that I have said is absolutely inevitable if Britain fights on—and Britain will fight on.'

Suddenly her red mouth twitched and she cried: 'I hate you —I hate you! Never before have I been shaken in my belief, but you have made me doubt, and if I am wrong I deserve to die.'

Gregory put up his pistol and shook his head. 'No. I'm not going to shoot you now. Whatever you may have done in the past, you have convinced me today that you did it believing that it was for the good of your country. I only wish, though, that we had talked together months ago, because I believe that I could have shown you that you were wrong and persuaded you to use your great powers for good instead of ill; but it's too late now.'

'Too late,' she repeated. Then a new expression suddenly lit her dark eyes. 'I wonder. The military situation in France is now beyond repair, but if France could be kept in the war the Fleet could be saved—and the colonies.'

In a flash Gregory saw that he had achieved the seemingly impossible. The swift, cold brain of this extraordinary woman had not only analysed and accepted his arguments but had gone on to estimate future possibilities in the light of a new conviction. Without any telling she had grasped the fact that, although France was lost, if Britain fought on the only hope of saving her country from the horrors he had pictured lay in aiding Britain to smash Hitler as rapidly as possible so that France might be freed again before she fell into a state of anarchy.

Starting forward, he seized her by the arm. 'If there is the faintest hope still remaining we mustn't lose an instant.'

'Let me think.' She closed her eyes for a moment 'What time is it?'

'It's getting on for four o'clock.'

'Four. Then Reynaud is overdue; he should have been here half an hour ago.'

'Here?' Gregory exclaimed. 'But the Government is still in Bordeaux. Surely he would never leave it at a time like this?'

'You don't understand,' she cried impatiently. 'It was part of the plan that he should resign and hand over to Petain. He's been fighting against it for days but we've all been at him, and before I left Bordeaux yesterday his resignation had been assured.'

"Then, if he's no longer in power it's too late for him to do anything.'

'Not necessarily. Paul's instinct has always been to fight to the last ditch. I have only to say the word to him in order to reanimate him with the fighting spirit once again. When he arrives I could go with him to the local post-office, where we could get a priority call through to Bordeaux. If he could get in touch with de Gaulle and Mandel and the other leaders of the war party he could summon them to join him in Avignon. They could render the new Bordeaux Cabinet still-born by denouncing Petain as a usurper, or at least proclaim an Independent Government from there, which would have Britain and at least half France behind it.'

Before Gregory had time to reply they both caught the sound of a motor horn, and ran to the window.

One glance at the small, solitary figure getting out of the dust-covered car that had driven up in front of the house was enough for Gregory to recognise Paul Reynaud.

'Stand back,' said the Baroness quickly. 'Leave this to me. Your presence will only complicate matters.'

As Gregory stepped behind the curtains he heard Reynaud's voice calling up to the Baroness. 'It is finished. I resigned at eleven-thirty this morning and Petain is forming a new Cabinet with Weygand as Vice-President. I took a plane to Toulon and hired a car from there. Thank God it is over!'

'Wait, Paul!' the Baroness called back. 'Don't come into the house—I am coming out to you. I have much to tell you but we can talk as we go. You must drive me down to the post-office at once.'

Turning from the window she said to Gregory: 'Stay where you are. Poor fellow, he looks so tired that he will be as putty in my hands. We may not be back for an hour or more, but wait here.'

She was already at the door before she had finished speaking and next moment she was running from the house. For a few minutes Gregory remained deep in thought, trying to assess the new possibilities which had arisen from that extraordinary interchange of views that had taken place between himself and the Baroness. Then he lit a cigarette and stepped out from behind the curtains. To his surprise he saw that Reynaud's car was still outside the house yet he could have sworn that he had heard it drive off. Next second he noticed that the rear off-wheel of Reynaud's car was deflated. He must have had a puncture and driven the last few miles on a flat tyre. Thrusting his head out of the window Gregory saw another car streaking down the hill. They had taken Grauber's.

'Stop! Stop!' he yelled at the top of his voice. 'For God's sake stop!' But at that very moment the steering-gear with which he had tampered gave way. The car suddenly swerved across the road. With a horrid clang of iron on brick and the sound of shattered glass it charged straight into the wall of a villa at the bottom of the hill.

Swinging round, Gregory dashed out of the house and ran at the top of his speed down the slope. When he reached the villa its occupants had already come out and were lifting two bleeding bodies from the wreckage. Reynaud was badly cut about the head and face, and unconscious but still alive. The little Black Baroness was dead.