Erika would have known that high-pitched lisp anywhere. It was for ever coupled in her mind with the big pasty face and cruel solitary eye that had mocked her, day after day, as she had squirmed on the floor of a squalid hutment while its owner spent an hour by the clock every afternoon gently flicking the muscles of her arms, legs, thighs and buttocks with a little whip, until he had half flayed her.
She was still crouching beside the bollard, her hand hovering within a few inches of her pocket; but she was staring straight into the muzzle of his heavy gun. He had the drop on her just as she had, only a few moments ago, had the drop on Einholtz. Had she had her pistol in her hand she would have squeezed the trigger, taking a chance that her shot would get in first and deflect his aim, and accepting the possibility that they might kill one another, as then, at least, if she had to die she would have had the satisfaction of dragging this fiend down to death with her. But she knew that before she could even get her hand on the butt of her pistol his gun would flash, and its leaden slug smash through the bone of her skull.
She did not want to die. Her whole soul cried out in revolt against it. She must feel Gregory’s strong arms about her again before her body went to moulder in the grave, and only by continuing to face whatever terrors life had in store for her could there be any hope of that. Yet Gregory was in Russia, thousands of miles away, and close at hand there were underground chambers where the Gestapo’s victims moaned for the devil to take their souls if only he would release them from their pain. She had sworn to herself never again to fall alive into their hands. Perhaps time really did not exist, and if she met death bravely now, in what would seem to her no more than a few moments, Gregory would be with her in some other world, lovelier than this by far. Her hand twitched once and dived into her pocket.
Grauber did not fire. In two strides he was upon her. His heavy boot lifted and caught her, still crouching, under the chin. As she spread-eagled backwards, she thought for a moment that he had kicked her head right off her body. The darkness became intenser; red stars and circles flashed before her eyes; there was a frightful pain where her spine met the base of her neck. She was only semi-conscious when she felt him grip her wrist and give it a frightful wrench that made another pain shoot through it like a knife, as she released her hold on her pistol.
As though from a great distance she heard his voice. “You little fool! Surely you didn’t think I’d shoot you? After all the trouble you’ve given us that would be much too easy a way to let you out. We are going to have lots of pretty little games together before they shove what’s left of you into a furnace. Do you remember the little games we used to play in Finland? That is quite a long time ago and I have invented a lot of others since, which I must show you. Get up!”
Her mind still swimming and only partly there, Erika made no move.
“Get up!” he repeated, and kicked her savagely on the shin.
The fresh pain brought her round completely, and knowing that other kicks would follow if she did not obey, she made a great effort which brought her lurching to her feet.
As she stood there swaying weakly, she heard a loud groan. Grauber heard it too. He looked towards the place where Einholtz had fallen and snapped at her:
“Stay where you are. One move from you and I’ll smother every hair on your body in mutton fat, then light them up as candle wicks.”
Leaving her leaning for support against the side of the boathouse, he strode over to his subordinate. When he had kicked her under the jaw she had bitten the side of her tongue. It was rapidly swelling and hurt her terribly. The blood from it tasted salt in her mouth and the back of her neck ached atrociously.
Time had ceased to exist for her. How long she stood there she did not know, but Grauber’s voice, and after a time that of Einholtz’s answering him, vaguely penetrated to her dulled senses. She gathered that one of her bullets had seared Einholtz’s scalp, temporarily knocking him out, but that he was now rapidly recovering and intensely angry.
After a while Grauber came back to her, and Einholtz was beside him. Erika’s eyes had now become accustomed to the dim light, so she could see that the latter’s face was very pale and that a trickle of blood from his wound was running down it.
When he was within a yard of her he suddenly raised his fist and struck her in the face. With a little whimper she went over backwards; he then began to kick her.
“Stop that!” grunted Grauber. “I mean to make her talk, and if you give her too much she won’t be able to.”
Erika lay there, moaning, where she had fallen. Already she was wishing that she were dead, yet knew that she had not yet gone through one hundredth part of what they meant to do to her. When Grauber again ordered her to get up she made no attempt to do so, hoping now that if he kicked her enough it might result in some internal injury that would carry her off quickly.
Instead of kicking her again he stooped, thrust his great hand into her mop of tumbled hair, clutched a big handful of it and began to drag her bodily towards the door.
She screamed, but he paid no attention to her yells. Levering herself up with one foot, she swung her head round and bit him savagely in the hand.
He let go her hair with a curse, sucked at his hand for a minute, then, stooping again, grabbed one of her ankles. As he pulled her after him once more her head and shoulders bumped along the boards, then out on to the gravel path.
“Let me go!” she panted. “Let me go and I’ll walk! I’ll walk, I promise you!”
“That’s better,” he chuckled, releasing his grip, and, staggering to her feet, Erika lurched up the path between them.
At the gate a Mercedes-Benz, with a uniformed chauffeur at its wheel, was waiting. Grauber said to Einholtz:
“We had better go into Friedrichshafen and have that wound of yours attended to at the local headquarters.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer,” muttered Einholtz, sullenly.
With a word to the driver Grauber pushed Erika into the car and climbed in after her. It was a big car, but he was such a bulky man that there was not room for more than the two of them on the back seat, so Einholtz let down one of the small seats opposite. The two men pulled down the blinds of the car, Grauber switched on a little blue light in its roof, and the driver let in the clutch.
Einholtz wiped some of the blood that was still trickling down his face away from the corner of his mouth, glared at Erika, and suddenly jabbed his heel down hard on her instep.
“You little bitch!” he snarled, as she jerked away her foot. “You thought you’d been so damned clever, didn’t you, getting that old woman to hide you? But I had the tapes on you from the very first morning. If you’d had any sense you might have guessed that any maid who had to serve that old cow would hate her guts, and that Helga would prove no exception.”
He chuckled suddenly, and went on. “Anyhow, that girl would give away her own mother for a good healthy man like me. How we laughed, up in her room every night, to think of you down there so smugly thinking you’d put a fast one over the Gestapo. I could have pulled you in any time, but there was no hurry about that, and as I was having my fun I thought I’d wait till you made your breakaway. There’s no sport like catching the bird just as it thinks it’s out of the cage.”
“If you’re not careful you’ll try that once too often,” lisped Grauber.
“I knew you were behind her, Herr Gruppenführer,” grunted Einholtz sourly.
“Perhaps. But that wouldn’t have stopped you getting a bullet through your brain instead of through your hat. You wouldn’t have a headache now if you had been willing to stop their car at the crossroads where I picked you up. I let you have your way because I know this little spitfire better than you do, and I had an idea that she might teach you a lesson.”
Einholtz relapsed into sullen silence and neither of them spoke again until, in a back street of Friedrichshafen, the car sounded its klaxon twice, upon which a pair of high gates were opened for it and, driving through, it pulled up in a courtyard.
“Out you get,” said Grauber, as the driver threw open the door nearest Erika, so she followed Einholtz from the car and up a few steps into a hall where several smart S.S. men were lounging. The moment they saw Grauber they sprang to rigid attention, but he was in a good humour, and piping: “Guten Abend, meine Herrn” motioned them to relax.
With a muttered word about seeing the doctor, Einholtz went up a stone staircase, while Grauber laid a hand on Erika’s shoulder and gave her a push towards the open door of one of the ground floor rooms. As she entered it she saw that it was just a bleak sparsely furnished apartment which might have been the interviewing room in any police-station. Closing the door behind him, he waved her to one of the wooden chairs, then took out a cigar, lit it and sat down himself.
Leaning his elbows on the bare table he stared fixedly at her for a full minute, then, at last, when her eyes dropped before his gaze, he said:
“I want some information from you, and you know enough about the sort of thing that goes on in such places as this to imagine what will happen to you if I don’t get it. So you’d better talk, and tell the truth, bearing in mind that I have enough facts already to check your story. Now! Where’s your boy friend—that snake Sallust?”
“I don’t know,” replied Erika.
“Oh yes you do. Why didn’t he come with you to Switzerland?”
“Because I couldn’t get in touch with him. I don’t know where he is.”
“A little over a month ago.”
“Where were you then?”
“In a hospital, at which I was working in England.”
“Did he tell you that he was going away again?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say where to?”
“No.”
“You’re lying!”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Let me refresh your memory. He told you that he was going to Russia. You see, I know where he’s gone. Do you remember Karl Zensdorff who was with me in London? But no, that was before you met Sallust. Anyhow, Karl was one of my men and a very fine professional knife-thrower. He and Sallust ran across one another at the house of a little Jew called Rosenbaum up in Hampstead. Karl crucified the Jew and practised his knife-throwing on him afterwards, very prettily, I remember. Well, Karl is now in Damascus. He reported to me only two days ago that Sallust had just passed through and, according to our French friends in the passport control, is on his way to Russia. You see how small the world is and how we get to hear of these little things. Naturally, my agents in Russia have been duly instructed to keep an eye on Mr. Sallust, so I shall be able to verify a great part of the statement you are about to make to me. Now—you’d better not try to lead me up the garden path.”
He paused, obviously expecting Erika to reply to him, so, after a moment she said, dully: “I can’t make any statement about that. How can I, when he didn’t even tell me where he was going?”
Grauber stood up. “Now listen to me. Sallust is in love with you, and you’ve been in the game with him, so he tells you most things—everything, in fact, that he does not consider to be a vital secret. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t; and I am confident that he would not regard this mission to a country allied to Britain as of particular secrecy. I am now going to leave you for ten minutes, while I have a drink in the officers’ club upstairs. I give you this last chance to think matters over. When I return, unless you are an imbecile, you will tell me what I wish to know.”
His jack-boots rang heavily on the boards as he strode to the door. As it slammed behind him Erika let her head fall forward on the table. Her jaw ached, the back of her neck ached, her shin ached, her instep ached, and her left eye was rapidly closing up from the blow that Einholtz had given her. She tried to collect her thoughts, but she felt absolutely ghastly, and her mind remained blank to everything except the pains shooting through her body. It seemed to her only a moment before she once more heard Grauber’s heavy footfalls as he came in again.
A carafe of drinking-water and a glass stood on the table. Filling the glass, he flung its contents over her bowed head. As the cold water splashed on to the back of her neck and ran down her spine she shuddered and straightened up.
“Well,” he said, “are you going to talk?”
She knew that she would have to sooner or later. They would do things to her that no human will could resist; but she felt that she owed it to her own integrity to refuse as long as she had the power to do so. She mutely shook her head.
At that moment the door opened and Einholtz came in, his face now clean and the top of his head swathed in a turban of white bandages.
“There’s a show on downstairs,” he said to Grauber. “If she’s proving stubborn it might soften her up if we took her down to see it.”
Grauber considered for a moment, then he nodded. “Yes, that’s a good idea,” and taking Erika’s arm he jerked her to her feet.
Between them they hustled her out into the hall and down a flight of stone steps into the basement. The corridor was lit only by small red electric bulbs at intervals along its ceiling. Einholtz pushed open a door flush with the wall and they entered a large, low-ceilinged room. It was furnished only with a table, upon which stood some electrical apparatus, a kind of wooden throne that stood in the middle of the floor, and a few hard-seated chairs. In one corner there was an iron stove, roaring away, which made the place stiflingly hot and on the far wall there was a rack upon which hung a score or more curious-looking iron implements.
A man in a white surgeon’s smock, with heavy lensed spectacles, sat at one end of the table and at the other sat an S.S. officer with a writing-pad in front of him. Two S.S. troopers were standing near the throne, and between them stood a woman of about thirty, stark naked.
The officer stood up as Grauber came in but the Gruppenführer signed to him to get on with his business. He then pushed Erika into a chair, took another himself, and the show began.
The woman was a German and a coarse-looking creature, but she had a decent, honest face, and as the interrogation proceeded Erika learnt the cause of her being there. She was a local prostitute and she had sheltered a British airman who had made a forced landing after his aircraft had been hit during a raid on Friedrichshafen. She had not known that when he picked her up, as he had already secured workmen’s clothes by breaking into a farmhouse, near which he had landed. He also spoke fairly good German and had represented himself as a Belgian who had been brought into Germany for forced labour. He had quite a bit of money and had treated her much better than most of her casual customers. Later, when he had been trying to get a boat to smuggle him across Lake Constance, the truth had come out, but by that time he had been living with her for a week and she had grown too fond of him to betray him to the authorities. With her help he had arranged about a boat, but they had both been caught just as he was leaving.
The Gestapo thought it possible, although improbable, that the man had talked to her about his job as an R.A.F. pilot, so she might be able to give information about the technique of the British air raids and the station upon which his squadron was based. Although the woman protested again and again that he had said nothing at all about such matters, they thought it worth while to go right through with a routine grilling on the offchance that her ravings might disclose something of interest.
The oral examination having produced nothing, at an order from the officer the two troopers seized the woman and thrust her on to the throne. While they were strapping her wrists and ankles to its arms and legs, the man in white left the table and, uncoiling two rolls of electric flex as he went, walked over to the woman carrying their large specially fashioned terminals.
Erika saw with horror that the throne was a form of electric chair, but that instead of the shock being administered as usual by knee pads and a headband the terminals were designed for the impalement of the wretched woman. The two troopers stood by making lewd jokes while the other man thrust them into her writhing body.
Having adjusted them so that she could not force them out, he went back to the table and flicked over a switch. Instantly the woman was galvanised. Her mouth opened and let out a piercing scream. Her eyes started from her head.
The operator switched off the current and the investigating officer said: “Well, what have you got to tell us?”
The woman was tough, and instead of inventing any story that might have postponed further torment, let fly a spate of obscene curses at him.
They were abruptly cut short by the current being turned on again. As the woman’s limbs went rigid, Erika closed her eyes to shut out the awful sight and put her hands over her ears, but she could not shut out the screams that echoed round the sombre chamber. The current was kept on for longer this time, and when they turned it off the woman hung limp for a moment, only held in place by her hands. Her body was glistening all over, and the sweat was streaming down it. Suddenly she vomited.
“Now!” came the staccato voice of the officer. “Another two goes of the heat and you’ll never again be any good for your old job. Out with it.”
“He was an Australian,” she moaned. “I told you that—and it’s all I know.”
“Think again!” The officer leant over and this time turned on the current himself; but he kept his finger on the switch and for a full three minutes alternately flicked it up and down. During the whole ghastly proceeding the victim never ceased to jerk convulsively and emit heartrending screams except when the current was cut off, and then she gibbered and moaned with her head rolling piteously from side to side.
In the brief intervals of applying the current the officer had continued to hurl questions at her, without result, and apparently coming to the conclusion that he was flogging a dead horse, he suddenly sat back, barking out an order to the guards to release her.
As they undid the straps she fell forward, a flabby mass of writhing pink flesh, on to the floor. Unceremoniously they picked her up, flung her on to a stretcher, and carted her away.
At the slam of the door Erika took her fingers from her ears and opened her eyes. She found Grauber looking at her.
“Well,” he said, “how would you like to try a taste of our new toy?”
She shuddered, lowered her eyes and made no reply. The room was appallingly hot and now stank foully from a mixture of sick, sweat and excrement and iodoform. There were beads of perspiration standing out on Erika’s forehead and her chemise was sticking to her back.
Grauber’s voice came again. “If you’re not prepared to talk now, in ten minutes’ time you’ll be carried out of here in the same state as that woman.”
Erika felt that she was going to faint, but she still sat silent with her head hanging down on her chest.
“What you’ve seen isn’t one tenth of it,” Grauber’s voice went on. “Those toys inflict internal burns, you know. For months afterwards you’ll wish you’d never been born, and you’ll never be fit for much again.”
She closed her eyes, swayed slightly, and slid sideways to the floor.
“Donnerwetter! She’s fainted,” growled Grauber.
But Erika was not quite out. As she lay there, sweating and terrified, she could still hear the voices above her.
“Bring your things here, Herr Doktor,” Einholtz called. “We’ll pull her clothes out of the way and give her a shot where she lies. That will soon bring her round.”
As Einholtz stepped forward to grasp the edge of her skirt, Grauber said sharply: “Stay where you are, both of you.”
There was a pause, during which Grauber seemed to be considering, and Erika could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Then he spoke again in a lower tone, evidently to Einholtz.
“I know this woman. I’ve had her through my hands before. She’s the highly strung type and needs special treatment. We’ll do better with her in a more artistic setting.” He raised his voice: “Herr Doktor, I wish you to come with us, and bring your instrument.”
As he finished speaking, he stooped, seized Erika in his strong arms and lifting her, flung her over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes.
Directly the fresh air from the ground floor reached Erika’s nostrils she began to feel slightly better, but she gave no sign of returning consciousness, as her apparent faint seemed to be a temporary protection.
In the hall Grauber lowered her to a bench. There was a short wait while he left her to give some orders about his car, then, on his return, as she still showed no sign of coming round, he shook her.
She opened her good eye—the other was now almost entirely closed. “Come on,” he said, “we’re going to take you for a little midnight excursion.”
With an effort she got to her feet and stumbled before him down the steps out to the now waiting car. They sat side by side in the back, as before. Einholtz and the doctor took the smaller seats. The high gates were opened, the blinds of the car were pulled down, and it drove off.
Her pains had now merged into one dull ache that gripped her whole body, with occasional stabs from the specially tender places whenever the car swayed or jolted. Her mind was still half bemused by terror and physical exhaustion, but the fresh night air gradually cleared it a little. She could neither see nor guess where they were going but knew that wherever it might be their journey boded no good to herself. Any attempt to escape would have been so utterly hopeless that it did not even occur to her. She lay limp in her corner with the cold perspiration drying on her body. The car droned on and on until it seemed that she had been sitting there for hours, but she had lost all sense of time, and to her the journey was like some never-ending nightmare.
She was roused from her semi-stupor by a more violent series of twists and jerks than usual, and it came to her vaguely that the car must be winding its way up a steep hill. Two minutes later it pulled up. Einholtz and the doctor got out and Grauber pushed her after them. She saw then that she was standing in the courtyard of Schloss Niederfels.
The shock of the unexpected stimulated her brain a little. She had thought they were taking her to some concentration camp. Why, she wondered, should they bring her here? Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the sinister doctor, standing only a few feet away from her with the big leather case that contained the fiendish instrument. Of course, they could use it at Niederfels as well as anywhere else, and Grauber’s remark about a “more artistic setting” came back to her. Yet why should he have the idea that she would yield up more readily any secrets she possessed in the banqueting hall or a well-furnished bedroom of the castle than in a reeking concrete cellar?
She was given no chance to speculate further at the moment as Grauber’s hand closed on her arm again and they all moved towards the main door. Perhaps Einholtz had left it unlatched; in any case it opened at his touch and, switching on the lights as he went, he led them down the short passage to the banqueting hall.
“I think we might start by having some supper,” Grauber announced in his high voice. “I’m quite hungry after our drive.”
“Jawohl, Herr Gruppenführer,” Einholtz replied quickly. “If you will keep an eye on the woman, I will arrange it. We don’t want her jumping out of the window again.”
Grauber glanced at the doctor. “He will see to that. I’d like a word with you before you go.”
They had automatically gone forward to the big open hearth. While the doctor remained near Erika the other two walked back towards the passage and stood for a few moments conversing in the doorway to it.
As Erika sat down in one of the high-backed armchairs her glance fell upon the big, brass-faced clock that was ticking away above the carved wood mantel. The hands stood at a quarter past three. It seemed inconceivable to her that barely five hours had elapsed since she had left the castle; since nearly four of those must have been occupied by her journeys to and from the shores of the Bodensee. Yet, actually, her attempt to get the launch, her arrest, the short run into Friedrichshafen and her soul-shattering experiences at the Gestapo office had all been encompassed in little more than an hour.
She wondered vaguely what had happened to Kurt. Perhaps, having no more use for him, Einholtz had shot him before leaving the castle; or possibly he had been handcuffed to his own bed and locked in his room. Then, for the first time, the question entered her mind as to what had happened to the Gräfin Bertha. Somehow she had taken it for granted that the game old woman had got safely back. But had she? On the way to Friedrichshafen Einholtz had disclosed that he had known the part she was playing all the time. The terror Erika had felt in the Gestapo office had put that out of her mind, but now she suddenly became acutely anxious for her mother-in-law. Grauber and Einholtz were not the sort of men to neglect their habit of exacting a bitter payment from anyone who sheltered and aided any fugitive from the mockery of Nazi justice.
The clock had ticked through ten minutes when Erika heard footsteps in the passage, and with a fresh surge of apprehension saw the old Countess come in.
She had a heavy dressing-gown over her nightdress and she was followed by Helga, who was similarly, if more attractively, clad. Einholtz brought up the rear.
Grauber, who had sat down near the entrance to the hall, came to his feet, clicked his heels and bowed from the waist with ironical politeness as he presented himself:
“Gruppenführer Grauber, I have heard quite a lot about you tonight, Frau Gräfin, and I am most interested to make your acquaintance.”
The old lady had her chin in the air, and her dark eyes surveyed him as though he was something that the cat had brought in.
“What do you want with me?” she snapped. “How dare you get me out of bed at this time of night.”
“I want some supper,” he purred. “And you, Frau Gräfin, are going to get it for me. As you cannot have been in bed for much more than an hour, it is quite fitting that you should get up again; so that, unexpected by you as the sequel to your recent adventure may be, you should not be deprived of witnessing its results.”
As she made no reply he brought down the short whip that he was carrying with a smart smack on the leather of the chair behind him, and barked, “Supper, you old cow, or the next time this whip falls it will be your hide that it will lash!”
For probably the first time in her life the Gräfin Bertha showed fear. She had seen Erika, dishevelled, battered, and with one eye bunged up from a great purple bruise, slumped in a chair at the far end of the room, so she needed no telling what had happened. The blood drained from her face and, without a word, she silently turned about.
Einholtz grinned at Helga, and gave the lush-looking maid a friendly slap on the bottom. “Go and keep an eye on the old bitch,” he laughed, “and make her put her back into it. You’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ll be leaving here tomorrow. We can use a girl like you.”
With an answering laugh Helga followed her ex-mistress out of the room.
The clock ticked metallically on for another quarter of an hour. Erika was wishing that instead of shooting Einholtz ineffectively in the boathouse she had turned her pistol on herself. She did not know what was going to happen, but the atmosphere of the place was now heavy with the foreboding of some unbelievably ghastly scene that was soon to be enacted there.
Then there were footsteps again and her mother-in-law came back, carrying a tray so heavily laden that her aged arms could scarcely bear its weight. Helga walked jauntily behind her carrying three bottles of Hock.
Suppressing a sob, the Gräfin Bertha set the heavy tray down on the table. With palsied hands she set out the plates, cutlery and three dishes containing the best cold food the larder had to offer. When she had done, Helga snapped at her:
“Get the glasses, quick now!”
“Go with her, Helga,” said Grauber, quietly. “I don’t want our charming hostess to rat on her own party.”
While the two women were away the men drew chairs up to the table. Grauber set one for Erika and bowed to her. “The Gräfin von Osterberg will not refuse to join us in her own home, I’m sure.”
During the past half hour Erika’s limbs had stiffened as she sat. When she stood up a score of pains seared through her and she gave a little moan, but she tottered to the table and sank down in the high-backed Jacobean elbow chair that Grauber was holding for her.
The Gräfin Bertha returned with another tray. While she set the glasses on the table Helga uncorked the wine. The three men helped themselves to the food and all of them offered the dishes to Erika, but she shook her head. Her swollen tongue was now dry in her mouth and a morsel of food would have choked her, even had she been willing to eat with them.
Helga took a chair next to Einholtz and began to help herself lavishly to the cold meats. As she was munching her first mouthful she grinned maliciously up at the Gräfin Bertha and said:
“You stay where you are and wait on us. Come on, give us some wine.”
The old lady picked up one of the bottles of Hock, walked round to behind Erika’s chair and poured her a full glass. “Drink that, child,” she said gruffly, “you need it.”
It was the only time she had spoken since her first appearance and the sound of her voice did Erika good. She felt certain that the old woman understood it was through no fault of hers that the Gestapo men had come to the castle and were inflicting these indignities upon its aged chatelaine. She gratefully drank the golden wine. It stung her sore tongue a little but eased the dryness of her mouth and its warmth made her feel slightly stronger. Having poured out for the others, the Gräfin Bertha walked quietly to an armchair by the dead embers of the fire and, picking up her workbag, began to knit.
The nightmare meal seemed to drag on interminably, yet barely twenty minutes had passed when Grauber pushed away his plate. The others followed suit, lit cigarettes, and passed round the third bottle of Hock.
In the ensuing silence Erika became a prey to the most frightful fears again. What were they going to do now? How would this night of horrors end?
Grauber tipped back his chair, looked across at her and said:
“After the feast, the entertainment. That is the proper order of things, isn’t it, Frau Gräfin? Tonight, in this marvellous old hall, which makes so perfect a setting for such a scene, we shall be privileged to witness a somewhat unusual spectacle. Herr Doktor, oblige me by getting out your apparatus.”
The soulless eyes behind the heavy lensed spectacles showed no trace of emotion. Like an automaton the Gestapo-trained operator, who had not uttered a single word since Erika had first set eyes on him, stood up. Walking over to the big leather case that he had brought with him, he produced a set of batteries, the coils of flex and the two poker-like terminals. Einholtz pushed aside some plates for him and he set them on the table. After making a quick test he spoke at last:
“All is ready, Herr Gruppenführer.”
The blood had drained from Erika’s face as Grauber looked at her again, and said:
“As I was remarking to Herr Oberstleutnant Einholtz earlier tonight, you do not stand up well to physical torture. You are one of those highly strung women who are damnably obstinate yet faint as soon as some trifling persuasion is offered to them. No information can be extracted from an unconscious body, so as far as the Herr Doktor’s apparatus is concerned, and other similar treatments, you are a very poor subject.”
Erika felt certain that he was playing a cat-and-mouse game with her. He was deliberately encouraging her to hope for mercy in order that she might be plunged into greater depths of despair when, as she knew already, it emerged that not a trace of mercy existed in his perverted and evil heart. But he went smoothly on:
“I have seen many women under examination with various scientific aids, and the sight of your paroxysms would hold nothing new for me. But I promised our friends an unusual spectacle, and I will give it to them. It would interest me to see how a really aged woman reacts.”
Turning away, he added suddenly to Helga: “You are the Gräfin Bertha’s personal maid. Strip her of her clothes.”
“Stop!” Erika’s cry rang round the hall as she sprang to her feet. “I will not have it!”
Grauber looked up at her, his single eye lit by a self-congratulatory smile. “I had an idea that might bring you to heel,” he purred. “It never fails to intrigue me that people who are prepared to die rather than talk themselves will often cave in rather than see others touched; although I confess that I don’t pretend to understand it myself.”
“You wouldn’t, you swine,” she flared at him.
He shrugged. “Now you feel differently you may as well get it over. Tell me what Gregory Sallust is up to in Russia and I will send the Gräfin Bertha back to bed.”
Erika slumped down in her chair again and buried her face in her hands. She knew that she could not possibly sit there and let them strip that hidebound, dogmatic, but courageous old woman naked, far less allow them to practise upon her the vile indignity that had turned the Friedrichshafen prostitute from a stalwart woman into a quivering, slobbering jelly. It was unthinkable, and Gregory himself would be the first to agree to that.
Frantically she wondered what the effects of giving away the reason for his journey into Russia would be to him. But she could not see that it would in any way jeopardise his safety. His mission was so wide and general in its scope that to disclose its objects would reveal no vital secret.
Suddenly Grauber brought his great fist crashing down on the table. The plates were still rattling as he shouted: “I’ve wasted enough time on you. Are you going to talk, or am I to make that old bitch jump around as she hasn’t done since she went on her honeymoon?”
Erika started upright. “Yes! I’ll tell you!” she gasped. “Gregory has gone to Russia to find out three things. How much of their manpower the Russians can arm and put in the field. How much territory they can afford to give away before they are forced either to make a stand or surrender; and the state of Stalin’s health.”
Grauber’s solitary eye opened wide, then an amazed smile spread over his heavy features.
“But this is marvellous!” he cried. “Sallust is the best agent that the British have got. If I can capture him now he will have that information. And those are the three things that I would give half my private fortune to know.”