One of the assets that Gregory had found most valuable in his dangerous work was his ability when woken suddenly to be almost instantly conscious of all the circumstances in which he had fallen asleep. In the present instance, before Pipi had finished shouting at him he had flung back the bedclothes and was tumbling out of bed.
‘Fire bombs!’ he echoed. ‘Where? Have they broken through the gate into the courtyard?’
‘No,’ Pipi panted. ‘They are at the back. They have thrown the bombs over the terrace into the big salon. I smelt smoke and found it coming from under the doorway. The room was full of it. I could see nothing; but while I was there another grenade crashed through the window and bounced along the floor. I slammed the door to and dashed upstairs.’
‘Have you woken your mistress?’
‘Yes, Herr Commandant. I went to her first.’
‘Good. Rouse the rest of the household, then get the fire hose going again. I’ll be down as soon as I can get some clothes on.’
As Pipi ran from the room Gregory looked quickly about him. Mario’s uniform had been taken away by Pipi and, owing to this unforeseen emergency, he had not brought up the suit which was to replace it. All the Baron’s clothes that were useable had been packed the previous evening; they were still in the suitcase that had been brought in from the car and left down in the vestibule. Pulling open the wardrobe, Gregory looked inside. All that was left there were a fur-trimmed Hussar’s jacket, a silk dressing-gown, a carnival domino and a Chinese mandarin robe. Suddenly he remembered his own dinner-jacket-suit. At the time of Ribbentrop’s visit, fearing the house might be searched, he had hidden it in the unlit stove.
Hurrying into his underclothes, he pulled the suit from its hiding place. The hair oil had congealed into hideous stains on the satin lapels of the jacket, and it was crumpled to a rag; but that was of no importance at the moment. Within three minutes of Pipi’s rousing him he was dressed, had snatched up his wallet and pistol, and was taking the stairs two at a time down to the next floor. Turning left along the broad corridor he ran into Sabine’s room.
Unlike Gregory, when in a deep sleep she was difficult to wake. The light was on and she was sitting up in bed with her head lolling against its padded satin backboard. Evidently Pipi’s reason for waking her had not penetrated to her brain, and immediately he had run from the room she had dropped off again.
With her dark hair framing her pale face, slim arms and one small firm breast exposed owing to the ribbon of her nightdress having slipped from her shoulder, she still looked a girl scarcely out of her teens. Her long black lashes made fans on her cheeks and her lips were a little parted. The sight of her, even in that hour of fresh peril, made Gregory catch his breath. Instead of calling to her, on a swift impulse he stooped and rewoke her with a kiss on the mouth.
Her eyes flickered open. ‘Oh, darling!’ she sighed, and threw her arms round his neck.
Gently but swiftly he broke her hold, and said in a low urgent voice, ‘My sweet, we’re in trouble again. You must get up at once. That swine Grauber has set his thugs to burn down the house. Quick now!’
As he spoke he pulled back the bed-clothes. She gave a little shudder; then doubled up her fists and, like a child, began to rub the sleep from her eyes as she muttered, ‘Oh, hell! Aren’t we ever to have any peace?’
‘Come along!’ He took one of her arms and gave her a little shake. ‘I tell you the house is on fire. For God’s sake start getting yourself dressed.’
Swinging her long legs over the side of the bed, she got to her feet. Magda had left her underclothes laid out all ready for her on a nearby chair. She was fully awake now. Running to it she started to pull on her stockings.
Gregory left her and walked swiftly towards the windows. Both of them were French and led out on to the balcony. One was a little open, and he could now smell smoke coming from it. Opening it wide he stepped out on to the balcony. The moon was up, silvering the spires of the Parliament House across the river, and making the scene almost as bright as day.
As Pipi had said, Grauber’s people were attacking the back of the palace. Seventy or eighty feet below, down in the road, near the small car that had been parked there earlier, there was now a big wagon. Grouped about it there were a score or more of figures, and Gregory grimly took in the fact that most of them were in the uniform of the Arrow-Cross. Then, after the first quick glance, his attention concentrated on the immediate foreground just below him. Two men had come up the steps cut in the steep slope. They were standing just beyond the iron gate, and could easily have forced it, but for some reason they had apparently decided not to break through on to the terrace. One was kneeling beside a square box and evidently fusing the grenades. The other had just taken one from him, and as Gregory watched, pitched it through a ground floor window.
Stepping back into the room, Gregory grabbed the first piece of furniture to hand. It happened to be the stool in front of Sabine’s dressing table. Running out on to the balcony again he lifted it high above his head and hurled it down at the two men. Both ducked but one of its legs caught the kneeling man a glancing blow on the head and he toppled backwards. The other was holding another bomb ready to throw. He lobbed it up at Gregory. The bomb missed his head by inches, sailed over his shoulder through the open window, and fell with a dull thud in the room.
Swinging round, he ran towards it, hoping to snatch it up and throw it out again before it could explode. It was not a grenade, but a cylindrical tin cannister from one end of which sparks were sizzling. As he dived to grab it, there came a loud ‘phut’ and from the place where the sparks had been there shot out a jet of thick oily smoke. It was pointing towards him, so the smoke fountained up right into his face. Blinded and choking he staggered back, while Sabine let out a scream and ran to him, fearing that he had been seriously injured.
It was a good minute before he could get his breath and his eyes had ceased to water sufficiently to see again. Meanwhile the bomb had been vomiting forth its pitch and sulphur in a steady stream. For several feet around it there billowed a cloud of such denseness that it was no longer even possible to guess where it lay, and to have dived into the smoke again would have been to invite asphyxiation.
As they backed away still further a second bomb hurtled through the window and rolled under the bed. Gregory dropped to his hands and knees and strove to reach it. But again he was a few seconds too late. Before his groping hand could hit upon it the fuse ignited its contents. A moment later clouds of noisome smoke were coiling up in great spirals from under both sides of the bed and from behind its headboard.
By now the far end of the room was totally obscured. The electric light over the dressing table showed as no more than a faint blur in a pea-soup fog. In the centre of the room the smoke billowing out from under the bed hid all but its foot and, fearing that they would be cut off from the door, Gregory pushed Sabine round it. When rushing into the room he had left the door a little open; so a gentle draught from the window was causing the smoke to swirl and eddy inwards after them. With incredible swiftness wisps and fingers of it reached out from the two black central masses, while others now struck downwards from clouds of it that had hit and rolled along the ceiling. The eyes of both of them were smarting, their nostrils teasing and their throats full of acrid fumes. Sabine had had time to put on only her stockings, elastic belt, brassière and shoes; but it was impossible to remain there longer and Gregory thrust her towards the door.
‘My jewels!’ she gasped. ‘My jewels!’
‘Where are they?’ he cried.
‘In my beauty box. By the dressing table. I must…’ A violent fit of coughing cut her short.
She had turned to go back for them, but he caught her by the arm. Although he was again choking and gasping he took a couple of paces forward. Then he halted and stepped back. The whole room was now filled with smoke. A few feet in it was so dense that he could no longer see the bed.
‘No good!’ he spluttered. ‘No … no good. Suffocate in there … for … for certain.’ Sabine had already stumbled from the room and was bent double in the corridor. Half-blinded again he staggered after her, pulling the door shut behind him with a bang. Gratefully they drew in the clean air; but it was several minutes before their eyes had stopped oozing tears and they had cleared their lungs sufficiently to breathe freely.
As soon as they were able they set off at a run along the broad corridor. At the stairhead they paused, still wheezing and weeping. The upper part of the hall was clear, but below, like mist upon a pond, strata of faint bluish haze were floating. It was coming from the back of the hall and under the stairs, filtering in beneath the doors of the big reception rooms that gave on to the terrace.
‘My coat!’ exclaimed Sabine. ‘Holy Mary be praised! That’s safe, anyway!’ It was still lying on one of the settees where she had left it after Mario had brought it in from the car for her. They hurried down the stairs and as Gregory helped her into it, he remarked:
‘By Jove, it’s heavy.’
She nedded ‘Sables always are; but it’s not only that. I’ve got a big flask of brandy in one of the pockets, and there’s this.’ Patting a bulging zip-up pocket in the lining, she went on, ‘When I am travelling I always keep my passport and papers in here. There’s less risk of losing them than in a handbag.’
Gregory wondered grimly if they would ever now have a chance to use their passports; but his mind was swiftly taken off speculations about the future by the doors of the vestibule being thrust open and Pipi appearing in them clasping the nozzle of the hose. Gregory ran forward to help him and Sabine quickly did up her fur coat to hide her semi-nakedness.
Several other servants appeared with coats pulled on over their night clothes. Between them, they ran out the long flat snake of canvas through the hall to the door of the saloon. They were all jabbering in Hungarian but, from their gestures as much as anything, Gregory gathered that a shout from Pipi would be relayed to a man in the courtyard who would turn on the water, and that as it spouted from the nozzle the footman was to throw open the door.
Gregory was a little dubious about the wisdom of opening the door, but a fire might be raging behind it; and, if that were the case, in doing so lay the only hope of saving the palace. In the event, his fears proved justified. The water rushed along inside the hose rounding it out in a matter of seconds, the footman flung open the saloon door, the jet of water erupted into the room; but, at the same instant, there welled from it a great convoluted cloud of stygian blackness that swiftly enveloped them all.
Coughing and cursing, they were forced to give way before it, while Gregory yelled, ‘Shut the door! Shut the door!’ But no one could now get near enough to do so. An order was passed for the water to be turned off, and the brass hose nozzle was thrown down on the floor, still emitting great gouts of water. Several of the men, Gregory among them, soaked handkerchiefs in it and tied them over their mouths and nostrils; but they were so blinded by the smoke now pouring out through the doorway that they still could not reach it.
The hall was filling rapidly and Sabine had retreated half way up the stairs. Joining her there, Gregory said quickly, ‘Listen. It’s clear that Grauber is trying to smoke us out. I suppose he hasn’t yet got the O.K. to come in and get us, and fears that we’ll manage to slip away if he fails to have us in his clutches within the next few hours. These bombs are the sort that troops use to make a smoke screen. They don’t give out flames, so unless one sets a carpet or curtain smouldering there is very little risk of fire. If there had been a fire in the saloon we’d have seen the flames through the smoke. But the thing is that they’ll go on chucking bombs in until the whole house is rendered untenable and we’re driven from it; so if we’re to get away at all we’ve got to make the attempt now.’
Sabine glanced down at her bare chest and said, ‘I wish I had a few more clothes on. Still, fortunately it’s a warm night; and if you say we’ve got to go now, we must.’
Gregory had caught a glimpse of Mario out in the vestibule. Choking and spluttering he made his way to it through the smoke and ran the chauffeur to earth just outside in the courtyard. Mario said that he was still willing to act as a decoy. They then told Pipi of their intentions and Gregory asked him to take charge. It was agreed that there was no point in making any further attempt to use the hose unless an outbreak of flame was seen, and that all the servants should be withdrawn to the fresh air of the courtyard until it become possible to re-enter the palace without risk of suffocation. Sabine kissed Magda on the cheek and held out her hand for Pipi to kiss, then the couple wished them luck and, accompanied by Mario, they headed for the clearer atmosphere at the top of the stairs.
Even on the first floor the lights were now made dim by a blue haze thicker than that seen in a night-club at four in the morning, and it was evident that the smoke up there would soon be as dense as it was on the ground floor. Thick wreaths of it were seeping from under the door of Sabine’s bedroom and also from under that of another room, into which a bomb must have been thrown through the window.
Keeping their damped scarves and handkerchiefs pressed over the lower part of their faces, they went on up to the attics. Sabine led them into one which held a big water tank and a wooden ladder leading up to a glass sky-light. Before mounting it Gregory said to her and to Mario:
‘Now, remember; we must stick to the middle of the line of roofs. If we get too near the edge our silhouettes will show up against the sky-line. Then they’ll spot us and the game will be up. So keep low. If necessary, get down on your hands and knees and crawl. Sabine, you stick close behind me. Mario, you turn to the right as soon as you are through the sky-light. Good luck, and a thousand thanks again for the help you are giving us.’
When he reached the top of the ladder, he wrestled for a moment with the rusty lever of the sky-light; then he thrust it up and crawled out on to the roof. Sabine went up after him, her head on a level with his heels. When he had crouched there for a whole minute without moving she called impatiently:
‘Go on! What are you waiting for?’
Instead of replying he gave only a low hiss to silence her, and waved backwards with his hand for her to remain where she was. Then he crawled a few feet across the roof, raised himself to a crouching position, sank down again, crawled back and thrust his feet over the edge of the sky-light with the obvious intention of descending to the attic.
Sabine gave way before him. When he was half way down the ladder he gently lowered the sky-light. As he reached the floor she asked in a voice still made hoarse from the smoke she had swallowed:
‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’
For a moment he did not reply. Then he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s no good. Grauber’s got one ahead of me. I might have guessed he would. He has either bludgeoned or bribed the caretakers in both the next-door houses to let him send men up to their roofs. On either side there are eight or ten of them just waiting for us to walk into their arms.’
To find their escape route blocked at the very outset was a wicked blow, and against such numbers there could be no possibility of forcing a passage. In deep despondency they made their way downstairs again.
On the last lap they narrowly escaped disaster. Down on the ground floor the atmosphere had become so laden with smoke particles that it was only just possible to see a hand held in front of the face. In the pitch black murk they lost their sense of direction, become separated and, for a few terrifying minutes, could find neither the doors nor one another. To regain contact they had to remove the damped covers from their mouths, so that they could shout, and the acrid fumes rasped their throats like red-hot sandpaper. By luck, a moment later, they stumbled into the vestibule, and from it were able to stagger out into the courtyard, but not before they were whooping as though their lungs would burst.
When they had recovered sufficiently they told Pipi how their plan for getting away over the roofs had been thwarted, and Gregory suggested that as a forlorn hope they should make another attempt to break out in the car. But Pipi shook his head.
‘It would be hopeless, Herr Commandant. Thinking you safely gone old Hunyi, the porter, and I undid the gate a few minutes ago and looked out. The street is blocked both ways by lorries drawn across it and there are the best part of a hundred Arrow-Cross men out there.’
‘Did they make any move to rush the gate?’ Gregory asked.
‘No; they only laughed and jeered at us, and said that they were waiting for the Gnädige Frau Baronin and her Frenchman. And that if both of you did not come out soon, they would have to take steps to make us all do so.’
‘What about the police?’ Sabine enquired hoarsely. ‘Were there none there?’
‘No, Gnädige Frau Baronin, I did not see any. But there were a few firemen, and there is a fire engine farther down the street. I suppose one of our neighbours telephoned for it, and the Arrow-Cross men have refused to let it be brought up to the palace.’
‘That’s about it,’ Gregory agreed. ‘I expect they have told the firemen that they are using only smoke-bombs; so there is no immediate danger of fire, and all they need do for the present is to stand by.’
Sabine stamped her foot angrily. ‘They have no right to prevent the firemen coming in. One of these bombs may quite well start a fire, and in that dense black smoke it might get such a hold before anyone is aware of it that half the block may be burnt down.’
‘You ought to know by now the sort of pull these Fascist organisations have,’ Gregory could not resist remarking with a trace of bitterness. ‘In any country that wants to keep the goodwill of Hitler they are allowed to break up the political meetings of their opponents, and wreck the offices of newspapers that show a tendency to be Left-wing, while police and firemen look the other way.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right, and that really I should be thankful that they haven’t broken in and wrecked everything in the place. What I don’t understand, though, is why they make no attempt to come in and drag you off to Grauber.’
‘I do.’ He replied quickly. ‘There are still limits to what these types can get away with in Hungary. Throwing smoke bombs can be laughed off as showing disapproval of someone they had been told is concealing an enemy agent; but the Regent might get tough with them if they started taking it on themselves to break into palaces and arrest people. And there is more to it than that. Grauber hoped that his own thugs would catch us in their ambush. When they failed he went to Szalasi and asked for his help. I haven’t a doubt that Szalasi replied more or less like this: ‘No, thank you. I’m not making a deadly enemy of Ribbentrop by snatching his girl-friend and her chum for you; and he’d know that my boys wouldn’t dare do a thing like that without my orders. But I tell you what I will do. I’ll tip off one of my lieutenants that I’d like enough smoke bombs thrown into the palace to drive everyone out of it. Afterwards, it will be no concern of mine if there is a scrap in the street and, of course, you will have your boys outside mingling with the crowd. It will be up to them to nobble the two birds you’re after as soon as they appear, but it should be easy money to do that once they are in the open, and to bring them along to you at the Villa Petoefer.” ’
‘So that’s the game slippery Szalasi is playing!’ Sabine commented indignantly.
‘That, or something very like it.’
‘Since he was willing only to take such half-measures I wonder that Grauber didn’t wait until tomorrow; because it’s almost certain that by then he’ll be able to get the full cooperation of the police.’
‘I don’t suppose he could have raised enough men of his own to man the roofs as well as the streets; so if he had waited till tomorrow, the odds are we should have got away. He did the wise thing in securing any help he could while the going was good.’
‘If you’re right about Szalasi, we may get away yet. When his young men have thrown all their bombs they are going to get bored with waiting about. They’ve driven us from the house but they seem to have overlooked the fact that we could spend the night here in the courtyard. It’s not yet much after midnight. In another couple of hours they’ll be thinking about their beds, and if they are not under Grauber’s orders they’ll pack up and go home. Say it is even three or four o’clock before they throw their hand in; we’ll still have plenty of time before dawn to plan another attempt to break out, either over the roofs or wherever Grauber’s men seem to be fewest.’
Inwardly Gregory groaned. Squeezing her arm, he said, ‘No, darling: I’m afraid it’s not going to be like that. Having rendered the palace untenable, their next act will be to do the same with the courtyard and the servants’ quarters along either side of it. They must know that by now most of your household has been flushed out into the open, and it won’t be long before they start on the job of forcing the lot of us out into the street.’
He had hardly finished speaking when the first tin canister came lolloping through the stone arch above the wooden double gates. It fell near one of the maidservants, who let out a scream, and next moment a spurt of the oily black smoke fountained up from it.
‘Holy Mary!’ Sabine muttered tearfully. ‘What are we to do?’
‘We’ve got to face it,’ Gregory replied grimly. ‘The game is up. I’m desperately sorry to have let you in for this—desperately sorry.’
‘It’s quite as much my fault,’ she admitted huskily. ‘If I hadn’t persuaded you to come back here after I got you out of the police station; if I’d let you take a chance on your own last night as you wanted to; even if I’d listened to you this morning and agreed to make a break for it without delaying to get papers and things, we wouldn’t have been trapped like this.’
He shrugged. ‘It is no good considering might have beens, and all you did was to urge the course that you thought at the time would be best for us. But now we’ve got to resign ourselves to saying goodbye. The only chance of your getting out of this is for you to surrender yourself to the top Arrow-Cross boy and demand that he should take you straight to Szalasi. That should give him the feeling that he’s one up on the Germans, so it’s unlikely he’ll refuse. Szalasi is going to be desperately embarrassed when you are handed over to him. The very last thing he wants is for Ribb to be able to pin it on him that it was he who scuppered you. All the odds are that he’ll apologise for his boys and send you back here in a car. Then you must jump into the Mercedes and get Mario to drive you hell for leather to the frontier.’
‘But what about you?’
‘It is me that Grauber is really after, and there is nothing to be gained by my surrendering to Szalasi’s boys. Ribb might be annoyed at my being caught, but he couldn’t reasonably blame Szalasi for handing me over; so it’s a certainty that he would hand me over, otherwise he’d make Grauber his enemy for life. All I can do when the time comes is to attempt to shoot my way through, and hope for a chance to get away up some alley in the darkness.’
He tried to keep his voice light, but he knew now that he was really up against it. The odds against his being able to get the better of half-a-dozen Gestapo thugs, aided by scores of Arrow-Cross men, were fantastic. He could only hope that he would meet his end fighting and not get a knock on the head which would result in his being delivered alive into Grauber’s hands.
That the time would soon come when he must take this last gamble with fate was apparent. While he and Sabine had been talking, four more smoke bombs had been pitched through the archway. Pipi had got the fire-hose going again and had succeeded in putting two of them out, but the others were belching their evil black smoke and it was obvious that the hose could not be switched quickly enough to douse all of the swift succession of them that were now coming down in the courtyard. The group of eight or ten servants were starting to cough and splutter, and casting anxious glances at their mistress.
Old Hunyi, the bearded porter, came hobbling up. He was still in pain from the kick he had received in the groin and leaning heavily on a thick stick; but he made an awkward bow to Sabine, and said in Hungarian:
‘Gracious lady, if we remain here we shall soon all be suffocated. I beg that you will deign to accept the shelter of my lodge.’
She translated to Gregory who gave a sad shake of his head and replied in German, ‘That would only be to put off the evil moment. From the street they can lob bombs through the windows of the lodge, and they will as soon as they have made the courtyard untenable. I’m afraid there is no possible way for us to keep out of their clutches.’
Hunyi considered for a moment. He understood German and now spoke in it. ‘If we could find the trap door leading to the caves the Gnädnige Frau Baronin and the Herr Commandant might get away by them.’
‘The caves!’ Gregory almost shouted. ‘What caves?’
‘The Buda hill is honeycombed with caves,’ the elderly porter replied. ‘There are lakes beneath our feet and many of the mineral springs rise in them. Legend has it that our fore fathers took refuge down there when the Turks ravished the city in the fifteenth century.1 Many of the old palaces have ways down into them; and I recall, when I was a boy and Pipi’s father was Steward here, hearing him say that there was a way into them through a trapdoor in the cellars.’
For Gregory this possibility meant a chance of life and freedom, and for Sabine escape from the threatening attentions of the Gestapo. He did not attempt to keep the excitement out of his voice, as he cried:
‘In the cellars! But where? Could you find it?’
Hunyi shook his head. ‘No, Herr Commandant. But Pipi might know where it is.’
Sabine called to Pipi to leave the hose to the footman and come over to them. Quickly they questioned him; but he could not help. He knew of the caves but had never heard his father speak of an entrance to them from the Tuzotlo palace.
Gregory’s heart sank again. If it was there they should be able to find it. But since its existence was not even known to Pipi it would need careful looking for, and in the cellars of a large building like the palace such a search might take hours.
Rushing from place to place, their hasty conferences, and the wear and tear from constant fits of violent coughing made them feel as if the smoke bomb attack had been going on all night; but, in fact, it was less than half-an-hour since Pipi had given the first alarm, and there was a quarter of an hour still to go before it would be one o’clock. Given normal conditions, two or three hours should have proved enough to locate the trap-door. But conditions in the palace were not normal. The rooms on its main floors were now pitch black caverns, and Gregory knew that by this time enough smoke must have seeped down into the basement to asphyxiate anyone who remained there without a mask for more than ten or fifteen minutes.
Nevertheless, as it was that or death outside, and the yard was now becoming thick with smoke, Gregory determined to try it. The air was clearest near the gate; so most of the servants were now in a huddle by it, under the archway through which the smoke bombs were coming. Mario was among them. Gregory ran over to him and gasped:
‘A pair of goggles! Have you a pair of goggles? I am going into the palace again.’
Mario nodded, and they ran together to the garage. At the back of it there was a motor-cycle that belonged to him. Snatching a pair of goggles from its handlebars he thrust them at Gregory and panted:
‘One moment, I have others. If I can help I will come with you.’ Turning to a box of spares he unearthed two older pairs, the elastics of which were stretched, but not too badly for them to be usable.
As they emerged from the garage, Pipi came running towards them. For the first time that night he was laughing. In his round blackened face his teeth flashed like those of a Negro. Behind him, by the wrist, he was dragging an old woman. For a moment he was seized with a coughing fit, then he spluttered out:
‘I asked the other servants. This is old Ciská, our laundry woman. She knows where it is.’
‘Thank God!’ exclaimed Gregory. ‘Quick! Give her one of those pairs of goggles, Mario.’
As she took them, Pipi snatched the other pair and said. ‘She speaks only Hungarian; I will go with you to interpret.’
Mario shrugged. ‘As you will. You know the cellars better than I do.’
Gregory turned to him. ‘You can help in another way. God alone knows what it will be like in the caves. Anyway, we’ll need torches, candles, matches. Please collect everything of that kind you can while we are gone.’
‘We’ll need a crowbar, too,’ Pipi added. ‘Not having been used for so long, it’s certain the trap will be hard to get up.’ As he spoke he ran into the machine shop and came out carrying a medium-sized jemmy.
Sabine was standing with Magda in an angle of the yard. Hurrying over to her, Gregory told her what he hoped to do, then rejoined the others. Parts of the yard were now two or three inches deep in water from the hose. In it they redamped the scarves and tied them afresh over their mouths and nostrils.
With Pipi leading and old Ciská following beside Gregory, they went through a passage at the back of the garage into the main block of the house. The smoke was dense, but troubled them much less now that they wore goggles. Pipi fumbled his way along a corridor and found the stairs to the basement. Down in it there was much less smoke, but enough to justify Gregory’s fear that without a mask anyone would be driven from it within a quarter of an hour.
Pipi was snapping the lights on as he advanced and old Ciská kept mumbling to him in Hungarian. They walked in Indian file along several low stone-flagged passages, then came into a broader space along one side of which were trestles supporting a row of casks. There they halted, and after a moment Pipi turned to Gregory.
‘She said it was in the beer-cellar and this is the beer-cellar. But now she says that, although it’s nearly thirty years since she’s been in this part of the basement, she’s sure that the beer-cellar she remembers was not like this.’
‘Probably she has confused it in her mind with a cellar that holds wine casks,’ Gregory suggested. ‘Is there one that does?’
‘Yes, Herr Commandant.’
‘Then let’s take her to it.’
For a moment Pipi was silent, then he burst out, ‘St. Stephen’s curse upon it! We cannot. The wine cellars are locked, and I keep the keys in my room upon the second floor. This scarf is not enough protection to go upstairs. I’d be suffocated before I could get back with them.’
‘Perhaps we can break down the door. Anyway, let’s go and see.’
With a despondent shake of the head Pipi turned about, and led them down a corridor at right angles to the one by which they had come to another open space. Giving a helpless shrug, he pointed to an ancient nail-studded door set in a low archway.
Gregory gave vent to a peculiarly blasphemous Italian oath that he used only in times of exceptional stress. The jemmy that Pipi was holding might have been a matchstick for all the good it would have been against such a door. Nothing short of dynamite would have burst its lock or forced it off its hinges.
The wave of evil fury that had rocked his mind was past in a moment. Swiftly he began to assess the chances of his being able to get Pipi’s keys himself. It meant going up three flights of stairs—back stairs that were unknown to him—finding a room somewhere at the opposite end of the house to the one he had occupied—a room that he had never entered—then in pitch darkness locating solely from its description the right drawer in a bureau or writing table, and finally getting safely back to the cellar again.
‘No,’ he decided. Pipi was no coward and if he, knowing the house from cellar to attic, would not take such a gamble, it would be sheer lunacy for him, to attempt it. The sulphur-laden air would overcome him and he would be choking his life out before he could even find Pipi’s room.
Yet, if they failed to locate the trap door, it could be only a matter of an hour or so and he would be choking his life out in his own blood outside in the street. Either way was going to be extremely painful, and he had an idea that asphyxiation would prove the more so; but it had the advantage that at least he would make sure of not falling alive into Grauber’s hands. And, after all, there was always the chance that by some miracle he might succeed in getting the keys.
Old Ciská had been peering uncertainly round her through the bluish haze. Now she muttered something to Pipi. Turning to Gregory he exclaimed excitedly, ‘She says this is it! That in the old days the beer cellar used to be here!’
The old crone was nodding her head up and down and pointing with a skinny finger to a wide embrasure about fifteen feet away between two great squat pillars that supported a vaulted arch. ‘She says that’s where the scantling used to run,’ Pipi interpreted, ‘and that the trap-door is in the corner by the left-hand pillar.’
Gregory was already staring in that direction; but instead of joy his face held a worried frown. In more recent years the embrasure had been used as a bin for empty bottles. Hundreds of them were stacked in it, six or eight deep and five feet high. To shift enough of them to get at the floor under any part of the stack was going to be a formidable task. In consternation he said, ‘Ask her if she’s certain—absolutely certain.’
Pipi put the question and, with a muffled cackle of laughter from behind her scarf, Ciská began to babble cheerfully. ‘She should know, even after all these years. Béla the pantry-man had brought her there when she was a girl, given her too much beer and tossed her petticoats over her head. Afterwards they came there often. Once they had nearly been caught by the cellar-master. It was then Béla had shown her the trap-door. He had pulled it up and made her hide crouching on the steps underneath it until the old boy had gone. Soon after that Béla had been taken for the war, and there had been a child. The old Baroness had been very angry and sent her to live in the country. But there had been plenty of fine fellows there. None of them were such lusty chaps as Béla, though …’
Cutting her short, Pipi told Gregory that he felt sure the old woman knew what she was talking about.
‘Come on then!’ Gregory flund himself at the left-hand end of the great stack of bottles and began to throw them into the farthest corner. It was gruelling work and terribly exasperating; for no sooner had a space a foot or so deep been cleared at the side of the pillar than more bottles from the centre of the stack rolled down into it. Soon the pile of bottles and broken glass in the corner threatened to block the passage, so they had to start another pile against the cellar door. Smoke was still seeping down from above through all sorts of unsuspected crannies and the atmosphere was stifling.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes had slipped by since they had left the courtyard. They were still only halfway down the stack, and fresh avalanches set them back every few moments. Gregory began to despair of reaching the floor before they were exhausted. Old Ciská laboured manfully, but Pipi suddenly left them, so Gregory feared he had been forced to throw his hand in. But Pipi returned carrying a bundle of new laths that had been cut for him to bin away the year’s making of Baratsch, and with these they succeeded in shoring up the bulk of the remaining bottles in the stack.
After that the work went easier, although Gregory was worried now that soon the courtyard would be getting so thick with smoke that Sabine would either faint from suffocation, or find herself compelled to break out with her servants into the street.
Sweating, half-blinded, and with throats like limekilns, they kept at it until the last dozen bottles in the corner where they were delving had been thrown aside. Gregory gave a grunt of relief and joy. They had uncovered a square stone slab with an iron ring in it.
Seizing the ring, he pulled with all this strength; but the stone would not yield. Pipi knelt down and jabbed fiercely with his jemmy at one end of it until the edge of the iron had entered the crack between the stones far enough to hold. Throwing his weight on the jemmy, he heaved. The stone lifted slightly. Another minute and they had it up. A draught of cold clean air hit them in the face. In great gulps they drew it down into their bursting, lacerated lungs.
For a few minutes they were too exhausted to do anything but crouch there, then Gregory said, ‘Pipi, tell old Ciská that if I ever get back to Hungary I’ll give her a pension for life. Take her up now, and bring down your mistress. And the torches and things Mario was going to collect for me.’
The wait for Sabine seemed interminable, but just bearable now that he had fresh air. When she arrived she was almost fainting, and being supported betwen Pipi and Mario. They said that except for Magda, who had remained with her mistress, all the other servants had found the smoke bearable no longer and gone out into the street.
The draught from the trapdoor speedily revived Sabine; but she drew back from its dark depths with an expression of horror. Mario handed Gregory a big torch and a canvas bag half full of other things. Gregory said to the two men, ‘I’ll never be able to repay you both for all you have done. Go up now and out into the street. When you are questioned tell everyone that your mistress and I decided that we would rather die in the palace than be handed over to the Gestapo; and that between us we swallowed the contents of a bottle of sleeping tablets.’
Switching on the torch, he shone it down in the cavity. Its beam showed a flight of crumbling stone steps that merged into darkness.
‘I can’t!’ gasped Sabine. ‘I can’t! We don’t know where it leads. We may never get out!’
‘Courage, darling, courage!’ Descending the first few steps, Gregory took her hand and drew her after him.
No sooner was her head below the level of the ground than Pipi and Mario shouted after them ‘May God keep you! Good luck! Good luck!’ then lowered the heavy stone into place.
They had escaped from the Gestapo and from Grauber; but, as the dank cold of the cave struck an instant chill into their bones, even Gregory’s heart quailed at the thought of what now lay before them. This uncharted escape route must hold many perils. If the Goddess of Fortune should turn her back, they might die there in the darkness under Buda hill.