On the morning of Thursday, November 12th, Sir Pellinore was sitting at his desk in his big library. At a little after midday Erika joined him there. She had only just arrived from Gwaine Meads, as the result of a letter she had received from him that morning. Her rich gold hair was as smoothly done, and her fine face as carefully made up, as usual, but there were deep shadows between her high cheekbones and pansy-blue eyes; and, whereas she habitually carried herself with distinction, there was now a despondent droop about her shoulders.
Coming to his feet, Sir Pellinore boomed, ‘Delighted to see you, my dear. Got your telegram an hour ago. But you needn’t have bothered to send one. You’re always welcome here. You know that.’
As she thanked him she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Then he held a chair for her and went on, ‘Bad business this, about Gregory; but I thought you ought to know.’
‘It’s terrible!’ she said. ‘Terrible! I think that woman must have Satanic powers, and have cast a spell on him. But witch or not, I could cheerfully murder her.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Sir Pellinore sat down again, leaned back and tapped the tips of his fingers together. ‘She wasn’t really to blame for this business. Gregory was determined to get her out even before he’d been down to the Tower to see her. You could hardly expect her to refuse the offer.’
‘Why didn’t you stop him?’
‘I tried to. But you must know what he’s like when he’s got the bit between his teeth.’
‘Is he badly injured?’
‘Troops gave him a pretty rough handling. One of them broke his collar bone with a rifle butt, and he cracked the back of his head open fallin’ against an old cannon. But he wasn’t looking too bad when I went down to see him in the prison hospital yesterday.’
‘What will they do to him?’
Sir Pellinore pulled a long face. ‘The charge for assistin’ an enemy agent to escape is treason. At the worst that could mean death. But it may not come to that in view of the services he has rendered to his country.’
Seeing that Erika’s lower lip had begun to tremble, he leant forward quickly. ‘Don’t take too black a view! No good doin’ that. Let’s talk of something more cheerful. This North Africa show has been a wonderful success. Little short of a miracle. Off Casablanca the night before the weather was most unpromisin’. But whatever the Americans’ faults they’ve plenty of guts. Their Admiral decided to go in, and God calmed the waters for them. Our end, too, went without a hitch. Just think of it! All those hundreds of ships, and nearly a hundred thousand troops, conveyed over a thousand miles of ocean without the loss of a single life.’
Erika nodded. ‘Yes, it’s almost unbelievable.’
‘I happen to know the inside story of how the job was done,’ Sir Pellinore went on, ‘and it’s fascinatin’. Positively fascinatin’. As everyone knows, from Marlborough to Hitler, a good Cover Plan has always been half the battle. To start with, by putting rumours out among the neutrals, and that sort of thing, our people persuaded the German Intelligence to believe that the convoys were heading for Dakar. But, of course, that couldn’t hold once they’d passed through the Straits of Gib., so we tried to fox them that we meant to relieve Malta and invade Sicily. Not easy that.
‘Stuff that’s come into our hands shows that right up to the Friday Kesselring was convinced that we meant to go into North Africa. He had his Air Force based on Sicily all ready to strike. If he had struck on the Saturday afternoon we must have lost scores of ships and thousands of men. But he didn’t. That night he had positive information from his boss, Goering, that the convoys would sail past southern Sicily and make their landings on the east coast of the island. He decided not to risk a single aircraft in a long range attack.
‘Instead he made his fellers spend the whole of Saturday tinkerin’ up aircraft that had been damaged or were out of commission. He gave orders that every plane that could be made to fly should go up on Sunday afternoon. He’d worked it out that our convoys would then be goin’ through the narrows between the tip of Sicily and Cape Bon. If they had it would have been a massacre. But they didn’t. On Saturday evening they sailed past Oran and Algiers, to keep him thinkin’ that he was right and would make his killing. Then, after dark, they turned back. Early on Sunday morning they went in to their true objectives, and left the enemy flat.’
Again Erika nodded. ‘I see,’ she said without a smile. ‘That was … What a clever thing to do.’
Sir Pellinore stroked up his white moustache, and remarked a shade reproachfully, ‘You don’t seem particularly interested, m’dear.’
‘Of course I am!’ she murmured. ‘It was a wonderful idea.’ Then she burst out: ‘But how can you expect me to think of anything but Gregory? From the moment I had your letter, telling me how he had helped that woman to escape, and of his awful intrigue with the Moldavian Colonel, I’ve been able to think of nothing else. It’s horrifying, terrible, to think what they may do to him.’
The old man raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Naturally you are upset. Knew you would be. You’re much too nice a gel not to be sorry for an old friend who’s made a mucker. But I understood from him after you last saw him that you had broken with him entirely. Does this mean that you still love him?’
‘Love him!’ she cried. ‘He is more to me than my life! I don’t care what he’s done! For him to have played the traitor seems utterly inconceivable. But if he has, I don’t care. I came down on the first train to beg you to arrange for me to be allowed to see him. He’s ill; not only physically but mentally. He must be if this awful charge is true. I mean to tell him that I am still his, now and for always; and that if he is sent to prison I’ll wait for him till he comes out.’
She burst into tears. Sir Pellinore stood up, came round from behind his desk and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t cry, my dear. Everything is going to be all right. Afraid I’ve led you up the garden path a bit. But I had to. Seemed to me that provokin’ you into a first-class emotional crisis was the best way to make you put the past behind you and think only of the future.’
Erika drew in a sharp breath. ‘Do you … do you mean that he won’t be sent to prison?’
‘He’s been in prison for the past week,’ Sir Pellinore smiled, ‘but they’re letting him out. Now, dry your tears, m’dear, and I’ll tell you the inner inside story of the great show I was telling you about just now.’
While Erika dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief the Baronet went back to his chair, and began:
‘After Gregory had decided that come hell or high water he meant to get the little Baroness out, he evolved a plan for doing the job which entailed giving away to the enemy some of our secrets. I didn’t like it. Damnably risky. Might have caused a ghastly mess if things had gone wrong. Still, seein’ that he was determined to get her out anyhow, and this scheme offered the only chance of saving him from landin’ himself in prison, I reluctantly agreed to help.
‘Getting her out of the Tower could be fixed. It was, and by me; but not till the very last day, and then only to a limited extent. One indiscretion could have blown the whole works. With the approval of the people at the top I roped in a friend of mine, a Colonel in M.I.5. He fixed things with the Governor of the Tower and the Officer of the Guard for the night. The sentries were given orders to watch for the launch. They were to make certain that the woman got away in it, then run in and grab the man. They were told nothing else.
‘Unfortunately Gregory put up too realistic a fight and got hurt. Anyhow he would have been arrested and clapped into jail. He had to be, and everything else about the escape had to be one hundred per cent genuine. Otherwise the Baroness might have suspected that things weren’t quite what they looked, or through a leak it might somehow or other have got through to the Germans that her escape was a put-up job. It was in order that the Moldavians should continue to be hoaxed that we’ve kept Gregory in the hospital at Brixton Prison. There was no avoidin’ dopin’ the two wardresses, but they are both being given a month’s leave on full pay. And although a few people may wonder why Gregory is allowed to go free, no one except a little handful of us will ever know the whole truth.
‘But gettin’ her out of the Tower was only half the job; and the easier half, at that. She had to be got out of the country. Not to Ireland or South America, but straight back to the Continent. And on a date that couldn’t be altered. That’s where Gregory excelled himself. He got hold of this Moldavian Colonel—feller called Kasdar, or some such outlandish name. Pretended he was potty about the Baroness and asked this feller’s help. It transpired that Kasdar could put her across in a Moldavian sea-going tug; and, of course, we could fix the Navy to let it through their patrols. But he wouldn’t play without some inducement. We’d expected that. It was to feed him that I got for Gregory those tit-bits of true information. God Almighty, what a game it was. My hair’s white already but it’s a marvel the lot didn’t drop out. Every move depended on perfect timing, and the worry of it nearly drove me to drink. Still, we managed to block the most important bits by stopping the diplomatic bags from November the 4th. That was all part of the plan. It forced Kasdar to use the Baroness as a courier. You see, as she was in the lock-up we couldn’t give her the stuff to take out with her. It had to be passed to her by this old friend of hers, the Moldavian; otherwise she would have smelt a rat.’
Sir Pellinore paused for a moment and Erika said, ‘But I don’t understand. You say this was true information that Gregory was giving to the Moldavian. Why did you want her to take it out?’
Sitting back, the old man gave a great guffaw of laughter. ‘My dear, that was the cream of the jest. The German Intelligence take a lot of foolin’. I believe our people did a grand job; but the only way to clinch the deal was to land a red-hot tip on Hitler personally. The Baroness tricked Gregory into bringing her here to spy for the Nazis. He tricked her by making her take out the stuff.
‘The neutrals aren’t all pro-Germans by a long chalk. We have plenty of them working for us, and we know quite a bit about what takes place on the other side. Yesterday we learned what happened last week. By the morning of the 6th the Baroness was back with her old pal Ribbentrop. He put her stuff slap on the house-painter’s desk. Hitler told Goering to get on to Kesselring and order the all-out attack for Sunday afternoon. The information Gregory gave Kasdar was dead right—except that to fit the Cover Plan he told him that D-Day was on the 9th instead of the 8th. Then he sold him the Cover Plan about our going into Sicily for the Baroness to take back to Berlin. It’s the greatest coup he’s ever pulled off.’
Erika was now crying with joy. Running round the big table-desk she threw her arms about Sir Pellinore’s neck, kissed him again and again, and stammered out her relief and happiness.
‘Steady on, m’dear,’ he said after a moment, ‘or you’ll have me trying’ to take you off Gregory yet. It’s time we had a glass of wine. You look as though you could do with a tonic.’ Leaning forward, he pressed the bell on his desk twice.
Two minutes later the door opened. The elderly housemaid came in carrying a magnum of Louis Roederer ’28 in an ice bucket. Behind her, framed in the doorway, stood Gregory. His head was bandaged, his left arm was in a sling, and he was pale from loss of blood; but he was smiling.
He was looking at Erika and she at him. No words were needed. All the love they felt for one another was in their eyes.
Sir Pellinore too was smiling. Brushing up his white moustache he murmured to himself, ‘The greatest coup he has ever pulled off; and I haven’t pulled off a bad one myself.’