'You . . . you! My God, if I could only get my hands on you!' Robbie burst out, beside himself with mingled anger and terror. What Barak had said was so terribly true. Not a soul, other than those then in the room, knew about the hide-out; so, if
Barak left them tied up there, before anyone found them they might have become skeletons hanging from posts in loose bundles of clothes. Their only chance, Robbie realized, lay in his being able to shout loud enough to be heard perhaps by a passer-by on the water-front. He opened his mouth to yell for help. But Alexej was too quick for him. Guessing his intention, the thug hit him a sharp blow in the stomach.
As Robbie gasped for breath, Barak nodded. 'Good work, Alexej. I doubt if anyone would hear him, but we'll take no chances so you'd better gag him.'
Seeing that one of Robbie's side-pockets was bulging with something soft, Alexej put his hand into it and pulled out the very strips of stuff that Robbie had prepared for the purpose of gagging Barak. Before he could get his wind back, Alexej had forced one of them into his mouth and tied its ends behind his head.
'Now,' said Barak. 'As I was about to say when you so rudely interrupted me, I owe you something extra for this.' He gingerly fingered his broken nose. 'Before we leave you, I mean to do some carving on your face.'
Producing a long flick-knife from his pocket, he opened it and took a step towards Robbie. Stephanie had so far remained silent, her face a picture of pain and despair. Suddenly she jumped up from the chair, seized Barak's arm with her uninjured hand, and cried:
'No; no! Not that. We've lost! I know you mean to kill us. But at least have the mercy to do it quickly.'
Snatching away his arm, Barak turned and gave her a violent push that sent her reeling back into the chair. Then he said to Alexej: 'Get behind her. Hold her down by the shoulders if she tries to interfere again. When I've finished with him we'll tie her up to the post, then we'll go and have some supper.'
As he advanced again, Robbie began to struggle violently. The cord that bound him to the post was too strong and too tightly tied for him to have any hope of freeing himself; but the post was loose, both where it entered the floorboards and about two feet above his head, where it joined the rooftree that formed the apex of the ceiling.
Barak stood for a good minute, watching his futile struggle with amusement, then he said: 'I think your nose first. We'll see what you look like when I've slit it.'
At that moment, there was a sharp knocking on the front door of the house and a voice cried in Greek: 'Open up! We know you're there. We can see chinks of light round the windows.'
Alexej was standing behind Stephanie. She opened her mouth to shout. But, as he had been with Robbie, he was too quick for her. His hands shot out, gripped her round the neck and strangled her cry.
Barak said to him in a whisper: 'Quick. Go down. Find out
who it is. Get rid of them somehow—anyhow. I'll look after her.'
With a swift, cat-like tread, Alexej ran across the room and down the stairs. Barak put away his flick-knife and took a pace towards Stephanie. Then all three of them up in the bedroom strained their ears to catch further sounds from below.
They heard Alexej wrench open the front door, then the Greek voice came loud and clear: 'We are police officers. Mr. Robert Grenn, alias Monsieur Thevanaz, I have a warrant for your arrest in connection with the murder of Mr. Carl Cepicka.'
Robbie's mind took in the words as though they had been printed in poster-size letters and held in front of his eyes. The police had succeeded in tracing him after all. The trail had been clearly laid from Rhodes to Crete, yet how they could have succeeded in discovering his hide-out he could not imagine. But what did that matter? Their arrival at this moment could have been decreed only by a Divine Providence.
Then an awful thought struck him. They had taken Alexej for the man they were after. Barak had told his underling to get rid of whoever it was, 'somehow—anyhow'. The police probably had only a rough description of the wanted man and, in the uncertain light of torches down in the hall, would not get a very clear view of Alexej's features. What if he let them believe for the moment that he was Grenn—alias Max Thevanaz—and allowed the police to march him off? Stephanie and he would again be left to Barak's mercy.
The same thought had rushed into Stephanie's mind. Again she made a move to cry out. Alexej had gone from behind her chair, but it was no more than three feet from Barak. His left hand shot out and grasped her throat in time to prevent her uttering a sound. With his right, he took her injured hand and crushed it in a sudden, fierce grip. What would have been a scream of pain passed his stranglehold on her windpipe only as an agonized gurgle. Her eyes rolled up and she slumped back in a dead faint.
Being gagged, Robbie could not cry out, but already he had resumed his desperate struggle to free himself from the post. Planting his feet firmly, he tensed all the muscles in his strong back and strained on it. Under the tug of his body, the top of the post was now attached to the rooftree by only a single nail. Compelled to witness Barak's fiendish treatment of Stephanie, Robbie was seized with a frenzy of rage. He redoubled his efforts. Barak, evidently fearing that the groaning of the post against the floorboards would catch the attention of the police below, again pulled out his knife. Flicking it open, he stepped up to Robbie and said in a fierce whisper:
'Keep still, you swine! Keep still, or I'll stick six inches of this into your stomach.'
Robbie ignored the threat. He gave another mighty heave. The old post came away at the top. Still tied to it and with his feet still planted on the floor, he suddenly fell forward. Before Barak had time to jump out of the way, the top of the post hit him on the head. He went over backwards. Robbie came down on top of him. But Robbie's last effort proved a minor repetition of Samson bringing down the pillars of the Temple. As the two men crashed to the floor, there came a rending sound. The beam of the rooftree suddenly sagged. Great lumps of plaster began to fall, the room was filled with noise and dust. One of the lumps struck Robbie on the side of the head. Darkness descended on him, in which he saw flashing stars and whirling circles. Then he
passed into oblivion.
* * * *
When he came to, he was lying in bed and a nurse was bending over him. His wounded arm was strapped to his chest and his head ached abominably. For a few moments, he had no idea where he was or what had happened to him; so he asked the nurse in English. When she shook her head and murmured a few soothing words in Greek, memory flooded back to him. He was still very muzzy5 but his thoughts flew to Stephanie and he stammered out an anxious enquiry.
The nurse had only a vague idea how her patient had received his injuries but she was positive that a girl had been brought in with him, suffering from nothing worse than shock and one hand with broken fingers, and that she was now in the women's ward. Unutterably relieved, Robbie drank the sedative that the nurse gave him and soon afterwards fell into a deep sleep.
He was woken by the sound of cheering outside the hospital, and wondered what could be going on. It was daylight now and his thoughts turned quickly to the events of the previous night. But he had little time to ponder them, for shortly afterwards another nurse and a doctor arrived to dress his wounded arm.
The doctor told him that the cheering had been due to the news having just come through that the war crisis was over. On the orders of the President of the United States, the trapped submarine had attempted a break-out during the night. It had succeeded and the blockading Soviet warships had not endeavoured to sink her. It had been a terrible risk to take because, if the Russians had attacked her, presumably the Americans would have retaliated by launching their rockets and strategic bomber force. Once the submarine was free of ice she might, too, have sent her missiles hurtling towards Moscow before she could be sunk. Evidently, when the Russian bluff had been called, they had had the good sense to refrain from an act which could have plunged half the world into chaos.