Then the two policemen stationed themselves, one at the door and one inside with me. That wasn't so pleasant. I wondered when the cop was going to suggest a hand of nap to while away the time before the execution. I looked about appreciatively, sat down on the blue silk sofa and said "What now?"
A waiter came in with tea and toast. One cup. I asked the cop if he'd like some. He refused. As I went to pour out my second cup I saw why, because the room began to spin, "This hotel isn't what it was," I muttered and fell down.
I woke up next morning in a fourposter. Frenchy, in a red silk nightdress and negligee was bending over me with a cup of coffee. I hauled myself up, noticing my blue silk pyjamas, and took the cup.
She sat down at the Louis XIV table beside the bed. She went on eating rolls and butter. Her hair, obviously washed, cascaded down her back like gold thread.
"Very nice," I said, handing back my cup for a refill. "If I didn't wonder whose Christmas dinner I was being fattened for. Where's the cop?"
"I sent him outside."
I began to glance round. The windows were barred.
"You can't get out. The place is heavily guarded and the cops will shoot you on sight."
"That's new?"
She ignored me. "You're quite safe as long as you're with me. I've told them I've got to have you with me."
"That's nice. How long will you be around?"
"I thought you'd spot a snag."
"Look, Frenchy. I think you'd better tell me what this is about. It's my carcass after all."
"I will," she said calmly. "Prepare yourself for surprises." She seemed very matter of fact, but her face had the calm of a woman who's just had a baby, the pain and shock were over, but she knew this was really only the beginning of the trouble.
"I told you I was at a gymnasium in Berlin until I was 13. Then I began seeing visions. Of course, the tutors didn't make much of it at first. It's not too unusual in girls at the beginning of puberty. The trouble was, they weren't the usual kind of visions. I used to see tables surrounded by German officers. I used to overhear conferences. I saw tanks going into battle, burning cities, concentration camps — things I couldn't possibly know about. Then, one night, my room-mate heard me talking English in my sleep. I was talking about battle plans, using military terms and English slang I also couldn't possibly have known. She told the House Leader. The House Leader told my father, who was then only a captain in the S.S. Father was an intelligent man. He took me to Karl Ossietz, one of the Leader's chief soothsayers. A month later I was installed in a suite at headquarters. I was dressed in a white linen dress, my hair was bound with a gold band. I'd become part of the German myth ...
"I was the virgin who prophesied to Attilla, I was thirteen years old and I lived like a ritual captive for four years, officiating at sacrifices and Teutonic Saturnalia, watching goats have their throats cut with gold knives, seeing torch light on the walls — all that. And I thought it was marvellous, to be helping the cause like that. I went into a kind of mystic dream where I was an Aryan queen helping her nation to victory. And in my midnight conferences with the Leader I prophesied, I told him not to attack Russia — I knew he would be defeated. I told him where to concentrate his forces to use them to their best effect. Oh, and much, much more ...
"Also only I could soothe him when his attacks of mania came on — by putting my hands on him the way I did for you the other day. I'm not a real healer. I can't cure the body. But I can reach into overtaxed or unstable minds and take away the tightness.
"When the war ended, I just left in a daze. They thought they didn't really need me at that time. There was something in the back of my mind — I don't know what it was — made me come here, with my passport, my safe conducts, my letters of introduction ... When I saw what I had done to you all — what could I do? I tried to kill myself and failed — maybe I wasn't trying hard enough. Then I tried to live with you, simply because I couldn't think of anything else to do. A stronger person might have thought of practical ways to help — but I'd spent four years in an atmosphere of blood and hysteria, calling on the psychic part of me and ignoring the rest. I was unfit for life. I just tried to forget everything that had ever happened to me."
She shrugged. "That's it."
I stared at her, feeling a horrible pity. She knew she had been used to kill millions of people and reduce a dozen nations to slavery. And she had got to live with it.
"What's it all about now?" I asked.
"They need me again. There must be desperate problems to be solved. Or the Leader's madness is getting worse. Or both. That's why I felt if I could disappear for a month it would be all right. By that time no one could have cleared up the mess." She lit a cigarette, passed it to me and lit one for herself.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know. If I don't help they'll torture me until I do. I'm not strong enough to resist. But I can't, can't, can't co-operate any more. If I had the guts I'd kill myself but I haven't. Anyway, they've taken away anything I could use to do it. That's why all the windows are barred — it's not to stop you escaping. It's to stop me from throwing myself out. I don't suppose you'd kill me quickly, so I wouldn't know anything about it?"
In a sense the idea was tempting. A chance to get back at the Leader with a vengeance. But I knew I couldn't kill poor, thin Frenchy.
I told her so. "I'm too kind-hearted," I said. "If I killed you, how could I go on hoping you'd have a better life?"
"I won't. If I'm needed they'll cage me again. And this time I'll have known freedom. I'll be back in robes, with incense and torchlight and all the time I'll be able to remember being free — walking in the field at Histon, for example." I felt very sad. Then I felt even sadder — I was thinking about myself.
"What happens next?" I said.
"They'll fly me to Germany. You're coming too."
"Oh, no," I said. "Not Germany. I wouldn't stand a chance."
"What chance do you stand here? If I went and you stayed, you'd be shot the moment I left the building. They can't risk letting you go about with your story."
Her shoulders were bowed. She looked as if she had no inner resources left. "I'm sorry. It's my fault. I should have left you alone. If I'd never made you run away with me you'd be safe now."
That wasn't how I remembered it exactly, but I'd rather blame her than me for my predicament. I agreed, oh, how I agreed. Still, once a gent, always a gent. "Never mind that. I'll come and perhaps we can think of something." I was dubious about that, but by that time I was too far in.
So at eleven that morning we left the hotel for the airport. From Berlin we went by limousine to the Leader's palace. I've never been so afraid in my life. It's one thing to go in daily danger of being shot, or sent to starve in a camp. It's another thing to fly straight into the centre of all the trouble. I was so afraid I could hardly speak. Not that anyone wanted to hear from me anyway. I was just a passenger — like a bullock on its way to the abattoir.
During the trip, Frenchy's father kept up a nervous machine-gun monologue of demands that she would co-operate and promises of a glorious future for her. Frenchy said nothing. She looked drained.
We arrived in the green courtyard of the palace. On the other side of the wall I heard the rush of a waterfall into a pool. The palace was half old German mansion, half modern Teutonic, with vulgar marble statues all over the place — supermen on super-horses. That's the nearest they'd got to the master-race, so far. A white haired old man led the jackbooted party which met us.
Frenchy smiled when she saw him, a child's smile. "Karl," she said. Even her voice was like the voice of a very young girl. I shuddered. The spell was beginning to operate again — that blank face, the voice of the little school girl. Oh, Frenchy, love, I sighed to myself. Don't let them do it to you. She was being led along by Karl Ossietz, across the green courtyard.