The Black Baroness

The road was never entirely clear of that endless column which had its origins in all the desolated cities of Holland, Belgium and Northern France, to be swollen during more recent days by another two million evacuees from Paris; but thousands of them were now passing the night in the fields, as could be seen from the small 'bivie' fires and moving lights Which from time to time threw up stationary cars, vans and carts piled with baggage and household belongings; and Gregory knew that had it been daytime their numbers would have rendered the roads absolutely impassable.

At dawn they passed through Poitiers and, halting south of the town, had some more food from Gregory's hamper to sustain themselves. Daylight now revealed the full tragedy that the last week of the war had brought about. The procession of luxury cars alternated with aged farm-carts; yet every few hundred yards vans, cars and lorries had been abandoned because they had run out of petrol, and on both sides of the road the endless ribbon of higgledy-piggledy makeshift camps continued.

All through the long, hot morning they stopped and started, stopped and started, but by mid-day they reached Angouleme, where during a short halt they picked up an R.A.F. sergeant-pilot and an A.S.C.

private, both of whom had got themselves hopelessly lost.

In the cafe where they had found these two Gregory learnt that the new German thrust, directed at the western end of the Maginot Line on the previous day, had, after all, proved a success. The Huns were clean through, and their armoured columns were now racing east in an attempt to cut the whole Line off from the main French Army.

After leaving Angouleme the traffic became a little less congested and at a quarter to five in the afternoon the taxi pulled up outside the Hotel Julius Caesar on the outskirts of Bordeaux.

Taking leave of the three men to whom he had given a lift, Gregory handed the taxi-driver his bonus.

They had accomplished the three-hundred-and-sixty-mile journey in just under twenty-six hours without a single breakdown and he felt that, considering the appalling conditions on the road, the man had well earned the money.

At the desk Gregory learnt, to his relief, that Sir Pellinore was in the hotel, and having sent up his name he was at once asked to go up to the Baronet's suite.

Sir Pellinore was delighted to see him, but he was not in one of his chaffing moods and was much too busy on a pile of papers spread out in front of him to enter upon long dissertations. After telling Gregory that Erika was now progressing well, and expressing his sorrow when he was told of Kuporovitch's death, he gave a bare outline of the state of things at the moment.

On this the eleventh day of the battle for France the situation had become absolutely desperate. After terrific fighting at Saarbruecken the Germans had gone clean through that ghastly white elephant, the Maginot Line, which had tied a great portion of the French Army to it during these last terrible weeks yet had failed in the end to fulfil its vaunted function as an impassable barrier. The German thrust had deepened alarmingly in the last twenty-four hours and their armoured units had penetrated as far east as Saint Dizier. They also claimed the capture of Verdun. That mighty fortress, the Glory of France, which in the last war had for months withstood the hammer-blows of the German Crown Prince's Army, had now fallen to Hitler's fanatical youth in a single day.

In the centre the French were giving way all along the line, and in the west Le Havre had fallen. Its huge stores of armaments and supplies, brand-new from the British factories, had been captured before there had been time to burn or destroy one-tenth of them. The only hope which now remained to France was that the German effort might at last peter out from utter exhaustion.

'And what of the political situation?' Gregory asked.

'God knows!' Sir Pellinore flung up his big hands in a weary gesture. 'We wrangled with them all last night and all this morning. Churchill and Beaverbrook have just left for home, but I understand that their intention is to discuss with the War Cabinet a last bid to keep the French from throwing their hand in. The suggestion is that we should offer them a solemn Act of Union by which all French citizens will in future enjoy the rights of British citizenship in addition to their own and vice versa; so that the two great Empires become insolubly united and each will benefit from the assets of the other.'

'By Jove!' murmured Gregory. 'Only a man like Churchill is capable of such great statesmanship. It may even be the beginning of a new world-order in which nation after nation unites to pool the whole world's resources.'

'Yes,' Sir Pellinore nodded. 'If it goes through, history will be made in the next few hours; but even if we make the offer, will the French accept it? The price is that they fight on, and it doesn't seem to me that they've got much fight left in them. But I can't stay gossiping with you. Tell me, as briefly as you can, what you've been up to.'

'I had a free trip to sunny Italy and afternoon-tea, consisting of poisoned wine, with that modern replica of Lucrezia Borgia, your little friend the Black Baroness.'

'The devil you did!'

'Two of Lacroix's men flew me back to Paris just in time to save me from being bottled up in an Italian concentration-camp and when I got back I was out of the game for three days owing to the effects of the poison.'

'Anything to show for it?'

'No; not a damned thing. I've even lost track now of the Baroness, but I'm hoping that she's here in Bordeaux.'

'She is. She's staying in this hotel.'

'Thank God for that! I've got a long score to settle with that little fiend, and I'll settle it tonight.'

'You'll do nothing of the kind,' boomed Sir Pellinore. 'She's already done all the damage that she can and, as a matter of fact, I happen to know that she's leaving Bordeaux this evening.'

'But since this is the centre of the whirlpool why on earth should she do that?'

'Because Petain and Weygand have now openly taken over from her and are advocating surrender.'

'What, Petain, too?'

'Yes. The old fool is absolutely gaga, and the others have persuaded him that he should fill the role of the white-headed martyr who saved his country from herself and further French poilus from being massacred by having the courage to face the obloquy of asking for an armistice. The Baroness is wise enough to know that any suggestion of petticoat influence now might be just the one thing that would swing matters the other way, so she's leaving matters in the hands of the men who actually sit at the Council table.'

'All the same, I tell you that I've got a score to settle with her.'

'Don't be a fool, Gregory. If you could have eliminated her somehow a month ago—a week ago—even yesterday—it would have been worth your while to run the risk of paying with your life for that pleasure; but not now. Her death cannot help us one iota, and since by the Grace of God you've come through these frightful weeks alive, I mean to take you home with me to Erika tomorrow.'

'I'm sorry,' said Gregory slowly, 'but I couldn't leave with a quiet conscience; because, quite apart from settling with her personally, there's still a job of work to be done.' He then told Sir Pellinore what Lacroix had said about the Baroness's letter-files and the Ford van which she had almost certainly used to remove them to Bordeaux.