'All right,' he muttered sullenly. 'Chief Inspector Van der Woerden is in the building somewhere, I think.'
'How nice,' sneered Grauber, in his thin falsetto, 'and how fortunate for all concerned.'
While the Inspector left them they stood there in the charge-room, to and from which policemen and civilians were now constantly hurrying. In the next few moments the news came through that German troops had crossed the Dutch frontier and that Amsterdam was now being bombed. The sound of the cannonade down by the harbour increased in violence, and the irregular rat-tat-tat of machine-guns was added to it. Just as they heard that the aerodromes at Brussels and Antwerp were also being bombed the Inspector returned with his superior, a short, stocky man with a grey moustache.
Grauber clicked his heels and bowed. 'I regret to have taken you from your duties at such a time, Chief Inspector,' he said formally, 'but your police are holding me upon a very minor charge which cannot easily be substantiated. If I give you my word to hold myself at your disposal, will you permit that I am released at once?'
'He's a German agent!' cut in Gregory; 'I insist that you should hold him here, otherwise he'll engineer further death and destruction among your people.'
The Chief Inspector glanced coldly at Gregory and said in a toneless voice: 'I know this gentleman. I am perfectly aware that he must now be considered as one of Holland's enemies, but it so happens that he is a member of the staff of the German Embassy; therefore he has a right to expect certain diplomatic courtesies.'
'He's no more a member of the Embassy staff than I am,' Gregory cried, 'and even if he were you'd be insane to let him loose in Rotterdam tonight. If you do he'll go straight down to the docks and give all the help he can to the enemy troops there who're trying to capture your city.'
With barely veiled hostility the Chief Inspector replied smoothly: 'Kindly mind your own business and refrain from attempting to interfere in mine. The affair at the docks will soon be settled and Holland is not yet at war with Germany.' Then he turned to Grauber. 'I accept your word, Herr Gruppenfuhrer, that you will report to the Dutch authorities within twenty-four hours if you are called upon to do so. You may go.'
'I thank you, Chief Inspector.' Grauber clicked his heels again, bowed from the waist and without a glance at Gregory walked quickly out of the station.
It was about the clearest instance of a Gestapo tie-up with a foreign police official who was on their books as a reliable Fifth Columnist that it could have been possible to witness. Gregory was absolutely wild with rage and the old scar on his forehead stood out a livid white. He turned furiously upon the Chief Inspector. 'How dare you let that man go! He's a murdering Gestapo thug, and you know it, you damned Fifth Column traitor!'
Suddenly, in his white-hot anger, before anyone could stop him he snatched up a heavy round ebony ruler from a nearby desk and struck the Chief Inspector with it a terrific blow across the head.
For a second Van der Woerden's eyes started from their sockets, round, goggling, horrible. His mouth fell open, blood began to ooze from a jagged line across his temple and he slumped to the floor without a sound.
With shouts of surprise and dismay the group of policemen flung themselves upon Gregory. There was a short, violent struggle, and as they wrenched him erect, with his arms pinioned behind him, the Inspector who had fetched Van der Woerden knelt down to examine him.
After a moment he looked up and said: "That blow will cost you your life. He's dead.'
CHAPTER 15
Prison for the Killer
Within a second of having struck the man Gregory had sobered up and the struggle with the police was not due to resistance on his part but owing to the fact that so many of them had all attempted to seize him at the same time.
Normally he despised people who lost their temper, as he maintained that those who were stupid enough to give way to anger placed themselves at a disadvantage, and if ever he had to fight he always fought with a cold, calculating ferocity, which was infinitely more dangerous than any whirlwind attack delivered without plan through loss of control. But, in this instance, his feeling of indignation and disgust had been so overpowering that he had virtually been affected by a brain-storm.
Such a thing had never happened to him before and it frightened him a little. He felt that perhaps the strain he had been through in the last eight and a half months was beginning to tell and that he was losing his grip. But as he stared down at the dead police chief he did not feel the least remorse at what he had done.
To have struck the official in such circumstances would have been bad enough, but to have killed him was infinitely worse. He knew that his act might cost him his life; and not as the price of something for which he might have been willing to give it, such as settling accounts once and for all with Grauber or dealing some major blow at the Nazis, but without anything to show for it, as a convicted murderer in a prison yard. Nevertheless, apart from the personal peril into which the act had brought him, he would not have undone the deed even had he had the chance.
Van der Woerden had known that his country was being invaded by the Germans. Even as he had stood there he was aware that the Nazi forces which had entered the port in secret were killing the very men who looked to him as their own officer for leadership and the citizens whom it was his duty to protect; yet he had deliberately allowed a German secret agent to go free so that he could continue his nefarious activities and inevitably bring about the loss of more Dutch lives. The man had been that lowest of all human beings—a proved traitor to his own country—and he deserved to die.
The Inspector stood up and gave an order in Dutch. Gregory was hurried down a corridor and thrown into a cell. The steel door clanged-to behind him.
He was quite calm again now and already thinking about what measures he should take. Producing pencil and paper from his pocket he wrote out two telegrams; the first was to Sir Pellinore:
'have executed dutch police inspector acting as gestapo agent stop under arrest rotterdam stop please inform foreign office and get legation to do their best to postpone trial till situation clarifies.'
The second, which he addressed to the British Minister at The Hague, ran:
'HAVE KILLED DUTCH POLICE INSPECTOR BELIEVING HIM TO BE GERMAN AGENT
STOP UNDER ARREST ROTTERDAM STOP KILLING JUSTIFIED ON GROUNDS THAT IT
TOOK PLACE AFTER INVASION AND VICTIM WAS ACTIVELY RENDERING
ASSISTANCE TO ENEMY STOP SEND LEGATION OFFICIAL TO RECEIVE DETAILED
PARTICULARS STOP PELLINORE GWAINE-CUST LONDON WILL GUARANTEE MY
BONA FIDES.'