'Right!' smiled Gregory. 'Even a dog's chance is better than nothing,' and grabbing up his suitcase, he swiftly ran through its contents. He had no intention of burdening himself with it but just selected the most useful items and stuffed them in his pockets. When he had done he poured a drink for himself and another for the Inspector. They solemnly drank damnation to the Nazis, then went outside together. On the doorstep they shook hands and Gregory stepped into the street a free man once more.
Erika had never been far from his thoughts during these trying days and he knew that she would have been worrying herself sick about him, so his natural impulse was to get back to her at the earliest possible moment. As the Allies were now holding a line from Antwerp to St. Trond he reckoned that apart from the danger of air-raids she was still quite safe in Brussels and would almost certainly remain there as long as there was any hope of his rejoining her; but the difficulty was how to get there.
The city lay on the north bank of the Rhine, or Lek as it is called in western Holland, and the normal route to Brussels ran south-east, across the one bridge that spans the broad river, over the Noorder Eiland and through the great dock area of the Feijenoord peninsula. The bridge, island and docks were now in the hands of the Germans, who had also occupied the whole of the Karlingen area of the eastern side of the city; so the only free exits remaining were by way of the northern or western suburbs. But to head north or west would take him further from his goal and mean that in a few hours he would find himself pinned by the Germans up against the coast. On the other hand, if he could reach the river and get across by boat to a place either east or west of the docks the rest of his journey should not prove difficult as he would be in friendly country still held by the Dutch. In consequence he decided to turn south and see if he could get through to the waterfront.
All hell was now loose in Rotterdam. The cannonade had increased to a steady drum-fire and the evening sky was one great pall of reddish smoke from the fires that were eating out the heart of the city.
At Hamar he had seen how a small place can be practically blasted off the map by concentrated bombing, but this was a huge industrial area many square miles in extent and it did not take him long to realise that it had suffered in a degree that he would have thought unbelievable. The first air-raids on Helsinki were large-scale affairs but the damage they had done was simply nothing compared with the havoc which had been wrought by five days and nights of shelling, bombing and incendiarism in the great Dutch port.
Not a pane of glass remained in any of the windows; great gaps appeared every hundred yards or so in the rows of buildings; streets and pavements were torn up as though from an earthquake; water mains had burst and flooded the lower levels; thousands of slates had been blown off the roofs and littered the gutters; lamp-standards had been uprooted and thrown across the roadways; tangles of fallen telephone wire snaked across great heaps of debris; the ways were partially blocked with overturned cars, wrecked omnibuses, twisted bicycles and dead horses; here and there barricades of vehicles, torn-up paving-stones and furniture dragged from houses had been erected, among which the killed were still lying; the air was stifling from the fires that were raging and in places ashes were falling like black snow; aeroplanes droned ceaselessly overhead, bombs crashed, guns thundered, fires roared, rifles cracked and machine-guns chattered. Sheltered in his cell even the babel of sound had given Gregory no conception that the city had been reduced to such an incredible scene of chaos and disruption.
Stumbling over bricks and skirting piles of wreckage he headed south, but he had not got far before he was checked by flames and smoke issuing from a block of burning office buildings. Turning back he tried another street but found it blocked by a barricade upon which police and troops were fighting.
Twenty-four hours earlier the Germans had gained a foothold on the northern bank of the river and they were now in possession of all that was left of the railway station and the Central Post Office. By street after street he tried to work his way down to the waterfront but in every case he was held up by fires or turned back by squads of armed police, while shells screamed over, bullets whined and brickbats hurtled through the smoke-laden air.
After two hours spent crouching and dodging in this inferno he gave it up as impossible and turned west.
Night had come once more and the red glow from the sky lit the scene of devastation. For what seemed an interminable time he picked his way through streets half-blocked by falls of rubble and twisted girders.
Here and there a leg, an arm or a human head stuck out grotesquely marking the place where a human body lay crushed and buried. Rescue parties were at work among the ruins but they could not keep pace with the casualties and while there were so many maimed and bleeding humans to be helped and cared for there was no time to collect the dead. Owing to the heat some of the corpses were already beginning to stink and their odour mingled with the stench of cordite and the all-pervading smell of burning. 'This,'
thought Gregory, as he stumbled on, 'is total war—Hitler's war. Pray God that we can keep it out of England.'
Even towards the west his progress was constantly checked by other fires or police patrols and for a time he lost all sense of direction, to find himself eventually right up in the north by the Law Courts. Here he came upon a new series of barricades which were being attacked by another force of Germans who had worked their way round the city, and on both sides of the barriers snipers were firing from the roof-tops at anyone rash enough to show himself in the streets. Having tried to go west again by half a dozen different turnings, without success, he entered a house, the door of which was standing open. No one was about so he made his way through into the back garden, then he began the laborious process of climbing over wall after wall down the block until at last he emerged in a side-street that was on the German side of the line of barricades.
He had not gone far when a squad of German infantry came running down the road. Without even challenging him two of them raised their tommy-guns and let fly. With that swiftness of thought which had saved his life many times before he flung up his arms at their first gesture and, letting his body relax, slumped backwards on to the pavement. The little bursts of bullets hissed over his head and spattered on the brickwork of a wall behind him. For a moment he lay there holding his breath, waiting for another burst to be poured slap into his body; but the Germans thought that they had already eliminated this solitary Dutchman who might be up to no good in the area where they were operating; without another glance at him they hurried on.
Stumbling to his feet he went forward more cautiously until at the end of the street he saw a German sentry. He had barely started to consider whether he dared risk a bullet by going on or had better turn back when the matter was settled for him. Above the dull rumble of the bombardment there came a solitary whip-like crack and for a second a stab of fire lit a second-floor window just ahead of him. The German sentry, shot from above through the back, reeled suddenly and pitched face-forward into the gutter.
A few streets further on he had to crouch in a dark archway for some moments while a German tank column rattled and bumped its way over the debris in the direction of the barricades, and ten minutes later he had to hide again from a company of infantry; but at last he reached the Zoological Gardens, right on the outskirts of the city, and it seemed that he had got clear of the Germans. Turning south-west he started to make his way through the residential district of Beukelsdijk. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning when he got on to a main road down which scattered groups of people were moving, and he realised that as they were all making in one direction they must be refugees who were heading for the coast.