'I can't—I can't!' cried the distraught King. 'They're killing my people throughout the length and breadth of Belgium as we sit here. No—no—no! The German emissaries are waiting upstairs to hear my decision. I've kept my word to you, Yonnie. I promised that I wouldn't sign anything until I had seen your friend, but now I'm through—I'm going to make an end before they kill us all.'
Suddenly starting from his chair Leopold dashed through the curtains and above the roar of the bombs that were still falling they heard him at the door shouting an order.
Erika and Gregory looked at each other. 'What can we do? What can we do?' she murmured.
Gregory made a little helpless gesture with his hands. 'If Hitler's representatives are here already, God knows; but we must make a last effort to stop him somehow.'
CHAPTER 20
Between Life and Death
For a few moments they stood there racking their brains in anxious silence; then the King returned, followed by two strangers. Both were obviously German. The one had the thin, shrewd face of a diplomat; the other looked curiously out of his element in the dark lounge-suit that he was wearing, and Gregory felt certain that he was a General. They both bowed formally to Erika and marched stiffly behind the King to a desk in one corner of the low room, at which he plumped himself down, exclaiming:
'Well, give it to me.'
The German who looked like a diplomat unlocked a flat black satchel that he was carrying and took from it two sheets of paper. One was a handwritten letter; probably, Gregory thought, a personal assurance from Hitler that if Leopold asked for an Armistice Belgium would receive generous treatment.
The other had only a few lines of typescript on it and looked like a formal and unconditional request for a cessation of hostilities.
The King read the letter through, unlocked a drawer in his desk, slipped the letter inside and relocked it.
He then picked up the other paper and reached out his hand for his pen. Suddenly Erika started towards him:
'Not yet,' she gasped. T beg you not to sign that paper yet.'
The German in the dark lounge-suit took a step forward as though about to lay a hand upon her, but Gregory placed himself between them and stood there scowling at him.
'Sire,' Erika hurried on, 'if you once put your signature to that paper you will go down in history as a traitor and a coward. You mustn't do it—you mustn't! If you cannot face the obligations into which you have entered you must let others do so for you.'
Leopold turned to stare at her. His face looked old and haggard, but his mouth was now set in a hard, wilful line that his entourage knew well as marking the pig-headed moods to which he was often subject.
For a moment he remained silent, then he spoke:
'I know perfectly well what I'm doing. This is my business— my responsibility. You and your friend ....'
The rest of his sentence was drowned in the roar of a bomb.
Erika had gone round behind the desk and was close beside the King. As the bomb crashed she had been fumbling in her handbag. Suddenly, her blue eyes blazing, she pulled out a small automatic and thrust it at him.
'Here,' she cried, 'Rather than betray your Allies, it is better that you should blow out your brains; and if you haven't the courage to do that I'll do it for you.'
Gregory heard her words but he was still facing the Germans and had his back towards her. He never knew if she was actually threatening the King with the pistol. At that instant, out of the corner of his eye he saw the curtains move. The Black Baroness stepped through them and in her hand she, too, held a pistol.
Even as Gregory sprang forward it flashed twice. Erika screamed, stood swaying beside the King for a moment, then fell right across him.
Gregory swung round in an agony of fear. He was just in time to see her fall before the two Germans flung themselves upon him. He stalled one of them off with a glancing blow across the face; but the other closed with him and for a moment they struggled wildly. There was a trampling of heavy feet; the sound of the shots had alarmed the armed sentry on the door. Thrusting the Baroness aside he dashed into the room and, covering both Gregory and the German with his rifle, yelled at them to put up their hands.
Flushed and cursing they relaxed their holds. Erika had lost consciousness and the King now stood with her limp form in his arms.
'You've killed her! You've killed her!' he screamed hysterically at the Baroness. 'I'll have you shot for this.'
She had slipped the automatic back into the pocket of a little silk coat that she was wearing and she curtsied as calmly as though Leopold had offered to take her in to dinner.
'As it please Your Majesty,' she said in her soft, musical voice, 'but when I came into the room I saw Madame Rostedal threatening you with a pistol and I was under the impression that I had saved your life.'
'That's a lie—a lie!' roared Gregory. 'You shot her deliberately, because you knew that she was trying to persuade the King not to sign that accursed paper. But I'll deal with you later. For God's sake, somebody get a doctor!'
Ignoring the threat of the sentry's rifle he strode across to Leopold. Almost snatching Erika from the King's arms, he carried her over to a sofa, where he knelt down beside her to see if she was dead or only badly wounded. There were two little round holes in her breast that were oozing blood, and as he knelt there staring at them there came the drone of a fresh flight of German bombers. The King, now overwrought beyond endurance, yelled at the sentry:
'Get out! Get out—and fetch a doctor!' Then swinging on the Baroness. 'You, too, get out, I say.
Perhaps you meant to save my life—perhaps you didn't—how do I know? But get out of this room—get out, all of you!'
The Baroness bobbed again and withdrew without any sign of hurry, while the sentry ran to get the King's doctor; but the two Germans did not move. The one who looked like a diplomat pointed at the paper on the desk, and said: 'If you will sign that now, sir, we can take it with us.'
The building shook as a new stick of bombs rained down, this time on the village. Seizing a pen, the King scrawled his signature, flung the pen down and shouted above the din: 'There! Take it! And for God's sake stop this ghastly bombing!'
'At once, sir.' The German bowed stiffly as he picked up the paper. 'We can get a message through to our headquarters in about ten minutes.' His companion also clicked his heels and bowed, then they both marched from the room.
The King took out his handkerchief, mopped his perspiring face and walked over to Gregory^
'How is she?' he muttered.
'Not dead—thank God!' Gregory murmured. 'But I'm afraid for her—terribly afraid. Both bullets got her through the left lung and it's on the knees of the gods as to whether she'll live or die.'
A moment later the doctor came hurrying in. He made a swift examination and said: 'We must get her to bed at once.'
'That's it,' nodded Leopold. 'That's it; do everything you possibly can for her. I shall be leaving in half an hour; this place has too many awful memories for me to stay here a moment longer than I have to, but I wish you to remain. Don't leave Madame Rostedal until she is out of danger or—or. . .' he trailed off miserably.