"You'll be dead if you don't, you fool," I said sharply. "Don't you know what kind of men you are dealing with? Take it off."
"I won't take my clothes off for any man." He swore bitterly.
"It's an order!" Hardanger barked savagely, urgently. "It won't give him much more trouble to remove your uniforms when there is a bullet between your eyes. Take it off," he finished with slow and heavy emphasis.
Reluctantly, sullenly, the two officers did as they were told and stood there shivering in the cold heavy rain. Henriques collected the uniforms and threw them into the police Jaguar.
"Who operates the short-wave radio in this Jaguar?" Gregori said next. I felt as if somebody had run a skewer through my middle and given it a twist: but I had been expecting it, all the same.
"I do," the sergeant admitted.
"Good. Get through to headquarters. Tell them that you have taken us and are proceeding to London. Tell them to call all police cars in the area back to their stations — except, of course, those on routine patrol duties."
"Do as he says," Hardanger said wearily. "I think you're too intelligent to try any fancy stuff, Sergeant. Exactly as he says."
So the sergeant did exactly as he was told. He didn't have much option, not with the muzzle of one of Gregori's pistols grinding into his left ear. When he had finished, Gregori nodded his satisfaction.
"That will do very well." He watched Henriques climb into the stolen Humber. "Our car and the one belonging to our two shivering friends here will be driven into the woods and their distributors smashed for good measure. They won't be found before dawn. With the search called off, the other police car and those two uniforms we should have little trouble in clearing this area. Then we switch cars." He looked regretfully at the Jaguar. "When your H.Q. catch on to the fact that you are missing this car is going to become very hot property indeed. That leaves only the problem of what to do with you."
He waited until Henriques had disposed of both cars, gazing out with empty disinterest under the dripping brim of fedora, then said, "Is there a portable searchlight in this Jaguar? I believe such equipment is standard. Sergeant?"
"We have a battery-powered light in the boot," the sergeant said stolidly.
"Get it." Gregori's eyes and mouth crinkled into a smile, the kind of smile a tiger trapped in the bottom of a pit shows when the man who dug the hole trips and falls in beside him. "I can't shoot you, though I wouldn't hesitate if that house were not so near. I won't try tapping you all on the head because I doubt if you would submit quietly to that. I can't tie you up for I'm not in the habit of carrying on me sufficient ropes and gags to immobilise and silence eight people. But I suspect that one of those farm buildings there will offer all I require in the way of a temporary prison. Sergeant, switch off the car headlamps and then lead the way with your light to those buildings. The rest will follow in double file. Mrs. Cavell and I will bring up the rear. The gun in my hand will be pressed against her back and should any of you try to run for it or otherwise cause trouble I shall merely pull the trigger."
I didn't doubt him. None of us doubted him.
The farm buildings were deserted — of human life, that was. From the byre I could hear the moving and slow champing of the cows, but the evening milking was over. Gregori passed up the byre. He passed up the dairy, a stable now converted to a tractor shed, a large concreted pig-sty and a turnip shed. He hesitated over the barn and then found exactly what he wanted. I had to admit that it certainly suited his purpose.
A long narrow stone building with head-high embrasured windows that made one instinctively look for the crenellated battlements above, it looked more like an old-time private chapel than anything else: its true function couldn't have been more different. It was a cider house, with a heavy old-fashioned oaken press at the far end, one long wall lined with duckboard shelving for apples, the other with bunged casks and covered vats of freshly made cider. The door, like the press, was made of solid oak and once the drop-bar on the outside was in position it would have taken a battering-ram to break it down.
We'd no battering ram, but we'd even better, we had desperation, resource and, between us all, a fair amount of intelligence. Surely Gregori wasn't so crazy as to think that that cider house could hold us indefinitely? Surely he wasn't so crazy as to think that our shouts wouldn't be heard eventually either by passers-by on the road or the occupants of the farm itself, not much more than a hundred yards away? With a sudden dread conviction and heart-chilling finality that momentarily paralysed all reasoning I knew that Gergori was indeed not that crazy. He knew we would be making no assaults on the door, he knew we wouldn't be shouting out for help because he knew beyond all question that none of us would ever be leaving the cider-house again except on a bier and covered by a blanket. Somebody with super-chilled icicles in lieu of fingers started playing Rachmaninoff up and down my spinal column.
"Get to the far end and stay there while I lock the door from the outside," Gregori ordered. "Time does not permit of elaborate farewell speeches. Twelve hours from now when I've shaken the dust of this accursed country from my feet for the last time, I shall think of you all. Good-bye."
I said steadily, "No magnanimous gestures towards a defeated enemy?"
"You beg, Cavell. I have time for one little thing more, time for the man who cost me so much, so nearly ruined all my plans." He stepped forward, jammed the automatic he held in his left hand into my stomach and with the sights of the pistol he held in his right deliberately and viciously raked both sides of my face. I felt the skin tearing in thin lines of white-hot pain and the warm blood trickling down cold cheeks. Mary said something unintelligible in a high voice and tried to run to me, but Hardanger caught her in powerful arms and held her till her futile struggles ceased. Gregori stepped back and said, "That is for beggars Cavell."
I nodded. I didn't even raise my hands to my face, anyway he couldn't have disfigured it much more than it had been before. I said, "You might take Mrs. Cavell with you."
"Pierre!" Mary's voice was a sob, anguish in it, a cruelly hurt and stricken despair. "What are you saying!" Hardanger swore, softly and viciously, and the General looked at me in dumb incomprehension.
Gregori stood very still, dark expressionless eyes looking emptily into mine. Then he gave a queer little duck of the head and said, "It is my turn to beg. Forgive me. I did not know that you knew. I hope when my turn comes—" He broke off and turned to Mary. "It would be wrong. A beautiful child. I am not, Cavell, devoid of all human sentiment, at least not where women and children are concerned. For instance, the two children I was forced to abduct from Alfringham Farm have already been released and will be with their parents within the hour. Yes, yes, it would be wrong. Come, Mrs. Cavell."
She came instead to me and touched my face lightly. "What is it, Pierre?" she whispered. No reproach in her voice, only love and wonder and compassion. "What is so wrong?"
"Good-bye, Mary," I said. "Dr. Gregori doesn't like to be kept waiting. I'll see you soon." She made to speak again, but Gregori had her by the arm, already leading her towards the door while the deaf mute, Henriques, watched us with mad eyes and a pistol in either hand, and then the door closed, the heavy bar dropped solidly into place and we were left there staring at each oilier by the light of the spot-lamp which still burned whitely on the floor.
"You lousy filthy swine," Hardanger ground out savagely. "Why—"
"Shut up, Hardanger!" My voice was low, urgent, desperate. "Spread out. Watch those embrasures, the windows. Quickly! For God's sake, hurry!"