With a blasphemous oath Grauber stepped over to the sitting-room door and pulled it open. From where Gregory was sitting, trussed and helpless, he could see that it gave on to a -narrow hall. The noise of the blows now came louder to him; then the sound of splintering wood. There followed a confusion of raised voices. Grauber had evidently unbolted the door and was shouting, `What in thunder do you mean by this?' Someone else cried, `The light showing under the door told us you must be here.'
His nerves as taut as violin strings, Gregory wondered who these people who had forced their way in could be. As he made desperate efforts with his tongue to force the handkerchief out of his mouth, he prayed frantically that they would save him. A heated argument was going on outside in the passage. He was petrified with fear that it would be settled
and that before he could shout for help Grauber would have got rid of his unwelcome callers.
Stretching his mouth to tearing point, Gregory did his utmost to vomit. The effort ejected a part of the handkerchief but the silk of the remainder clung to his gums. He was now able to gurgle, but not loud enough to be heard outside the room. Thwarted in his attempts to shout, he flung all his weight sideways. The heavy chair tipped, hovered, then went over with a crash. His head hit the floor. It had still been aching intolerably from his having been coshed. This second blow sent such a violent pain searing through it that he passed out. But only. for a few moments.
He caught the tramp of feet. When his mind cleared the room was full of S.S. men. At the sight of their black uniforms he groaned. These were Grauber's people. The noise of the chair going over must have brought them in from the passage,, but his hopes of rescue had been vain.
Two of them heaved the chair upright. Then Gregory saw Grauber and an S.S. officer facing one another in the open doorway. The latter had hiss back turned, but Gregory heard him ask sharply, `What has been going on here
'A private matter,' piped Grauber angrily. `A private matter. I have been interrogating an English spy.'
The officer turned and looked at Gregory. Instantly they recognized one another. He was S.S. Standartenfьhrer Hoegl, the Chief of Hitler's personal bodyguard, and he exclaimed: `Donnerwetter! It is Major Protze! He is no spy!' `He is!' insisted Grauber. `He is a pig of an Englishman.' `You can tell that to the Fьhrer,' retorted Hoegl. Then he added to his men, `Release the Herr Major.'
Half fainting from strain, shock and relief, Gregory was untied and stumbled to his feet. Meanwhile a furious altercation was taking place between Grauber and the Standartenfьhrer.
`How dare you address me in this way!' shrilled Grauber. `I demand that you treat me with the respect due to an Obergruppenfiihrer.'
`Not while you are in those clothes,' sneered Hoegl.
`What I wear is my business. I am about to change back into uniform.'
`Oh no you're not. You are coming with me as you are.' `I'll not take orders from you.'
`Yes you will. The Fuhrer asked for you this evening. You weren't to be found in any of the bunkers. He sent me to fetch you. Naturally, we expected to find you at the Albrecht Strasse. You weren't there but they said you might be at this underground apartment of yours. And here you are. What game you were about to play in civilian clothes and with that suitcase already packed that I see over there it is not for me to judge, but
My Chief, the Reichsfьhrer, has sent for me to join him,'
`Then he'll have to wait until you've seen the Fьhrer and explained to him why you left the bunker without his permission. He will want to know, too, what you have been up to with Major Protze. Come along now.'
Two minutes later they had emerged from a deep basement and were all packed into a big S.S. car that had been waiting outside the ruined block… By the flashes of the ack-ack guns Gregory saw that they were driving along the north side of the Tiergarten, but his head was still splitting and he was so exhausted that he was hardly conscious during the journey.
When they arrived at the Chancellery he asked if the car might take him on to Goering's house. As it was not he for whom the Fьhrer had sent and he was obviously near collapse, Hoegl, agreed. With an S.S. man on either side of him Grauber, white and shaking, was hustled into the building to face thee wrath of the Fьhrer. The car drove off and within ten minutes Gregory, between gulps of brandy, was giving Erika an account of his ghastly experience.
But his trials that night were not yet over. At half past four in the morning there was a terrific detonation. Both he and Erika were blown out of bed. Picking themselves up they put on their coats and went through the wrecked doorway to find out the extent of the damage. A Russian shell had blown in a part of the back of the house. The kitchen quarters were wrecked and the Hofbecks, who slept in a room adjacent to them, had both been killed. Malacou, although sleeping in the room above them, the outer wall of which had collapsed, had, miraculously, come to no harm.
When they had helped him move his bedding downstairs to the small dining room he told Gregory that the previous day he had found Sabine still at Seeaussicht and handed him a letter from her. It read;
My dear,
Poor old Kurt having been wounded explains why he never came for me. These past two days I've been in half a mind to set off with Trudi on our own, but everyone says there are now thousands of Russians to the south of here, so I haven't had the, courage to risk it. I must have been out of my mind not to have gone weeks ago, when you tried to persuade me to. But I'm sure you can't mean to stay in Berlin to be captured, and you have always been so full of resource. When you leave, I implore you to come here first and take me with you.
Always your devoted Sabine.
Having shown the note to Erika, Gregory said, 'I don't wonder that having left it so late she's scared to run the gauntlet on her own. But the Russians can't be very thick on the ground to the south of the city yet. And this can’t go on much longer. If I find that Hitler is still set on doing himself in we'll leave this coming night and pickup Sabine on our way out.'
After another few hours' sleep, weary, haggard and with his head still aching, shortly before midday Gregory went to the bunker. There he learned that on the previous evening Goebbels had raised the question of the Prominente. Not the German Prominente, with whom Gregory had for a time been a prisoner. Of them Goerdeler, Popitz, Nebe and others had been executed several weeks earlier. The remainder had been transferred to Flossenbiirg and, on orders given by Hitler on April 9th, Canaris, Bonhoeffer, Oster, Dohnanyi and the majority of the others had been butchered. Goebbels, thirsting for blood, had referred to the other group of Prominente, which consisted of the most distinguished British and American prisoners of war. The latter had been removed from Colditz and were now being held as hostages in Bavaria. At his mention of them Hitler had gone purple in the face and, his whole body trembling, yelled
`Shoot them all! Shoot them all!'
It was to transmit orders for this massacre that Grauber had been sent for and, on learning that he had disappeared, the Fьhrer, now ever ready to suspect treachery, had sent Hoegl to try to find him. When he had been brought in there had been another scene, but his wits had saved his life. He had said that his Fьhrer’s need of reliable troops was much greater than the Reichsfьhrer’s and that Himmler's personal bodyguard, consisting of a whole battalion of crack S.S, men, was at Hohenlychen doing nothing. His idea had been to go and fetch it and he was in civilian clothes because that would give him-a better chance of getting through the Russian lines.