Her face remained expressionless as she replied, `I don't know. I've my own skin to think of. You admit that you are here as a spy. I ought to say "Yes", then when you are asleep do a Delilah on you and’ send for the police.'
`I'm sure you wouldn't do that,' he smiled; then added seriously, `Besides, if you did, I'm armed and agile; so it could only result in several people getting killed.'
`Including me, if you had the chance?
'No. I couldn't do that after what we've been to one another. Not even if it meant the difference between my getting away and being captured.'
`I believe you mean that,' she said quietly. `So you win. We've both risked being put on the spot for one another before, so we'll risk it again. But tell me what you're really up to here. Not this nonsense about stopping the war single-handed.'
`It's quite simple. In London they know that the air-raids must have hit Berlin pretty badly, but not how badly. Air reconnaissance photographs give a general idea, but no more; and for months past the Allies haven't had an agent here worthy of the name. For eye-witness reports of conditions in the industrial districts and actual buildings of importance destroyed they've had to rely on the accounts of neutral diplomats who have refused to stick it here any longer and returned to their own countries; and, of course, by the time they reach London such reports are weeks out of date. To come here and find out is a pretty tough assignment, but the chaps who run that sort of thing knew that I know Berlin and can pass anywhere as a German; so they came to me in prison and offered to annul the remainder of my sentence if I'd take this trip and come back with the goods.'
`You want me to hide you, then, while you spend a week or so checking up on the damage that's been done to the city?' `No. I've seen quite enough already to put in the sort of report that will satisfy them. My problem now is to get home. With my wallet I lost the coded names and addresses of two neutrals living in Berlin who, I was told, might help me in an emergency, as well as my forged identity papers and money; so 'Im stranded. What I want you to do if you possibly can is to get other papers for me and some cash; so that I can make my way to a neutral frontier.'
`I can let you have all the money you need,' Sabine replied; then she added with a worried frown, `But to get identity papers or you is going to be far from easy.'
`Money is more than half the battle,' said Gregory quickly. For a good round sum I might be able to buy a passport from some minor official in a neutral Embassy; but to find such a man would take time and I don't want to embarrass you with my presence for longer than I can help. Another possibility would be for me to hang about in a well-populated district while an air-raid is in progress and hope to find someone just killed, then take his papers.'
Sabine shook her dark head so that her hair shimmered in the sunshine. `No. To approach anyone on the staff of an embassy is too great a risk. He might agree to get you what you want, then when you went to collect it turn you in to the police. But your second suggestion has given me an idea. People are brought home dead or dying every night. Their wives or relatives are then left with their papers. I've known several women who've lost their men folk in the last few months. I could go to see them and sound them out. I might be able to get a set of papers for you that way.'
`Bless you, my dear. I'll never be able to repay you.'
She patted his hand. `Dear Gregory, you never know. These days we're all living on the edge of a volcano. If I do survive the war I'll probably find myself penniless. If so, I'm sure I could count on you to see me through to better times.' `Of course you could. Now about hiding me. Where do you suggest that I lie low? How about the rooms over the garage? 'Yes, they are furnished and empty. My car's still there, but had to get rid of my chauffeur over a year ago when it became impossible for even people like me to get petrol. We all go bout on bicycles now. I see no reason, though, why you shouldn't occupy one of the top bedrooms in the house. Kurt never goes up there and it would be more convenient for Trudi to bring you your meals.'
`Are you absolutely certain you can trust her?
'Yes. I shall simply tell her that you are in trouble with the Nazis. That will be quite enough. She is Hungarian but her mother was a Jewess. And what those fiends are doing to the Jews in Budapest is beyond belief. Hitler is positively obsessed by his fanatical determination to exterminate the whole Jewish race. Ribb told me it was that much more than strategic considerations that led to his taking over Hungary. There were more than a million Jews in Budapest alone; mostly good honest people who ran all our industries and commerce for us. I gather it was the sweeping advance of the Soviet Armies that decided Hitler to go into Hungary and kill all the Jews while he had the chance; and Himmler, who from the beginning has made race-purity his overruling passion, urged him to it. They sent a man named Adolf Eichmann there. He is the head of what is termed the "Office of Jewish Emigration", but it would be better styled "The Office of Wholesale Murder".'
`He is the brute who drove all the Jews in Poland into ghettos, then systematically slaughtered them, isn't he?
'That's the man, and as his Einsatz gruppen could not shoot the poor devils quickly enough he invented the gas chamber. They sent him to Budapest in March and he made his headquarters the Majestic Hotel. The hordes of Jews rounded up were so enormous that they overflowed the ghettos; so thousands and thousands of them were packed into cattle trucks, ninety to a truck-can you imagine it?-to be sent to Germany. But only a handful ever got here. The trains were shunted on to sidings and the people in them left to starve to death.'
`God, how appalling!'
`Isn't it? And no-one can stop it. The Generals try to when they get the least chance; but Bormann's Gauleiters have the power to overrule them. It's said now that Himmier's ape-men have murdered over four million Jews.'
Gregory shook his head. `After all, there are great numbers of decent Germans. One would think they'd get together and stage some sort of protest at such hideous barbarity.'
`They daren't. Everyone knows what is going on, of course, and about the tortures that are inflicted on the prisoners in the concentration camps. But no-one mentions these horrors above a whisper. They'd pay for it with their lives if they did. But let's get off this frightful subject and go across to the house.'
The interior of the villa was much as Gregory had expected: a flight of stairs led straight up from the hall; on one side was a drawing room that ran the whole length of the house, with a bay window looking towards the road and French windows leading on to the garden at its other end; off it, beyond a velvet curtain, there was a small writing room; on the other side of the hall was a dining room and, in rear of it, the kitchen.
Up on the top floor Sabine showed Gregory the room he was to occupy. It was comfortably furnished and, she said, had been used by her manservant when she had had one. Trudi's room and two others were on the same floor, but there was no bathroom; so Sabine told him he would have to wait until Kurt had gone to his laboratory then use the one on the first floor.
Down there she showed him her luxuriously furnished bedroom, which was as big as the drawing room, and off it, above the back hall, was the bathroom. Beyond that lay a dressing room and the best spare bedroom, in which von Osterberg usually slept. As they came out of the bathroom she smiled, and said: