Drawing a quick breath, she murmured, 'You're right. I ought never to have brought you in here. Your room is immediately above this. Come; I'll show you.'
Out in the corridor she pulled aside a velvet curtain that masked a narrow flight of stairs, and led him up them to the room above. Still speaking in a conspiratorial whisper, she said, 'Half an hour. No longer.' Then, blowing him a kiss, she turned away, and ran down the stairs.
His heart still pounding heavily, Gregory looked about him. It was a double guest room and his bags had already been unpacked. To the right an open door showed a bathroom dimly lit; at the far end of the room there was a deep bay window similar to that in Sabine's. Walking over, he pulled aside a curtain, opened a section of the window and peered out.
Immediately below him was a balcony on to which Sabine's room opened. Below that, on the courtyard level, projected a wide terrace, and from it a steep retaining wall sloped down to a street on a lower level. That, he decided, was the way he must go when he left the house in the early hours of the morning. It would be much simpler than fumbling his way downstairs in the dark and making his way out by the vestibule. The drops to Sabine's balcony and from there to the terrace looked quite easy; and by then she should be sunk in the deep dreamless sleep that follows satisfied passion, so there would be little chance of her hearing him outside her window.
He was much relieved at finding his way clear to paying a call round about dawn at Count Laszlo. That would ensure them an uninterrupted private talk; whereas, had he had to rely on the sheet anchor he had thrown out of the Count's coming to Sabine's, it was possible that she might have smelt a rat and refused to allow them to remain alone together.
Now, thrusting from his mind all thoughts but those of joyous anticipation in the evening that lay before him, he went into the bathroom. Finding that a bath had already been ran and scented for him, he sniffed appreciatively, pulled off his clothes and got into it. After a quick shave he dressed in his evening things and was back down in the hall just under the half-hour that Sabine had stipulated.
She joined him a few minutes later, now dressed in a light bodice and long full skirt of yellow silk brocade, and with diamond pendants sparkling below her ears. He helped her on with her sable coat, then they went out to the car.
The Arizona lay across the river in Pest, but it took them only ten minutes to get there. Having parked the car in a side street nearby, they walked the last hundred yards through the still, warm night to the entrance of the Club, while Gregory recalled to Sabine the last time they had been there. The place had then been owned by a huge fat woman possessed of a most ingenious imagination and a passion for dressing up. She always appeared at least once in her own cabarets, and on that occasion the high spot of the performance had been a tableau inspired by ancient Rome. Her mountainous body draped in a toga, and a laurel wreath perched on her sparse hair, she had lain upon a couch depicting one of the more decadent Caesars, while a giant negro held a feather fan above her head, and a bevy of her beautiful young girls posed nearly nude around her, offering fruit, wine, a peacock pie and other delights.
As Sabine assured him that this jolly old trollop was still the proprietress of the Arizona, they entered the Club, then separated while Sabine went into the cloakroom to leave her furs. Gregory had come hatless and coatless; so he had nothing to leave, but he took the opportunity to pay a visit to the 'gents.'
Just inside the door he found himself looking straight into the vulture like face of Captain Cochefert. The Vichy security man recognized him at once, and exclaimed with a toothy smile:
'Why, Monsieur le Commandant!' Then his voice sank to a lower note and he added, 'I have brought a guest here this evening whom I am sure you will know.'
At that moment the door of one of the cabinets opened, and out minced a plumpish man with hair cut en brosse, a heavy jowl and a thin sharp nose. In utter consternation Gregory found himself staring at his most deadly enemy the chief of the Foreign Department of the Gestapo, Herr Gruppenführer Grauber.
No Holds Barred
Chapter 12
Grauber was in his middle forties. His pasty complexion and a quite noticeable paunch gave the impression that physically he was not formidable, but they were deceptive; his broad shoulders gave him the strength of a bull, his long arms the grip of an orang-utan and, in spite of the smallness of his feet, he could move with the swiftness of a cat. Usually, however, for strong arm measures he relied on a member of his harem a selection of blond young S.S. men as brutal and perverted as himself one or more of whom generally travelled with him.
His small, light eyes had been set close together, but since November '39 he had had only one. Gregory had bashed out the other with the butt of a pistol. Its socket now held a glass imitation and, as it did not swivel with the other, the unnerving thought leapt to the mind that the Gestapo Chief was capable of looking two ways at once.
Through his Department, U.A.l, he controlled by far the greater part of Germany's secret agents outside the Fatherland the exceptions being the old military organization under Admiral Canaris and a small service run by the Foreign Office to provide Ribbentrop with special information. His rank was equivalent to that of a Lieutenant General and he was responsible only to Himmler. He spoke many languages and was an adept at disguise. Frequently he went about dressed in women's clothes, as he had a flair for playing feminine parts, much aided by a naturally effeminate voice. But tonight he was dressed in a well cut dinner jacket.
Gregory had first come up against him quite early in the war, at his secret headquarters in Hampstead. He had had an acid bath there for disposing of inconvenient corpses, but first induced his helpless victims to give him useful information by applying the lighted end of his cigar to their eyeballs. When in Finland, a few months later, he had beaten Erika for twenty minutes every morning on the muscles of her arms and legs with a thin steel rod. It was that which had determined Gregory, if he ever got the chance, to kill him very, very, slowly.
That this was not the chance Gregory needed no telling. In fact the odds were all the other way, and if he fell alive into Grauber's hands he could expect to die even more slowly.
As it was still early, few people had as yet arrived at the Arizona. In the washroom there were only Gregory, Cochefert, Grauber and the Hungarian attendant. The latter, unaware of the dramatic situation that had so suddenly developed within a few feet of him, was cheerfully swishing out the basin that Cochefert had just used. Gregory, his mouth a little open from stricken amazement, had his eyes riveted on the unhealthy face of the Gruppenführer. Grauber, equally astonished at this unexpected meeting, returned his stare without moving a muscle. Both were for a few moments like birds that have suddenly become paralysed from meeting the hypnotic glance of a snake. Of the three Cochefert alone retained a normal manner. Still smiling at Gregory, he waved a hand behind him, then said in French, and too low for the attendant to catch his words:
'You see, Colonel, I am honoured tonight by the presence of your Chief.'
As though the sound of his voice had released two springs, the other two sprang to life. Grauber was no coward, and such was his hatred of Gregory that to secure him for the torture chamber he would have risked his other eye. Gregory knew that if once he allowed himself to be arrested he would be better dead. His only hope was that he might render both men hors de combat before they could call in the police. Sabine's car was little more than a hundred yards away. If he could only reach it he would be able to get clear of Budapest before a serious hunt for him could be set going.