The outcome must be that by afternoon he would be in a train under heavy guard on his way to Germany, to await the Gruppenführer s grim pleasure. It seemed that only one eventuality might prevent this namely Grauber's failure to appear in court. Yet there was not the least reason to suppose that he would fail to do so.
There had been other occasions when Gregory had fallen into Grauber's clutches and been equally despondent about ever getting out of them. He had done so because, although the Gruppenführer was brave enough in other ways, he was terrified of high explosives. Once an air raid alarm had scared him into abandoning his prisoner, and another time, when they were both in a submarine, depth charges had panicked him into abandoning ship prematurely. But Budapest was hundreds of miles outside the range of Allied aircraft, and there was not the remotest possibility that bombs, shells, showers of grenades or any other form of big bang was likely to keep Grauber cowering in a cellar next morning.
Taking off his still sticky jacket, collar and tie, and shoes, Gregory spread out the blankets and lay down on the bed. As the bottle of hair oil had struck him neither on the temple nor the base of the skull, but a little to one side of the top of his head, it had caused him no serious injury. His head still ached but now only slightly, and not sufficiently to prevent his continuing to think coherently without undue effort, although there was no longer any desperate necessity for him to do so.
He began to wonder about Sabine, and if she had learned that he had fallen foul of a Gestapo man, or knew only that he had been run in for participating in a brawl. In any case, his arrest was tough luck on her, because his efforts, during their long day together, to restrain her from wrecking his mission had succeeded only through their appeal to her emotions. There had been setbacks from time to time, but by evening she was clearly thinking of him again as a lover whose presence filled her with ardent desire; and when they had been together for those few minutes in her bedroom, she had made it plain that she was longing for the night of passion that she then believed lay before her.
She was going to be bitterly disappointed and so, for that matter, was he; although the loss of a night's pleasure to her was a microscopic infliction compared with what he had to expect from the cause of their enforced separation. With Grauber's threats in the forefront of his mind he was too much of a realist to take any comfort from the thought that the Gruppenführer had preserved his moral rectitude by forcing him to remain faithful to Erika. She, he knew, would have preferred that he should sleep with a dozen other women rather than that he should pass one night at the mercy of Grauber.
For some time he thought of her with that deep, abiding warmth of affection which is the essence of real love. Then his thoughts turned again to Sabine. He hoped that she was not going to become involved in his disaster, and thought it unlikely that she would be. It was not as though they had been carrying on a long intrigue, as it was barely twenty-four hours since they had recognized one another at the Piccadilly. Her association with Ribbentrop would protect her from any prolonged cross-questioning about him; and if the worst came to the worst she could always explain having spent the day with him by saying that she had known all the time that he was an Englishman, and had decided to do a little counterespionage work herself by trying to get out of him what he was up to in Budapest.
About Count Laszlo, Colonel Janos and the others he felt there was much more cause for worry. Fortunately, his reply to Grauber about the people he had met while in Budapest had been only a slight exaggeration of the truth. In the past fortnight he had made many new acquaintances; so investigation of his activities would pinpoint the conspirators. Since the formation of the Committee he had, too, constantly impressed on its members the necessity for secrecy, and they had taken serious notice of his warnings. But there remained the danger to them from that first conference at the Nobles Club to which Count Zapolya had indiscreetly invited such a large number of his friends. It must have been through either someone who had been present at that meeting, or one of the Club servants, that Grauber had got wind of the affair, and if the former then that person, having witnessed the election of the Committee, might also give away the names of its’ members.
As there was no way in which Gregory could send them a warning, he could only hope that when Count Laszlo called at Sabine's as arranged, at nine o'clock next morning, on hearing of his arrest he would take fright, then swiftly warn the others, so that they could all go into hiding until the danger was past. But that they would do so on the bare information that he had been pulled in on account of a row in a nightclub seemed unlikely, and by the time they learned more of the matter it might be too late.
Gregory was still speculating on the point when he heard a jingle of keys out in the corridor, the door of his cell was unlocked, and the warder signed to him to get up.
With an inward groan he obeyed. After Grauber's departure he had thought himself safe at least until after he had been taken before a magistrate, but only about an hour had elapsed since he had been brought to the station. There could be only one reason for rousing him up while the night was still young. Grauber must have gone straight to some higher authority and had now returned with an authorization to collect him. He might have known that his old enemy was not the man tamely to accept defeat, or let the grass grow under his feet in rectifying a temporary setback. At the thought of what he might now have to suffer before morning, Gregory's hands grew damp his mouth dry, and as he followed the warder down the corridor his feet seemed as though made of lead.
To his utter astonishment and boundless relief, as he stepped through the door of the waiting room he saw that beside the Police Captain stood, not Grauber, but Sabine.
The chunky faced Captain looked from him to her and asked, 'Baroness, do you definitely identify this man as Commandant Etienne Tavenier?'
'I do,' she replied with a smile at Gregory.
The Captain smiled at him too, and said, 'My friend, your luck is in after all. This lady with whom you went to the Arizona has taken steps to secure your release. Please sign this declaration that nothing has been taken from you while in custody, and you are free to go.'
Almost in a daze, Gregory signed the paper, thanked the Captain, and followed Sabine out to the main office. A policeman politely opened the front door of the station for them and they stepped from the bright light into semidarkness, nearly colliding with another officer who was about to enter. He stood aside then turned to stare after them for a moment before going in. Sabine's Mercedes was standing at the curb in the narrow street, and as Gregory sank into the seat beside her he let out a great sigh of thankfulness.
Before driving off she lit a cigarette, then turned to him and said, 'You are looking terribly groggy, darling. Did you get badly hurt?'
'No,' he murmured. 'No. I'll be all right in a minute. I was hit over the head with a bottle of hair oil; but I've got a thick enough skull to stand much worse things than that. I was unconscious for only a few minutes, and I've hardly a trace of a headache left. If I look queer it is from the pleasantest shock I've ever had. You can have no idea what you have saved me from. I'll be in your debt till my dying day.'