Ribbentrop suddenly seemed to get his temper under control, and said in a more pacific tone, 'Herr Gruppenführer, I sympathize with your feelings. But there are more ways than one in which we can serve our Führer. For his servants to quarrel among themselves is certainly not one; and subtlety often pays bigger dividends than force. I refrained from asking you to leave with the others because I have a proposal to…"
Gregory heard no more. To have lingered another minute would have been fatal. Now, with his nostrils clamped between finger and thumb, he ducked down below the level of the balustrade and swiftly fumbled his way out round the edge of the curtain. During the whole time he had remained hidden there no one had glanced up in his direction. Now he could only pray that the curtain's movement would not catch Grauber's eye and lead after all to a showdown in which he would have lost the advantage.
Hastening along on tiptoe, he managed to reach the far end of the corridor, then the explosive pressure in his head became too much. The awful sneeze, partly muffled by his grip on his nose, snorted and burbled; he choked and then began to cough. Dreading now that he must be heard, he grasped the handle of the nearest door, turned it and thrust the door open a few inches. The room was in darkness. Slipping inside he closed the door behind him and paid his debt to frustrated nature in an awful bout of gasping, sneezing, weeping, coughing, while the water streamed from his eyes.
It was a good five minutes before he had recovered sufficiently to feel safe in returning to his post of observation, then he had to pad softly back down the corridor and exercise great caution to shake the curtains as little as possible while squirming under it; so he reckoned that he had probably lost about seven minutes of the drama being enacted down in the hall.
As he approached, lower voices had already told him that the crisis was over, but it was not until he could again raise his head and peer out from behind the armour that he realized that Grauber had gone. Ribbentrop and Sabine were now sitting side by side on one of the sofas, and he was saying to her earnestly:
'You are a clever woman, Sabine. I have no fears that you will make a mess of things. By doing as I wish you can save yourself and render me a great service.'
'I know,' she replied. 'I do see that it is the only way in which I can save your face. But you can't expect me to like the idea of leaving everything.'
'Of course not. Neither do I like the thought of losing you. We can only hope that it will not be for very long.'
'I suppose it is the only thing to do?'
'The only thing. I shall have difficulty enough as it is to put over this explanation in the teeth of the report that Grauber will make to Himmler. As you had an affaire with this man Sallust in the past, whatever your true motive in failing to tell us at once that you recognized him, the fact that you did not will make everyone believe you guilty of aiding an English spy. For that you would normally get the death penalty. You know the Führer’s rages, and how he refuses to make the least allowance for other people's personal feelings. If I tried to protect you, he would break me; perhaps even accuse me of betraying our interests to the British myself. The utmost I dare do openly I have done already. The rest is up to you, if you wish to save your neck and ever see Budapest again. Can I rely on your promise to fall in with my proposal?'
She nodded. 'All right. I expect I'll manage to take care of myself, and it will certainly be exciting; but you must brief me very carefully before we start.'
T will get everything for you in the morning special passes from Horthy to prevent the Security Police from holding you up on your dash for the frontier, foreign currency and a permit to take your car out with you. About everything else I can advise you when we get to bed.'
'You mean to stay here the night, then?'
Smiling, he stood up, took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "Why not? This may be the last chance we will get till the war is over.'
Without another word they came up the stairs and passed behind Gregory on their way to her room. When she reached it she pressed a switch which plunged the hall in darkness. For some while Gregory remained where he was, trying to extract all the meaning he could from their conversation.
The gist of it seemed to be that, as Ribbentrop was not powerful enough to protect Sabine, he was sending her abroad for the duration. By 'briefing' her, presumably she had meant advising her what line to take with her friends and servants before leaving the country. Her reluctance to do so was quite understandable; but apart from the fact that her life might depend on it nothing else could save Ribbentrop from being involved in a first-class political scandal. The only rather puzzling thing was that he had spoken of two special passes, and that she had used the plural when speaking of starting. It seemed to Gregory unlikely that Ribbentrop would be willing to connive at his escape, and almost as unlikely that, if Sabine were to leave Hungary for good, she would take her chauffeur with her; yet for whom, other than one of them, could the second pass be?
When at last he crept back to his room he was wondering again if his best chance did not lie in leaving the house, lying low with Levianski for several days, if the furrier would have him, then making a bid to reach the frontier.
On the other hand, it just might be that Sabine had, by some means, persuaded Ribbentrop to let her take him with her. Holding more promise, there was also her original plan for him to take her chauffeur's place. If that was still possible and the second pass was intended for the chauffeur, it was he who would reap the benefit of it.
One thing was certain: in an uneven battle Sabine had shown both courage and great skill. She had not lost her head for a single moment, and it was through no fault of hers that she had twice been caught out. She had not known that Cochefert had already blown Gregory's identity as Tavenier, or that her car had been followed by Puttony. Against ill luck and heavy odds she had stuck to her guns and, in the end, managed to come to some arrangement with Ribbentrop.
In the circumstances Gregory felt that he had no right to suppose that she might have left him out of her latest calculations; and he had promised her that he would not leave the house. That promise could hardly be considered as still binding after all that had happened during the past hour, and Sabine could not be in any way dependent on his help for getting across the frontier but, all the same, he decided to keep it.
The moon was still up and he undressed by its light, then slipped into bed. But he would rather have spent the night prowling the streets than between those soft sheets, for he knew that his life would not be safe until he was out of Budapest, and the strain of lying inactive was hard to bear.
It was not until morning that he dropped into a doze, and he was only fully woken by Pipi's tiptoeing in with his breakfast tray. On it there was a note from Sabine, which Pipi said had been passed on to him by Magda. The single line, scrawled on a flyleaf torn from a book, read:
Make no noise. Stay where you are until I come to you. S.
To abide by her order he denied himself a bath, shaved and dressed with hardly a sound, then sat down in an armchair to wait for her. At a little after half past nine, still in a negligee, she came in to him.
'It's all right now,' she said with a smile. 'Ribb spent the night here. That's why I couldn't come up to you; and Mary be praised, you didn't come down to me. I was terrified you would. He has just gone, and I've fixed everything; but it was touch and go last night.'