Gone to Earth
Chapter 19
Sabine stared at Gregory she realized that he was right. She might be smoke begrimed and tousled, but his state was far worse. Within the past thirty-six hours he had been in two gruelling fights. Not only was his face blackened but he had several nasty cuts on it and the swelling round his left eye was now a bluish purple. Even that, and the filth on their hands and faces, would not have mattered if they had been dressed as gypsies or in shoddy old clothes. But his dinner jacket, however stained, was still a dinner jacket and, as he had said, it now made him look like a crook who had just had a beating up; while her sables, now that she appeared such a slut, positively demanded questions from the first policeman they met about how she had come by them.
'What… what are we to do then?' she stammered. 'I can't leave my coat behind.'
He raised a smile. 'No; as you've nothing else to put on you certainly can't. You'd be arrested for indecency if you did quite apart from catching your death of cold. What we have to do is to avoid any patrolling policeman like the plague until we can get under cover with someone willing to help us. Do you know anyone you could trust really trust who does not live too far from here?'
After considering for a moment, she shook her head. 'I'm afraid not. You see, my affair with Ribb didn't exactly put my stock up with my old friends. As you must have gathered for yourself the Hungarian nobility are willing enough to use the Nazis as a buffer against Russia, but they don't like them; and, although the magnates have used me at times to get concessions for Hungary, most of them look on me as in the Nazi camp.'
'Yes, I appreciate that. And, anyway, it would be the devil of a job to think up a story to explain to strangers why I am with you. It was only a forlorn hope.'
'I've got it!' She snapped her fingers. 'Count Laszlo! His palace is only a few streets away, and he is a friend of both of us. He was with you when we met again, and knows that we've known one another for years. We will tell him that I've thrown Ribb over for you and that in revenge he's got the Gestapo to trump up some charge against us. Such a situation is just the thing to tickle the little hunchback's sense of humour; and I'm sure he will do everything he can to help us get away.'
It was, on the face of it, an inspiration, but there were snags to it of which Sabine was not aware. In the first place, Gregory hoped that Count Laszlo had taken his warning and left the city the day before; in the second, the last people he was willing to risk compromising were the members of the Committee. If one of them were arrested through him, the whole pro Ally movement might be wrecked; so even if the Count was still in Budapest his palace would have been ruled out as a refuge.
Having no intention of disclosing to Sabine the truth about his secret activities, Gregory gave as an objection to her suggestion another almost equally good reason.
'I'm sure you're right in thinking Count Laszlo would play; but unfortunately we daren't go to him. Within a few hours at most now, Grauber's appeal to Berlin will have forced the Regent to tell the Hungarian police to go after us. The first thing they'll do is to search the houses of people I'm known to have gone about with while in Budapest; and Laszlo is one of them. So we'd be caught there and he would probably be clapped into jail as well.'
'But you've forgotten our trump card. Pipi was going to tell the Arrow Cross men that you and I refused to leave the palace and took an overdose rather than be driven out. By now everyone will believe we're dead. There will be no search for us, and we've nothing to fear except being taken up by the police as suspicious characters, and afterwards identified.'
He shook his head. 'You're wrong about that. Pipi's story was only to explain our non-appearance with your servants when they were finally driven out into the street. As we are supposed to have committed suicide, directly the smoke clears enough the police will go in to make a routine investigation. When they fail to find our bodies they'll know it was a trick, and assume that somehow we got out in disguise. So you see, as far as the police are concerned, we'll be very much alive again; and before long they'll be hunting high and low for us.'
'They are hardly likely to be after us yet. Couldn't we go to Laszlo's just for a wash and some fresh clothes? He might even let us have one of his cars.'
'It would be much sounder to go to someone with whom we could lie up for twenty-four hours. The fact you are feeling in such good form at the moment is due to reaction at having escaped from those terrifying caves. But after what you've been through it can't last. In an hour or two you'll be ready to do anything to get some sleep; and, frankly, I'm too done up to drive a car very far, even if we could get one.'
Sabine sighed. 'I ought to have realized that. And of course I'll be feeling the full effect of our night out before I'm much older. As a matter of fact I'd give a lot now for a good bed and unlimited time to sleep in it. The awful problem is…'
'I know,' Gregory cut her short, 'and I have one possible answer to it. It's an idea I've been nursing from the beginning; but it means going over to Pest, and I was hoping we might hit on some plan which would save us from having to cross the river, because there are always policemen on the bridges and passing quite close to one of them will be unavoidable. We'll make for Leon Levianski's.'
'Who in the world is he?
'He's a Jewish merchant a wholesale furrier who lives in the Kertesz Utcza.'
'The man you told me about on Friday? The one whose name was given you in London as a safe contact?'
'That's the chap. He said that if I got into trouble he would do his best to help me out. Of course, when it comes to the point he may change his mind, or he may be away from home. Anyway, since you have no better idea, I think we had best head for the Kertesz Utcza while the going's good. Otherwise we'll miss our chance of getting across one of the bridges while there is still some degree of darkness.'
'All right, then,' she agreed and, after a last bob to the altar, she walked quickly with him to the stairs that led up to the church.
Their hurried discussion about what they had better do had occupied only a few minutes, but getting out of the church took them considerably longer. They went from one door to' another, but found them all locked; and they had to move round the vast empty building with caution for, even when walking on tiptoe, their footsteps on the ancient stones made whispering echoes that they feared might rouse some somnolent night watchman. It was, too, getting towards the time when cleaners might arrive to prepare the church for early mass, or a priest appear to carry out some special devotion.
At length, in desperation, Sabine signed to Gregory to follow her to a low door she had noticed behind the organ. It opened at a touch and led, as she had expected, not to the street but to the vestment rooms and, farther on, to the priest's quarters.
Fearful that at any moment they might run into someone who would take them for thieves, and raise an alarm, they crept down several passages until they came to a side door. It was bolted and locked but had its key in it. Only a moment was needed to turn the key and draw the bolts, then they were out in a small courtyard.
While they were down in the crypt the first flush of dawn had come. Above them the stars were now paling in the sky and with renewed anxiety they realized that it would soon be full daylight. There was a small archway in the northwest corner of the courtyard. Hurrying through it they found themselves in a side street. They turned left and a walk of a hundred yards brought them to the square, the east side of which was dominated by the front of the church. Its great bulk shut out the growing light from the east, so the ancient square was still in semidarkness.