Authors: Dennis Wheatley
‘It is unnecessary that we know one another’s names. Just call me Ike. Please show me your money.’
Gregory produced his wallet, they exchanged a final hearty hand-clasp with Leon and then set off with Ike. For over half a mile they walked in silence, mostly in the shadow of tall dark warehouses and across seemingly endless railway sidings, until they came to a gate in a tall corrugated iron fence. There was a watchman on duty there, but at a word from Ike he let them through and they found themselves on the river-side near a row of towering grain elevators. Alongside the wharf lay a string of immensely long barges, at least three times the size of those in use on the Thames. A dim light was showing from the stern hatch of one of them. Following Ike, they scrambled aboard her and he called down the hatch, ‘Szabó!’
A huge, untidy, hairy man lumbered up the ladder and greeted them in Hungarian. The Jew told Gregory to produce the passage money and he paid it over into the leg-of-mutton hand of the barge master. Szabó thumbed it through then peeled off notes to the value of a thousand
pengoes
and thrust them at Ike. With a quick grin the Jew pocketed them. Next moment, without a word, he had slipped back on to the wharf and was disappearing in the darkness.
Szabó spat and muttered in Hungarian. Sabine translated for Gregory. ‘He says that little runt takes no risk and does nothing except guide passengers to the barge, yet he insists on a twenty per cent commission.’
Meanwhile Szabó had beckoned them to follow him, and
led the way below to quite a big cabin. It was clean with bright chintzes as curtains and covers and a row of brilliantly polished kitchen utensils hanging in one corner over a cooking stove. In a rocking chair a fat, jolly-faced woman of about forty was sitting knitting. She struggled to her feet and gave them a smile of welcome.
‘This is my wife Yolande,’ said Szabó, with a happy grin. ‘She is the best cook on the whole Danube; so you are lucky to be travelling with us. My two hands, Dem and Zoltán, have cabins forward. They get a cut so you need not be afraid that they will split on you. Now, it is understood that we ask you no questions, but we must call you something. What shall it be?’
Again Sabine translated, and Gregory suggested, ‘Joseph and Josephine.’
‘So be it!’ the big man nodded. ‘And now a drink to a lucky voyage.’
Turning, he took a bottle of
Baratsch
and four glasses from a cupboard, then poured four generous rations. It was immature fiery stuff, but they drank the toast no less enthusiastically.
Their cabin was down a short passage. That too was clean, and more comfortable than they had expected. The bunks were one above the other and the springless mattresses in them much harder than the beds to which they had been accustomed; but each was quite wide enough to hold two people cuddled together, so they put the two mattresses one on top of the other in the lower bunk. As they undressed, although they had not yet sampled Yolande’s cooking, they were already prepared to endorse Szabó’s opinion that they were lucky to be travelling in his barge.
When they woke next morning the barge was in motion, although they would hardly have known it had it not been for the fast rippling of water against her sides. Having washed and dressed they went through to the big cabin. Yolande was there and cooked them a good breakfast of eggs and ham, but there was no tea or coffee, so they had to wash it down with light beer. She told them that there was nothing against their sitting on deck all day, except when the string of barges lay moored in a river-side town for the tug to refuel and the women of the crews to buy fresh provisions; and then they
must remain under cover in case someone asked awkward questions.
When they had fed they went on deck and found big Szabó at the tiller. They had passed the large factory-covered island of Cespel in the early hours of the morning, and the flattish green plain now stretched away into the distance from both banks of the wide river. Their barge was the last of three being towed by a powerful tug, and Gregory estimated that she must be doing a good six knots.
Very soon they settled into a routine more peaceful than anything that either of them had ever experienced. Day after day, and night after night, the great barge ploughed almost noiselessly through the turgid green water. The only halts were those at the larger riverside towns, in which Yolande did her shopping. The current was with them and they covered anything from a hundred to a hundred and thirty miles a day. Yolande’s cooking of unpretentious dishes was as good as her husband had promised, and neither of them was ever rude or surly.
Occasionally some scent, or sight or sound, reminded Gregory of Erika, but in this new world of blissful peace, England, the War, and Erika all seemed infinitely far away. It was a little difficult to realise that he was now on his way back to them and that, sometime, he would have to put his ‘love-life’—as for lack of a better word he decided to term it—in order; but there was no hurry and no sense whatever in worrying about that yet.
On the fourth day they reached Belgrade. Gregory had contemplated leaving the barge there. He and Sabine both had passports visa’d for Yugoslavia, so a week earlier they would have met with no difficulty in catching the Orient Express and being twenty-four hours later safely in Switzerland. But the Germans were in control in Yugoslavia, so Grauber’s writ ran there.
By now he would have ordered a look-out for them to be kept on every possible escape-route; so, although Gregory knew it to be his duty to get back to England by the quickest possible means, he had decided that to attempt going through Yugoslavia, with the risk of not getting home at all, was too big to be taken.
To remain in the barge all the way down to Turkey meant
at least a fortnight longer, but the risk while passing through enemy-held territory was almost negligible and when they did reach Turkey they would be in a neutral country; so in this case there was ample justification for a policy of hastening slowly.
Early on the morning of the 10th they came in sight of the great black rocks called the Iron Gates, which towered up on either side of the Danube and formed the frontier between Hungary and Rumania. For Gregory and Sabine this was the one real danger spot of their journey, but Szabó showed not the least uneasiness. He told them to pack all their belongings in their suitcase, then he set his crew of two to dig a hole amidships in the flat sea of grain that formed the cargo of the barge. After half an hour’s hard shovelling Dem and Zoltán got down to a flooring of short wooden planks. The centre one was lifted to reveal a tiny room, no more than five feet square and four feet high. It was actually a large packing case, which had been put into postion on the bottom boards of the barge before the grain was loaded into her.
Sabine and Gregory climbed down into it with their suitcase, the plank was replaced, and eight feet of grain shovelled back on top of them. Their prison was unlit, only just large enough for them to sit side by side, and as silent as the grave. Their only danger of discovery lay in one of the customs officers striking the top of the little wood-walled room while he searched for contraband with his plunging rod; but the area of grain was so great compared with the surface of their roof, that this was very unlikely.
All the same, they spent an anxious and extremely uncomfortable four hours. It was dark as pitch, and soon very stuffy. Towards the end the air was almost unbreathable and they both had splitting headaches. Had either of them been alone he or she would have suffered from appalling claustrophobia. Even as it was they found difficulty in keeping out of their minds nightmare thoughts that Szabó and his crew might be arrested, which could lead to their dying from suffocation before they were found. It was with infinite relief that round about midday they heard the rasp of shovels above them, and soon afterwards were pulled up by willing hands, half-fainting, into the fresh air.
Once more they settled down to lazy untroubled days in the September sunshine. On the 15th they left the Danube at Cernavoda
for the canal which enters the Black Sea at Mamaia, a few miles above the great Rumanian port of Constanta. There they again had to suffer a few hours’ imprisonment in the big packing case while the Customs cleared the barges to proceed to Turkey, but it was such a routine business that the search was only perfunctory.
On the last three days of the journey the barge lost its charm for them. There were no longer pretty villages, wooded hills or lush water meadows with cattle peacefully grazing to be seen on either hand. Instead the stalwart tug drew the great lumbering barges through choppy seas, driven spray made the deck untenable and meals were no longer a joy to which to look forward.
Mentally as well as physically they both came gradually to realise that, without knowing it, they had been driven out of paradise. They were now only a day or two from Istanbul, and what was to happen then? Gregory had said nothing to Sabine about his future plans, and she was beginning to wonder anxiously what he meant to do about her. For his part, he needed no telling that Istanbul was no more than two days by air from London—and in his mind London was now synonymous with Erika.
He did not blame himself for his affaire with Sabine. Seeing the people they were and the way in which events had marched, it was hardly possible for them not to have become lovers. And, for a love affaire she was everything that any man could desire. But he certainly did not want her as a permanency.
Erika was the only woman he had ever wanted as a permanency; and he still wanted her that way. They had long since decided that when the war was over and she could get a divorce from Von Osterberg they would marry. Owing to Sir Pellinore’s generosity they had already tentatively begun to look for a house in the country in which to settle down. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that.
He felt reasonably confident that if Erika had to be told about Sabine she would be broadminded enough not to hold his lapse against him; but he had no intention of letting her know anything about it that could be avoided. In his view, people who unnecessarily gave pain to others, supposedly beloved by them, by pouring out mawkish confessions were
guilty of the most cowardly self-indulgence. But Erika was certainly not the woman to countenance his having an intimate friendship with another woman. So something must be done about Sabine; and that ‘something’ could not be delayed much longer.
It was on the evening of the 18th, when they were actually entering Turkish waters, that he said to her, ‘This has been a wonderful fortnight, and I’m sure we were right not to mar it by talking about the future. But you must have thought about it quite a bit, and we’ll be in tomorrow morning. When we get ashore, what do you intend to do?’
Her dark eyes widened in surprise. ‘What an extraordinary question! Naturally, I shall remain with you.’
‘Of course—for the time being.’ He endeavoured to keep his voice casual. ‘But unfortunately I have to return to England—and as quickly as I can.’
She shrugged. ‘Then you must take me with you.’
‘That would be far from easy. You seem to forget that, as far as the British authorities are concerned, you are an enemy alien.’
For a moment Sabine considered, then her full red lips broke into a smile. ‘There is one way we could easily get over that—if you cared to take it. You have only to marry me and automatically I shall acquire British citizenship.’
Gregory hoped that his face did not show his mental reaction to her suggestion. He was deeply attached to her and ready to go a very long way to spare her feelings; but, even had there been no question of Erika, he would certainly not have been prepared to pay the price of marriage for what, before the war, neither of them would have thought of as more than three weeks’ lovely fun.
‘Thanks for the implied compliment that you’d have me for keeps,’ he smiled. ‘But I fear it can’t be done. You must know from the past that I’m not a marrying type of man.’
Next moment he could have bitten out his tongue. She had given him the perfect opening to reply, ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I am married already—or as good as’. He could then have explained his position to her and, although she might have been upset, she would have had no alternative but to accept it. As it was, he had now made it more difficult than ever to let her know that he had another mistress for whom he felt far more deeply than he did for her.
In blissful ignorance of his thoughts, she said. ‘No; I was only drawing a bow at a venture. I didn’t suppose you would want to marry. But if you mean to return to England you must take me with you.’
He made a wry grimace. ‘It’s all very well to say that. Naturally I should like to; but I don’t see how it is to be done.’
‘You’ll find a way. You’ve got to!’ Her voice suddenly became intensely earnest. ‘You can’t leave me here in Turkey. If I had been able to bring my jewels out of Hungary and sell them, at least I’d be independent. But I’m not. I’ve only enough money to last me for a month or two, and no means of getting any more till the war is over. I’ve earned my living before, and I can do it again. I don’t mind that. But I must have some background—some security in case I am ill or get into difficulties. You say you love me; the least you can do is to provide that.’
‘I’m most anxious to,’ he replied; and he meant it. ‘Fortunately I’m quite well off, and have ways in which I could get money to you wherever you are; but it is only fair to tell you that if I could get you back to England we wouldn’t be able to live together. I am a serving officer, and it is certain that I shall be sent abroad again.’
She sighed. ‘This bloody war! How damnable it is that the quarrels of governments should interfere with people’s private lives. Still, we can’t alter that; and I have to face the fact that I am now an outlaw from Hitler’s Europe, Italy, France, Austria, in all of which I could have made a life with friends, are barred to me. I’ve never been to the United States or Scandinavia, so know no one in those countries. Where else can I go but England? Even if you have to be away a lot I’d still be in touch with you. And there is dear old Sir Pellinore. I feel sure that as an old friend of my father’s he would act as a sort of guardian to me.’