Codeword Golden Fleece (20 page)

While Simon had been giving his account of their misadventures, the driver of the emergency ambulance and another man from inside it had been lifting out a stretcher, and Richard’s still form was carried into the house.

Rex and Marie Lou had now appeared, and, with a suddenly strained, white face, Marie Lou bent over the stretcher for a moment before running upstairs with Lucretia to prepare a bed.

‘In spite of his critical state, we thought it best to bring him,’ announced Jan. ‘If we’d left him in the prison infirmary there
might have been some hitch about getting him out later on. The doctor was strongly opposed to his being moved at all, but I said that I’d get my own man to look at him the moment I got home; so I’ll telephone at once.’

‘Yes,’ said the Duke. ‘Yes. We must find out the full extent of his injuries as soon as possible, and get him the best medical attention that Warsaw can provide.’

‘Let’s go get the medico in the car,’ Rex suggested to Jan. ‘After last night’s bombing he’s probably got his hands full, but we can run him to earth and bring him back.’

When they had gone, Richard was carried upstairs and put to bed. He lay utterly still, scarcely breathing, and from the whiteness of such parts of his face as could be seen between the bandages it was clear that he had lost much blood. De Richleau spoke of his comparative youth and excellent state of fitness as factors which would ensure his recovery, with a confidence he was far from feeling, but in an effort to comfort poor Marie Lou. Dry-eyed, but with ashen face, she settled herself by her husband’s pillow and asked to be left alone with him.

Simon, Lucretia and the Duke went downstairs to await the return of the others with the doctor, and they came hurrying in with him a quarter of an hour later. For another half-hour they waited in acute suspense for his verdict, then he came down to the small sitting-room and gave it to them.

Richard had cracked his skull and received a dangerous cut over his right eye. If he recovered he would be scarred for life unless he placed himself in the hands of a first-class plastic surgeon. His right ear had been practically severed, but this was only a flesh wound which would heal in time. The injury to his hip was the most severe, as it was a compound fracture, and might be causing an internal haemorrhage. X-ray photographs, which it was proposed should be taken the following morning would give more exact data. In the meantime, although he would not commit himself, the doctor thought that, unless there was serious internal bleeding, Richard’s excellent constitution would pull him through.

By the time he left it was past ten o’clock, but none of them was now even thinking of departure. Given the best possible care, it would be three or four weeks at the very least before Richard had recovered sufficiently to face a long journey, and in the meantime Marie Lou would not leave him, even if the Devil himself announced his imminent appearance in Warsaw;
and none of their friends had the remotest intention of doing so either. Alone among them, Lucretia’s distress at Richard’s misfortune was to some extent qualified. It solved her problem and, fond as she was of Richard, the overwhelming stress of her love for Jan made her feel a guilty relief that there was now no longer any chance of her being torn away from him and hurried off to Budapest.

For an hour they sat there giving one another accounts of all that had befallen them while they had been separated, then Jan produced a pretext for carrying Lucretia off into another room, Simon said he thought he would go up and sit for a bit with Marie Lou, and de Richleau suggested to Rex that, in view of the changed circumstances, they had better have another interview with their prisoner.

In the turret room they found Mack sitting in an armchair fully dressed and apparently counting the moments until Borki came to set him free.

At the sight of his visitors he jumped to his feet and stared at them in surprise and consternation. ‘The devil!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ve not gone after all. What has happened to prevent your leaving?’

De Richleau told him, adding: ‘So you see, it is now necessary for us to reconsider the whole position.’

‘But you can’t keep me a prisoner here for three or four weeks,’ Mack asserted. ‘That’s impossible. If the Warsaw police are not looking for me already, they certainly will be in another twenty-four hours. That order of release you made me sign this morning purported to have been written at Polish Army Headquarters. They will soon find out that I’ve never been there, and they’re not fools. They’ll trace the number from which I put through those telephone calls, and if they find me locked up here that will be the end of you.’

Taking a box of matches from his pocket, the Duke lit one and put it to the big porcelain stove that occupied one corner of the room, as he replied: ‘Yes, I was fully conscious that we might be laying a trail back to ourselves when I made you put those calls through; but, in view of the nature of the calls, I thought it unlikely that any of your friends would endeavour to trace them until it was too late, so I decided to take that risk. However, I agree that it would be dangerous to keep Your Excellency here much longer, and I will pay your police the compliment of assuming that they would pretty soon find you if we endeavoured to
conceal you anywhere else in Poland. In consequence, I have decided to let you go.’

‘Thank God that you are seeing sense at last! But, if you have come to release me, why bother to light the fire?’

De Richleau left the question unanswered, merely remarking: ‘I only trust that Your Excellency will be as sensible as you now appear to consider me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mack’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

‘Obviously, if we had been able to place any faith in your word, we should have let you go before. Since we cannot, and we are now compelled to remain in Warsaw for some weeks at least, I propose that your departure should be preceded by the placing in our hands of certain guarantees.’

Mack shrugged. ‘What guarantees can I give you, other than my word that I will refrain from molesting you? Of course, I could sign a statement to the effect that I have voluntarily remained in your company for these past few days; but I don’t see that that would do you much good if I should choose to turn nasty afterwards and state that it was extracted from me by threats of violence.’

‘You almost read my thoughts,’ said the Duke amiably. ‘However, it is a statement that I want you to write and sign for us—and one which you would find it very difficult to explain away afterwards.’ Producing a fountain-pen and some paper, he laid them on the table, and added: ‘With a little prompting from me you are now going to set down a detailed account of your visit to Lubieszow and your dealings with the Nazis.’

Mack’s tired eyes flashed with sudden courage. ‘To hell with you! I’ll be damned if I do!’

De Richleau picked up the poker with quiet deliberation, slid back the iron shutter at the bottom of the stove, from which a merry crackling now sounded, poked the fire gently and left the poker in it; remarking as he did so: ‘It will be my uncongenial task to give you a foretaste of what we are taught to believe that damnation is like, if you don’t.’

‘Torture!’ gasped Mack. ‘No, no! You can’t mean to torture me! Why, even the Nazis wouldn’t dare do that to a Cabinet Minister.’

‘It has yet to be proved that the feet of an Aryan statesman are more sensitive than those of some unfortunate Jew,’ said the Duke. ‘If my reading is to be relied upon, the soles of the feet are a good place to start with; but, of course, there are more
sensitive parts, and if you persist in your refusal to do as I wish we could go on to those.’

‘But this is frightful!’ Mack’s voice rose to a quavering wail. ‘You can’t do this! You can’t!’

‘I can and I will.’ A harsher note had suddenly crept into de Richleau’s voice. The lives of my friends now depend on your giving me that statement, and I mean to have it. Yes, even If I must stoop to Nazi tricks and later answer for that in hell myself. Rex, gag the prisoner and remove his boots.’

As Rex moved forward, powerful and menacing, Mack sprang away, backed into the corner of the room furthest from the stove and crouched there, gibbering:

‘Don’t touch me! I’ll do as you wish! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!’

As Rex paused, the Pole drew himself a little more upright stood panting in his corner for a moment, then spoke again.

‘Listen. I’ll do it if you force me to, but what use will such a statement be to you when you have it? I can always say afterwards that the whole thing was a tissue of lies concocted by yourselves and that you compelled me to write it by these appalling threats. The people who count in Poland would take my word against yours on any matter. You can be quite certain of that.’

‘Not on any matter,’ countered the Duke. ‘You seem to forget that Jan, Baron Lubieszow and his son Stanilas, all honourable Poles, were witnesses to the culminating scene at Lubieszow when your treachery was publicly exposed. It was clear, too, that not until then were the majority of your own staff aware of the full extent of your infamy. All their names will go into your statement and you will find it impossible to prevent any considerable proportion of them from testifying against you. Some will do so from patriotic motives, and others in the belief that, by putting the whole blame on you, they will save their own skins.’

‘You forget that in my position I shall be able to prevent any enquiry from taking place. The whole story will sound fantastic to any of the authorities that it might reach. It will be easy to persuade them of the absurdity of wasting time in investigating a charge of such palpable falsity while Poland is fighting for her life.’

‘You underrate my intelligence,’ de Richleau snapped. ‘The document will be sent under seal to the British Embassy, with a covering letter requesting our Ambassador to open and read it in certain eventualities. I shall also ask that, if he does so, he will then have copies made and, while retaining the original, send
these copies to your Government with a formal demand that a full enquiry should be held, at which he and his French colleague will be represented.’

‘I won’t do it! I refuse to ruin myself!’ cried Mack.

‘You can do the Nazis little good now, so you won’t be ruined unless you play us false.’

‘You swear that?’

‘I swear nothing. But you may rest assured that I place the safety of my friends and myself far higher than any desire to see you meet the just deserts of your treachery. Your absence during the crisis has probably already cost you your dominant position in the Cabinet. Both Hitler and Poland are far too heavily committed now for any machinations of yours to stop the war before the German Army has proved itself by securing a resounding victory. It is unlikely that the Government to which you belong will even exist a month from now. So in any case, your career is virtually at an end, and I have written you off as harmless.’

‘You refuse to trust me; why should I trust you?’

‘You have no option.’

‘I won’t do it. I am at your mercy, and you can kill me now. But I refuse to place my life in jeopardy for an unlimited period by committing myself to paper.’

‘I don’t propose to kill you. I am about to test the resistance of certain parts of your body to red-hot iron. This argument has gone on too long. Rex, grab him!’

Rex took two swift strides forward, seized the wretched man by the scruff of the neck and threw him face downwards on the bed. As he began to scream Rex muffled his cries by forcing his head down among the pillows. De Richleau grasped one of his ankles and, despite his kicking, began to undo his boot.

As Rex climbed astride Mack’s body to pin him down more easily, the prisoner got his head free for a moment and grasped: ‘All right, you swine! I’ll do it! For God’s sake, let me go!’

‘Shall we gag him and give him a taste of the iron just to show we mean business?’ asked Rex.

‘No, no!’ came the half-stifled gasps. ‘I’ll do it! I swear I will, by the Blessed Virgin!’

‘One moment,’ said the Duke. ‘Your Excellency no doubt appreciates that my American friend has become bored by our conversation. If I ask him to let you go, there must be no more nonsense. You will write, and write what I tell you to, without
protest. Otherwise, if we are put to the trouble of holding you down a second time, I shall adopt his suggestion.’

‘I’ve told you—I’ll do it!’ panted Mack. ‘I mean that! I swear I do!’

They let him get up, and, with his hair still rumpled, he sat down to write as he was bid. The language employed was French, in order that the Duke could be certain that his prisoner did not play him any tricks during its composition; but he made him add at the bottom of it in Polish: ‘I have written this my confession in French, having a full knowlede of that language, and because it is more widely understood than my native tongue.’ De Richleau’s Polish was good enough for him to vet this simple statement, and Mack then affixed his proper signature and seal, whereupon his captors expressed themselves as satisfied.

As Mack began to tidy himself up, preparatory to his departure, the Duke said, not unkindly: ‘I’m sorry to have to disappoint you again, but we shall not be able to release you for an hour or so yet. I mean to take no chance of your raiding the house within the next half-hour with the idea of recovering your statement: I am going to write the covering letter now and take both papers round to the Embassy. As soon as I get back we will set you free.’

The prisoner was not, however, destined to breathe the free air of the street until nearly three in the morning. It had been close on midnight when his confession was completed, and soon afterwards another air raid temporarily upset the Duke’s plans. Marie Lou refused to leave Richard, so the Duke remained with her, but he persuaded the others to go down into the cellars by the extremely sound argument that it was absurd for them all to risk being wiped out or injured by a single bomb. His visit to the Embassy did not take place, therefore, until the night was well advanced. Even so, he found half the staff still there, at work decoding urgent telegrams; but they could give him no information, except that Britain had issued an ultimatum to Hitler, a fact which the Duke had already learnt from Jan’s account of a news bulletin to which he had listened at midnight. Having left his packet in the care of the First Secretary, de Richleau returned to Jan’s house and duly released his captive. In the meantime, a hospital nurse, sent by the doctor, had arrived, and thoroughly tired out, they all went to bed.