The Legion of the Lost, стр. 21
‘Hilde Silversen. She’s—well, touchy.’ He explained at greater length.
‘She’s anxious to get back in spite of what she knows,’ said the Marquis.
He stopped abruptly, for there was a ring at the front door. None of them had heard any sound of approach and they looked in some surprise towards the door as Brian went to open it.
Hilde burst into the room.
Her eyes, a cornflower blue, were sparking; her cheeks were pale except for two spots of red; she looked as if she were in a high fever. Her lips were parted and quivering, her voice shook with emotion.
‘I am going back,’ she said a low-pitched voice. ‘I will not stay here! I have read what has happened at home.’
‘Now, come!’ said Palfrey. ‘You can’t, you know. I’m sorry. I think you’ll realise that you’re doing more good here than in Norway. Like Dr. Raffleck, he—’
‘He is different, he is a great man,’ said Hilde. ‘I am but a woman, and—and do you not think I know how to avenge those who are dead? I have changed since I left Norway, I am a different woman! I ran away because’ – her voice fell so low that they could hardly distinguish the words – ‘because I wished to save my virtue. Virtue!’ She made the word sound ugly. ‘What does a woman’s body matter when such things can happen? I can use mine to snare the beasts, I know just how I can do it, I can pretend that I am one of them—others have done it!’ Her voice rose to a shout then. ‘And you say I cannot get there, but you got there. You and all the others! If you can go, then so can I. I can only take revenge by seeing them, by leading them to their death as has been done by hundreds of women. By thousands! You—you are the leader, you can arrange it. Arrange, then, to send me back!’
Palfrey said in a low-pitched voice: ‘One mistake, Hilde. I’m not the leader.’ He looked diffidently at Brett and she turned to look at the Marquis as he went on: ‘And you’re a Norwegian subject, you know. Not English. You’re under your own country’s rules now. Free Norway’s. Isn’t that so. Lord Brett?’
Hilde and the Marquis eyed each other.
‘Do you realise that I mean it, every word?’
The Marquis surprised them by stretching out a hand and resting it on Hilde’s shoulder.
‘Why, yes,’ he said with surprising geniality. ‘We all do. Hilde—it is Hilde?—if you feel just as you do now in, say, a week’s time, then something can probably be arranged. We need the help of people like you, as many as we can get.’
Hilde’s lips quivered, her eyes narrowed. Palfrey thought that she was going to burst into tears. Instead she swung round on him and shook her clenched fist under his nose.
‘You see?’ she cried triumphantly. ‘It can be arranged, although you tried to prevent it!’
Palfrey was too startled to answer.
He felt vaguely amused, when he had recovered enough to view it dispassionately, that the Marquis had succeeded in calming the girl with little or no trouble by making a half-promise which might never need to be redeemed. Certainly from that moment onwards Hilde was a different creature. She agreed with surprising alacrity to go with Drusilla – on the Marquis’ suggestion – to the headquarters of the Norwegian Government.
Then he decided that he was being a fool; it was time he paid more attention to the Marquis’s detailed instructions.
Both Erik Erikson and Hans Ohlson were in Copenhagen, working under the direction of the Gauleiter for Zeeland – General Moritz von Kalle. Both had served ‘sentences’ in concentration camps and been released on condition that they collaborated with Germans; both had been requested by the Danish authorities in England to accept.
‘Because we shall have much more chance of getting them away from Copenhagen than from a camp,’ said the Marquis. ‘I think you’ll still find them in the Charlottenborg Palace, but you will be able to check that when you get there.’
‘How are we going?’ asked Palfrey.
The Marquis smiled.
‘By air and parachute. Not original, but reasonably reliable.’
‘How are we coming back?’ asked Palfrey. Then he waved a hand in annoyance with himself. ‘I should say how are we going to get Erikson and Ohlson back? We’ll go on to Germany, I take it? We can’t keep making cheap return trips.’
‘You’ll send them back by submarine,’ said the Marquis. ‘Full instructions will be left for you with Thorvold in Copenhagen, and the submarine will surface at the appointed time a few miles off the Jutland coast. It won’t be easy,’ he admitted, ‘but it will be arranged. You concentrate on getting the two men out of Copenhagen and to the Jutland coast.’
Chapter Ten
Copenhagen
It had been a poor night for flying.
Two or three times the plane had been swept to one side while flying through a thunderstorm in which the lightning had revealed everything about them. Now they were flying across a stretch of clear sky and a few stars shone upon them; to the south they could see the celestial pyrotechnics flashing vividly.
They had all the papers they were likely to need and had little doubt of their ability to account satisfactorily for their presence