The Unconquerable (26)
By:
December 24, 2014
HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize Helen MacInnes’s 1944 novel The Unconquerable (later reissued as While We Still Live), an espionage adventure that pits an innocent English woman against both Nazis and resistance fighters in occupied Poland. MacInnes, it’s worth noting, was married to a British intelligence agent, which may explain what one hears is the amazing accuracy of her story’s details. Under the editorship of HILOBROW’s Joshua Glenn, the Save the Adventure book club will reissue The Unconquerable as an e-book for the first time ever. Enjoy!
As they left the masses of russet-coloured honeysuckle, which, covering the ground, had dragged at their feet and twisted round their legs with the pull of a quicksand, Sheila heard the clear whistle of a bird. It came from behind the trees, near the path which the captain at last allowed himself to use. Once this path had been a cart-track, perhaps even a forest road. Now fine green grass grew over the ruts at the edge and led them with leisurely twists through the crowding roots of trees. The captain was hurrying once more, urging her on with concealed excitement, as somewhere ahead of them in the grey morning mist another bird answered. Then there were suddenly no trees. Just a stretch of frosted dew gleaming coldly. She heard men’s voices welcoming them. The captain was saying, “Well, we’ve made it. We’re the last, I see, but we made it,” and Sheila raised her eyes for the first time from the path. The silver mist was rising. It unveiled the forest circling round this clearing, and the trees were scarlet and bronze and yellow. Sheila stood there, looking at the trees and the soft mist. It was like watching a curtain going up in the theatre, when you held your breath at the unexpected beauty of the stage.
The captain spoke.
“Yes,” she answered. “Yes.” But she hadn’t known what he had said.
He took her arm and led her to the small wooden house which stood close up against one side of the forest clearing. A long-handled axe with its edge buried in a broad stump stood at the door. A two-handed saw with rusted teeth rested on wooden pegs driven into the house wall under the broad overhang of roof. The captain pointed to the back of the house. “There’s a stream behind these trees. You can wash there. Then you can rest.”
Sheila nodded. She passed Thaddeus, who didn’t even bother to look at her. Two other men were standing beside a wooden bench outside a small shed. They had been examining the pockets of the jackets and coats which they had taken from the Germans. The papers and documents and maps which they found were in neat groups on the wooden bench. Large pebbles were used as paperweights. These men, too, didn’t look at her.
She followed the narrow path past them. Three men still unaccounted for. They might be on guard in the forest. Well, two of them might. The third was at the stream, stripped to the waist, washing his shirt and socks. A healing wound ran its red tongue down his side. A violent bruise, brown with purple shadows, spread over his shoulder. As he turned round she saw the small cross hanging from a silver chain round his strong neck. He rose quickly from the edge of the pool, gathered the wet clothes in his hand, and passed her without a glance. Like the others, he had an even mixture of contempt and hate in his face. Sheila felt as a leper must feel when he approaches a village, hungry for a human word, and finds some scraps of food placed where he may reach them without contaminating others. She must learn to forget her old peace-time belief that people were innocent until you proved them guilty. In a war such as these men were fighting every one was guilty until proved innocent.
She concentrated on the problem of washing. She was too sleepy. She was exhausted. She hadn’t any soap, any towel. The water was too cold. Any old excuse came tumbling into her mind, anything to pretend she didn’t have to get her clothes off and scrape herself clean. She could imagine the effect if she went back to the forester’s house and asked for a towel.
“What, no towel, no bath salts, no powder, for her ladyship?”
As she knelt at the edge of the bank, where the stream, flowing slowly, had been damned to form a round pool, and tested the water half-heartedly with a finger, she remembered how in the stifling air of burning Warsaw she used to dream of a clean cool stream and water which didn’t need to be carried in a pail. Now she had the stream; it was clean, so clean that she could see the gravel in the bottom, and it was certainly cool. The pool was almost waist-deep, the bushes and trees were thick enough to give at least the feeling of privacy. Perhaps the guards, no doubt posted to make sure she wouldn’t try to escape, couldn’t see her. Then she laughed at herself, and she felt better. It was a long time since she had laughed at herself. She undressed quickly, shaking her clothes and hanging them on the scarlet and yellow leaves around her. She slipped hurriedly into the water before she could change her mind. It was very, very cold. The morning’s frost still pierced it.
When she hurried back to the forester’s house, carrying her wet underslip which had served as an inefficient towel, she found the captain, Thaddeus, and two men examining the papers and weapons which they had won. The German coats and tunics and caps were piled on the corner bed.
The captain looked up as she entered. “Why were you running?” he asked sharply.
“Cold. Trying to get warm.” It was true. Her teeth were chattering. The men lost interest in her once more.
It was, much to her surprise, Thaddeus who picked up a bayonet from the table, skewered a thick slice of sausage which lay there together with a bottle and some empty tins, and held it out towards her.
She thanked him. He looked at her with little liking in his light grey eyes, and turned once more to the table. Then he looked up again at the girl now sitting on the edge of the wooden bench in front of the unlit stove, poured some vodka out of the bottle into a tin mug, and came over with it to where she sat.
“Drink this quickly.”
In her nervousness she gulped it, so that she choked and coughed. He took the mug away from her, ignored her thanks, and went back to the table.
The icy bath had chased sleep away. She was still exhausted, but her eyelids were no longer weighted down. She finished eating the hard sausage, and then spread out the wet petticoat over the bench beside her, so that it might have a chance to dry.
“Better hang it outside,” the captain said unexpectedly. He spoke in Polish to one of the men — the man she had seen at the stream this morning — who rose and followed her to the door.
“Where are your stockings?” the captain added quickly.
“They were in shreds.”
“You left them at the brook?”
Now what have I done wrong this time? Sheila wondered. “Yes,” she said.
The captain spoke rapidly in Polish once more. The man took Sheila silently to the stream, picked up the stockings from where she had thrown them under a bush, and then led her back to the large linden-tree at the side of the house. There, round a rope strung under its thick cover, she knotted the shoulder-straps of the underslip beside the row of toeless socks. A drying shirt filled with the breeze and swung like a fat, headless, legless man.
In the cottage the men were now on their feet. The papers had been sorted and were being replaced in the tunic pockets.
“Did she leave anything else lying about?” the captain said.
“No.”
“Good.” To Sheila he said, “Rest on the bed.”
“Get over to the bed. You’ll be out of our way there.”
Sheila went to the corner of the room where the high wooden bed stood. There was a very old, very faded striped mattress, and three equally ancient striped pillows in a hard neat pile at the head of the bed. She watched the men, sorting the clothes on the floor as if this were some kind of card game. A coat, a tunic, a cap, side-arms — here. A coat, a tunic, a cap, side-arms — there.
“We need extra ammunition and four more trousers. That’s all. Then well be complete,” Thaddeus said, with satisfaction. “We can get the trousers from the laundry-line at Brzeziny. There’s a garrison there.”
The captain nodded. He had taken her torn stockings and thrown them on a pile of rubbish. “Bury them as usual,” he said to the man beside him.
The insecurity of these men struck Sheila with renewed force. In this hidden house, with a depth of trees to give a margin of safety, there was still no security. Litter had to be buried. No fire was lit to give the warmth they needed. Everything had to be arranged so that, at the first alarm from an outpost, each man could seize his load and escape into the forest. Even the shirts, washed free of bloodstains, had to dry, not in the sunshine of the clearing, but carefully hidden from any passing plane under a broad tree. And none of these men sat in the sunshine; they couldn’t enjoy even that. They crossed the clearing by circling round it, keeping close to the cover of forest. Sheila looked round the ominously neat room. These men couldn’t relax, not even here at their headquarters. Their margin of safety was too narrow. She looked at the thin, tight faces, and she saw them clearly for the first time.
The time passed slowly. The men ignored her, to them she was either a treacherous danger or a necessary nuisance. The only words spoken to her were those telling her to eat or giving her permission to walk down to the stream. She knew she was as much guarded then — though tactfully, secretly — as when she lay on the coarse linen-covered mattress. She stared at the beam across the ceiling with its framed pictures and painted flowers. She stared at the straight row of sacred pictures on the wall in their heavy wooden frames. She stared at the roughly carved figure of the Madonna with her blue-painted gown, at the candles and crucifix on the broad ledge at the Madonna’s feet. She stared at the top of the tall whitewashed stove, followed with her eyes its simple design down from the ceiling to the bulge of cooking-oven and the wooden benches fixed round it for a friendly hour on a cold winter’s night. On top of the oven some one had spread a neat piece of newspaper; weeks ago some one had spread it, intimating that the oven was no longer going to be used until he got back from the war. And on the newspaper, its edges neatly matching the square of the oven top, was a prayer-book. She stared at those things. She knew them all by heart, just as she knew the shape of the table with its square, solid legs suddenly twisting into a soft curve as they reached the hard earth floor; or the shape of the wooden bench, built into the wall opposite the stove, with its curved end-arms and its attached foot-rest. She knew this house as if she had always lived here; as if she had been the one who had painted the flowers on the beam so proudly; as if she had let the stove die and had raked it clean for a fresh start and had covered it with a newspaper announcing war, and had laid the book on it with a prayer for a safe return.
Then, to stop thinking about the forester who had not returned, she would sit up and stare at the open door and the patch of grass, no longer whitened with dew, but warm and fading in the autumn sunlight. Sometimes, when the men were not in the room, she would rise and walk to the window and lean on its broad sill of dark wood and look out over the empty flower-box at the trees and forget everything that worried and nagged her, by watching their leaves. Their rich colours, so sharply divided and yet merging into each other, would stare back at her until she could only think of red and yellow and orange and purple and bronze and henna. It was strange that anything so violent should be so peaceful. And then the crisp air would end its deception and strike at her shoulders, bring a shiver to her spine, and she would go back once more to the high box-like bed. She would begin staring at the ceiling beam with its framed pictures and painted flowers.
She would think of the Aleksanders and of Uncle Edward and of Casimir. She would wonder if Steve had reached safety, if Bill and Schlott were with him. And she would think a lot about Uncle Matthews. That always brought on a bad attack of conscience. He had been more fond of her than either he or she ever admitted. He would be worried. He might sit in his anonymous office, pretending that a lost niece was just another of life’s unnecessary complications, but he would be worried. As for herself, she could now admit that she had never appreciated Uncle Matthews. She knew that now, when it was too late. Often she had used to think of Uncle Matthews as some one who was being unnecessarily dogmatic, or interfering, or boring, or embarrassing. Now she realized that she must have often seemed equally dogmatic, interfering, boring, and embarrassing. But the chief difference between the old and the young was that the old knew what the young thought about them.
She thought about her father and her mother and then her father again. When she was a child her questions about her mother had been answered. But the discouragement given her when she asked about her father had only stimulated a greater secret interest in him. For that reason she generally thought more about her father when she thought of these vague nebulous characters, whose only reality to her was the fact that she did exist.
Night had come and had gone. Still there was no sign of Jan and his comrade.
This was the last day. She had until to-night. Perhaps, if the Poles followed polite convention in such matters, until dawn. She couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t think. The guard outside the door spoiled both of those attempts. It was his silence that worried her. He made no sound, and then, just as she was beginning to think that he wasn’t there, the slight shuffle of his feet, a smothered cough, a bored sigh would bring her back to the growing idea that Jan must have met with some accident. His accident would be her tragedy. Silly kind of tragedy, too. There was something ludicrous in being shot by your own side. Her father had died more efficiently than that.
She rose and went to the window once more. The soaring wall of leaves gave her courage. She looked at their brave colours and thought, Nothing is inevitable, not while you have two legs and a sound body and wits still working. She had at least until to-night.
She stayed at the window, watching the fading light and the darkening leaves until the captain came back to the house. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t been able to sleep either. He entered the room without looking at her, now obediently back in her appointed corner, threw some papers on the table, pretended to study a much-folded map.
He looked up suddenly and said in a burst of irritation, “Why don’t you sleep?”
“If your two men don’t hurry I don’t think I’m going to need any more sleep.”
He stared at her for a moment and then bent over the map once more.
“You said we should have plenty of time to talk here.” Sheila’s voice was calmer than she had expected. “The forty-eight hours are nearly up, and we haven’t talked more than twenty words.”
“There’s nothing you can say which interests us at the moment.”
“I had hoped to tell you about Captain Wisniewski. Now that the others aren’t here I could tell you about what he and his men hope to do. Why don’t you join him?”
The Pole’s thin face tightened. His eyes looked at her coldly.
Sheila was silent. She wanted to say, “But this camp of yours is so impermanent. Nine men striking aimlessly, here and there. Nine men being picked off, one by one. It is merely pinpricking compared to becoming members of a larger force with real striking-power. Wisniewski’s chosen a winter camp. You may be sure it will be remote enough, well-buried enough to be safe. At least, safer than this forest. This is an open part of Poland. You daren’t even light a fire. The frost is on the morning grass now. Soon you will need warm food and heat to thaw frozen clothes and bones. You are brave, and your men are brave. But that is not enough.”
But, looking at the thin, proud face, she merely said, when at last she did speak, “He needs men like you.”
The door opened, and Thaddeus came in. When he sat down at the table the breadth of his shoulders and the large head and body made him seem a tall man. He was discussing her now. His eyes were watching her. The captain argued wearily.
“You are a fool,” Thaddeus said, and rose in anger. He was no longer a tall man. He was only a little more than Sheila’s height, certainly not more than five feet six inches. The captain had risen too. His fist crashed on the table.
“I say we give her until morning. Jan may have been waiting all day for the light to fade. He may need darkness to travel in.”
The two men tried to outstare each other. Sheila rose quickly from the bed. She said to Thaddeus, “I’m not worth a quarrel. If you must lose your temper, then lose it with the Germans and not with your friends. You’ll never win that way.”
Thaddeus turned his stare on Sheila. She found herself wondering what his face would really be like if he could shave and wash properly. She wouldn’t be able to recognize any of these men if they had a shave, a haircut, a warm bath, and decent clothes. But then, they wouldn’t recognize her either if they had first seen her two months ago. And then Thaddeus turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
The captain’s voice changed. He said gently, “If you knew his story you would not think he was so hard. His wife, his father, his two children were killed because of a German spy. They gave shelter to our soldiers cut off in the retreat. A Polish soldier was their guest one night, but next day he came back in a German uniform with German friends. A servant-girl out searching for a stray cow was the only survivor in that household. She told Thaddeus the story when he reached his home and found it burned to the ground.”
Sheila looked at the captain’s drawn brows. You’ve got a story, too, she was thinking: you’ve got a frightening story locked in behind these cold eyes. For a moment his head bowed wearily, and then he was in control again, fingering the papers, examining the map, working with the intensity of a man who is driven by some inward compulsion.
A bird’s whistle trilled, fell silent, and then, as if in love with its own liquid note, trilled again.
“They’ve come,” Sheila almost shouted, “Jan’s here!”
The captain, folding up his papers with quick fingers, shook his head. “Not Jan,” he said, watching the girl’s face change from joy to despair. “We’ve a visitor. But not Jan. Not Germans, either.” He placed the papers in his torn, stained tunic. He took out his revolver, examined it, slipped it back into its holster.
Thaddeus was at the door again. The captain joined him. The two men, together, watched the darkening forest and the path from the outside world.
“It’s Dutka from the village. Dutka and two strangers,” the captain said at last. His voice was reassured.
“Hope he’s brought that razor and piece of soap he promised. We’ll never be able to use the uniforms until he does,” Thaddeus said.
“One man’s a soldier. The other looks old — a peasant — but he walks briskly enough.”
Sheila, sitting on the bed, didn’t even look up as the men entered. She listened bitterly to the sudden flow of words, to Dutka’s loud jovial laugh. She buried her head in the pillow. She had been so sure it was Jan and his friend. She turned her face wearily to the wall.
Not only had Dutka brought the razor and soap, but he had also cigarettes and a bottle of vodka. Triumphantly he set them all out on the table. “They’ve been hidden a week until I could get to you,” he explained in his deep, hoarse voice. “To-day was the first time I could manage to slip away from the village.” And then he started to account for his companions. “This here is Galinski,” he said, “a soldier in the Eleventh Infantry Division who fought round Lwów. He’s been sheltering in the village for the last four days. He seemed a likely recruit. Go on, Galinski, tell them what happened to you.” The soldier obeyed eagerly, quickly. He was alone in the world now. He wanted to go on fighting. After Lwów he had been captured by the Russians east of Dublany. He escaped and walked back through Central Poland only to find his family had gone and his house occupied by the damned Szwaby. He had fled again, wandered for a week, and then found a hiding-place in Dutka’s village. The Germans were there, too, now. A patrol had been stationed there. But he had just kept quiet in Dutka’s loft, and this evening, when the patrol was out on duty, he had slipped out with Dutka.
“It’s good to be here,” he kept saying. “It’s good to be here.” Something in his voice, perhaps its joy and relief, made Sheila turn round curiously to look at the man. He was young, tired, strained, but happy. She envied him his happiness.
The men who weren’t on sentry duty had crowded into the room and had listened to the story silently. The shutters were closed, the candle in the empty vodka bottle was lit, and the captain sat at the table with paper and pencil before him. He asked the soldier many questions. The answers were immediate. They seemed to be satisfactory. Then the other men were questioning Galinski eagerly, asking news of the outside world from which they had separated themselves. One of them knew Galinski’s home town. It was the captain who listened now. Finally he seemed satisfied. He turned to the other stranger, who had remained silently leaning against the oven, his cloth cap still pulled over his eyes.
Dutka said quickly, “He’s no recruit. He came asking for you at the village. Zabka from the next village brought him to me, so he was sent by the right people. I brought him along, for if you know him, as he says, then well and good. If you don’t — then you know what to do.”
The captain nodded. “Take off that cap,” he said sharply.
The man leaning against the stove didn’t move. “I’m glad to find you,” he said. “I heard two days ago that you were somewhere in this district.”
The captain stared unbelievingly, rose to his feet as if to a superior officer. As he was about to speak the stranger made a sign with his hand and silenced him. “Later,” he said quietly. “Later.”
The captain smiled and then sat down again. He opened the cigarettes and passed them round. The new bottle was uncorked, and each man had a mouthful of vodka. Sheila, sitting motionless in her dark corner, listened to the rising voices, the laughter, the short questions, the long answers. She was watching a scene from a play in which tension and gloom had suddenly and dramatically changed to light-hearted gaiety. Dutka was giving them news; they had cigarettes between their lips, the taste of vodka on their tongues. When a man is hungry for these things it doesn’t take much of them to please him. Each man’s high spirits increased the others’. Only the captain and the stranger with the cloth cap pulled over his eyes didn’t join in the sudden uproar of voices. The captain had a smile on his lips. His face looked happier than Sheila had ever seen it. His eyes were watching the stranger. He in turn watched the men. And it seemed to Sheila, as the hidden audience do all this, that Galinski watched every one, but especially the unidentified stranger. Quietly he watched him, secretly, as if he didn’t quite trust him.
The stranger, despite his clothes, was not a peasant. His voice as he now spoke was that of a commanding officer. “Who is this?” he asked, and nodded towards the corner of the room. Sheila suddenly realized that he had noticed her from the first. The men stopped talking. All had turned their heads to look at her. Galinski laughed and said a few phrases which brought a sudden guffaw from the others. Sheila’s cheeks flushed, and she drew nearer the wall. Dutka came forward to see her more clearly.
The captain said crisply, “Enough of that. She’s our prisoner.”
“A German spy,” added Thaddeus bitterly.
“Why don’t you shoot her?” Dutka asked curiously. “That’s what to do with a spy.”
“She will be shot at dawn, and no later,” Thaddeus said, and looked pointedly at the captain. No more reprieves, either, his tone implied.
The man with the cap stopped leaning against the stove. He moved Quietly towards the door, motioned with his head to the captain, who followed him out into the night. He wants to find out more about me, Sheila thought; or he may have something to say which he doesn’t want a spy to hear, not even one who is to be shot. And no reprieve. She closed her eyes.
“Let’s have a look at this spy,” Galinski said and caught up the bottle with the candle. Sheila opened her eyes to see the flame flicker, nearly vanish, and then burn more wildly as the man stood holding it above his shoulder. He was a young man, with a fair-haired, fair-skinned look in spite of a deep tan and streaks of dust. Like the others, he needed a shave. His uniform was stained and ragged. His eyes above the gaunt cheek-bones were a clear blue in the candle’s golden light. He stood with his back to the room and stared down at her.
“A spy, eh? A damned German spy.” His voice was harsh and savage. But his lips were smiling; a strange, meaning smile which only she could see. The blue eyes were serious; they were trying to tell her something. The bitter voice went on, “And where in God’s name did you pick her up?”
“On the Lowicz road. First we got a patrol. Then she arrived in a staff car with a German corporal,” one of the men said eagerly. “He got his all right. But she was still alive, so we brought her here. Information, you know.”
Dutka drew closer, too. “Did you get information?” he asked.
“A pack of lies.” The Pole who was talking was enjoying himself. By his voice you would have thought that he was responsible for everything. “She pretends she isn’t German, says she’s English, says she’s got friends at Korytów who will swear she’s all right.” He laughed at the idea. “Just look at her. She’s a German. A German telling lies to save her skin.”
Sheila said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the man in front of her. Dutka shook his head and turned away. “You should shoot her at once. Mark my words. A German’s a German. And a pretty woman never did no good. You’ll have trouble on your hands.”
Galinski’s eyes swept over her as if he were memorizing every detail about her. “German,” he echoed Dutka, with even more hate in his voice. He spat. Sheila flinched. But her anger was stifled by amazement. The man had grinned, a friendly, encouraging grin, and his left eye winked deliberately. “I wouldn’t mind helping with the examination,” he said, as he turned to face the room again, “or is that the captain’s privilege?”
“Here,” Thaddeus said suddenly. “That’s enough of that.” One of the men who had begun a laugh didn’t finish it.
Galinski placed the candle on the table and said, “Any food to spare?”
“You’ll have to wait till to-morrow,” Thaddeus said gruffly. “We’ve been too busy in the last few days to bother about food. Some of us will forage to-morrow.”
Dutka said, “If I had known I could have tried to smuggle something up to you. Not that the Germans in the village leave us much. But I could have tried.” He looked worriedly at the bottle of vodka and cigarettes, as if wishing they would transform themselves into a piece of ham and some bread. “You’ve never been needing food like this before.”
“We’ve been busy,” Thaddeus said.
The talkative man — it was he who had cut short his recent laugh — once more found his tongue. “We’re all set now. All we need are some more breeches and some bullets.”
“Ammunition?” Galinski asked. He walked over to the bench where the uniforms and weapons were neatly piled. “German ammunition you’re needing? Hey, Dutka, you tell them.”
Dutka looked at him stupidly. “Tell what?”
“About the patrol in the village. Haven’t they plenty of ammunition?”
“Plenty.” Then he was explaining in his deep voice about the patrol which had come to the village so unexpectedly only three days ago. They were quartered in the old Posting House. They used the outbuildings at the back for supplies. Two guards looked after that.
Galinski interrupted to say, “I know every step they take. I lay and watched them for these last three days from Dutka’s hayloft.”
“Didn’t they search the village first to make sure it was safe for them?” Thaddeus asked suddenly.
“Oh, yes,” Dutka said, “they searched. But they didn’t find him. Galinski used his wits. He will tell you what happened.”
“Let us talk of this ammunition first,” Galinski said. “That’s the important thing. Give me a knife, and I’ll take care of these two guards in the darkness.”
Sheila wanted to scream, “This is a trap. Don’t you see, all of you, Dutka, Thaddeus, it’s a trap?” She wanted to scream, “Thaddeus, remember your family. Remember the ‘Polish’ soldier!” But she forced herself to sit rigid and silent. Thaddeus had never believed her. None of them believed her.
She watched Galinski as he let the others develop the idea he had so cleverly proposed. The talkative man was elaborating on the plan. His voice quickened, his eyes gleamed as if he already saw two Germans waiting in the dark for a tight Polish arm round their neck, a quick Polish knife to silence their first cry. And as he talked and the others nodded their approval the whole idea seemed to become his. His comrades added their ideas. Between them all the plan became easy — a mere matter of lifting what they needed from the German supply hut and vanishing into the night.
Dutka alone was silent. He was thinking of the village, of the consequences it would have to face. Thaddeus noticed his silence. “We’ll wait for the captain. He never let us do any raiding so near the camp. We’ll wait for him.”
“We could all go. Make it a full attack,” the talkative man said. “Only two dozen Germans. We know how to work in the dark. We could take care of them. Two dozen Szwaby less.”
“And then one village less,” Thaddeus said, and turned, with relief no greater than Sheila’s, to the door as the captain and his strange friend entered. They had the look of men who had talked and decided much. The stranger was satisfied. But Sheila had the feeling that the captain had been persuaded against his will; he had the preoccupied air of a man who still argued with himself.
Thaddeus gave the new information quickly, outlined the idea, which had grown from bullet-snatching to wholesale slaughter.
The captain listened gravely, watching the excited, happy faces of his men.
“You see,” he said to his visitor, “all they want is action.”
“And dead Germans,” the talkative man said.
“The village is too near the camp,” Dutka suggested. “They will search every inch of this forest afterwards.”
“We are leaving this camp,” the captain said slowly, and looked at the stranger beside him. “To-morrow we leave.” The stranger nodded. “But for the sake of the village, Dutka, we won’t kill any Germans. We’ll be satisfied with the ammunition. We shall send two men back to the village with you, dressed as Germans. Then the two guards may not heed to be killed. Tie them up and gag them well. But you keep out of it, Dutka. Let my two men do everything. You will get to the village inn, and have an alibi. We shall take what we need and then clear out. Quietly. No noise or fuss. Fifteen minutes will do the job.”
He noticed the men’s disappointed faces. “This is more dangerous than killing the guards. Killing is the quick, easy way.” He smiled as he saw their faces clear. Suggest danger to a Pole, and he prefers it that way. The more danger, the greater honour.
“Now, outside with you. Thaddeus, you detail the men. Supplement my instructions. Come back here when you’ve finished; we have new plans to discuss.”
Thaddeus, already picking up two German greatcoats, nodded.
The men filed out. Their humour was high. Galinski was the last of them to leave. He shot a quick glance at Sheila. “Courage,” he seemed to say, “courage.” And all Sheila’s remaining courage melted into panic. She had only enough sense to keep silent. Not now, she told herself; wait, only wait, until he is out of this room.
And then he was gone, too, and there were left only the captain, the stranger, and herself.
They were looking at her. “Come over to the table. We want to talk a little,” the captain said.
“Don’t let him go. Choose two men, but don’t let him be one of them.”
They stared at her.
“That soldier who came here to-night. Don’t let him go. He’s a German. He’s a spy.”
The captain turned to his friend. He raised his hands helplessly and let them fall on the table. “You see?” he said. “She has the most fertile imagination.”
“Believe me now. Please believe me!” She plunged into a description of all that had happened.
The two men listened gravely, and that encouraged her.
“But we have only your word for it,” the captain said when she had finished, “and we have no proof that your word is honest.”
Sheila’s frustration ended her calm. Her Scots temper flared. She didn’t know what she was saying, but there was a rhythm and intoxication in the intense stream of words which gave them more meaning than any dictionary. When she suddenly ended she was no longer angry. She was amazed at herself, even ashamed. She was quiet and cold and miserable.
“Let me ask some questions,” the stranger said unexpectedly. He removed his cap, placing it carefully on the table beside him as if it held his rank and insignia. Sheila saw his high forehead, red-streaked where the cap had pressed too tightly, turn towards her. The eyes were keen, the eyebrows strong. It was a young face with old lines and whitened hair. His crisp, cool voice began a probing examination of her story.
“You are concealing something,” he said at last. “Who is the man who arranged everything for you? Was he Wisniewski?”
Sheila shook her head.
“You will not tell?”
She shook her head again.
“But how else can we believe you? You mean you are willing to be shot as a spy rather than give his name?”
“Would his name prove my story?” she asked with a flare of her past temper. “Once you had learned it you might say I had been taught his name to use when necessary.”
“But the Germans do not know his right name.”
“Then you know him!” Her relief choked her. And then she was on guard again. Once she used to think that friends were friends, that questions and answers could be frankly given between them. But now she knew better; now she was learning. A mask went over her face, and she stared coldly at the man.
“Look,” he said, “you and I are both afraid to make the first move. We have reached an impasse. Yet we must break it. Much may depend on that.”
“Much,” agreed Sheila bitterly, thinking of the dawn that was marching so steadily towards her. But she said nothing more.
“Does Wisniewski know this man?”
“Yes. Adam — Captain Wisniewski belongs to his organization.”
“What department? Come. I know it. What department?”
“Thirty-one.” She was weakening. She felt this man was genuinely trying to help her, respecting her for what she would not tell about Olszak; and she was weakening.
“How do you know that?”
“I was at the meeting, the first and last meeting of the organization, just before the Germans entered Warsaw. Another foreigner was permitted to attend with me. He was to take a report of the meeting to friends in Switzerland. I was there to meet the man who was going to employ me as a secretary. It was then I became Anna Braun, attached to Department Thirty.”
“This foreigner, a Swede I believe ——”
“An American.”
The white-haired man leaned back against the wall. His eyes had never left her face, but now they had relaxed just enough to let her know that she had indeed given the right answer.
Then Thaddeus entered. “They’ve gone,” he reported.
“Not Galinski? Not the man calling himself Galinski?” Sheila cried involuntarily.
“I’m tired of her play-acting. It’s getting on my nerves,” Thaddeus said irritably, and lit his cigarette at the candle’s flame.
“It isn’t play-acting,” the stranger said. “She knows too much. If the Germans employed her she could have put the noose round a certain editor’s neck weeks ago.”
Sheila stared at him. She began to smile. “You do know him,” she said.
“I once had the doubtful honour of holding him under protective arrest. That was after he had made a very savage attack in print on the colonels. An interesting man, even if I disagreed with his politics at that time. But now the colonels are gone.” He smiled sadly as if laughing at himself. “And politics have gone, and Poland depends now on her captains. Wisniewski… you ——” he looked at the man sitting beside
him — “and hundreds like you.” He interrupted his thoughts abruptly. “Send a man to trail the others to the village. One who can take a short cut, who can bring us back word of the success of this expedition, or of its disaster. It is too late now to stop it. All we can do is to find out what happened to it, and be prepared for what it may bring.”
“I’ve sent a scout after them,” Thaddeus said. “After they left I sent one in case of an accident. I should have sent one after Jan; we’d have known now what happened at Korytów to our men.” He looked quickly at the captain’s worried face. “Is there something more than routine behind this sending of another man?” he asked sharply.
“Remember your wife,” Sheila said in a low voice. “Remember the ‘Polish’ soldier, Thaddeus.”
Thaddeus turned to stare at her. His face seemed larger, whiter; his bloodshot eyes were closed into slits. “Dutka was right,” he said slowly, “she’s a trouble-maker. We’ll have no peace until she’s gone.”
The stranger shook his head. “Perhaps,” he said, “or perhaps she has given us a real warning. In any case, I want to talk to her.”
The questioning began once more. The stranger watched every line of her face, every fleeting expression, every uncontrolled muscle. Nothing escaped the granite eyes. The captain waited eagerly. He was obviously relieved that he hadn’t shot this girl; he would have had to live with a nagging conscience at the thought of having murdered a friend of his friends. Thaddeus, without the personal link with Andrew Aleksander, would feel regret and sadness if her death had been unjustified, but he wouldn’t have the same bitter memory of a tragic mistake. At this moment, however, Thaddeus sat with his eyes averted, a look of distaste on his face. Every answer this foreigner gave only seemed to make him believe still more that she was a spy.
An owl shrieked. Again its startled cry rang through the forest. The three men were on their feet. They were out of the cottage. Sheila was left staring at the flickering candle with its rough coating of congealed drips. “Expect the worst,” Uncle Matthews would say, “and you won’t be disappointed.” From now on she was going to believe Uncle Matthews…. Some one was approaching; a friend, possibly, for the three officers had taken no weapons. But the friend was Dutka or some one else from the village. It wasn’t going to be Jan and his comrade. Expect the worst… Sheila prepared herself for it. The candle flame was burning steadily once more.
She heard voices, many voices. Not triumphant voices. Bitter, hard, sad voices. It couldn’t be Jan. Uncle Matthews was right. The door opened at last. White smudges of human face, like a painter’s daubs on a black canvas, stared into the room. Six men entered with Thaddeus. Behind them came the captain and his friend. And a boy. The white faces took shape. Jan there was. But not his companion. The others were men from Korytów. She gave them a weak, unbelieving smile. And then the boy came forward, and she didn’t give Jan a second glance. She stretched her hand out to the boy with the strained dark eyes and the haunted face.
“Stefan!” she cried. And Stefan Aleksander forgot the watching men. His self-imposed restraint broke down. His thin arms were round her, and nothing seemed so wonderful to Sheila as the tight grip and the intense hug. It was her reprieve from distrust and veiled hatred. She forgot she was cold and hungry, forgot she was tired and sleepless. Nothing mattered, she thought, nothing mattered in this whole damned world except this warmth, this feeling of being welcomed and loved. She tightened her own grip and laughed through her tears.
She remembered Jan. “Then you were in time?” she could say at last. But where was little Teresa, where was Aunt Marta? Had they gone to Warsaw to Madame Aleksander while Stefan had chosen to serve with these other new recruits?
The men’s silence gave her answer. It didn’t need Stefan’s hysterical grip on her hand, or the slow, unhappy shaking of Jan’s head to warn her of the words he would speak.
“These five men and the boy are what’s left of Korytów,” was all he said.
RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION: “Radium Age” is HILOBROW’s name for the 1904–33 era, which saw the discovery of radioactivity, the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. This era also saw the publication of genre-shattering writing by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Karel Čapek, H.P. Lovecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Philip Gordon Wylie, and other pioneers of post-Verne/Wells, pre-Golden Age “science fiction.” More info here.
READ GORGEOUS PAPERBACKS: HiLoBooks has reissued the following 10 obscure but amazing Radium Age science fiction novels in beautiful print editions: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook, Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, J.D. Beresford’s Goslings, E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man, Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage, and Muriel Jaeger’s The Man with Six Senses. For more information, visit the HiLoBooks homepage.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire”.
ORIGINAL FICTION: HILOBROW has serialized three novels: James Parker’s The Ballad of Cocky The Fox (“a proof-of-concept that serialization can work on the Internet” — The Atlantic); Karinne Keithley Syers’s Linda Linda Linda (which includes original music); and Robert Waldron’s roman à clef The School on the Fens. We also publish original stories and comics. These include: Matthew Battles’s stories “Gita Nova“, “Makes the Man,” “Imago,” “Camera Lucida,” “A Simple Message”, “Children of the Volcano”, “The Gnomon”, “Billable Memories”, “For Provisional Description of Superficial Features”, “The Dogs in the Trees”, “The Sovereignties of Invention”, and “Survivor: The Island of Dr. Moreau”; several of these later appeared in the collection The Sovereignties of Invention | Peggy Nelson’s “Mood Indigo“, “Top Kill Fail“, and “Mercerism” | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Flourish Klink’s Star Trek fanfic “Conference Comms” | Charlie Mitchell’s “A Fantasy Land” | Charlie Mitchell’s “Sentinels” | Joshua Glenn’s “The Lawless One”, and the mashup story “Zarathustra vs. Swamp Thing” | Adam McGovern and Paolo Leandri’s Idoru Jones comics | John Holbo’s “Sugarplum Squeampunk” | “Another Corporate Death” (1) and “Another Corporate Death” (2) by Mike Fleisch | Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer and Frank Fiorentino’s graphic novel “The Song of Otto” (excerpt) | John Holbo’s graphic novel On Beyond Zarathustra (excerpt) | “Manoj” and “Josh” by Vijay Balakrishnan | “Verge” by Chris Rossi, and his audio novel Low Priority Hero | EPIC WINS: THE ILIAD (1.408-415) by Flourish Klink | EPIC WINS: THE KALEVALA (3.1-278) by James Parker | EPIC WINS: THE ARGONAUTICA (2.815-834) by Joshua Glenn | EPIC WINS: THE MYTH OF THE ELK by Matthew Battles | TROUBLED SUPERHUMAN CONTEST: Charles Pappas, “The Law” | CATASTROPHE CONTEST: Timothy Raymond, “Hem and the Flood” | TELEPATHY CONTEST: Rachel Ellis Adams, “Fatima, Can You Hear Me?” | OIL SPILL CONTEST: A.E. Smith, “Sound Thinking | LITTLE NEMO CAPTION CONTEST: Joe Lyons, “Necronomicon” | SPOOKY-KOOKY CONTEST: Tucker Cummings, “Well Marbled” | INVENT-A-HERO CONTEST: TG Gibbon, “The Firefly” | FANFICTION CONTEST: Lyette Mercier’s “Sex and the Single Superhero”