The dark-browed giant stood up suddenly, mighty fists clenching.
“The Hangman!” he grated. “His men took my wife, my child—”
The man at the head of the table took his arm and drew him back to his seat.
“I know,” he said softly. “But the Hangman’s hour of reckoning draws closer with each tick of the clock. Now you have both studied this map of the city, and the route Heydrich’s car will take. Are you sure of what you must do?”
The two men nodded silently. “Excellent. I will be on hand. When your — ah — errand is completed I will give you your instructions for leaving the city. I think that is all, gentlemen. Good luck.”
The man on his left drummed his fingers nervously on the top of the table. His smouldering black eyes were worried.
“You say you will be there?”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t. The neighborhood will be alive with Gestapo police seconds after we have done our work! It will direct suspicion at you if you are discovered in the vicinity.”
“I’m afraid that can’t be helped.”
“But you are one of our few links with the Reich authorities. You are worth a hundred of us. As long as they believe you a renegade American and admit you to their councils, you are invaluable to the underground movement. Nothing must happen to you.”
“I don’t intend letting anything happen to me,” the man at the head of the table said. A whimsical smile touched his face but his yellow-green eyes did not reflect that smile. “Even so, I’d risk quite a bit to be present at Herr Heydrich’s final performance. When he departs for his eternal and — ah — warm reward I want to be there to raise a silent cheer.”
He stood up slowly, a tall thin figure with the esthetic features of a scholar and the yellow-green eyes of a jungle hunter.
“I’m afraid we must consider the matter settled,” he said gently. “Au revoir, until tomorrow, my comrades.”
With a slight smile he turned and moved silently toward the cellar exit.
After a moment one of the men at the table pinched out the candle and darkness, close and final, settled pall-like over the damp cellar...
At five o’clock on the afternoon of May twenty-eighth, a German staff car entered the outskirts of Prague and followed one of the main boulevards leading to the center of the city.
The car was driven by an impassive German officer and the sole occupant of the tonneau was a thin, loose-lipped man with pale, fretful features and cold shifting eyes. He wore the insignia of a Reich Upper Group Leader and his narrow chest was covered with medals and decorations.
As the car approached an intersection a stocky black-haired man on a bicycle swung out into the boulevard and pedaled leisurely along the street, directly in front of the staff car.
The chauffeur applied the brakes, slowing the car. He sounded the horn impatiently, swearing under his breath.
The man in the rear of the car looked up, his cold eyes snapping. A muscle twitched nervously in his cheek.
“What is the matter?” he barked.
The chauffeur gestured helplessly at the slowly moving bicyclist.
“I am sorry, sir, but this fool ahead on the cycle is blocking the street. Perhaps he is deaf.” He sounded the horn again, pressing angrily with the flat of his hand.
The officer in the rear of the car leaned back against the cushioned seat. A smile played about his loose lips and his unnaturally pale face lighted with a strange eagerness.
“How unfortunate for him,” he murmured. “Run him down.”
“But, excellency—”
“Silence!” The single word cracked like a leash about the chauffeur’s ears. “You have your orders!”
Red-faced, the chauffeur jammed his foot on the accelerator, but as the heavy car started to gain momentum, the bicyclist suddenly swerved to one side, leaving the road clear for the staff car.
The officer in the rear of the car cursed softly and his flabby lips twisted in a pout.
“The stupid fellow has saved his life,” he muttered. He crossed his booted leg nervously. “And for what? I would have been doing him a favor by crushing him beneath the wheels of the car. What can life possibly mean to such a senseless, inferior clod? Only a succession of hungry days and miserable nights stretching on forever. He is helpless to help himself or to hurt others. He lives without power, without effect, without importance. Better not to live.”
As the car drew abreast of the man on the bicycle he glanced idly at the rider. Boiling black eyes met his for one chilling instant. Eyes set in a hard, tensely determined face, eyes without fear, eyes that gleamed like flashing sword points.
The officer saw the man on the bicycle reach into the folds of his coarse jacket and draw out a round, black object; and he suddenly screamed madly at his chauffeur.
A man on the opposite side of the street, a dark-browed giant of a man, stepped suddenly from between two buildings. He drew a gun from his pocket and sighted deliberately at the figure in the tonneau of the staff car. His gun barked five times.
Almost at the same instant the arm of the cyclist flashed up and down, and a small black ball smashed against the hood of the car.
A reverberating explosion shattered the air.
The car rocked from the force of the blast. The chauffeur fell forward over the wheel and the machine careened madly over the sidewalk and smashed its hood into the glass showcase of a small shop.
The man on the bicycle pedaled swiftly across the street to the man who had fired the shots into the car.
“Did you get him?” he snapped.
“I think so. Come, we must hurry.”
“Not yet.” The man who had thrown the bomb shot an anxious glance up and down the street. “He said he would be here to give us directions.”
“Maybe he has failed. Something might have happened to him.”
“He will not fail us.”
Already people were appearing on the quiet street, emerging from the neat homes and small shops that lined the boulevard. Two men were running toward the wreckage of the car.
A cart with a load of hay turned onto the boulevard from a side street and the driver stopped the horses near the wrecked car. The driver clambered down without haste. He was wearing frayed overalls and a straw hat and his thin features were set in dull, stoic lines.
The man with the bicycle gripped his huge companion’s arm as the tall figure of the driver strode toward them.
“He has not failed us!” he whispered tensely.
“What do you mean?”
The overalled figure stopped in front of them.
“Please accept my congratulations,” he said. “You have done an excellent afternoon’s work. As a reward I would suggest a quiet drive through the country. And — ah — I wouldn’t let anything stop you from taking your reward immediately.”
The speaker lifted his straw hat slowly and the last rays of the sun struck lights in his strange, yellow-green eyes. The faces of the two men gleamed. “We knew you’d come,” the dark-featured giant said huskily. “Where shall we go?”
The man in overalls glanced lazily across the street at the wreckage of the car, noting the gathering of men and women and listening to the growing tumult spreading along the boulevard.
“If I were you,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d drive slowly away from this turbulent place and find some quiet secluded village and remain there. You’ll find the peace and quiet good for your souls. For that purpose I can’t think of a better place than the lazy, pleasant village of Lidice.”
“Lidice?”
“Yes, they’re expecting you. Now get started. At any moment the genial gentlemen from the Gestapo will arrive and in their charming fashion begin the questioning of witnesses.”