Although his name was hardly known to the general public, it had long been respected in Government circles. To his great mansion in Carlton House Terrace, Ambassadors, Generals and Cabinet Ministers often came to consult him privately on their problems, and they rarely left without having- drawn new strength from his boundless vitality and shrewd common sense._
Gregory had just finished giving an account of events at Sassen since Erika had been forced to leave him there and of his final battle of wills with Malacou. Sir Pellinore towered over him, still grasping the neck of the magnum with a hand the size of a small leg of mutton. As he dropped the bottle back into the ice-bucket he boomed:
`Well, I'll be jiggered! So you forced the Malacoo feller to recant, eh? Made him swallow his own hell-broth. Shows how mistaken one can be. You're the last man I'd ever have expected to play the part of a sky-pilot. It's clear you've missed your vocation.'
`Thanks,' Gregory laughed, `but I don't think I'd fancy myself in a dog-collar.'
`Perhaps you're right. Might spoil your sport with the gals, eh?
'You're thinking of yourself,' Gregory twitted him. `Erika's the only woman in my life and-'
`And I'm the Grand Cham of Tartary,' Sir Pellinore cut in. `How about that Hungarian wench you brought back with you from your last trip? The Baroness Tuposo-no, Trombolo or some such outlandish name. By Jove, what a smasher she was. The elderly Baronet's bright blue eyes glittered at thee memory. `If I'd been ten years younger I'd have taken her off you and smacked her bottom myself.'
`I've no doubt you would. But Sabine was the last flutter of my murky past and the less said about her the better, because Erika should be here shortly.'
`You telephoned her from the R.A.F. station then. That's good. Seein' the mucker I made by bringing her down hotfoot from Gwaine Meads last time you got home, I didn't like to risk it. Thought you might bring back one of those blonde bombshells they export from Sweden.'
`That was considerate of you. God knows I was stuck there long enough to have acquired a harem.'
`Yes. Sorry about that. But I gather from General Gubbie's always the same with these S.O.E. jobs. When they want one of their cloak-and-dagger Johnnies to thrust a spanner in the Nazi works they can get him sent out overnight; but when he's singed what there is of the house-painter feller's moustche, they leave their chap sittin' on his backside till Doomsday.'
`It was all to the good, really. Naturally, I wanted to get home; but the people at our Embassy could not have been kinder and I benefited a lot from being under Dr. Zetterberg for the best part of a month. It was far from pleasant having to lie on my back again for most of the time with a damn' great weight attached to my foot, but there wasn't the temptation to kick over the traces that there would have been here.' `How is your leg?'
`Far better than I could ever have expected. Thanks to your having tempted Zetterberg with that staggering fee to risk his neck by going into Germany, I'll not have to spend the rest of my life as an unwieldy cripple. I only wish there were some way in which I could repay your princely generosity.9 'Nonsense,' Sir Pellinore responded gruffly. `Seein' you here on your two feet does that. The money was a bagatelle. You must know that I'm lousy with the stuff. But tell me more about us Maluku feller. If Erika hadn't vouched for it I'd never have believed in such goin's on. It's straight out of the Dark Ages.' Gregory sighed. `Neither would I if I hadn't come up against it myself. But one can't laugh at the fact that I was struck down on a day that he predicted would, in connection with Stefan, hold the maximum danger for me.'
`That might have been coincidence.'
`Not if you take into consideration all the lucky breaks we had on the days he said would be favourable to us; and Hauff's death. It was that which finally convinced me that he really was in league with the Devil.'
'Umph! Erika told me about that. Rollin' his own daughter in the hay. What a thing to do! Takes a lot to shock me, but there are limits. Can't see much fun in having a woman on a stone slab, either. Still, that's beside the point. If it wasn't that Erika swears she saw the two of them having an upsy-daisy I'd put the whole thing down to your having been round the bend for a while owin' to the pain you were suffering.'
`You can count that out. I was cooped up with him in that ruin for over four months and for most of that time I was as sane as you are. What is more, although we are now separated by hundreds of miles of land and sea, I still get his vibrations and know what is happening to him.'
`God bless my soul!' Sir Pellinore gulped down a great draught of champagne. `You can't really mean that?
'I do. His killing of Hauff led to Khurrem's committing suicide, and that has landed him in one hell of a mess. I always thought it a bit odd that on Ulrich von Altern's death the Sassen estate did not pass to his brother Willi. It probably did but, as Willi was a nut, the odds are that he wouldn't have realized it; and Malacou managed to fix things so that the von Alters lawyers would agree to Khurrem running the place for him. Anyhow, now Khurrem is dead her papa is up against it. The family have muscled in and a distant cousin named Gottlob is creating trouble. He is next in line to Willi and, on the plea that Willi is not all there, he is trying to get a court order that will make him Willi's guardian and enable him to take over Sassen. As the family has never had much time for their Turkish relations by marriage, it means that if Gottlob wins his case Malacou will be out on his ear.'
`Devil take me! You can't possibly know all that through thought transference.'
Gregory smiled. `I wouldn't call on the Devil if I were you. [t looks to me as though this is his pay-off to Malacou for my having made him rat on his Infernal Master. But I am; certain that is what is going on.'
'Bosh, my boy! Bosh! You must be loony. You dreamed it.
`In a way, perhaps. But they are waking dreams. I get them at odd times every day and I feel as though I were talking to Malacou just as I am to you.'
Sir Pellinore's slightly protuberant blue eyes took on a thoughtful look. Brushing up his white moustache, he said; For God's sake forget this nonsense. It was understandable while you were being hypnotized by this Malodo blackguard. But not now. What are your plans?
'My limp is no bar to my returning to duty, but I reckon I've earned a spot of leave; so I mean to go back to Gwaine Meads with Erika for a month or so. After that I take it there will be no difficulty about my again resuming my old job in the cabinet War Room?'
`None whatever. It was agreed it should be a permanent appointment and a stand-in employed whenever I wanted you seconded for special service.'
`That's O.K., then. And we won't be wanting any more stand-ins. Odd though it may seem, I've seen quite enough of he Nazis at close quarters. I'd rather remain here sticking pins a maps till the end of the war.'
Sir Pellinore bellowed with laughter. `Got cold feet at last, eh? But you're making a big mistake, my boy. You'd be safer in Berlin than London once the house-painter feller gets going with his secret weapon.'
Gregory looked up quickly. `I thought that had been sorted out by the raid on Peenemunde.' 'Yes and no.' Frowning slightly, the Baronet stood up and filled their tankards. `You and that Russian crony of yours enabled the R.A.F. to do a splendid job. The raid set the wurst-eaters back a good six months. Apart from blowing the place to merry hell we've learned that all the blueprints they had ready to send out to factories were destroyed. But that was back in August; and, of course, the backroom boys who