He felt ravenously hungry but the only food he had found in the cottage larder was the half of a small wild duck, a lump of sausage, a thin wedge of cheese and a loaf of rye bread. Putting aside the duck and cheese for his dinner, he slowly masticated some of the coarse bread and sausage then made a more thorough examination of the two S.D. men's wallets. Both contained permits to buy petrol, but he knew that if he produced one of them at a garage the number on the card would be entered in a book and he would have to sign for the petrol in the name of the man to whom it had been issued. Sooner or later such a forgery would be discovered, giving away the direction in which the stolen machine had been driven, and enabling the garage man to give a description of him and that might prove his undoing. His strongest card was that although every effort would be made to trace the machine, unless Malacou was caught and squealed the police could not have the faintest idea what the person who had made off on it was like. To protect this most valuable anonymity he decided not to use _either of the permits unless all other ways of securing a further supply of petrol failed.
In both wallets there were also identity cards, but to have made use of one of them would have been acutely dangerous, as the names of the missing men would, anyway for the next few days, be in the minds of every policeman in north, Germany. However, as he was wearing the uniform of an S.D. trooper no-one, other than an S.D. officer, had the authority to challenge him, and it was very unlikely that he would run into one until he reached Berlin. In the capital, though, as the badges he was wearing would show that he belonged to a formation stationed in occupied Poland, he might well be challenged and if he were the fat would be in the fire.
This thought made him wonder if it would not be wisest to put on his civilian clothes while he had the chance, but the uniform was such an excellent protection from any form of interference while on the road that he decided not to change out of it as yet.
As he had nothing else with which to occupy himself, the next few hours seemed interminable. He thought a lot of Erika, wondered what had happened to Malacou and cursed the day he had met him; then speculated on possible ways of obtaining money when he reached Berlin, but gave that up as futile for the present.
At length the shadows began to fall. Still hungry after his last unsatisfactory meal he ate the rest of the rye bread and every shred of the duck, then set about the job of getting the motor-cycle up the steep bank of the stream. Slipping, holding, cursing, it took him a good ten minutes, and when he did get the heavy machine on to the level he had to sit down for a while to recover from his efforts. Then, kicking the engine into life, he wheeled it, just ticking over, to within twenty feet of the road. Having made certain that nothing was approaching from either direction, he mounted it and set off.
He still had another twelve miles to go to Bydgoszcz and the petrol in his tank was getting very low, so he was uneasily aware that somehow, soon, he would have to get it filled up. Slowing down at two villages through which he passed, he kept a sharp look-out for a possible source of supply but, apart from garages, failed to find one. By that time he was nearing Bydgoszcz and was getting worried; so when, outside a Fair-sized villa on the outskirts of the town, he saw a car, he pulled up beside it, dismounted and sounded the klaxon.
After a few minutes a short plump, elderly man came out of the house, walked down the garden path and asked him in German what he wanted. In the harsh, dictatorial voice habitual to S.D. thugs, Gregory said that he had run right out of petrol and must have some. The man suggested that he should go on into the town and, as it was only a little after nine o'clock, knock up a garage. Gregory replied that his tank was almost drained, that he was on urgent duty and could not afford the delay should his machine fail before he reached the pump. The man protested that he was a doctor and about to visit a bad case at a farm some miles away, so could not spare any petrol. Gregory said he could not help that. Petrol he must have, and at once. He would give the doctor a chit to secure more, but unless he met the demand he would find himself in trouble.
Under the threat the doctor quailed, became ingratiatingly polite and hurried back to the house to fetch a piece of rubber tubing. While he was absent Gregory took from the breast pocket of his uniform a notebook and fountain pen and scribbled on one of the pages: Commandeered from Herr Doktor -, seventeen litres of petrol for urgent requirements, then signed it: Albrecht Schmidt, No. 4785 Sicherheitsdienst. Ten minutes later the petrol had been siphoned from the tank of the doctor's car into the tank of the motor-cycle and Gregory had filled in the doctor's name on the chit.
During this transaction Gregory kept the peak of his uniform cap pulled well down over his eyes and, the light from the headlamps by which it had been carried out having been well below the level of his face, he felt sure that the plump doctor, if ever called on to give a description of him, would be able to give only a very vague one. With an abrupt word of thanks, he set off again to go through Bydgoszcz.
By luck he found a bypass that took him round it to the entrance of an autobahn signposted ` Berlin '. He roared along it for sixty miles. Then it joined the Danzig-Berlin highway with a signpost that said ` Berlin 160 Kilometres'. Down it he continued to let the powerful machine rip, and when he had covered three-quarters of the distance he could see a glow in the sky ahead that was evidently over Berlin.
As he drew nearer he realized that an air-raid was in progress. The glow was from fires and the scores of searchlights that swept the sky. A myriad tiny sparks flickered at the extremities of the beams as hundreds of anti-aircraft shells exploded, and in the distance he caught the continuous rumble made by the crashing of the bombs. By the time he neared the end of the autobahn the raid was over and only a lurid glare from raging fires lit the sky.
By then it was half past one in the morning. Slowing down, he looked out for a suitable spot in which to abandon the motor-cycle. Not finding one he took a side turning to the north along which, interspersed among fields, back lots and orchards; there were small factories and short rows of small houses. A mile or so along it he came to a humpbacked bridge beneath which ran a railway culvert.
Pulling up at the side of the road he took a screwdriver from the tool kit, removed the number plates from the machine and put them in his pockets. Then, making certain that no-one was about, he wheeled the motor-cycle some distance off the road, unstrapped the hold-all and pushed the machine over the brick edge of the culvert, so that it crashed on to the railway line fifteen feet below. Pleased by the thought that the next train that passed would render Germany the poorer by one powerful motor-cycle and that, with luck, it might even derail itself, he picked up the hold-all and returned to the road. Five minutes later he threw the number plates into a deep ditch which was screened by a fine crop of nettles.
He now felt very tired and after half an hour's tramp through the blacked-out deserted streets of the suburb he was limping again. But about two o'clock he came upon the sort if place for which he was looking. It was an unpretentious inn, somewhat older than the majority of the buildings in the neighborhood, with a tea garden beside it and large enough to have eight or ten bedrooms.