• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He tossed the decanter across the room and shoved her back on to the bed. She was completely sober, her eyes wide with horror. 'I didn't mean it, Max. I didn't mean any harm.'

'You never do, angel.'

'What are you going to do?' she whispered hoarsely.

'Do?' He smiled coldly. 'I'm going to give you to Stavrou.'

She shook her head several times from side to side. 'No, Max, you wouldn't do that.'

'Wouldn't I?' Donner said and he turned and went out, closing the door behind him.

Stavrou stood looking down at her, no expression on the cold, cruel face and then he did something she had never known him do before. He laughed.

As he took his first step towards her, she screamed and staggered to her feet, pushing a chair between them. He kicked it to one side as negligently as one might kick a football and she turned and ran to the French windows, wrenching them open so violently that a pane of glass shattered.

But there was no way out. The balcony led nowhere except to the stone terrace at the front of the house forty feet below. She turned and as Stavrou appeared in the window, gave a heart-rending cry and flung herself over the rail.

The cell into which they pushed Chavasse had a barred grill in the door, but no window and when the door closed behind him he found himself in almost total darkness. There was a rustle on the other side of the room and he was aware of a darker shadow against the wall, the white blur of a face.

'Who's there?' he said sharply.

'Ah, English,' the other said, speaking with a slight accent. 'How interesting. Presumably you are on our side?'

'That depends very much on who you are,' Chavasse said.

'Allow me to introduce myself. Gunther von Bayern, Colonel, Military Intelligence Corps, German Army. You don't mind if I call it that, do you? As far as I'm concerned there is only one.'

'Chavasse--Paul Chavasse.'

'Ah, French?'

'And English. You wouldn't have such a thing as a cigarette would you?'

'Be my guest.'

The face that leapt out of the darkness when the match flared was wedge-shaped, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones. The eyes were black and flecked with amber and seemed to change colour in the flickering light. He was about forty-five, a handsome, smiling man with a deceptively lazy drawl that didn't fool Chavasse for one minute.

'Wasn't there a Captain Bailey with you?'

Von Bayern nodded. 'Our liaison officer. Poor fellow, when we drove into the courtyard of this damned place and found ourselves under the guns of men who were apparently soldiers in my own army, he tried to make a run for it.'

'They gunned him down?'

'I'm afraid so. Don't you think it's about time you told me what this is all about?'

Chavasse crouched down beside him and started to talk. It took a surprisingly short time and when he finished, von Bayern chuckled softly. 'You know, one really must give credit where it is due. The plan has all the simplicity of genius.'

'And it will work,' Chavasse said. 'It will work and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.'

Footsteps sounded in the passage outside and when he hurried to the grill, he saw Asta going past with Stavrou. When he called, she turned and hurried across.

'Are you all right, Paul?'

'Fine, angel.'

Von Bayern's face appeared beside him. 'May I have the pleasure of an introduction?'

'Asta Svensson--Gunther von Bayern.'

'Distinctly my pleasure,' von Bayern said, and Stavrou, scowling, dragged her away.

They heard a door slam further down the passage, a key turn in the lock and Stavrou went past on his own.

'A nasty looking piece of work, that one,' von Bayern observed.

'Stavrou?' Chavasse nodded. 'He's supposed to be Greek.'

Von Bayern shook his head. 'Definitely from east of the Urals. I fought too many of his breed in my youth to be mistaken.'

He offered Chavasse another cigarette and they sat down on an old wooden packing case. 'A charming girl, by the way. Are you in love with her?'

'You don't pull your punches,