The Island of Peril (Department Z) Read online

  Loftus was thinking: ‘Where are the Errols?’

  The Prussian snapped three questions, and Richoffen answered swiftly. The hand of the Kommandant stretched out towards the control-panel; and it was then that Labiche struck.

  He tripped the Lieutenant who had brought him in, and sent the man flying. He had snatched an automatic from his pocket as he moved, and now a bullet snapped out, shattering the Kommandant’s wrist. It happened with stupefying speed. The Kommandant gasped, momentarily too shocked to notice the pain as the blood welled over his wrist and splashed from the back of his hand to the desk. Richoffen half-turned and one of the underlings went for his gun.

  Loftus fired, from the hip.

  As the gun went flying, Labiche reached the desk and crashed the Kommandant clear of it. In the same moment, Loftus backed to the wall, his gun covering the lot of them. Another man moved—and Loftus shot to kill. The thud of the falling body echoed dully in the office and Yvonne screamed, while Richoffen stared in utter disbelief.

  Labiche pressed a button—thank God, thought Loftus, fervently, that he knew the procedure! His gun still menaced them all, demanding their silence, ready to kill at a word, as a cavernous voice came from the receiver.

  ‘Yes, Herr Kommandant?’

  Labiche spoke: swiftly, gutturally, his voice a marvellous imitation of the Prussian’s.

  ‘Orders of urgency! The men dropped from aeroplanes are friends, who have been driven from England. They are to be treated with all courtesy, given all assistance. Is that understood?’

  ‘But Excellency——?’

  ‘The previous orders were mistaken!’ roared Labiche.

  ‘Yes, Excellency, yes!’

  A click told them the man at the other end had closed down—and fast upon it, Richoffen leapt at Labiche in an effort to reach the controls. Judging his moment to perfection, Labiche delivered a blow to the stomach which brought him to a gasping standstill, doubled up with the pain. The Frenchman hit him again—on the face, this time. And as the German went down, Labiche turned with his gun at the ready.

  ‘Nice work,’ applauded Loftus, calmly. He knew from Labiche that the room was sound-proof, and was dryly aware just how far from calm he would be feeling now, if it were not.

  It was also gas-proof, he remembered. And with Labiche to cover for him, he pulled off his mask—to hear Yvonne’s voice shriek:

  ‘God—No! Loftus!’

  ‘Loftus,’ he assured her, bleakly. He was covering them all again, now, as Labiche removed his own mask. ‘And another old friend,’ he added, with cold pleasure.

  Her head swivelled round.

  ‘Raoul!’ The colour drained from her face. ‘Raoul!’ she whispered again—and visibly shrank; seemed literally to become smaller—at the look of utter contempt and loathing which was the Frenchman’s only answer.

  The three lieutenants still on their feet had not moved. Loftus jerked his head in a gesture embracing the three of them and Richoffen, Yvonne and the Prussian.

  ‘Get in that corner, all of you,’ he commanded.

  No one moved.

  ‘All of you!’ he roared.

  He fired again, taking a piece out of a man’s arm, and they moved—Richoffen first. As the Kommandant slowly joined them, Loftus crossed to the desk and thus to Labiche’s side. His mind was working swiftly: the complete success of this first operation must be turned to fullest advantage—and at once. But how?

  As if he had asked the question aloud, Labiche said slowly:

  ‘I can arrange what is necessary, Bill—perhaps without complete loss of life.’ More confident, suddenly, he added: ‘I will take the Kommandant’s uniform!’

  ‘And then?’ Loftus prompted.

  ‘I will give orders for time-fuses to be placed where they will do most damage. Acting as General von Frietscher, it can be done.’

  ‘Good man,’ said Loftus.

  Labiche snapped an order in German. When no one moved, Loftus gestured the others away at gunpoint, and Labiche strode over to the Kommandant and struck him on the temple with the butt of his gun. Then calmly but swiftly, he stripped his clothes from him and donned them. He was not as thick-set as the Kommandant, but he had pulled the uniform over his own suit, and it hardly sagged at all. The transformation took only minutes, and Loftus kept his gun trained on the others as Labiche said:

  ‘I go, Bill.’

  ‘Right,’ said Loftus. ‘Good luck!’ And he pressed the door-control button.

  It happened swiftly, and for a moment it seemed that the odds which had been with them had now swung the other way. Because as Labiche opened one door, another opened, too, after a peremptory ring. Loftus saw three men entering—the first two considerably dishevelled; a streak of blood across the face of one, the other with an arm which was hanging limp at his side.

  The Errols!

  Behind them, an officer was halfway into the room before he saw what was happening. His face dropped, but his hand moved at once to his gun. Loftus knew that if he fired—if he made any noise at all, with the doors open—the alarm would reach the main passages and so the guard-houses, in moments.

  Disaster loomed over them, in that moment.

  But if Mark Errol’s face was cut, his brain—and his hands—were in perfect working order. With the swift appreciation of emergency which characterised all Craigie’s men, he smashed a fist to the lieutenant’s stomach. And as his gun fell, flashed a hand down in a perfect save—while his cousin Mike, his left arm useless, yanked at the man with his right and dragged him into the room.

  Loftus closed the doors on the instance, and for a moment they simply stared at each other—the Errols slowly comprehending the incredible: the newcomer aghast. Then Labiche said mildly:

  ‘I will try again, Bill.’

  Loftus pressed the switch, and this time Labiche went out without incident. As the door closed, Yvonne gasped on a shrill note:

  ‘How—how could you possibly——!’

  Loftus said: ‘This being a waiting period, my pet, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t talk.’ He spoke lightly, almost frivolously, as if completely oblivious of the great drama being played out all around them. But he was profoundly aware of it, and with his whole being he was praying for the courageous Frenchman’s safety—and success.

  Aloud, he continued: ‘You didn’t succeed altogether, Yvonne, in hoodwinking me. At first, yes; but you grew too insistent about wanting to help. To throw a fit of near hysteria because you were not kept fully informed of—or used in—our more vital investigations, was hardly intelligent. And in other things, you gave yourself away.’

  His voice still light, but his eyes cold, he told her: ‘You were the only woman who could have been seen hurrying away from the nursing-home after the staff had been put to sleep and Tenby removed. Other than people I can trust implicitly, only you knew where he had been taken.’

  Yvonne stared, her face deathly white, and there was restrained contempt in his voice as he went on:

  ‘You were always at the flat, or next door—and your habit was to move from one to the other when you were least expected; so that you heard much that you weren’t intended to—or at least, you thought you did. You were given the task of making Labiche talk, and you thought I was miles away on the night that you succeeded. But I didn’t trust you, my sweet—and I’d been told that Labiche might remember very suddenly. So I stayed near at hand, and listened in: there is a recording-machine in my flat, you see.’

  His mind flashed back, remembering; reminding him of Labiche, and what he was trying to do at this very moment.

  Grimly, he told her:

  ‘You were asked by Labiche to get de Boncour—but you would have telephoned Richoffen to get Labiche removed. I telephoned Craigie instead, but you contrived——’ he remembered that gesture at her ruffled hair, to get the pair of them out of the flat: “to get word to Richoffen.” He arranged for the kidnapping of de Boncour, and later—when you knew I was going to fetch the
man—for the murder of Monet. And when I captured that fake warden, my sweet, you knew what took place—and its effects—and again, you warned Richoffen. That was why his men were half-prepared at Grove Crescent. He would not have had even those makeshift barricades erected, had he not been warned. It is also why he escaped. You were the only one who could have warned him—so I had you watched and followed.’

  ‘You swine!’ she spat at him.

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Loftus.

  Mark Errol broke in:

  ‘She went out into Buckinghamshire, Bill, and there was a ’plane waiting there for her. We managed to stow away, but we didn’t last long when we got here—although we tried to make a fight for it. For once——’

  ‘We were really pleased to see you,’ interpolated Mike.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Loftus, dryly. ‘Well, Yvonne—anything to add?’

  ‘You fool!’ Her voice rose hysterically: ‘You will die—you cannot get away from here alive! We warned Berlin direct, Richoffen and I, and the defences are ready! At this very moment, there are ten thousand men—ten thousand, you understand?—on the march, under the sea. They will make sure none of your accursed Department men get out of here alive, I can tell you! You cannot win, Loftus—you cannot get away!’

  Loftus felt a chill hand grip his heart. But he said pleasantly:

  ‘We don’t agree, my sweet. But if you’re right, none of us will get away, I promise you.’

  With forced calm, Richoffen interposed:

  ‘You sent Labiche to set time-bombs in the main storehouses and laboratories. If he does that, my friend, you will be buried alive with the rest of us! And your men outside will be gassed—there is no protection possible, against the quantity that will be released.’

  ‘You know,’ said Loftus blandly, ‘we’d thought of that.’

  ‘All of you will die——!’

  ‘Don’t blether about dying,’ retorted Loftus. ‘We’re all for it, sooner or later—and at least it’s worth dying for a decent job, decently done. And we happen——’

  He broke off as the loud-speaker on the desk crackled, and Labiche’s voice came clearly:

  ‘Loftus——Loftus!’

  ‘Speaking,’ he called.

  ‘It is done, but we are known and the guards are preparing to attack. All exits are closed up. I propose bringing all of your men to the central hall, with you, and then operating the detonators. We have no more than five minutes—you will be ready?’

  ‘We are ready now,’ Loftus assured him.

  He felt, then, that there was no chance of escape, except the remote one that the central hall would not be crushed completely, and that its proofing would withstand the gas. But Yvonne clearly did not think so, and she started screaming. The Kommandant had recovered consciousness and was glaring at them, his mouth working, and two of the lieutenants were shouting wildly across the room.

  They stopped, all of them, when Richoffen roared:

  ‘Quiet, you curs!’ Into the sudden, startled silence, he said in a deadly voice: ‘If you destroy the island and yourself, Loftus, you will have done less than you think. There is a store of euthan gas in England great enough to lay the country at the mercy of the Fuehrer. Stop this madness, and save yourself!’

  Loftus stared—trying to probe the German’s mind, to gauge if he was telling the truth. And sick at the realisation of all it could mean, decided that he was.

  Mike Errol grunted:

  ‘He’s lying, Bill.’

  ‘Shoot the swine,’ suggested Mark.

  ‘It is true,’ said Richoffen, and he laughed—laughed as Loftus opened the doors to admit Labiche and twenty-three of the thirty men of the Department Z assault force—and kept laughing, like a man in hysteria, as the doors were closed. And then Labiche said thinly:

  ‘The explosions begin in one minute. It would be wise, I think, for all to put on masks.’

  They obeyed, even Yvonne and Richoffen and von Frietscher: and in silence they waited.

  21

  The End for Whom?

  On the surface of it, Labiche’s calm was almost uncanny.

  But Loftus realised that the Frenchman was acting much as he and most of Craigie’s men. They had put on their masks without fuss, and all but Loftus, Labiche and Mike Errol—and the little party of Nazis in one corner—were squatting on the ground, as if they intended to be comfortable while they could.

  The seconds ticked by.

  Each one took them nearer the moment when the explosions would blow the laboratories and store-tunnels of the Island of Gruntz into perdition—and release quantities of sleeping and poison-gas such as the mind of man could hardly conceive. Even Loftus had only a faint idea of the degree of deadliness within that rocky island: but Labiche, von Frietscher, the woman and Richoffen knew. Perhaps that was why they were standing so rigidly, staring towards the doors; Yvonne crouching back against the German who had lived so long as an Englishman, her eyes and lips distended behind her mask, her breast heaving.

  Each second seemed an eternity.

  No more than thirty had passed when Richoffen and von Frietscher moved as one towards the desk.

  ‘I must see——I must see!’ von Frietscher shouted.

  Loftus was puzzled, but Labiche nodded, and they allowed von Frietscher to approach the control panels. Loftus would have shot him had he touched the door-controls, but the Kommandant’s uninjured hand was only near a red button well away from the danger-point.

  Fifteen seconds remained, when von Frietscher pressed.

  There was a faint whirring sound, and for a moment Loftus was startled. He was aware of Richoffen’s eyes turned on him with an expression impossible to define, although hatred played its part. And then Loftus saw what the German general had meant.

  He was amazed.

  Two large screens were showing in the walls, and for a moment he knew fear, not of approaching death but of the possibility that the effort would fail. For the screens showed long tunnels through which masked men were marching, a grotesque army of the Third Reich. He saw, too, other tunnels where the stores were kept—and near them, wisps of smoke.

  Labiche said:

  ‘They are televisors, Loftus, by which all key-points can be watched.’

  Loftus nodded.

  Von Frietscher was staring as a man hypnotised, and what those screens contained had stopped the Department men from lounging. All were staring towards those tunnels of marching men, towards the wisps of smoke and the huge crates in others—exits from the underground laboratory of Hell.

  Five seconds remained. . . .

  It happened, then.

  It happened without a sound, which was the miracle of that room. Loftus watched, oblivious of all else, even Richoffen and Yvonne—Yvonne, who was sobbing now.

  A store-tunnel went first.

  There was a sheet of flame and then a billow of white smoke. Flame and smoke again—and then what seemed like a vast cloud of vapour, which lasted only for a moment, for the walls of the tunnel collapsed, carrying with them the piled storage crates. It was fantastic to stand there, watching the effects of that mighty explosion, and yet hear nothing.

  Loftus watched the marching men—and suddenly the first battalion went into the inferno which the explosion created. That tunnel, free from gas, showed flame and thick, dark smoke—and as it came, the walls began to fall and the even ranks of men broke in terror. They saw men tear off their masks and start to run, but running was useless as the ceiling crashed down in an avalanche of bricks and solid rock, smashing men into pieces, mangling and wrecking them. And still the mass of rocks crashed down and the men went under, many with their mouths open as if they screamed, although no sound reached the room.

  Another tunnel filled with marching men went next.

  Loftus watched as if made of stone, for the horror of that spectacle was worse than anything he could have conceived. It was petrifying in its speed and diabolical in its efficiency. It had to be; but to see the men
dying, crushed and buried beneath the debris, to see them fighting desperately as they tried to reach a safety that was not there, was a ghastly experience.

  As the third battalion suffered the same fate—men born to Hitler’s madness made to die for it, before their time—more storage tunnels crumbled before their eyes. They could see the whitish vapour creeping from them along the empty passages towards the guard-houses.

  And with the vapour, fire!

  Loftus watched the guards fleeing and knew that to their ears, the explosion must have sounded like the crack of doom that in fact, for them it was. They ran, and then suddenly they dropped—and the fire caught them: devouring them with unimaginable speed in that ghastly, raging inferno.

  Another scene flashed on.

  A vast room, a laboratory in which two hundred men had been working; all of them masked. There were huge vats of liquid fixed in the ceilings, and vast glass containers, test tubes and retorts swirling with gases. And suddenly, in the split-second after the men had jumped up from their benches, the room collapsed around them—the vats exploding and glass containers smashed, as walls and ceiling came crashing down.

  Masks were burned from faces like so much paper. And as men died in the agony they had intended for others, the total destruction of that island of horror went on until there was nothing left to see. The screen was obscured—everything blotted out by the smoke which hung like a thick, dark pall over all.

  For a long moment, no one moved.

  Then suddenly Yvonne tore her mask from her head.

  Her face was livid, her eyes glared like those of a mad woman. She was mad.

  Sobbing and screaming, she flung herself down in front of Loftus, mouthing unintelligible words at him—curses or pleas, he could not tell which.

  As he stared down at her, trying to understand, he was suddenly struck by the almost incredible truth—and as his eyes met some of the others’, he saw that they had realised it, too. The island was destroyed: beyond the walls of this room there was only death and the means of death, crushed bodies, and chaos.

  But Yvonne was without her mask and still breathing—living.