Faked Passports (24 page)

“Her father was transferred from our Consulate at Amsterdam to our Consulate here a fortnight ago. Apparently the pressure of work here has been increasing ever since the war started so Mr. Fordyce was sent out to lend a hand. He's a widower, you know, so wherever he goes Angela always goes too, to look after him. They want us both to lunch with them. If it's O.K. by you, I said we'd meet them downstairs in about ten minutes' time.”

Gregory laughed. “I shall be delighted to lunch if they won't mind my slipping away immediately afterwards. I've got an appointment with a man at the Finnish Foreign Office for three o'clock.”

“Oh, no, that'll be all right.” Freddie dived at his suitcase. “I must get some of these parcels unpacked so that I can have a wash and change into my new clothes; then we'll get down to the lounge again.”

Downstairs they found that the Fordyces had secured a table and were with difficulty retaining two empty chairs for their guests as the lounge was absolutely packed with people. Half the population of Helsinki seemed to have assembled there to
see as many of their acquaintances as possible and discuss the latest rumours.

While Freddie made the introductions Gregory was smilingly taking in the father and daughter. M. Fordyce was a tallish man still in his early forties and as yet had not a single grey hair on his dark, smooth head. His double-breasted lounge-suit was of grey Glenurquhart tweed and he was unmistakably English. Angela was even prettier than Gregory had supposed from his first glimpse of her. Like her father she was dark and had blue eyes, a combination which suggested a touch of Irish blood in the family, but her skin was of that smooth whiteness which is spoken of as magnolia blossom and sometimes found in a special type of dark beauty. Gregory noticed that she used very little make-up and thought that just a touch more colour on her lips and cheeks would have made her still lovelier; her eyes, however, nature could not have been improved upon, as she had long, dark, curling lashes.

After a glass of
aquavit
they went into the crowded dining-room and enjoyed an excellent meal. The smoked salmon—which is as cheap in Finland as herrings are in England—was, curiously enough, not of such good quality as that usually served in London; but the mussel soup was delicious, as the mussels—in which the Finnish coast abounds—had not been out of the sea for more than an hour. Stuffed pike, cooked over a wood-fire, followed and afterwards Gregory and Freddie tried their first bear steaks. Ordinarily, bear meat is inclined to be tough but this had been treated with oil—in the same way as the Italians prepare a tournado—and the meat had a distinctive, rather pleasant flavour of its own. To celebrate Freddie's and Angela's unexpected reunion Mr. Fordyce stood them champagne, and they finished up with a good selection of cheeses and Turkish coffee.

As they were celebrating the meal was naturally a happy affair, but most of the faces about them were grave and anxious owing to the crisis. Many of the women in the room were quite good-looking but very few of them had on any make-up; the lack of which left their faces curiously colourless compared with the usual restaurant crowd in London, and Freddie remarked upon the fact.

“My dear,” Angela laughed, “didn't you know that for a girl to paint her face is the one deadly sin in Finland? That's why I make up so little here. The tarts use cosmetics as a badge of their profession but even they use only as little as possible—
just enough to show that they are tarts—otherwise they would never be able to attract the better class of men.”

“I see,” Gregory smiled across at her. “I thought it must be because they were rather puritanical, the old Protestant strain coming out. The Finns are said to be rather like the Scots in many ways, I believe, and nothing is more dreary than a Sunday in Scotland. They are Protestants, aren't they?”

“Yes, Lutherans,” Fordyce volunteered.

Gregory nodded. “I imagine it's the long winter nights which make people in the northern countries like Scotland and Scandinavia so keen on education—plenty of time for reading—and once people get interested in books they almost always educate themselves.”

“Yes. They are terrific readers. You've only got to look at the bookshops here to see that. Practically every worth-while book that comes out is translated into Finnish, and a bookseller was telling me the other day that the editions they print are very often as large as those printed in England; which is absolutely staggering considering the relative smallness of the population.”

“This business of make-up, then,” Freddie brought the conversation back, “is, I suppose, due to the same sort of strict morality that the Church of Scotland enforces so far as it can?”

“Oh, no. It's not that they're the least straight-laced,” Angela hastened to assure him. “In fact, women are remarkably free here and the Finns have a passionate belief in the equality of the sexes. They were the first people to give women the vote; and if a servant-girl here has an illegitimate child nobody thinks
any the worse of her; she just stays on in her job and the child is adopted into the family.”

Glancing at his watch Gregory saw that it was nearly half past two, and he wanted to be in plenty of time for his appointment at the Finnish Foreign Office so he stood up and excused himself.

Having collected his furs from the cloakroom he thrust his way through the jam of people in the hall to the desk and said to the fair-haired clerk who had booked him in: “I want those papers back now that I gave you just before midday to put in the hotel safe.”

The fair man looked at him in blank surprise. “But you sent for them yourself—half an hour ago, sir.” He reached into a drawer and produced a chit. “We have your signature for them.”

I told you not to give that packet to
anyone
—on
any
pretext,” Gregory snarled, the second he could give expression to his amazement and anger.

The clerk gave back before his angry scowl. “But, sir, you said you would be wanting the packet again after lunch and I thought …”

“But you say you gave it to someone half an hour ago. It would then have been barely two o'clock.”

“In Helsinki many people lunch at midday, sir, and would have finished by then. I thought you were busy, perhaps, and so had sent your friend to collect your parcel.”

“If I had, he would have produced the receipt you gave me; and I still have it here. What have you to say to that?”

“Only, sir, that visitors are often careless and mislay the receipts we give them. We consider it quite satisfactory if instead of the original receipt we have the visitor's signature for anything deposited. And here is yours.” The clerk extended the slip of paper again.

Gregory glanced at it. “That's not my signature.”

“Well, it's very like it, sir.” The man shrugged apologetically and pointed to the place in the visitor's book where Gregory himself had written his name earlier that day. The forgery would not have been passed by a bank but it was a pretty fair imitation, and as Gregory stared at the fair, blue-eyed, bespectacled clerk he suddenly formed a very shrewd suspicion as to what had occurred.

The man behind the desk might be of Finnish nationality but he was certainly not one hundred per cent. Finnish. The Finns have no blood ties with other Scandinavian peoples—they are a race apart—and the only nation to which they are allied by blood and language is Hungary, for over a thousand years
ago a colony of Finns migrated into middle-Europe and settled round Lake Balaton. The Finns are of two main types—the Karelians, who come from the North and the East and are a jolly, pleasure-loving people, and the Tavastlanders, from the South and the West, who provide the more sober element—but neither has any resemblance to the Teutons; whereas the clerk's square head and thick neck betrayed his German origin.

That, almost certainly, was the key to what had transpired. The fellow was either a German or had relatives in Germany, which enabled the Gestapo agents in Helsinki to exert pressure on him. As part of his secret duties he had evidently reported that an Englishman had lodged a packet of important papers with him. The member of the Gestapo to whom he reported had then copied Gregory's signature out of the visitors' book and made the clerk hand over the packet.

Gregory knew that he could create a fuss, send for the manager, threaten to sue the hotel and call in the police; but none of these things would get back his vitally-important papers. He swiftly made up his mind that he would try to get the clerk sacked later, if he had time to spare, as the man was dangerous; but there was not a second to lose now. With the smallest possible delay he must try to get on the track of whoever had stolen the packet.

“What was the name of the man to whom you gave my papers?” he asked quickly.

“I don't know, sir.”

“Is he staying in the hotel?”

“Oh, no.”

“But you knew him?”

“Yes. He has been in here several times in the last two days.”

“D'you know where he lives?”

The clerk smiled blandly, with almost open insolence. “No, sir, I haven't the least idea.”

“All right. Describe him to me,” Gregory snapped. “And remember this: the packet was such a big one that somebody must have noticed you handing it across the counter, and one of the porters would certainly have seen the man walk out with it. I'll have every person in the hotel questioned and if I find that you've lied to me about his description I'll have you put in prison for aiding and abetting a theft!”

The clerk wilted slightly as he protested. “But I wouldn't dream of lying to you, sir, and the management will be most distressed about this unfortunate occurrence. The man said
you had sent him for the packet and produced your signature, otherwise I should never have given it to him. He was a big man, very strong, I should say, but rather fat. He had fair hair, cut like a brush in front.”

“A German?”

“I couldn't say, sir, but he spoke to me in English and I thought he might be Scandinavian or Dutch. He had a heavy, pasty face, spoke in a shrill voice and was wearing a black patch over his left eye.

It was all Gregory could do to suppress an exclamation. The description exactly fitted his old enemy,
Herr Gruppenführer
Grauber, the chief of the Gestapo Foreign Department, U.A.-1. What was Grauber doing in Finland? But that was easy. Grauber had his spies and agents in every capital and, naturally, now that Finland had become the new storm-centre of the war the Gestapo agents there would be working overtime. Grauber must have come to superintend their activities in person. He had probably walked into the hotel a little before two o'clock, glanced down the visitors' book and seen Gregory's name there. On questioning the clerk he would have learned about the packet that had been deposited and immediately decided that, whatever the papers were, they were very well worth getting hold of if they belonged to Gregory Sallust. With the clerk's connivance it had been a simple matter to copy the signature from the visitors' book and secure the packet.

By giving a correct description of Grauber the clerk had cleared himself of all but suspicion of complicity, while definitely confirming Gregory's conviction as to the manner in which the papers had been stolen. The fact that Grauber had obtained them under false pretences was of no immediate help, as with the Finnish crisis at its height it would take hours—if not days—to get a warrant for his arrest.

Without another word to the clerk Gregory turned abruptly away. It was unlikely that he would be able to get hold of Monsieur Wuolijoki before three o'clock, but Erika must have been in Helsinki for the last three weeks and through her connections among the German colony she would be certain to know something of Gestapo activities in the Finnish capital.

Crossing to the hall-porter, he gave him another lavish tip for the use of the telephone in his office and rang up the von Kobenthals. When he had asked for the Countess von Osterberg he was told to hold the line and a moment later a low, husky voice, that made his hand tremble as he held the receiver, said:

“Hallo? Who is that?”

“Colonel-Baron von Lutz,” Gregory replied.

There was a little pause and then her voice came again. “I know your name, of course,
Herr Oberst-Baron,
but I don't think we have met. What can I do for you?”

“Oh, but we
have
met.” Gregory allowed a smile to creep into his voice. “I last saw you at a farm-house outside Berlin, on the night of November the 8th.”

There was a little gasp! then a swift whisper. “Gregory, is it you? It
must
be you. Oh, darling!”

“Hush!” Gregory whispered back. “For God's sake be careful. Can I come up and see you right away?”

“Yes, yes, at once—instantly.”

“It is Colonel-Baron von Lutz speaking. You will remember that, won't you? I'll be with you within a quarter of an hour.”

Replacing the receiver, Gregory pushed his way through the crush back to the crowded dining-room where the Fordyces and Freddie were sitting.

“Is anything wrong?” Mr. Fordyce inquired, on seeing Gregory's anxious face.

“Yes.” Gregory bent down and lowered his voice. “A Gestapo agent has made off with my papers.”

“How damnable! Was there anything very important amongst them?”

“They may make the difference between peace and war here in the next twenty-four hours.”

Fordyce stood up quickly. “Is there anything that I can do to help? An introduction to the Chief of Police? I'll take you round to him personally if you like.”

Gregory shook his head. “No; thanks all the same. We mustn't involve you in this owing to your official position. My situation is a very complicated one. Freddie will tell you all about it. Fortunately I know the man who stole them; he's an old enemy of mine named
Gruppenführer
Grauber, so I've at least got that to start with.”