Time, after that, dribbled away. Darkness came and I had some food. I smoked, had a drink, and I kept away from the erotic books. I sat with the door open into the little hallway so that I should hear her at the door.
She came at half-past ten. I heard the key turning in the lock and I was in the hallway as the door opened and she slipped in. She turned to me, held up a warning hand in silence, and put the key into the lock and carefully twisted it home. Then she turned right round and held out her arms.
It was like the burst of a great rocket filling the darkness of the sky with a sudden chrysanthemum blaze of light. Blonde hair, misty violet eyes, a simple little yellow frock and gold slippers, and her brown, bare arms reaching for me. I took her into my arms, kissed her, and held her. Then we were sitting together on the settee in the main room. I had her hands in mine and she was rubbing her cheek against the side of my neck, saying silly little things in German to me which I didn’t need to have translated. Her lips moved to mine and it took me ages before I could force myself to come to the most important item on the agenda.
I got up and went and fixed a couple of brandies. I handed her one.
“Now listen,” I said. “We’re all in big trouble here and we’ve got to get out. You, Lottie and me.”
“But why?”
“Never mind the whys for a moment. How is the only thing. So I want straight answers – and quickly. Just how closely are you watched or guarded?”
She sipped her drink, gave a little frown and said, “Too closely. Some parts of the house we cannot go. At night we sleep on the third floor and are locked in until morning.”
“How did you get up here?”
“We can go up, to the higher floors. But not down. I have a terrible time finding this place.”
“Why can’t you go down?”
“There’s a door at the top of the main stairway. The man Hesseltod has the key. He sleeps in a room by the door and unlocks it in the morning.”
“Are you friendly with him?”
“We chat sometimes at night when we come up. Sometimes he asks Lottie and me to have a drink. He’s nice. But why do you ask all this?”
“Never mind for the moment. I’ll come to that. Could you slip something into his drink if I gave it to you? So that we could get his key?”
“Yes ... yes, I think so. But not tonight. He sleeps already. Tomorrow night, yes.”
I didn’t like that. It meant passing another day in the place. But I had no choice.
“Darling, why you frown?”
“Because I don’t want to have to wait until tomorrow night. However....” I went over and sat down by her.
She put a hand on mine and said, “I don’t understand all this. Why is it so dangerous for me and Lottie? We are not allowed to do some things – but we have been told that it will all be explained. That it is a good thing for us in the end.”
As she spoke I was thinking, another day, a whole day, for things to go wrong. But there was no other way. We couldn’t go down now, wake Lottie, explain things to her, and risk getting the key from Hesseltod as he slept....
I said, “Okay. Then it’s got to be tomorrow.”
Katerina said, “You don’t answer my questions. Why do we have to go?”
I said, “There are a lot of questions and a lot of answers to come. It looks as though we’ve got time on our hands so why don’t we start at the beginning.”
“That’s what I want. How can Lottie or I be in danger?”
I said, “Let’s leave that for a moment. And get this—” I put my hands on her shoulders and looked straight at her. “I want the truth from you. And don’t pretend I’ve always had it in the past, because I haven’t. Promise?”
She leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips, and then said, “I promise.”
“First of all. What was the exact set-up between you and Stebelson? He’s admitted that there was one, but that you’ve now gone back on it.”
She was silent for a moment studying me. Then she said, “All right, I’ll tell you. Stebelson works for Herr Malacod. You know this. Well, Malacod is interested in Madame Vadarci. Madame Vadarci is looking for girls, my age, blonde like me, strong, healthy, good at sports and intelligent. Also, they must be absolutely purest German blood, back for many generations. You know this is not so easy to find. Particularly, too, when the girls must be beautiful. I am beautiful, yes?”
“Yes. But get on with it.”
She did. Malacod and Stebelson knew what Madame Vadarci was after. Stebelson had suggested to Malacod that he find a girl, that he fake her antecedents, birth, parentage and so on, and then bring her to the notice of Madame Vadarci without her knowing anything about him or Malacod.
“There is a man in Cologne, a friend of Stebelson, who worked on genealogical research for Madame Vadarci. Stebelson paid him money, he fixed papers for me, and then gave my name to Madame Vadarci – she came to England to find me in Brighton.”
“You were a decoy?”
“Yes.”
“And then they roped me in on the same tag – because they wanted someone to follow you and find out what Madame Vadarci was up to and where she was going?”
“Yes.”
“And Lottie Bemans?”
“The same thing
