The Scarlet Impostor Read online

  THE SCARLET IMPOSTOR

  Dennis Wheatley

  Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 The Man Without a Job

  2 The Three Trails

  3 The Reversed Swastika

  4 Wings Over the Frontier

  5 A Lone Wolf Enters the Shadows

  6 The First Link

  7 Within Sound of the Guns

  8 When Greek Meets Greek

  9 Death Intervenes

  10 The Fight for Life

  11 The Lady of the Limousine

  12 Look to Thy Heart

  13 There’s Many a Slip

  14 Out of the Game

  15 A Fantastic Family History

  16 The Return of the Broken Reed

  17 Blackmail

  18 The Rats Get Their Prey

  19 Men Without Mercy

  20 The Silent House

  21 Death and Kisses

  22 Behind the Bars

  23 ‘The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men’

  24 The Scarlet Impostor

  25 Beyond the Maginot Line

  26 A Quiet Night at the Front

  27 Back into Germany

  28 Once More a Fugitive

  29 Satan’s Children

  30 Arrest

  31 In the Hands of the Gestapo

  32 The Night of Blood

  A Note on the Author

  Introduction

  Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

  As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

  There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

  There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duke de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff in Whitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

  He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote eleven Black Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ’all his books’.

  Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

  He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

  He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.

  The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

  Dominic Wheatley, 2013

  1

  The Man Without a Job

  Gregory Sallust paced restlessly up and down his private sitting-room at No. 272 Gloucester Road. Lean and loose-limbed, his habit of walking with his head thrust forward made him appear to have a permanent stoop. His thin-lipped mouth was tightly closed, his lantern-jawed face betrayed a sullen anger and the white scar which ran from his left eyebrow towards his dark, smooth hair, giving him a slightly Satanic appearance, showed with unusual plainness, as was always the case when the muscles of his face were tensed by any strong emotion. His grim, silent pacing resembled that of a very dangerous, caged animal desperately plotting to break free.

  Rudd was the only other occupant of the room. He acted in the rather curious dual capacity of Gregory’s man-servant and landlord, and was now sitting on the edge of a settee, polishing two large automatics with loving care.

  When Gregory had gone straight from his O.T.C. to serve in France during the last years of the World War, Rudd had been his batman. After the Armistice Rudd had inherited a long lease of 272 Gloucester Road, the ground floor of which was a grocer’s shop, and the upper part a strange caravanserai mainly tenanted by transient students at the near-by London University. The first-floor front was their shabby, incredibly untidy common sitting-room, in which they played gramophones, held bottle-parties and, when funds were low, cooked weird meals on a small gas-stove.

  As Rudd’s sole income consisted of his precarious rents and such money as he could pick up by doing odd jobs for the grocer, he would long since have gone under had it not been for Gregory, his one permanent tenant, who occupied the two best rooms of the house, with a private bathroom, at the back of the first floor.

  Rudd’s yellowish hair was close-cropped and bristling at the top of his head but allowed to grow in front into a lock which he carefully trained across his forehead in a well-greased curve. A small, fair moustache graced his upper lip, but as he always kept it neatly trimmed it failed to hide the fact that his teeth badly need the attention of a dentist. His eyes were blue, quick, humorous and friendly. Putting aside one of the automatics he took up the other and glanced anxiously at his master.

  ‘Don’t take on so, Mr. Gregory, they’ll be wantin’ yer soon enough nah there’s another war on. We’ll be givin’ the Jerries ’ell tergether ’fore the month’s aht.’

  Gregory stopped his pacing a
nd stared down at him angrily.

  ‘Damn it, man! You don’t understand. This isn’t like the last war. Everything’s cut and dried already. Haven’t you heard the B.B.C. announcements? No commissions to be granted to anyone who hasn’t had a previous commission in the Regular Army or is a technical expert, except by way of the ranks, and the training battalions are already jammed full of young men in their twenties.’

  ‘That’s wot they say, sir. But wot abart the Intelligence or this ’ere new Ministry of Infermation? You speaks German as well as any Fritz, you know the old Continong like the back of yer’ and you’ve done plenty of odd jobs fer the big boys in Fleet Street. Couldn’t yer get a civilian billet somewhere?’

  ‘Civilian billets be damned! I’m only thirty-nine and I want to fight, so why the hell shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, orl right, sir, orl right! But the war’s only a week old yet and we’ll all get a bellyful of fighting before we put little old ’Itler where the monkey put the nuts.’

  ‘You’ve said it!’ Gregory exploded. ‘The war’s a week old and here I am still kicking my heels. Every regiment I’ve tried is full up and there isn’t the ghost of a prospect of getting in anywhere.’

  ‘’Ave a little patience, sir, do. The war ain’t ’ardly started yet an’ I don’t need ter tell you that the old Boche’ll take some beatin’. It’ll be four years or the duration again this time an’ the duration’ll be longer than the four years, as it was larst—leastways, that’s my opinion, nah they’ve made this tie-up wiv Russia an’ can get orl the supplies they want through ’er.’

  Gregory nodded jerkily. ‘Yes, but they’ll have to pay for the stuff, remember, and they’re devilishly hard up. Besides, the Russians only wanted to encourage them to cut their own throats.’

  ‘Them Russians is a slippery lot,’ agreed Rudd, but Gregory turned on him irritably.

  ‘For God’s sake stop polishing those guns! You’ve been at it for a week, and you’ll wear the damned things out. I’m going across the landing to see if the rest have any news.’

  In the common sitting-room at the front of the house, it being Sunday morning, Gregory found four of the six other tenants. Hildebrand Pomfret, a cadaverous, disappointed novelist with whose own assessment of his literary gifts the public obstinately refused to agree, was discussing the war with a bald, paunchy man of about fifty named Beadle, while the two other occupants of the room, Griselda Girlie, pimply and bespectacled, and Ann Croome, a small, plump person with a heart-shaped face and magnificent violet eyes, constituted an attentive audience. As Gregory’s glance fell upon Ann his lean face lit up with a sudden smile. He was not the least interested in her personally, but beauty in any form always pleased his artistic eye.

  ‘Any fresh news in the last bulletin?’ he asked of no one in particular.

  ‘Not much,’ Ann replied. ‘The Poles are stilll hanging on outside Warsaw, but the B.B.C. hardly tell us a thing about our own end of it. Griselda’s just got her orders, though.’

  ‘What orders?’ Gregory frowned. ‘I didn’t know you were in anything, Griselda.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the pimply-faced girl smiled palely. ‘As a medical student I’m naturally qualified for nursing. It’ll set me back in taking my degree, of course, but that can’t be helped. It was all fixed up days ago and they’re sending me to Southampton. I’m off this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, the best of luck to you.’ Gregory looked across at Beadle, who held a minor Customs post. ‘As you’re well over fighting age I suppose you’ll stay on in the Customs?’

  Mr. Beadle shook his pink, bald head.

  ‘No, not exactly. Examinations of neutral shipping for contraband have to be made by experts. As I was in the R.N.V.R. for many years they’re giving me a commission and I shall be posted to one of the ships maintaining the blockade.’

  Gregory grunted. ‘How about you, Pomfret? Once it gets going, I expect the war will be good for the sale of your books. It’s a pity you don’t write thrillers, though.’

  Pomfret shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘I’m afraid I shan’t have much time for writing, because I’ve been fortunate enough to secure a post in the Ministry of Information. Where my department will operate from I don’t know, but I’m under orders to leave London at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘God help us, if the Ministry’s to be run by people like old Pomfret,’ thought Gregory, and looked across at Ann Croome. ‘I take it that you, at any rate, will remain here to lighten our darkness, Ann; or are you thinking of departing to some funk-hole in the country?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she smiled. I’m staying in London. My boss has got himself a job in one of the civilian departments of the War Office, and as I’m carrying on as his secretary, I’ve got a War Office job, too. What are you doing, Gregory?’

  For perhaps the first time in his life Gregory Sallust stammered and he felt sick with shame as he replied: ‘I—I hardly know. Something’ll turn up, I hope, but for the moment nobody seems to want me.’

  Ann’s violet eyes opened wide. ‘But that’s impossible! You served in the last war, didn’t you? And you’re such a very knowledgeable person. You’ve travelled everywhere and done all sorts of adventurous things, surely they’ll give you a commission in something or other?’

  Gregory shook his head, and the cynical smile which she knew so well twitched the corners of his thin-lipped mouth.

  ‘My dear Ann, this is one of the penalties we pay for being a Democracy. All commissions are to be given through the ranks this time, except to youngsters who served in the O.T.C.—and there’s no wire-pulling. It’s twenty years since I served in the Army. I don’t know the first thing about the new weapons, drill or tactics, so I just don’t qualify. About the only thing open to me is to become a Grey Angel.’

  ‘A Grey Angel?’

  ‘Yes. They were a corps of old crocks formed during the last war at the behest of the old women who made it their job to see that serving soldiers on leave had as little fun as possible. They used to meet the leave-trains and shepherd the returning Tommies across London so that they could be sent straight back to their homes in the country without even an hour in the great, big, wicked city, in case they felt like spending some of their cash on a night at the “Empire” or going out on the razzle with lovelies like you.’

  His bitter laugh was cut short by the entrance of Rudd.

  ‘You’re wanted on the ‘phone, sir. It’s Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust.’

  ‘The devil it is!’ Gregory was through the door like a flash, and a moment later was at the telephone in his own sitting-room.

  ‘Lunch with you? Delighted. A chat beforehand—yes, I can be with you in twenty minutes.’

  Seizing his hat he leaped down the rickety stairs four at a time, erupted into the street, hailed a passing taxi and told the driver to take him to 94 Carlton House Terrace.

  As the cab spun through the streets of war-time London, half-deserted in the September sunshine, Gregory’s mind was racing. What did old Gwaine-Cust want with him? Was it a job? Was it? It must be! In the past he had successfully undertaken many dangerous commissions for Sir Pellinore. The grand old chap must have remembered, and have found him some niche in the war machine.

  The taxi halted. Gregory paid off the cabman and his finger had hardly touched the bell before the door of Sir Pellinore’s town house was opened by a liveried footman. The man gave him a friendly smile, said that Sir Pellinore was expecting him and took him straight up to the luxuriously-furnished library on the first floor, with its tall windows overlooking the lovely vista of St. James’s Park.

  Sir Pellinore came forward to meet him and as they shook hands he drew himself up to his full, magnificent height. The elderly Baronet stood six feet four in his socks and could easily have thrown most men of half his age down the staircase. He had very strong, blue eyes under bushy eyebrows whose snowy whiteness matched that of his luxuriant cavalry moustache and his bluff, genial manner effectually disguised the extremely able br
ain which lay behind his broad forehead.

  ‘Sit down, my boy, sit down,’ he boomed, indicating a comfortable chair opposite his desk. He then sank back in his own and gently tapped together the tips of his long fingers.

  ‘Thought I’d give you a ring just to see if you were fixed up,’ he said smoothly.

  Gregory gave a rueful laugh. ‘I wish to God I were, but no one’ll have me.’

  ‘I had an idea that might be the case,’ Sir Pellinore smiled. ‘Too old at forty eh?’

  ‘I’m not forty yet.’

  ‘Lucky young devil! Still plenty of years ahead of you in which to show the gels a thing or two. Wish I were your age! But that’s beside the point. I need hardly ask whether you’re willing to serve?’

  ‘Good Lord, no! I’d fight the Jerries again for the fun of the thing but these Nazi swine make me see so red I hate their very guts. I’ll take any mortal thing you can offer me if it means having a cut at them.’

  ‘Any mortal thing?’

  ‘Yes, and be thundering glad to get it.’

  The older man nodded slightly. He was no longer smiling and his eyes were very grave as he said: ‘From what I know of you, Gregory, I believe you would. That’s why I sent for you. I want a man who is brave, intelligent, resourceful, unscrupulous: a man who can be trusted without limit because he will carry not only his own life but the lives of others in his hands: a lone wolf with no dependants to mourn him if he should die unhonoured while taking a great gamble—a gamble in which the winning stake is a speedy peace that will save millions from untold misery.

  ‘In short, I want a man who is capable of handling the most important secret mission ever entrusted to a single individual—and I believe that you are such a man. Are you prepared to risk having to face a firing-squad, or worse, by going secretly into war-time Germany?’

  2

  The Three Trails

  It was a fantastic proposition which Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust had put up to him. Had it come from almost anyone else Gregory would have thought that they were joking, but he knew the elderly Baronet far too well to think that such a thing was even remotely possible.