Chavasse sat up slowly and gingerly touched the side of his neck with his fingertips. It was lucky that Steiner had been wearing nothing heavier than crepe-soled shoes. His stomach muscles were bruised and tender to the touch, but it was his face that caused him the most pain. It somehow felt lopsided and heavy and his right cheek was swollen and sticky with blood.

Muller groaned slightly, and again there was that uncanny rattle in his throat. Chavasse got to his feet and went across to the operating table. As he looked down at that poor broken body, Muller opened his eyes and stared up at him vacantly.

He seemed to be trying to speak and Chavasse leaned down. “My sister,” Muller croaked. “Did I tell them where to find her?”

Chavasse shook his head. “No, you didn’t tell them a damn thing.”

Something resembling a smile appeared on Muller’s face. He closed his eyes with a long sigh of relief. Suddenly, Chavasse realized that Muller’s breathing had stopped.

For a long time, Chavasse stayed there, looking down at a dead man. After a while, he sighed. “Well, you had guts, Muller. I’ll say that for you.” He went across to the bed for a blanket, which he took back to the operating table and draped over the body.

He started to examine the room. There was no fireplace and the only window was crossed with iron bars set firmly in solid stone. He next tried the door, but a close examination of the locks made it clear that escape by that way was out of the question.

He glanced at his watch. It was almost two-thirty, and he sat down on the bed and considered the situation. He had to get out somehow. From the look in Kruger’s eye when he had first seen Anna, it wouldn’t be very long before he paid her a visit.

And then there was the Hauptmann affair. He tried to remember what he had read of the man. A liberal politician who was immensely popular with the people – possibly even a future chancellor. His death would be a world sensation. How ironic that it was to take place at the United Nations Peace Conference.

The very fact that Nagel and his associates dared attempt such a deed indicated the strength of their movement. If they got away with it, there was no telling what the ultimate effect would be on the German political scene. If the Nazis obtained any kind of government control, then everything would swing out of balance, including relations between East and West Germany. The repercussions on world politics could be immense.

He slammed a fist into the bed and started to get to his feet. It was then he noticed one of the long rubber truncheons that had been used to beat Muller.

Obviously, either Steiner or Hans had dropped it carelessly to the floor and it had rolled under the operating table. It was sticky with blood when he picked it up. He wiped it on one of the blankets and then stood in the center of the room, bending it in his hands. It was about two feet long, a horrible and deadly weapon, and as he examined it, a plan slowly formulated in his mind.

He opened his mouth wide and screamed. He allowed the sound to die away and then repeated it. As he listened, footsteps approached along the corridor and halted outside the door. Chavasse started to groan and whimper horribly.

Hans shouted through the door, “Stop that noise or I’ll come in and make you shut up!”

Chavasse groaned horribly as if in great pain, and quickly crossed the room and flattened himself against the wall behind the door.

Hans said angrily, “Right, my friend, you’ve asked for it.”

The key rattled in the lock and the door swung open. Hans moved forward into the room, his great hands clenched, and Chavasse said from behind him, “Here I am.”

As Hans turned, Chavasse swung the truncheon with all his strength, catching the man full across the throat. Hans made no sound. His eyes retracted and he fell backward as if poleaxed. His beard was flecked with foam, and for a little while his fingers scrabbled uselessly at the floorboards as he fought for air, and then he was still.

Chavasse dropped onto one knee and searched him quickly, but he was out of luck. Hans had not been carrying a gun. Chavasse went out into the gallery and listened, but all was quiet. He quickly locked the door and pocketed the key, and then, as he turned to move down toward the room in which Hardt was imprisoned, a woman screamed somewhere close at hand.

He moved along the corridor quickly and then she screamed again, the sound coming clearly through an oak door at the end of the gallery. He turned the handle and opened the door.

ANNA was crouched in the corner by the fireplace, her dress torn down the front and a livid weal glowing angrily across one bare shoulder. Kruger stood in the center of the room, a small whip twitching nervously in his right hand.

“You won’t get away from me, my dear,” he said, “but please continue to resist. It adds a certain spice.”

Chavasse slipped in through the door and closed it quietly behind him. As he started to move forward, Anna saw him and her eyes widened. Kruger turned, an expression of alarm on his ravaged face, and Chavasse slashed him across the back of the hand that held the whip.

An expression of agony flooded Kruger’s face. He fell to his knees and started to whimper like a child, and Chavasse lashed him across the head with the truncheon.

Kruger bowed his head like a man in prayer and keeled over slowly. Chavasse raised the truncheon again, and Anna flung herself forward and caught hold of his arm, “That’s enough, Paul!” she said, fiercely holding him with a grip of surprising strength.

He lowered his arm reluctantly. “Has he harmed you?”

She shook her head. “He’s only been with me for ten minutes. Most of the time he spent talking the most unutterable filth.”

“We must thank God for the fact he’s only half a man,” Chavasse said, and pulled her toward the door. “We haven’t got much time to waste. We must release Hardt and then find a way out of this place.”

“What about Muller?” she said.

“Muller won’t be going anywhere ever again,” he told her.

They paused outside the door of the room in which Hardt was imprisoned, and Chavasse tried the key that he had taken from Hans. The door opened noiselessly to reveal Hardt sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hands.

He looked up slowly and an expression of amazement appeared on his face. “How the hell have you managed this?”

“I had to get a little violent,” Chavasse told him. “How do you feel? Well enough to make a move?”

“I’d walk to China to get out of this place.”

“No need to go to extremes,” Chavasse said. “If we can successfully negotiate the main hall and reach the cellars, our troubles are over. They keep a launch down there in an underground cavern with direct access to the lake.”

“And what about Muller?”

“I’ve just spent the last hour with him,” Chavasse said. “Steiner and Hans laid it on a bit too thick during the last beating. I was alone with him when he died.”

“Did he tell you anything?” Hardt asked.

Chavasse nodded. “Apparently, Bormann died some months ago. Muller was just trying to make himself a little cash on the side.”

“And the manuscript?”

“That’s genuine enough,” Chavasse said. “His sister’s looking after it. She’s the one we’ve got to find now.”

He took Anna’s hand and led the way out of the room and along the gallery. The hall was completely deserted, the only sound the peaceful crackle of the logs in the great fireplace. He smiled reassuringly to the other two and they began a cautious descent.

When they were halfway down the staircase, one of the doors was flung open and Steiner entered the hall. He was lighting a cigarette, the match in his cupped hands, so that for a moment he did not see them, and then he looked up and an expression of astonishment appeared on his face.