Where Eagles Dare

That's the one. Let's have the rope.'

Smith eased his legs into a double bowline, wriggled over the window-sill and cautiously lowered himself to the full extent of his arms while Schaffer, standing by the window with the rope belayed round one of the stanchions of the shelving, took the strain. Smith released his grip on the sill and was lowered jerkily by Schaffer till he was about ten or twelve feet down. Then, using a free hand and both feet to fend himself off from the wall he began to swing himself in a pendulum arc across the face of the castle, an assist from Schaffer up above adding momentum to his swing. On the fifth swing the fingers of his left hand hooked round the lead cable and wire. As Schaffer eased off tension on the rope Smith got both hands round the cable and quickly climbed up the few feet to the window above. He was almost certain that the lead cable he had in his hands was the telephone outlet, but only almost: he had no desire to slice the blade of his knife through high-powered electricity supply lines.

He hitched a wary eye over the window-sill, saw that the telephone operator, his back almost directly to him, was talking animatedly on the phone, lifted himself another six indies, observed a cable of what appeared to be exactly similar dimensions to the one he was holding running along the skirting-board to some point behind the exchange and then not reappearing again. He lowered himself a couple of feet, grasped cable and wire firmly with his left hand, inserted the point of his knife between cable and wire a few inches below that and started sawing. A dozen powerful saw-cuts and he was through.

Mary glanced at her watch for the tenth time in less than as many minutes, stubbed out the half-cigarette she'd been nervously smoking, rose from her chair, opened her hand-bag, checked that the safety catch of the Mauser inside was in the off position, closed the bag and crossed the room. She had just turned the handle and begun to open the door when knuckles rapped on the outside. She hesitated, glanced at the bag in her hand and looked round almost wildly to see where she could dispose of it. But it was too late to dispose of any-. thing. The door opened and a cheerfully smiling von Brauchitsch stood framed in the doorway.

'Ah, Fraulein!' He glanced at the bag and smiled again. 'Lucky me! Just in time to escort you wherever you're going.'

To escort me -- ' She broke off and smiled. 'My business is of no consequence. It can wait. You wanted to see me, Captain?'

'Naturally.'

'What about?'

'What about, she says! About nothing, that's what. Unless you call yourself nothing. Just to see you. Is that a crime? The prettiest girl we've seen -- ' He smiled again, this man who was always smiling, and took her arm. 'Come, a little Bavarian hospitality. Coffee. We have an armoury that's been converted into the finest Kaffeestabe -- '

'But -- but my duties?' Mary said uncertainly. 'I must see the Colonel's secretary -- '

'That one! Let her wait!' There was a marked lack of cordiality in von Brauchitsch's voice. 'You and I have a lot to talk about.'

'Dusseldorf.'

'Dusseldorf?'

'Of course! That's my home town, too.'

'Your home town, too!' She smiled again and gave his arm the briefest of squeezes. 'How small a world. That will be nice.'

She wondered vaguely, as she walked along, how one could smile and smile and, inside, feel as chilled as the tomb.

For the second time in fifteen minutes Smith and Schaffer stopped at the doorway outside the gold room's minstrels' gallery, switched out the passage light, paused, listened, then passed silently inside. This time, however, Smith reached through the crack of the almost closed door and switched the light back on again. He did not expect to be using that door again, that night or any other night, and he had no wish to raise any eyebrows, however millimetric the raising: survival was a matter of the infinitely careful consideration of all possible dangers, no matter how remote that possibility might at times appear.

This time, Smith and Schaffer did not remain at the back of the minstrels' gallery. They moved slowly to the front, till they had come to the head of the broad flight of stairs leading down to the floor of the gold room and then sat down on the front oaken benches, one on each side of the gallery's passageway. They were still shrouded in deep gloom, completely invisible from below.