"With a few swift strokes of his double paddle he sent the canoe leaping towards the next big breaker…."

V for Vengeance streaks ahead of the previous Sallust adventure, The Black Baroness.

Wonderful little bits: a nursing home in Paris where inmates sleep and rest all day, then go out at night to carry out their Resistance assignments.

Even better: a Resistance leader who moves freely around Paris in a casket carried in a hearse.

Sallust escapes occupied Europe by canoeing from Ostend to England:

....Next morning they got the collapsible canoe down to the garage, which was empty, as the Comte's car had long since been commandeered; but there was a small working-bench at one end of the garage and a miscellaneous assortment of paints and gear.

     The Comte proved quite useless at such work, but Frédéric was very helpful, and Gregory's natural ingenuity enabled him to devise means for not only making the necessary repairs but strengthening the canoe considerably. Having cut some pieces of wood to the required length they inserted them as extra struts, then used an old sunblind for patching the canvas where it had rotted, and carefully covered the edges of the patches with rubber solution. For the dual purpose of making it both more watertight and less conspicuous they painted it all over with a mixture blended to a dull green and broke up its outline by two broad strokes of purple which cut across its covered-in bow and stern.

     It was evening again by the time they had finished, and although Gregory had hoped to set out that night Frédéric pointed out to him that he would be much wiser to give the paint twenty-four hours to dry; so he slept again under the hospitable de Werbomont's roof.

     On the 13th they spent their time devising everything they could think of which might add to Gregory's chances of a successful voyage. In order to buoy up the boat, if it became waterlogged, Frédéric collected all the empty bottles that he could find, and having corked them, firmly wedged them as tightly as he could into the pointed bow and stern. They also sewed a number of cork table-mats into an old sheet so that when Gregory was within a reasonable distance of the English coast he could throw the sheet out and trail it in the water, where, as a big patch of whiteness, it might catch the eye of a British airman and result in help being sent out.

     Like many wealthy Belgians, de Werbomont had laid in a good stock of tinned food at the time of the crisis, but he now willingly parted with some of his hidden reserve to provision the canoe. Bottles of water, a bottle of brandy, a torch, cigarettes and matches were also put aboard, an old carriage lamp was rigged up on the stern, and Frédéric succeeded in buying from one of the local fishermen a sou'-wester and an old suit of oilskins.

     After dinner that night they waited anxiously until their neighbours had gone to bed, although this precaution was scarcely necessary, since the Belgians, as a whole, were much more pro-British than the French, and very few of them indeed were playing the part of Quislings.

     Owing to the lack of proper heating, the population was going to bed early in these days, and even the German garrison, apart from the sentries on night duty, finding little amusement in the hostile town, preferred their barrack-rooms and messes to going out at night; so at half-past ten de Werbomont declared that he thought the coast was now about as clear as it would be at any time during the night.

     Frédéric went out as a scout and, after having had a good look round the beach, came back to report that all was well, except for the danger that they might run into one of the German patrols which moved along it at irregular intervals; but that was a risk which had to be taken whatever time they set out.

     De Werbomont then led the way down to the beach, while Gregory and Frédéric followed, carrying the now weighty canoe.

     For the season of the year the sea was moderately calm, but even so quite biggish breakers were frothing on the shore, and it looked as though the little craft might easily be swamped before they could get it launched.

     After a quick debate Gregory got into its cockpit just on the tide line; then, when he had thanked the other two and they had wished him luck, as a big wave came creaming in they ran him out through it till they were nearly waist-deep in the water. With a few swift strokes of his double paddle he sent the canoe leaping towards the next big breaker, just before it broke. For a second the boat rose almost perpendicular in the air, then it tilted forward, rushing down the farther slope, and he was off.

     The first hundred yards proved a heavy strain. He had to keep the canoe head on to the incoming waves, otherwise, had one caught it sideways, it would have overturned, then been rolled back and dashed to pieces on the shore. But after a breathless fight he reached deeper water, and although the waves were just as big the strain of fighting them became considerably less.

     He had little fear of going under, as the canoe was as buoyant as a cork. Even if it capsized it was virtually un-sinkable, so he would be able to cling on to it for as long as his strength lasted; but whether he had the stamina to make the journey was another question.

     The moon was only four days from full, and while he had been making his preparations he had dreaded that it might be too bright for them to dare risk carrying the canoe down to the beach. Its light would have made them visible at quite a distance to any prowling Germans; but luck had favoured him again, as the sky was overcast, and not a glimmer of the moon could be seen.

     On the other hand, he had to some extent counted on it for setting his course, and he would now have to rely entirely upon the little pocket compass with which de Werbomont had provided him; yet he dared not flash a torch to see it so long as he was near the coast, and for the first half-hour he had to make his way purely by guesswork.

     It was only when he risked a first quick flash to look at the compass that he began to realise to the full what he had taken on. The tide had already swung him round, and he found that he was proceeding parallel with the coast. After that, holding his torch low, he flashed it down on to the compass every few minutes, as he soon found that if he did not do so he constantly lost his sense of direction. As far as possible, he endeavoured to maintain a steady stroke, knowing that the one thing he must not do was to exhaust himself too quickly. In the camouflaged boat he felt that he would be really unlucky if the Germans spotted him, provided he could cover a fair distance before morning, but he knew that to reach England safely would require every ounce of his endurance.

     After he had been out for about an hour and a half he heard the hum of planes in the darkness overhead. Only a matter of seconds later there came the crash of falling bombs behind him; the R.A.F. were making one of their raids on Ostend harbour.

     The first bombs had hardly fallen before the German antiaircraft batteries opened up, and looking back he saw that the whole coast was now fringed with the long pointing fingers of searchlights, which swept the sky, groping for the raiders, and lit up the sea with a pale gleam for miles around. Mentally he wished the raiders luck and at the same time blessed them as he now no longer had to waste time and lose way every few moments while looking at his compass.

     For the next twenty minutes he put his back into it and paddled straight ahead. Gradually the din behind him subsided; then the searchlights went out, plunging him again into complete darkness on the black waters.

     Soon after one the sky cleared a little, and the moon became visible intermittently through breaks in the heavy clouds. Again he felt that his luck was in. The light was not sufficient for such a small craft as his to be sighted at any distance from a German patrol boat, but he had carefully worked out the position of the moon at various times for that night, so he was able to set his course by it, and once more prevent the loss of way from looking at his compass so frequently.

     Hour after hour he ploughed on through the gently heaving sea with a steady rhythmic motion, resting for short periods now and again, but never long enough for the boat to be swept far off its course. About five o'clock he took a longer spell, and made a light meal of some biscuits and lukewarm coffee laced with cognac, which Frédéric had put into a bottle for him.

     The moon had now set, and he paddled on for another couple of hours in darkness, then it gradually lightened until the grey streaks of dawn came up in the east. A little after dawn a wind got up, and this gave him considerable concern, as it was blowing at an angle across his bows, which meant that he could no longer stick to his even stroke and had to paddle much more strongly with one arm than the other to keep the nose of the canoe headed in the right direction. As the wind increased it became a devilish fight to prevent the little craft from being swung right round and driven far off her course.

     Gregory was tired now; the muscles of his back ached, and his hands were beginning to blister. The wind, too, was whipping at the wave-caps, so that a constant spray lashed over the boat, stinging his face, covering it with salt brine and getting into his eyes.

     Morning had come, and he was as much alone as if he had been in the centre of the Atlantic Ocean. Owing to the fact that his head was only a few feet above sea-level, his horizon was very limited, and as the canoe shot down into the troughs of the waves he could often see no more than a few yards ahead; but when it swished up on to a crest he could catch a momentary glimpse of the heaving seas all round him for a considerable distance. He was out of sight of the Belgian coast, although he had not the least idea how far he had managed to get from it, and he was in two minds as to whether he wanted to see a ship or not, as he knew that in any case he must still be a very long way from England, so the odds on its being British or Nazi were about even.

     At nine o'clock he abandoned the uneven battle for a little while he fed again, but it irked him bitterly that every moment he rested the canoe was now drifting sideways with the wind and undoing some of the heavy labour he had put in. When he began to paddle again another thing that worried him was that he had no means at all of judging what progress he was making while the sea continued to be so choppy. For all he knew he was only barely countering the effects of the tide and the wind, so that unless they lessened all his efforts might serve no better purpose than to keep him in the same position for hours, or even days, on end.

     In the middle of the morning three British planes flew over, but he knew that they were much too high to see him, so he did not even bother to get out his cork-floated sheet, and in a few moments they had disappeared from view. Just after midday he saw a long pencil-shaped Dornier, which was flying at a much lower altitude. As it came towards him he feared for a moment that he might be spotted and machine-gunned, but its pilot must have seen something that interested him farther north, since the aircraft suddenly veered off in that direction. He was bitterly cold and had constantly to resist the temptation to take too frequent nips from the bottle of brandy, but he did not feel the least hungry and had to force himself to make another meal early in the afternoon, because he knew that it would help to keep his strength up.

     About half-past three he sighted a destroyer. From her design he felt certain she was British, and he put on a terrific spurt in a wild endeavour to cut across her course. But even her apparently leisurely speed carried her along at far too swift a pace for him to get anywhere near her, and, although he waved his paddle and shouted at the top of his voice, owing to the fact that he was so low in the water she passed without her lookouts having seen him.

     As it neared five o'clock his anxiety increased. The winter day was closing in, and it looked now as though he would have to spend a second night at sea. Even in a rowing-boat that would not have been quite so bad, as there he would at least have been able to stretch his limbs and warm himself a little by violent exercise; but in the tiny canoe he was imprisoned from the waist down, and had been sitting now in exactly the same position for close on nineteen hours. From time to time he was getting bouts of cramp, and he felt another night would be almost unendurable.

     It was the realisation of this that caused him to light the carriage lantern which had been rigged-up just behind him. By doing so he deprived himself of the option to form a judgment as to whether any ship which might come on the scene were British or German before hailing, and in the latter case hoping to remain unobserved. If anyone saw the light at all and decided to investigate, it would be pure chance whether they proved friends of enemies; but he felt that the risk had now to be taken. If a Nazi ship picked him up it was hardly likely that they would shoot him out of hand, whereas, chilled to the marrow and desperately tired as he was, he felt that if he was not picked up at all there was a good chance of his dying of exposure.

     As twilight deepened the wind went down a little, so he took the opportunity to have another rest, and laying down his paddle glanced behind him. He could have fainted for sheer joy. The same destroyer that he had seen earlier in the afternoon had evidently turned in her track, as she was now heading back towards him, and less than a quarter of a mile distant.

     Getting out his sheet, he draped it on one end of the paddle and began to wave it wildly, almost upsetting the canoe. Next moment there was a faint shout from the destroyer, and he knew that he had been seen. He had been right about his vein of luck; it had held out after all.

     The destroyer hove to, a boat was lowered, and the frozen Gregory helped aboard. For a little time he could not 

even stand upright, 

but when the Lieutenant-Commander came down off the bridge to question him he was getting back the use of his legs. Having given an account of himself, he was taken down to the ward-room by a sub-lieutenant, who gave him a good stiff drink and lent him a pair of dry trousers. He soon learnt that the destroyer was a unit of the Dover Patrol, and that, although he was a considerable way north of the course he had set himself, he had managed to place the best part of thirty miles between the Belgian coast and himself before he was picked up. The destroyer was now beating back to Dover, and to his great satisfaction it put him ashore there shortly after ten o'clock that night....

The reader's pleasure in Sallust's minute preparations as he works with fellow-fighters always intoxicates. And in the protagonist's voyage itself, with expertly depicted zest for hard physical work, we are already looking back to Childers and Buchan and ahead to Geoffrey Household and David Morrell.

V for Vengeance (1942) by Dennis Wheatley

"It’s a treat to be able to put one over on the police…."

Night-action in Paris with Gregory Sallust and underground allies larking deep in the thrust-counterthrust of melodrama.

Starting with the third volume of the Sallust roman fleuve,  Wheatley gives 1942 readers a realtime series of trans-European chases, Urals-to-Channel. 

The only way to sustain a suspension of readerly disbelief here is to read the novels back-to-back, as I did in April 2018.

     'What do they intend to do with Madeleine next?' Kuporovitch asked.

     'At the moment she's in a cell at the Sûreté, but they'll transfer her to the Cherche-Midi, where they keep most of the women these days. What time that will be I can't tell. It all depends on when there's a police car free to do the job; but I should think they'll take her across within the course of the next two or three hours. Once she's inside you'll stand precious little chance of getting her out. The trick you played before won't work a second time, even if you could find another Luc Ferrière.'

     'What happened to him?' Gregory interjected.

     'The old chap's protesting his innocence and offering to swear to it on Mein Kampf. They're treating him quite decently at the moment, but I doubt if he'll get away with it when they find that stuff you planted in his house. Serve him right, too! The dirty little Quisling was responsible for our nursing-home being raided; and if you knew what those devils have done to poor little Nurse Yolanda and the others who were there you'd be ready to tear that old man's guts out with your naked hands. But, as I was saying, your only chance of rescuing Madeleine is to intercept the car that takes her to the Cherche-Midi. Now I must get back, otherwise I shall find myself having to smoke one of my own cigarettes.'

     They gave Ribaud two hundred yards' start, then followed him until they reached the Sûreté. Walking round it, they took up their positions in a deep doorway on the opposite side of the road to the entrance of the courtyard, from which the police cars always drove in and out.

     It was now getting on for half-past three, but another long wait was in store for them. Occasionally it was broken by a sudden tense expectancy as a police car came out of the yard, and they strained their eyes to see if Madeleine was in it. Had it not been for the bright moonlight they would have had no hope at all, but as long as the moon lasted they felt reasonably certain that they would be able to pick out a woman's figure, even if she were seated in the back of a car, some distance away. Four o'clock came, then an intensely worrying period when the moon disappeared behind the roof-tops, and semi-darkness partially obscured their view; but by five the street was lighting with the early summer dawn.

     They were both very tired from their long vigil, and incredibly depressed by the thought that, even if they were able to make their attempt, it could only be a forlorn hope. Madeleine's escort was certain to be armed, and the driver of the car would have only to put his foot on the accelerator for it to streak away. Their opportunity would consist of no more than a bare half-minute, as the car turned out of the courtyard before developing its full speed.

     Suddenly Kuporovitch gripped Gregory's arm, but at the same second Gregory had seen the same thing. A police car was running quietly out of the yard, and in its back they could plainly see Madeleine seated beside an agent de ville. They had long since discussed their method of attack in detail, and now, without an instant's hesitation, they put it into operation.

     While Kuporovitch remained concealed in the doorway Gregory stepped out on to the pavement and hailed the driver of the car. Just as the man was about to put on speed he turned with a look of surprise. Letting the car run gently on he called: 'What d'you want?'

     Gregory ran swiftly across the road to him, crying as he ran: 'For God's sake come and help me! Some men have broken into my apartment in that house. They've half-murdered my wife, and I only just managed to get away.'

     The police chauffeur stopped the car and leant out of it, as he said quickly: 'That's bad luck, but we've got a prisoner and can't leave the car. There are scores of our chaps in the yard of the Sûreté there. Give a shout to some of them.'

     Gregory was now right close up to the man, and he waited on tenterhooks for the next act in their skilfully staged plot. Suddenly it came—a single shot rang out. Unseen by the driver, Kuporovitch had come up behind the car and fired through its window, shooting through the back the agent de ville who was sitting next to Madeleine.

     The instant Gregory heard the shot his hand darted forward. Grabbing the police chauffeur by the throat he dragged him from the seat. Then, lifting his fist, he hit the man a hard blow between the eyes, dropping him in the roadway and, scrambling into the car, seized the wheel.

     Meanwhile, Kuporovitch had run round the other side of the car. He jumped in beside Gregory, and with his gun still in his hand thrust it in the face of the agent de ville; but he had no necessity to shoot again. The man was lying back, either unconscious or dead.

     The single report of the Russian's automatic had been enough to raise the alarm in the courtyard of the Sûreté. Other policemen were now running from it, shouting at them to halt; but Gregory had the brake off. He let in the clutch and the car shot forward.

     A pistol cracked, another and another. The shots echoed through the quiet dawnlit street. A bullet clanged on the metal-work of the car; another hit one of the rear tyres, which went off with a loud plop. The car swerved wildly, but Gregory managed to get it under control. Crouching over the wheel he drove on all out, in spite of the bumping rim.

     But he knew that he would never be able to get clear away in the car now. The rim must be cutting the flattened tyre to pieces, and the stout rubber-covered canvas might catch in the axle, causing it to jam. In addition, there had been a number of other cars in the courtyard of the Sûreté. In them the police would give chase at once, and he could not hope to outdistance the pursuit with one of his back tyres gone.

     He took the first corner to the left at full speed, ran on a little way, then turned right, into the entrance of a mews. 'Come on!' he cried, jumping out. 'We've got to run for it!'

     Kuporovitch had been leaning over the back of the seat examining the agent de ville. He found that his victim was still breathing, and he hoped the fellow would live. He had little time for the French police who were now co-operating with the Germans, but he knew that they were more or less forced to do so, and it had been particularly distasteful to have to shoot the fellow in the back; but Madeleine's safety being involved, he had not hesitated an instant, as it was so obviously the one certain means of putting the man out of action before he could offer any resistance.

     There was no time to examine the policeman further, so Kuporovitch extricated his body from the car and, seizing Madeleine's arm, began to run. Gregory had only waited to see that the other two were out before setting off at a pace which he thought Madeleine could manage.

     As it was still early the mews was empty, except for one chauffeur who was cleaning a car, which had a red label Médecin pasted on its windscreen. At first the man made as though to intercept them, but Gregory cried: 'Get out of the way! The Germans and the police are after us!'

     Immediately the man's expression changed. He pointed to his garage. 'Get in there! I'll tell them you ran past.'

     With a hurried word of thanks they ran into the garage and crouched down behind an empty trailer that occupied the back of it, while the chauffeur went on cleaning his car.

     A moment later they heard a police car drive up. Excited questions were flung at the man who had hidden them; but apparently the police were satisfied with his replies, as they drove on, and silence again fell in the mews.

     After another few minutes the chauffeur came in to them and said: 'The coast's clear now, but they may come back later to make a more careful search. You'd better get out while the going's good.'

     As they thanked him for his help he shrugged: 'Oh, that's nothing. It's a treat to be able to put one over on the police, now they've gone in with those filthy Boches.'

V for Vengeance (1942) by Dennis Wheatley 

Coming events cast their shadows before them: Come Into My Parlour by Dennis Wheatley (1946).

....Sir Pellinore had popped a dose of veronal into Gregory's last drink, so he slept until nearly midday. On waking he felt pretty heady but he remembered perfectly clearly all that had taken place the night before. For a little he lay in bed torturing himself with thoughts of what might be happening to Erika; but, after a bit, he realised that he was acting like a fool, as unnerving speculations about her could do neither her nor him any good, and that his best hope of defeating Grauber lay in regarding the problem of her rescue as coldly and logically as if it was no personal concern of his at all.

After a bath he felt slightly better; then, downstairs, he had a Pim and three cocktails with Sir Pellinore, which made him feel more his own man.

When they had lunched Sir Pellinore provided the best possible antidote to his guest's depression. Upstairs in his library he had a fine collection of maps, both historical and modern, and he produced a great pile, all showing either Lake Constance or the ancient Kingdom of Wurttemberg, in which Schloss Niederfels lay. Work, and work connected with the hazardous journey he was soon about to undertake, was the very thing Gregory needed to occupy his mind. He spent most of the rest of the day concentrating on memorising the names of German villages, the by-roads that connected them and the situation of wooded areas which would give good cover if required.

On the Monday morning Sir Pellinore introduced both Gregory and Stefan to a clever-looking little man wearing thick-lensed spectacles. He had at one time been a dentist but, owing to the war, had gravitated to certain highly specialised duties connected with sabotage operations. From a little box he produced some small squares of hardish, jelly-like substance each of which had a little lump in its middle. The lump was the cyanide of potassium and its coating so composed that, with a little pressure, it would stick to the side of a back tooth and, once stuck, would need a really hard thrust of the tongue to dislodge.

"If you—er—get into trouble," he explained gently, "you simply rip it off with your tongue and bite through its centre. The result is very swift and, I believe, affects the user only by a sudden contraction, as though he were about to give a violent sneeze.

"You will see," he went on, "that they are of two colours. The green ones are dummies for you to practise with; the red ones are the real thing. Both kinds can be kept permanently in the mouth for a considerable time without any likelihood of their dissolving and becoming dangerous. But, if necessary, I advise that you should replace a used one by a new one after a fortnight. Now, I'd like to look at your mouths to decide the most suitable places for you to wear them."

Having asked on which side of their mouths they chewed by preference, he made a very careful examination of their teeth, and affixed two of the dummies. Then, wishing them good luck, he departed....

Come Into My Parlour by Dennis Wheatley (1946).

We are in Ashenden country here: Switzerland and Russia.

Come Into My Parlour is one of the more focused Sallust novels. There are nice atmospheric touches: Gregory and Stefan jaunting between Russian and German lines in a stolen vehicle during a blizzard as they travel from Leningrad to Moscow; nighttime criscrossings of the Bodensee; hide and seek in a castle suitable for a Dornford Yates thriller.

I wish Wheatley were a better writer. Imagine his vigor, inventiveness and scope combined with pen of a Maugham, a Waugh, or a Fleming. The arcs of his plots are usually sound in 1940s terms. His love of high living with fine food and spirits is always welcome. But as the sentences themselves go by, it feels like a long ride on highway rumble strips.

Wheatley's Sallust thrillers would have benefitted from parallel action in alternating chapters. In Come Into My Parlour we get huge chunks Erika being lured to Lake Constance so that she can be kidnapped as bait to lure Sallust; then a chunk of Gregory and Stefan in Russia, interviewing Voroshilov and evading Grauber. Today's thriller writers would weave the simultaneous events together by cross-cutting and employing shorter chapters.

Politically, Wheatley being Wheatley, we get the usual stuff about how decent a gent Admiral Canaris was and how Mussolini was just fine until he started getting too tightly bound-up with Hitler in '39. It's a solid example of petty bourgeois anti-communist opinion, and of the double-entry moral bookkeeping made famous by the middle class left and right.

Canaris and Himmler's plan to lure Sallust into Germany is ingenious, and I will leave it to the reader to savor. Canaris's appearance brought back the enjoyable 1970s World War Two thrillers of Jack Higgins.

The S.S. villain Grauber leaves a lot to be desired. Wheatley describes him first as a "mincing pervert," then as an implacable and physically dangerous opponent, then as a coward. The one thing Grauber is never graced with by his creator is the idea to just shoot Sallust when he has him in hand. Like Dr. Evil dealing with Austin Powers, everything is deferred and deflected to give Sallust a lifeline.

From the above paragraphs it sounds like I disliked Come Into My Parlour, that I am picking it apart with gripes. In fact I enjoyed the novel, an absurd and impossible fantasy filled with good food, good drink, good friends, good scenery, and a good fight.


Jay
29 April 2018

The Prisoner in the Mask by Dennis Wheatley (1957)

The Prisoner in the Mask by Dennis Wheatley (1957)

Only Wheatley had the authorial confidence (or arrogance) to end a novel with the lines "....After a decent interval we can be married with wedding bells and live happily ever after.'"

No one in a Wheatley novel lives happily ever after. The most they can hope for are pleasurable interludes before the next pendulum swing of Fortune again lands them in the soup.

The Prisoner in the Mask is delightfully high class. The hero is Armand, Count de Quesnoy. (He will later inherit the title Duke de Richleau.) His friends are from the same titled social layer.

Some characters and themes more fully explored in later novels about the Duke are hinted at in The Prisoner in the Mask. His mastery of occult forces and "white" magic is foreshadowed in his experiences as a soldier in Madagascar, where he developes his skills in hypnotism and mind-over-matter meditation.

He meets the father of future comrade Rex Van Ryn, a wealthy banker from the U.S. who serves the same purpose as
Blenkiron in Buchan's Leithen novels: a repository of ready cash and unconditional friendship.

The novel begins at the start of the 20th century and quickly transports the Count De Quesnoy from life as a privileged teen in Tsarist Russia to the French military school St. Cyr. His is also in romantic pursuit of Angela Syveton, wife of a powerful Royalist deputy. Wheatley spends most of the novel figuring out ways to keep the Count and Angela thwarted and apart. He does a masterful job.

This is, however, a historical thriller, not a bodice-ripper. Armand is witness to the frame-up, persecution, prosecution, and imprisonment of Dreyfus, and becomes involved in conspiracy as mentor to the young François de Vendôme, whom Royalists hope to make constitutional monarch of France. The Royalists are emboldened by the sorry spectacle of the Third Republic: internally rotting from the scourges of republicanism, atheism, and a politically organized working class movement.

(Solid Marxist analysis of French politics here).

Wheatley made no secret of his conservatism and his worship of Winston Churchill. Like his author, Armand is a staunch rightist, appalled that leaders of the French Army put their reputations ahead of justice for Dreyfus and the honor of their class.

Wheatley is a master of plot vicissitudes. One damned thing after another fouls-up Armand's hopes for his country and his desire for Angela Syveton. Patriotism and eros, however, are inexhaustible engines driving forward this classic of escapism.

And who is the prisoner in the mask? That would be telling...


Jay
25 November 2018

Sallust 8, Germany 0

They Used Dark Forces [1964] is the eighth adventure of freelance spy Gregory Sallust. (Eighth in the internal chronology of the series, not in order of publication.)  I have read all eight in the last two years and found this pop roman-fleuve richly rewarding.

Yes, Wheatley does love employing the long arm of coincidence. Yes, he overuses the word “had” when revisions to his sentence structure would have made for sharper constructions.

But these are quibbles. The joy of these novels is their depiction of the good life.

Five hours after Gregory landed in England he was sitting in the lofty book-lined room that had been the scene of the beginnings and ends of all his secret missions. It looked out from the back of Carlton House Terrace to the Admiralty, the Foreign Office and the other massive buildings in which throbbed the heart of Britain’s war machine. The fact that it was raining did not depress him in the least.

Beside him on a small table were the remains of a pile of foie gras sandwiches off which he had been making a second breakfast, and nearby stood an ice-bucket in which reposed a magnum of his favourite Louis Roederer 1928. From it his silver tankard was being filled for the second time by his old friend and patron, Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust.

The major complaint about the Sallust novels is their unabashed admiration for European fascism.  Like John Buchan, Wheatley in his fiction has his hero fiercely extol the virtues of this anti-labor militia movement.

Here is Sallust discussing politics with his lover Sabine:

Smiling, she returned his kiss then sighed and said, ‘Oh God, how I hate this war. Just to think what a bomb has done to you and robbed us of. And the even worse things that have happened to such thousands of other people. May that filthy little Austrian that brought it on us rot in hell for all eternity.’

‘You seem to have changed your views quite a lot since last we met,’ Gregory grinned. ‘Two summers ago when we talked of these things in Budapest you were a hundred per cent pro-Nazi.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But look what the Communists did to Hungary after the First World War. Those gutter-bred swine robbed families like mine of everything we had, and did their utmost to degrade everyone to their own filthy level. You British, with your stupid, pale-pink Liberalism, made no effort to stop them. Neither did the French. The only people who had the guts to stand up to them were the Italians and the Germans. Naturally, as German influence was so strong in Hungary I became a Nazi. What sensible person wouldn’t have? But I’m not a Nazi now. They’ve made themselves untouchables. Say that I’m a Fascist, if you like. But I’m not a Nazi.’

Gregory nodded. ‘There’s a lot to be said for the Fascists. Old Mussolini did a great job in cleaning up Italy. If only he’d stayed neutral he’d be on the top of the world today and Italy positively bulging with money made out of both sides during the war. That he got folie de grandeur and thought that with Hitler’s help he could become a modern Roman Emperor, ruling the whole Mediterranean, was one of the greatest tragedies of our time. Little Franco, too, has done a great job of work in Spain. What is more he has had the sense to keep his country out of the war, so given it a real chance to recover. Why people should cavil at him for having put the Moscow-inspired agitators and saboteurs behind bars I could never see. If he’d run his country on the lines the idiot British and French intellectuals and those crazy Americans would have liked to see, by this time Spain would have had a Communist Government. Quite a useful card for the war against Hitler. But what about afterwards, with Russian bombers based there only two hours’ flight from London and Paris? Some people simply can’t be dissuaded from trying to cut off their noses to spite their faces. But all this is beside the point. You say you’re no longer a Nazi; but you’re still working for them.’

‘Up to a point,’ she agreed thoughtfully. ‘I’d still turn in these dirty little Marxists who’d like to see Germany a Soviet Republic, whenever I could get the goods on them. But I’ve never yet given information about those of our own kind who would like to see Hitler as an ugly corpse.’

They Used Dark Forces is a strange title for the novel, as it suggests Berlin is employing dark forces to win their war.  But the they is Sallust himself, and a man named Malacou, with whom he has a telepathic bond.  The bond is developed when Malacou hides Sallust for several months as a leg injury heals.

They Used Dark Forces is more James Bond than Duke De Richleau. The telepathy allows Wheatley to unpack some contradictions, and it forms a line on which he can hang the last half of the novel.

One scene in particular contains a solid piece of uncanny business.  Sallust and Malacou, in Berlin and pretending to be occult mind-readers, are taken by their jailer to a March 1945 banquet at the home of Herman Goering.  There their performance certainly raises gooseflesh, since the dinner guests are dancing on the edge of a volcano.

Soon after ten Kaindl came for them. They accompanied him down to the ground floor and into a spacious dining room. It was so large that a horseshoe table occupied less than half of it, and Gregory saw that Goering’s idea of a small dinner party consisted of at least twenty people. Most of the men were in uniforms bedecked with Knight Stars, Iron Crosses and other decorations, but three of them were in dinner jackets and the women were all in décolleté evening dresses.

The Reichsmarschall sat enthroned at the outer centre of the horseshoe. As Gregory had thought might prove the case, he was clad in a white and gold toga and had a laurel wreath on his head. He had become enormously fat, his eyes were pouched, his cheeks loose and puffy and on his sausage-like fingers there gleamed rings worth several thousand pounds. No actor in a play would have given a better representation of one of the most dissolute Roman Emperors.

Kaindl led his two charges into the centre of the horseshoe and presented them as Herr Protze and Herr Malacou. Goering ran his eyes over them and spoke:

‘Colonel Kaindl tells me that you predicted our victory in the Ardennes and other matters correctly. Let us hear now what else you can tell us of the course the war will take.’

Gregory drew a deep breath. He was standing within ten feet of Goering and had escaped immediate recognition, but at any moment some expression on his features or in his voice might give him away. With a bow, he replied:

‘Excellency, it is necessary that my colleague be seated. He will then fall into a trance and I shall interpret the communications that he receives from the entities of the outer sphere.’

A chair was brought, Malacou sat down, closed his eyes and, after taking several long breaths, began to mutter. As Gregory felt sure that everyone there must realise that Germany could not now possibly win the war, and that if he held out false hopes no-one would believe him, he said:

‘Alas, through my colleague, the entities speak of no further German victories; but the soldiers of our great Führer will fight desperately in defence of the Reich. May will be the month of decision. Overtures for peace will be made. At that time there will be dissension in the Partei. Many prominent members of it will then die, but Your Excellency will not be among them. By March the Anglo-American armies will be across the Rhine and the Russians across the Oder. In May Berlin will become a doomed city; but it seems that resistance will continue in the south with the object of obtaining better terms from the Allies than they will be willing to give in May.’

Goering shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘You tell us little that from the way things are going we might not guess for ourselves.’

Now that Gregory was, as it were, right up in the firing line, he had got back his nerve and was on the top of his form. With a smile, he replied, ‘That the views of the Herr Reichsmarschall should coincide with fore-knowledge obtained from beyond confirms the soundness of his judgement. But to obtain more than an outline of general events is not possible. I can only add that war will continue to inflict the world at least until next August, and that in that month a disaster will occur in Japan that will affect the whole world.’

‘What kind of disaster?’

‘It will be in the nature of an earthquake or a violent eruption, but there are indications that it will be brought about by man.’

Suddenly Goering’s eyes lit up. ‘Lieber Gott! Could it be that the Allies are really so far advanced in developing an atom bomb?’

Gregory shrugged. ‘That is more than I can say; but many thousands of Japanese will die in the disaster. And now, if it please Your Excellency, my colleague can be the vehicle for much more precise predictions about individuals than about generalities. Would you like to be the first to have your future told?’

Goering shook his head. ‘No. I am content to wait and see what fate sends me.’ Then he gestured to a woman on his right and added, ‘Make a start with this lady here.’ Turning to the woman, Gregory bowed and asked her for the loan of something she always carried. She gave him her gold cigarette case and he handed it to Malacou. He then fetched a chair, sat down opposite the woman and asked her to lay her hands on the table, palms up. Smilingly she did so. For a few moments he studied her hands in silence, meanwhile he conveyed to Malacou what he read in them. Malacou, who was seated behind him, was at the same time psychometrising the cigarette case and communicating his thoughts. By working simultaneously on the same subject in this way they checked their findings, and when Malacou began to mutter Gregory pretended to interpret.

He told the woman that as a child she had had a serious accident that had affected her spine, that she had married twice and that her present husband was an airman, that she had two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom had been sent out of Germany, he thought to Sweden. Then he predicted that she would survive the war, have two more children and go to live in some southern country, he thought Spain.

With astonishment, she declared him to be perfectly right about her past and Goering clapped his mighty beringed hands.

The second subject was a younger woman. Having told her accurately about her past, Gregory said, ‘You, too, will survive the war, gnädige Frau. But not without injury. I regret to say that in an air-raid you will lose your right arm. You will also become a widow, but you will marry again, an elderly man who will provide you with every comfort.’

The third was a good-looking but rather sullen-faced woman. About her, spontaneously, Malacou sent Gregory a thought. As all that mattered was to impress Goering he decided to use it. When he had told her past, he said, ‘Within six months you will become the mistress of a Russian officer.’

Her eyes blazing with anger the woman sprang to her feet and slapped his face. But Goering roared with laughter and the rest of the guests followed his lead.

When the clamour had subsided Gregory started on his next subject. She was what the French term a ‘belle laide’. Her hair was a true gold and Gregory thought that he had rarely looked into a pair of more magnificent eyes; but her mouth was a thick gash across her face, and enormous. As he looked at her he suddenly wondered if she could be Sabine’s friend, Paula von Proffin of the letter-box mouth. When his reading of her hand and the thoughts Malacou sent him tallied with what Sabine had told him of Paula he felt certain of it. Malacou also conveyed to him that she would be raped to death by Russian soldiers. Looking at her with pity he decided to give her no idea of that. Instead, after telling her that she had had a hard early life as a model, then married a banker who had left her penniless, he added, ‘Your life will not be a long one, so make the most of it. At all events you are now married to an immensely rich man who can afford to indulge you in every luxury.’

Again Goering roared with laughter. Then, leaning forward towards a middle-aged man in a dinner jacket who was seated near him, he bellowed, ‘Listen to that, Hans. And you pleading poverty before dinner. You’ll not be able to deny little Paula anything after this.’

From that Gregory surmised that her new husband must be one of the chiefs of the Hermann Goering Werk, and that was why they were among Goering’s guests.

Paula gave Gregory a ravishing smile and he turned to the next woman along the table. Among other thoughts, Malacou informed him that she had a venereal disease. So in her case he ended by saying, ‘For the present I would advise you to lead the life of a nun; otherwise you will give anyone you go to bed with a present that he will not thank you for.’

She, too, jumped up in a fury, but Gregory sprang back in time to evade the slap she aimed at him. Again the cruel laughter rang out and, bursting into tears, the woman ran from the room.

‘Well done,’ wheezed Goering. ‘Well done. I shall find you invaluable.’

So it went on through the women, then the men took their turn. Most of them were to survive, but three were to die, and Gregory told them frankly that they would give their lives for the Führer; but he refused to give them particulars or dates. One among them was a Naval Captain and Malacou told Gregory, both by telepathy and by confirming it in the muttered Turkish that at times he used to ensure that Gregory got his thoughts exactly, that the Captain was a traitor in the camp and using his position to spy on Goering.

Gregory made no mention of that, but when he had told all their fortunes he addressed the Reichsmarschall. ‘Excellency, these psychic investigations into your guests have revealed one piece of information that I have not disclosed. It is for your ear alone and important to your safety. If you would give me a few minutes in private …’

Goering’s eyes held his for a moment, then the elephantine Chief of the Luftwaffe nodded, heaved himself up from his great ivory and gold throne and said, ‘Come with me.’

Picking up the skirts of his toga, he led the way out to an ante-room. On the walls there was a fabulous collection of paintings by the Dutch Masters. A great curved table desk occupied the centre of the room. With a grunt Goering lowered himself into a chair behind it, signed to Gregory to take another, and said:

‘Well, go ahead.’

‘That Naval Captain,’ Gregory replied. ‘I don’t know his name. But my colleague is certain that he has been planted here to spy on you.’

A broad grin spread over the Reichsmarschall’s fat face. ‘I know it. He is my Naval Attaché, but in the pay of Himmler. I keep him on a string. Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t. As long as he is here Himmler won’t send anyone else to spy on me. I feed him with what I want that crazy fool to know.’

Gregory smiled. ‘Then my warning is redundant, Herr Reichsmarschall. But Herr Malacou and I are deeply grateful for the way in which you have rescued us from prison and are anxious to be of service to you in any way we can.’

For a moment Goering studied Gregory’s face intently, then he said, ‘Tell me, Herr Protze, how much of this clever act of yours is trickery? There are no means by which your predictions about the future can be checked, but all my guests are well-known people; so you and this Oriental fellow for whom you appear to act as manager might have obtained particulars about their pasts from ordinary sources.’

‘No,’ Gregory replied firmly. ‘I assure Your Excellency that Herr Malacou is a genuine

mystic. After all, both of us have been confined at Sachsenhausen for the past four months; so what possible opportunity could we have had to ferret out facts about the lives of your guests?’

Goering nodded. ‘Yes. You certainly seem to have a point there. The Führer and Himmler swear by this sort of thing; but I never have. I’m still convinced that the occult has nothing to do with it. My belief is that you have only the ability to read people’s thoughts about themselves, and make up the rest. Still, that’s neither here nor there. The two of you provided us with an excellent entertainment, and in these days we haven’t much to laugh about. You may go now. Tell Colonel Kaindl to give you a glass of wine and to protect you from those angry women, and that I’ll rejoin my guests presently. I’ve a few notes I wish to make.’

Wheatley’s friendly portrait of Goering, like his favorable opinion of Churchill in the Sallust novels, is a perfect example of authorial bad taste. But once we accept the use of historical figures in popular fiction, I suppose portraying them all as slavering one-dimensional monsters would be a greater abuse of reality. Perhaps.

Jay

24 November 2018

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