Come into my Parlour Read Free Page A

Grauber’s young thugs were able to furnish for him, despite his constant urging of them to apply ice-baths, hot irons and thumbscrews to anyone even remotely suspected of possessing useful information. And Grauber always had an uneasy feeling that one day the Admiral would show up the shortcomings of the Gestapo Foreign Department U.A.–I so blatantly that in a fit of cold unforgiving rage Himmler would consign its Chief to Dachau.
    However, Grauber was far too clever to allow his personal feelings about his rival to prevent his making use of him whenever he felt that he could do so without unfortunate repercussions; and now, having reached his own handsome office, which was only a few doors away from Himmler’s, he seated the Admiral in a comfortable armchair, gave him one of his own genuine Havana cigars, lit it, and said:
    â€œIt is our mutual misfortune,
Herr Admiral
, that there are times when our interests are not altogether identical, but this is happily not one of them. No one could be more anxious to put Sallust out of the way for good and all than I am myself, but it is you who have taken the initiative in this matter, so I do hope that I may count on your assistance.”
    â€œAssuredly, my dear
Herr Gruppenführer
, assuredly,” agreed the Admiral, puffing contentedly at the long cigar. “Although, of course, my little organisation has nothing like the ramifications of your own, and I don’t suppose for one moment that there is any really worthwhile help that I can give you.”
    â€œYou can tell me what you know of Sallust?”
    â€œThat would, I am sure, be no more than a repetition of the data that is already in your own files and, unlike yourself, I have never had the questionable advantage of making personal contact with the fellow.” Canaris shifted his glance maliciously to Grauber’s pebble-filled left eye-socket, knowing perfectly well that the original eye had been bashed out by Gregory Sallust with the blunt end of an automatic.
    Grauber flushed, but went on persistently: “Nevertheless, you may have picked up something about him that I have not, so I would like to hear your version of his activities.”
    â€œVery well then. It fills many pages, so I will give only a résumé and you can stop me at any point on which you require further information. Sallust comes of good middle-class stock, but his parents were only moderately well off and both of them died when he was quite young. He was an imaginative and therefore troublesome boy and after only two and a half terms was expelled for innumerable breaches of discipline from his public school, Dulwich College. With the idea of taming him, his uncle sent him as a cadet to H.M.S.
Worcester
. The freer life seems to have suited him, but again, owing to his refractory nature, he was never made a Petty Officer, as they term their Prefects. On leaving he did not go to sea, because he did not consider that such a career offered a sufficiently remunerative future. Instead he used a portion of his patrimony to give himself a year on the Continent. He has a quite exceptional flair for languages so he could soon speak German and French like a native. He was still at an age when he ought to have been at school, but he was already his own master and a handsome, precocious young blackguard. The women adored him and he had an insatiable curiosity about the night life, both high and low, of all the cities he visited, so there wasn’t much he hadn’t done by the time the war broke out and he returned to England.”
    Canaris paused for a moment, then went on: “He got a commission at once in a Territorial Field Artillery Regiment, and in due course wassent to France. At the age of twenty-one he was serving on the staff of the Third Army. At the battle of Cambrai he was wounded and carries the scar to this day; it lifts the outer corner of his left eyebrow, giving him a slightly satanic appearance.