Free Sleeper Agent by Ib Melchior Page B

must have known it would be delivered to him.
    Only one person could do that!
    He heard Larry order the shaken jailer to cut the girl down and take her away. He whirled on them. “No!” he said sharply. He despised himself for saying it “Leave her!”
    The telephone receiver felt leaden in his hand. He had an irrational hope that, somehow, he wouldn’t get through. But presently he heard the voice of Sergeant Connors. “CIC.”
    He sighed. “Pete,” he said. He hardly recognized his own voice. “Get over to Zum Grünen Kranze. The Gasthaus. Round up the Greiner woman. Leave the kid. Bring her over here. To the jail. On the double!”
    Pete didn’t even sound surprised. “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “Be there in a few minutes.”
    Tom replaced the receiver. He stared at it as if it shared a guilty secret with him. He got up.
    Liselotte Greiner was brought to the jail exactly seventeen minutes later. It had seemed an eternity to Tom, waiting in the dingy little office of the jailer, with Larry and the uneasy German.
    Sergeant Connors ushered her in. She swaggered arrogantly into the room, confidently aware of her good looks. Insolently she ignored Tom’s offer of a chair. “Why have I been brought to this . . . this place? ” she demanded to know. She looked around with obvious distaste. “Surely I am not under arrest! ” Her mockery was brazen.
    She seems so damned sure of herself, Tom thought, it might be a cover-up for a real sense of apprehension. He fervently hoped so. He came straight to the point. “Where is Colonel Steinmetz?” he snapped.
    The girl did not move a muscle. Almost derisively she said, “I do not know what you are talking about.”
    Tom was taken aback. He had expected some reaction. He had been watching her closely. Watching for those little involuntary telltale signs that betrayed so much. There had been nothing.
    He thought quickly. The girl was clever. She would have prepared herself for just that question. When her companion had been detained she would have realized that she had been made to talk, that her interrogators had found out about her Colonel Steinmetz. She was too clever to run away without a proper travel permit. That would only have thrown suspicion on her, and she would have been hunted down and brought back. All she really had to do was to stay put—and keep her mouth shut.
    He looked at her, his set face grim. He had a chilly sensation. It was true. The fanatic Nazi women were ten times harder, ten times more ruthless than their male counterparts. He had run into many of them from the concentration camps. This one—she would not break easily. If at all. He grew tense. He had no choice. He nodded to the jailer.
    The man started. “ Ja-jawohl, Heir Hauptmann Jaeger,” he stammered. “ So-sofort! At once!” He hurried out.
    The girl stared at Tom, venom in her cold eyes. “Jaeger,” she repeated pointedly. “A German name!” She smiled a contemptuous smile. “I thought your German was too perfect for an Ami! ” She looked him up and down, a withering appraisal. “A German! Betraying his own!” She made a mock exaggerated gesture of spitting on the floor. “ Ptui! ”
    Tom sat perfectly still and quiet, but his pulse raced and roared in his ears. Damn the bitch, he thought savagely. Damn her soul to hell! He stood up. “Come with me, please,” he said pleasantly.
    They walked briskly down the corridor toward the cell. Tom kept his eyes on the girl. She’s a cool one, he thought with grudging respect If she’s the least bit concerned, she doesn’t show it.
    The jailer waited by the open cell door. His sallow face looked chalky. He averted his eyes from the girl coming toward him.
    Tom stepped aside. His mind was icy with the knowledge of what he was about to do. But he had to know. He was powerless to spare the girl. He could not allow even the possibility of a deadly agent such as Steinmetz going into action behind the lines. Without a word he