Traitors' Gate Read Online Free PDF

Adastral House.’
    Half-an-hour later Gregory arrived at the big corner building in Kingsway which housed the Administrative Departments of the Air Ministry. He had a brief interview with a Group Captain, signed some more papers, was medically examined and passed fit. A little before five o’clock he was out in the Strand again and, short of being officially gazetted, was now Pilot Officer Sallust, R.A.F.V.R., under orders to report at the R.A.F. Intake Depot at Uxbridge on the coming Saturday afternoon.
    When he reflected that at eleven o’clock that morning he had not even remotely contemplated such a step, it was borne in on him how swiftly the people at the top could get things done if they had a mind to it.
    He was just in time to reach his tailor’s before they closed and they promised, by hook or by crook, to get two sets of uniform and a greatcoat made for him by Saturday morning. Then he telephoned to Erika to tell her what had happened to him and asked her to take a few days off, so that they could hit it up in London for the last half of the week before he went into uniform.
    She arrived next day and for once was able to enjoy a hectic time with him unmarred by secret nagging thoughts that this was the prelude to his going on another mission and these might be the last nights they would ever spend together.
    On the Saturday afternoon she drove out with him to Uxbridge and was much amused to find that he showed a nervousness he would never have displayed had he been going to make a parachute drop into Hitler’s Europe. The fact was that, although he rather liked himself in his smart new uniform, he was uncomfortably aware that, when putting it on, he had said good-bye to his independence. For the next fortnight, anyhow, his actions would be governed by bugle calls; he would, too, be given orders by numerous masters, some of whom might be fools or malicious, yet he would have to suppress the desire to tell them to go to the devil.
    At the gate of the camp Erika had a twinge of conscience at her mirth, for his long face suddenly made her feel like a mother seeing her small boy off for his first term at a prep. school. But her belated display of sympathy did little to lighten his gloom and, his mind filled with pessimistic thoughts, he followed the airman who took his baggage through into the wired enclosure.
    Uxbridge proved in some respects far worse, and in others much better, than he had expected. The accommodation left much to be desired. It consisted of old dormitories built to hold forty airmen, but with only eight basins and two bathrooms to each, and an antiquated hot-water system the vagaries of which were unpredictable. However, the food served in the big mess was hot, varied and of an excellence far beyond anything that Gregory had hoped for. On the other hand, it was announced by an Instructor on the first night that officers were strictly forbidden to keep any form of alcoholic liquor in the barrack rooms.
    As drink had already become far from easy to obtain, Gregory had brought a suitcase full with him. He was quite prepared to share his drink with others, but not to forgo it. Greatly as he respected and admired King George VI he would even have defied the Monarch on this issue, as he considered the order a most unwarrantable infringement of the liberty of a Briton. No sooner had the Instructor left the room than, producing a bottle of brandy, Gregory invited his neighbours to join him in a night-cap.
    This, and the fact that he was one of only six, out of the several hundred who formed the intake, wearing First War medal ribbons, led to his new companions regarding him with mingled awe and respect. By far the greater part of them hadnever worn a uniform of any kind before, so they crowded round him asking questions and automatically giving him the unofficial status which might have been accorded to a prefect. Knowing, too, the manner in which N.C.O.s expected to be treated by an officer, and being