Percy J. Brebner - "The Brown Mask"

H. Rider Haggard - "LOVE ETERNAL"

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Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences - "Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5"

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Bat Wing by Sax Rohmer

S >> Sax Rohmer >> Bat Wing




At the time I was much too delighted to question the circumstances
which had led to this tete-a-tete, but had I cared to give the matter
any consideration, it must have presented rather curious features. The
call first of host and then of hostess was inconsistent with the
courtesy of the master of Cray's Folly, which, like the appointments of
his home and his mode of life, was elaborate. But these ideas did not
trouble me at the moment.

Suddenly, however, indeed before I had time to speak, the girl started
and laid her hand upon my arm.

"Did you hear something?" she whispered, "a queer sort of sound?"

"No," I replied, "what kind of sound?"

"An odd sort of sound, almost like--the flapping of wings."

I saw that she had turned pale, I saw the confirmation of something
which I had only partly realised before: that her life at Cray's Folly
was a constant fight against some haunting shadow. Her gaiety, her
lightness, were but a mask. For now, in those wide-open eyes, I read
absolute horror.

"Miss Beverley," I said, grasping her hand reassuringly, "you alarm me.
What has made you so nervous to-night?"

"To-night!" she echoed, "to-night? It is every night. If you had not
come--" she corrected herself--"if someone had not come, I don't think
I could have stayed. I am sure I could not have stayed."

"Doubtless the attempted burglary alarmed you?" I suggested, intending
to sooth her fears.

"Burglary?" She smiled unmirthfully. "It was no burglary."

"Why do you say so, Miss Beverley?"

"Do you think I don't know why Mr. Harley is here?" she challenged.
"Oh, believe me, I know--I know. I, too, saw the bat's wing nailed to
the door, Mr. Knox. You are surely not going to suggest that this was
the work of a burglar?"

I seated myself beside her on the settee.

"You have great courage," I said. "Believe me, I quite understand all
that you have suffered."

"Is my acting so poor?" she asked, with a pathetic smile.

"No, it is wonderful, but to a sympathetic observer only acting,
nevertheless."

I noted that my presence reassured her, and was much comforted by this
fact.

"Would you like to tell me all about it," I continued; "or would this
merely renew your fears?"

"I should like to tell you," she replied in a low voice, glancing about
her as if to make sure that we were alone. "Except for odd people,
friends, I suppose, of the Colonel's, we have had so few visitors since
we have been at Cray's Folly. Apart from all sorts of queer happenings
which really"--she laughed nervously--"may have no significance
whatever, the crowning mystery to my mind is why Colonel Menendez
should have leased this huge house."

"He does not entertain very much, then?"

"Scarcely at all. The 'County'--do you know what I mean by the
'County?'--began by receiving him with open arms and ended by sending
him to Coventry. His lavish style of entertainment they labelled
'swank'--horrible word but very expressive! They concluded that they
did not understand him, and of everything they don't understand they
disapprove. So after the first month or so it became very lonely at
Cray's Folly. Our foreign servants--there are five of them altogether--
got us a dreadfully bad name. Then, little by little, a sort of cloud
seemed to settle on everything. The Colonel made two visits abroad, I
don't know exactly where he went, but on his return from the first
visit Madame de Staemer changed."

"Changed?--in what way?"

"I am afraid it would be hopeless to try to make you understand, Mr.
Knox, but in some subtle way she changed. Underneath all her vivacity
she is a tragic woman, and--oh, how can I explain?" Val Beverley made a
little gesture of despair.

"Perhaps you mean," I suggested, "that she seemed to become even less
happy than before?"

"Yes," she replied, looking at me eagerly. "Has Colonel Menendez told
you anything to account for it?"

"Nothing," I said, "He has left us strangely in the dark. But you say
he went abroad on a second and more recent occasion?"

"Yes, not much more than a month ago. And after that, somehow or other,
matters seemed to come to a head. I confess I became horribly
frightened, but to have left would have seemed like desertion, and
Madame de Staemer has been so good to me."

"Did you actually witness any of the episodes which took place about a
month ago?"

Val Beverley shook her head.

"I never saw anything really definite," she replied.

"Yet, evidently you either saw or heard something which alarmed you."

"Yes, that is true, but it is so difficult to explain."

"Could you try to explain?"

"I will try if you wish, for really I am longing to talk to someone
about it. For instance, on several occasions I have heard footsteps in
the corridor outside my room."

"At night?"

"Yes, at night."

"Strange footsteps?"

She nodded.

"That is the uncanny part of it. You know how familiar one grows with
the footsteps of persons living in the same house? Well, these
footsteps were quite unfamiliar to me."

"And you say they passed your door?"

"Yes. My rooms are almost directly overhead. And right at the end of
the corridor, that is on the southeast corner of the building, is
Colonel Menendez's bedroom, and facing it a sort of little smoke-room.
It was in this direction that the footsteps went."

"To Colonel Menendez's room?"

"Yes. They were light, furtive footsteps."

"This took place late at night?"

"Quite late, long after everyone had retired."

She paused, staring at me with a sort of embarrassment, and presently:

"Were the footsteps those of a man or a woman?" I asked.

"Of a woman. Someone, Mr. Knox," she bent forward, and that look of
fear began to creep into her eyes again, "with whose footsteps I was
quite unfamiliar."

"You mean a stranger to the house?"

"Yes. Oh, it was uncanny." She shuddered. "The first time I heard it I
had been lying awake listening. I was nervous. Madame de Staemer had
told me that morning that the Colonel had seen someone lurking about
the lawns on the previous night. Then, as I lay awake listening for the
slightest sound, I suddenly detected these footsteps; and they paused--
right outside my door."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "What did you do?"

"Frankly, I was too frightened to do anything. I just lay still with my
heart beating horribly, and presently they passed on, and I heard them
no more."

"Was your door locked?"

"No." She laughed nervously. "But it has been locked every night since
then!"

"And these sounds were repeated on other nights?"

"Yes, I have often heard them, Mr. Knox. What makes it so strange is
that all the servants sleep out in the west wing, as you know, and
Pedro locks the communicating door every night before retiring."

"It is certainly strange," I muttered.

"It is horrible," declared the girl, almost in a whisper. "For what can
it mean except that there is someone in Cray's Folly who is never seen
during the daytime?"

"But that is incredible."

"It is not so incredible in a big house like this. Besides, what other
explanation can there be?"

"There must be one," I said, reassuringly. "Have you spoken of this to
Madame de Staemer?"

"Yes."

Val Beverley's expression grew troubled.

"Had she any explanation to offer?"

"None. Her attitude mystified me very much. Indeed, instead of
reassuring me, she frightened me more than ever by her very silence. I
grew to dread the coming of each night. Then--" she hesitated again,
looking at me pathetically--"twice I have been awakened by a loud cry."

"What kind of cry?"

"I could not tell you, Mr. Knox. You see I have always been asleep when
it has come, but I have sat up trembling and dimly aware that what had
awakened me was a cry of some kind."

"You have no idea from whence it proceeded?"

"None whatever. Of course, all these things may seem trivial to you,
and possibly they can be explained in quite a simple way. But this
feeling of something pending has grown almost unendurable. Then, I
don't understand Madame and the Colonel at all."

She suddenly stopped speaking and flushed with embarrassment.

"If you mean that Madame de Staemer is in love with her cousin, I agree
with you," I said, quietly.

"Oh, is it so evident as that?" murmured Val Beverley. She laughed to
cover her confusion. "I wish I could understand what it all means."

At this point our tete-a-tete was interrupted by the return of Madame
de Staemer.

"Oh, la la!" she cried, "the Colonel must have allowed himself to
become too animated this evening. He is threatened with one of his
attacks and I have insisted upon his immediate retirement. He makes his
apologies, but knows you will understand."

I expressed my concern, and:

"I was unaware that Colonel Menendez's health was impaired," I said.

"Ah," Madame shrugged characteristically. "Juan has travelled too much
of the road of life on top speed, Mr. Knox." She snapped her white
fingers and grimaced significantly. "Excitement is bad for him."

She wheeled her chair up beside Val Beverley, and taking the girl's
hand patted it affectionately.

"You look pale to-night, my dear," she said. "All this bogey business
is getting on your nerves, eh?"

"Oh, not at all," declared the girl. "It is very mysterious and
annoying, of course."

"But M. Paul Harley will presently tell us what it is all about,"
concluded Madame. "Yes, I trust so. We want no Cuban devils here at
Cray's Folly."

I had hoped that she would speak further of the matter, but having thus
apologized for our host's absence, she plunged into an amusing account
of Parisian society, and of the changes which five years of war had
brought about. Her comments, although brilliant, were superficial, the
only point I recollect being her reference to a certain Baron Bergmann,
a Swedish diplomat, who, according to Madame, had the longest nose and
the shortest memory in Paris, so that in the cold weather, "he even
sometimes forgot to blow his nose."

Her brightness I thought was almost feverish. She chattered and laughed
and gesticulated, but on this occasion she was overacting. Underneath
all her vivacity lay something cold and grim.

Harley rejoined us in half an hour or so, but I could see that he was
as conscious of the air of tension as I was. All Madame's high spirits
could not enable her to conceal the fact that she was anxious to
retire. But Harley's evident desire to do likewise surprised me very
greatly; for from the point of view of the investigation the day had
been an unsatisfactory one. I knew that there must be a hundred and one
things which my friend desired to know, questions which Madame de
Staemer could have answered. Nevertheless, at about ten o'clock we
separated for the night, and although I was intensely anxious to talk
to Harley, his reticent mood had descended upon him again, and:

"Sleep well, Knox," he said, as he paused at my door. "I may be
awakening you early."

With which cryptic remark and not another word he passed on and entered
his own room.




CHAPTER XI

THE SHADOW ON THE BLIND



Perhaps it was childish on my part, but I accepted this curt dismissal
very ill-humouredly. That Harley, for some reason of his own, wished to
be alone, was evident enough, but I resented being excluded from his
confidence, even temporarily. It would seem that he had formed a theory
in the prosecution of which my cooeperation was not needed. And what
with profitless conjectures concerning its nature, and memories of Val
Beverley's pathetic parting glance as we had bade one another good-
night, sleep seemed to be out of the question, and I stood for a long
time staring out of the open window.

The weather remained almost tropically hot, and the moon floated in a
cloudless sky. I looked down upon the closely matted leaves of the box
hedge, which rose to within a few feet of my window, and to the left I
could obtain a view of the close-hemmed courtyard before the doors of
Cray's Folly. On the right the yews began, obstructing my view of the
Tudor garden, but the night air was fragrant, and the outlook one of
peace.

After a time, then, as no sound came from the adjoining room, I turned
in, and despite all things was soon fast asleep.

Almost immediately, it seemed, I was awakened. In point of fact, nearly
four hours had elapsed. A hand grasped my shoulder, and I sprang up in
bed with a stifled cry, but:

"It's all right, Knox," came Harley's voice. "Don't make a noise."

"Harley!" I said. "Harley! what has happened?"

"Nothing, nothing. I am sorry to have to disturb your beauty sleep, but
in the absence of Innes I am compelled to use you as a dictaphone,
Knox. I like to record impressions while they are fresh, hence my
having awakened you."

"But what has happened?" I asked again, for my brain was not yet fully
alert.

"No, don't light up!" said Harley, grasping my wrist as I reached out
toward the table-lamp.

His figure showed as a black silhouette against the dim square of the
window.

"Why not?"

"Well, it's nearly two o'clock. The light might be observed."

"Two o'clock?" I exclaimed.

"Yes. I think we might smoke, though. Have you any cigarettes? I have
left my pipe behind."

I managed to find my case, and in the dim light of the match which I
presently struck I saw that Paul Harley's face was very fixed and grim.
He seated himself on the edge of my bed, and:

"I have been guilty of a breach of hospitality, Knox," he began. "Not
only have I secretly had my own car sent down here, but I have had
something else sent, as well. I brought it in under my coat this
evening."

"To what do you refer, Harley?"

"You remember the silken rope-ladder with bamboo rungs which I brought
from Hongkong on one occasion?"

"Yes--"

"Well, I have it in my bag now."

"But, my dear fellow, what possible use can it be to you at Cray's
Folly?"

"It has been of great use," he returned, shortly.

"It enabled me to descend from my window a couple of hours ago and to
return again quite recently without disturbing the household. Don't
reproach me, Knox. I know it is a breach of confidence, but so is the
behaviour of Colonel Menendez."

"You refer to his reticence on certain points?"

"I do. I have a reputation to lose, Knox, and if an ingenious piece of
Chinese workmanship can save it, it shall be saved."

"But, my dear Harley, why should you want to leave the house secretly
at night?"

Paul Harley's cigarette glowed in the dark, then:

"My original object," he replied, "was to endeavour to learn if any one
were really watching the place. For instance, I wanted to see if all
lights were out at the Guest House."

"And were they?" I asked, eagerly.

"They were. Secondly," he continued, "I wanted to convince myself that
there were no nocturnal prowlers from within or without."

"What do you mean by within or without?"

"Listen, Knox." He bent toward me in the dark, grasping my shoulder
firmly. "One window in Cray's Folly was lighted up."

"At what hour?"

"The light is there yet."

That he was about to make some strange revelation I divined. I detected
the fact, too, that he believed this revelation would be unpleasant to
me; and in this I found an explanation of his earlier behaviour. He had
seemed distraught and ill at ease when he had joined Madame de Staemer,
Miss Beverley, and myself in the drawing room. I could only suppose
that this and the abrupt parting with me outside my door had been due
to his holding a theory which he had proposed to put to the test before
confiding it to me. I remember that I spoke very slowly as I asked him
the question:

"Whose is the lighted window, Harley?"

"Has Colonel Menendez taken you into a little snuggery or smoke-room
which faces his bedroom in the southeast corner of the house?"

"No, but Miss Beverley has mentioned the room."

"Ah. Well, there is a light in that room, Knox."

"Possibly the Colonel has not retired?"

"According to Madame de Staemer he went to bed several hours ago, you
may remember."

"True," I murmured, fumbling for the significance of his words.

"The next point is this," he resumed. "You saw Madame retire to her own
room, which, as you know, is on the ground floor, and I have satisfied
myself that the door communicating with the servants' wing is locked."

"I see. But to what is all this leading, Harley?"

"To a very curious fact, and the fact is this: The Colonel is not
alone."

I sat bolt upright.

"What?" I cried.

"Not so loud," warned Harley.

"But, Harley--"

"My dear fellow, we must face facts. I repeat, the Colonel is not
alone."

"Why do you say so?"

"Twice I have seen a shadow on the blind of the smoke-room."

"His own shadow, probably."

Again Paul Harley's cigarette glowed in the darkness.

"I am prepared to swear," he replied, "that it was the shadow of a
woman."

"Harley----"

"Don't get excited, Knox. I am dealing with the strangest case of my
career, and I am jumping to no conclusions. But just let us look at the
circumstances judicially. The whole of the domestic staff we may
dismiss, with the one exception of Mrs. Fisher, who, so far as I can
make out, occupies the position of a sort of working housekeeper, and
whose rooms are in the corner of the west wing immediately facing the
kitchen garden. Possibly you have not met Mrs. Fisher, Knox, but I have
made it my business to interview the whole of the staff and I may say
that Mrs. Fisher is a short, stout old lady, a native of Kent, I
believe, whose outline in no way corresponds to that which I saw upon
the blind. Therefore, unless the door which communicates with the
servants' quarters was unlocked again to-night--to what are we reduced
in seeking to explain the presence of a woman in Colonel Menendez's
room? Madame de Staemer, unassisted, could not possibly have mounted the
stairs."

"Stop, Harley!" I said, sternly. "Stop."

He ceased speaking, and I watched the steady glow of his cigarette in
the darkness. It lighted up his bronzed face and showed me the steely
gleam of his eyes.

"You are counting too much on the locking of the door by Pedro," I
continued, speaking very deliberately. "He is a man I would trust no
farther than I could see him, and if there is anything dark underlying
this matter you depend that he is involved in it. But the most natural
explanation, and also the most simple, is this--Colonel Menendez has
been taken seriously ill, and someone is in his room in the capacity of
a nurse."

"Her behaviour was scarcely that of a nurse in a sick-room," murmured
Harley.

"For God's sake tell me the truth," I said. "Tell me all you saw."

"I am quite prepared to do so, Knox. On three occasions, then, I saw
the figure of a woman, who wore some kind of loose robe, quite clearly
silhouetted upon the linen blind. Her gestures strongly resembled those
of despair."

"Of despair?"

"Exactly. I gathered that she was addressing someone, presumably
Colonel Menendez, and I derived a strong impression that she was in a
condition of abject despair."

"Harley," I said, "on your word of honour did you recognize anything in
the movements, or in the outline of the figure, by which you could
identify the woman?"

"I did not," he replied, shortly. "It was a woman who wore some kind of
loose robe, possibly a kimono. Beyond that I could swear to nothing,
except that it was not Mrs. Fisher."

We fell silent for a while. What Paul Harley's thoughts may have been I
know not, but my own were strange and troubled. Presently I found my
voice again, and:

"I think, Harley," I said, "that I should report to you something which
Miss Beverley told me this evening."

"Yes?" said he, eagerly. "I am anxious to hear anything which may be of
the slightest assistance. You are no doubt wondering why I retired so
abruptly to-night. My reason was this: I could see that you were full
of some story which you had learned from Miss Beverley, and I was
anxious to perform my tour of inspection with a perfectly unprejudiced
mind."

"You mean that your suspicions rested upon an inmate of Cray's Folly?"

"Not upon any particular inmate, but I had early perceived a distinct
possibility that these manifestations of which the Colonel complained
might be due to the agency of someone inside the house. That this
person might be no more than an accomplice of the prime mover I also
recognized, of course. But what did you learn to-night, Knox?"

I repeated Val Beverley's story of the mysterious footsteps and of the
cries which had twice awakened her in the night.

"Hm," muttered Harley, when I had ceased speaking. "Assuming her
account to be true----"

"Why should you doubt it?" I interrupted, hotly.

"My dear Knox, it is my business to doubt everything until I have
indisputable evidence of its truth. I say, assuming her story to be
true, we find ourselves face to face with the fantastic theory that
some woman unknown is living secretly in Cray's Folly."

"Perhaps in one of the tower rooms," I suggested, eagerly. "Why,
Harley, that would account for the Colonel's marked unwillingness to
talk about this part of the house."

My sight was now becoming used to the dusk, and I saw Harley vigorously
shake his head.

"No, no," he replied; "I have seen all the tower rooms. I can swear
that no one inhabits them. Besides, is it feasible?"

"Then whose were the footsteps that Miss Beverley heard?"

"Obviously those of the woman who, at this present moment, so far as I
know, is in the smoking-room with Colonel Menendez."

I sighed wearily.

"This is a strange business, Harley. I begin to think that the mystery
is darker than I ever supposed."

We fell silent again. The weird cry of a night hawk came from somewhere
in the valley, but otherwise everything within and without the great
house seemed strangely still. This stillness presently imposed its
influence upon me, for when I spoke again, I spoke in a low voice.

"Harley," I said, "my imagination is playing me tricks. I thought I
heard the fluttering of wings at that moment."

"Fortunately, my imagination remains under control," he replied,
grimly; "therefore I am in a position to inform you that you did hear
the fluttering of wings. An owl has just flown into one of the trees
immediately outside the window."

"Oh," said I, and uttered a sigh of relief.

"It is extremely fortunate that my imagination is so carefully
trained," continued Harley; "otherwise, when the woman whose shadow I
saw upon the blind to-night raised her arms in a peculiar fashion, I
could not well have failed to attach undue importance to the shape of
the shadow thus created."

"What was the shape of the shadow, then?"

"Remarkably like that of a bat."

He spoke the words quietly, but in that still darkness, with dawn yet a
long way off, they possessed the power which belongs to certain chords
in music, and to certain lines in poetry. I was chilled unaccountably,
and I peopled the empty corridors of Cray's Folly with I know not what
uncanny creatures; nightmare fancies conjured up from memories of
haunted manors.

Such was my mood, then, when suddenly Paul Harley stood up. My eyes
were growing more and more used to the darkness, and from something
strained in his attitude I detected the fact that he was listening
intently.

He placed his cigarette on the table beside the bed and quietly crossed
the room. I knew from his silent tread that he wore shoes with rubber
soles. Very quietly he turned the handle and opened the door.

"What is it, Harley?" I whispered.

Dimly I saw him raise his hand. Inch by inch he opened the door. My
nerves in a state of tension, I sat there watching him, when without a
sound he slipped out of the room and was gone. Thereupon I arose and
followed as far as the doorway.

Harley was standing immediately outside in the corridor. Seeing me, he
stepped back, and: "Don't move, Knox," he said, speaking very close to
my ear. "There is someone downstairs in the hall. Wait for me here."

With that he moved stealthily off, and I stood there, my heart beating
with unusual rapidity, listening--listening for a challenge, a cry, a
scuffle--I knew not what to expect.

Cavernous and dimly lighted, the corridor stretched away to my left. On
the right it branched sharply in the direction of the gallery
overlooking the hall.

The seconds passed, but no sound rewarded my alert listening--until,
very faintly, but echoing in a muffled, church-like fashion around that
peculiar building, came a slight, almost sibilant sound, which I took
to be the gentle closing of a distant door.

Whilst I was still wondering if I had really heard this sound or merely
imagined it:

"Who goes there?" came sharply in Harley's voice.

I heard a faint click, and knew that he had shone the light of an
electric torch down into the hall.

I hesitated no longer, but ran along to join him. As I came to the head
of the main staircase, however, I saw him crossing the hall below. He
was making in the direction of the door which shut off the servants'
quarters. Here he paused, and I saw him trying the handle. Evidently
the door was locked, for he turned and swept the white ray all about
the place. He tried several other doors, but found them all to be
locked, for presently he came upstairs again, smiling grimly when he
saw me there awaiting him.

Fidel and Che: a revolutionary friendship

After last week's fairly open theme, I thought I'd go with something a bit more structured this time. As I type this, I'm listening to Steeleye Span and thinking about the great ballad traditions of Britain and Ireland. What is a ballad? I suppose the most inclusive definition would be that it's a singable narrative poem: that covers a multitude but will do for the moment.

Ballads in English stretch back to the middle ages, with fine examples to be found among the Scottish border ballads and the English Robin Hood poems. These early ballads are among the best-known poems and stories in the language, and form part of the common heritage of English speakers everywhere. They gave rise to a tradition of ballad-making that endures down to the present day.

In fact, most poets since have tried their hand at the ballad at one time or another, and the result has been to deny any definition more specific than the one I ventured in my first paragraph. If you look around the internet, you'll come up with a wide selection of poems that are called ballads but have little in common formally. Stanza length varies from two to 10 or more lines, and all sorts of metrical and rhyming patterns are used. A good number will be singable in only the loosest possible sense, and at times the narrative tends to get lost in a mesh of more-or-less successful verbal embroidery.

So, what should a ballad be? Well, "proper" ballad stanzas are quatrains in which the first and third lines have four stresses and the second and third have three. The lines will rhyme A-B-C-B or A-B-A-B. It's as simple, and as difficult, as that. Here's an example, from Robert Burns's extremely singable Comin Thro' the Rye:

Gin a body meet a body
          Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body –
          Need a body cry.

Burns wrote a good number of ballads, and his lead was followed by many 19th-century poets. Two examples that I particularly like are Robert Browning's Confessions and Christina Rossetti's Up-Hill, but you can find ballads by just about any Romantic or Victorian poet if you look for them.

There is a long, strong tradition of ballads and ballad singers in Ireland, too. It is hardly surprising, then, that the great appropriator of tradition, WB Yeats, tried his hand at the form. At least four of his poems have the word "ballad" in the title; the pick of the bunch, for my money, is The Ballad of Father Gilligan, which may have benefited from having been written with a specific tune in mind.

Ballads continued to be written in the 20th century; perhaps the most unexpected exponents were Ezra Pound, with his Ballad of the Goodly Fere, and WH Auden. In fact, the ballad The Quarry is probably my favourite Auden poem.

And so, this week I invite a chorus of balladeering. You may choose to go the whole hog and write in ballad stanzas or you might prefer to take a more liberal view of the formal requirements. Either way, sing up and – as they say at all the best Irish sessions when calling for a bit of hush for the singer – one voice please.

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Obituary: Donald Westlake

The disputed Holocaust memoir, written by Herman Rosenblat, which was dropped from Penguin Group's publication schedule at the end of December is now set to appear as a work of fiction.

Rosenblat's memoir - which Oprah Winfrey called "the single greatest love story" she had heard in two decades in television - recounted how as a teenage boy in a Nazi concentration camp, he was kept alive by the food which was thrown to him by a young girl, Roma Radzicky. Penguin's US imprint Berkley Books had planned to publish the story, which sees Rosenblat reunited with Radzicky on a blind date years later, as Angel at the Fence: the True Story of a Love That Survived, next month.

But a Holocaust historian said it would have been impossible to approach the fence in the Schlieben concentration camp to throw food over it, concluding that this part of the story was made-up. Berkley initially defended the book, saying it was a work of memory, but then decided to cancel its planned publication, and demanded the return of the advance it had made to Rosenblat. A $25m film based on the book, to be called The Flower of the Fence, is still going ahead, with production due to start this year.

Publisher York House Press based in White Plains, New York, has entered into a tentative agreement with the film production company to publish a novel based on the film script early this spring. It said the book would be "grounded in fact", and would rise "to the proper levels of artistic value, ethical conduct and social responsibility".

A spokesperson for York House Press condemned the attacks which were made on the 80-year-old Rosenblat after the veracity of his story was questioned, describing them as a "savage" response to what was otherwise "a credible, heart-wrenching, and verifiable account" of his time in the concentration camp.

"No deliberate untruth is permissible, but beneath any fabrication is motivation and intent. We believe Mr. Rosenblat's motivations were very human, understandable and forgivable," the spokesperson said. "It is beyond our expertise to know how Holocaust survivors cope with their trauma. Do they deny, try to forget, rationalise or fantasise and promote fiction along with truth? Perhaps the coping mechanisms are as individual as the survivors themselves."

The president of the company producing the film, Harris Salomon from Atlantic Overseas Productions, said the book, "regardless of its shortcomings", would "challenge, educate and enlighten" readers about the horrors of the Holocaust. "The documented fact, acknowledged by his critics, is that Herman is a survivor of concentration camps," he said.

But Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst, said that neither she nor Rosenblat were involved with this version of his story. "Usually book rights from films come out after the movie is released," she told guardian.co.uk. "I think the timing on this is very insensitive."

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