by Desmond Cory
“No. I’ve never seen this chap before. What does he want?”
“You,” said Marie-Andrée ferociously, “and I half-believed you, Monsieur What’s-your-name? You tell a good story, anyway.” Something small, round and hard touched the small of Johnny’s back. “Keep still.”
“I think,” said Johnny, “I might now be allowed to finish my story. It’s not uninteresting.”
“You’ve talked enough. Antoine – we can’t take any chances. You must move to the place we’ve arranged. I’ll look after this – individual.”
Antoine pushed himself slightly forwards on the bed, and as he moved Johnny’s back arched and his right hand became a blur. There was the soft impact of hand on hand, then Johnny turned round completely with the girl’s pistol in his hand and pointing at Antoine. Antoine’s hand, moving at lightning speed towards his pillow, stopped short, and relaxed.
“Inexperienced,” said Johnny sadly. “Never hold your pistol in the small of a man’s back, my dear. It only tells him exactly where it is, and all he has to do is grab it. I think Antoine is really more of an adept in these matters than you are.” He reversed the pistol with a flick of his fingers and tossed it on to the bed. “Here you are. I’ve already got one.”
Antoine still looked at him steadily, with the suspicion of a smile deepening the corners of his mouth. He said: “So have I.”
He felt under the pillow, pulled out his automatic and dropped it on to the bed beside Marie-Andrée’s. “Now perhaps we can talk with more comfort. Unless, of course, you would prefer a little game of three-handed bridge.”
Johnny grinned, “That’s all right for people with three hands. I myself prefer to play patience,” he said, and glanced wickedly at Marie-Andrée, who was leaning against the wall with her arms folded.
“That, also, is an interesting game,” agreed Antoine. “I’m so sorry. Will you take a seat, Monsieur – er – Darreaux?”
“Fedora,” said Johnny, sinking gratefully into the proffered armchair. “Fedora of the British Intelligence. Thank you.”
There was a quick interchange of glances between the other two. “Now that,” murmured Marie-Andrée, “that is not an impossibility.”
“There is no question of our disbelieving Monsieur Fedora,” said Antoine suavely. “I’m only surprised that British Intelligence has elected to take a hand in a purely French matter. I am, of course, greatly flattered.” His eye moved meditatively to the pistols on the bed.
Johnny said: “I’m not in the least concerned with handing you over to the police, please believe me. My major concern is, in fact, to see that you stay at liberty. You, my dear Antoine, are the only man in Paris who, to my knowledge, can recognise le rossignol.”
There was no mistaking the surprise on Gervais’s face at that moment. He said: “But – but Marcelline is dead, m’sieur, and has been for some years. Obviously, you are –”
“Marcelline Gaston is alive and is in Paris.”
Antoine reached for a cigarette-box and handed it to Johnny. “Cigarette?”
“Thank you,” said Johnny.
“And now perhaps we had better hear all about this from the beginning. Would you mind?”
Johnny said: “Not at all. Mademoiselle Duveyrier, you are quite comfortable?”
“Thank you.”
“Yes. Well,” began Johnny, “it’s come to the notice of our Intelligence that a group of ex-Nazi operatives are actually at work in Paris, and there is no doubt whatever that the woman who used to be called Marcelline Gaston is one of them – moreover, the only one known to the Department. It’s unfortunate that she worked with the Diamond Group of the Maquis and that the only two men who would now recognise her are yourself and –”
“Pierre Darreaux.”
“Exactly. Now, you live in Paris – Darreaux, deep down south; you are obviously the easier of the two to contact, But when I want to contact you, what do I find? The Maquis after you. Um!
“Well, there are two alternatives, of course; they’re right or wrong. I’ve been into your record very carefully, and it seems hard to believe that they’re right, were it not for the evidence of Boehm’s letter. But if they’re wrong, it opens up a very interesting line of investigation. It could easily mean that le rossignol is in a position where contact with you is a possibility and that therefore you have been removed in a particularly brilliant manner, by placing an incriminating letter in a position where it was bound to be found. That was the line I was working on.”
“But that’s amazing. That explains the letter – it’s the only thing that does. God, Marie, I’m sure he’s right.” He turned suddenly to Johnny. “Was working on?”
“Yes. I followed the thing a step farther. Darreaux can also recognise le rossignol, you remember? So I arrived in Paris, calling myself Darreaux and making sure the news that Darreaux was in town got about. I was rather hoping, you see, that this charming young lady might decide my presence here was as embarrassing as your own and take steps to remove me.”
“And did she?”
“Well, not exactly. She ’phoned me up.”
“Did what?”
“She ’phoned me up, expressing a desire to meet me in the near future.”
Gervais chuckled. “An unexpected development.”
“All of that. It knocked me into a heap. It seems fairly obvious that Darreaux is working for the Germans.”
“I see. Well, I’m not surprised as you seem to be; we half-suspected it at one time. He’s a plausible, oily brute; the sort you distrust on sight.”
“In that case, my imposture should be convincing.”
“By no means. But then, what?”
“Then I decided to get in touch with you and hear your views on the matter. I’ve done the first half, anyway.”
“But, yes.” Gervais hitched his foot on to the end of the bed and stared at it meditatively. “You seem to have it all worked out, you know. So I’ll just say, what can we do to help you?”
“And I’ll just say,” said Marie-Andrée, “why the hell didn’t you tell me all this in the first place?”
Johnny said: “You might not have believed me, and then what? No, I never give information for nothing.”
Gervais said quickly: “Obviously we must help Monsieur Fedora. If he catches up with Marcelline, the chances are that he’ll be able to prove my innocence… But, of course, you stand to gain nothing. You should really –”
“You forget I’m a reporter. This looks better than ever to me.”
“If it’s permitted to be published,” said Johnny lugubriously. “You’re too far in to walk out now, young lady, whether you want to or not. The point is, Antoine, have you any ideas?”
“No. No, I don’t think I have.”
“Well. In the first place, you must stay here, where I can call on you any time I need you. In the second place, we must try to get hold of this letter and trace it. It’s the sort of thing that some people I know are very good at doing. Where is this letter at the moment?”
Antoine said thoughtfully: “I think it’s pretty certain that Pinot still has it. He was the man who originally found it, you know. It’s probably in his flat somewhere.”
“Who’s Pinot?”
Antoine gave a brief description and biography.
“And he found it, eh? That might put him under suspicion; but it’s just as easy to suppose it was placed in a position where he would be bound to find it. These people are nothing if not thorough… Anyway, I’ll make arrangements for Pinot’s flat to be burgled some time tomorrow night. It might be helpful if you were present – I take it you have no previous engagements?”
“No,” said Gervais, smiling.
“All right. We’ll get that letter somehow and take it to my friends at Defence Headquarters, who will really go into the matter for us. If nothing comes of that” – Johnny frowned – “we’ll have to really start pulling the town apart. There’s always the chance that le rossignol will get in touch with
me again, or find out that there’s something amiss and try to fix me in some unspecified manner. In which case, a lot of trouble will be avoided.”
“Especially,” agreed Marie-Andrée, “if she succeeds. Will you have some dinner, Monsieur Fedora? You had little time for eating at Le Singe Vert, I seem to remember.”
“Thank you, I will. Nothing ambitious, please,” said Johnny politely.
Marie-Andrée smiled, nodded and went out of the room.
“That’s a good kid. Pretty, too’” was Johnny’s comment.
“Yes. I would have been in a nasty mess without her. But now, with you to help us, I’m confident everything will be all right.”
“I hope so; also that your confidence is not misplaced.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of you,” Gervais gave a quick laugh. “You have quite a reputation here in France, Monsieur Fedora – or may I call you Johnny?”
“Do.”
“Yes. Your exploits are pretty widely known. Anyway, if I can do anything to help you in this matter, it will be a privilege.”
“That’s very nice of you.” Johnny yawned. “It must be a surprise to you to learn that Marcelline is still alive and kicking.”
“Yes.” Gervais was silent for a moment. “She is a remarkable woman, you know. I heard that she was not French at all, but in fact a –”
“A German agent. Yes.”
Gervais nodded. “I’m glad in a way. We were – closely connected for a long time and never for a moment did I suspect her integrity, let alone her nationality. But spying is well, an honourable profession.”
Johnny said coldly: “I mean to kill her, Antoine. That is my profession and I should make that quite clear.”
“Oh, yes. Naturally. I should do the same. All the same, I am glad that she is not French. It is hard to explain.”
“I understand what you mean,” said Johnny, and left it at that.
After a long pause he said: “Now, Antoine, I’ll brief you for tomorrow, so that you can get the situation clear. Pinot lives at –?”
“In the Avenue Piedmont.”
“All right. I know the district vaguely. Tomorrow night I shall arrange for him to be out on a visit to the Commission Headquarters. Is he married?”
“No.”
“Good. Housekeeper?”
“I suppose he must have. But I don’t think she sleeps in the flat; she shouldn’t cause any difficulty.”
“Better still. Anything else you remember? Dogs, burglar alarms, anything of that nature?”
“Yes, there is an alarm. He had it installed last year. I remember that.”
“Well, that’s all right. We’ll be on the look-out for it. We’ll meet at nine o’clock exactly at – Is there an estaminet nearby?”
“Le Drapeau. At the end of the avenue.”
“Good, again. We’ll meet there; I’ll have a man with me who can open a bank vault with a bent sardine-can opener and who will act as advisory expert on the Operation Pinot. The girl had better stay here by the telephone; it might be needed and it’s as well to be prepared. All clear?”
Gervais nodded.
“If it’s there,” said Johnny, “we’ll find it. If not, we’ll go straight on to Dupont’s house and try there, before Pinot returns.”
“Yes. You’ll arrange –?”
“I’ll arrange,” said Johnny, smiling.
“With your pull,” said Gervais, “it’s a wonder you don’t try the Bank of France. I believe you’d do it, too.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ANTOINE had-been sitting at a side-table in Le Drapeau for some ten minutes and was, if not nervous, definitely uneasy. He was surprised at his extreme relief when he saw Johnny push through the door; he relaxed in his seat and took a long sip at his café au lait. He glanced incuriously at Johnny’s companion – a small, thin man almost as deeply mufflered and overcoated as Antoine was himself – and nodded and smiled.
“Ah,” said Johnny, pulling back a chair. “I’m sorry we’re late. Monsieur Gervais, may I present Monsieur Elder? Pierre is a very old friend of mine and can be trusted.”
“Delighted,” said Elder formally. He seated himself opposite Antoine and scrutinised him unwinkingly. Johnny beckoned the waiter and ordered two more coffees. There was a brief silence.
“Now,” said Johnny, leaning back in his chair and almost looking as if he were enjoying himself, “now we can discuss the admittedly trivial matter that has brought us together tonight. I believe that Pierre has already carried out the process that Americans call “Casing the joint” – by which I mean a brief reconnaissance patrol around the Pinot mansion – and we will hear his expert views on the subject as soon as the lad has brought us our coffees… You’re absolutely right, Dublanc; a dish of bouillabaisse is indeed hard to beat, especially when it is mixed with a soupçon of vinegar.”
The waiter placed a tray of mud-coloured crockery before Johnny and pushed two cups on to the table. In the far corner of the room, somebody started to play a guitar and his two companions began to sing in low voices that barely carried across the room.
Elder said: “This thing shouldn’t be too difficult. It appears to be a flat on the first floor of a fairly large block; there is a convenient drainpipe close to one of the windows. I shall get in through that window and open the door from inside; all you gentlemen will have to do is to walk in, just like that.”
Antoine said: “That seems almost too simple.”
“Rubbish! The simple things always work,” said Johnny. “It’s the carefully planned ones that don’t. You know – at thirteen and a half minutes past seven you will come out of the telephone booth opposite 114, rue de la Rhubarbe and will meet a tall, fair haired man wearing stilts and a Homburg hat, carrying last week’s Point de Vue under his left arm and a large envelope containing your instructions under his right. On receiving the code word ‘Bemax’, he will waggle both ears in a clockwise direction –”
“But as it’s so simple,” said Antoine carefully, “what are we waiting for?”
“I haven’t finished my coffee yet – besides, I’m enjoying the atmosphere here. That fellow over in the corner, for instance, weltering in weltschmerz… Ah, the ‘continong’,” said Johnny, rhapsodically, “the whole set-up appears to await direction by Carol Reed.” He sipped methodically at his coffee-cup and looked at Elder. “Well, Pierre?”
Elder balanced a small globule of saliva on the tip of his tongue and spat six feet with ferocious accuracy. He said: “All right.”
“All right.” Johnny stood up and adjusted the scarf round his neck, “A cold night, I think. Let’s be on our merry way.”
They moved towards the door as the guitar changed its rhythm to a series of tightly-strung chords, swelling out to fill the room. Its music followed them out on to the darkened street; Antoine pulled the collar of his overcoat slightly higher, and knew that it was not the cold which caused him to do so. Johnny was standing just outside the square of orange light that flared across the road from the cafe’s open door; Antoine could just discern the smile that turned up the corners of his mouth; then the shadow of Johnny’s hat tilted across it, leaving nothing but a blurred silhouette.
They moved slowly down the street, their, shadows teetering crazily from lamp-post to wall and back again, while Johnny talked in a low and cheerful voice of the adventures in Paris of his maiden Aunt Griselda. She had kept a small Pomeranian which occasionally answered to the name of Pion-Pion and which breakfasted abstemiously on black coffee and Schnapps. Aunt Griselda had mislaid this animal on one of her infrequent trips down the Champs-Elysées, and it had eventually been discovered playing the part of a Black Sheep at the Folies Bergère. This brief experience of the world behind the footlights had so delighted the poor beast that, after moping disconsolately in Aunt Griselda’s boudoir for some weeks, it had settled down to write a post-Existentialist play under the pseudonym of Jean-Paul Sartre. It was at this stage, unfortunately, that – the story went on and on and Antoi
ne, occupied with his own thoughts, lost the thread of what could not have been called a really compact narrative. He was absorbed so intently in reflection that he had little idea of the direction they were taking, until:
“Here we are,” said Elder. “As planned.” He looked once up the street and then, with a swift movement, peeled off his overcoat, thus revealing a stained corduroy jacket and a highly regrettable spotted bow-tie. Antoine, wincing slightly, took the overcoat that was offered to him, and Elder without more ado sprang nimbly at the side of the house and began to travel up an apparently sheer wall, finding about as much difficulty in doing so as a large and healthy caterpillar. Antoine privately considered this open-to-all observers climbing rather unprofessional, but thought it would appear ungrateful to say so. Instead, he said:
“Your friend must have unusually powerful fingers.”
“Oh, yes. I understand he used to be an acrobat… Well, he’s well on his way; let’s go round to the door.”
“All right,” said Antoine; then, quickly: “There’s somebody coming.”
The shadow of an approaching man was leaping nervously across the wall, and even as Antoine spoke the man himself rounded the corner – a spare, well-dressed man wearing a bowler hat and carrying a neatly-rolled umbrella.
“Hell,” said Johnny under his breath, and then, in a delicately modulated guffaw: “Steady, old man. Mind you don’t slip.”
Elder, in the act of straddling the drainpipe, turned and waved a preoccupied hand; the well-dressed man, looking up, stopped and allowed his jaw to fall open.
“Take it easy,” advised Johnny. “Don’t rush things. Plenty of time.”
Elder nodded and travelled some ten feet up the drainpipe with an undulating movement of the elbows. The well-dressed man replaced his jaw, advanced a few steps and addressed Antoine in a well-bred whisper:
“What’s going on?”
“Our friend,” said Johnny, turning to regard him with some surprise, “has lost his door-key and is adopting a somewhat unconventional means of entry to his flat.”
“Surely,” suggested the stranger with some diffidence, “surely –”