by John Creasey
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1
Loftus Entertains
He was a large man, and a man who liked his comfort. The heat of the September evening made him view with disfavour the thought of dancing and drinking at the Dernier Cri, but his companion was proving most insistent.
‘Bill,’ she said—she pronounced it ‘Beel’—‘it is so long since I have had a chance of dancing. And in Paris, you promised to entertain me!’
‘Isn’t my company entertainment enough?’ demanded Bill Loftus.
Yvonne de Montmaront had a pleasant, tinkling laugh and she used it now: proving that either she was not annoyed with him, or that she knew quite well she would get her own way. They were seated together in his parked Talbot; a gleaming, glistening thing which seemed incongruous beside the barbed-wire and sandbagged defences of Hyde Park. There were few private cars about, for London was denuded of nearly all traffic but that on official business, although to suggest that London was deserted was a delusion. Some four and a half million of its normal population remained, even in that era of total war; and those who passed Loftus and Mademoiselle Yvonne de Montmaront were surprisingly cheerful. A year before it would have been remarkable that there were no children in the park, but that had become a commonplace.
Loftus sat and regarded her quizzically, one large hand resting lightly on the steering-wheel. In spite of a cool breeze rustling the leaves of the trees which scorned the days of war, there was a film of perspiration on his forehead at which he dabbed ineffectually with a large, silk handkerchief.
Yvonne was not small, but against him she looked it. In her white silk dress she also looked cool, and she was. Her large and lovely eyes returned his gaze equably, and not for the first time he found himself wondering if all that was said of her was true.
She was reputed to have been the mistress of, among others, at least two French premiers, a high-ranking, close collaborator with Hitler, and a member of Mussolini’s picked Council. Yet she looked not only youthful and fresh, but positively virginal. Nor had she ever given him any reason to imagine she regarded him as more than a friend: a professional colleague with whom her relationship would always be easy but never intimate.
On the latter, at all events, Loftus himself was quite decided.
When he had first known and worked with her, in a minor investigation which had taken him to Paris, France had been France—not a protectorate of Nazi Germany. So many hopes had been frustrated, so many fears substantiated, since then.
His own hopes had suffered.
Few looking at his ungainly figure or his homely face would have suspected the shrewd alertness of his mind, nor his ability to think and act with a speed that left men gasping. Certainly none who did not know him well would have guessed that he was not only an agent of the British Secret Service, but the brilliant second-in-command of that remarkable Department called Z; a Department which might be called the ultra-secret branch of British Intelligence. It was operated by Gordon Craigie, of whom many will have heard, and its members were almost without exception youngish men who knew no cause but service. So much so that in normal times, when a man married he automatically resigned from Department Z. In the opinion of Gordon Craigie, no man could at once be wholly faithful to a woman and to the work which at any time might take him to the other side of the world, and would certainly submit him constantly to very real dangers, most of which could well prove fatal.
Many of Craigie’s men had died.
Loftus knew that. Loftus knew, in fact, that of the Department’s agents who had held such roving commissions, there were less still living than there were dead. Ghosts of men, of friends, were always at his side. They had lived under the strain of war conditions for many years of so-called peace, and it always seemed to him that now, they watched the world from afar: wondering if their efforts had been wholly futile, if their deaths in the cause of peace would ever be rewarded.
Yvonne said, suddenly:
‘What is in your mind, Bill?’
Loftus shrugged, smiling.
‘The past, the present, and the future. Which, of course, is very remiss of me—particularly after suggesting that my company should be pleasure enough.’
‘Bill,’ she told him, ‘if I had to be alone with any man for this evening—for tonight—’ her eyes gleamed mischievously—‘or for the whole of the war, indeed, I should choose you. But tonight, there is no need to be alone.’
‘I’m not so sure. Think of a large room. Iced beer. Moonlight. Windows wide open. Haunting music. Comfortable chairs. Yes?’
‘No,’ said Yvonne firmly. ‘The Dernier Cri.’
‘May M’sieu Armand de Boncour be accursed for employing anyone like you. All right, my pet, but if we get caught in a raid I shall desert you.’
‘So like the English,’ she murmured.
‘Thank you,’ said Loftus. ‘Let me tell you, my precious representative of the other side of the once complete entente, when you say English in these days you mean British.’ He started the engine, then abruptly cut it and sat back again, a hint of laughter in his grey eyes. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m beggared if I will. For the first time for three days I feel cool, and I want to go on feeling cool. I’ll lend you a fiver, if you like.’
‘Bill!’
‘That will teach you,’ said Loftus, more loudly, ‘to cast aspersions on the British. Call me anything you like, but leave the rest of us alone. Remember the R.A.F. Remember Dunkirk. And the Navy. Not to mention——’
The small and shapely lips tightened, the high-boned cheeks flushed with indignation and the pointed chin lifted at least an inch.
‘As you wish,’ she told him, stiffly. ‘I should have known better than to expect chivalry from you.’
‘This is the first rest I’ve had for months.’ Loftus was still smiling, but not with his eyes. ‘Why should I do what I don’t want?’
As she shrugged expressively and turned away, a short, chunky man in a blue sports jacket with exaggeratedly squarecut shoulders passed them, hands in pockets and respirator case swinging at his hip. He must certainly have heard their exchange, yet did not so much as glance their way.
‘A man,’ murmured Loftus, ‘of remarkable restraint.’
Yvonne’s head jerked around.
‘You! And what of me? When I think——Bill, you beast, you are laughing at me!’
‘It’s true,’ he admitted. ‘Thereby proving that the loveliest woman in—er—out of Paris has a perfect right to her sorrowfully low opinion of me.’
‘Could you talk sense?’ pleaded Yvonne, as he let in the clutch; but his attention was on the chunky man, now some fifty feet ahead.
As the Talbot started off, Loftus saw him change the respirator strap from his right shoulder to his left. At the same moment, a taxi just behind them wakened to life. It passed them quickly, then slowed down for the chunky one to board.
‘Such thoroughness!’ murmured Loftus, and Yvonne shrugged again in helpless bafflement.
‘Oh, the English!’
‘British,’ he corrected, and accelerated sharply to pass the taxi. Then, giving no signal, he cut sharply across Piccadilly and into Bond Street.
At nearly eight o’clock, Bond Street was practically deserted and he drove along it at considerably more than thirty miles an hour. Not surprisingly, the absurdly small hat perched on the side of Yvonne’s head blew off. She made a desperate grab at it, rising to her feet in the process—and her rise coincided with the emergenc
e of a small car from a side-turning.
Loftus had to brake, or take a smash. He braked sharply, shooting out an arm to protect Yvonne as she was jolted a foot into the air. As the small car squeezed past, its driver glaring, a youngster of some seventeen summers came hurrying up to them with the hat. Torn between gratitude to the rescuer and a furious attack on Loftus, Yvonne chose the former. And while she thanked the youngster in a silvery voice which—had he but known it—had captivated statesmen, chiefs-of-staff and minor royalty alike in half the countries of Europe, the chunky man’s taxi passed them by.
‘Yes—thanks very much,’ Loftus added. Then without warning, drove left into the turning from which the smaller car had come, forcing a startled Yvonne to sit back sharply as the youngster leapt away from the running-board.
‘Brute! Idiot!’ gasped Yvonne, but Loftus hardly heard her.
Abruptly, he turned another corner. Then another. That brought them into Piccadilly. Still without speaking, he drove to the Circus, turned left up Regent Street and then sharp right into a small, square courtyard. The high, brick walls surrounding it were grimed with the dirt of ages and blank save for the narrow doorways on all sides. Above each of these were small signboards, most of them badly-painted.
‘And perhaps now you will explain?’ Yvonne said acidly, as the car stopped.
‘Explain?’ Loftus frowned. We’re here, cherie. The Dernier Cri. Isn’t that what you’ve been pestering me for all evening?’
‘It is not enough. I wish to know why I have been jumped up and thrown down; why you have started, only to stop, and stopped only to start. I wish to——’
Loftus grinned. ‘Save it and tell me over a drink.’ He slipped out of the car—moving, despite his bulk, with remarkable grace and speed—and pouting, she accepted his helping hand. Then as an attendant took the car to garage it, they crossed to a doorway where the sign announced:
LE DERNIER CRI
The Last Word from Paris in London
‘Apt,’ remarked Loftus, judiciously. ‘If somewhat dated. The man who thought of that bon mot deserved almost certainly more than he got.’
‘I begin,’ remarked Yvonne, ‘to understand why the English are called mad.’
‘British,’ said Loftus, sternly. ‘Don’t let me have to tell you that again.’
They mounted a steep flight of stone steps covered with coconut matting, and Loftus produced a card as they reached the landing. A doorman in evening-dress, looking profoundly bored and very pale, nodded wearily and accepted the ten-shilling entrance fee. His equally weary and somewhat older colleague conducted them to the next landing, where they could hear the strains of music and the chatter of voices.
‘I thought so.’ Loftus eased his collar. ‘It’ll be a fug of the first order.’
‘Every room,’ intoned the weary man, ‘is air-conditioned in the most modern fashion, sir.’
He opened the door as he spoke, and as they entered the atmosphere hit them. It was thick with the fumes of liquor and the smoke from cigars and cigarettes, and it was noisy. Even the two or three couples dancing appeared to ignore the lifeless band crowded into one corner. ‘Phew!’ Loftus grimaced. ‘It’s worse than I fancied.’
‘Do you think they have real champagne?’ asked Yvonne.
‘At two guineas a bottle, probably,’ said Loftus, easing his collar. ‘I won’t be answerable for the number of times I tread on your toes if you insist on dancing in this.’
They were led to a comparatively quiet table, where a bright-eyed waiter took their order and slipped off into the fug. Loftus mopped at his now clammy forehead as Yvonne, still looking remarkably fresh and cool, smiled about her. Not until they were actually sipping their champagne, did she say soberly:
‘What was it, Bill?’
Loftus looked around. The nearest occupied table was two yards away; in this din, there was no chance of being overheard.
‘It was the chunky man,’ he said.
Yvonne frowned.
‘I saw him, of course, but——?’
‘When I was talking to you first,’ Loftus explained, ‘he was helping support what railings remain in Hyde Park. When I switched on, he headed for the taxi. When I switched off, he shook his head at the driver, and came on past us. I let him catch a word or two, and then started in the fond hope that I would avoid him—me being off duty and having no desire to be on again, for the next twelve hours or so. But he was very smart, that chunky man. And Craigie decrees that we poor mutts must never sleep.’
Throughout that statement Loftus’ expression had not changed. He appeared to be thoroughly bored as he looked about the room, and there were moments when his lips did not seem to move, although Yvonne heard every word.
She sipped in silence for a moment, then:
‘Why did he have such remarkable restraint?’ she demanded. ‘And why was he so thorough?’
‘His restraint,’ said Loftus genially, ‘was evident in that he heard what appeared to be a quarrel, yet didn’t even glance towards us, and he was thorough because he was followed by his taxi.’
‘Go on,’ said Yvonne.
She shook her head as he proffered his cigarette case then pensively, lit up himself.
‘I tried to avoid him across Piccadilly, but he hung on. I scorched down Bond Street—and but for the little car and your hat, curse them both, I would have foxed him.’ He grinned. ‘Never mind—I think we lost him.’
Yvonne’s eyes sparkled.
‘But why not let him follow you? Why not try to find out what and who he is?’
Loftus regarded her with lazy amusement.
‘Sweet one,’ he said, ‘there are more things than you wot of, in London. I’m on holiday, or leave—call it what you like—and I insist on getting at least one night’s sleep, before indulging in the latest craze of spy-hunting.’ Even, he added mentally, though it is my job, thanks be. ‘If it weren’t for you, cherie, I think I should be sleeping now.’
Yvonne took no offence.
‘You offered to entertain me,’ she said, ‘and I shall most certainly keep you to it! But—you didn’t really let him go, did you?’
Loftus smiled.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t let him go. One of my friends was watching me, and the chunky one will be followed. And in the morning—after that good night’s sleep,’ he added hopefully, ‘I’ll hear all about it. There’s one good thing: these places have to close at eleven, these days.’
‘Then we haven’t much time for dancing,’ said Yvonne. ‘Come—my feet just ache to dance!’
‘Ache,’ Loftus predicted solemnly, ‘will be the operative word.’
But when he danced, it was with complete assurance and with an ease and lightness which belied his bulky frame. Yvonne knew that, as soon as she started to swing round with him to a waltz which was being ruined as only waltzes can be by indifferent bands. There were some half-a-dozen couples on the small square of badly polished floor, but most of these soon dropped out, for the sheer expertise of the Yvonne-Loftus combination was a joy to watch and when they stopped, there was a burst of spontaneous applause.
They danced again, a tango this time, and Yvonne deliberately tried to make it difficult for her partner. Loftus followed the intricacies of her improvisations so well that he appeared to instigate them himself. Yvonne’s smile widened as they went on, and she was laughing aloud, if lightly, when the band stopped and he led her back to the table.
‘Superb!’ she enthused. ‘You are a man of many parts, Bill. I really thought you were serious, when you said you could not dance. I could,’ she added, semi-serious, ‘find it easy to be in love with you.’
Loftus widened his eyes in mock-alarm.
‘My sweet, don’t add more complications to a world already complicated a deal too much! I am engaged. Or didn’t you know that?’
Yvonne shrugged.
‘Does it matter that much?’
‘Oh, lord!’ exclaimed Loftus. ‘If you were to ask
me the miracle of the modern world, Yvonne, I’d say it’s the complete accord we hear so much about between Paris and London. Though our governments agree, it takes time for our morals to follow. Yes, it does matter.’
Yvonne’s fine eyes regarded him soberly for a moment, and then she said.
‘I am hungry, Bill.’
‘Well, at least that can be handled!’ Loftus lifted a hand for the bright-eyed waiter. That waiter, he thought, as he waited for the sandwiches which were all the Dernier Cri could offer, was the one live thing in the club. The temporary interest aroused by their dancing had died away. The ‘revellers,’ mostly in lounge suits and afternoon dresses, for there was little formality in London those days, looked tired out. Several men in uniform were leaning back in their chairs with their eyes closed. The band—all three of it—looked ready to fall asleep at any moment.
Loftus, too, felt tired.
He blamed it on the heat of the room, but at the back of his mind he was a little perturbed. His concern grew more real when the waiter returned—and that man’s eyes were no longer bright, but heavy. Placing the sandwiches on the table, the waiter dabbed his forehead with a napkin, apologised and made an effort to brighten up.
‘It remains so hot, M’sieu, yes?’
‘Does it always get as bad as this?’ demanded Loftus.
‘Always it is ver’ hot, M’sieu, but so hot—no, I do not think so. Outside it is worse, yes?’ he added with a hopeful grin, now too weary for amusement, like the room and the people and the very air.
Loftus looked at Yvonne—and saw that her eyes, usually so bright, were lack-lustre. She even stifled a yawn. She looked at the sandwiches, but when he pushed them towards her, shook her head. He frowned, then rose abruptly.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re getting out of this.’
Yvonne stood up. The others nearby looked at them, but without interest. Where three men had been leaning back with their eyes closed, a dozen men and several women were now almost asleep. And as Loftus moved towards the door he felt a wave of weariness, almost a physical thing that might have been thrown at him, envelop him.