The Scarlet Impostor

by Dennis Wheatley

  Opening the door for her to pass, Gregory closed it behind them, then drew her hand through his arm as they set off gaily down the corridor. Out in the street he found that the Paris black-out was not as bad as that in London, as a system of blue-shaded lights had been established, and they had no difficulty in getting a taxi.

  The Vert Galant came up to their expectations. Gregory had a way with waiters; a quiet, authoritative manner that never failed to impress from the moment he entered a restaurant. They sensed that he was the sort of client who knew exactly what he wanted and was prepared to pay for it and to tip well into the bargain. So silent-footed minions came and went for a couple of hours while little Collette tucked in to her heart’s content and Gregory encouraged her to have all the good things she fancied.

  She was an amusing small person, and he decided that he could not have found a more entertaining companion with whom to pass an evening if he had combed all Paris with that aim. She was attractive to look at across a table, she smoked her cigarette and drank her after-dinner wine with in air. She had no trace of false shame about being a maid, and between gusts of laughter she related many amusing episodes concerning people with whom she had been in service, while her shrewd, sound common sense made her comments upon the war and the general situation very well worth listening to.

  Gregory did not attempt to pump her about the Marxist friends of Madame Dubois. She might assume, if she liked, that he had come to Paris to see Madame Dubois upon that sort of business, but he had made up his mind to make her forget it as soon as possible. With her mind free of such speculations she would be much more inclined to leave him alone in the flat for which she was responsible. She showed no curiosity about his affairs and appeared to be entirely absorbed in enjoying herself.

  While she was away powdering her nose after dinner he bought her a huge bunch of roses from the restaurant flower-seller, and on her return she hugged them to her with the delight of a child who seldom sees sweets at all but has just been given a box of candies.

  Soon afterwards the restaurant closed and they had to leave it for the darkened street. Owing to the curfew there was no possibility of their going on anywhere else, so Gregory gave the taximan the address of Madame Dubois’ flat.

  Collette climbed in with her arms full of roses, while he clutched a parcel containing two bottles of champagne. He had instructed the waiter to put this up for him with the idea in the back of his mind that as there was nowhere else to go and the night was still young Mademoiselle Collette might extend to him the hospitality of the delightful flat of which she was the sole custodian.

  Gregory would not normally have attempted to kiss her in the taxi because that was not his technique, but as she had raised the matter herself he thought she might expect it. When the cab was well under way, crawling steadily along the river-bank, he accordingly slipped his arm round her and drew her to him. But she quickly used the roses as a screen and turned away her head.

  ‘Oh come!’ he protested in a hurt voice. ‘You did promise me another kiss in the taxi going home.’

  I did not promise anything,’ she dissented.

  ‘You said you’d let me kiss you when you knew me better if you found that you liked me. Don’t you like me?’

  ‘Oh, I like you lots and lots, Grégoire,’ she replied with a mocking note in her voice. ‘You make me laugh and I like that. You’re very generous, too. I like that also in a man.’

  ‘Well, then …’ said Gregory.

  ‘Why be so impatient?’ she shrugged. ‘Let us drive round for a little.’

  Gregory promptly ordered the cabby to crawl round for a bit, and the man complied. He was used to such orders at that hour of the night.

  For the next twenty minutes Gregory tried small-talk, badinage and even a little playful rough-housing, but still Collette used her roses as a barrier and would not let him kiss her. At length he got fed up with her refusals and, deciding that he had advanced as far as she was prepared to go on a first evening, he ordered the taximan to drive to the address he had first given.

  She laughed as she heard him give the order, and declared: ‘So you are going to drive me home now. And then, all on your own, you’ll go back to your hotel and dream of me. Think how nice that will be!’

  ‘I’ll certainly do that,’ he agreed, ‘but I wish I hadn’t to go to bed so early. You’re not tired either, are you? You don’t look it.’

  ‘No, Grégoire, I’m not tired. I don’t intend to go to sleep for hours yet.’

  ‘Can’t we go on laughing and talking for a bit, then?’ he asked, renewing his attack.

  ‘But where? There is nowhere to go—and you have told the man to take me home.’

  ‘Exactly! Why not there?’

  ‘But what would Madame say?’

  ‘I don’t see why Madame should ever know anything about it.’

  ‘I don’t expect she would if neither of us told her.’

  ‘Then—why not?’

  ‘All right,’ she said with sudden decision, ‘you shall come in and have a cigarette.’

  Having arrived at the flat Gregory paid off the taxi. They went straight up in the lift and along the corridor to Madame Dubois’ flat. Collette fished a key out of her bag and opened the door. The lights in the corridor had been dimmed as an air-raid precaution and the flat was unlit.

  ‘We’ll go through to the sitting-room,’ Collette said, and walked inside without bothering to switch on the light in the hall. Gregory closed the door behind him and for a moment they were in pitch-darkness.

  Suddenly the lights clicked on and Gregory saw that two men were sitting in the hall. One of them had an automatic ready in his hand. Collette had turned at the sitting-room door and, pointing at him, said swiftly:

  ‘Messieurs, this is the man who endeavoured to rifle Madame’s papers. I am convinced that he is a spy.’

  22

  Behind the Bars

  Collette’s reference to Madame Dubois’ papers instantly told Gregory what had given him away. It had been that accursed filing-cabinet, which had jammed before he had had time to close it properly. Ill-luck must have caused her glance to fall on the cabinet just before they had gone out to dinner. She must have noticed at once that the top drawer was not quite closed and have realised that Gregory was the only person who could have tampered with it. That had been quite enough to enable a quick brain like hers to jump to the conclusion that the nice Englishman who was going to take her out to dinner and who pretended that he was so lonely had in reality a very different motive for cultivating her acquaintance.

  Gregory had learned at dinner that she had been in Madame Dubois’ service for the past eighteen months, which would have been ample time for anyone of her intelligence to gather that although Madame lived in a pleasant, well-furnished flat she was anything but an ordinary, well-to-do widow. All sorts of strange people doubtless came to see Madame and Collette had probably been specially chosen for her discretion. He remembered now that while she had talked most freely that evening of her previous employers, she had not let slip a single fact about either Madame Dubois or her acquaintances. Collette evidently liked her absent mistress, and having found him out had taken drastic steps to protect her interests.

  Gregory gave her full marks for the way in which she had handled the situation. Instead of panicking when she had noticed that the cabinet had been tampered with and trying to turn him out of the flat, or betraying any of the humiliation she must have felt on the sudden discovery that her visitor was really interested not in her own charms but in her mistress’s affairs, she had kept her head and at once laid her plans for trapping him. Having taken an excellent dinner off him she had then gone calmly to the cloak-room, and telephoned these men to lie in wait for him, afterwards making him run her round in a taxi for twenty minutes to give them ample time to get there and prepare their ambush.

  But who were the men? That was the question which principally agitated Gregory’s violently disturbed mind as
he gazed down the nearest fellow’s gun-barrel. Were they a couple of Marxist thugs? For all he knew Collette might be in Madame’s confidence and herself a member of the Paris organisation, in which case she would have known whom to ‘phone up for assistance. The fact that she had accused him of being a spy pointed to that, while if she was in the game she probably suspected also that Madame Dubois was not suffering from injuries received in any normal accident but had been intentionally run down, and that Gregory was one of the people who had attempted to murder her in this way.

  On the other hand, the two men might be detectives; it would have been to the police that a maid would normally have telephoned had she suspected that a plausible young man who was making up to her intended to try to burgle her mistress’s flat.

  Whichever solution of the problem was correct he had certainly landed himself once again in a damnable mess. If the two men were Marxists it was hardly likely that they would accept his word for it, after Collette’s accusation, that he had come over to see Madame with the most friendly of intentions, while—worse still—if they were detectives they would probably hold him as a suspect and he would have to swallow the bitter pill of calling on Sir Pellinore to get him out of jail.

  He was not left long in doubt. While these thoughts had been flashing through his mind the two men had stood up and stepped towards him. The one with the gun was short and stout, with a plump face and round, innocent, baby-blue eyes; the other was a much younger fellow, of the dark, Provençal type, and walked with a limp.

  While the fat man continued to cover him with the gun the other walked round behind him, frisked him and removed the pistol from his hip-pocket. The manner of the frisking was so slickly expert that after it was over Gregory had little doubt where he stood. He was in the hands of the French police.

  The fat man spoke with a swift, clipped accent.

  ‘Monsieur, I am Police Lieutenant Ribaud, of the Sûreté Générale. It has been reported to us that you visited this apartment under suspicious circumstances. I require you to accompany us to Headquarters for questioning. Here is my authority.’ He flashed a cellophane-covered paste-board under Gregory’s nose for a second and slipped it back into his waistcoat-pocket.

  ‘I’m delighted to meet you, Lieutenant Ribaud,’ said Gregory, regaining his savoir-faire, ‘but I can’t imagine that anything I’ve done here is in any way illegal, and what can have given Mademoiselle Pichón the extraordinary idea that I’m a spy simply passes my comprehension.’

  ‘You came here to inquire for Madame,’ Collette stormed. Two hours later you returned, told a plausible story that you were alone in Paris, and induced me to go to dinner with you. My evenings are my own, so why should I not accept? I did so, but while I was changing my clothes you took the opportunity of going through Madame’s filing-cabinet. Whether you have stolen anything from it I do not yet know, but you may have done so.

  ‘Madame has many political enemies. She is more hated by the Nazis than any other woman in France. We cannot prove it, but both the police and her friends believe that she was deliberately run down by German agents last week. Those devils would stop at nothing to put her out of the way now that Germany has made a peace move, for they know that all her influence would be brought to bear against its acceptance. You pretend that you are an Englishman. I cannot tell whether that is true or not, but you are certainly a foreigner and it is quite clear that you meant to make friends with me so that you could have the run of this apartment. Why should you do that if you are not one of Madame’s enemies? I repeat, I believe you to be a Nazi spy.’

  Little Collette had become a changed woman. Her dark eyes were flashing with a hatred which she did not attempt to conceal and she spoke with extraordinary venom.

  ‘Chérie, you’re quite mistaken,’ Gregory assured her. Look, here’s my English passport.’

  As he produced it from his pocket she waved it contemptuously aside. Passports can be faked. You went to Madame’s filing-cabinet. If you look you will see that the drawer still remains a centimetre open. I dust the room every day and I will swear that the drawer was flush with the cabinet this morning. No one else has been in this flat since Madame left it except yourself.’

  ‘Well, well. Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Gregory amiably. ‘I had half an hour to pass while you were beautifying yourself for my delight. What if I was at a loose end after I’d finished the paper, and did pull that drawer open out of idle curiosity? Very reprehensible conduct on the part of any guest, no doubt, but hardly grounds for accusing him of being a Nazi spy.’

  ‘It is enough, in view of the activities of the owner of this apartment, for us to desire your presence at the Sûreté-Générale, Monsieur,’ said Ribaud. ‘What have you in that parcel?’

  ‘A couple of bottles of champagne,’ Gregory laughed. ‘I had hoped to persuade Mademoiselle to share them with me. Surely that proves the—er—innocence of my intentions?’

  The Frenchman caught the point and smiled with quick humour, but Collette was not amused.

  ‘You think you are very clever, Monsieur, do you not? But let me tell you that after I found you out I only encouraged you for my own purposes. I would not drink with you now if it were my last chance to drink on this earth.’

  ‘Isn’t life strange?’ murmured Gregory with a wicked twinkle in his eye. ‘Just think of it; you won’t even drink with me now, whereas if you hadn’t happened to notice that the drawer of the cabinet was open you’d probably have had your head pillowed on my manly chest by this time and be deriving considerable pleasure from the thought that in due course you were going to give way to my persuasive powers and let me sleep with you.’

  To his delight, Collette flushed deep pink with rage and stamping her little foot, cried angrily: ‘Monsieur! How dare you! I …’

  Ribaud intervened abruptly. ‘We waste time, Mademoiselle. I regret it exceedingly, but we shall have to trouble you also to accompany us to the Sûreté so that you can sign a statement. Will you be good enough to lead the way? You, Corbin, will follow; Monsieur will go next, and I will bring up the rear so that Monsieur may not be tempted into any foolishness on the way downstairs.’

  They filed out in that order, went down in the lift and crossed the hall of the block as though they were four acquaintances going off somewhere together, but immediately they had stepped out into the darkness of the pavement Gregory felt his right wrist grabbed and the limping Corbin snapped a single handcuff on to it, the other of the pair being attached to his own left wrist. The gentlemen of the Sûreté were evidently taking no chances of his getting away in the black-out. Round the corner a police-car was waiting for them, and a few minutes later they were at Police Headquarters.

  In a small room on the ground floor a uniformed Sergeant took particulars of Gregory’s passport and details of the arrest. Mademoiselle Collette Pichon wrote out a full statement, signed it, and ignoring Gregory’s courteous ‘goodnight’ accepted the offer of the gallant French police that one of their cars should take her home.

  Gregory was then led to a cell, and when he had reached it Ribaud turned to him and said: ‘It is our business to search you, Monsieur. I trust that you will raise no objections, for it would be completely useless to do so.’

  Gregory shrugged. ‘All right, go ahead. The last thing I wish to do is to obstruct you in the execution of your duties.’

  He partially undressed at their request and they not only emptied his pockets but also ran over his garments, feeling every seam to make sure that nothing was sewn inside it. On his removing his shoes they found under the thin inner soles the balance of the 5,000 Reichsmarks which he had brought out of Germany.

  Before leaving for Paris that morning it had occurred to him that Madame Dubois might just possibly give him information which would make him wish to attempt an immediate return into Germany without waiting for the money to be sent out from England, and he had replaced the Reichs-marks in his shoes simply because he did not consider it wise t
o carry so large a sum loose about his person.

  The two French detectives made no comment whatever on this interesting find and placed the notes with the other belongings which they had taken from his pockets, but Gregory knew that his carrying a big wad of German notes in so unusual a manner was going to take some pretty skilful explaining away, and he was quick to realise that his prospects of getting the French police to release him after a cursory examination were more than halved by this unfortunate discovery. When they finally left him with a brief ‘goodnight’ they took all his possessions except his clothes, shoes, cigarettes and lighter. Lighting a cigarette he had a look round his cell.

  It was a quite comfortable cell, but that was little consolation to him. He thought with regret of the lawn sheets and rich hangings of the room which he had expected to occupy that night at the Saint Regis, and cursed his folly in having been so impatient to get at Madame Dubois’ secrets instead of having waited a while until an opportunity had arisen on which he could have arranged to have remained alone in her flat.

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed he realised suddenly that he was very tired. He had had only two hours’ sleep very early that morning, and the amount he had managed to get in on the previous day had hardly made up for the tremendous strain through which he had passed the night before. It was no good crying over spilt milk, however, and there would be time enough in the morning to consider the repercussions of this new muddle in which he had landed himself. Pulling off his shirt and socks he crawled into the narrow, iron bed and almost immediately drifted off to sleep.

  It had been only about a quarter-past twelve when he had turned in, so although he was awakened at seven by a warder he felt considerably better for his good night’s rest. His cheerfulness was not further restored, however, by having to content himself with a cold wash in a microscopic basin instead of luxuriating in a hot bath.