The Dark Secret of Josephine rb-5

by Dennis Wheatley

  The General smiled. "I see you are well practised in discretion." Then, after glancing at his watch, he added: "It is now a quarter to eight Two hours should be enough forme to give Gusiot his instruc­tions and for him to make his preparations. Be ready to join him in a coach at ten o'clock."

  For a short time they discussed various political leaders in Paris, and the chances of getting them to combine in a coup d'etat; then they shook hands on their bargain, and Pichegru told his club-footed soldier servant to see Roger safely out of the Rathaus.

  In his attic at the Drei Konige he changed from the imigri uniform back into his own clothes, repacked his valise and went downstairs for a meal. He had not long finished it when the coach arrived for him. Darkness prevented his seeing the man in it except as a vague figure, and as soon as he had taken his place with a muttered greeting, the vehicle drove out of the inn yard.

  A reluctant but instinctive caution kept both men from speaking until they were clear of the town, and even then they made no mention of the business they were bent upon. For a while they discussed the war, then they settled down in their corners to doze as well as they could while the coach jolted its way through the night averaging some eight miles an hour.

  For well over half the journey they travelled by the road along the right bank of the Rhine, which was in the hands of the French; and as they had an escort of hussars they were nowhere challenged.- But at about five in the morning they reached the fork road, the right arm of which ran north-east through Darmstadt to Frankfurt; and, as the territory they were about to enter was in a state of dubious neutrality, they decided that it would be best to dispense-with their escort

  In the grey pre-dawn light Roger now saw his companion properly for the first time. He was a well set-up man of about thirty with flashing black eyes and a fine upturned moustache: and Roger was relieved to see he had taken the precaution, against failing in with the Austrians, of obtaining for himself a suit of ill-fitting but adequate civilian clothes. However, they encountered no Austrian troops, breakfasted heartily in Darmstadt and, soon after ten o'clock, crossed the bridge over the Main into Frankfurt,

  Without difficulty they found the Judengasse, and the dwelling in it of the banker Bauer. It proved to be a sizeable mansion and above its door, as a sign, there hung a red shield. Roger and Gusiot went inside. The ground floor was in use as a counting-house, and when Roger told one of the young men there that he wished to see the banker in person, they were obsequiously bowed through to a private section partitioned off from the main office.

  A Jew of about fifty, clad in the traditional cap and gown, rose to meet them. Keeping his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe, he begged them to be seated and enquired their business. Roger produced the order and enquired if, when filled in for a million francs, it could be met

  Bauer asked a moment's grace, went to a cabinet and compared the signature on the order with one he had there, then he said: "Nobleborn, no one could doubt that the British Treasury is good for a mere fifty thousand pounds; but in these troublesome times one does not keep such a sum in one's cellar. How soon do you require it?"

  "How soon can you produce it?" Roger asked.

  "Permit me, nobleborn, to consult my sons." Bauer replied; and, on Roger's nodding, he rang a handbell four times. In response three young Jews, the eldest of whom appeared to be only in his early twenties, came in. For a few minutes their father talked with them in the tongue of their race, then he turned to Roger and said:

  "Nobleborn, if you will accept mainly marks and thaler, in four days' time we shall be prepared to meet your order with the equivalent of one million francs in gold."

  Roger glanced at Gusiot and the Frenchman nodded. The formalities were soon completed, then the banker and his three sons accompanied them to the front door. The youngest, a stripling of eighteen, went out to the coach with them and said to Roger:

  "Pardon me, nobleborn, but it is evident that you are a trusted agent of the English. Do you think there might be a future in England for a young man like myself?"

  With the habitual kindness that was second nature to Roger, providing due respect was paid to him, he smiled, and replied: "Why not? We have Lloyd's House where more shipping is insured than anywhere else in the world, the India Company and the Hudson Bay. With the coming of the mechanical age Britain's own industries are booming, and loans for their expansion are always in good demand. On London's 'Change in these days many a fortune is being made by shrewd men within a few years."

  "I thank you, nobleborn." The young Jew bowed low. "I have hopes of coming there to settle one day. Pointing to the red shield above their heads he added: "There are so many of us in the German States named Bauer that my branch of the family has decided to be known in future as the Rothschilds. Would you be gracious enough to remember that, and should I come to England put in a good word for me where you can, because our house, although not a very rich one yet, has done its utmost to meet your heavy demand upon it promptly."

  "Indeed I will. On my return to England I will tell Mr. Rose, who decides all things at the Treasury, of the great assistance your family has been to us." Roger gave the promise willingly; the future being a closed book to him, he could not know that he was pledging his support to a man whose financial genius and unshakable faith in Britain would make him second only to Wellington in bringing about the final downfall of Napoleon.

  Gusiot and Roger then adjourned to a good inn for a meal. After it, with Bauer's written promise to pay, the Captain set out on his return journey. Roger, now aching in every limb from his many hours in jolting coaches, took a room and went straight to bed.

  Next morning, September the 28th, he caught the diligence into Mainz, which was in the hands of a French garrison. There, he hired another travelling coach and, after some trouble, two French-speaking coachmen to drive it. Late in the afternoon he crossed the Rhine, now heading west. On the night of the 30th, the cumulative effect of the jolting forced him to sleep in a bed for the night at Verdun. But without any further break of more than a couple of hours in his journey, he reached the outskirts of Paris soon after midday on October the 2nd.

  As the coach drew level with a big rambling building in the Faubourg St. Martin, Roger halted it. Before the Revolution the place had been a convent, but a board attached to its tall wall announced that it was now a depot for army clothing. Having settled up with his two coach­men, Roger picked up his little valise and walked through one of the tall gates, thus giving the men the impression that the depot was his destination. Of its janitor he enquired for an imaginary Citizen Rollo, and the man obligingly sent his son to ask the heads of various depart­ments if they had anyone of that name working under them, with, of course, negative results. Twenty minutes having been occupied in this way Roger walked out to find, as he expected, that he had again freed himself from the possibility of hired drivers gossiping about where he had come from at the inn at which he meant to stay.

  Half a mile down the road stood the Porte St. Martin. During the Terror, this gate, and all the others of Paris, had been manned as barriers at which passes had to be shown; but he found that it was now open again to both inward and outward traffic between dawn and sunset Another mile's walk brought him to La Belle Etoile in the Rue de l'Arbe Sec, not far from the Louvre. Going in he found the landlord in his little office, and asked for a room.

  To Roger's amusement and satisfaction Maitre Blanchard did not recognize him, and if anyone in Paris was likely to have done so it should have been he; for he had known Roger first as the impecunious

  secretary of the Marquis de Rochambeau, seen him mysteriously blossom into a young nobleman who had the entre at Versailles, and later proved a most stalwart friend to him, with the knowledge that he was a secret agent, during the dark days of the Terror.

  As they were alone together, and it was during the quiet of the afternoon, Roger laughingly declared himself. The good Norman was overjoyed at seeing him again, and ran to fetch hi
s wife from the kitchen. Both of them fussed over him, Mere Blanchard declared that she would cook him his favourite dish of duck casseroled in red wine for dinner, and her husband promised to produce his best Burgundy and oldest Calvados.

  When they escorted him upstairs, most poignant memories flooded back to him, as when last he had lived there he had loved and lost his beautiful Athenals; but, knowing that, they tactfully refrained from giving him his old room.

  Two hours later he dined with them in their private parlour, and, during the meal, they gave him the latest news. Paris was once more in a ferment—this time on account of the final decisions taken by the old Convention on the form of the new Constitution. The clauses had been argued with great violence ever since June, when Boissy d'Anglas, a Liberal Deputy who had recently come much to the fore, had put forward the recommendations of a Committee which had been debating the question all through the spring.

  The salient points of the Committee's findings were that the executive power must once more be divorced from the legislative, that there should be two chambers instead of one, that the members of both must be owners of property, that universal suffrage should be abolished and that only those who paid taxes should be entitled to a vote.

  While these proposals did not deprive the people of any of the real liberties they had won by the Revolution, they were clearly aimed at destroying once and for all the dictatorship of the proletariat and concentrating power in the hands of the middle-classes. In conse­quence, all the old catch phrases of the Revolution had been revived By the mob orators, and the surviving Jacobins, who still formed a formidable bloc in the Chamber, had fought them tooth and nail.

  The re-establishment of an executive independent of the law­makers was denounced as a move to restore the monarchy or so it had been decided that it should consist of a Directory having five members, one of whom was to retire annually.

  The measure for the two Chambers had been agreed: the lower, called the Cinq-Cents, was to have 500 members and to initiate legisla­tion; the upper, called the Conseil des Anciens, was to have 250 members and the power to veto any measures passed by the lower for one year. But the property qualification for election was ruled out by one motion of the Jacobins, and by another they secured a vote to anyone willing to tax themselves to the value of three days’ work.

  These brakes upon further reaction had not aroused' much opposi­tion amongst the general public, but the arrangements for the election of members to the two new Chambers had provoked a universal outcry.

  As Mr. Pitt had rightly appreciated during his -talk with Roger, a free General Election in France must sweep away at one stroke every ex-Terrorist from the new governing body. Barras, Tallien, Freron and the other Thermidorians who had conspired to bring about Robespierre's fall, and still held the reins of power, had been equally quick to appreciate this, so they had allied themselves with the remaining Jacobins to prevent it To the indignation of the electors, they had forced through a decree by which two thirds of the members of the two new Chambers must be selected from the deputies of the old Convention, leaving the electors only the choice of which individual members they should return.

  To the vast majority of the people the Convention stood for murder, arbitrary arrest, the seizure of property, forced loans, and every other form of injustice and tyranny. It had, too, brought France to a state of poverty and general misery undreamed of in the old days of the monarchy. In consequence the idea that it was to be perpetuated under the thin disguise of a new name, by a majority of its members continuing as the rulers of the country, was already causing riots which threatened to develop into a mass movement aimed at over­throwing the government.

  Roger was delighted to hear all this, as it showed that the state of popular opinion could not have been more favourable to the Allies' designs, and that if Pichegru could be persuaded to march upon the city there really was every reason to believe that it would fall into his hands like a ripe plum. He then asked about conditions in general, to which Maitre Blanchard replied with a bitter laugh:

  "If anything, Monsieur, they are worse than when you left us. Food is scarce, prices high. For an honest silver ecu one can get a purse full of the republican paper money, yet we are forced to accept it; and the streets become ever fuller of poor fellows disabled in the wars begging for a crust to keep the life in their bodies. It has become a popular jest to say: 'Under Robespierre we starved and dared not complain; now we may complain but that will not prevent us from dying of hunger*."

  "At least people who have made themselves unpopular with the mobs are no longer liable to be set upon and strung up to a lamp­post" Roger remarked, but Mere Blanchard quickly put in:

  "Monsieur is mistaken about that; only it is a different type of people who are now the victims of a different kind of mob. The young bourgeois have invented a new form of sport. By night packs of them hunt out and kill one or more of the many thousands of so-called 'patriots' who held posts as jailers, police spies and minor officials of all sorts during the Terror. Few people would now object to them throwing the busts of Marat in the sewers, or booing when the 'Marseillaise' is played in the theatres, and some whom they knife or strangle may deserve their fate, but others do not; and it is wrong that any man should be done to death without a trial."

  Blanchard nodded. "On account of these jeunes gens, Monsieur will be wise to keep a sharp look-out should he go into the streets at night They call themselves by such names as the Companions of the

  Sun, and the Companions of Jesus, but many of them are little better than bands of licensed robbers."

  "Licensed?" Roger picked him up. "Do you mean that they are actually protected by the Government?"

  "Not officially; but the authorities make no attempt to put them

  down."

  "It surprises me greatly that while there are so many declared atheists still in the Chamber it should tolerate any body calling itself the Companions of Jesus."

  With a shrug, Blanchard replied: "In matters of religion, as in all else, everything is at sixes and sevens. Not long since, Boissy d'Anglas denounced it in the most violent terms as pandering to childish and absurd superstition; but he went on in the same speech to say that there must be no further religious persecution. His views, I think, express the opinion of even the Moderates in the Chamber. They are hoping that if held up long enough to contempt and ridicule it will die out; but, of course, it will not. Now that they no longer need fear arrest, hundreds of priests have secretly returned to France; and all over the country people are attending Masses with all the greater fervour from the right to do so openly having been so long denied them."

  "You should add, though," remarked his wife, "that side by side with this evidence of piety, never before has there been so much open sinning."

  "That is true," he agreed. "In the main hunger is responsible, for from the age of twelve upwards there is now hardly a female among the working population who will not readily sell the use of her body for the price of a meal. But vice of every kind is also rampant among the better off. For that Barras, and others of his kidney, are much to blame, as they set the fashion by publicly flaunting a new mistress every week. Yet it is not entirely that When you were last here many thousands of men and women were in prison. Believing themselves to have no chance of escaping the guillotine, to keep up their courage they adopted a philosophy of ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die'. On their release they emerged imbued with this cynicism, and with life once more in their grasp the younger ones gave themselves up to the wildest profligacy. Last winter the jeunesse doree, as they are called, organized 'Victim Balls’ in which no one was allowed to participate who had not lost a near relative by the guillotine. For these, both the men and women dressed their hair high leaving the neck bare, as it had been the custom to arrange it immediately before execution; and at the beginning of each dance they cried in chorus 'Come, let us dance on the tombs!' It is said, too, that the costumes worn at these parties are becom
ing ever more shameless, and that many young girls of good birth now openly rival the demi-mondaines, by according their favours to any man willing to give them a jewel or provide them with elegant clothes."

  For some three hours longer Roger absorbed the atmosphere of this post-Robespierrean Paris through the reasonably unprejudiced accounts of his honest host and hostess; then, as he was about to leave them for the night he asked Maitre Blanchard:

  "Do you know what has become of Joseph Fouché, the Deputy for the Lower Loire?"

  The Norman shook his head. "No; that one keeps very quiet these days. Last autumn, by denouncing others whose deeds were no less black than his own, he managed to coat himself in a layer of white­wash. But he must realize that it is no more than skin deep, and that a false step might yet bring about his ruin. I imagine, though, that being a Deputy he is still living in Paris."

  "Could you find out for me tomorrow; and, if he is, his present address?"

  "Certainly, Monsieur. The officials of the Chamber must know his whereabouts, so there should be no difficulty about that"

  Next day, in accordance with his principle of never taking any unnecessary risk, Roger went out only to call on Harris, the banker in the Rue du Bac upon whom his orders for British secret service funds had been made, and draw a considerable sum in gold. But from the Blanchards and the inn servants he learned of the rising tide of unrest that was now agitating the city. The decrees of Fructidor— as were termed those concerning the packing of two-thirds of the seats in the new Chambers with members of the old Convention, and others similarly unpopular passed in that month of the revolutionary calendar —had been rejected by all but one of the Primary Assemblies in the forty Sections of Paris, and deputations by the score carrying petitions demanding that they should be rescinded were besieging the Convention.

  In the afternoon Blanchard told Roger that Fouché had left his old apartment in Rue Saint Honore and was said to be living in a small house in the Passage Pappilote, on the Left Bank near the old Club of the Cordeliers. From a big trunk that for several years had been stored for him up in the attic of La Belle Etoile, Roger collected a sword cane, and a small double-barrelled pistol which would go into the pocket of his greatcoat Then, after he had supped, he started out with the intention of getting to grips with his enemy.