by Desmond Cory
“Best in France,” said Madison with some pride. “Only one of its kind, apart from one in the Deuxième Bureau which isn’t quite so up-to-date. I’ll tell you all about it some time when we’re not quite so busy. As it is, we come to the third curious point, i.e., that we’ve traced the reference to this Jean Gustave Leblanc whose name is quoted in connection with Gervais. Now this letter was found, or so I gather, in the S.S. files, and the assumption is that it was never sent. Nevertheless, Leblanc was duly sent to Marburg on the 30th of September, 1944.”
“And Gervais?”
“Gervais wasn’t.”
Johnny stroked his chin thoughtfully. He said: “They’ve been a little bit too clever this time.”
“Yes, I think they have. Or rather, they’ve been diabolically ingenious, but old Martin Marprelate here is one up on them.” Madison stroked his machine lovingly. “There’s still a few more dodges that we can pull on this letter, y’know, but it’ll take a little longer.” He thumbed down the switch on the desk and said: “Mademoiselle Henriot? Can you spare a moment?”
“Yes, sir,” said a thin female voice from the loudspeaker. “I shall come up at once.”
“Good girl,” said Madison indulgently, and switched off. “We’ll let the analyst boys have a go at the ink with their jolly little reagents. There’s a chance they may be able to tell you that this signature was not made in 1944, but at some other, more recent time. You follow me?”
Johnny said: “I think so.”
“Yes, all right, then. After that, it’s your pigeon, old boy, and you can take it away with you and roast it and eat it, for all I care. And talking about billing and cooing, have you met our Mademoiselle Henriot?”
“I think so,” said Johnny smiling.
“Ah, yes,” said Mademoiselle Henriot, examining him with wide blue eyes. “I brought Mr. Fedora to you this morning, Captain. I mean Monsieur Darreaux,” she added hurriedly.
“Exactly so. Careless talk costs pigeons,” said Madison reprovingly. “We all know Mr. Fedora’s Mr. Fedora, but we mustn’t say so because the Colonel says not. Remember that, my child, and you won’t go far wrong; and, constantly hearing the last dictum in mind, you may trip down to the laboratories and give this envelope to Mr. Thorpe. He will know exactly what to do with it.”
The Henriot shot one of her most ravishing smiles at Johnny, took the letter and went out of the room, her silk stockings glinting provocatively in the fluorescent light.
“Nice legs, eh?” said Madison happily. “Quel châssis, as you French put it. Ah, well – mustn’t dilly-dally; large lumps of work to get through. Can you drop in about the same time tomorrow for Thorpe’s stuff?”
Johnny said: “I think so.”
“It’d be the hell of a nice change if you cloak-and-dagger boys were certain about something, you know. You’ve got no idea how wonderful it feels… If you go out the back way, you’ll dodge Mony, old chap. She’s been on tenterhooks ever since she found out you were coming to Paris, and is all set for a really high-class seduction. What a wonderful thing is reputation. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything that I haven’t, really.”
Johnny strolled over to the window and looked out. He said: “I think I’ll go out the front way, if you don’t mind. Somebody’s been tailing me all day, and I don’t want him to miss me.”
“Well, if that’s your story, no doubt you’re wise to stick to it. These women are all alike, that’s all I can say. If a man’s murdered a dozen other human beings in cold blood, they’ll fall all over him. It’s not fair, s’elp me, it ain’t.”
“Have a look down there, if you don’t believe me,” said Johnny, stepping away from the window. “Tall fellow in a grey macintosh. I’m rather hoping he’ll try something on the way back; if he doesn’t, I certainly will.”
“Oh! Ah!” Madison stared out from behind the curtain into the darkening street. “Well, mind he doesn’t knock you off, old boy. It only makes trouble for the Records Office, and besides, Mony wouldn’t like it.”
Johnny said: “Yes, I’ll make a note of that.”
“Good-oh. Well, chuff-chuff, Johnny. Mind number one, that’s all.”
“Chuff-chuff,” said Johnny moodily, opening the door. Privately, he was thinking that Madison really talked too much.
He went down the brown-carpeted stairs and out of the front entrance of Western Defence H.Q., into the Place de l’Etoile. He checked his watch with the clock in the hall that pointed to half-past eight, and wandered down the pavement, barely preventing himself from nodding to the stranger in the grey macintosh and the blue pork-pie hat who was leaning against the wall ostensibly reading a newspaper. Johnny felt vaguely disgusted. To be tailed in quite so obvious a manner was, he felt, almost insulting; whoever the gentleman was, it was fairly certain that he was not one of the von Hettering outfit. They would be anything but amateurs. He decided to solve his problem at the earliest possible moment and set off down the street at a fast walk. Behind him, Grey Macintosh folded up his newspaper and sauntered along in nonchalant pursuit.
Johnny took the first side-turning that he came to, into a comparatively deserted street which joined on to a larger road some twenty yards farther down, selected a deep doorway just before the corner and stepped thoughtfully into the darkness. He pulled his hat farther over his eyes, turned up the collar of his macintosh, placed his hands in his pockets and, standing as close into the shadows as he could go, achieved a very fair imitation of the Invisible Man. He listened alertly and almost at once heard the footsteps of Grey Macintosh; as Johnny had hoped, his follower had assumed that he had gone straight round the corner and was walking very fast in an endeavour to catch up. He passed within an arm’s length of Johnny, staring at the road in front of him, and moved out of sight; Johnny at once stepped out after him and watched him. He walked into the pool of lamplight that marked the joining of the two streets and stood for a moment looking up and down the main road; Johnny had taken exactly two steps towards him when there was a soft plop that echoed rather strangely in the deserted street, and Grey Macintosh folded slowly up from the knees and hit the ground with a most unpleasant bumping noise.
By the time he was still, Johnny was standing beside him and looking down the road in the direction whence the shot had come.
A little man without a hat was running down the road at full pelt, pushing a pistol into his pocket as he ran. He had covered some five more yards before Johnny’s bullet hit him exactly in the back of the head and emerged just above his right eyebrow, and somehow managed another five yards before he died. In view of the distance and the tricky light, Johnny considered it as nice a shot as any he had ever done. The little man’s views on the subject must remain unascertainable.
The potting of the little man had been for Johnny something of a conditioned reflex, as was the quick glance up the street that assured him no one was in the vicinity.
His next actions were to replace his Mauser into its shoulder-holster and to consider what to do. After perhaps three seconds’ deliberation, he took the late owner of the grey macintosh by the shoulders and heaved him clear of the lamplight into a patch of comparative shadow; then bent down and began to go through his pockets. He found a wallet almost at once and found it to contain a fat wad of visiting-cards, all of which proved that Monsieur Georges Leport was an expert at practically every job under the sun – until he found one that explained this situation.
M. GEORGES LEPORT
of the
JOUSSET DETECTIVE AGENCY
Johnny raised one eyebrow, replaced the visiting-cards and the wallet and stood up once more. He walked rapidly round to where the little man was still lying, and was just about to perform a similar autopsy when a car came down the street, the headlights exposing the road with the callous indifference of an operating-room arc-light.
Johnny sighed to himself, took the little man by the armpits and swung him with one sweeping movement on to his shoulder. Singing the Marseillaise at
the top of his voice, he lurched dangerously across the road in front of the oncoming car. The driver stood on the brakes and the car slewed wickedly across the road, coming to a halt with its wheels touching the pavement.
“Fool!” said the driver, leaning out of the window.
“What the blazes are you ruddy drunkards playing at?” He threw open the door and sprang out into the road. “I’ve a damned good mind to knock your nose through the back of your head. What the hell have you got there, anyway?” He stared at the little man, hanging limply across Johnny’s shoulders.
It was at this precise moment that Johnny’s elbow landed slightly to the right of the apex of his jaw and his stare suddenly became cross-eyed. Johnny held him upright with his left hand and addressed the other occupant of the car.
“If you do anything as silly as screaming,” he said crisply, “I shall blow your boy friend’s brains out. I’m at least two murders behind schedule this evening.”
The lady’s mouth was already wide open, and for a second it looked as if not even the safety of her bel ami could stifle the forthcoming explosion; Johnny’s fist automatically crumpled into a ball ready to establish forcible contact with her determined and prominent chin. But mind triumphed almost at once over matter and she tried to swallow instead. By the time she had finished choking, Johnny had expertly bundled both the driver and the little man into the back of the car and was climbing cheerfully into the driving-seat.
“This is really remarkably kind of you,” he said. “Now where would you like to be dropped?”
From her expression he gathered that she would have no objection to being dropped in the river, providing Johnny moved on as quickly as possible in an exactly opposite direction. She shrank into the corner of the seat, palpitating visibly.
“Come, now,” said Johnny kindly, as he set the car rolling calmly forwards, “there’s no need for alarm. Regard me as you would Porthos, Aramis or any other dashing young cavalier of crime. It is possible” – he rounded the corner and placed his foot gently on the accelerator – “that you are acquainted with the works of Mr. Leslie Charteris, as well as those of the great Dumas.” He removed one hand from the steering-wheel and raised his hat reverently. “In which case you will have no difficulty whatsoever in understanding what I mean… If you don’t mind, we shall head for the Bois de Boulogne. A charming place, so romantically isolated at this time of night; admirably suited to the disposal of bodies. Though, of course, madame, one would hardly wish to undertake the disposal of a body so admirably proportioned as your own…”
He burbled on happily, while the car – which, he was pleased to note, was a custom-built Fiat, a beauty – streaked through the traffic, its nose steadily pointing towards the Porte de la Muette; and while the woman’s face, a beautiful face if one ignored the forbiddingly Hapsburg set of the chin, slowly reflected a whole range of expressions from desperate alarm to anxious uncertainty.
At one point in a scurrilous and completely fictitious account of Johnny’s activities while a member of an apache gang at the Boul’ Mich’ she ventured on a bright but somehow rather practiced smile. During the account she had stealthily contrived to remove her rings and a very valuable diamond bracelet from their normal positions and to insinuate them inside one of her silk stockings, a proceeding which Johnny watched with some interest in the driving-mirror.
Eventually he rounded the park and, selecting a suitably shady and deserted spot, eased the car to a halt. After thoughtfully watching an indignant pair of lovers out of sight round the corner, he turned to the lady with an apologetic gesture and tapped her lightly on the chin.
He got out of the car and carried the woman out, laying her carefully on the grass; then returned to the car and with some difficulty extricated her friend from the back seat. He struck his victim once more on the back of the head, in order to ensure that the other’s sleep would not be disturbed; then placed him beside the lady and carefully entangled their arms together. He stood back and surveyed his handiwork with the abstracted air of a Michelangelo eyeing a completed statue. On the whole, he considered it likely that they would not be disturbed until one or the other woke up.
Whistling, he went back to the car, vaulted into the driving-seat and, after a quick glance at his little friend in the back – for whom he was beginning to feel something approaching affection – he allowed the car to roll forwards once more, this time up the Avenue Foch and towards the unassuming flat where Pierre Elder normally lived. He pulled the little man on to his shoulders once more. Elder lived in a neighbourhood where the sight of unconscious men on the shoulders of other, more upright citizens was merely considered one of the natural spectacles of civilised life.
Nodding to Pierre as he carried his burden through the doorway he said: “Get rid of the car,”
Pierre, looking thoroughly bored, walked over towards the car, while Johnny passed through into what Pierre referred to as his sitting-room and laid his capture on the sofa. Then he leaned thankfully against the mantelpiece, lit a cigarette and regarded the corpse.
After taking a few deep draws, he walked across to the window and drew the curtains. Then he turned to the little man. He took a penknife from his trousers-pocket and, cutting scientifically down the back of the coat, was able to draw it off with very little trouble. Nursing his two trophies, he went over to the gas-fire and began a systematic examination of the contents of the pockets.
They gave him singularly little information. The revolver was a diabolical-looking weapon of Italian design, its magazine containing nine rounds of .32 ammunition. One round had been fired and ejected, probably for the purpose of providing the Paris police with a convenient clue. In all respects the gun was quite unremarkable although the handle appeared well-rubbed and the mechanism was in smooth working order. A large and bulbous silencer had been fitted over the barrel; Johnny detached it, looked at it and let one eyebrow climb painstakingly up his forehead. The silencer was undoubtedly of the design issued to departments of IIIB, the German Overseas Intelligence Units. This, Johnny considered, was definitely a favourable sign.
He dug once more into the pockets with rather less confidence than before and brought out a small and grimy handkerchief, a small wad of cotton-waste that had clearly been used for cleaning the pistol, a fountain-pen with a loose cap which Johnny regarded with serious misgivings but which turned out to be perfectly innocuous, a box of matches, a cheap cigarette-case containing two nauseous cigarettes, three hundred and twenty francs lying loose and in shocking condition, two grocery bills addressed to M. André Battiste of the rue de Rivoli, and a paper-clip. Johnny crumpled up the bills and threw them away – he knew perfectly well that German agents do not carry on them proof of their identity when engaged in minor assassinations, and felt somewhat hurt that they should consider him fool enough not to be aware of this – and spent something like five minutes looking at the paperclip, turning it over and over in his fingers as if it were a rare and unusual jewel. He then picked up his penknife once more, advanced on the unresisting pseudo-Battiste and attacked his trouser-pockets with the same scientific accuracy. He cut them open and examined them carefully, very carefully – he remembered a case that had hinged on a grain of cocaine in a dead man’s trousers-pocket – but found absolutely nothing.
“M-mm,” he said, and sat down beside the little man. He threw his cigarette-end vaguely in the direction of the fire and began a further examination. He searched the little man’s hair, the little man’s ears, the little man’s hands, the little man’s shoes, and finally cut the little man’s clothes completely off and subjected him to a scrutiny that, had he been alive, the little man would certainly have found acutely embarrassing, But there were no helpful tattoo-marks anywhere on the little man’s pale and not too clean person, whereupon Johnny swore quietly to himself and went through the entire performance once more, with even greater care but with no different results.
“Little man,” he said, sitting back on the sofa and
searching for a cushion, “you’ve had a busy day. It’s unfortunate that you’re destined to end it in a coal-cellar.”
He picked up one of the discarded grocery bills, uncrumpled it, took out a pencil and scribbled swiftly on the back:
‘I’m going out again. Suggest
you put little Ernest in the
cellar for the time being.’
He placed this note in a prominent position on the mantelpiece, then sat down once more, ruffled his hair with his hand and indulged in a bout of serious thinking. He had drawn the expected blank with the sharpshooter, except for one thing which would conceivably prove of assistance, and which was adhering to little Ernest’s right hand and to the very tip of his right shoe.
Green paint.
Johnny dabbed lightly at it with his finger; it was still very slightly tacky. And the little man had been otherwise neatly if not fastidiously dressed. The paint was almost certainly a very recent acquisition: no attempt had been made to rub it off and the chances were that it had not even been noticed. It was very interesting.
Eventually Johnny picked up the shoe, wrapped it up in a sheet of Pierre’s newspaper, and went out of the house. The Paris taxis were in the habit of pointedly ignoring that immediate neighbourhood, but he was able to pick up a prowler after a few minutes’ walking and directed it to the spot where his little reconstruction of the old Wild West had taken place. Having arrived there, he paid off the driver, clutched his parcel firmly under his arm and started off.
For a very long time he explored the vicinity, moving in ever-widening and irregular circles from his central starting-point. He had been given a very, very long chance indeed, but nevertheless he proposed to make full use of it. He had resigned himself from the beginning to lack of success; and by the time his circle was a quarter of a mile in circumference, that was exactly what he’d got. Nevertheless, he was not bored.
