This Traitor Death

by Desmond Cory

  “Darreaux speaking… Yes… Oh, hell! It’s you Monsieur d’Ambois.”

  “Yes, me. Who d’you think it was, Lili Marlene? Me, I have some progress to report so I ring you up as I promise. It is inconvenient, no?”

  “No.”

  “No? Ah, that is good. Button back the ears, then, and listen. My men have been over this house of yours very carefully, but they do not seem to have encountered any useful pointers. The fingerprinting, that will take time, bien entendu. They have, however, found a gun in a drawer bearing your initials. It is a small 3-mm. Mauser automatic.”

  “Oh, that. I’ll be glad to have it back, if I may; it’s one of my favourites. One of those boys lifted it from me last night.”

  “By all means. It will be returned immediately. Thank you. There was also in the same drawer a service pistol that I presume to be Captain Gervais’s property, and” – he coughed deprecatingly – “a brown shoe wrapped up in paper. Yours, perhaps?”

  “I told you about that, didn’t I? It belonged to the little man I bumped off and left in the coal-cellar. I was taking it along to be examined later, so perhaps you’d like to look after that side of things for me.”

  “It will be a real pleasure. These little things, they can be of the greatest assistance. But I must apologise for troubling you. You will, I assume, be endeavouring to sleep.”

  “Yes, that does seem to be the idea in the near future. Tell me – any news from Machon yet?”

  “But yes. He has just telephoned. Of the women, it appears that one is undoubtedly suffering from appendicitis and has been rushed to hospital, and that the second, the unmarried one, is having a baby. It is possible that I have that the wrong way round, but these things are unimportant, are they not? The last one, aha, that is different. She has vanished unaccountably and the good Machon, he is in pursuit.”

  “Sounds promising. What one is that?”

  “The jeune fille whose legs you say you recall. Mademoiselle Mony Henriot. If, indeed, any of these ladies have the cold feet and have done a bunk – is that not right? – then this is the one we must seek.”

  “Mony Henriot,” said Johnny, sucking the inside of his lower lip. “Thank you, m’sieur, I’ll keep in touch.”

  He replaced the receiver delicately on its cradle, walked over to the dressing-table and selected a clean towel from its top drawer. He remained for a few seconds contemplating the double row of pin-ups that he had arrayed across the glass surface of the dressing-table. Just off centre, perched neatly between a glossy Lana Turner and a kittenishly smiling Marie MacDonald was Holliday’s photograph of the swim-suited Hilse von Hettering. It seemed perfectly in place there and was in the last position, Johnny had decided, where any potential ransackers would expect to find incriminating evidence. The lessons of Edgar Allan Poe had not been wasted upon Johnny.

  “It’s possible,” he said to himself. He leaned farther forward, placed his hand over the top half of the photograph, and scrutinised the lower half keenly. “C’est bien possible. Mais quelle poule, alors! Je voudrais bien être dans les draps de Gervais il y a plusieurs ans – elle a le génie… mais jusqu’au nez, whatever the meaning of that expression may be.” And he turned moodily from his pornographic musings and his studied contemplation of the photograph to stare straight into the eyes of the original.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THEY were light-blue in colour and interrogatory in expression, and their owner was standing nonchalantly in the bathroom doorway. One hand rested on the handle of the door and the other clasped a cream-coloured handbag by its strap.

  The position seemed to Johnny to be extremely graceful. But then, any position in which she was not actually pointing a revolver at his stomach, would have seemed delightful to him.

  “Good morning,” she said composedly.

  “Good morning to you. Forgive my manners; it’s just that your method of appearance struck me as the least bit unconventional. W-won’t you sit down?… You are, of course, the genie of this bottle of shaving lotion?”

  “I think you know who I am,” she said. “And you are Sean Fedora of the British Intelligence. I have wanted to meet you for a very long time.”

  “But too kind,” said Johnny wildly. “Er – well… As you’re here, there doesn’t seem to me much point in asking you how you got here. So what can I do for you?”

  A thin crinkle of amusement outlined her lower eyelids. “I thought you might like to shoot me.”

  “I’m certainly supposed to. Nevertheless – rather a gross breach of the rules of hospitality, don’t you think? Am I to take it you’ve no objection to being shot?”

  “Strong objections.” She reached over to pick up an ashtray, then began to turn it over and over in her thin but unmistakably strong fingers. “I’ve come to do a deal with you, Fedora.”

  Johnny sat down on the bed facing her. “And if I don’t want to deal –?”

  “You don’t have to. All you do is pick up the cards.”

  “Uh-huh. Good ones?”

  “The best.”

  “What can I win with them?”

  “What you want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What do all men want?”

  “All right… Let’s get down to details, shall we? Cigarette?”

  “Thank you, I don’t smoke.”

  “I will, if you don’t mind. All right. Let’s have your proposition.”

  “It’s simple. I’m getting out. I want to get out alive.”

  Johnny struck a match and looked at her over the flame. “Naturally.”

  “It’s too much, you see. The game’s over. It was over in 1945, I suppose. Maybe none of us had the sense to see it. Well – it’s over now, anyway. When I found out that you had been sent here, I knew… never mind. This is it – you want Mai Weill. I’ll give her to you.”

  She was speaking disjointedly, but quite unemotionally. It was almost as though she were thinking aloud.

  Johnny said: “I see. You want to, sell out?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Put it how you like. But this information isn’t of much value, I’m afraid. I know Mai Weill already. When I’ve had a shave and a rest, I’m going round to take her.”

  “Weill is nothing. That is the least valuable of my information… You see – whatever happens, I shall have to kill Weill. That is the first part of my program.”

  “I see. I should not have interrupted you. Please go on.”

  “I am Weill’s second-in-command, you see. She and I know a great many things – things that few others know. And she knows that I know them – she alone. That is why I must get rid of her. Then I can return to Germany and act on my information.”

  “Yes?”

  “You want to know a little of what I have learnt?” She smiled. “Just a little then. I know where the Goering plate is hidden and just how to get at it. I know where the missing gold from the Burgkirchen vault is stored. I know where Skorzeny is hiding and where Kurt Mayer hid the Amsterdam diamonds… I know where Hitler’s body is!…”

  Johnny eyed the tip of his cigarette. He said softly: “I should estimate the potential value of your information at round about one and a half million English pounds.”

  “I know much more –”

  “I don’t doubt it. Go on.”

  “I haven’t said enough? How many times does two go into one and a half million?”

  “Arithmetic’s not my strong point.”

  “Quite a number,” she said. “Quite a number. And you can double that sum and still be economical.”

  “You suggest we go after this money together?”

  “Yes. I must have help, you see, and the best there is. The three million is undoubtedly there, but it has to be taken from the most dangerous men in the world… Some time ago, I decided that if I were to do this thing, I must have one of five men to help me. Jimmy Emerald or Arthur Rickard – or the American, Lloyd Johnson – or Jean de Meyrignac – or –”

/>   “Or Johnny Fedora.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m flattered. That crowd you mentioned would take a lot of stopping.”

  “But you are the one I would have chosen. Emerald speaks better German, true – and Rickard is more experienced. Yet you are, I think, the best. You have brains, and you are used to acting alone – and you are the deadliest man with a gun in Europe. That is your reputation, at least.”

  “Some of your boys are pretty good.”

  “True. But,” she said with unconscious irony, “I could never trust a Nazi. And – there are other considerations.”

  “Such as –?”

  “I can, without difficulty, imagine you… dans les draps de Gervais.”

  There was a lengthy silence. Then Johnny passed a hand wearily across his forehead and said: “You must forgive me. This affair seems to have involved me in a plethora of charming young ladies – if that’s the word I want. My head will soon be completely turned.”

  She smiled. “It was really rather unfair of me to overhear your little monologue. After that, it will naturally be difficult to convince me that you find me – unattractive.”

  “It’s naturally difficult for any man to convince any woman of that.”

  “You’re a cynic, I see. Surprising how our profession seems to breed them.” She rose to her feet and moved across to the dressing-table, where she eyed the photograph with a certain detached curiosity. “But it is true that I have changed. I do not care to remember how many years ago that photograph was taken.”

  “The legs are distinctly recognisable, however.”

  “Yes?” She extended one gossamer-clad limb and inspected it with lazy approval. “You like them?”

  “They might be described as breath-taking. For the purposes of this conversation, they will be.”

  She examined herself in the mirror and made the slightest of adjustments to her skirt.

  “I have managed to keep my figure – yes. It has not always been easy. But I have always had a certain pride in my appearance – that, and the length of time in which I have been a Frenchwoman… it has enabled me to acquire a certain chic.”

  “I’m almost convinced. Your face, too, is almost beyond criticism.”

  “Almost?” She smiled, crossed to where Johnny was sitting, and placed her face some six inches from his own. Doubtless, Johnny reflected, to facilitate inspection. “What particular feature do you object to, chéri? Perhaps it can be altered.”

  “There’s a certain quality about your eyes,” said Johnny. “They’ve been there before.”

  She paused slightly before replying:

  “You have killed men, too. Very many.”

  “I know.”

  “Yes.” She leaned heavily on the arm of his chair and sighed. “Yes, it shows after a while. But I make no attempt to pass for a virgin. Or for anything other than what I am. Do you see anything strange about my mouth?”

  Johnny looked at it, then said: “No.” His voice seemed strangely husky.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure,” said Johnny, feeling her hand moving across the back of his neck and hoping that it was not about to insert several inches of steel where it would do the most good.

  “You can be sure of this, too. That while my eyes may give me away, my mouth never will. Do you consider that – sufficient compensation?”

  “Experience undoubtedly has its advantages.”

  “As you would find,” she said softly, “if you were to lift your face slightly – so that I could kiss you…”

  Johnny decided to accept this invitation; it would, at least, enable him to consider the situation in comparative leisure. Moreover, it was intrinsically anything but unpleasant… so much so that when Hilse removed her lips some thirty seconds later, he realised with horror that he had not begun to consider the situation at all. This, emphatically, would not do.

  “All right,” he said. “Your demonstration was completely successful, mademoiselle. Now, however, we must turn to business matters… You may remain seated on my lap, if you wish. It imparts the correct secretarial atmosphere.”

  “Thank you, sir…”

  “Not at all. Okay, start talking.”

  “But what about?”

  “We are about to murder an old associate of yours, you may remember. She’s the only surviving member of your organisation in Paris?”

  “That’s right. You should know what happened to the rest.”

  “Yes. So that elimination of Mai Weill means that the case is closed so far as my employer is concerned. He wished the Paris section of IIIB to be obliterated and, with Weill’s death and your defection from Defence H.Q., he’ll be satisfied.”

  “Excellent. Weill, of course, has the records for the entire Paris section of IIIB in storage… You knew that?”

  “No; I didn’t.”

  “It is so. Your employer will, I imagine, be extremely pleased with them.”

  “Tant mieux. But Allied Intelligence, as a whole, will not be satisfied merely with your disappearance. They will be on the lookout for you everywhere. That is a thing that I’m powerless to stop.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I really think,” said Johnny mildly, “that it would be better if you were to die and Mai Weill were to escape.”

  “It’s certainly an idea. How can we arrange it?”

  Johnny said: “Much the same way as that in which you died during the war. We’ll get Weill, switch her into your clothes and blow the place up. Simple, but – I fancy – effective.”

  “You think it will work again?”

  “Naturally if I explain exactly what happened.”

  “Which was –?”

  “I traced you to Weill’s flat prior to the explosion. Remains of body inside must therefore be yours. Not very complicated, is it?”

  She clapped her hands together. “C’est magnifique!”

  “Mais ce n’est pas la gare, unfortunately. We will obliterate that monstrosity later. While on the subject – we’ll have to get you out of the country at once.”

  “At once?”

  “The moment we’ve done this job, or – let me think. In case you didn’t know it, the Sûreté are out looking for you in the hundreds. I don’t doubt all the cribs are being watched. But on being informed of your demise, I’ve no doubt they’ll cease to waste the taxpayers’ money. Tomorrow morning, then, you leave Paris for London. On the Flèche d’Or.”

  “I have often wanted to see London,”

  “Misguided girl. This afternoon, the balloon goes up.”

  “What about the explosive?”

  “I think I can arrange that. We’ll use the regulation plastic 808 with a little un-regulation phosphorus that will bring a happy, healthy glow to the cheeks. The 808 I have already, together with a suit-case, the loss of which I shall regret deeply; I can get a safety-fuse and a box of detonators, and I know where phosphorus may be readily acquired… Weill herself I had better leave to you.”

  “All right.”

  “You realise she must not be shot! Just – er – exploded. If the experts find a piece of her – or you, that is – with a bullet-hole through it, they will suspect… No. You must engage her in conversation with one hand and swing a nifty sandbag with the other.”

  “You have not only brains,” she said “you have an enthusiasm that surprises me. Almost, this collaboration might have been your suggestion.”

  “All this is assuming we do come unto these yellow sands, and then join hands. As yet, I’ve made no promises. I’m merely working on that hypothesis.”

  “I see.”

  “I shall need to know quite a bit more about your organisation. My report to my employer had better be pretty comprehensive. In particular, I want to know all about the Gervais affair!”

  “That” – she contemplated the nail of her right-hand index-finger and sucked it thoughtfully – “that was Brunner’s scheme. I felt it at the time to be needlessly overcompl
icated.”

  “Obviously it would be difficult to eliminate him without considerable repercussions.”

  “Precisely. Our idea was to turn the undoubted power of the post-war F.F.I. organisations against him rather than us. Certain aspects of his history made this appear quite a simple task… Brunner worked out the letter of which you have heard so much, and persuaded Boehm to sign it, prior to his execution. It nearly did the trick.”

  “Remarkably nearly.”

  “Antoine’s luck was always amazing.” She sighed. “It took us a long time to trace him. Eventually, of course, it was through you.”

  “And that was a mistake. Otherwise, I could never have known Weill’s identity.”

  “If events had gone right, you would be dead – and that would not have mattered.”

  “True.”

  “Your change of appearance” – she ran her fingers gently over Johnny’s face – “that was misleading. As was your assumption of Darreaux’s identity. It was ill-advised of me to ’phone you at once – but perhaps no real harm was done. On your appearance at Defence H.Q., of course, we knew all we wanted to know and your demise was arranged. But it seems that he shot someone else.”

  “He did.”

  “Always a bungler. But for once I am inclined to forgive him… On your reappearance, you were trailed to the young lady’s flat and taken to Brunner’s house. And how you got out of there I cannot imagine.”

  “How did you know I had?”

  “I saw you in the Quai des Orfèvres. I was just – wondering if there was anything I could do for Gervais. The morning paper seemed most foreboding.”

  “Gervais is, I fear, completely safe from all you horrible people as you probably discovered. You then decided to give up and throw in with me. Am I right?”