by Desmond Cory
“Window.”
Marie-Andrée nodded and made a dash for it. She wrestled with the catch for a few seconds and then threw it open. For a time they did nothing but hang on the window-sill, and inhale great gulps of cool evening air into their smoke-clogged lungs.
“Thank God! There’s a fire-escape…”
Johnny looked downwards into the mass of yellow flames into which the wooden fire-escape plunged.
“Miracle it hasn’t gone up yet. As it hasn’t, we may be able to get away over the roofs.”
They clambered up on to the spiral steps, Johnny knocking glowing sparks from his windcheater and flannels as he did so, and rattled upwards towards the roof.
From the crowd gathered below there came a sudden deep-throated buzz of interest; someone shouted up to them, but his voice was drowned in the hot roar of the flames beneath.
The effort of climbing the stairs forced the pure air into their lungs, and they both started to cough. The back of Johnny’s throat felt hot and raw, and his head was once more beginning to swim. The last few steps to the roof were pure undiluted agony… He stopped at the top and leant on the parapet, closing his eyes. He felt Marie-Andrée’s arm go round him again.
“How are you feeling?”
His head was clear and still, but the rest of his body seemed to be swinging to and fro, as if in a high wind, suspended from his neck and, as it were, hanging from it. He opened his eyes again and saw the thin trails of cobwebs that criss-crossed the pale evening sky, blurring slightly whenever he tried to focus his eyes on them, but otherwise terribly clear.
“Not too good.”
“We can get away across the roofs quite easily, I think. Or if you’d rather, we can wait here for the firemen. They’ll have ladders.”
“What the hell?” said Johnny. “I came in on my two feet and I’ll go out the same way. Here.” He fumbled inside his jacket. “Take these papers.”
“Yes. All right.”
“In case I should happen to pass out on the way. You keep them for me. Don’t give them to anyone – not even George Washington’s ghost. Not to anyone except me. I risked my ruddy neck for those, and I’m not going to – not –”
“All right, darling. All right. I’ll look after them. Don’t talk. Come with me. I’ve got the car down there. Just hang on till you’re in there.”
“Yes,” said Johnny foolishly. He started to do one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life. He started to walk.
He had to concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else. One foot had to go forward in front of the other before he put his weight on it. Sometimes he put his weight forward too soon and stumbled badly… Another thing, each foot had to be moved alternately. That was very important. Once or twice he forgot which foot should be moved – moved the wrong one and tripped. It was all extremely difficult.
Occasionally things happened nearby, but outside the orbit of his concentration. Once he was able to lean against a wall for a few seconds while Marie-Andrée put her foot through a pane of glass.
Then – much later – he was walking over a carpet. This was much harder than walking across the roof because the pattern distracted his attention. It was important, he knew, that his feet should be placed in the little red diagonal squares, not in the grey ones. That was tricky. It was the way in which they changed colour that made it so hard. It was not really fair…
There were doors that came slowly towards him and – then opened mysteriously. There were stairs…
The stairs were a sort of living nightmare. They did everything – folded up, elongated themselves, twisted, turned, went up and down, moved at express speed and then stopped dead.
But he went down them all the same; sometimes slowly, sometimes exhilaratingly fast. At one point they suddenly spun round him and took him by surprise. He fell hundreds of feet down them before Marie-Andrée could stop him.
He seemed to have hurt his shoulder. Marie-Andrée seemed to be crying softly to herself, too. That was strange…
But after those stairs, the pavement was laughably easy.
He found that he could fairly stride along it. People seemed to be helping him, too – nice, kind people. He was going to get to that car easily. It was simple, this walking…
He got to the car. Someone opened the door and, after a struggle, he found himself standing inside. One of the strangest cars he had ever been in. It wasn’t a car at all; it was a sort of dark tunnel, with a little pin-point of light at the end.
Perspiring, Johnny stood up again and went on walking, walking – walking…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE doctor sat down unprofessionally on the bed and fiddled with the thermometer.
“Well,” he said morosely, “we’re coming along nicely.”
“We are?”
The doctor nodded and inserted the thermometer into its slim leather case.
“You mean I’m all right?”
“My dear chap” – the doctor patted his leg affectionately – “you’re as fit as a fiddle. Apart, that is, from one or two minor details such as that bullet-wound, gassing, burns, a torn cartilage, asphyxia, concussion and shock. The insanity, of course, I presume to be congenital. Anyway – you should be up and about in less than six weeks.”
Johnny grinned. “You’d be surprised,” he said, “if I told you how much less –”
“Maybe. But that’s going to depend on your condition and not on your own private opinions. So much for that. But you’ll be pleased to learn I’m allowing you some visitors today.”
“Delighted,” said Johnny courteously.
“Had a lot of people asking after you. You must be popular. God knows why. Anyway, your boss is here.”
“Holliday?”
“That’s him. I’m allowing him a quarter of an hour with you. No more. Now listen. You’ve probably got a lot of talking to do. All right. But take it easy. If your throat gets sore, take a sip from that glass. Don’t get excited.”
“Okay.”
“Yes; well, don’t. If you’re okay after Holliday’s through with you, you can have a quarter of an hour with your little French girl-friend. You won’t do much talking with her, I imagine. But no excitement. A positive dearth of passion for the next six weeks; all right? I’m no spoilsport, but that hole in you won’t put up with any of your manly embraces.”
Johnny sighed. “You make the situation clear, all right.”
“Fair enough. Well – I’ll send the boss in right away. You lucky people,” said the doctor. He stood up, nodded to the nurse and they went out of the ward together.
The nurse returned almost at once, ushering before her an overcoated Peter Holliday. The general effect was that of a ruthlessly competent Pekinese escorting a large but sheepish bloodhound. Holliday waved to Johnny, peeled off his overcoat and placed on the table a large carton of five hundred Players, which the nurse, hovering, promptly confiscated.
“Well, Johnny. It’s good to see you all in one piece.”
“Yeah – isn’t it?”
“It’s more than good, it’s absolutely wonderful. I hear from various sources that you did the trick, too.”
“I got a habit.”
“Yes, you have rather. The reports are all rather piecemeal, though. I’d like to know exactly what’s been going on here.”
“So would I.” Johnny stretched himself. “It’s all kind of complicated. Guess I don’t follow it myself.”
“Well – start at the beginning. Here” – Holliday glanced anxiously round the room and whipped out a cigarette-case – “have a gasper.”
Johnny took one, accepted a light and flourished it in the air. “All right. You asked for it.”
“One of these days,” said Holliday patiently, “I may get it.”
“Yeah – but you tell me something first. Did you get the records all right? From –?”
“From that safe affair? Yes. The vast majority. It’s rather a pity you let the fire in when you ble
w out the ceiling; but most of the papers weren’t even charred. The boys are working on them now – a damned good haul, that was, Johnny. Now, come on, I’m all agog.”
“Okay. Well, the story goes like this. At the beginning it seemed that only two people were likely to recognise this rossignol bird – a chap called Gervais and a chap called Darreaux, and of the two only Gervais was in Paris. He seemed to be the obvious fellow to contact; and he was wanted on a charge of collaboration with the Nazis. He’d vanished from the scene and I had to find him.
“On my arrival in Paris, then, I booked in at Rostand’s under the name of Darreaux. First, ’cos I thought it might be easier to find Gervais if I was an old pal of his; secondly, I thought it on the cards that le rossignol wouldn’t like having an old pal of hers on the scene and might try to bung me off.
“Well, the latter plan didn’t work out at all an’ we may as well skip it. They found out who I really was too soon. But I found Gervais all right, hidin’ out with a girl called Duveyrier. An’ he swore he’d been framed, that he hadn’t collaborated at all. He struck me as tellin’ the truth, too; he didn’t look the collaborator type. What he couldn’t understand was why he was bein’ framed; an’ that was somethin’ I could tell him.
“Le rossignol, y’see, was working in Defence H.Q. in the Place de l’Etoile. She was the cause of all those leakages that had you worried. An’ Gervais owned a restaurant right opposite where she worked. It was too much of a risk an’ he had to be put out of the way. I worked out some of this an’ guessed the rest, an’ decided the first step was to get Gervais in the clear.
“We burgled the flat of the feller who had the letter, found it an’ I took it along to Defence H.Q. That’s when le rossignol learnt I wasn’t Darreaux, but Fedora. She didn’t like the look of things an’ arranged for my immediate demise, but that didn’t go right somehow an’ I got the demiser instead.
“By now, y’see, they knew I’d found Gervais: (a) because I’d got the letter and (b) because Gervais took a photograph of me from Pinot’s flat. I, on the other hand, knew Pinot was a German agent and that le rossignol was almost certainly working in Defence H.Q. As it happened, I’d met her, an’ hadn’t recognised her.”
Johnny wiped his forehead and drank a little of the liquid that stood beside his pillow. It tasted awful.
“Well – Oh, yes… That’s where I had a spot of luck. Laddie I’d shot had green paint on his shoes. I cast around for a door with green paint an’, by a fluke, hit the right one. Didn’t help me as much as I thought. Flat was owned by a prostitute he’d been in the habit of consorting with. Miss Mai Weill. Not a bad idea, y’know. Nobody asks questions about that kind of girl; all kinds of men can go to her. Some German I-men, some not.
“She had me pretty adequately fooled for a bit. Until later that night, when I had time to think things over. Then I got things worked out. It seemed pretty plain to me then that she was the girl for me. Firstly, the little man I’d shot had a paper-clip in his pocket. That I made to mean that he’d had written instructions but had either handed them over or had burnt them. Secondly, I wasn’t in the H.Q. for more than half an hour; in that time le rossignol had telephoned the news and it had been relayed to the little man. He’d have gone round to wait for me at once, without first satisfying his carnal desires in a red-light district. Both those things pointed clearly to this girl. Finally, she was the only person who could have picked up my trail between my shooting that little guy and my visiting Gervais and Marie-Andrée.
“Because that’s what must have happened. When I left she followed me to this flat where Gervais was hiding out and then did some quick telephoning. First she sent three of her boys round to get me and, as an afterthought, one of the trigger-happy boys in Gervais’s mob. First thing you know, there’s a lot of guns going off an’ then we’re carted off by some hot members of German Intelligence. Gervais gets taken to meet the boss an’, by the greatest stroke of luck in his short an’ happy life, the police pick him up. Bet no one’s ever been so glad to be shoved in the clink before.
“The boys left behind make a feeble effort to gas us but give it up too early, so that, by a process of elimination, the Third Reich has two less fanatics at its beck and call. Makin’ a total of five, an’ leavin’ only the two ladies to be dealt with.
“After a health-givin’ sleep, then” – Johnny yawned reminiscently – “I went back to Weill’s flat intendin’ to create hell and slaughter. I found both the little birds were there, arranging to blow the place up, to destroy the records again, I suppose… Things got a bit confused. Weill took a pot at me an’ hit le rossignol good and hard. Then I got Weill just as she managed to send the place up. I worked my way out somehow an’ woke up in here. Don’t remember much more about the last bit, to be honest.”
“No? Not surprising. You seem to have found your way to your girl-friend’s flat and passed out there.”
“You don’t say. Funny. I don’t remember a thing about that,” said Johnny truthfully.
“Um,” said Holliday. He smoked in silence for a short while. “That’s what the girl herself says. But the policeman down below swears there were two of you climbing about on the roof.”
Johnny took another drink of his medicine. It still tasted like glue, but he took several sips.
“Could be an optical illusion, I suppose,” said Holliday. “Lot of smoke about. You were pretty badly concussed, lad… You didn’t take any papers with you, by any chance? For some reason?”
“Papers? Did you find any on me?”
“No. No, we didn’t. There just seem to be a couple of files missing. There’s quite a few burnt, but these are actually missing.”
“There was a lot of paper on the floor of that room. To burn easier, I suppose. I didn’t have a chance to look at any of it.”
“Ah. Now that would account for it.”
“Anything important?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know.” said Holliday, thoughtfully. “Quick – put your fag out. Here comes that nurse.”
“Gosh!” said Johnny. “Here – you take it. She’ll smell the smoke.”
Holliday took it and smiled. “Quick-thinking as ever. Well, I hope you’ll soon be back with us, that’s all.”
Johnny said: “I’m retirin’, Peter.”
“Retiring?”
“Yeah. I’m gettin’ old. Time I settled down.”
“Good heavens. You surprise me. I thought – well, we’ll talk about it later. I see my time’s up.”
“Both our times are.”
“Hullo, my sweet. How are you feeling?”
“Fine, thanks. I am not allowed to hug you, however. Doctor’s orders.”
“Never mind. A gentle-kiss. You think that may be permitted?… Aha! I have brought you some cigarettes, also some fruit. You like oranges?”
“To hell with the oranges. Sit down,” said Johnny, patting the side of the bed, “and let’s hear about it.”
“About what?”
“About Miss Weill’s flat and what you were doing there, anyway.”
“Oh, that. Well, there’s nothing very much to it. I saw you lunching at Rostand’s with the attractive young lady and, of course, I was madly jealous.”
“Of course.”
“So when you went out together that afternoon, I followed you in my car. That’s all.”
“So it was you,” said Johnny thoughtfully. “We wondered who it was.”
“You saw me?”
“No. We got a sort of impression… Anyway, skip it. You told Holliday a good story, too. Whether he believes it or not is another matter. But you’re a good girl, all the same.”
“Oh, yes. Beautiful and intelligent, too. I’m going to be very useful to you, darling.”
“What, again?”
“Uh-huh. I can speak German. You don’t, very well.”
“That’s interesting. But I don’t really see the value of such an accomplishment to me.”
“Ah. Th
at’s because you don’t know where those Mayer diamonds are. They’re in Austria.”
“Austria?”
“Or maybe in Switzerland. It’s not quite clear. We’ll find out all right as soon as we get there.”
“Hey,” said Johnny. “W-w-wait a minute! You’re not proposing –?”
“No, darling. That part of it is up to you, or should be.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re not suggesting that you’re going to –?”
“But, of course. Why not? I should be quite as much use to you as that Hilse woman. I can’t shoot very well, it’s true, but she didn’t get very far with that, did she? Besides, that’s what you’re supposed to be good at.”
“Oh, no. Nothing doing. I don’t want you.” Johnny sulked.
“You prefer to love ’em and leave ’em, eh? Well, you’re not leaving me, chéri. You won’t get anywhere without me. I’ve got the necessary documents.”
“Why, you little double-crosser! What happens if I refuse? You hand them over to Holliday, I suppose-”
“Oh, no. I shall go myself.”
Johnny laughed hollowly. “Forgive me. But you haven’t a lot of experience in this sort of thing, have you?”
“I’ve learnt quite a lot this last few days. I’ll pick it up. We jeunes filles biens élevées are an adaptable crowd.”
“Oh, dear. But you – Oh, dear.”
“We may take the matter, then, as settled. We will now practice our German.”
“Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen,” said Johnny crossly. “Liebling.”
“He’s up to something,” said Holliday darkly. “I know him of old. What it is I don’t know – but he’s up to something, all right.”
The V.I.P. sitting opposite Holliday crossed his legs and carefully tapped ash into an obsequiously adjacent tray. “Nothing – er – troublesome, I hope?”
“I hope not, too. He certainly won’t work on the other side – he’s the last man to do that. But he could be a deucedly irritating neutral. He always was a bit of the Lone Wolf.”
“He’s one of the best we have.”
