The Stone Leopard

by Colin Forbes

  `If you would like to come in,' the girl said, smoothing her skirt down over her long, lithe legs, 'I might be able to help you in other ways. . .'

  Vanek, whose appetite for women was healthy, made it a point never to mix business with pleasure. And in any case, the girl had so far not had too close a look at him in the gloomy hall. Explaining that he had five more people to interview that day, he left her with a vague impression he would certainly be calling on her again within a few days. As arranged earlier, at eight in the evening he met Brunner and Lansky at a corner of the Place Kleber as snow drifted down over the huddled rooftops of Strasbourg. Taking them into a crowded bar, he found a table at the back.

  `. .. and so,' he continued a few minutes later, 'it is made to order for a quick solution. You visit him tomorrow night, soon after 6.30 when he has returned home. . . .' It was Lansky he had chosen to pay a call on Leon Jouvel. 'He is a widower and lives on his own. He has a second-floor apartment and the building is quiet. No one about at all except for a red-headed girl who lives next door. She could be a nuisance—she's looking for somebody to keep her bed warm.'

  `I don't like it,' Brunner said. 'You're moving too fast. We need more time to check on this man. . .

  `Which is exactly what we have not got,' Vanek snapped. 'In five days from now—December 22—we have to complete the whole job, which includes visiting three people, one of them in Germany. So, the strategy is simple—we deal with the first two on the list quickly. . .'

  `If the place is empty, I'd better take a preliminary look inside it tonight,' Lansky said. He stood up. 'We'll meet at the bus station in the Place de la Gare tomorrow at the time agreed ?'

  `It's dangerous to hurry it,' Brunner muttered.

  Vanek leaned forward until his face almost touched Brunner's, still speaking very quietly. 'Think, man! It will be Saturday night—the body won't even be discovered until Monday morning at the earliest. . .'

  The Rope used the set of French skeleton keys—which had been flown from Kiev to Tabor with the false Surete cards at the last moment—to open Jouvel's apartment door. It was a four-roomed apartment: a living-dining room with a colour television set, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. When he entered the apartment the first thing he did was to draw the curtains, then he examined the place with the aid of a pocket torch.

  Everything was neat and tidy; Lansky reminded himself he must remember this when it came to setting the stage.

  Lansky had brought no rope with him; purchasing a length of rope can be dangerous if the police institute a proper check afterwards. Instead he looked round for something on the premises—a sash cord, a belt, anything strong enough to hang a man by the neck until he is dead. Inside an old-fashioned, free-standing wardrobe he found what he was looking for—an old woollen dressing-gown with a cord-belt round the waist.

  He tested the strength of the cord carefully by tying one end to the leg of the old-fashioned gas cooker in the kitchen and pulling hard on it. If necessary, to give it more strength he could immerse it in water later. Privately, he had already rejected Brunner's suggestion that Jouvel might drown in his own bath; that involved undressing a man, which took more time. And suicide was always something the police were willing to accept with a widower living on his own. He next tested the handle on the outside of the bathroom door to make sure it was firm. Brunner had told him it was not unusual for people to hang themselves on the inside of a bathroom door; perhaps they felt they could do the job here in decent privacy.

  Twenty minutes is the maximum time a burglar allows for being inside a house; after that the statistics show the law of averages moves against him. Lansky carefully timed his visit for twelve minutes. He had re-opened the curtains and was ready to leave when he heard voices in the corridor near by. With his ear pressed against the door panel he listened carefully. Two voices, a man's and a girl's, probably the girl in the next apartment Vanek had mentioned. They were talking in French but Lansky couldn't catch what was being said. He waited until the voices stopped, a door closed, and footsteps retreated along the corridor. When he came out and relocked Jouvel's door the building was full of silence. In less than twenty-four hours, at seven on the following evening, he would return to pay his last call on Leon Jouvel.

  He emerged from the archway into the rue de l'Epine with equal caution. But tonight police detective Armand Bonheur was fifty kilometres away in Sarrebourg, sitting cold and depressed inside his car while he watched the house where Leon Jovel was paying his duty call on his elderly sister. Lansky waited a little longer until the only person in sight, a man walking away towards the Place Kleber, disappeared. The man was Alan Lennox.

  At eight o'clock in the evening of Friday, 17 December, at about the time the Soviet Commando went into a bar near the Place Kleber, Andre the Squirrel made his suggestion to Marc Grelle in the prefect's office in Paris. Would it be worth while for him to fly to Strasbourg to interview Leon Jouvel and then go on to see the other witness in Colmar? 'If Lasalle is right and these people knew the Leopard they might be able to tell me something.'

  Grelle considered the suggestion and then decided against it. For the moment at least. The trouble was he needed his deputy in Paris to help complete the security fence he was building round the president. 'Let it wait,' Grelle advised.

  Travelling up from Switzerland by train, Alan Lennox had arrived at Strasbourg station while the Soviet Commando was still in Kehl across the river Rhine. Since there are only two or three first-class hotels in the city, it was not surprising that he chose the Hotel Sofitel, which is built like an upended shoe-box and more like the type of hotel found in America. Registering in the name of Jean Bouvier, he went up to his fourth-floor room which overlooked a concrete patio.

  His first action was to consult Bottin, the telephone directory, and like Vanek in the same hotel only two hours later, he noted that Leon Jouvel had two addresses, one of which corresponded with the Lasalle list, the other a television shop. Unlike Vanek, he phoned the shop from the hotel room. The number went on ringing, but no one answered it. In the shop, Louise Vallon was having her busiest time of the day and she was damned if she was going to attend to the phone as well. In the Sofitel, Lennox replaced the receiver. The obvious next move was to try Jouvel at home.

  Checking the street-guide he had bought at the station, he found that the rue de l'Epine was only a short walk from the hotel. Putting on his coat and hat again, he went out into a world of slow-falling snowflakes which made it seem even more like Christmas in Strasbourg. Unlike Paris, the city was full of reminders of the approaching festive season; the Place Kleber was decorated with enormous Christmas trees which lit up at night. In less than ten minutes Lennox was standing at the archway to 49 rue de l'Epine.

  Leon Jouvel. The door on the second floor carried the name on a plate beside it. Lennox knocked for the third time but there was no reply. And for once the door of the neighbouring apartment was not opened by the red-headed and enthusiastic Denise Viron; at lunchtime she was still in bed and fast asleep. Leaving the building, he went out to find somewhere to eat.

  In the afternoon he visited the shop on the Quai des Bateliers and it was full of customers. The fair-haired girl behind the counter was having trouble coping with the rush and there was no sign of a man in the place. While she was occupied he peered into the back office and found it empty. He decided to go back to Jouvel's apartment in the middle of the evening. If you want to interview a man the place to corner him is at home, after he has finished his day's work and eaten—when he is relaxed. Lennox went back to No. 49 rue de l'Epine at 8.30 pm.

  Denise Viron was just going out for the evening, wearing a brilliant green coat which she felt sure suited her exciting personality, when Lennox stopped in front of Leon Jouvel's door. Eyeing him, wondering whether she really was going out after all, she stood outside her doorway with the light still on so it threw into stark relief her full-breasted figure.

  `He's away for the night,' she said. 'Was
there something I might be able to help you with ?'

  Lennox, who had his hand raised to knock on the door Lansky had opened with his skeleton keys only a few minutes earlier, took off his hat instead. He moved a few paces towards the girl who took a tentative step back inside her own apartment. Pulling at her long, red hair, she watched him with her lips slightly parted. God, a tart, Lennox thought. 'You mean Mr Leon Jouvel ?' he inquired in French. 'It's rather urgent— you're sure he won't be back tonight ?'

  The girl puckered her over-painted mouth. 'Popular today, aren't we? Jouvel, I mean. I've just had one of those market research blokes asking after him this afternoon. No accounting for tastes.'

  `Market research?'

  `That's right. You know the type—nosey. Personally I think it's an impertinence the way they ask you all those intimate questions. . .'

  `Mr Jouvel,' Lennox interjected with a smile. 'When will he be back then ?'

  `Tomorrow—Saturday. That market research chap . .

  `Is there someone I could leave a message with? His wife, perhaps ?'

  `He's a widower. Not interested in women any more.' She gazed past Lennox's shoulder. 'Personally I think when you get to that stage life isn't worth . .'

  `No one else in the apartment ?'

  `No. He lives alone.' The girl was frowning, as though making a tremendous intellectual effort to solve a problem. `Funny, I'm having almost the same conversation with you as I had with that other chap. What makes Jouvel so popular all of a sudden? Weeks go by and he sits alone in there glued to the box and now . .'

  `He's home all day Saturday ?' Lennox inquired.

  `There you go again--same kind of question.' Denise Viron was beginning to tire of the conversation. 'All day Saturday he's at the shop,' she snapped. 'And it's not a good time to see him—Saturday is his big day. And you won't find him back here before 6.30 in the evening. Are you another market research chap ?' she inquired sarcastically.

  `I knew him a long time ago,' Lennox replied vaguely and excused himself. He heard a door slam as he went down the stairs and behind him Denise Viron re-buttoned the coat she had unfastened as they talked. She was going to have to go out, and in this weather, for God's sake.

  At 5.30 pm. on Saturday evening detective Armand Bonheur yawned in the police office and checked his watch. Soon he would be on the bloody night-watch again, taking over from his colleague who at this moment was discreetly observing Leon Jouvel's shop-front on the Quai des Bateliers. Bonheur would then wait on the quai for Jouvel to lock up so he could follow him and keep an eye on who went in and out of No. 49 rue de 1'Epine. Already Bonheur was getting to hate this duty. What the hell had Paris got on a man like Jouvel anyway ?

  It would not have been possible for even Borisov, his trainer, to recognize Lansky easily as he left the Hotel Terminus with a group of people who had just come out of the lift. Wearing a German suit and a Tyrolean hat he had purchased during the Commando's brief stay in Kehl, Lansky was also equipped with a pair of thick-lensed, horn-rim spectacles of the type normally only worn by old men. Even his walk had changed as he shuffled across the wind-swept Place de la Gare with his hands deep inside his overcoat pockets, a coat also purchased in Kehl. To complete the transformation he carried an umbrella which he had previously ruffled and dirtied. Muffled up inside a scarf; shuffling across the cobbles, Antonin Lansky now looked more like a man in his late sixties.

  Reaching the station, he mooched inside the glassed-in restaurant which fronted on the square, sat down at a table and ordered coffee in German. Occasionally as he sat there amid people waiting for trains he checked his watch. He would be visiting Leon Jouvel somewhere between 6.30 and 7 pm, catching him off guard soon after he had arrived home.

  At 6 pm Alan Lennox sat at a window table in the café next door to Jouvel's television shop drinking coffee. It was well after dark and under the street lamps the cobbles on the quai gleamed from the recent snow flurries. He had decided to take Denise Viron's advice, to let Leon Jouvel, whom he had seen at the other side of his shop window, get his big day over with before tackling the Frenchman. And since it was Saturday he thought it highly likely Jouvel would stop off at a bar on the way home—and what better place to get a man talking than in a bar?

  A trained observer—trained by long experience—Lennox had automatically noticed the man in the raincoat on the far side of the quai who stood under a lamp reading a newspaper. Probably waiting for his girl, Lennox surmised: at intervals the waiting man checked his watch and looked up and down the quai as though expecting someone. Lennox finished his third cup of coffee. To spin out the time he had ordered a pot, and the francs for the bill were already on the table so he could leave at a moment's notice.

  At 6.5 pm a short, plump figure with a bushy moustache came out and locked up the shop.

  As Jouvel said goodnight to his assistant, Louise Vallon, and crossed the quai Lennox emerged from the café and paused at the kerb to light a cigarette. No need to follow too close in this part of Strasbourg and the shop owner was wearing a distinctive yellow raincoat. Putting away his French Feudor lighter, Lennox was on the verge of stepping into the road and then stopped before he had moved. The man under the lamp had tucked his paper under his arm and was strolling after Jouvel. A coincidence: he had got fed up waiting for his girl.

  As the traffic stopped against the lights, Lennox hurried across and then slowed down again. On the bridge crossing the river Il to the old quarter he saw the man with the paper and ahead of him Jouvel. The shop owner, who had crossed the bridge, had stopped to peer in through the lighted windows of a restaurant as though wondering whether to go inside. The man with the paper had also stopped, bending down as he pretended to tie his shoelace. It was now quite obvious to Lennox that Leon Jouvel was being followed by someone else.

  As Jouvel left the restaurant and crossed the road to turn up the rue de l'Epine—which meant he was going straight home— Lennox changed direction to approach No. 49 by a separate route. The man with the paper had left the bridge and followed Jouvel. In that lonely and deserted street a second shadow would be a little too conspicuous. Familiar now with the immediate area, Lennox walked rapidly up the rue des Grandes Arcades and then into a side street leading into the rue de l'Epine, arriving just in time to see Jouvel turn in under the archway. Lower down the street the man with the paper disappeared inside an alcove as Denise Viron, wearing her bright green coat, came out of the archway. She stopped when she saw Lennox.

  `You've come back to see me ?' she inquired hopefully.

  `Another night maybe ? There are plenty of nights yet,' Lennox told her.

  Their voices carried down the narrow canyon of the empty street to where detective Armand Bonheur waited, huddled inside the alcove. His instructions had been complex, too complex for his liking. He must keep Jouvel under surveillance. He must not let the shop owner know he was being watched. He must keep an eye open for an Englishman called Lennox, and the description had been vague. Hearing the reply to the girl's invitation given in perfect French, Bonheur did not give a moment's thought to the Englishman he had been told about. He settled down to a long wait.

  As far as Bonheur was concerned the form of surveillance was very unsatisfactory—it was impossible to station himself inside the building, to keep close observation on Jouvel. The only positive factor in his favour was that the building had no rear exit. Everyone who entered No. 49 had to go in under the archway. It was just after seven—it had begun to rain again— when Bonheur saw a shuffling old man with an umbrella approaching No. 49.

  Lennox rapped on Jouvel's door only a minute or so after the Frenchman had arrived home. Lennox's manner was businesslike as he explained he was a reporter from Le Monde, the Paris newspaper, which was going to run a series on the wartime Resistance. He understood that Jouvel had been an active member of the Lozere group and would like to talk to him about his experiences. Nothing, he assured Jouvel, would be published without his permission. And there would be,
Lennox added casually, a fee. . . .'

  `What sort of fee?' .Jouvel inquired.

  He was standing in the doorway, still wearing his yellow raincoat, his mind in a turmoil. He had asked the question to give himself a little more time to think. For over a year he had fretted over whether to approach the authorities with his suspicion, and here was a golden opportunity presented to him on a plate. Should he talk to this man, he was wondering.

  `Two thousand francs,' Lennox said crisply. 'That is, if the information is worth it and makes good copy. In any case, I will pay ten per cent of that sum for fifteen minutes of your time.'

  `You had better come in,' said Jouvel.

  Sitting on an old-fashioned settee in the living-room, Lennox did most of the talking for the first few minutes, trying to put Jouvel at his ease. The Frenchman's reaction puzzled him. Jouvel sat facing him in an arm-chair, staring at him with a dazed look as though trying to make up his mind about something.

  When he mentioned the Leopard, Jouvel closed his eyes and then opened them again.

  `What about the Leopard ?' the Frenchman asked hoarsely. I worked closely with him as radio operator, but he is dead, surely ?'

  `Is he ?'

  The brief question, phrased instinctively by Lennox as he detected the query at the end of Jouvel's own question, had a strange effect on the Frenchman. He swallowed, stared at Lennox, then looked away and taking a handkerchief out of his pocket he dried the moist palms of his chubby little hands.

  `Of course,' Lennox went on, 'if you prefer it we could print your story as being by "an anonymous but reliable witness". Then no one would connect you with it but you would still get the money. . .'