The policeman opened the door of the house, led me into the hall, told me to wait, while he went off towards the living-room. Bénat’s usual servant put his head out of another room, his eyes scared and curious and faintly greedy, but he nipped back as soon as he saw me. Then another policeman came out of Bénat’s office.
The first policeman came back.
“This way, if you please.”
Down the familiar corridor. There were six in the room. A stranger just inside the door, the three I’d seen, another man with his back to me. In the corner was the lorry driver who’d put me over the edge.
Alix said: “Giles …”
The dog began to bark, great hostile gulps that filled the room.
“Quiet Grutli,” Charles said.
The other man turned his head. “Come in, M. Gordon.” It was
Deffand. I’d forgotten his existence. I made sense of it all now.
Alix said with a sort of pain in her eyes: “ What is it? What’s
happened to you, Giles? Are you hurt?”
Armand Delaisse had hardly moved. I could see my coming had
shaken up all three of them. Charles’s clever sallow face.… The
lorry driver had gone a bit green. But it was Alix I was looking
at.
She said again: “What is it, Giles? Why are you—like that? Tell
me.”
I heard myself saying: “Sorry to be—late.”
She glanced at Charles and I think she jumped at once to the
fact that he was somehow accountable. Her face changed, the last
roundness went out of it; she looked like her brother.
Deffand said: “ You’ve hurt your hands. Have you been in an
accident?”
“Well, yes.”
“Have you come by car?”
“I came by car.”
Charles moved to a cupboard, poured a glass of brandy. Deffand’s
eyes followed him. Charles brought the glass over to me. “Sit down,
Giles. You must be quite tired after your long drive.”
We looked closely at each other. His lip had a derisive, defiant
droop. My coming had finished it. The game was up—and he didn’t
care a damn.… It was part of the hazard, part of an expected
malevolence in fate, part of his theory, fitting somehow into the
pattern he’d made for himself. He almost welcomed it, as a masochist
welcomes pain. I found myself suddenly hating him for the first
time. I could hardly keep my hands off his face.
Deffand said: “No doubt you’d like some attention.”
Charles turned away and the moment was gone.
“I’m all right.” My knees were weak and I sat down. Alix didn’t
move; she was still staring at me. The quiet man by the door turned over a page in his notebook.
“Why did you come up here this evening?”
“Has anybody a cigarette? I smoked my last—on the way.”
Deffand passed me one and held his lighter, taking in my broken finger-nails and shaky hands. I wanted time to think. A quick decision now which would affect everything else. It was almost too much; my brain was tired and slow.
“I came to see M. Bénat. Invited for six o’clock—things delayed me.”
“My God!” said Alix. “My God!” And put her face in her hands.
Deffand glanced at her with a narrow preoccupied frown. “ What happened?”
I stared at the end of the cigarette.
Charles said: “Well, go on, Gordon, tell us what delayed you.”
I looked across at him, thinking it out. “I should have hurried if I’d known there was going to be a party.”
“I thought you’d be sure to know that.”
“I’m damned sure you thought nothing of the kind.”
Grutli began to growl again at my tone. I gulped at the brandy, felt it go warmly down. A policeman came in and spoke in Deffand’s ear. He waved an impatient finger and the man went. Alix wasn’t looking at me any longer.
Deffand said: “As you’ll guess, M. Gordon, I’m here in a professional capacity. I explained my mission to you earlier this week.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you know I have taken certain steps since then.”
“I saw something in the paper this afternoon.”
“You may remember I asked you to help me then, and you refused. Your help would have been valuable, but you see we got along without it.”
Nobody spoke. Deffand lit a cigarette himself and began to blow smoke through his nose. “I’ll be quite frank with you. M. Bénat and his friends are under suspicion for the same sort of offense. Their connection with the Café des Fourmis has been suspected for a long time. A search is at present being made of this house and its contents. It may succeed or it may fail.…”
“It has already failed,” said Bénat indifferently. “The sergeant has just told you.”
Deffand squinted at the end of his cigarette. “Perhaps you have had too long an experience to commit much to writing, Bénat.”
“During the war it was almost all word of mouth. No doubt fighting the Germans from across the Channel was a different matter.”
Deffand said: “The point is, M. Gordon, that I could arrest these people at once if I chose— but generally speaking time and trouble are saved by moving only on concrete evidence. So we again invite your help. I shall in any case make a clean sweep in the end. Evidence from you now would be largely a matter of saving time and trouble.”
There was a minute’s silence. Armand Delaisse was staring at me in a queer way.
I said: “ You’re mistaken in expecting me to be able to help you.”
There was a faint stirring in the room. Bénat bent to stroke the dog.
Deffand said: “You know these people well.”
“I’ve been up here twice this year.”
“But you knew them last year also.”
“I was blind then.”
“You have spent several days with Mme. Delaisse this week.”
“We were out for pleasure. Nothing more.”
Charles laughed. His face had that dark look, as if it were in shadow.
Deffand said: “ I should like you to understand that it need not necessarily be a charge dealing with the things we’ve spoken of. What I want is evidence against M. Bénat which will give me greater freedom to act as I should like.”
“How graciously you put it,” Charles said.
Deffand ignored him. “Let me express this a little differently, M. Gordon. I understand your interest in Mme. Delaisse. You must be anxious about her position at the moment, and her future.”
“Possibly.”
“Then let me put a suggestion to you. If I get suitable evidence against M. Bénat now I will give you my guarantee that Mme. Delaisse will not be molested at all. She’ll be free to leave France or to go on living here if she chooses. She will cease to exist so far as I am concerned.”
I didn’t speak.
“On the other hand, if I have to follow these inquiries to the end, it will be my duty to charge everyone implicated. So it would be in her interest to speak now.” Deffand looked at me dryly. “ If you fear further intimidation I can grant you a safe conduct.”
I said: “ I never have feared intimidation.”
For the second time Armand Delaisse glanced at me. He looked very puzzled.
Deffand blew another spiral. “ Well?”
I met Charles’s gaze. Under the irony was a relentless pride. “I don’t like this situation any better than you, M. Deffand. But I’ve nothing to say that will help you in the case.”
There was a short silence. “I’m sorry you take this attitude.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“A foreign visitor to this country is entitled to expect special consideration. But it would be a mistake to think himself above the law.”
“I’ve never felt that.”
“Just what do you feel then?”
“I think it would take too long to tell you.”
“I am here to listen.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “private wars get out of hand, take precedence over—public ones. It would please me a lot to see Bénat go to prison.… But it pleases me more to keep him out. I can’t explain why.”
Charles said suddenly, contemptuously: “I’ve no use for magnanimity.”
‘I know.” That was just it. That was what I’d been trying to get clear in my own mind. He had no place in his life for the magnanimous. It didn’t fit. And because it didn’t fit he would find it intolerable. For courage and all the virtues of the jungle, for revenge and betrayal and all the vices of man.…
He said again: “ Don’t let me tempt you into any gesture you’d be likely to regret. Deffand implores you to help him.”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing I want to say.”
“You see,” said Charles to Deffand. “He’s trying to buy nobility by withholding what he doesn’t know.”
Armand Delaisse pushed his chair back with a sharp irritable movement. “If this farce is over perhaps we can go.” It was plain enough he didn’t care two sous what was going on between us; all he knew was that I was willing to keep quiet.
Deffand said: “Have a care for yourself, M. Gordon.”
“Can I go?” persisted Delaisse.
Deffand put out his cigarette. “ You can stay, if that’s what you mean. I am going. But don’t make any mistake, I shall be back. To-morrow, if some of your friends will talk. Next week or the week after if they will not.” He breathed nasally. “As for you, M. Gordon, if I were you I should take the first train home. Come, Lemierre.”
I said: “Are you going to Nice? Could I ask the favour of a lift?”
He looked me over, professionally, with contempt “ It is possible.”
He went out followed by the other man.
I looked at Alix. She hadn’t shifted from her chair and she had her eyes down. She looked pretty bad. I thought bitterly, this is the last time I shall see her. It didn’t seem to matter. I turned to go.
Armand Delaisse said in an undertone: “ One moment.”
“Well?”
“We were told—we understood you had given us away to the police—that that was why we had been raided.”
“Did you run the Resistance movement on wild guesses?”
“Immediately after your last visit here you were seen to go to the British Consulate. Next day your friend from the Consulate met Deffand at lunch. Then Deffand called on you. Two days later the Café des Fourmis was raided. That and your other interferences—can you wonder at our mistake?”
I stared at him, thinking over the sequence. The lorry driver had come across, was staring at me.
“It was no mistake,” Charles said. “All this is a little bluff between himself and Deffand.”
Delaisse said slowly, angrily: “ No. That can’t be true.”
I said to Charles: “Delaisse may have believed I talked. You never did.”
“Oh? … Very positive.”
I said to Delaisse: “Think it over for yourself. Bénat had his own reasons for wanting to be rid of me. He made use of you to do it.”
“… What does he mean, Charles?”
“My dear Armand, if you care to believe this fellow …”
“No, of course I do not. But …”
I said: “ In a leader it’s always the first sign of a moral rot, isn’t it—the betrayal, the degeneration.…”
Alix hadn’t moved. They would be waiting for me outside.
“Why didn’t you tell Deffand about it, then?” Charles said.
I saw it all clearly again for a second. “I think it hurts you more to be under an obligation to me.”
He stared. “ ‘To accept a benefit is to sell one’s liberty.’ Isn’t that what the old Roman said?”
“It may be.”
“You think I feel the same?”
“I’m sure of it, yes.”
He blew out an amused breath. “Well, thank you for being absurd. I accept the benefit gladly, since I might certainly lose my liberty the other way.”
“Well, it’s really exchanging one liberty for another, isn’t it?”
“I’m intensely practical, my dear man. We’ll argue out the principles another time.”
At any price I wanted to say something to get at him. I said: “D’you remember that evening at the Wintertons’ remarking that to you—and to some other people—there was only one God, Charles Bénat, world without end, Amen?”
“Did I? Very intelligent of me.”
“Wasn’t it. But what happens when Charles Bénat starts lying not only to his followers but to himself? Isn’t that a sin against the Holy Ghost?”
It did seem to hit him somewhere. “ I don’t think I follow.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”
“No, wait.”
I looked down at his hand till he took it off my arm. We stared at each other. Armand Delaisse was listening—so was the driver. A twist of annoyance went across Bénat’s face.
I said: “Trouble with setting up as a tin god is that you’ve got to live up to your own standards—whatever they happen to be. Other mortals can fall short of them—not you. It’s the one condition. Otherwise it all makes nonsense.”
“D’you think I care what the devil you say or do?”
“Yes. Over this.”
“Well, you’re wrong. Run after Deffand. Tell him what you please.”
“Deffand’s not important. I’ve no intention of telling him anything at all.”
“No doubt you’ll whisper it all in his ear on the way home.”
“I used to think you a man without illusions. It was a point of pride.”
“I’ve no illusions about you, Gordon.”
“No.… Only about yourself—since you’ve already persuaded yourself into thinking you can accept your liberty from me.”
“I don’t accept my liberty from anyone!” he said savagely.
“What rot! You accept it from Delaisse, this other man and people like them, who do the work and take the risks.… You accept it from all sorts of simple, decent people who play up because to them you’re still Bénat of the Resistance, still a name to conjure with. They don’t realise yet that it’s changed—should be Bénat the Racketeer.”
“Simple and decent.… Nobody’s simple these days, and very few decent. They trust me because I let them have luxuries they couldn’t get otherwise, and bring a little colour and romance into their silly drab lives.”
“Yes … the little tin god again. So you take favours as your right. But it’s not the same from me. I’m the atheist, the disbeliever. In future you’ll only exist by my good-will, and I know you’re sham. We both know it at this moment. If you can’t draw me into the illusion you can’t go on believing in yourself.”
I hardly knew what I was saying, but he stared at me as if his interest was caught in spite of himself.
“As if Christ had been cut down by the Roman soldiers who realised he was really going to die, eh? …”
“I’m not going that far.”
“No .… Neither am I.” He smiled, his lip judicial, contracted. “You’ve paid me the compliment of setting the stakes too high.…”
“It’s you who set the stakes,” I said. “I was afraid they were rather out of your class.”
Just for the moment then, under his smile, he gave me a look that wasn’t easy to take. He was going to say something more, but there was a cough in the passage.
“M. Deffand is waiting,” said the plain-clothes policeman.
We hadn’t much to say on the way down. Deffand took a justifiably poor view of my silence, and I was feeling ill again. He did suggest that one of his men should look at my scrapes and scratches, but I wouldn’t let him. He didn’t ask a single question about my car. When he let
me off at the hotel he said:
“Au ’Voir, M. Gordon. Take my advice.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll not get in your light again.”
When I got up to my bedroom I was sick, and every now and then I’d have a fit of shivering through the night. I’d doze off and wake up with a start thinking I’d gone blind and have to switch on the bedside light to make it all right. But I didn’t dream of the climb once. When morning came the shivering had worn off, and after some breakfast I felt a lot better. I went round to a doctor with the reminiscent name of Foch and he told me I’d had slight concussion and ought to take it easy for a day or two. Otherwise there was nothing wrong. Then I called in at the garage and reported about the car.
There was a fuss, as I’d expected. Three men with strained faces and talkative hands argued it out with me. Had I informed the police? How could it have happened? I put the blame on my eyesight and told them I wanted as little fuss as possible. Fortunately there was quite a bit of money to my credit at the bank. When I left I took my passport to the station and booked a seat on the evening train for Paris.
I was getting out—cutting my losses and quitting. It hadn’t really started yet, the ache about Alix. I’d been too shaken up for the ordinary feelings to begin. I knew I’d done the only possible thing. She’d made no move towards me last evening at all. After the first exclamations of horror she’d neither moved nor spoken. It was hopeless to attempt to break the tie.
But I was going to feel pretty bad about it later on.
I didn’t go near either the Wintertons or John to say goodbye. If I saw John I should quarrel with him for saying anything to Deffand. If I saw the Wintertons they’d overwhelm me with kindness. It was a bit rude, but I’d have to write to them. This last day in Nice was better alone. The train left at six. It had been hopeless to try for a sleeper. With luck I might get one side of a first-class carriage.
Anyway, it didn’t seem to matter much. Nothing mattered any more. I’d been following a private mirage of my own, and the end was the desert one might have expected.
Chapter 22
I thought I’d have a sleep in the afternoon, so went back to the hotel and lay on the bed and smoked.
After a bit I dreamed what I hadn’t dreamed the night before. I dreamed I was on the cliff again, among all the rubble, with the fissure I’d got stuck in just below me. But when I looked down Alix was caught in it and holding out her arms. She said: “ Don’t let me go, Giles.” And I said: “ You’re tied to Charles, not me. You’re his sister, the same clan, the same blood, the same breath. You’ll never be free.” And she said: “ Don’t let me go, Giles. You promised. Don’t let me go.” Then I left her there and got round the lump without difficulty and climbed to the top of the cliff. Then I woke in a great sweat to find the pain had started all right now.
Night Without Stars Page 26
