by Gil Brewer
* * * *
A young man, an agent de police, met Baron as he entered the bare waiting room outside the office of the commissaire. The waiting room both looked and smelled like Baron’s old grammar-school rooms. The floors were worn boards, well oiled, and there were benches around the walls, well polished by many impatient behinds. The benches were knife-nicked along their edges, and here and there Baron saw black initials and dates carved into the old oak. There were three brass spittoons at three corners of the room, beside the benches. In the very center of the room, in line with the pebbled glass door signifying the office of the commissaire, was a straight-backed, cane-bottomed chair. The agent de police stood leaning behind this chair, a hand on either side of the back. He regarded Baron coldly and with the self-conscious, penetrating, supercilious stare of a young, new officer.
“I must see the commissaire,” Baron said.
The agent said nothing. Baron gave him a long look, decided the man was half asleep, and brushed past him toward the door.
“What is your business?” the man said. He had taken Baron’s arm as he walked by.
Baron looked at him again.
“Important,” he said. “Urgent. International.”
The agent did not change expression. He wore no hat. His cap was hanging on the inside doorknob of the door Baron had just entered. He had yellow hair, parted far down on the left side, just above the tip of his ear. The hair was combed flatly across his skull, toward the other side. It gave Baron the impression that the man looked out at him through a curved opening in a length of yellow pipe.
“Américain?”
«Oui. Vite, s’il vous plaît.»
The agent released Baron’s arm. “It is late,” he said.
Baron said nothing.
The man shrugged. “Wait,” he said. He lounged across the room and creaked through the door into the office. The door closed.
Baron stood by the chair. He walked around the room. He looked up at the cold glass windows that circled the walls of the room, revealing nothing but water pipes. The room was not near an outside wall, and the windows were dark beyond the elbows and joints and sockets of water pipes. The pipes ran all around the room behind the windows. He waited a long time, perhaps five minutes.
Abruptly he stalked toward the office door. His first step in that direction brought the door open. The young agent returned, closed the door carefully, lounged over to the chair, and put either hand on its back once again. He did not look at Baron.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said. “It is late.”
A plain-clothes man came out of the office, rapidly closed the door, looked at neither of them, put his hat on, and left the waiting room. He was trying to shove a sheaf of papers into his right-hand coat pocket and they would not fit.
Baron stepped quickly over to the office door, opened it, and entered. Behind him the agent said, “Very well,” and did not move. Baron closed the door.
The office was empty. There was a large desk cluttered with papers, and a black cheroot burned in a clean ash tray beneath a green-shaded desk lamp. Behind the desk large windows opened into an alley. The limb of a tree waved slowly behind the windows. On the left wall of the room was an open door and Baron heard somebody snorting in water in there. Then whoever it was coughed and spat and grunted.
Behind him the door opened and another uniformed officer entered. He walked quickly to the desk, put down an envelope, picked up another envelope, and left.
The commissaire came out of the washroom, drying his hands on a towel, still coughing. He stared at Baron, finished drying his hands, wiped the back of his neck under the open tunic, tossed the towel inside the washroom on the floor.
“What?” the commissaire said.
Baron started to say something, attempted something else, then stopped and said nothing.
The commissaire was bald. He was a stocky, red-faced man, with clear blue eyes, rather merry, Baron thought, and a wrinkled uniform. Under his eyes the flesh sagged in wrinkles, which went along with his dress. He moved decisively. He went to the desk, picked up the cheroot, poked at the envelope the other officer had left, coughed, and stuck the cigar in his mouth and chewed on it. Finally he drew a great puff of smoke, breathed it out, stepped up to Baron. He stared into Baron’s eyes and waited.
Baron opened his mouth and everything came out like water from a faucet. He told the commissaire the entire story, sparing nothing. Once it got going, he was not able to stop it for a moment. It rushed from him. Every word was a kind of pleasant relief and he drove toward the end, breathing hard, wanting to get it all out of him, onto somebody else’s shoulders. As he talked he imagined himself somewhere peacefully resting, on a bed perhaps, with no troubles in the world, with nothing to bother him, with only peace and contentment just outside his door. It was a feeling that grew and grew as he talked, and by the time he finished he was smiling and the perspiration had begun to dry on his hands and face. His palms had been so damp they were uncomfortably dry now. He wiped them against his trousers.
“It is very serious,” he told the commissaire. “You know of this Gorssmann? You know of Cassis?”
The commissaire nodded. He turned his back on Baron, went around his desk, and sat down in the large, high-backed, leather-upholstered chair. “Yes,” he said. “I know of you, too, monsieur.”
The commissaire stared at his desk and smoked his cheroot. Baron felt it becoming warm in this room again. His palms began to perspire again and something was starting all over again, down inside him. The moment of respite had been brief.
The chair creaked as the commissaire leaned back, smoking. He leaned forward, brushed the ash from the cheroot, rested it carefully on the tray, and leaned back again, creaking.
“Don’t you understand?” Baron said.
“Let me see your identification.”
Baron fumbled for his wallet in his jacket pocket, flung it on the desk in front of the commissaire.
The commissaire picked up a pencil and poked at the wallet. “Just your papers, please.” He poked the wallet across the desk, past the ash tray, beyond the cluttered papers on the desk.
Baron showed him his papers. The commissaire nodded, handed them back.
“Who are you?” the commissaire said.
Baron stared at him.
“Please,” the commissaire said.
Baron began to experience the same sensations he’d had when listening to Hugo Gorssmann. It was a feeling of complete enclosure and the sudden outrage down inside him sought for a way out, his mind instinctively feeling there was no way out.
“Why did you come here?” the commissaire said. “Providing you are Frank Baron, what can you want with us?”
“Don’t you understand?”
The commissaire looked at him, rocked slightly in his chair, creaking. He leaned far back in the chair and looked at Baron. “Have you your passport?”
Baron swallowed whatever he’d planned to say. He found his passport, flipped it across the desk to the commissaire. He watched as the officer glanced quickly through the passport, compared the picture with the man before him, and grunted. “I see,” the commissaire said. He handed the passport back to Baron.
“Obviously,” Baron said. “You’ve got to do something.”
“What are you doing in France?”
“Nothing in particular. Don’t you see? Until now—”
The commissaire pursed his lips. He rapped his knuckles on the desk and shouted, “Henri!”
The office door behind Baron opened and the blond agent entered. He closed the door and raised his eyebrows at the commissaire.
“I warn you,” Baron said, “you’re losing time.”
The commissaire looked at him and said to the young agent de police, “You will draw your pistol, Henri, and search this man.”
Baron stood still and waited as Henri searched him and discovered nothing but the roll of franc notes. Henri tossed the franc notes on the desk, trying not to
watch them too closely.
“What are you trying to do?” Baron said.
“Security measures,” the commissaire told him.
“You doubt what I say is true?”
“It may very well be true.”
“Then for God’s sake, stop acting this way!”
“Anyway you look at it,” the commissaire said, “it is bad.” He picked up the cheroot, relit it from a greenish brass desk lighter, puffed, laid it in the ash tray, and leaned back in the chair. He scratched the back of his hand, swallowed, pursed his lips. “Your papers are not in order,” he said.
“You’re joking.”
“I assure you, monsieur.”
Baron turned all the way around, performing a kind of pirouette, then leaned across the desk. The perspiration had really started again. He could not seem to reach the commissaire and he was beginning to understand that there is nothing so disconcerting as not being able to reach somebody in time of real need. He had to convince the commissaire, but just looking at the man, he knew it was futile. The commissaire had made up his mind about something.
“You expect me to believe this tale?” the commissaire said.
“You’ve got to believe it.”
“Henri,” the commissaire said. He nodded toward a door on the other side of the office. Henri nodded back and Baron caught the look of pleasure in the man’s eyes.
“We will have to detain you,” the commissaire said.
“Oh, no,” Baron said. “No, you don’t!”
“Please,” Henri said, nudging Baron with the barrel of his revolver toward the door on the other side of the room.
Baron shrugged him away, went around the desk belligerently.
“Arrest at attention,” Henri said, “or I am forced.”
“Go to hell.”
“It is to warn.”
Baron bent over the commissaire, grabbed his arm, held his face close to the man. His voice was even louder than he’d thought of making it. “You’ve got to do something,” he said. “You can’t just sit here. The Republic is in danger, monsieur le commissaire. Don’t be a fool.”
“He calls you the fool,” Henri said. “Release or I am forced.”
The commissaire looked at Baron, and nodded toward Henri. Baron understood what he meant. Henri would, in another moment, obey the impulse.
“How did you find out about Cassis?” the commissaire said.
“I told you,” Baron said.
“Laughing,” Henri said.
“Do so,” the commissaire said to Henri. Henri came over and took Baron’s arm, held the gun just under his elbow, and began to guide him across the room toward the door.
“My apologies, monsieur,” the commissaire said from behind them, and the chair creaked. He heard the commissaire leave the office and the door slammed.
It was the detention room. Henri thrust him aside, closed and locked the door. There had been no need to tell him not to try to escape. There was no way out. There were no windows. Only one door led from the room and it was a solid oak door. He heard Henri on the other side of the door, pacing the office floor.
There were several chairs in the detention room and a single golden oak table about eight feet long. There were two dry inkwells on the table and three broken-nibbed pens. A single sheet of paper was by one inkwell and somebody had doodled on it. There was a steam radiator, stained with rust where it leaked at one end, and the air in the room was very close.
A key scraped in the lock of the door, the door opened partially, and the commissaire leaned around the iamb, looking at Baron. “We cannot at this time allow you the usual,” he said. “You understand this? It demands the utmost. Security is vital. I am sorry, monsieur.”
Baron made for the door. The door closed and the key grated and clicked.
“Truly,” the commissaire said from the other side of door. “Wait a little.” Baron heard him walk away.
Somewhere in the building a telephone began to ring.
Baron tried to tell himself that at least he was safe. It was a conclusion reached very deviously and it did not help at all. It only seemed to make matters worse, and for the space of a moment he lost his head. He went over to the door and banged on it with both fists as the precariousness of his position became clear. Finally he quit that and went over and sat in one of the chairs by the large table. Nobody had answered when he banged on the door.
Gorssmann would never suspect for a moment that he had come to the police. No sane man would have done this. It placed not only himself, but Bette and Elene, in horrible danger. How could he have been such a fool? If Gorssmann somehow got wind of this, it would be all over. He tried to discover the true motive for his coming to the law, but his mind drew a blank. He was here. It had seemed the right thing to do. Now he knew he must somehow get away.
Again he left his chair, with Bette’s name flashing on and off in his mind like a red light. He went to the door and began banging on it again. They could not hold him like this. He had to get away, find somebody who would listen, and act.
He began to see how things really were more and more clearly and he knew he had to get hold of himself. Gorssmann might, at this instant, be trying to reach him. The man who had been following him had probably by now reported his disappearance.
He pounded still harder on the door. He could hear the frantic thunder of his own knocking. It reverberated through the nighttime emptiness of the old building, and above the knocking, like an old woman’s intermittent screams, the telephone rang and rang.
CHAPTER 8
About a half hour passed and Baron felt himself slipping toward a very real despair. There had been no answer to his knocking on the door and the telephone finally stopped ringing. His own mental condition was a trap now. There were pitfalls he had to avoid. It was a battle to stay clear of them. The one thought that tortured him most was the memory of what Gorssmann had said about Bette. He could find no way of forgiving himself for coming to the police. He called himself every name he could think of as he paced the worn board floor of the detention room. Nothing helped.
He did not hear the door open.
“Monsieur?”
He whirled as the commissaire spoke loudly.
“Someone to see you, monsieur,” the commissaire said. He stepped aside in the doorway, brandishing a newly lighted cheroot, and a tall cadaverous man strode past him. The man came on into the detention room and stood looking at Baron across the large expanse of table.
“This is Louis Follet,” the commissaire said.
For a long moment nobody spoke. The commissaire sighed abruptly, took another frantic puff on his cheroot, turned his back, and closed the door. Baron heard the distinct sound of the key in the lock, the click as the bolt shot into place.
Baron was slightly disconcerted about Follet. He did not know who he was, but he was of that type seen hanging around water-front bars. His clothes were wrinkled, baggy, the gray suit well worn, the stringy tie raveled on one side. He carried a soft felt hat partially crushed in one hand. He was very thin, but large-boned, his cheeks sunken in a gray face that did not smile. The only lively thing about Follet was the probing look in his eyes.
“Yes?” Baron said.
Follet said nothing. He kept watching Baron with those bright-blue eyes that seemed to burn in his head like the blue flame on an alcohol lamp. The eyes did not waver. The eyes simply watched and watched and Baron began to feel the perspiration again.
Follet placed his hat beneath the elbow of his left arm, probed his pockets until he found tobacco and cigarette papers. Standing there, watching, he rolled himself a fat cigarette with long curling shreds of tobacco. The shreds hung from the end of the cigarette as he lit it. From the time he lit the cigarette until it burned out close to his lips, Follet never took it from his mouth.
“I am from the Sûreté Géneralé, Department of Air Intelligence,” Follet said at last. The cigarette jiggled between his lips as he spoke. Otherwise he did not move.<
br />
Baron quit looking at the man. He went and slumped into a chair by the table, folded his hands on the table, and looked at them. He listened to Follet breathe and decided the man was consumptive.
“You are now in the hands of the secret police,” Follet said.
“Must we talk in code?”
“You are bitter?”
Baron started to explode, managed to stifle it. He heard Follet’s quiet chuckle, glanced up. Follet’s face hadn’t changed. The chuckle worked its way around the cigarette.
“Would you mind very much telling me everything you told the commissaire? The commissaire is a good man, but prone to excitement, monsieur. It would help if I heard this extravaganza from your own lips.”
Baron said nothing.
“Please, monsieur,” Follet said. “I promise to listen carefully.”
Baron looked at Follet again. He decided to hell with it. He might as well tell him. They would keep him here anyway, and Follet somehow did not seem like the commissaire.
“All right,” Baron said. He went through it all once more. He told Follet as thoroughly as he could, everything. He did not want to have to tell it again. Even thinking about it made him ill. When he finished, he was so worked up he could no longer sit in the chair. Again he began to pace the room. “I came here thinking I could get some help,” Baron finished. “Now I find nobody believes me.”
“Pitiful, isn’t it?” Follet said. He moved over to a chair by the table, stuffed his hat in his jacket pocket, and, folding himself carefully, almost mechanically, he sat down, leaned his head back, and watched Baron. “May I see your passport, monsieur?”
Baron found his passport, flung it across the table. Follet’s hand snatched it up. He glanced quickly through the passport. “You say you are Frank Baron?”
“Yes,” Baron said. “I am Frank Baron. Can’t you read?”
“Monsieur, please,” Follet said. He picked a shred of tobacco from his lip, wiped it on the edge of the table, breathed smoke, and handed Baron his passport. “It is true, the picture there is of you. A good, clear picture, too, I might add. No doubt at all about that. But see for yourself. Your name is Longwell—Herbert Longwell, of Richmond, Virginia.” Follet breathed some more smoke as Baron flipped incredulously through the passport. “Can you blame the commissaire?”
