by Eric Ambler
“I can see,” I said patronizingly, “that you are no photographer, Monsieur. That is not cinematograph film.”
“No?”
“No. I admit that it looks a little like it. But you will find that cinematograph film is a millimeter narrower. That is a standard spool of thirty-six twenty-four by thirty-six millimeter exposures for the Contax camera.”
“Then those photographs were taken by this camera here, the camera that was in your room?”
“Certainly.”
There was a pregnant pause. I saw the two exchange looks. Then:
“When did you arrive in St. Gatien?”
It was the fat man once more.
“On Tuesday.”
“From?”
“Nice.”
“At what time did you leave Nice?”
“I left by the nine twenty-nine train.”
“At what time did you get to the Reserve?”
“Just before dinner, at about seven o’clock.”
“But the Nice train arrives at Toulon at three thirty. There is a bus for St. Gatien at four. You should have arrived at five. Why were you late?”
“This is ridiculous.”
He looked up quickly. The small eyes were coldly menacing.
“Answer my question. Why were you late?”
“Very well. I left my suitcase in Toulon station and went for a walk down to the waterfront. I had not seen Toulon before and there was another bus at six.”
He wiped the inside of his collar thoughtfully.
“What is your salary, Monsieur Vadassy?”
“Sixteen hundred francs a month.”
“That is not very much, is it?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“The Contax is an expensive camera?”
“It is a good one.”
“No doubt; but I am asking you how much you paid for it.”
“Four thousand, five hundred francs.”
He whistled softly. “Nearly three months’ pay, eh?”
“Photography is my hobby.”
“A very expensive one! You seem to be very clever with your sixteen hundred francs. Holidays in Nice and at the Hotel de la Reserve, too! More than we poor policemen can afford, eh, Commissaire?”
The Commissaire laughed sardonically. I could feel myself getting very red in the face.
“I saved my money to buy the camera,” I said. “As for this holiday, it is the first I have had for five years. I saved my money for that also.”
“But naturally!” The Commissaire sneered as he said it.
The sneer aroused me.
“Now, Monsieur,” I protested angrily. “I have had enough of this. It is my turn to demand explanations. What exactly do you want? I am prepared to answer questions about my passport. You are within your rights in asking them. But you have no right to steal my private property. Neither have you any right to question me in this way about my private affairs. As for those negatives to which you seem to attach some mysterious importance, I have yet to learn that it is forbidden to photograph lizards. Now, Messieurs, I have committed no crime, but I am hungry, and it is time for lunch at the hotel. You will please return to me my camera, my photographs, and my passport immediately.”
For a moment there was dead silence. I glared from one to the other. Neither moved.
“Very well,” I said at last, and turned to the door.
“One moment,” said the fat man.
I stopped.
“Well?”
“Please don’t waste your time and ours. The man outside the door will not allow you to leave. There are a few more questions we have to ask you.”
“You may keep me here by force,” I said grimly, “but you cannot force me to answer your questions.”
“Naturally,” said the fat man slowly; “that is the law. But we can recommend you to do so-in your own interests.”
I said nothing.
The fat man picked up the negative from the Commissaire’s desk and, holding it up to the light, ran it through his fingers.
“Over two dozen photographs,” he commented, “and all practically the same. Now that, I think, is curious. Don’t you think so, Vadassy?”
“Not in the least,” I replied curtly. “If you knew anything at all about photography, or if you were just ordinarily observant, you would notice that each one is lighted differently, that in each one the shadows are massed in different ways. The fact that the object photographed in every case is a lizard is unimportant. The differences lie in the way each is lighted and composed. Anyway, if I like to take a hundred shots of lizards in the sun I don’t see that it is any business of yours.”
“That is a very ingenious explanation, Vadassy. Very ingenious. Now I will tell you what I think. My idea is that you were not in the least interested in what you photographed with those twenty-six exposures and that you were merely exposing the film as quickly as you could to complete the spool and get the other ten exposures developed.”
“The other ten? What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it a waste of time to pretend any longer, Vadassy?”
“I really don’t know what you mean.”
He heaved himself out of the chair and stood close to me.
“Don’t you? What about the first ten exposures, Vadassy? Would you like to explain to the Commissaire and myself why you took those photographs? I feel sure we should be interested!” He tapped me on the chest with his finger. “Was it the lighting, Vadassy, or was it the massing of the shadows that so interested you in the new fortifications outside the naval harbor of Toulon?”
I gaped at him.
“Is this a joke? The only other photographs on that spool are some I took in Nice of a carnival that was held the day before I left.”
“You admit taking the photographs on this film?” he said deliberately.
“I have already said so.”
“Good. Please look at them.”
I took the negative, held it up to the light and ran it slowly through my fingers. Lizards, lizards, lizards. Some of the shots looked promising. Lizards. More lizards. Suddenly I stopped. I looked up quickly. Both of them were watching me.
“Go on, Vadassy,” said the Commissaire ironically; “don’t trouble to look surprised.”
Unable to believe my eyes, I looked at the negative again. There was a long shot of a section of coastline partly obscured by what looked like a twig close to the lens of the camera. There was something on the coastline-a short gray strip. Another shot, closer this time and from a different angle, of that same gray strip. There were things that looked like trap-doors along one side of it. More shots. Two of them were from the same angle; another had been taken looking down and nearer still. Then came three almost wholly obscured by a dark mass in front of the camera. The edge of the mass was blurred and very faintly patterned like a piece of cloth. Then there was one of what looked like a concrete surface out of focus and very near to the camera. The last of them was overexposed, but only one corner of it was obscured. It was taken from one end of what looked like a wide concrete gallery. There were some curious arrangements of highlights. They puzzled me for a moment. Then at last I understood. I was looking at the long, sleek barrels of siege guns.
3
The formalities of my arrest were attended by the examining magistrate, a harassed little man who, prompted by the fat detective, subjected me to a perfunctory interrogation before instructing the Commissaire to charge me. I was, I learned, charged with espionage, trespassing in a military zone, taking photographs calculated to endanger the safety of the French Republic, and of being in possession of such photographs. After the charges had been read out to me and I had signified that I had understood them, I was deprived of my belt (lest, presumably, I should hang myself) and the contents of my pockets, and taken, clutching my trousers, to a cell at the rear of the building. There I was left alone.
After a bit, I began to think more calmly. It was ridiculous. It was outrageous. I
t was impossible. Yet it had happened. I was in a police cell under arrest on a charge of espionage. The penalty, should I be convicted, would be perhaps four years’ imprisonment-four years in a French prison and then deportation. I could put up with prison-even a French one-but deportation! I began to feel sick and desperately frightened. If France expelled me there was nowhere left for me to go. Yugoslavia would arrest me. Hungary would not admit me. Neither would Germany or Italy. Even if a convicted spy could get into England without a passport he would not be permitted to work. To America I would be merely another undesirable alien. The South American republics would demand sums of money that I would not possess as surety for my good behavior. Soviet Russia would have no more use for a convicted spy than would England. Even the Chinese wanted your passport. There would be nowhere I could go, nowhere. And after all, what did it matter? What happened to an insignificant teacher of languages without national status was of no interest to anyone. No consul would intervene on his behalf; no Parliament, no Congress, no Chamber of Deputies would inquire into his fate. Officially he did not exist; he was an abstraction, a ghost. All he could decently and logically do was destroy himself.
I pulled myself together sharply. I was being hysterical. I was not yet a convicted spy. I was still in France. I must use my brains, think, find the very simple explanation that must exist for the presence of those photographs in my camera. I must go very carefully over the ground. I must cast my thoughts back to Nice.
I had, I remembered, put the new spool in the camera and taken the photographs of the carnival on Monday. Then I had gone back to my hotel and put the camera in my suitcase. It had still been there when I packed later that night. It had remained in my suitcase until I had unpacked at the Reserve on Tuesday evening. While I had been in Toulon the suitcase had been in the consigne at the station. Could anyone have used it during the two hours I was walking about Toulon? Impossible. The suitcase was locked and no one could break it open in the consigne, steal the camera, take those dangerous-looking photographs, and restore the camera to the suitcase in two hours. Besides, why put the camera back again? No, that would not do.
Then another thought struck me. The photographs I was supposed to have taken were the first ten on the spool. They must have been, for my last lizard shot had been number thirty-six. Now you can’t turn a roll of film backwards, and there were no double exposures on the film. Therefore, as I had started a spool at the carnival in Nice, a new spool must have been put in before the Toulon photographs were taken.
I jumped up in my excitement from the bed on which I had been sitting, and my trousers sagged down. I rescued them and, with my hands in my pockets, marched up and down the cell. Of course! I remembered now. I had been slightly surprised to notice when I had started on the lizard experiments that the exposure counter on the camera had registered number eleven. I had thought that I had made only eight exposures at Nice. But it is very easy to forget odd shots, especially when there are thirty-six exposures on the spool. Yes, the spool had certainly been changed. But when? It couldn’t have been done before I arrived at the Reserve, and I had started on the lizards the following morning after breakfast. It came to this, then: that between 7 p.m. Tuesday and 8.30 a.m. (breakfast-time) Wednesday, somebody had taken my camera from my room, put a new spool of film in it, gone to Toulon, penetrated a carefully guarded military zone, taken the photographs, returned to the Reserve and restored my camera to my room.
It didn’t sound possible or probable. Quite apart from any other objections, there was the simple question of the light. It was practically dark by eight o’clock, and as I had not arrived until seven, that disposed of Tuesday. Even supposing that the photographer had gone by night and started work at sunrise, he would have to be very quick and clever to get my camera back into my room while I was lying in bed looking out of the window. And, anyway, why return it to me with the spool still inside it? How had the police got into the business? Had the taker of the photographs told them anonymously? There was, of course, the chemist. The police had obviously been in ambush for the owner of the negative. Perhaps the chemist had been caught with the photographs and sworn that they had belonged to me. But then, that didn’t account for their being with my experimental shots. There had been no sign of a join in the negative. It was hideously puzzling.
I was feverishly going over the ground for the third time when there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside and the door of my cell opened. The fat man in the tussore suit came in. The door closed behind him.
For a moment he stood wiping the inside of his collar with his handkerchief, then he nodded to me and sat down on the bed.
“Sit down, Vadassy.”
I sat down on the only other piece of furniture in the room, an enamelled iron bidet with a wooden lid on it. The small, dangerous eyes surveyed me thoughtfully.
“Would you like a bowl of soup and some bread?”
This I had not expected.
“No, thank you. I am not hungry.”
“A cigarette, then?”
He proffered a crumpled packet of Gauloises. This solicitude was, I felt, highly suspicious; but I took one.
He gave me a light from the end of his own cigarette. Then he carefully wiped the sweat from his upper lip and from behind his ears.
“Why,” he said at last, “did you admit that you took those photographs?”
“Is this another official interrogation?”
He brushed cigarette ash off his stomach with the now sodden handkerchief.
“No. You will be interrogated officially by the juge d’instruction of the district. That is no business of mine. I am of the Surete Generale and attached to the Department of Naval Intelligence. You may speak quite freely to me.”
I did not see why he should expect a spy to speak quite freely to a member of the Department of Naval Intelligence, but I did not raise the point. I had, indeed, every intention of speaking as freely as I was allowed to.
“Very well. I admitted taking the photographs because I did take them. That is, all those on the spool with the exception of the first ten.”
“Quite so. Then how do you account for those first ten photographs?”
“I think the spool in my camera was changed.”
He raised his eyebrows. I plunged into a long account of my movements since leaving Nice and the deductions I had made concerning the origin of the incriminating photographs. He heard me out, but was obviously not impressed.
“This, of course, is not evidence,” he said when I had finished.
“I don’t offer it as evidence. I am just trying to find a rational explanation of this fantastic affair.”
“The Commissaire thinks that he has found the explanation. I do not blame him. On the face of things the case against you is perfectly good. The photographs are on a negative which you have admitted to be yours. You are also a suspicious person. Simple!”
I looked him in the eye.
“But I take it that you are not satisfied, Monsieur?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you would scarcely be here talking to me in this way if you were satisfied.”
His jowl distorted into the beginnings of a grin.
“You overrate your importance. I am not interested in spies, but in who employs them.”
“Then,” I said angrily, “you are wasting your time. I am not the person who took the photographs, and my only employer is Monsieur Mathis, who pays me to teach languages.”
But he did not appear to be listening. There was a pause.
“The Commissaire and I agreed,” he said at last, “that you were one of three things-a clever spy, a very stupid one, or an innocent man. I may say that the Commissaire thought that you must be the second. I was inclined from the first to think you innocent. You behaved far too stupidly. No guilty man would be such an imbecile.”
“Thank you.”
“I am not in the least desirous of your thanks, Vadassy. It was a conclusi
on that I disliked exceedingly. In any case, I can do nothing for you now. Understand that, please. You have been arrested by the Commissaire. You may be innocent, but it will not disturb my rest in the slightest if you are sent to prison.”
“I feel sure of that.”
“On the other hand,” he continued thoughtfully, “it is essential that I should know who did take the photographs.”
There was another silence. I felt that I was expected to make some comment. But I waited for him to go on. After a few moments he did so.
“If the real criminal is discovered, we may, Vadassy, be able to do something for you.”
“Do something for me?”
He cleared his throat noisily.
“Well, of course, you have no consul to intervene on your behalf. It is our responsibility to see that you are treated properly. Providing, naturally, that you co-operate with us in a satisfactory manner, you need have no fears.”
“I have already told you all I know, Monsieur…” I stopped. There was a lump in my throat and the words would not come. But the fat man evidently thought that I was waiting to be supplied with his name.
“Beghin,” he said, “Michel Beghin.”
He paused and looked at his stomach once more. The cell was insufferably hot and I could see the sweat from his chest staining through his striped shirt. “All the same,” he added, “I think you may be able to help us.”
He got up from the bed, went to the cell door and banged on it once with his fist. The key clicked in the lock and I saw the uniform of an agent outside. The fat man muttered something I did not hear and the door closed again. He remained standing there and lit another cigarette. A minute later the door opened again and he took something from the agent. As the door closed once more he turned round. In his hand was the camera.
“You recognize this?”
“Of course.”
“Take it and examine it very closely. I want to know if you find anything curious about it.”
I took it and did as I was told. I tried the shutter, the viewfinder, and the distance meter; I took out the lens and undid the back; I peered in every nook and cranny of the instrument. Finally I put it back in the case.
