Of All The Bloody Cheek

By Frank McAuliffe

Prefatory Word
I suppose it is only natural that invariably one of the first questions is: "What was the most interesting Commission ever accepted by the firm of Mandrell, Limited?"
Westerners exhibit a raging compulsion to gain this particular information. They will blurt out their rude inquiry the moment they detect the slightest sag in one's conversational guard. I have come to conclude that this passion for getting immediately to the plum is a complex inflicted on Western man by his dedication to birthday gifting, to the sweet-toothed Easter hare, to the Christmastide thing, and all that.
Easterners, on the other hand, particularly the pure Orientals, select an altogether different scent in their search for unrecorded data. I don't know quite how you would categorize their curiosity; it's a difficult thing to pin with words. But I believe I can best describe it thus: Their quest is not for the most interesting Commission in the history of Mandrell, Limited, but rather for the most—well, ghastly is the only word that expresses it well. Why this should be is beyond me.
Which is all actually neither here nor there, for I do not propose to initiate this chronicle of Mandrell, Limited's activities with the Commission falling under either of these definitions. First of all the Commission that I personally found most interesting would, I'm quite certain, bounce off some of you, leaving no discernable bruise. And the Commission that I regard as the most ghastly
OF ALL THE BLOODY CHEEK
was so ghastly that I cannot bear to resurrect it, even to the extent of this reminiscence. (Pride, pride.)
As to the curiosity of international proportions about Augustus Mandrell himself, there is much that I could say were it not that safety dictates otherwise. Still, some general remarks would perhaps not be amiss since that universal curiosity which dogs my footsteps is concerned as much with what I do as it is with what kind of a monster I must be to do it. I feel I must do whatever little I can to correct this baldly erroneous assumption. So we come to personal matters.
False modesty forbids me to insist that I am a simple man. Being entirely self-educated, I have managed to retain a rich enjoyment of the colorful circumlocutions of the English language, even while rejecting its impossible syntax and grammar. (Although the absurd difficulties here are not to be compared with those of Arabic, for Instance.) It could be argued that my study of Eastern languages has led me to a convoluted style in my native tongue. But in fact I must admit that I am probably a rebel in this, as in many things. Rules are for the trammelled—Mandrell makes his own. A language is meant to be used fully—for pleasure, comment, communication, even for profit. However, I digress. Back to practicalities.
Very well, then: I am Augustus Mandrell, of mixed though uncertain origin, and with an extraordinary diversity of self-developed talents. I co-operate as little as possible with the governmental thirst for orderliness, ignoring that area of communication concerned with birth certificates, business licences, visas, passports, marriage registries, police dossiers, intelligence records, etc.: a roster, to my mind, of fear-spawned intrusion. I travel, yes, but the name of the traveller exists only for the length of the trip. The photographs which append the passports are not of the face which looks back at me from the mirror when I have removed such items as the false moustache, the strips of rubber skin, the cotton wads which fit around the gums, the bits of colored glass which adhere to the eyeball.
My business carries me to many lands, but it is unlicensed in any of them. Indeed, it is even considered illegal in some. Therefore, I submit no monthly reports to the Department of Monthly Reports, no annual description of income to the Department of Annual Income, no stockholder's report to a yearly gathering of the Amalgamated Leeches of Commerce. Mandrell, Limited is mine and mine alone.
Nevertheless, the various governments of the world have managed to build up remarkable dossiers filed under Mandrell, Augustus. I have availed myself of a reading of many of these laughable works of fiction. On six of them I am willing to pass a few general judgments. The file maintained by Scotland Yard is the most voluminous (six hours' reading time). That belonging to the Mexico City police is the most incriminating. A verdict of guilty would have been unavoidable had they caught me. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (U.S.-A.) holds the file that is by far the most sweeping. Interpol, of course, has the most confusing collection of data. The Turkish police, as ever, have the most orderly file, yet too, the most limited in scope. Only the deeds committed within their borders are noted. (Insular beggars.) The most charitable comment possible regarding the file held by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is that it is fastidiously bound.
That is as much as I can safely tell you. That I have selected the most challenging, the most dangerous, and therefore, to me, the most satisfying of professions is perhaps a clue. You will note early in this chronicle that I am possessed of excellent commercial judgment. Rare indeed have been those occasions on which I have been guilty of defiling the dignity of specie. Nevertheless, you will also notice, I trust, that money is of secondary or, shall we say, incidental importance to me. I have been asked, of course, why I have chosen the particular profession that I describe in these pages. I reply that a man likes to do that which he does well, but even I realize that this is an incomplete answer. I have mentioned the money—Mandrell Limited's profits—yet even this is not the full answer. The answer lies somewhere in these memoirs—I think.
The Doctor Sherrock Commission is a good starting point. Not only does it represent one of the first commissions accepted by the firm of Mandrell, Limited, but also, in the telling, it will supply perspective to those of you who may not be familiar with the mechanics of my firm. Fortunately you have always been many.
Augustus Mandrell
The Dr. Sherrock Commission
Dr. Sherrock is remembered by the firm of Mandrell, Limited, with unequivocal sentimentality. He put us on our feet, so to speak. Which is more than I can say for the service he extended to many of his patients.
Odd chap, this Sherrock. He was a medical doctor with a practice in Liverpool. His home, with its steel-shuttered windows, was located in the posh Clairemont section. Each day the doctor made his transit from home to office in the rear of a locked Rolls. The chauffeur of the Rolls, a barrel-shouldered young man named Ben Nett, carried beneath his left arm an ugly bit of iron manufactured in Belgium and containing within its contours seven steel-headed bullets.
Once the auto arrived at the building that housed the doctor's offices, it was driven down a ramp to an underground garage. Here the machine was parked in a wire-enclosed stall from which Sherrock stepped directly into an elevator that scheduled but two stops: the garage and the doctor's offices on the third floor.
And this strange regimen did not slacken with Sher-rock's arrival at the office. He would not treat just anyone. Perhaps he had been less selective at one time, accepted patients purely on the criterion of their forfeiture of health. But in the period in which I knew the man he insisted that yours be an anatomy previously researched by his stethoscope before he would allow you the shelter of his office.
One would assume it financial folly for a doctor to so isolate himself from the community. Which M.D., I mean, survives without that one essential trapping of his practice—the patient? Not so. Sherrock sustained the vacuum and still remained the top yearly-income doctor in Liverpool. A feat, I am told, of no meager proportions, for the Liverpool of those days (about a year prior to the war) was a city glutted with medical men made notoriously tractable by starvation.
Sherrock prospered because he still retained a trusting core of old patients, his Clairemont neighbors, for the most part—case histories he knew by memory—and their offspring.
What have we here, then? A snob who has discarded the ideals of his youth, the wistfully lofty tenets of his profession? No; there was more substance to Sherrock's withdrawal. During the several months prior to my acquaintance with the man, the doctor had been exposed to a series of odd adventures, an unsettling record of mayhem that prompted anything but a sense of security.
On June 19, for instance, Daisy Sherrock, the doctor's wife for eighteen years, encountered sudden escape from the balance of her life. On holiday in Wales the woman slipped, jumped, or was pushed from a promontory onto a covey of rocks bordering the Irish Sea. While it is true that the lady was renowned locally for her lack of beauty, it is doubtful that her extraordinary acrobatics improved her condition in any degree.
On December 26 of the same year (you will note that I am reluctant to wax specific regarding the identity of the year involved; I must refuse to do so for reasons that will remain my own)—anyway, on December 26 a Miss Sally Hickey received the following correspondence in the post: "If you go ahead and do it I'm going ahead and kill you and him."
A rather irrelevant exhibition of faulty sentence structure, but noteworthy in this instance when you realize that Miss Sally Hickey was about to become the second Mrs. Sherrock. The doctor had announced their engagement on Christmas Day. Miss Hickey, a winsome slip of a girl, had, up until this time, known only that fame inherent in her occupation as a nurse in Dr. Sherrock's office. She was evidently a medical woman of precocious skill, for it was she (not the older, more experienced, nurses) whom the doctor kept alone with him in the office for those late-evening experiments that are so much a part of the life of the dedicated physician.
There was no further enlightenment from the letter writer. Perhaps he had exhausted his gift.
Then on February 13 (that birth date, historically, of beautiful women) of the new year, a rifle bullet splashed through the window of Dr. Sherrock's library. On February 19 a similar missile shattered the same window. These ballistic outrages commanded Dr. Sherrock's attention rather abruptly, for he chanced to be seated in the room on both occasions. All windows of the great house, except those of the servants' quarters, were shortly equipped with steel shutters.
Then on March 8, just three weeks prior to the wedding, Dr. Sherrock found himself face to face with the secret aggressor. On his way to the office in his Rolls, the doctor encountered a vintage saloon that forced his own machine from the roadway at high speed. The Rolls struck a stone wall that fortunately gave way to superior craftsmanship, and Sherrock went unharmed.
The doctor, for all his submersion in the medical profession, was not a dense man. Upon sensing the bent of his enemy's animosity—having it rather flung in his face, actually—Sherrock exhibited an astute knowledge of the basic ingredients of survival. He, for example, did not entrust his deliverance to the abilities of the Liverpool police (a loutish lot). Instead, following the roadway impertinence, he hired for himself the chauffeur with the automatic pistol, the Mr. Ben Nett previously mentioned.
In fact, the durable Mr. Nett became so much the constant companion of Dr. Sherrock and the doctor's fiancee in the ensuing weeks that when the day of the wedding finally arrived, a certain degree of good-natured joshing befell young Nett. The alcoholic mouths of the wedding guests speculated with Ben on the sleeping accommodations being provided for the trembling bride.
"What'll it be, Lad? Three in a bed? Ho-ho-ho-ho."
"How many loaded guns will the poor lass find facing her tonight? Eh? Ho-ho . . ."
Ahhh, when will Englishmen ever learn that dignity is the least resident in the brandy bottle?
The wedding went off as planned, but I understand the honeymoon trip to Italy was postponed until less hostile times. That is, postponed until the police, or somebody, should apprehend Mr. Michael Bell.
It had been suspected all along that the caretaker of Dr. Sherrock's misfortune was one Michael Bell. After all, hadn't it been Michael Bell who had injected into the demise of the first Mrs. Sherrock the fascinating rumor of possible "foul play"? Hadn't it been Michael, a brash immigrant from Belfast, who had gone about the pubs in Clairemont muttering his dark, vulgar conclusions regarding ". . . me sister's accident—if you'll call that an accident . . ." immediately following the burial of the first Mrs. Sherrock? Yes, Michael was the brooding brother of the matron who had enjoyed the flamboyant swim in the Irish Sea. He was Dr. Sherrock's brother-in-law.
Michael had also been the frequent escort of Miss Sally Hickey prior to her engagement to Dr. Sherrock. Michael it was who had taken the vivacious young nurse about the sights of Liverpool on those evenings when she was not enmeshed in after-hours research with the good doctor.
Thus it must have seemed to poor Mr. Bell that his whole world was being unraveled before his eyes, and all of the yarn ending in the hands of the physician. Sister gone . . . ladyfriend gone.
As I said, Dr. Sherrock and the Liverpool police suspected that Michael was the secret tormenter. But it was not until the day of the automobile rowdyism that they knew for certain. Sherrock swore that he had seen the contorted face of Michael behind the wheel of the offending machine. The authorities of course took after the lad with laudable vindictiveness. But Mr. Bell proved worthy of their zeal. He eluded the pack, and was still, two months following the Sherrock-Hickey nuptials, at large. More power to you, lad.
Mrs. Sherrock (nee Hickey), poor lass, came to despise Michael Bell with a fervor equal to that expressed by her doctor-husband. The young waif had indentured herself to the god Matrimony, and she was eager to test the residual benefits thereof—to wit, her new buying power. But instead, she found herself a prisoner in the steel-shuttered house. On the assumption that Mr. Bell had been rather in earnest when he threatened to kill both Sally and the doctor, the Liverpool police and Sherrock himself insisted that Sally remain confined.
The situation was at this flux when the talents of Man-drell, Limited, were solicited.
Despite the obvious impediments in the case, I accepted the Commission. My decision was considerably influenced by the hints of pending bankruptcy tended me by my creditors. As I deposited the advance fee to my account, my banker of the day, a Mr. Lovejoy, remarked, "Ah, it does my heart good to see so young a firm as your own finally making its way, Mr. Mandrell. Afraid there for a while we were going to lose you. So many bankruptcy decisions being brought on these days, eh? Although you young fellows shouldn't be believing all those things you read in the press about the commercial houses. We are certainly not the 'smugly solvent' lot you hear about from those Bolshevik crybabies. No, indeed . . . Ah, Mr. Mandrell, our dossier on Mandrell, Limited, appears somewhat delinquent. We do not have your exact activity listed. What is Mandrell, Limited, in?"
"Why, I suppose hunting describes it best," I murmured.
"Hunting? You mean big-game hunting? Buena macu-bula and all that?"
"Yes, big-game hunting," I said.
"My, my. That doesn't sound any too broad-based, reliable, or . . . ah . . . economy attached, if I may say so." (Followed by a positive geyser of derogatory cliches.) "Can you tell me, is our Mr. FitzHunt aware of Mandrell, Limited's corporate structure?"
You suet-voiced popinjay. You no longer have Mandrell, Limited, beneath your pound-sterling thumb; the loan is up to date. So now you would impose this false insecurity to our negotiations. Bondage me with fear. Not on your life, sir. Mandrell, Limited, now has teeth.
"I would appreciate it, Mr. Lovejoy," I said, "if you would summon the necessary articulation to correctly pro-
nounce my name. It is Man-DRELL. Not Man-DRiLL. A minor distinction, to be sure, yet one the zoologists of the world have seen fit to emblazon with significance."
"Oh, I say, I hadn't meant to . . . well now, back to our analysis of Mandrell, Limited's growth potential. You
"Good day, Mr. Lovejoy. You will find my checks in the post."
I moved on from my bank—yes, indeed, "my" bank— to a sleazy building in Blackpool. To the eternally suspicious gentlemen encountered therein I handed over the sum of nineteen pounds. They in turn grudgingly parted with an Afghan rug which they had been holding but which belonged to me.
"Nineteen pounds. That's not one-tenth the worth of this thing," I was informed by a Mr. Grimes of Customs.
"Not one-fiftieth," I corrected him. "But you see it is damaged here, the two holes? So the full import duty could hardly be assessed."
"Not if I'd been in charge . . . Here, those look to be bullet holes!"
"Yes, they certainly do. Good day, sir." At this period in my life I was admittedly a bit dotty on the subject of fine rugs. An affectation, probably, that has not survived my maturity. On this occasion, however, I found myself particularly indebted to Dr. Sherrock. Had it not been for the advance monies from the Sherrock Commission, I fear I would have been driven to some desperate act in order to retrieve the Afghan rug from the customhouse.
These, then, were the fruits of my labor. Let us pursue now the labor itself. The Dr. Sherrock Commission.
In order that you may not be misled, let me point out that it was not Dr. Sherrock who negotiated the Dr. Sher-

rock Commission with Mandrell, Limited. That would have been somewhat incongruous, as you shall see.
My major concern, following my acceptance of the Commission, consisted of arranging a face-to-face meeting with the harried doctor. The meeting, of necessity, had to be within a format that Sherrock's schedule, with its bristling aura of defensive security, firmly did not allow.
As a first maneuver I motored up to Liverpool and presented myself at Sherrock's offices. With my arm supported by a dramatic, blood-spotted sling, I supplicated at the desk of the nurse-receptionist for emergency help. Through lips made blubbery by pain, I demanded that the talents of Dr. Sherrock should immediately be brought to bear on my tortured arm. I was informed that a Dr. O'Shaughnessy, a colleague of Sherrock's, would honor my affliction. "Dr. Sherrock is not available."
"You are not understand, Lady Nurse," I sniveled. "I am Igor KaminsM. Great pianist. Greatest since Gault-flegal. The critics, some say greater than Gaultflegal. I? I must be neutral. ... I am trapped here, Liverpool, this stupid city, by the concert. I am let nobody, nobody, touch-a these lovely hands except Sher-rook."
I held out for the nurse's attention my injured paw. The fingers of the hand were so grotesquely intertwisted that I would be lucky were I to ever again zip my trousers with same, much less play the piano. The ring finger itself was split fully in half all the way to the second joint. The collection of malformed digits that she viewed was of course of my own manufacture. Mostly a block of plaster of Paris sculpted to my needs and carefully tinted to an over-all yellowish purple, except for the areas of bruised-red where two of the fingernails hung by a thread of cuticle. Rather overdone, actually, but the thing passed for a ruptured hand if only because there was nothing else it could possibly have been.
"This Dr. Sher-rook, I am heard of him," I said. "He is must fix me. I must play tonight."
"Dr. O'Shaughnessy will see you, if you care to wait," the nurse said, staring coldly at my affliction. "We do not treat non-English patients, as a rule. Dr. Sherrock's orders. But in this case, since you are in the Arts, perhaps . . ."
I carried on a bit more, banging about Dr. O'Shaugh-nessy's office and screeching that none but "Dr. Sher-rook himself should examine my hand, but to no avail. O'Shaughnessy and another white-smocked gentleman eventually prescribed massive home rest for me and flung me from the building. It would serve you right, you medical swine, should Igor Kaminski elect to never play again. How, I ask you, sirs, are you to explain my absence at the next Buckingham Palace command performance?
Thus, in my first move to complete the Sherrock Commission I gained little but a growing respect for the good doctor's hunger for privacy. I returned to London, taking with me the abused but talented hand of Igor Kaminski, and sat brooding at my desk in this bit of an office I had acquired just off Bristol Square. The Dr. Sherrock Commission represented the first substantial Commission in the short history of Mandrell, Limited. It had to be brought off with ringing virtuosity. The firm's reputation would be built on nothing less.
Following a full day of contemplation, I had all but decided that if I were to retain my infant business, and my Afghan rug, I would be forced to risk the temper of the doctor's armed chauffeur, Mr. Ben Nett. I would intercept Sherrock during his daily home-to-office ride. Then, lo! before I had time to act on this somewhat dangerous decision, the correct strategy came suddenly to me on the winds of Fortune. Fortunate for me, that is. A bit on the awkward side for the third party involved, a gentleman named John Austin.
Austin was an incumbent M.P. from Liverpool, Labour man. He had, according to the shocked report in The Times, been struck down by an auto on a street of his own district while returning home from an electioneering rally. The offending machine—described by a witness as an old Bentley, color red, if you can imagine such a thing—had sped off without pausing to ascertain even the extent of the M.P.'s injury; which, upon his removal to St. Malachy's Hospital, proved to be grievous.
The key, the very key to my dilemma, served up by the voting stock—slack, blind cattle—of Liverpool!
I immediately flew north and presented myself at old, gray St. Malachy's to involve myself in the succor being tended Mr. Austin. To the hospital authorities, I was a doctor engaged by the Labour Party. To the politicians on the scene, I was present on behalf of the Austin family. And to the family, I was a member of the hospital staff. It was all rather simple. Most of the people I encountered during my three days of medical duty, even the members of the M.P.'s family, appeared more concerned with the political ramifications surrounding the incident than the ministrations being accorded the near-deceased.
An ugly theory had invaded the affair. It was indignantly whispered, through filed teeth, that the Tories had done in poor M.P. Austin, had paid the driver of the red Bentley to obliterate their opposition, an expediency well in keeping with Liverpool political tradition. A very serious game down there.
On two occasions during my medical tour I was able to achieve the sickroom unescorted and spend a few minutes alone with the patient. Following the first of these visits, I looked in on the superintendent of the hospital and informed him that his famous charge had regained coherence for a few seconds during my visit and had voiced a request.
"He wants a particular doctor called in for further consultations," I told the Super. "A Dr. Sherrock. I've heard of Sherrock but, unfortunately, do not know him personally."
"I know Dr. Sherrock," the Super said. "I'm afraid he'll not come to the hospital. He lives under . . . well, some rather peculiar pressures."
I shrugged. "Just as well. The patient evidently has enormous faith in him; but, after all, Sherrock is no more than an M.D., possessing God knows what degree of competence."
"Dr. Sherrock is the highest caliber of physician," the Super told me coldly. The Super didn't like me. He didn't like my splayfooted stride, my paunchy, hunched posture, my stained school tie, or my grimy, fingerprint-crusted eyeglasses. He, in particular, did not enjoy the cloud of bad breath that hung about me like a cape (in reality a bit of pungent cheese smeared on the upper arms and neck). I was not at all the Super's conception of the doctor one summoned to minister to a Member of Parliament. Which is not surprising, since the disguise I have described was inspired not by a doctor but by a banker, my Mr. Lovejoy.
"If Mr. Austin has so much faith in Dr. Sherrock," the Super told me, "I will personally make every effort to bring Sherrock here. Are you, sir, so in command of your profession that you can deny the therapeutic effect such a visit might have?" Quackery on high. Nothing as ineffectual as medical attention was going to keep Austin from dying, and the Super well knew it.
I did not leave the invitation of Dr. Sherrock to the Super's influence alone. After maneuvering my second visit to the sickroom, I reported to the Labour Party people and the dying man's family that the M.P. had amazed me by a miraculous rally to consciousness. "He badly wants this Dr. Sherrock brought in," I informed them. "And I will venture only this diagnosis myself. A? a humble medical scientist, I'd say that without Sherrock the M.P.'s chances are wholly dependent upon the whim-sey of the supernatural. Which, at best, is . . . well, erratic."
I also mentioned that I had reported the patient's request to the Superintendent of the hospital and that, while the man had promised action, I thought I had detected a bit of foot-dragging. "Does anyone . . . er . . . happen to know the Super's political affiliations?" I asked slyly.
Ah, there are few spurs so sharp as the sudden knowledge that one is being made the victim of a conspiracy My listeners exploded into activity. Poor Dr. Sherrock He found his carefully erected isolation abruptly besieged from several impressive quarters. Entreaties to abandon his security shield for a trip to St. Malachy's rang upon him from people he could hardly ignore, from empire-level government people, from the medical hierarchy, and from his own insular neighbors in Clairemont. The doctor capitulated in twelve hours.
The routine was snapped. Instead of motoring home from his office that evening, Sherrock was chauffeured to St. Malachy's, protesting all the way that he did not know and had never met M. P. Austin. "Strange are the ways of modern medical science," the Super soothed him.
I of course made it my business to be on hand when Sherrock arrived at the hospital, and I graciously agreed to attempt once more to rouse the unconscious patient. I insisted, however, that only Sherrock and myself should be present in the sickroom. There was grudging compliance.
Once in Austin's room, door locked behind us, blinds drawn, I guided Sherrock to the respirator tank in which Austin lay, living tenuously on the mechanical ability of his windowed boiler (or iron lung, as I believe the Americans affectionately call it). Dr. Sherrock stared down at the pallid face of the M.P. for a few seconds, then said crossly, "Never met him. And shouldn't care to either, I might add. Labour man, isn't he?"
"I doubt that introductions will ever be necessary, Doctor," I said, reaching into my black satchel. "I have something here you must digest, sir. Somewhat bitter I'm afraid . .."
"Wha-"
I expended the time necessary to place the snout of my pistol against his smock directly in line with his heart. Accuracy was essential in this instance, for the silencer on my weapon was effective for but one shot, really, and Sherrock was already frisking about somewhat. The one discharge proved sufficient. Sherrock was deceased before I caught his body and lowered it to the tile floor.
I removed my gloves, washed my hands in the small lavatory (they generally perspire a bit); then I left the room. Prior to my departure I of course disconnected from its wall socket the electric plug that ensured the functioning of Mr. Austin's respirator. *
In the outer room I encountered the M.P.'s family, a couple of Labour Party officials, and the Super and a few of his staff. Dabbing at my eyes with a soiled handkerchief, I blubbered, "He's making every effort . . . Dr.
Sherrock . . . Such skill . . . His hands, not a tremor . . . He requests that he be left alone with the patient until he summons you... . The finest physician I . . ."
My breath opened a passageway through the crowded room as I made for the corridor door. I paused by the door only long enough to unsettle the lush widow Austin by pressing on her an unwholesome leer, for no reason that I can recall now other than my possibly being a bit nervous by this time. Then I left St. Malachy's and Liverpool.
I received the balance of my fee in the Dr. Sherrock Commission a week later in my office off Bristol Square. The late doctor's chauffeur, the cleft-chinned and void-eyed Ben Nett, carried the crisp pound notes to my hand. He brought also my client, the widow Sherrock, nee Hickey.
Sally was on her way to seclusion in Italy for the period of her bereavement. Mr. Nett had graciously consented to share her grief. They were utilizing the same steamship tickets, I believe, that had been held in abeyance from the doctor and Sally's postponed honeymoon.
We concluded our business; Sally made several fatuous but well intentioned remarks regarding my Afghan; then they left. I have met Sally a few times over the years since that day, but Mr. Ben Nett I saw once more only, in Switzerland, Just prior to his unhappy accident.
On the day following the payment of the fee, I returned to Liverpool and released my auto from its hiding place. I drove the sad machine to a local automotive shop and contracted repairs. As I turned to exit from the shop, I discovered the manager studying the dented front end of the red Bentley with an apprehensive eye of cocked suspicion. "Don't get many red ones, we don't," he observed
THE DR. SHERROCK COMMISSION
nervously. "You say you'll be back to fetch it this afternoon?"
Out with it, mealymouth. What are you trying to say? I of course assured this idiot that I would return; then I left him and his uncharitable speculation.
The Bentley, I might mention, had been purchased and licensed under the name Lovejoy—a gesture of sorts to my banker. That I would never be allowed to reclaim the machine was not so staggering a loss as you might assume. The Tory people had been most generous and had budgeted into my fee the purchase price of the auto.
Thus: the Dr. Sherrock Commission. Actually, the Second Dr. Sherrock Commission. I can never be certain, I guess, but it did appear to me at the last moment there, as my finger enjoined the trigger, that recognition had floated to the surface of Dr. Sherrock's eyes. That he remembered me from our previous association. The matter of the first Mrs. Sherrock.
The Iranian Farmer Commission
Have you ever been the nervous witness to a spot of wild mob activity? I mean a mob that erupts throughout a complete city? Interesting sort of thing, providing one retains one's objectivity. The excitement of watching modern man throw off the yoke of these artificial rules we call civil law is matchless, second only to the excitement of joining him in his orgy of animal freedom.
Possibly the finest example of raw-pulp mob chaos it has ever been my luck to observe took place in the city of Teheran, capital of Iran, in January of 1942. A really first-class piece of work.
The country of Iran in the year 1942 was enduring one of those galling phenomena of large-scale war: benevolent occupation. The Allies—England, France, the U.S., and Russia, in case you've forgotten (they obviously have)—were interested in Iran. Their interest became so keen that in August of 1941 both England and Russia invaded this wasteland that so inconsiderately blocks Russia from the Arabian Sea, and from year-round, deep-water maritime trade with the rest of the world. Two considerations triggered the invasion. First, the old Shah had been damned slow about deporting the three thousand or so German military who had seeped into his country and were sniffing about the oil fields of
THE IRANIAN FARMER COMMISSION
Abadan. Second, the Allies needed a southern route through which to supply Russia with war materials. Iran, much to her amazement, became this southern route.
The old Shah never quite adjusted to the whole thin" and within three weeks abdicated in favor of his son.
Oddly enough, all of this had very little to do with the mob that exploded through Teheran's streets the following January, as you shall see. In giving this account of the Iranian Farmer Commission I am, in a sense, delivering a defense of Mandrell, Limited's reputation. There are documents still in existence in the files of the Colonial Intelligence which accuse Mandrell, Limited, of being the direct cause of the mob activity. This is not true. Here are the unreported facts:
The rich, grating sound of polished silverware sawing upon excellent china tapped at my ear, bouncing softly against my tympanic membrane. The sound somehow generated a lulling backdrop, a comfortable, luxurious, repeated chord not unlike that encountered when one is seated on a screened veranda listening to the dulled thwack of tennis balls being struck by the young in the courts located across the garden beyond the hedge. I was seated on this occasion, however, not at some estate in Essex but at the dining-room bar at the British Club in Teheran, capital city of Iran.
The British Club had actually no budgetary connection with His Majesty. It belonged to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and had been built by the oil company primarily to induce peace in the tempers of those executives assigned from the England home office to a tour at the fountainhead of the company's wealth. But since the war had forced the English military to occupy most of Iran— the portion not occupied by the Russians—the club in
Teheran had become the single greatest inland oasis in the Middle East for thirsty members of His Majesty's forces. Eventually the club lost its original identity and was known from that period on simply and marvelously as the British Club. The club had become also, as a stopover for so many passing strangers, an absolute ant colony of secretive eyes, whispered messages, and casual hand signals, in an area of the world already grown flaccid with intrigue.
I too was not without guilt, a contributor to this ugly panorama of man's distrust. For it was not Augustus Mandrell who sat at the bar. No; even to the acute eye it was a Mediterranean merchant who sat there. A man of brownish skin, wearing about his agile frame a cotton suit of flowing Indian cut, a black fez restraining to his skull a mass of tight, oily curls, where once had reared a scholarly shock of unpretentious stalks. Or: never trust a stranger in a bar, my son.
A Hindu waiter bowed at my elbow and informed me that a Mr. Parvis Saliba awaited me in the lower foyer. I scurried from the bar abruptly, caught up in the grip of a commercial excitement that I hoped befitted the rug-merchant role I was playing.
Mr. Saliba was an Iranian gentleman of some sixty-odd summers. I had judged him to be rather a fool upon our first meeting, a week previous when he had welcomed me to Iran. Since that time we had met again and I had changed my estimate. Rather, he had learned to be at ease with me and had ceased acting like a fool, had ceased attempting to Put Me In My Place.
When we met in the foyer, Mr. Saliba said, "My associates are here. They are waiting for us in the billiard room you reserved. First. . . may we speak?"
He took my arm, grasping it with an authority that 30 had come to him over the years as naturally as the pot belly that bulged the lower portion of his vest. He led me to a small, empty cloakroom, out of earshot of the two Hindu doormen. Also out of earshot of the robed gentleman with the limp who had been following me for two days.
"We have located Fazlollah Hussein," Mr. Saliba said. "He is staying at his smaller house here in the city. Fazlollah has rarely used the small house. Much too cramped. Fifteen, possibly eighteen, rooms. But he cannot use the large house. His family, they have come to the city to see what they can do. They are at the large house."
"And Attrod is with Mr. Hussein?" I said.
"Attrod and all of his retinue. It appears that Fazlollah is extremely well guarded. In addition to the men inside the house, the ten or twelve ruffians who form the palace guard, so to speak, there are also approximately one hundred or so of Attrod's followers stinking up the gardens which surround the house. Should any violence occur within the house, I'm afraid a man would be torn to pieces by this rabble on the outside before he could escape. You see, Mr. Mandrell, we have somewhat of a national reputation for treating assassins with rude brevity in Iran. Dismemberment is the accepted form. I do not say this to alarm you, but to alert you."
"I have nothing against your national fetishes personally," I said. "However . . ." We smiled at each other.
"And it is the decision of your group," I continued, "that Fazlollah Hussein's—what will we call it, addiction? —is incurable?"
"Not incurable. That is why we have turned to Mandrell, Limited. You shall administer the cure to Fazlollah. Yes, we are all agreed, my associates and myself—and Fazlol-lah's family too—that this is our only answer."
"As long as that is understood," I said. "Mandrell, Limited, deals in unequivocal results. Once Mandrell acts, there is no area for renegotiation,"
"That is understood. Shall we join the others?"
"I must confess that this man Attrod has impressed me," I said, not moving. "You and your fellow fanners of the Elburz Mountains impress me also. By God, we should have farmers such as yourselves in England. With your Riviera apartments, your chateaux in the Paris suburbs, your Bulgarian chalets. But alas . . . Yes, your group impresses, but this ridiculous man Attrod—there, sir, is a man who kneads the imagination."
"Attrod, Attrod," Mr. Saliba hissed. "He is a fanatic. One of those terrible men who every so often rise to the surface from Allah knows where. Unfortunately for ourselves, he has arrived in our time."
"A by-product of the war perhaps?" I said.
"No, no, no. Do not misunderstand. Before the war was, Attrod was. About eighteen years ago he started moving outward from the hopeless desert that is the center of our Iran. Of course they laughed at him or ignored him at first. After all, they see many like him from time to time. A starving peasant whose mind leaves him and who then goes about begging something from those who have nothing. But Attrod was different, or had much luck. Some believed him. After all, he promised little. 'Attrod will try,' he said. That's all: 'Attrod will try.' You have there, perhaps, a lesson in holy-man demagoguery. To those who have nothing, promise little. Who can say? To the peasants he said, 'Bring me love, and I will try.' For a while he became famous, as an unknown horse who wins suddenly one big race at Longchamps becomes famous. He was lionized by fanatics, feared by the sober-minded. That is the barrier at which most of these so-called holy men are stopped. Consumed in the flame of their own importance, you understand? But Attrod, he did not change. He remained the bony, sun-blackened little man in rags. Nor did he change his chant: 'Attrod will try.' He is the phenomenon with staying power. The man more god than man. When he walks, hundreds walk with him. When he pauses, thousands come to hear him. He preaches . . . what? Socialism? "The poor will contribute their energy,' he says. 'The landowners will contribute—their land!'"
"The obvious question-" I started to say.
"Come, Mr. Mandrell," Saliba interrupted—the one rudeness I will not forgive. "Let us meet with the others. We farmers of the Elburz, we are not a patient people. A heritage that comes with our wealth, perhaps. I understand you. The others do not. They will leave if we do not hurry."
"I'm afraid it is I who do not understand your friends," I said, holding my place. "They have the problem, not I. I have the solution."
"But you are being very well paid. . . . Ahh, this role as spokesman, it is an unaccustomed burden." He walked back from the door and busied himself stuffing another cigarette into his ivory cigarette holder.
"I think sometimes," he said, sighing, "that that is our trouble, my friends, and myself too. Everything is an unaccustomed burden for us. I see men of action and decision such as yourself, such as the British officers who have invaded us, even the Russian soldiers who dash through the roads of Teheran in their trucks and grab from any private home those whom they wish to question. I see you, so sure of yourselves, and I must compare myself to you. The lives we farmers have led, they have not been good lives, only amusing lives. The fat life that bloats the body, shreds the religion, draws the blood like a pump from one's morals. What is left? A jellied despot with the brains of a sponge, the stamina of an orchid, the imagination of a blotter—the Farmers of the Elburz Mountains. We are a sorry lot, Mr. Mandrell."
As I said, once Mr. Parvis Saliba discarded his pomposity, he was far from a fool. I have always retained a fondness for Mr. Saliba, despite the wretched outcome of the Iranian Farmer Commission.
"Which I think," he continued, "may answer the question you were about to ask. This man Attrod has selected a very weak enemy. We were very foolish about Attrod. He had never been to the north before. His triumphs have been in the south. We thought we were much too wise for him."
"But how does he do it?" I asked. "How does he force apparently sane men into giving away their land?"
" 'Force' is the wrong word. Force is the one weapon Attrod does not use. How can I say what it is like, this persuasion of his, this magic? I have never met him. I am not sure now that I would want to meet him. The farmers to the south, we heard of their defeat by Attrod and we laughed at their weakness. I realize now that they had been like us, had sworn to supply a steel, unresponsive ear into which Attrod should pour his supplication. Yet they fell before him. And when the angry interrogation of their neighbors crashed upon them, these farmers who had given their land to Attrod, they could but shrug, make the sign to Allah, and answer, 'Attrod, he is a true holy man.' We of the Elburz ridiculed our southern compatriots. Yet once we learned that Attrod was coming our way, we did take action. We sensed that should he be allowed free passage among the peasants, who admittedly do not live well—but that is the way it has always been, the way of Allah—we sensed that his preaching might infect some undisciplined ears.
"So we made arrangements. We formed this silly cabal against this scrawny little beggar. We even had the specifics set down on paper. We sat about the air-conditioned conservatory at Fazlollah Hussein's mountain house and the 'Legal Committee' read our manifesto. I remember Article 14, for instance: 'A member of the cabal may offer the enemy water, but not from the well located nearest the house.' That sort of foolishness. I recall that Fazlollah raised his glass—most of us do drink alcohol, another sign —he raised his glass and shouted: Til drink to that, old man.' Fazlollah is very representative of all that is not good about us. He is much too overweight, much too given to forgetting his lands, his business, if he can chase a young girl. He is fifty-eight and has never missed a Riviera season. Except now, of course, with the war, with German bombers actually bombing private yachts in the Mediterranean. I suppose that Fazlollah, like all of us, every now and again has this distracting worry about Allah bubbling to his attention. The awareness that he is approaching closer and closer to Allah, and Allah is not in sympathy. That may be part of the answer."
"A universal affliction," I said. "Yet when Attrod arrived here it was at Fazlollah's house that you kept him?"
"Fazlollah had been appointed Chairman of Recreation by the cabal—ah, such stupidity! . . . As I said, we were afraid to let Attrod walk through our area. So we sent for him. The Welcoming Committee went south and brought this terrible man here in a silk-lined Duesenberg. My own automobile, I might add. He was quartered at Fazlollah's house. We sat back then and waited for the amusement. On the sixth day—I shall never forget it— Fazlollah came forth from the house and renounced his comfort, his family, his friends. He became a disciple of Attrod. He gave half of his lands to Attrod, to a committee of Attrod's that will cut the property into parcels which will then be served up to whatever abuses can be delivered them by the poor."
"I suspect that even the most cloddish poultry farmer in Devonshire could have forestalled your tragedy," I commented. "If one harbors any fondness at all for roast chicken and fresh eggs, one does not allow the fox residence in the hen house."
"Yes, if only we had recognized Attrod for a fox and not a mouse," Saliba said. "Such an insidious man. Not only did he convince Fazlollah to literally cut the ground out from beneath himself; he has also taken Fazlollah's person from us. Fazlollah joined Attrod's immediate entourage. When that emaciated little man trudges in the hot sun of the Elburz, the mountain of blubber Fazlollah trudges with him. They are now, as I said, staying at Fazlollah's small town house. You may be required to act quickly, Mr. Mandrell. The morning after next they are all leaving for the holy city of Meshed, on foot! Attrod, Fazlollah, and the complete rag-bag pack of Followers now lying in the gardens—all will be leaving for the holy city."
"To give thanks for Allah's gift of gullibility upon Fazlollah, no doubt," I said. "Quite correct, Mr. Saliba. I want to finish with Fazlollah Hussein before they leave the city. Let us go meet with your friends. If you gentlemen can supply me with one particular service, I believe I can promise you release from your dilemma by morning. By two-thirty of the morning."
We left the cloakroom and moved on to the billiard room on the second floor. There were four gentlemen in the room awaiting us. There should have been five. "Where is my nephew?" Saliba asked.
"He grew impatient," answered a man who was busy aligning a shot at the billiard table. "He is probably at tie bar."
"Ayub, bring Beyshore back here," Saliba snapped to one of the nonplayers at the billiard table. "We must finish this business today." Ayub accepted the command without enthusiasm and slowly left the room.
Saliba then introduced me to the three remaining farmers. It was explained in the introduction that I was English, but that I would be known during my stay in Teheran as Mr. Naymik, Turkish rug dealer. Thus the reason for my appearance: the brown skin stain, the dark, oily curls beneath the fez, the handsome mustache.
Two of the farmers gave me slight nods at the introduction. The other ignored the civilities and maintained his concentration on the game, where he expertly three-banked himself a score.
The title "farmer," normally an appellation ringing with honest dignity, fitted these gentlemen with more than a measure of incongruity. All, for instance, wore Western dress of the latest accepted Paris cut. Then too, each gave much attention to that fascinating criterion that governs communication among strangers, the criterion of station or caste. One of man's most beloved inventions. (Else why should we all be so absorbed with it?)
While we awaited Saliba's nephew Beyshore, one of the gentlemen at the table launched a reminiscence of a recent trip inside Occupied Europe. He recalled the multiple cultured advances he had observed. The "Third Reich influence" as he called it. His petty motive was obviously an attempt to inflame my English nationalism. Another of the group remarked to his associates on my odd pronunciation of the English language. He then asked me directly if I had not found my childhood on the London docks rather trying. That he was misinformed is irrelevant. As I said, the title "farmer" fitted them ill. The complexity of their snobbism appeared to me to be hardly agrarian.
I of course maintained my usual patrician reserve. That is, I did until Mr. Beyshore and the messenger returned. Then I set about establishing the correct discipline to the meeting, a customer-seller format wherein—as at Fort-nam's—the customer is actually the supplicant, the seller the beneficent, tolerant host.
First things first, of course. Thus the initial barb of reality that I introduced was an explanation of the nationality and the exact denominations and dimensions of specie that should represent the final payment of my fee. We reached cold-eyed agreement.
"Now, gentlemen," I said, "we must decide on the mode you prefer in this venture, the implement of dispatch. I can emphasize your displeasure to the defector Fazlollah by either of two methods. The one method will be discreet, fully effective, and will leave in its wake an image for other landowners to note of implacable retribution delivered with taste. The alternate method requires the use of several pounds of TNT."
"Wouldn't the second method require also that you get your hands dirty, Englishman?" Mr. Beyshore inquired, drawing a glare from his uncle.
"In addition to the cleanliness factor," I said, "the second method, while admittedly containing an element of pictorial splendor, does have other disadvantages. For one thing, the area of damage must of necessity be less than precise. Thus the probability of restricting the lethal impact to a single individual would be rather in the hands of Allah."
"A more infirm site one would be hard-pressed to find, old man," remarked the urban Mr. Beyshore. Beyshore was the youngest of the group. His demeanor suggested, however, that here was the future leader of the Elburz farmers, the man who would replace Uncle Saliba.
The young man carried a decoration that interested me. I asked him about it. "That pearl in your ear lobe, Mr. Beyshore, is it actually held in place by the skin of the ear?"
"It was inserted at a very early age," he said smiling with very good teeth, and fingering the pearl that was the size of a pigeon egg. "It is firmly in place."
His uncle spoke. "It has, if you will forgive me, all the earmarks of a childhood affectation." Saliba giggled into his handkerchief. The other farmers laughed also. Beyshore glared at them in confusion for a moment, thinking he was being twitted. Then he too smiled.
"But back to business," Saliba said. "I'm sure we will all agree that we do not want the TNT alternate." The others murmured their assent.
"A wise decision," I said. "The pageantry surrounding a man's departure from this life should not be so garish as to obscure the essential fact of his departure. A minor courtesy. But the choice of a method not involving explosives requires certain arrangements that I cannot bring off by myself in the time available. That is why I have mentioned the alternatives to you. If you gentlemen can provide the arrangements I have in mind, I can ensure completion of your petition by morning."
"To serve the Englishman is the first duty of every humble Iranian," bespoke Mr. Beyshore.
"Your humility does you credit, sir," I said to the 39 young man, a bit testily, I'm afraid, for his asides were coming to annoy me. "There is a specific piece of data I want delivered to the Russian Intelligence people at their embassy here in Teheran," I continued. "The data must be delivered in such fashion that the Russians shall not doubt its authenticity."
"I think that can be accomplished very easily—unfortunately," Mr. Saliba said. "There are many Iranians imprisoned in the Russian embassy. Political prisoners who have been grabbed from their homes by Marshal Karvik's soldiers. As soon as the Russian invasion of Iran was completed—a matter of a few days—the Russian secret police went after those who have been active in underground work against the Russian border states. These underground men are former landowners from the border states, principally from Azerbaijan and Turkmen. Their property was taken from them when Mother Russia absorbed their countries. They and their families have always found sympathetic refuge in Iran. You see, here there has always been the fear that what happened in their countries could happen also to Iran. You can imagine how Mother Russia would dearly love access to the Arabian Sea, the southern seaport she has never had."
"Well, the Russians are here now," inserted Mr. Beyshore with steam. "Who is to say that they will ever leave, even when the war is over?"
"The British have promised that the Russians will leave," Saliba said to his nephew. "Despite their other faults, the British are quite frequently men of their word."
(Oddly enough, at the end of the war both the English and the Russians withdrew from Iran, per their original agreement. One of those brilliant coups delivered by the balance-of-power-conscious   English   statesmen   which somehow gets lost in all the talk of how much the Russians and Stalin fooled us after the war. Russia, you will note, still has to get along without a southern seaport.)
"These political refugees," Mr. Saliba continued, "who had found sanctuary in Iran are now more or less trapped here, particularly those in the Russian area. Their underground work has enraged Moscow for years. They-"
"And who encourages their underground work?" Beyshore demanded. "Who gave them the explosives and paid for the printing presses? The English! And who does nothing for them now that they are being run to earth like animals—the English!"
"You do not seem to feel that way about the English lady at the Imtazza Hotel," one of the men at the billiard table said to Beyshore, drawing laughs from his fellow players, and drawing blood to Beyshore's face.
"Enough!" cried Saliba. "Let us finish here first. I want to speak to you later, nephew, about the English lady." Saliba turned to me. "These men being held by the Russians know their life expectancy to the minute. They will be shot one of these nights behind that great wall surrounding the Soviet embassy. But first they will be questioned by the Russians for information about the underground work. We can contact these prisoners, tell them what to say to the Russians. From a source such as this, the Russians will believe. Is that satisfactory?"
"Excellent," I said. "I will write out for you the information I want the Russians to have. If they believe it, there will be no need for the TNT. I will be able to convey your displeasure to Fazlollah directly."
"It will be better that way," Saliba said. "The other landowners must be made aware that Fazlollah Hussein's answer is not the prudent answer to middle-age ennui. A rash of such awkward generosity could not help but cripple our local economic structure."
As I wrote out my instructions on a pad, Saliba turned to bis nephew and spoke to him in Arabic, whereas we had all previously spoken in a mixture of English and French.
"This Englishwoman at the Imtazza Hotel," Saliba said, "I have asked about her. She is a well-used woman, nephew. Twice she has been divorced. Once she was widowed, her husband murdered. It is said-"
"I know, I know," the nephew snapped. "She has had an unfortunate life. She was the happy wife of a doctor in Liverpool before the war, a Dr. Sherrock. After his strange death she rushed into marriage with a German, a general. Being fully English, she could not stay with a German after their bombing of London. She has explained this to me."
"And her marriage to Wakamatsu, the Japanese industrialist?"
"She says she thought he was Chinese."
"Nephew, it is whispered that this woman looks too much to the money in a man's bank and not to the man himself when she marries. Take care with her."
I finished my writing and turned the data over to Saliba. Prior to leaving the gentlemen—the odor of their combined after-shave lotions and other toiletries had by this time alerted me to the constrictive size of the room— we discussed the transportation that Saliba had arranged for me, my exit from Iran. I was told that I would be flown out in a bomber belonging to the Royal Air Force.
Noting my obvious surprise, Mr. Beyshore said, "We have our influence. For the past ten years we have helped your British Intelligence in this area. We have allowed them to send their saboteur people across our lands into Azerbaijan and Georgia. And we have hidden these same people when they came running back to Iran with the Soviet Secret Police chasing them. So when we ask for a loan of a bomber, we ruddy well expect to get it."
I was told the R.A.F. plane would take me to Alexandria. When I mentioned that I would much prefer to deplane at Jerusalem, Saliba said, "I just lift the little telephone and call the British embassy. The airplane goes to Jerusalem."
Personally I shall never fear the East until such time as its people learn to accept an advantage over the West with grace.
As to my preference of Jerusalem as a destination, rather than Alexandria, I felt no requirement to enlarge on my choice to the farmers. I have not been a welcome personage in Egypt for some years. Not since that day that a member of the royal family, during a tour of the Aswan dam, suffered an impromptu immersion in the waters of the dam. His unscheduled dip caught the avid attention of the remainder of the touring party, for the man was known to be a devout nonswimmer. Before much could be accomplished in the way of extricating the poor devil, he was swept away into the impellers of a hydroelectric turbine. Thus, literally, his light did shine throughout the land.
Mr. Gamal Risshor, member of the Egyptian parliament and actual head of Egypt's Secret Police, knows me well. (We met for a moment on the exit road from the dam.) He has swom to truncate my normal lifespan, should I ever again enter his home arena. Jerusalem, on the other hand, was a city where no such animosity prevailed. A port from which I could exercise my own considerable talents toward arranging the remaining passage to England.
My business with the Iranian farmers was concluded for the moment. I gallantly offered to dine them in the club, at my own expense. Happily they refused. I bade them farewell and left the billiard room. In the corridor outside I encountered the robed gentleman with the limp who had been rather obtrusively following me for the past two days. In brushing past him I arranged to deliver his shin a sharp kick, not out of any pettiness, rather to test the impression I'd formed that the "shadow" did one half of his walking on an inanimate leg. The solid thunk produced by the kick substantiated the impression. The knowledge upset me a bit. I have little taste for physical deformities, to the degree that occasionally I have added considerable peril to a few of my Commissions (the LeMans Race Driver Commission comes to mind) in order to ensure that no lingering eyesore should remain in my wake. I did not on this occasion, however, allow my appetite to be invaded by the affliction of this man from Colonial Intelligence. The assumption of his allegiance was of course guesswork on my part, but it proved a guess of excruciating accuracy.
I proceeded to the club dining room. On the way I chanced upon Mr. Patterson, director of the club. I had a pressing question for the man. "The Imtazza Hotel, Mr. Patterson, you can tell me his location please?" I asked.
"The Imtazza, old boy?" he said. "Why, just a hop from the rail depot, Mister . . . eh . . . Naymik, isn't it?" I nodded. "Can't say I'd highly recommend the place," he continued. "The kitchen there apparently comprises the temination of their plumbing complex. Ah ... it has been explained to you, has it not, Mr. Naymik, that your temporary membership here at the club does not include the squash court?"
Shaking my head in short vigorous turns, I said, "This game I do not play. Russian roulette, yes. Squish, no."
"Good, good," he said. "Damned difficult keeping the court in shape. What with the All-Service Tournament coming up and all, the . . ." He wandered off.
So it is at the Imtazza Hotel, just a hop from the rail depot, that you bed yourself, is it, Mrs. Wakamatsu, formerly Mrs. Von Ritterdori, formerly Mrs. Sherrock, nee Miss Sally Hickey?
It is rare that the firm of Mandrell, Limited, is petitioned by the same individual for more than one Commission, a peculiarity of the market I imagine. But there have been instances in which the firm has delivered service at least twice to the same person. The first client who ever requested a double Commission was Sally Hickey. Dear Sally.
My original encounter with Sally took place in Liverpool before the war. She was the wife of a Dr. Sherrock at that time, and she came to Mandrell, Limited, to negotiate a Commission that would ensure that she became the widow Sherrock. The Commission, one of Mandrell, Limited's first, went well. Sally obtained her widowhood, her inheritance, and the companionship of her late husband's chauffeur, a Mr. Ben Nett, whom she immediately bundled off to Italy with her. She had heard, I suppose, of the atrocious driving habits of the Italians, and wanted to be prepared.
About a year later I received a communication from Sally requesting my presence in Lucerne, Switzerland. I responded quickly to this call from a faithful client and arrived in Lucerne a few days later. I introduced myself to Sally as Senor Antonio Casalou of the Spanish branch office of Mandrell, Limited. My choice of disguise had been governed by the Occupation policies of the Germans, who had by this time taken into custody an army whose function prior to their apprehension by the Nazis is rumored to have been the preservation of the Republic of France. But let's not get into that Maginot Line thing.
The Occupation policies of the Bosche had somewhat impacted tourism in Europe. It became rather difficult to move about unless one could prove allegiance to one of the noncombatant nations. So it was that my passport was made out—by my own hand—to Senor Antonio Casalou, Madrid.
The fact that I maintained my disguise once I had contacted Mrs. Sherrock is attributable to a security equation of my own that I had been taught by cruel experience to employ. The equation translates roughly as follows: the longevity of the successful operation of Mandrell, Limited, is inversely proportioned to the number of times that the founder of the firm exposes himself using his recorded name: Augustus Mandrell.
Dear, svelte Sally was of course visibly disappointed at not being served by Mr. Mandrell himself, a man who had won her trust. But half an hour's exposure to the charming, dark-skinned Senor Casalou removed the maid's foreboding. We, Sally and I, sat over hot cocoa in the shadow of the Alps and constructed a solution to a vexation that had overtaken the lovely widow since our last meeting. The end product of our negotiations was the Ben Nett Commission.
In a countryside so abounding in remote ski paths there was small excuse for prolonging so simple a commission. Yet the Ben Nett Commission went unconcluded for the most part of a week. Not the actual physical exertion portion of the assignment—that was dispatched the very afternoon of my arrival, or the very next morning, I forget which. No; I am referring to the contractual termination of the commission, the closing of the account, so to speak.
Naturally the widow was to some extent left companion-less the moment that she saw me return from the ski paths alone, without Mr. Ben Nett, who had but a few hours previous kindly offered to guide me to some of the less-used ski slopes. This situation of loneliness had not occurred to Sally until the Commission was past rescinding. I recall being rather touched by the pathetic fashion in which her hand, holding a lace handkerchief, had paused in midwave, then slowly fluttered to the tabletop when she saw me climb the steps to the hotel's heated garden with my still-cold skis settled nonchalantly on my shoulder. She excused herself immediately to the two handsome German officers seated with her and fled to her chalet, leaving behind at the table the lace handkerchief, which one of the Germans slyly grabbed and slipped into his tunic.
It was at that chalet that I attempted to comfort the dear thing the next afternoon. Poor Sally. She had so many little worries pecking at her composure in this period. Sefior Casalou purred reassurances to the distraught lady. "No, no, it matters not which side wins this stupid war, dear Saw-lee. Your money, it will still be safe in the bank of the Swiss.... There, there, the kiss to smooth the worry wrinkles. Ahhh, the skin of your neck, here under the loveliest of ears, so soft. So much the scent of the sad rose. So ..."
That evening and the next day my campaign of mercy continued. Several additional evenings might have dissolved in the same urn of limpid duty, since I had no commitments back in England the following week. Unfortunately, during one of our lazy predawn conversations, I chanced to mention to Sally my unpaid fee for the Ben
Nett Commission. There ensued a regrettable scene in which it became apparent that Sally had somehow assumed that the topic of my fee was an item that would never be mentioned to her again. We separated on a less than amiable basis, with myself scampering about the floor on hands and knees searching out the bundle of banknotes that had scattered rather wildly after striking my face. I fear my scuttling was more or less hurried, for dear Sally was locked in the adjoining room telephoning a German officer whom she claimed had several times that afternoon requested of her permission to hoist my liver on the point of his field marshal's dagger.
Sally Hickey, enchanting young lady of charming appetites. Ahh, reverie, reverie, hardly an enduring substitute for reality.
I discarded the reverie and seated myself in the subdued, almost cathedral confines of the British Club's dining room. The robed man with the limp followed me in and took a table half a room away. What's the matter, old man, a bit of an ache in your nonferrous appendage?
The Hindu waiter and I went through several troublesome minutes before the waiter finally translated to his order pad the items plucked from my Arabic description. My Arabic was of course heavily accented with Turkish; thus I was not too surprised ten minutes later when my roast lamb arrived in the form of lamb curry. One of those minor inconveniences delivered upon one when one is intent on maintaining a disguise. It has happened to me frequently over the years. Happily, the stomach is an organ of the body that it is almost impossible to abuse. There are, I understand, some seventeen thousand edible foods on this planet. Finicky man, however, restricts his diet to but nine hundred or so of these. Odd creature indeed.
I was well into my serving of curry when a peculiar event took place. Two men, one of them wearing a military uniform, walked up to my table, pulled out opposing chairs, and seated themselves. An absurd effrontery in the near-empty room—therefore a dangerous one.
The synthetic glare I had unleashed—I had become far too alert to be genuinely angry—died in my eye when I recognized the man in mufti. He was Colonel Duncan Purdy, known locally as an oil-company executive, but actually head of all British Intelligence in Iran. He was a big man, of middle age, ruddy, incorruptible, and without soul. The other man was younger, dark-complected, and animal-looking, one of the more noble of the forest animals—the tiger, say. He wore the uniform of an American lieutenant, engineering corps. I later learned the Lieutenant's name and true identity: Louis Proferra, member of a new American unit the title of which became rather well known, for one reason or another, as the war progressed: Office of Strategic Services, or O.S.S. The O.S.S. people had rather a difficult time of it getting their Allies to take them seriously. You will appreciate immediately a portion of their dilemma when you consider that when an Englishman pronounces Oss as a single word, he finds the sound visited by a haunting familiarity.
The two gentlemen sat and proceeded to add to a conversation that had apparently been in progress prior to their arrival. Each ignored my presence with malicious aplomb.
Colonel Purdy was telling Lieutenant Proferra about a man named Augustus Mandrell.
". . . . But then the war started," the good Colonel was saying. "Bloody good war it is too, although I will say I liked the first one better. Anyway, with the press for manpower, the Yard had to forget about Mandrell. Nobody followed up on what they already knew about him; I'll tell you, the damn file on him at C.I.D. is an affront to the whole of the department by its sheer bulk alone. Bah! Off he went on his merry way. God knows how many good chaps he's put in their grave. Shocking loss when one thinks of the men who have perished for some purpose. Say, Dunkirk, or Singapore."
"Where did he come from?" Lieutenant Proferra said. His voice had that same touch of a dangerous forest cat. "Is he English?"
"Afraid he is," Purdy said. "By Jack the Ripper out of, say, your Lizzie Borden. The estimate is that he started operating in 'thirty-eight. Prior to that we don't have the form. But right now a special team has been pulled back from war work with but one assignment—find the pus-sac origin of Augustus Mandrell. That's how we feel about this man, Lieutenant. That's how all the Special Service people have felt about him ever since the Von Ritterdorf thing. Three good men and a two-engine bomber we lost on that. The man who dreamed that one up should swing on the gibbet right next to Mandrell. And, by God, don't for a minute think that isn't where Augustus Mandrell is headed.. . .
"Well, it was 1940 and perhaps there's some excuse when you remember how the war was going then. We expected Hitler across the Channel any day. That's when somebody in Special Service, somebody who had worked for C.I.D. on the Mandrell case, fell victim to this giddy inspiration. Special Service is all right in its place, I suppose, but I do feel that they come up with the bizarre sometimes only because it is the bizarre. Anyway, we knew—Intelligence knew—that a good bit of the German invasion plan pivoted on one man, General von Ritterdorf. He'd had extensive background in amphibious invasion.
Been with the Japanese during their landings in China. It was concluded—I won't say where—that if some fatality should overtake Von Ritterdorf, the invasion would be that less effective."
"So you assigned Mandrell to Mil Von Ritterdorf?" Lieutenant Proferra prompted.
"Assigned?" Purdy said. "We couldn't assign the bastard anything. We felt damn lucky just to make liaison with the elusive rodent. He has this damn wall of contact men you have to work your way through just to get to talk to him. Regular network of spivs like himself, they are. Mostly the London black-market crowd. But he has a few level heads scattered in too: disbarred barristers, unlicensed doctors, a homosexual or two. They pass you around from one to the other, you see, until the great man decides that you really want to see him on business. That you're not from the police. And that you've the money to pay his price, too. Oh, he makes damn sure of that."
"This homosexual angle," Lieutenant Proferra said. "What about Mandrell himself?" As I mentioned, Mr. Proferra was an American.
"My boy, I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Colonel Purdy said, with a beady-eyed chuckle that was meant for just him and me.
"I can see what you mean about the bizarre," Lieutenant Proferra said. "It's a well-known fact that fairies are a poor security risk. We make damn sure we don't get any in my outfit."
"Really? Personally I've never paid much attention to well-known facts. My department deals in exactly the opposite. Little-known facts. Perhaps that's why two of my best agents . . . Well, that's neither here nor there," Purdy said, discarding the subject since it was obvious that the Lieutenant had completely missed the irony. They were actually quite an incompatible pair: the experienced old hand vs. the pugnacious beginner who had not as yet learned when to keep his mouth shut.
"So Special Service went ahead and took in Mandrell. Hired him," Purdy continued. "Transportation, expenses, five thousand pounds, and no questions asked. Just get Von Ritterdorf. He accepted, of course. Mandrell's patriotism can be very precisely measured in pounds sterling. We flew him in over Vichy, France, in a bomber with three crewmen aboard. The French underground was alerted to help him as soon as he landed in his parachute. Mandrell, incidentally, to show you the man's gall, said before the flight that he would accomplish the trick alone. Said he would not accept the aid of the French underground because they couldn't be trusted! He was told that he would damn well do it our way—and so we thought. Well . . . that bomber never came back. At a time when we counted our aircraft like crown jewels, we lost an operational machine.
"Six months went by before we learned what happened. A man who had escaped a Jerry prison camp was sent through to us. He had met the pilot and co-pilot of the bomber in the camp. They told him about Mr. Mandrell. The flight had gone on form right up to the drop area, where Mandrell was supposed to bail out. The pilot and co were up front with the controls. They gave the signal to the sergeant, who was in back with orders to damn well get Mandrell out at the right moment. Then above the noise of the engines the pilots heard this banging about in back, followed by a fearsome scream. They laughed and called a 'well done' to the sergeant. Then they turned north and concentrated on running the German night fighters back to England. About twenty minutes later, who pops his head in the cockpit and coolly asks if they are over Normandy yet but bloody Mandrell. He has a pistol in his hand and he insists they follow a course over a particular town. They explain that this will put them in range of a known German radar complex. He tells them that is their worry. They go over the town; Mandrell dives out; two minutes later the Jerry fighters are on them and shoot down the bomber. Before they were shot down the copilot went aft to look for the sergeant. All he found was the poor devil's parachute!"
We paused for a moment of silent rage. I consumed the last of my coffee and belched delicately.
Lieutenant Proferra broke first. "I bet he went to work for the Nazis then?" he said harshly. Odd how the Americans fall to specific labels like Nazi, while we English deal in reality: German. The enchantment of distance I suppose.
"We don't really know what he did," Colonel Purdy said. "Except that a French underground group in the area into which he dropped was destroyed by the Germans a few weeks later." This was pure calumny, and the old fool knew it! The underground group of which he spoke had been betrayed six months earlier by one of their own members, a man passed over during the vote for leader. The patient Germans had been inconsiderate enough to decline mentioning their knowledge of the group, and had thus intercepted several British agents parachuted in.
"What Mandrell did in France, or how he got out, is a mystery," Purdy continued. "All we know is he was back in England before the end of the year."
"Yeah, that sounds like him," the Lieutenant said. "He probably couldn't have come within a mile of General Von Ritterdorf anyway."
"Oh, we got a break there, with Von Ritterdorf," 53
Purdy said. "About a month after we dropped Mandrell, the General went and got himself killed in a weird accident. On an inspection tour of the invasion bases he slipped into a waterway and was sucked through the impellers of a hydroelectric turbine. All that waste, the bomber, the men, for nothing."
"You weren't able to grab Mandrell in England?" Lieutenant Proferra said. He was an honest man, Pro-ferra, and couldn't quite hide the note of criticism. By golly, if uda bin me he double-crossed, I'da got im. You can bet your boots on that.
Boyishly relentless, I believe they call it.
"Lieutenant," Purdy said patiently, "when this man wants to disappear, it's like he's a great hibernating toad. Buries himself in the muck and stops breathing and eating until it's safe to come out. We did come close, I'll say. The nervy bastard showed himself at the Special Service installation in Birmingham looking for the balance of his five-thousand quid. Claimed he had done in Von Ritter-dorf. Well, all I can say about the incident is we near had him. Instead, we lost a sergeant major who failed to keep his pistol case properly closed. That made four good men lost. And out of it we didn't even get a look at Mandrell's bare face. I mean, the face with no damn grease, or whiskers, or scar tissue, or other glop hiding it. You could chase him all year, never catch sight of him, then come to find he was the chap sitting at the next desk all the time."
"You never got his fingerprints I suppose?"
"Not with the bloody plastics they've on the market today," Purdy said. "He always wore gloves, or a coating of plastic, or even a light film of this quick-drying glue they have. We found an office he had, just off Bristol Square. In the whole office there wasn't a print that was his. Plenty of other prints, some of them belonging to some damn surprising people, but none we could call MandreU's. We watched that office for six months, but he only showed once in that time. Came in with a writ from the Department of Customs. Said there was a rug in the place with import duty still owing. The blighter was so cool about it the boys on watch helped him roll the rug off the floor and take it away."
"He took a chance like that just to steal a rug?"
"He's supposed to be a bit dotty on rugs—we know now. But I wouldn't doubt that it was his way of thumbing his nose at us. He's had his way so long he must think he walks on holy ground. Now you get a bit of what Augustus Mandrell is made of, Lieutenant. Now you can see how I feel today, how I'd like to tell them at home to go to hell with their diplomatic pussyfooting. Here I have this man in my area, can lay my fist on him in a minute, and they tell me to leave him alone. God knows what carnage he'll spill on my doorstep. But "Whitehall says we have to let him be because the Iranian royal family and some other bigwigs brought him in. The damnable part is, I know London is right. If I touched Mandrell, the farmers up in the Elbruz could get obstinate and bind up our whole south-Russia underground business, a thing it's taken years to build. Wouldn't Marshal Karvik and his comrades just love that. Allies are allies and all that, but Intelligence work goes on even when the wars are over."
There was another pause while both men looked around the quiet dining room, looked around at everything but their somewhat indentured dinner companion.
It was the Lieutenant again who most feared the silence. He said, "And I suppose the bitterest part, Colonel, is to know what this Mandrell must be thinking. He must think it's his own cleverness that keeps him out of your hands. He has no way of knowing that he's free only by some fluke immunity." O Lord, please do spare us from these Thy subtle ones.
"Lou," the Colonel said, leveling his finger and pouring out all the considerable voltage in his desert eyes, "if I had that man's ear, I would tell him just one thing. Just this: I would give my life, my very life, to kill him. . . . That is Duncan Purdy's stand on Augustus Mandrell."
They pushed their chairs back, stood up, and left the room, headed for the bar. When I give it some thought— and in my line one does hear a good number of them—I have to rate Colonel Purdy's as an exit line of some stature. Romantic, yes, but then, aren't all the really good ones?
I had not anticipated this drawn-out unofficial apology from the Crown served with my meal; thus my schedule was askew. I hurried from the British Club and jumped aboard my hired car. The driver and owner of the auto was a Kurd, interesting chap who had maintained a grudging silence ever since the conclusion of our negotiations for his services. The machine itself was a 1935 Dodge, the one auto that for some reason year after year survives the erosions inflicted by the desert. They are still to be found in that part of the world, wheezing along stoically with their illiterate burdens, while their newer, more sophisticated brethren tool off to a graceful death in the salvage yard of some pragmatic Arab.
I alighted at the railway depot and purchased a first-class compartment on the morning train to Abadan. Abaci an: a city in the south of Iran, selected by Allah to be the crown that sits on the largest oil field the world has ever known.
My purchase of the railway ticket was a precaution 56 well in keeping with Mandrell, Limited's essential "back-out" policy, as the military call it. My Iranian farmers had made travel arrangements for me, yes. Should they be for a journey that I for one am not yet ready to make, the longest journey of them all, I had to have rerouting capability.
I must report, sadly, that the customers of Mandrell, Limited, are not as a group honorable men. They are given to vicious hindsight, collapsible memory, and—worse yet —incorrigible welching, once the Commission has reached the point of the final monetary transaction. They tend, I think, to equate the peril that Mandrell has just removed from their lives with the peril that Mandrell then represents—that ugly specter blackmail. Some of them just cannot accept the assurance that is implicit in every Mandrell, Limited, contract: to wit, the ethic which dictates that once the Commission is closed, the customer will never more be in contact with Mandrell, Limited, except by the customer's own choice (a second commission, say). I would suggest that it is adherence to this one principle, more than any other consideration, that has allowed Mandrell to survive and prosper while other such firms have been trampled in the grief unleashed by their forfeiture of integrity. My dear chap, Integrity and Mandrell, Limited —they are synonymous!
R.A.F. bomber flights to Jerusalem are all fine and dandy. But a man who sticks to the old reliable iron horse, on good old solid terra firma, can't go too far wrong. I stuffed my ticket to Abadan in my notecase.
The Imtazza Hotel was indeed located but a hop from the railway depot. The Imtazza has since been demolished, and with cause. But at the time the shortage of accommodations in Teheran blinded many to the building's deformities, not the least of which was a foundation that each year sank perceptibly into the earth.
I discovered my sweet quarry seated in the hotel dining room. Ah, dear Sally, you have not withered at all over the years. That same trim neck that first captured my hunger when you brought me the Dr. Sherrock Commission. That same straight, slender back that so forthrightly refused to support any longer the burden of Mr. Ben Nett.
And, my dear, it appears that your habits have retained their inflexibility. You do still prefer the company of gentlemen at your dinner table.
Seated across from Sally was Mr. Mohammed Beyshore, he of the pearly ear lobe.
Mr. Beyshore treated my intrusion coldly, as well he should. He glanced up at me and, without the courtesy of rising to his feet, said sternly that he was occupied. I of course promptly seated myself at their table. Turning to Sally, I said, in a French that contained the charm of a Turkish accent, "Your beauty, my dear, even to these eyes that have beheld much beauty, delights me. Women with such white skin as your own have always been my weakness."
Sally smiled nervously. Poor Mr. Beyshore, his manners a product of English schools, was defenseless. He was forced to introduce me. "My dear, this is Mr. Naymik," he said in English. "Mr. Naymik sells rugs, I believe. Secondhand."
I bowed slightly, then allowed Sally to witness the animal expression on my face as my eyes put great hairy hands upon her impeccable bosom. The dear girl blushed with indignity.
"I bring you fortunate tidings," I said, turning to Mr. Beyshore. "Your uncle summons you. He is at his home here in the city. Something to do with the political prisoners who are to carry our message to the Russians." I spoke in Arabic. Beyshore answered in like.
"We have already contacted the prisoners," he said. "Everything has been arranged. I saw to it myself. What more can Saliba want?"
"How many prisoners will make the confessions?" I asked.
"Three. They will start at eleven tonight. They asked only that their families be provided for. I gave them my word. But I tell you, the Russians will be idiots to believe them. Attrod has never been associated with the underground. The emaciated one may be a socialist, a madman, but he has never encouraged or condoned violence."
I turned for a moment to Sally and purred, "Your beauty is a flame, sweet one, and myself a cold, cold moth." I swung back to Beyshore and said, "Happily the Russians have never been noted for their empathy with holy men. Nonviolence they do not understand. If the prisoners tell them that Attrod's followers carry explosives to Meshed, they will believe. Meshed is much too close to Russian Turkmen to ignore the possibility."
"Granting they do believe," Beyshore said. "They will descend on Fazlollah's house and search for the explosives. How does this make your assignment so easy? Fazlollah and Attrod still remain surrounded by Attrod's palace guard. This palace guard you will find perpetuates an ancient Arab custom—the skillful slicing of meat from the bone with the scimitar."
"I am told," I said, "that Fazlollah's cousin Ishmel was made aware of this skill last month when he tried to pull Fazlollah from Attrod's tent. A bit of information, incidentally, that had to come to me from a source other than the Elburz farmers."
"It was not serious," Beyshore growled. "Ishniel still lives."
"But leaks profusely, I understand, upon any intake of fluids. It does not matter. Evidently it was IshmeFs plight that convinced your uncle he should secure the services of a professional. Speaking of your uncle, my boy. . ."
Beyshore jerked from his chair angrily. He apologized to Sally at some length while I busied myself consuming the dessert he had left untouched. Sally forgave him the interrupted dinner, and following. much persuasion on Beyshore's part, she consented to meet with him again at midnight. The young dandy took his joyless leave.
Sally and I were alone.
Ah, my dear, you still radiate a musky aura of rumpled bed sheets, of small-hotel debauchery, of below decks on an anchored moon-bathed cabin cruiser. You are quite lovely.
I'm afraid the young lady found me—or my rag merchant with his unfortunate habit of blowing his nose into his napkin—rather a foul substitute for the bejeweled, perfumed fanner. She was drawn up, prepared to excuse herself at the first conversational opening. My dear, you should know better by this time.
I went on for a few minutes in my charming French, telling her a couple of really amusing stories from the international scene. What Stalin had said to Hitler when the Germans attacked Russia. What Churchill had said to Pierre Laval. Gradually then, as the young miss smiled, then laughed, moving on to more titillating ground: What Maurice Chevalier had said to Hedy Lamarr. What General Franco had said when presented with a giant Negress as a gift from the Bey of Morocco.
"Oh, Monsieur, you are terrible." Sally giggled, and 60 glanced around the near-empty dining room to ensure that we were not being overheard.
I asked if she were expecting her husband. She answered that she was unmarried, . . at the moment." I said that surely some gentleman accompanied her, a brother, father, uncle, some man. Only her maid, I was told. "I am returning from Karachi to England. A very nice R.A.F. colonel was kind enough to give us a ride to Teheran. We will be here for a few days only."
"But in this country, my dear, a woman is considered fair game by the natives if she is unescorted by a man," I said, horrified. "A woman of fair skin is worth a fortune to the professional kidnappers of the city. Just three months ago an American schoolteacher, a girl of your own tender years, and nearly as beautiful as yourself, chanced into Teheran. She was grabbed from the streets by the agents of the bandit prince Ali DeMille. Ali had seen the maid in her bath and wanted her. She is kept now in his tent in the desert, a thousand miles from civilization. One can only surmise the indignities she is forced to accept, for Ali is a great, hairy, muscular man, a young giant who sleeps on a bed five meters wide."
"But the authorities?" Sally said, touching her lips with her tongue. "Can't the British officers do anything?"
"They try. But Ali is a man like a tiger. He is elusive. He speaks seven languages, writes poetry in two of them, and looks like a Greek god. Can you imagine what he does to that poor young woman when he and his band return from a raid on the caravan of some thieving merchant? What happens when he stalks into his tent flush with victory, full of the smell of adventure, and grabs up that poor girl who has had naught to do all the day but soak in a warm bath and stare out at the hills of the mysterious desert? She would beat at his chest with furious fists of course, but what must eventually occur?"
Sally did not reply. She was silent and a bit pale. A slight tremble went through her. A touching expression of sympathy for the unfortunate American schoolteacher.
"I realize how such a story must offend you, my dear. But then, reality is sometimes undigestible. I personally would feel much easier of mind if I knew that you had some method of defending yourself from such a tragedy. Perhaps you are versed in the Indian art of Gymcrack?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Sally said with a start. "What did you say?" The poor dear was still enmeshed in her sympathy. Her eyes glittered with it.
"I asked if you were perhaps familiar with the basic protective maneuvers of Gymcrack? If you are, I will not have to carry this worry for your person about with me."
"I'm afraid I have never heard of it."
"Ah! But perhaps this is an opportunity for me to make a very humble contribution to your safety. Let me explain."
Gymcrack: ancient art of self-defense, developed by Kassim Gymnasium (in whose honor do we still call our hallowed halls of sweat). Kassim was an Indian holy man who preached pacifism but who occasionally was caught up in an overpowering urge to retaliate when some ruffian kicked sand in his face on the banks of the Ganges. "He developed a sly method of inflicting damage on his adversaries without appearing to do so," I explained. "The basic principles of Gymcrack were adopted by people of the Orient and developed into judo and karati. But the original Gymcrack is superior to either of the oriental developments. There are but three basic holds in Gymcrack, and they can be learned in just ten minutes. With mastery of these three holds, a woman need never fear an attack involving as many as three men. She can easily beat them off. I could teach you the holds right here at the table, my dear ... or it might be less conspicuous if we retired to the writing room?"
"Oh, I don't think so," she said hesitantly. "I don't think the kidnappers will come after me. How many women would your Prince Ali want in his tent?" She laughed.
"The answer to that is not known to me," I said solemnly. "It is said that Ali is changeable. He demands violence in his first . . . er . . . encounter. But following the first . . . er . . . display, he becomes gentle and strums an old zither, which he plays like a master, and murmurs his poetry until he is ready for his second . . . er . . . And all the night does this go on.... Come, my dear, my train leaves in an hour. I cannot leave with a peaceful mind unless you allow me to teach you at least two of the principles of Gymcrack. Come, we will go to the writing room." I was out of my chair and had taken her hand, which proved to be rather warm. The poor young thing resisted for a second, then allowed me to lead her to the mat.
There was one person seated in the small writing room, a prosperous Egyptian gentleman perspiring over some difficult correspondence. I stepped to his side and asked in his own language if his room at the hotel chanced to be located in the vicinity of Room 101. The room, I said, wherein two oriental gentlemen were auctioning off twenty-five white women for as little as two hundred rial each. An example of the goods being offered was the young woman who had just entered the writing room with me. The Egyptian stared at Sally for a second with unbelieving eyeballs, then snatched up his correspondence and rushed from the room, his sensibilities blatantly offended,
I suppose, by my gross report. I locked the curtained French doors and turned to Sally.
"Now, first," I explained, "I will demonstrate how the attacker would come upon you. ... You see, like this, from the front, and would press against you and pull
you against his chest, like this____Ah, I'm sorry, I had
not meant to press so hard, so realistically. I did not hurt them . . . er . . . hurt you, did I?"
"Ah, no. But I didn't know you were going to hold me this tight."
"Well, now we must reverse roles. I will be you and you the attacker so that I can illustrate how you will ward off such an indignity. . . . Just so. Press harder. That's it. Now, I—and remember, I am you—I have my hands trapped at my sides. I slowly bring the hands upward, like this, between our two bodies, palms against the stomach of the attacker, against the ribs, thus destroying his center of gravity, you know, then upward and against his . . . Well, you see, if you were a man there wouldn't be this sort of . . . Here, we'll try again."
We continued, despite the inconveniences, to work on the first maneuver of Gymcrack—or the Push, as I believe it is called by the experts—for several more minutes. I then pronounced my pupil ready for the second maneuver: the deadly Pull.
"I wouldn't mind practicing the first one again if you think we should," my determined Utile pupil said a bit breathlessly.
"Perhaps we will come back to it," I said. "Now in the second hold you will again be the attacker. . . . That's it, as hard as before. Now this time, instead of the hands moving up, they move down. The start is the same. Palms against the stomach of the attacker. Then slowly down. . .. Now, once the hands have reached this point, the object is to force the legs of the attacker, his supporting columns of stabilization, so to speak, away from each other, and to force your own legs between them. . . . Well now, your costume rather hinders us here, the folds of the dress, you know? Perhaps if we hike this up here a bit. . ."
"I ... I think we had better go someplace else," the shaken attacker said a few minutes later. "I know this is all very scientific, but I'm really not learning it as well as I should. I keep worrying about somebody opening the door. My rooms are just upstairs on the second floor."
"Perhaps you are right, my dear. Then I can suggest an appropriate costume for you to improve the effectiveness of . . . Here, let's practice the first hold once more and then be off."
Two hours later I left my student in her apartment. The rigor of the exercise had proved a bit much for the frail lass; perhaps I had been an overdemanding tutor (it's always difficult to say), forcing us to conduct the third basic hold of Gymcrack, the dreaded Push-Pull, in the confines of her bed. But I'll say this. When I left her, strewn on her unmade bed, barely coherent, her fair skin blotched with brown skin make-up and a spreading rash here and there where she had proved allergic to some material in my beard—the glue, I suspect—when I left, I guarantee that behind me I left a really top-notch Gym-crackist.
Ah, let us face it: the Englishman, the Englishman, no matter how sophisticated, he is still the traveler who seeks his bit of home away from home.
At one o'clock in the morning I sat in my dark hotel room and waited. My preparations were now 100 per cent operational. I was poised, ready to unleash, waiting only for the Russians to succumb to my reasonable chicanery.
The Teheran venture, except for the blundering there at the end, was a classic piece of work. Believe me, I have on other Commissions had myself swamped with the consequences of operations that were anything but classic (one thinks of Mexico City and one shudders); therefore, spare me this bit of professional pomposity. The Teheran Commission had that neat, nut-center design that cries for a simple solution. Here was the man we wanted, living in a private home in the center of a metropolis, walled off from violence by a broiling mass of barely dormant fanatics who patrolled the gardens that surrounded the house. The simple solution had to be an intrusion of the house by myself, an intrusion either by force or by guile. Time precluded the guile. So much the worse for the fanatics —and for the Russians.
At one-forty, a little earlier than I had thought, my telephone rang. I waited for the third buzz, then picked the instrument up while it was still sounding. I didn't say a word. After a second's pause, an informant said, "Two large trucks left the embassy gate a few minutes ago and are coming this way." I hung up, grabbed my bag, and raced to the street behind the hotel, where a vehicle awaited me. The auto was an open touring car, an official machine of the Teheran constabulary, on loan to me for the evening. I climbed behind the wheel, and eased the car quietly onto the dark streets of the city. No robed and limping gentleman followed me. You are missing the whole show, old man.
Here now was the moment between security and commitment, the final forward motion. Prior to this act I could have swallowed my hunger and dropped back into ambush without having alerted the lamb. The success of Mandrell, Limited, lies somewhere in this equation: every minute elapsed between committing yourself to act and the act itself is a minute deducted from your escape time.
This is why I am fond of the Iranian Farmer Commission; list it with the classics. Until the moment when I parked by the small side gate to Fazlollah's house, I was not at all committed (except perhaps for the actions of the three political prisoners who had "informed," and they and their fates were exquisitely deductible).
The gardens about the house, where more than a hundred of Attrod's followers had just been roused from sleep, were frozen in the white spotlights emanating from the two Russian troop carriers—frozen and still in much the way that an avalanche is just before it rips loose. Russian soldiers carrying truncheons and holstered side-arms spread like a stain through the rag-bag bedrolls of the pilgrims.
Striding into the icicle-tense yard, my Iranian military uniform puffed out with anger, I demanded of a Russian the location of the idiot in charge of the troops. I had covered my generally excellent Russian with an Arabic accent, but not enough to defeat my meaning. The soldier blinked in the white light and lost the pose of contempt his army generally showed the Iranian military. The disciplined man, you will find, responds very readily to outrage. He saluted and said his superiors were in the house. Instead of returning his salute, I faced the strong-smelling mob in the yard and blubbered at the top of my voice that they need not fear, I would save their holy man from these northern infidels. It was not my wish that these faithful should go amok, at least not until I had completed my appointed round.
I hurtled forward toward the house of Fazlollah Hussein. 67
Inside I encountered two brute-browed, stone-brained Soviet police officers. (God, will they never change?) To them I expressed my personal shock, the Iranian royal family's shock, the British occupation force's shock, the whole lock, stock and barrel population of Iran's shock, at this callous invasion of Attrod's privacy.
My imperious invective, lashed about in their own language, sloughed away the policemen's arrogant self-assurance. They quickly explained that they were searching for contraband explosives, were convinced such were on the premises. Absurd, I cried. Attrod has never been connected with underground activity, is a man of anti-violence, above such mortal trickery. (Which was quite true.) The Soviets allowed that perhaps the holy man was being used by less spiritual thugs. I allowed as how this was possibly accurate, but did not excuse the molesting of our holy man and his immediate retinue. We held council, and compromised. The Russians would be allowed to proceed in their search for the illegal powder goods. I, Colonel Abdulla Kamikaze, military adviser to the Shah, would protect the privacy of Attrod and those of his followers enclosed in the house (including, of course, Fazlollah Hussein).
I was conducted to a large inner room of the house. Here were gathered about a dozen men absorbed in varying degrees of personal fright, Fazlollah and the palace guard. Around the walls stood three Russians with machine pistols in their hands. Seated on the bare tile against one wall, the calm open pond into which all looked for the reassuring reflection, sat Attrod. Attrod: a thin, sun-black body, marginally nourished, encased in a slim tube of sagging skin. He might be Allah's chosen, but the elements, perhaps out of jealousy, had not been kind to him. He sat there in a spiritual mist while around him ugly fear corroded his followers.
I explained to the rabbits that I was an officer of the royal household and I had come to deliver them from Russian abuse. One could almost pocket the anxiety that fled the room.
"Ahhh," fat Fazlollah squealed to me. "My friend the Shah, he is in good health? And Dr. Mohammed Bazine, did he send you to my home? They do not forget their friends?"
No, they have not forgotten you, Fazlollah Hussein. You are much on the minds of your friends, like a blood clot.
Attrod spoke from his seat against the wall, spoke to the backslider. "Are you not the one who forgets, Fazlollah? It is Allah who delivers, not the parasites of the royal family—those eagles who feed on Allah's children."
The voice from the misshapen little body was harsh and impatient, rich with haughty authority. It was not the voice of love, as I'd expected. Very interesting. The lands he'd obtained over the years for his destitute followers had not been cajoled from the flabby landowners; they had been commanded from them. The bag-bone on the floor poured off an energy that penetrated all about him, cauterizing all with the conviction that here was greatness, here was the unmuddled, the cure, the rock, the strength. Even I felt it. When abruptly he raised his black, yellow-nailed hand from his lap, commanding that he be raised to his feet, I found that my body leaned a fraction toward him, nearly ready to move to him, but naturally anticipated in this by several of his disciples, Fazlollah among them. By God, the soft farmers had an enemy here!
The holy man said he would go to his room and sleep. 69
He and Fazlollah and two others started from the big room. The Russian officers gave no objection. They told their soldiers to commence a search of the building. I touched Fazlollah on the arm and said, "There is a message for you from one who loves you. Is there someplace we can talk?"
Attrod snapped around in the doorway. He said, "Come, Fazlollah; I wish you in my room." The lamb was not to be unleashed. I'd have been shocked were it otherwise. Attrod looked at my eyes with the gaze of a steel wall, a wall that moves toward one. After a second he said, "You come also, Colonel." (Was there the slightest hint of resignation in that voice? The gnarled fingers slipping from the prize?)
We proceeded to a room at the back of the house. It had once been a luxurious sleeping room, but now it was stripped of all furniture except Attrod's sleeping mat and the tapestries and rugs that hung on the walls. When the master was seated on his mat he dismissed his two pungent disciples, thus clearing the air doubly for our discussion.
"You have a message for my son Fazlollah?" Attrod said. "You said it was from one who loves him. Considering his past life, I can only conclude that you are a divine messenger, for only Allah has given this man love in this life."
"It is so," the lamb said.
They waited for me to speak. They waited in vain. My eye, mind, and attention had just been smothered by an object hanging on the wall behind Attrod—an object I did not believe existed. There was an Afghan rug hanging there that to my eye—which, in rugs, is as acute as any in London—was a duplicate of the rug which I had rescued from Customs as a result of the Sherrock Commission. It was a twin, and in excellent condition.
Without a word to Fazlollah or his master I walked to the rug and inspected it. Excellent. I stripped it from the wall.
Something in my imperious manner alarmed Fazlollah, possibly a whiff from the fresh earth of a grave. He cried, "Who ... I must have an explanation, Colonel. Who in the royal household do you answer to?" Attrod sat and stared at us, grasping for comprehension, the price of unworldli-ness. He was still sitting thus when I stepped to his side and with a swift blow adjusted bis physique so as to eliminate audible commotion. Then I dealt with the fat Fazlollah Hussein.
Five minutes later I left the house and walked to my official auto. I avoided the floodlights of the Russian trucks as much as possible and maintained a military posture of sufficient potency to intimidate the Russian soldiers I encountered. That I carried a rolled-up rug bothered them not at all. They turned from me quickly and went back to their own rough search of the packs of the ragged pilgrims. Upon reaching the touring car, I slung the heavy rug into the back, then slid easily away from the house of Fazlollah Hussein. The sound of the dogged voices of Russian soldiers, who were attempting to herd Attrod's disciples to the front garden, died in the night behind me.
I drove the quiet streets of Teheran, wherein the cool dark air tried to wash away the man-animal stench before the sun arrived. I wondered what would be the actions of the man at the house behind me when he was eventually found and freed from his ropes and gag. What would he do, now that he had lost so valuable a crutch? I thought I knew.
A quarter of an hour before pink dawn, four of the Iranian farmers escorted me to a British airdrome south of the city. This was the Payroll Committee. Oddly enough, Mr. Beyshore, he with the wealthy ear, was not a member of the committee.
At the gate of the airdrome Mr. Saliba handed me a briefcase and said, "May Allah attend your departure from our land, Mr. Mandrell, and your future life. You have served us well. You have our . . ." He paused for a moment as he saw me set the briefcase on the bonnet of the 1935 Dodge and commence unfastening the leather straps.
"There is no need for that, sir," he said crossly. "We are men of our word."
"There is always need for that, sir," I said coolly as I opened the briefcase. Ahhh, is there any sight in the world quite like that of neat wedges of English pound notes stacked one atop the other? "My compliments to you and your companions," I said. "You certainly know how to pack a traveling case."
Mr. Saliba stalked back to his Duesenburg without a word. I climbed into the Dodge and told the Kurd driver to follow the Rover that had been sent to the gate to escort us. My luggage and my newly acquired rug were in the rear seat of the Dodge. The Rover led us for a quarter of a mile to a green concrete building that served as the flight-control office and waiting room of the airdrome.
I had no foreknowledge of what activity was normal about the green building. Therefore I had to rely on superb instinct and the one corner-eyed look I received from the sergeant driving the Rover to decide that something was wrong there, in the clean, morning desert air. I'd have felt much more comfortable had the farmers escorted me all the way to the green building. They could order R.A.F. bombers about to their own convenience, but they were not allowed past the gate of the airdrome? Rather a fracture in logic, wouldn't you say?
I broke open my large travel case and removed a leather holster contraption which I quickly attached to my waist. "Remain here with the luggage, my friend," I told the Kurd.
The man was uneasy. He blurted, "You are of the military? You wear the firearm?"
"No, no, excellent driver; I am not of the military. I wear the firearm only to adapt to the environment. Even these winged contraptions with which we invade the kingdom of the bird"—I pointed to three Hawker Hurricanes that sat at the edge of the runway—"are disfigured with armament. There will be for the brave driver of the Dodge an additional twenty rial when I return for my luggage—if the brave driver will keep bis engine running."
He flashed a child's grin. "Hey, you mean for the quick getaway? The Jimmy Cagney?"
There is no escaping it. Somebody must bloody well look into the influence the American flicks are spreading like fertilizer, around the globe.
I grabbed up the fat briefcase and walked into the green building. Within the building there was definitely some abuse of the general routine in force. Too many of the uniformed clerks gave a quick look, then turned their eyes away.
I looked about for the obvious person to inquire of. Then I saw the man who intended to answer all questions. Colonel Duncan Purdy stood up from an old leather chair by the window and turned to look at me. The American O.S.S. man, Lieutenant Louis Proferra, rose from another chair. Their smiles were not the sort of thing one's stomach adheres to of a morning. I walked over to them.
"Ah, mission accomplished, sir?" the Colonel said to me. I was wearing a business suit and fez but had discarded the skin stain and heavy eyebrows, leaving but a thin mustache.
I replied easily, "I believe one of your airships is to transport me. Can you tell me if it is available yet?"
"Yes, right out there." The Colonel pointed out the window to a twin-engine aircraft, one propeller of which was in operation. "Alexandria, isn't it?" he said.
"No; it has been changed to Jerusalem."
"Nice. Colder than Teheran. But Alexandria this time of year—for a man with a bit of money . . ." He smiled at my briefcase.
"I prefer Jerusalem."
"Yes; I've heard some people do not enjoy Alexandria. ... Incidentally, we took the liberty of moving the body. I hope you don't mind?"
I didn't say anything. It was suddenly, irritatingly obvious how clever they had been. When I drove away from Fazlollah's house several hours earlier, I would have wagered I had not been followed, not by the Russians, certainly, nor by any third party. Having become adjusted to the incompetence of the man trailing me since my arrival in Teheran, I had judged myself immune to being followed without my knowledge. The incompetence had been deliberate. Good Lord, Mandrell, a shadow with a wooden leg!
The Colonel said, "I really couldn't see a man of his importance left thrown in a ditch. We moved him to a comfortable bit of grass—just outside the Russian embassy as a matter of fact. I'm surprised you didn't think to do him this honor yourself."
"I have no interest in political intrigue," I said.
"Unless somebody pays you, you mean," Lieutenant Proferra snapped. He glanced at my briefcase also, but he wasn't smiling. It would take him a few years to develop a digestive tract of international diet as thick-walled as the Colonel's. He continued, "You can take off now and not even worry about the tension you've jammed into the world. It doesn't matter to you that Washington and London will catch hell for what you did last night. People in the United States have heard how Attrod converted Fazlollah Hussein. It impressed them, made them feel good. Now you come in-"
"That's why we stopped by to see you this morning," Colonel Purdy said, cutting in on Proferra's trivia. "You are about to develop an interest in political intrigue. Do you know the name of the man in charge of the Russian occupation?"
"Marshal Karvik," I said.
"Yes, an extremely capable man . . . too capable. It seems he is not a military man at all. Secret Police. A real pig on suppressing underground activity. He's very nearly decimated some organizations it took us years to build. We would feel much easier if he were replaced. He is, to be blunt, a prize casualty awaiting an accident."
"No, thank you," I said. "I have in the past found the British government a poor risk financially."
"I wasn't speaking as a representative of the British government, sir," the Colonel said evenly. "The underground groups suffering from Marshal Karvik's zeal are not our people. They're-"
"I know who they are," I interrupted. "If they wish to contact me I will be in Jerusalem for a week or so."
"Will you?" the Colonel said. "It's rather up to us, isn't it? Our transport system?" He turned and waved over a uniformed flyer standing by the operations desk. When the man—rumpled chap, appalling offhandedly efficient type, an R.A.F. requisite—walked over, the Colonel said, "This is Major Pry or, pilot of that machine wanning up. . . . Would you mind telling us your flight plan, Major?"
"Straight through to Alexandria, sir."
"Odd. Somebody evidently thought you were stopping at Jerusalem. Thank you, Major." As the flyer left, the Colonel said to me, "Do you want to go to Alexandria? I can assure you a rather interesting time. Mr. Gamal Risshor will meet the plane."
Risshor, as I have mentioned, was the man in charge of the Egyptian Secret Police. I said, "Didn't you promise the farmers here and the palace that I would have safe conduct out of Iran?"
"We haven't killed you or arrested you, have we?" Colonel Purdy said coldly. "And we're offering you a ride out. That's the extent of the safe conduct. If you choose to stay and look into the Marshal Karvik affair, I am sure we can find you more elaborate transportation when you are finished. More ports of call."
I looked out the window at the airplane. It was taxiing away toward a runway, or maybe back to its hard stand because its part in the act had been concluded.
There are particular things you must know in your business in order to survive. In an unorthodox business, of which Mandrell, Limited, is a supreme example, the fatalities are disproportionate because survival ingredients must be learned pretty much by encounter, and on one's own. But as you accumulate seniority in your business, you must assume that you have developed at least the minimal sense of survival, and you must trust this sense. For instance, at that moment in front of red-faced Colonel Purdy (a reflective example of the man I might have been, incidentally, had but the gods, etc., etc.), I knew that if I accepted the Marshal Karvik Commission and concluded it to the satisfaction of all involved (with the exception of Marshal Karvik, of course), I would then be an independent agent stranded in the middle of Iran, the recipient of no government loyalties; in fact, the quarry pursued by two major governments. The Russians would certainly want me. The English, therefore, would forget their commitment to the farmers concerning my life span, if only because it would be embarrassing to have the Russians catch me.
Then there was the assignment itself. Marshal Karvik was not of the grist that makes the mortician solvent before his time. Old-line Communist; purge manipulator, outlaw pack leader, policeman, academician of survival —rather a member of the profession, actually.
Thus Colonel Purdy was offering me several weeks of sweaty man-hunting, with any eventual success bringing only a somewhat perverse recognition.
Besides being an affront to rudimentary logic, there wasn't a farthing to be made out of the whole mess. I think not, Colonel. No, no; I think not. Turning back to them I said, "Ah . . . would it be possible to use the lavatory?"
Lieutenant Proferra grinned. "What's the matter, the old kidney going squeeze-o, squeeze-o?"
There is no evading it. Despite the American's facade of cultural enlightenment—the Volstead Act; the hundred-foot heads at Mount Rushmore; the jitterbug—there still lurks within them a rockbed crudeness.
"I believe that can be allowed," Coloner Purdy said. "There is no window in the room, only a vent. But don't go too encumbered. Leave your briefcase here." You fat, narrow-minded fool. I've got you now. 77
I leaned over and put the briefcase on the floor, deliberately exposing my back to them with my jacket tightened by the exertion.
"And your pistol too," Colonel Purdy said as I straightened.
I blinked at them and said, "I rarely carry a firearm. I have none now."
The Colonel's face sagged with anger. Proferra started shifting his weight for some order of belligerence. "Your pistol, sir," the Colonel said.
"On my honor as a gentleman-" I started to say.
"The damn thing's holstered at the small of your back," Proferra snapped. "Damn you, do you think we're blind?" He stepped to me, spun me, and held me with an abnormally stringent grip while one hand removed the small automatic from the holster under my coat. After handing the weapon to the Colonel, he pushed me away, snarling, "Go ahead. Go and leak your coward's blood!"
My ears lay back dumfounded! Where had this raw-boned disciplinarian been given the touch of the poet? Ah, at the mother's knee, its imprint forever in the groin of the beast.
My eye tacked wistfully over the briefcase; then I turned from their shallow ridicule and walked several paces to the door that only partially contained the fumes that proclaimed the service beyond. As soon as I was closed in the fetid cubicle, I slung off my fez, swung my jacket inside out—the lining being khaki-colored, the cut quasi military—slapped on a cloth cap from the pocket of the jacket, and had a hand poised for the doorknob while I checked the time lapse on my watch. Three seconds, two, one . . .
The explosion, a raw, belching report, came right on schedule. I popped the door open and moved along the wall of the chaotic waiting room. The room was near opaque with swirling brown dust through which male coughing and strangled throat sounds punched bluntly. The end of the room where Colonel Purdy and Lieutenant Proferra had been standing was a wreckage of overturned and destuffed armchairs. Pile-driven against the hard earth outside the window, the glass of which no longer existed, lay a crumpled man in an American lieutenant's uniform. The Colonel had been holding the automatic taken from my holster, so there was no reward in looking for his whereabouts.
(I can usually restrain myself from the greasy pit of provincial morality, but my immunity is sometimes overpowered by the sheer dead weight of recurrent encounter. Thus: since we English have burdened ourselves so assiduously with the racking weight of the term gentleman, I feel impelled, despite myself, to clarify my apparent misuse of its connotation. When I swore to Colonel Purdy on my honor as a gentleman that I was. harboring no pistol or firearm, I did so with a precise definition of the word "pistol," as opposed to the term weapon. The device that he and Lieutenant Proferra had noticed bulging under my jacket as I bent to deposit my briefcase was in contour indeed similar to a pistol. But I assure you it contained no mechanism capable of discharging shot. It was a defensive weapon only, dormant as it sat in its holster and dormant if removed from the holster in a certain manner. But the thing was designed to explode in fifteen seconds if pulled from the holster as one might ordinarily remove a gun. The defense rests.)
The explosive charge within the weapon was such that it was lethal only within several feet of its center, its planning, of course, taking into consideration that my own person would be in the room with the weapon when some rash adversary took it from me and it erupted. Therefore 90 per cent of the green building remained operational, if somewhat distracted. Taking advantage of the general numbness, I moved closer to the blast area. Ah, my poor briefcase—shredded open like a sunflower. Naturally I had hoped for its survival—had, to be honest, anticipated it. But the good Colonel must have lifted it from the floor in those, his last seconds. His final act one of avarice?
And there were my crisp pound notes scattered all about, plastered to the walls and ceiling, held in place by globs of what might best be described as the cream of colonial authority. Why in God's name had he picked up my briefcase!
The building about me was returning to coherence. I cried out, "Won't somebody bloody well get some fire-fighting equipment in here?" Then I ran for the front door and out to the Dodge. The Kurd had learned well from Jimmy Cagney. He had the auto in gear and starting to move before I quite reached it. I stood on the running board, looking every inch the cool military head performing under fire that I felt myself to be, and we drove for the gate with my commanding figure waving several police Rovers down side roads as we encountered them. At the gate I majestically stared down any protocol the guards may have been tempted to enforce, and we drove through aimed at Teheran.
The city was in somewhat of a mess. The wild mob activity I mentioned at the opening of this account was in progress. Store fronts were being mauled. Streetcars were in flames. Rocks, bricks, broken bottles, bits of steel pipe, nail-bristling wooden boards, even pieces of clothing, flew everywhere through the air. This sowing of rude missiles produced a crop of running people who dashed about with screams issuing from that orifice supplied them by nature, and very red blood spewing from those orifices supplied them by mischance.
Ah, but they were happy children, though they knew it not. Gibbering citizens emancipated for a few hours from humdrum law by some indignity that had penetrated beyond the threshold of their docility.
The most active defiling took place in the area of the Russian embassy. Camel dung, bovine excrement, and less savory ingredients splattered the great wall that surrounds the embassy. The additional layer of decoration added to the wall amounted to a thickness of several feet in some areas. This portion of the demonstration was a direct tribute to a man who would never know of the honor. To Colonel Duncan Purdy—the man who moved dead bodies about.
The Dodge plowed its way to the Imtazza Hotel. The Kurd occupied himself in defending his cherished machine from the mob with a tire iron. I ran into the hotel and made a quick but flamboyant visit to Sally Hickey's bedroom.
A quarter of an hour later, the Kurd and I were on the road again. We raced for the Old Silk Road, that pot-holed relic of the Arabian Nights that leads through the Zagros Mountains to Baghdad. At Baghdad I dispensed with the services of Mr. Cagney, and loaded my rug and baggage aboard the White Train—even in wartime, still the most pampering rail transport in the world —which took me to Turkey.
Turkey, 1942: that fortress of anti-privacy, where playing informer for the police is the full-time hobby of every citizen. But a safer nest yet for Augustus Mandrell than Iran. I might mention that I am rather proud— ah, "proud" is a bit strong; perhaps "smug" would be better—about my cboice of the Old Silk Road as an exit route rather than using the reservation I had on the Abadan train. They say that the Abadan train was that day dismembered seat by seat, board by board, nail by nail, by the understandably zealous Colonial Intelligence people who were in search of something or other. It never quite ran on schedule again.
Two full weeks elapsed in Turkey before I located the correct man. A chap who owned an airplane, and whose aura of competence encouraged me to entrust with him so valuable a cargo. He and his vintage craft brought me hippety-hop across North Africa until finally we reached Spain. Thence the long, dangerous leg to dear old England. The enterprising aviator, a mosquito in a sky of warring eagles, had readily accepted as payment for the impromptu transportation the pigeon-egg-size pearl I showed him. Once the unsightly residue was scraped from the jewel's surface, one noted instantly the inner warmth and value.
That the pilot and his truly international craft were shot out of the sky by an off-course Spitfire during their return flight to Spain is to my mind hardly a vindication of the potency of the pain-wracked Arabic curse that had been levied upon the holder of the gem. The curse had been issued, of course, in the early morn, as I left Miss Hick-ey's bedroom at the Hotel Imtazza.
And so home again. I considered it wise to immediately transfer my office. The old quarters were known to certain middlemen, chaps whose discretion was a volatile commodity, particularly since I had not been in residence and therefore unable to monitor their shifting allegiances. Also, the existing rooms were inadequate for my harvest of rugs.
You see, the twin rugs had to be installed in a certain manner. As I have mentioned, the original rug, the one I redeemed from Customs about the time of the Dr. Sherrock Commission, had two bullet holes in it. The second rug, the one taken from Fazlollah Hussein's home, was not only a twin to the first with regard to the weaver's art; it also contained the further similarity of brutal damage. It also had two bullet holes in it.
I shall never forgive him that, his evasive action that forced me to unholster my revolver and fire two shots into the rug. The event occurred in the'open touring car belonging to the Teheran constabulary, as I sped away from Fazlollah's house. My prisoner remained silently wrapped in the folds of the rug for several miles. Unfortunately the night air revived him sooner than I had anticipated, and the desperate gentleman attempted to wiggle free, with the obvious intention of leaping from the automobile.
By good fortune, the Major's uniform that had been supplied me by the farmers contained a pistol. I am rather certain that the first bullet fired through the rug finished my prisoner. Then again, there I was, attempting to hold the machine on the road, operating in wretched lighting conditions, maintaining an alert ear for signs of pursuit—distraction upon distraction. Suffice to say, I fired a second shot.
Above all other considerations though, the second bullet was necessary, for firmly, I could not chance his abuse of the complete rug with his leakage. Even the mean volume of blood in that sun-baked, scrawny little body, while still flowing, constituted a threat to the rug's luster.
The General LnCorte Commission
"Throw a steel barrier fully across the center of France. From Normandy to the Swiss border."
During late August of 1944 the American Third Army was chewing its way across central France at pell-mell speed. This army had invaded through the beaches of Normandy. Its objective was to split the German forces within France, to lay the steel barrier across the country and thus trap the German units still left in the south of France.
There was urgency to the schedule of the Third Army, for the second invasion—the forgotten invasion of the war in Europe—had already taken place at the Riviera beaches and the Allied armies in the south were chasing the Germans north up the Rhone Valley. The northbound Germans were not retreating so much as they were attempting to outwit the trap.
The Wehrmacht succeeded, for the most part, in breaking past the Americans from Normandy, much to the chagrin of the Allied generals, and much to the later horror of the Allied soldiers who had to face the "escaped" Germans on the banks of the Rhine.
But the failure of this military coup, as it happens, is beyond the scope of our immediate interest.
During the Third Army's plunge across France from 84
Normandy, they engulfed the town of Chemult. On the morning following the engulfment, a Captain John Tarpey of Arizona, U.S.A., was seated in a jeep next to the church in Chemult. Captain Tarpey carried the grime and the tired hostility of a man not out of his uniform in five days. He sat in the jeep memorizing a map and listening to the strong sound of tanks whining by, their steel threads grinding sparks from the cobbled road.
Father Peppard, pastor of the church at Captain Tar-pey's elbow and a man who wisely bore malice toward all soldiers regardless of uniform, made his timid way through the gasoline fumes of the tanks to the jeep. Once he reached the Captain, the priest initiated distasteful conversation. Father Peppard's English was sporadic, but he eventually made the military mind understand his message.
There was a French general hiding in the church, the priest explained. The General wanted to talk to the Americans. The Captain must come and remove this General from the church.
Captain Tarpey, a man with the devil's own share of logistic worries, told the priest that there were some Free French military units somewhere to the rear. He advised the padre to await the arrival of the French units and explain to them about the General.
Father Peppard grew bitter. "Zat ees eet. Zat ees eet," he cried. "Zee General, he will not surrender to the Free French. Vichy. He ees Vichy. Zay keel him. He weel shoot heemself first, he say. In my church!"
"Okay, okay," Captain Tarpey said, and climbed from the jeep. "There's a prisoner-of-war camp being set up at Welborn. Maybe we can funnel him back there. What's this general's name?"
"LaCorte," the priest said. "General Henri LaCorte." 85
The Americans accepted delivery of General Henri LaCorte and passed him to the rear, to the P.O.W. camp at Welborn. General LaCorte was still in residence at Welborn several weeks later, when I first heard of him.
The General LaCorte Commission, in outline, was com-, prised of a rather simple statement of purpose: He is in I an American P.O.W. camp in Welborn, France. Go there, and deliver unto him long overdue retribution.
The French General had certainly compiled a life that might cause many to wish him godspeed on his way to his grave. As the war erupted, LaCorte had been in command of "... a very nice piece of Seventh Army light armor, north of Paris. . ." He and his armor were held in reserve during the first few weeks of fighting. Then the Germans broke through at Sudan and, after twenty-two years, once again took the sweet taste of French soil.
LaCorte and his armor were, belatedly, ordered to a position east of Arras. They arrived just in time to be smashed in the mouth by Von Kleist's Panzers. A few weeks later came the heroic rout known as Dunkirk
LaCorte and the messy remains of bis light armor were pushed inside the Dunkirk perimeter. While the evacuation to England was in progress on the Dunkirk beach, LaCorte stumbled upon an old friend, Colonel, later Brigadier, Laban Kinkaid, of the British Expeditionary Force. Kinkaid and LaCorte had known each other for years. They had met originally during World War I. ". . . Thirty-five days together in the old A-eighteen trench at Verdun. You get to know a man pretty thoroughly in a place like the old A-eighteen. With the Hun just machine-gun distance away, and the stench of your own men dead for days on the barbed wire always in your lungs . . ."
During the 1920's and 1930's both Kinkaid and La-86
Corte served in embassy liaison work. They were career soldiers by this time, both sharp, both conspicuously bright. Their tours in global outposts frequently coincided, Laban at the British embassy, Henri at the French. The coincidence was often of their own design, particularly as they ". . . got to know the ropes. Athens, Hong Kong, Washington, Rome—ah, yes, Rome. Drinking together. Women-chasing together. The type of service life the cadets at Sandhurst dream of—and well they should . . ."
When they met at Dunkirk, Kinkaid offered to have LaCorte and as many of his men as could get themselves to the beach evacuated. "We'll be taking nearly five thousand French military out of here to England," Kinkaid told LaCorte. "Somebody has to lead them while they're in England. No reason in the world why it shouldn't be you, Henri?"
"Why not?" Henri said. "All French forces here in Dunkirk have just been ordered by Paris to evacuate with your people. You know, Laban, I'm afraid Paris is considering surrender. The whole country."
"They bloody better not!" Kinkaid said. "Don't worry; we'll have you and your troops back in a week or so, as soon as we resupply. Then we'll give Jerry a bit of his own."
"Let's drink to that," LaCorte said, slapping his old friend on the back. He broke out a bottle of good brandy that he had managed to retain even through the Panzer onslaught. Same old Henri ...
The following day an English lorry that Kinkaid had somehow managed to reroute came by to pick up the General and his kit. The General had disappeared. Two days later, Kinkaid—by this time forty-seven hours on his feet with the evacuation—learned that LaCorte was holed up in a house in Bergues, right on the fringe of the German envelopment. Kinkaid made one last, court-martial-offense effort to rescue his friend. He dispatched a courier on motorbike to Bergues with orders to bring the General back to the beach. The motorbike never returned.
It was several months before Kinkaid learned the truth about his W.W.I. trench companion. LaCorte had been in Bergues making preparation for a secret dash to Paris in time to join in the official ceremonies marking France's surrender to the Germans. When the embarrassing courier on the motorbike arrived, LaCorte had the driver arrested and held for the Germans.
.. That damned embassy work between the wars took the spine out of LaCorte. Before long he was back at his old trade, liaison between embassies. The German and the French. He's spent the whole war on the Berlin-Paris dinner-party circuit. Now he's surrendered to the Americans. Typical, soft way out for Henri. With his luck, or devil's gift, he'll get two years in prison as a collaborator. He'll be out and walking free before the men he deserted are fully settled in their graves. There's an Irish ballad I'm reminded of, Mr. Mandrell, 'Danny Boy.' I'm sure you've heard it. There's a very beautiful stanza in it that you don't often hear when these singers make their gramophone records. There's not much demand, I guess, for the beauty that's in death. Anyway, a mother is singing to her Danny Boy as he prepares to go to war. And she tells him that if she dies before he comes back, he's to come to her grave. And she says, 'And I will hear, though soft you tread above me.' Well, that's LaCorte and the men who fought the Germans. They're in the grave, and they will hear Henri as he stomps his polished boots on the parquet floor of some baroness's ballroom a few years from now. I cannot let that happen. .. ."
I was in London when I received the General LaCorte Commission. LaCorte was in France. Our lack of proximity did not appear too formidable a hurdle. Making one's way about a land caught up in the chaos of invasion is a rather simple matter, requiring but a judicious use of cheek.
Ah, but crossing the Channel, there was another matter. The extraordinary security arrangements that had been imposed at the Channel ports prior to the launching of the D-day invasion had, for some reason, been kept rather intact. Sort of a "once you've built a machine, why tear it down?" philosophy, I suppose. The fact that the machine is no longer required being the least concern of the rear-echelon bureaucrats in charge of the policing.
I spent two days on the coast attempting to penetrate to the water's edge and could not achieve even the wetting of my feet. The military rabble in control were very officious about who should board the Continent-bound troopships. Something more potent than counterfeit identity papers would be necessary. I returned to London.
My schedule had now become constrictive. The time I could invest in the LaCorte Commission was not inexhaustible. There was the Oxford Don Commission waiting just around the corner, a venture I was committed to concluding before Christmas vacation emptied the university.
Another four days were lost as I went about London attempting to muster a small theatrical group. I wanted four female dancers and a middle-aged buffoon. They would accompany me to France, at my expense, and we would do our bit toward relieving the tension of front-line warfare. You haven't been forgotten, lads.
Securing the girls proved to be the hurdle. Those who fitted the qualifications were immersed in a wealth they had never before known, what with the profusion of overpaid foreign servicemen wandering about London exhibiting the discrimination of super-glandular simians. The buffoon, on the other hand, was encountered in ten minutes, in a pub located around the corner from the theatrical agent's office.
But eventually I had my troupe and, girdled with a set of false papers from something called the Ministry of Wartime Arts and Artists, we traveled to Portsmouth and boarded a supply ship departing for France. Such is the charm of woman in a man's environment that I was not at any time asked to even exhibit our bogus papers.
Thus the Belfast Repertory Players were unleashed upon the continent—aimed, after a fashion, at the prisoner-of-war camp at Welborn, the last reported residence of General Henri LaCorte. At the end of one week we had still to reach Welborn. I found myself in this period inclined to belittle the predicament of Dr. Frankenstein. He had but one charge to deal with; I had five.
Slogging westward from our landing at Muntyane I had ample time, as I stood in ankle-deep mud screeching at numb transportation officers who were lecherously reluctant to release us inland (the gains of female charm exact their toll—a truth), for regret to nibble at my reason.
What had seemed the least complex of ploys there in London had now become a lathering gallop in circles. We had gained ingress to the battle area under the banner of entertainment, and by God, no group is as ponderously insistent on their money's worth as they who have not paid. In that week we performed before impromptu gatherings that totaled out to well over ten thousand troops. And even I must admit that we were serving the lads precisely the product their healthy animal lust most admired. In fact, I'm afraid we left later, legitimate groups a rather difficult act to follow. To this day veterans of the Cherbourg Peninsula tell of the Belfast Repertory Players, in particular our finale, where the uninhibited ladies were constantly betrayed by their patriotism into exaggerated undress. ". . . every stitch on this green earth, I tell you. Every stitch but the very shoes on their feet. Now, you can believe that or no, but I seen it with me own two eyes. . . ."
As it arranged itself, our schedule left me little time to care for or to monitor the off-hour deportment of my fellow troupers. Yes, I said fellow troupers. I too stood up on those bloody makeshift stages with a putty nose added to the already formidable disguise I was wearing, and fed lines to the buffoon. He had mummified in his memory every witticism ever delivered in the music halls of the 1930's. Some were rather amusing the first time heard; the remainder were—well, depressing is the most charitable word that comes to mind—but designed to his meager talent and sure laugh "provokers with the soldiers, a telling indictment of the serviceman's fallow environment. I even, in preserving my identity as an affluent gentleman with thwarted thespian desires, took to executing a few dance steps at my exit. I eventually, however, restricted this portion of my act, since I was, in this specialty, conspicuously more agile than the ladies who had preceeded us on stage.
But I was speaking of the off-duty deportment of my troupe. It was chaotic. It strangled our speed and pulled down my precious days as a great forest cat pulls down a doe.
Our buffoon, for instance, was invariably navigating an alcoholic fog. This condition was induced by his gregarious mixing with the soldiers, most of whom appeared to spend every waking hour in search of fabled French wine cellars, many of them with evident success. His affliction did not go unnoticed in our clown's performance. I found myself assuming more and more of his role on stage, inventing bits of business, as they call it, to cover his blundering, and reforming his act to make it possible for me to deliver the punch line on those occasions when the mist washed over the senses of my partner. We were listed on our program as Harris and Gibbons, Edward Gibbons being my alias in this venture. I came slowly to realize that the billing should have been reversed. Indeed, a couple of the girls—the two, I felt certain, with the greater degree of actual show-business experience— assured me that I deserved top billing. One of the girls even went so far as to recommend that I perform as a single.
Such was the buffoon's contribution to the chaos. It was as nothing compared to the contribution of the girls.
Following our landing at Muntyane it soon occurred to the dancers—or, more accurately, the truth inundated itself upon them—that far from relmqm^hing an area of high capital return in their departure from the streets of London, they had actually embarked upon an enormous unplucked bonanza. Their off-stage services were so avidly petitioned, and their pound appetite so ferocious, that I doubt if any one of them achieved more than two hours' sleep per twenty-four. Trying to force them to run on stage and perform even the amoebic steps that comprised their routine became a chore demanding a whip master. I achieved it of course, but it absorbed an excruciating portion of my patience.
Another problem, one peculiar to the dancers, increased with the days and established further built-in drag to our progress toward the P.O.W. camp. This was money. The girls had too much of it! It came in by the fistful, and even when converted to the highest denomination available in invasion script, it still created, in gaudy volume, a transportation problem. To the girls, with our daily inland travel, it became also a security problem. All four of them took to wearing money belts. They made the tactless error one evening of wearing the belts during their act, each reluctant to allow myself or the buffoon even momentary possession. It was not until the finale of their act, with the blatant display of commodity and price tag gaining a frigid reaction from an audience whose sensibilities had finally been pierced, that the girls realized their transgression of taste.
As with all excesses of the physique, the demands of the brain eventually receive no response from the muscle. A total fatigue wrapped my artists about the sixth day and they followed dumbly as I rushed them on to Welborn. Then on the eighth day, at last: Welborn. By this time all five of my stars were baying for respite from the daily transport, and since such a pause fitted neatly the demands of my agenda, I sighed reluctantly and granted a three-day stopover. I insisted, however, that my children should aid me in assembling a more elaborate show.
We were in Welborn. There remained now the detail oi obtaining permission to exhibit our talents in the P.O.W camp itself. As an opening wedge toward this end, w« put on two shows for the local American soldiers, including the prisoner-of-war camp guards and officers.
I was prepared during these performances and durins the inevitable backstage elbow rubbing—grease pain against khaki—following the show, to ingratiate mysel with the CO. of the prison camp. My dancers, too, hac instructions that the Major was to be extended every cour tesy, by force if necessary, and that he should not be charged for same. "In a pig's arse he won't!" said Rose A. Velt, her's being the most articulate protest expressed by the dear ladies regarding this break with tradition.
"Speak for yourself, dearie," said Stephanie Sunbeam to the reactionary, before I could exert my own rebuttal. "I've seen the Major in person. And, lovey, 'es as 'and-some as any of them cowboys in the Yank flicks. A regular Gary Cooper, 'e is."
But our little domestic tiff went for naught. The Major appeared not. He visited neither our performance nor the backstage fraternizing (or negotiating) following the show. The damned obstinate boor. I had to have access to the prison camp. The most obvious key to the gate appeared to be an entrance made under the guise of entertainment for the inmates. Such an innovation in traditional gaol routine would surely require the blessing of the camp commander. What sort of hermit was this who would place himself athwart the destiny of Mandrel!, Limited?
"Aw, the Major, now, he's a bear for work," I was informed by a Lieutenant Gen? Roady, a native of a community bearing the delightful name Buckroe Beach, Virginia. "This ain't no grab-all P.O.W. camp we got ourselves here, Mr. Gibbons. This one's special. We got us some Nazi Gestapo dudes in here that they are callin' by the name war criminals. Whatever the hell that means. That's why they got us O.S.S. boys sittin' guard here 'steadova bunch a regular dog-faces. The Major, like I said, is a bear on work. He don't mess with nothing except what his job is. Now me, I don't see life that way. You say you can for sure fix me up with that big girl now, that Stephanie Sunbeam?"
The Lieutenant and I were speaking in the officers' mess 94 hall, an area to which I had wangled an invitation in hopes of intercepting the camp commander. I was about to deliver Miss Sunbeam's chastity to Roady when at the next table I heard another lieutenant whisper, "Suck it in, men. Here comes the Old Man."
"Yeah, here comes Major Proferra now," Roady said to me, his eyes dropping to the scrambled eggs and frog's legs which comprised his lunch.
"Major who?" I choked. By great Zeus, it was the same man! When last I met Louis Proferra he had been but a lieutenant. I quickly assessed the Edward Gibbons disguise I was wearing. I decided that it would pass the Major's scrutiny, although I did regret not having laid on the paintbrush with a bit more weight that morning.
Proferra strode past our table, ramrod-straight, of course, and seated himself at the isolation of a small table against the rear wall. He had achieved promotions in rank during the War, but he had paid for it. His left sleeve was empty and the smooth olive surface of the left side of his face was gouged here and there by the passage of steel.
I exhorted Lieutenant Roady and finally convinced the lad to escort me to the Major's table for introductions. (Sorry, Stephanie, my dear.) Following the introduction, Major Proferra looked me straight in the eye with this matched set of pitchfork prongs he carried beneath his own thick brows. He said, "I want to thank you, Mr. Gibbons, for providing my men with your . . . entertainment." He made it sound as if I had broken through his lines and captured the commanding general.
"When are you and your ... troupe leaving this area?" he continued. "The sooner the better for all, I think. You must have further commitments, and my men have then-work to do."
Dedication in a man is a characteristic with which I am in full sympathy. Obsession, and ill-mannered obsession at that, draws naught from me but my wrath.
"I had thought, Major," I said crisply, "that we would remain in your section long enough to perform you a further service. It has been our practice, whenever we have been in the area of a P.O.W. camp, to oblige the camp commander by putting on a show for his prisoners. Quite distasteful to myself and the girls, I'll admit, but our performances have been directly responsible for subduing the belligerency rate in each of the P.O.W. camps we worked. After all, the civilized approach-"
"Belligerency rate!" Major Proferra exploded. "There is no belligerency rate in my camp! And when there is, this is how we subdue it." He slammed his one remaining fist on the table top, splitting the wooden table into two halves. Lieutenant Roady scrambled about attempting to hold the broken furniture together. The Major and I, locked in a battle of wills, paid him no heed.
"I will expect to hear," the Major continued, "in my Morning Report, that you and those . . . those women have left my sector."
"You will be informed within the hour that we have left, sir," I raged in a smoldering whisper. "Come along, Lieutenant Roady," I said to the flustered junior officer as I walked away. "I can finish telling you about Augustus Mandrell as I pack. In all the annals of flagrant bad manners, I don't-"
"Come back here!"
Major Proferra was on his feet. The blood had drained from his face, leaving a taut, implacable visage, much the image one has of Rome's Antony, young Antony, before Egypt.
I turned upon the Major the renowned supercilious mien 96 of the Gibbons' clan. "Are you, by chance, addressing me, sir?" I said pompously. I have hooked you now, Major. You will find, my boy, that Edward Gibbons is a man who retains a grudge with little if any restraint.
"You said a name just now that. . . that I have an interest in," the Major said evenly.
"Edward Gibbons?" I said. "Gibbons is an old and much honored-"
"No, God damn it! You said Augustus Mandrell."
"Oh, Mandrell. Well he's a chap we don't talk about too much. Very difficult man to meet, you know?"
"I've met die bastard," Major Proferra said. "I met him in Teheran in 'forty-two."
"Really?" I said. "Well, many's the chap who claims to have met Mandrell. I encounter them quite frequently. Enhancing one's reputation by association, I guess you call it. Name-dropping, and all that."
"I've met him," Proferra barked. "It's not his name I'll be dropping next time I meet him; it's his head. I met him in 'forty-two when I was working with Colonial Intelligence in Teheran." He went on to elaborate on an encounter that any of you familiar with the Iranian Farmer Commission must know by heart.
". . . And we had him trapped there at the British airfield just outside Teheran," Proferra recounted. "I wish I'd shot him dead on the spot. Instead, I took his automatic or whatever it was out of his holster and handed it to the Colonial Intelligence officer, Colonel Purdy. Next thing I know, Mandrell ducks out to the latrine and the automatic explodes in Purdy's hand. Wrecked the operations room, blew me through the window, and killed poor Purdy instantly. All I'm waiting for now is this war to get over with. Then I'm going after Augustus Mandrell full time. So let's have everything you know about him, Mister."
Lieutenant Roady had withdrawn from the heat surrounding his commanding officer and myself. He and the four other officers in the mess sustained their seating privilege at the verbal contest by playing with the food in their plates. (A sign on the wall announced that no smoking comprised a portion of the dining-room regimen, the edict signed by Major Proferra.) The junior officers were enjoying the harsh encounter. When you are harnessed to the command of a martinet, one of the few compensations is the occasion of watching the ferocious chieftain in combat with an outsider—watching, with pride actually, as the old man flays an unknown, and therefore unsympathetic, hide.
Your interest, gentlemen, shall not go unrewarded. Let us see what this lean disciplinarian is made of.
"Happily, Major, you need not deter whatever other postwar pursuit you might have in mind," I said. "And I will say that the civilian opportunities before you appear multiple. What with the hoard of trained killers we shall shortly be flushing back to their homes, there is certain to be a demand for men in your line. Prison guards—turnkeys, if you prefer—gaolers of all manner and description. Even an able hangman or two, one suspects."
"What the hell are you talking about?" the Major enquired. It occurred to me that his animosity—there was little mistaking the criminal intent of his great paw as it clutched and unclutched by his side—was buttressed by the fatuous assumption of superiority that in wartime invades the military mind when in opposition with a civilian, even with as distinguished and worldly a civilian as Mr. Edward Gibbons, impresario extraordinary.
"What I mean, Major," I said, "is that British Intelligence has anticipated you. But now, regarding your obvious lack of empathy with Mr. Mandrell, this puzzles me. Are you certain there was not some severe provocation that triggered his incivility there in Teheran? I am-"
"Yeah, there" sure was," the Major interrupted. "The bastard didn't want to hang. That's what triggered him. He had just murdered Attrod, the holy man of Iran, and he'd have hung sure if we'd been able to hold on to him."
The great hand clutched again. Yes, there was to be little progress if the Major continued to see me as a civilian. I said, "Attrod? Don't believe I've ever heard of him. But then I've been rather out of contact, what with my little stay in the Gestapo's number-one torture prison at Hoffmannburg. Can't say I was a bit sorry to see the Commando chaps come pouring over the wall that night." I paused just long enough to give my embarrassed laugh. "Rather an exorbitant show to pull just one man out of the Gestapo's hands. But then, I guess Top didn't want me getting any more of this." I bent over and rapped my curled fingers against the shinbone of my right leg. The resulting metallic echo of course emanated from my own versatile epiglottis.
There then ensued that short uncomfortable silence that generally punctuates those occasions in which one man has had the poor taste to force an account of his heroic suffering upon other men.
"As I mentioned," I continued, blithely thumbing open my elegant cigarette case (a present from His Majesty, with the royal insignia stamped discreetly in one corner, should one inquire), "your attitude toward Mr. Mandrell puzzles me. . . . With your permission," I said as I touched the flame to my cigarette; the Major's only response was the appearance of several additional blood vessels thrusting thickly against the skin of his neck. "I myself have never met Mr. Mandrell. I plan of course to do so, since my present assignment is exclusively to gain his apprehension. But from the accounts of the man's activities, I would certainly classify him as rather a modern-day Robin Hood. His bold acquisition of the wealth of the rich. His refusal to tamper with the financial status quo of the poor. Surely these are the qualifications-"
"Robin Hood!" the Major screeched. "You stupid son of a bitch! Robin Hood! A great Robin Hood he was, all right. Letting Colonel Purdy, a distinguished soldier from your own army, hold a booby trap in his hands while Robin Hood hid out in a latrine. Where the hell do you think this happened?" Proferra flipped his empty sleeve, which was folded over at the elbow with the cuff pinned to the shoulder and held in place by the coveted Venus de Milo medal. "Huh? Maybe Sherwood Forest?"
"I have the distinct impression, sir, that I have been compromised," I said stiffly. "It has certainly not been my intention to initiate one of those disgusting 'you show me your war wound and I'll show you mine' discussions. There should after all be some dignity left in-"
"Lieutenant Roady! Lieutenant Stoddard!" Major Proferra roared over my head. "Front and center!" The two lieutenants scrambled from their seats. "I want this . . . this man in my office inside thirty seconds," the CO. told his subordinates. "If he resists, cut him in half with your sidearms."
The Major brushed past the three of us. As he came abreast of me, his hand leapt out and struck the cigarette from my Hps, projecting the lighted cylinder in a precise arc so that it landed in his own path, directly to a location on the floor that allowed him to step on it without breaking stride. Pure bravado, but well done.
Before the thirty seconds had elapsed, I was standing in front of Major Proferra's desk. The lieutenants were dismissed. Proferra informed me that I would not leave the room until I had told him everything I knew about Augustus Mandrell, and told it without all the "fancy talk."
"You've hinted at a lot of things, Gibbons," Proferra said. "British Intelligence and all that. But to me you're just a civilian floating around enemy country in time of war. And with a lot of questionable female baggage in your tent, to boot. For my money I can handle you just like any other suspect Vichy bastard. That means bounce you off the wall until you talk."
"All right, Major," I said, my voice dropping an octave from the Gibbons voice, and my hand rummaging mascu-linely in my side pocket until it came up with a dented old briar pipe. "They told me you were a top man, and to be trusted. But I had to see it for myself. I don't by habit trust many men. Had a few of them blow their guts on me when the show got dirty. But you shape right. I pressed you hard there in the mess in front of your men, but you didn't bend. I like that. ... As you guessed, there is no such person as that silly ass Gibbons. I am with B.I., though, and I have a mission here in your area. A mission involving this butcher Mandrell. The name is O'Keefe, D. P. O'Keefe. Commander, if you want the form, but I'm not out here 'pulling rank,' as you Yanks say. I've got all the credentials you'll want to see in my kit at the tent. Even have me a V.C. potting around somewhere, if you go for that sort of thing. All right, lad, let's get to business. We have-"
"I want to see those credentials, Commander," he interrupted. "Go ahead and say your piece. But those credentials I want to see."
Good show, Proferra! Don't let anyone pull the wool over your eyes all in one fell swoop, my boy.
"And so you shall, Major. And so you shall. By God, sir, I wish I had listened to them at Eisenhower's headquarters when they told me you were the goods. Could have saved myself a lot of damn foolishness." I forced admiration into my eyes and allowed the Major to witness the result.
"I think I have good news for you, Major," I continued. "We've every reason to believe that we've finally got Augustus Mandrell, got him under locks. We've this chap calls himself Naymik put away in London-"
"That's him!" Proferra cried. "Naymik, that's the name Mandrell was using in Teheran. Supposed to be a rug dealer."
"Yes, I know," I said smiling over our mutual triumph. "Myself and some others are convinced this Naymik is Mandrell. All we need now is the proof. Personally I'm for putting a bullet in anybody even smelling like Mandrell. The Colonel Purdy from Teheran you mentioned? Well Purdy and myself put together a very smart bit of an operation in northeast Iran in 'thirty-two. Underground work in Russian Turkmen. Purdy pulled an Uzbek dragoon with a sword as long as your leg off my back in Nabit Deg one night, so you know how I feel. But we have to satisfy the Crown we've the proper body swinging on the rope, don't we? That's where your prison camp comes into the picture. There's a man in your camp who can help us identify Mandrell once for all. The man is a Vichy French general named LaCorte. .. ."
I explained to Major Proferra that our research at B.I. indicated that General LaCorte had been blackmailing Augustus Mandrell for years. LaCorte had hidden away somewhere several photographs of Mandrell, barefaced reproductions with no disguises interposed between the camera and reality.
"He also has a set of Mandrell fingerprints, we think," I said. "I've spent the last three months making contact with captured Vichy officers, usually in prison camps similar to yours—though not as well kept up, I'll add. When I started, all I knew was there was a blackmailer somewhere about. Now I know his name. Next we find out where he hoards the stuff."
"Hell, yes, Commander. We'll get him out here and beat him bowlegged until he spills."
"I'm afraid you don't understand the Frenchmen, Major. They'll sell out the country, like these Vichy scum. But attempt to get some silly thing from them, their lineage, their reading habits, their sex life, and they're bound to become stiff-necked. No, Major; I've had too much success with this Belfast Repertory Players cover to give it up now. Damned nuisance working with those women of course. Then actually, they're not a bad sort, once you hear their side of it. All wives of British officers, I might mention, although I don't expect you to repeat it. Out for a bit of a fling before the old man gets home. One's a lady no less, though I defy you to pick out which one. No business of mine. Strange are the ways of British Intelligence, as we say."
The Major melted before my rueful shrug. Or was it a more basic reassessment I saw surface in the gentleman's mind? One of those four dancers, big-boned hips and all, a lady of tide. ...
Somehow (without our belaboring whatever magic it might be that had glutted his judgment) the Major found quite logical my assertion that the key to the Frenchman's reticence was the introduction of frivolity into his life of detention.
"We put on the ruddy show inside your camp," I said. "Just the Vichy people in the audience, of course, no Bosch. Then I push LaCorte into prominence, get him on stage perhaps. Jolly him a bit. Then, lad, I take out his back teeth, so to speak. Getting rather good at it by now, what with all the practice. This is certainly a new type of war we've come up against this past year or so. No more quick knife in the dark at some foggy border crossing. Or a Bren gun spitting yellow curses from a cellar window on a quiet afternoon in Occupied France. Now it's all this psychological thing. Disarm them emotionally, as it were."
"Boy, you said it. I remember when I first joined O.S.S____"
When the Major and I finally left his office, I had my hunting license. The Belfast Repertory Players would perform the next evening, within the wire fences of the prison compound.
On the evening of the performance, which took place at one end of the prison mess hall, I went into the audience and maneuvered the selection of General Henri LaCorte as a volunteer to aid us on stage. LaCorte was, fortunately, rather popular with his fellow inmates—a society will flower from any crevice—first because of his former rank and, second, because he possessed a civilized wit honed fine by his years of dinner-party infighting, making it a simple matter for me to direct his selection without appearing to.
When I devised the original plan, there in London, for the demise of the General, my first-draft intention had been to arrive at the P.O.W. camp hidden in the wainscoting of the Belfast Repertory Players, and thence to dispatch General LaCorte in a dull but efficient stroke of anonymity. By the time of our arrival at the P.O.W. camp, however, I discovered that my exposure to the Players and their narrow dedication to the flamboyant had constituted a headier dose of show business than I had been prepared to ingest. A potent infection had invaded my senses and had spread to even the policy-making center. Thus my plan expanded in detail. Gone was the phantom who would strike and vanish in a swirl of silence. The LaCorte Commission would launch Augustus Mandrell, Man of the Theater.
The General was a short dumpling of a man with a good mustache and large brown eyes that rolled easily upward to reinforce his thrusts of humor. I led him backstage and had him stand on a wooden platform about four feet high that the prison carpenters had built at my direction that afternoon. From the platform, shrouded on three sides by curtains, one could look over the adjacent low wall into the dancers' dressing room—which the General did as I went about explaining his role and snapping handcuffs on his ankles and wrists. I must say his absorption in the girls befitted a man of his environment, and he did not become at all disconcerted until I slapped the wide strips of adhesive across his mouth—sealing man's great portal; capping the distorter of history; the majestic tunnel; the lair of the foolish serpent; the cave of winds, brilliant by the instant, foul by the century.
I quickly slipped the bit of hemp that was anchored to a beam above me about LaCorte's neck, The beam, an integral part of the wooden platform, and the rope, had gone unnoticed by my guest up until this time. He immediately evidenced a more than cursory interest in the rope and, in particular, in its utilitarian configuration. I slid the knot against his soft flesh, drawing the loop snug about his neck.
"General Henri LaCorte?" I said, pushing the knot 105 deeper into the flab above his collar. "General of French armor? . . . Embassy toy soldier? . . . World War One trench officer?" With each question the noose pressed closer to its grim toil. "World-wide drinking and skirt-chasing companion of Brigadier Laban Kinkaid? . . ."
He nodded and nodded, his eyes sucking at mine and frozen from motion as his head rotated up and down around them. I leaned another half pound on the knot.
"What is a friend if he is not also a conscience, eh?" I said. "From a friend, then, from Brigadier Laban Kinkaid, I bring retribution for your sins of dishonor. I am sure he would appreciate any effort you made in these next few minutes toward dying with bravery."
LaCorte's tongue jumped madly in his head but the adhesive held his hps secure. Drops of perspiration bubbled from his scalp and deserted his body, running out from between the stalks of bis thin hair. His nose hunted for oxygen like a rooting sow.
"The Brigadier sends you this salute in memory of the nineteen days you and he spent in trench A-eighteen at Verdun . . ."
I put a knee against him and hitched the slack out of the rope onto a peg on the beam support. As I pulled the last of the slack, the General was lifted by a love of life onto his toes. His toes were too short. The knot found the working parts beneath his thick flesh.
I glanced at his face and discovered that I had been deaf. LaCorte had been speaking. Like a shout one hears in a dream, the magic word came from his eyes to me. It came lucid and loving, vibrating with promise— "Money!"
I pushed a quarter of an inch of expansion into the rope loop and peeled back a bit of the adhesive, allowing him enough Up exposure to communicate, but hardly the opening necessary to scream effectively. He told me he had money hoarded away and he was willing to outbid any offer Brigadier Kinkaid had made. I explained that I had spent many years in my profession, and that most of the people I had dealt with had, on those rare occasions when I spoke to them prior to concluding my assignment, claimed to have access to abundant stores of money, enough surely to influence my business sense, an extended lifespan for the speaker being the desired end product. But, I summarized, they had rarely been able to prove the reality of this cache. LaCorte insisted he was the exception, he had the money.
"Proof, man, proof," I hissed at him. "I must have proof."
"I have it," he cried. "It is here in the prison."
"Don't be an idiot," I said, regripping the rope. "How could you have money here?"
"I do, I do. It is not currency. It is rubies. Rubies. They are in my room. Hidden."
"I must see them," I said fiercely.
The corner of his mouth was dry. He worked his tongue against it and said, "Some friends . . . some friends are to get me released soon—within weeks. I will go then to Switzerland. I have more rubies there. Here at the prison I have but a handful. In Switzerland—a box! We will be rich. You will have half. Come with me to Switzerland. Anything you want.. ."
"No, General, your friends will not obtain your release. I shall. You and I will leave tonight as soon as our portion of the performance is concluded. Do you have the courage to go through France with me in a Free French uniform? We will travel together, accepting the gratitude of the peasants, commandeering our transportation, lying when needed, killing when necessary, until we reach
Switzerland. This is the only arrangement I will accept. . . . Your choice?"
Actually what choice had the dear man? He agreed. Every muscle in his body that could be moved in an affirmative gesture moved to show the extent of his agreement.
I then explained our act in the show. When the girls finished their first dance, the platform he stood on would be moved to stage center. I would be in attendance in my magician costume. "The platform we stand on," I said (my voice a bit giddy at the promise of new wealth), "is a by-product of man's gullibility. When the trap door and the mirrors beneath are arranged in a particular fashion, the magician goes about hanging people, much to the delight of the audience. Alas, the magician then proceeds to disenchant all concerned by resurrecting the dead subject. It is rather a simple illusion. All you need do is slump a bit and pop your eyes when you hear what sounds like the trap door opening. I had planned to dispense with the illusion portion of my act on this occasion— a secret ambition of mine, ha-ha—but your generosity has persuaded me to remain legitimate. Now, regarding our escape. We will have but a few minutes. Once you are 'hanged,' and the audience has absorbed its full pleasure from the sight of your apparently dangling body, the curtain will be momentarily drawn. I shall hop up here, free the rope, and we will go forward to accept our applause. We bow and back out through the curtain. Do not linger, even if the applause is sustained—which is likely. We must be into some uniforms I have backstage, off to your room for the rubies, and out of the compound before the dancers finish their final performance. Now I'll adjust the rope."
I affixed the hangman's knot comfortably, at the side 108 of his jaw. As I moved my hand up to reseal the adhesive he shook his head and said, "A moment please. You have little regard for my courage, is that not true?" I shrugged. He continued, "Brigadier Kinkaid too, he thinks LaCorte has lost his courage. He will not forgive what happened at Dunkirk. It cannot be helped. How is he, by the way? The diabetes, I am told it is very bad."
"He is dying," I said. "They want to amputate the legs. He won't let them. 'Who wants to go piece by piece?' he says."
"Stubborn and brave. Yes, that is Kinkaid. And courage, he has proved that in the war. And he thinks Henri LaCorte has no courage. He is wrong. When my time comes I think I will die—you know?—as a man. But not now. There is a matter of honor I must arrange first— about a lady. We both knew her—this girl—myself and Kinkaid. This was in Rome. The girl was beautiful, very beautiful. We both loved her and one day we destroyed her. Playing with a bomb, a hand grenade we had stolen from stores to show off to the girl. Need I say we were all young? It exploded. We threw ourselves to the ground— . except the girl. She didn't know. When the doctors had finished she was no longer beautiful. We were guilty of the greatest crime. We sat in the cellar of the embassy in the light of a huge furnace with wine in our bodies and we swore that we must take care of the girl for the rest of her life. We did. We paid for the doctors. She stayed in Italy and we sent her money. Kinkaid even found her a husband, a man who would marry the scarfaced girl. Dris-coll was his name. Fat, incompetent sergeant with a taste for beer and sloth. We arranged a commission for Dris-coll. Lieutenant. We arranged it for Driscoll to always be stationed somewhere on the Mediterranean. Hannah loves the Mediterranean. Something to do with the sun
heating her terrible face. Anyway, Driscoll was killed at Crete. Best thing he ever did. There is a pension for Hannah, but it is not enough. Kinkaid and I, we continued our bargain. Or I did until I became trapped in France by the war. Yes, it has been a trap, whatever you and Kinkaid might think. But I have always been aware of the bargain. Some' of the rubies in Switzerland, they must go to Hannah Driscoll. You see? It is not death I fear. I have obligations."
I looked at him. Enunciating my arid contempt clearly, I said, "Monsieur is very amusing. That is the most hilarious story I have ever heard."
He was at first disposed to anger, then the realist in him took command. (Do not twit the hangman—old Existentialist proverb.) He rolled his eyes and I was able to see one dimple appear next to his mustache. He said, "Well, at least the story is true if not the motives. I had planned to send Hannah some of the stones. But now, with you taking half, I must recalculate. In the postwar world that is coming, a man must have resources. Don't you agree?"
The girls were nearly to the end of their routine on stage. I spread the tape over the bleating mouth and pulled back the curtains surrounding the scaffold. You talk too much, mon general.
Rushing to my trunk at the back end of the stage, I made swift-handed innovations to my personal wardrobe, eagerly adapting it to this promise of further wealth. I had not quite finished by the time the dance number ended out front, its conclusion marked by a wall-bending animal bellow from the pop-eyed French audience. The earthy cantata wailed out front undiminished as I and two soldiers, also pop-eyed, who had been assigned to assist backstage, pushed the scaffold to stage center just behind the main curtain. The General nearly toppled on us but the rope, snugging up to his windpipe, secured him in place.
I allowed the mad bellow to subside to half its high before I gave the signal to pull the curtain. I suspect there is nothing quite so sobering to men in prison for treason as the sight of a gibbet. The cheers caught in the throats of our audience as if a door had been slammed inside their mouths.
I strode about the stage in my robes and cried that I must have absolute silence for my magic or tragedy would be ours. Never had a prestidigitator received such agile obedience. I talked on for a few more minutes, gradually penetrating their terror and regaining some degree of the show-business atmosphere. It was after all just a trick. The girls will be back soon and we can forget this fool magician.
I screeched for silence once more and took a position several feet behind the platform, a length of rope in my hand. As I waited for just the right moment of rapport between myself and the audience—one of the dancers one night, staggering from fatigue and a bit of grain spirits sloshing in her empty stomach, a physical imbalance surprisingly conducive to truth, had told me that I exhibited an amazing feel for detecting the peak of audience stimulation, a talent of natal origin, she assured me, and her voice had writhed in jealousy—nonetheless, as I waited for the instant of maximum anticipation from out front, I found myself waxing with a somewhat juvenile animosity toward this gathering of turncoats. The distribution of fidelity in a man's life is often, in fact, most times, a befogging trial of application to many supplicants. But in the case of these men, and in particular the man who stood on the gibbet before us, who had spent twenty-seven years housed in one completely identifiable loyalty, there should, I felt, have been minimal confusion on the subject of fidelity on the day that Hitler marched into Paris.
The audience was ready. I was ready. General Henri LaCorte had been ready for some time—years.
I jerked the length of hawser in my hand, thus releasing the bolt that held the trap door on which the General stood.
We had put together the contraption rather hurriedly and there were bound to be defects. On a really sound model I believe the rope is arranged so that it cannot twist. But as I slunk away into the rear curtains on my way to the exit, I could see the General rotating, rotating gently under the crude spotlights, under the timorous but patient eyes of his friends.
In the cool night air, as I finished wiping my disguised face and making a final adjustment to my uniform, there was unrest to be felt from inside the mess-hall building, voices asking whispered questions. The voices had become considerably louder and were laced with heat flashes of screaming by the time I had walked across the prison square to the small medical building that faced the mess hall.
My uniform was that of an American major, Medical Corps, a doctor's identity being the easiest to sustain in a military installation since he is not expected to be too well versed in protocol and, if alert, can be trapped by questioning only by another doctor. Inside the hospital I sent two orderlies off with a stretcher to the mess hall to attend a man, I explained, who appeared to be suffering from a form of muscular inertia. Having established authority, I next interrogated Records concerning topic LaCorte, learned the location of the General's barracks and had a sergeant lead me there. A guard at the barracks showed me the General's spare quarters, a cubicle large enough to accommodate but a bed and a squat dresser. After I dismissed the guard I sat on the bed and stared at the little room for two full minutes. . . . Where?
Actually, the General proved a man of shallow ingenuity. As soon as I noted the title of the book I reached out and snatched the volume. It was the bottom book of a neat pile of eight that sat flat on the chest. The title: The Life of Giovanni Casanova. The book had been somewhat abridged by LaCorte in that the core had been gutted, leaving a square empty hole in the center with the intact covers acting as lids. In this hole I found a Manila envelope entrapped by a rubber band. The envelope contained not the rubies I sought but, instead, nine photographs, all evidently products of the same excellent camera. Nine photos, nine ladies of distinguished mien captured thereon. The maids shared several notable similarities. Three, for instance, were completely without clothing. The remaining six stared voluptuously at the camera through the tangled remains of what had been meticulously prepared coiffures. Their eyes were dulled by the residue of some common overdemand on the senses, but there were indications that the latter six had not completely lost their wits. They had, at least, installed a bed sheet between the implacable lens and approximately 80 per cent of their physical working parts. Yet such had been Monsieur LaCorte's charm that five of the ladies had foolishly scribbled their names to the rear of the photos, and those who had not had been ungallantly identified by the General in his own bold script.
I recognized two of the names. One belonged to the wife of a prominent German admiral. The other belonged to that young lady of international virtuosity, Sally Hickey, dear Sarah. Call my stand what you will—Victorian?— but I refuse to detail just which category of photograph Miss Hickey, formerly Sherrock, formerly Wakamatsu, etc., appeared in, sheet-clad vs. skin-clad.
Ah, General LaCorte, the rewards of weakness are varied, are they not? The silk and the hemp. You fought some war, my lad.
On the inner face of the front cover of LaCorte's book was pasted a large open-top envelope having a printed legend proclaiming the work to be the property of the Rio de Janeiro public library. My finger slipped into the envelope, encountered LaCorte's rubies. There were four in all, two in a white envelope, two rolling free. On the face of the white envelope was printed the name Hannah Driscoll. TrathMly I was somewhat surprised to find this indication of LaCorte's fidelity. A Frenchman is disinclined to pair money with romance or to "soil the one with the other, as he expresses it.
When it comes to precious stones, assessing their value, I am rather a dunce. I am not partial to jewelry, dislike it, actually. LaCorte's rubies looked to me to be good ones, perhaps even excellent ones, a deep, clear red. With the wartime inflation of the ruby market, I guessed these stones to be worth about £2,450 each, give or take ten. A total value of £9,800, or about fifty grand, as the Americans say.
One could only surmise what had happened to the necklace that had originally held one or all of the gems. One would rather not surmise on the fate of the slender neck, probably Jewish, that had originally supported the necklace. And in Switzerland there sat a whole box of such loot. Keep your box of ghastiy spoils, O ancient Alps. May their stench bring you avalanches.
The rubies settled within my shirt pocket with a faint sigh, as if they identified immediately the commercial beat of the breast against which fortune had thrust them, and were content. After a second's hesitation, I pocketed also the nine photographs. They, after all, comprised no part of LaCorte's record of dishonor. To leave them would serve only to discredit the French General further in the consensus of his prudish American captors.
I opened the door leading from the room to the narrow hallway that ran the breadth of the single-floored building. My mind chattered with an analysis of the likely encumbrances poised yet between me and escape. As the portal swung open I became aware that I had lingered overlong in LaCorte's room. The rapid boot steps of several fast-moving men were to be heard in the main hallway of the building, a hallway that ran the center length of the structure and intersected the corridor in which I stood. The intersection was located but fifteen paces to my left and my ear's delicate assessment of the quick bootsteps established that the ominous, uninvited horde in the main corridor must have been equally distant from the same intersection. Fortunately the only lighting was a single, lonely bulb hanging nakedly at that same intersection, leaving the corridor ends in friendly shadow.
I spun and ran on desperate tiptoe to my right, toward the window, the barred window, in the side wall of the building, grasping on my way at the doorknobs of the other doors I passed and finding each locked and unresponsive to the animal plea of my slippery palm. I reached the barred window, the implacable termination of my corridor. A quick reflection in the window glass showed me a face breaking apart in cracks of running sweat. The boots behind me were now but a few paces from the intersection.
I stepped up on the window sill and grasped the upper window frame with fingers that very nearly penetrated the wood. I located one of my feet on the crossbar of the double-hung window, and induced my body, the simian agility of which is as acute as that of an Olympic gymnast, to lift itself upward until my weight rested on the one foot standing on the crossbar. I could not in this location extend to my full height, for the ceiling of the corridor junctured with the wall just an arm's length above the top of the window. It was in that arm's length of shadowed corner that I intended to nest.
At the moment that the booted invaders turned the corner into my hallway, my heels made contact with the ceiling. I was stretched, belly down, between the two walls of the narrow hallway, my hands braced against one wall, my feet against the opposite wall, and my eyes staring malevolently under my left armpit at the four American soldiers below to my left.
Two of the group held .45-caliber automatics in their hands. One of these two was the courtly lieutenant from Virginia, Gene Roady. The other was the harried, somewhat angry, commander of the P.O.W. camp, Major Louis Proferra. The officers were accompanied by a pair of embarrassed noncom slugs, members of the hospital staff.
Predictably, their four sets of eyes tracked immediately to the open door of General LaCorte's room, missing completely the festering quarry hanging batlike in the rafters. They rushed the empty room, their hungry weaponry confidently cleaving a path for them. Major Proferra's musical voice drifted to me from the room.
"Tear the goddamn bunk apart," he cried. "Make sure the bastard isn't here."
A few seconds of gallant furniture wrecking were sufficient to establish the vacancy. "All right," Proferra conceded. "He's gotta be outside someplace. Did you order the gates locked, Lieutenant?"
"First thing, sir," Roady answered. "Nobody goes in or out without you say so."
"Then he's still inside the fence. You stick here, Lieutenant, and search. See if you can find out what he was after. Let's go, Sergeant." Proferra and the two noncoras left the room. As Proferra led the pair toward the main corridor he asked, "You say he was dressed in a major's uniform?"
I'm not certain, but I believe Proferra emphasized the word "major," as if the culprit's assumption of a rank equal to the commander's own constituted a crime of equal repugnance to the abuse delivered to General La-Corte in the mess-hall theater.
"Yes, sir," one of the noncoms answered, the same sergeant who had directed me to LaCorte's quarters. "A major in the Medical Corps. We had no way of knowing-"
"And he didn't look like that old guy Gibbons that was in the show the other night with the comic?"
"Well, no. But the guy in the show had that big red nose and the baggy pants, and ... I guess I wasn't watching the comics in the show as much as I was watching-"
"You'll be watching those stripes disappear off your sleeve if we don't get this guy," the commander comforted him as they left the range of my ear.
I returned softly to earth. Lieutenant Roady, exhibiting commendable diligence in his search of the room, proved co-operative, although it did require two palm-edge blows to immobilize him adequately. My demotion in rank was accomplished in but a few seconds, a time interval devoted to stripping the lieutenant's jacket, cap, and shirt-collar silver bar, and incorporating these items into my own dress.
The area outside the building crackled with uncertainty. The complete prison area, a complex of eight rows of buildings similar to the building I'd just left, shivered in a cold illumination that destroyed all shadows. The great searchlights staring in at the prison from the barbed-wire fence had been turned on. Three rifle-carrying soldiers ran past me toward the rear fence of the compound, presumably to take positions opposite the main doors of the individual buildings, a security measure already in effect at several of the buildings located between me and the only gate in the barbed-wire fence.
A dozen or so troops were coming through the gate from the barracks building situated outside the fence. These reinforcements were quickly led off among the buildings by Major Proferra. The search party.
I walked briskly to the center square of the compound, wherein stood the mess hall and the hospital. Four excessively-armed soldiers stood guard at the mess-hall door. I moved past them, curtly accepting their salute, and entered the mess hall, where a babble of French voices had already indicated that I would find my old audience sitting tensely, awaiting perhaps the reappearance of that amusing magician with his interesting rope trick.
The 150 or so French prisoners were boxed into their seats by a ring of machine-gun-carrying American guards who stood along the walls. Down front, next to the stage, sat my dancers and the buffoon. Each of the girls wore a blanket over her assets, and two of the ladies were crying. Ah, my children, you are henceforth on your own.
The stage was bare. Gone to your reward already, General LaCorte?
I stopped next to a competent sergeant and identified myself. "Lieutenant Fox of Headquarters Intelligence. Start moving these prisoners outside for interrogation. I want them in four equal groups, one group against each of the four fences." When thwarted by efficiency, the wise man ignites perplexity.
"Major Proferra said to keep them in here," the sergeant replied awkwardly.
"That was before Major Proferra knew about the paratrooper raid," I said. "We want all the prisoners out in the open where we can see them when those Kraut paratroopers start dropping in. Which should be"—I snapped my wristwatch up into view—"in about twelve minutes. Get them moving, Sergeant."
"Yes, sir," he replied, the sheen of something, which I will assume was excitement rather than fear, brightening his eyes.
I stepped out of the mess hall, pointed at two of the four men standing guard, and snapped, "You two, follow me." I led my armed guard at a nice canter across the bright square toward the gate. There were soldiers stationed at the doors of all the barracks in sight by this time and more running Yanks advancing toward the gate from outside. Major Proferra and his search party were not to be seen, but you could hear harsh American voices demanding an open-air muster of the tenants of one of the far buildings. Plainly the strategy called for emptying the buildings one at a time with an inspection of the evacuated quarters to follow. Trap the murderer of General LaCorte, then flush him out.
As I and my two trotting noncoms reached the gate, a heavy-jawed corporal turned quickly from his post as gate guard and joyously yelled at me. "Sorry, Lieutenant, nobody goes out the gate without he's escorted by Major Proferra himself. I got my orders. Sergeant Buckley said-"
"Nobody's going out your damn gate," I snapped at the leech disgustedly, my scalp muscles meanwhile excessively conscious of the tobacco-chewing gargoyle in the gate tower above me. Leaning on his machine gun and listening to our every word. My demotion from major to lieutenant was exacting a toll. As a major possibly I could have breached the order. "And you make damn-A sure nobody does go out," I added.
Then, as if this had been my original intent, I moved forward to intercept a thin lieutenant who was leading a group of men in the gate from the outside barracks. "Hold it there, men," I ordered the dozen new arrivals, and at the same time drew the thin lieutenant with me to the side. "Lieutenant Fox of G-two," I identified myself. "And you?" The nuance of my voice making the question: "And you, you pipsqueak nonentity?"
"Lieutenant Farrelli, O.S.S. Security Detail," he stammered.
"Have you heard what happened?" I demanded.
"One of the French prisoners, a General, killed, wasn't it? That's what I-"
"Lieutenant Farrelli," I interrupted crossly, "it looks like you just inherited yourself command of this prison camp."
"Me? . . . Where's Major Proferra? Lieutenant Roady?"
"Roady's disappeared," I said, as I hunched my shoulders inside the Virginia officer's jacket. "Grabbed into one of the buildings by that gang of Gestapo prisoners, most likely. At that, he's luckier than Major Proferra. We just found Lou's decapitated head behind the mess hall.
He .. . he's dead. And just when I had the good news for him. That we finally broke Von Starkey, got him to tell about the paratrooper raid tonight. Our first-"
"Dee-capitated? ..." Farrelli said, awed, I think.
"A tough way to go, but quick," I sympathized. "The rest of his body we found inside the mess, in the kitchen. God knows what they were planning. But the guy that did it made one mistake. The body was stripped, no clothes. That means somebody is running around here with Major Proferra's uniform on. Probably figures he can sneak out the gate that way."
"I'll post my men right here," Lieutenant Farrelli cried. "The son of a bitch won't get out."
"No," I said. "We have to go in and get him. We can't wait for him to move first. We haven't time. According to Von Starkey, the killing of the French General was the signal. They're going to try the breakout tonight. The Kraut paratroopers are due in just twelve minutes. Take your men and search for the man wearing Major Proferra's uniform. I'll contact headquarters about the paratroopers. Better not tell your men too much right now, just enough to help you find the phony major. Go to it, boy! And remember what they did to Lou."
Lieutenant Farrelli bounded upon bis twelve men and issued his orders in a fierce, choked-up whisper. As he and his stout brigade trotted off, the Lieutenant called out one last blood-curdling reminder: "And don't forget—if you spot the bastard wearing the Major's uniform, I get first crack at him!"
I spun to my two escorts, who were chatting with the gate guard. "Go find me a communications man," I snapped, "somebody who can contact General Godforsaken at Headquarters." "General who?"
"Get me a radio man!" I screamed. They scattered. I turned to the thick-skulled guardian of the gate. "Corporal, you make damn sure nobody goes out that gate without I say so."
The Corporal's "Yes, sir" was flawed by uncertainty. The transition of my authority to a level superseding his previous orders from Major Proferra had not yet been total. I glanced at my watch, then at the dark sky above.
"Those damn fighter planes should be up there by now," I muttered well within the Corporal's earshot. "There'll be hell to pay if they don't intercept the Kraut paratroopers. Damn Air Force ..." I trotted off disgustedly toward the mess hall, leaving the Corporal with his own thoughts as he stared into the sky, then edged back under the machine-gun tower. You clod, you. You insist on more pressure, do you? So be it.
The Yank soldiers at the mess hall had mustered about half of my old audience of French officers out of the hall by this time. The gun-swinging Americans were roughly grouping the Frenchmen in formation in front of the building. As I passed a Corporal who was packaging the rear line of the formation, I murmured to him in French, "We have decided. We will shoot every fourth prisoner."
My comment bounced harmlessly off the Corporal, leaving in its wake only blinking-eyed dullness. Fantastic school system behind these American chaps. My comment did, however, appear to contain more than passing interest for the several French prisoners who overheard it, and they were not above passing on the titillating announcement to those ranked about them in the formation who had not overheard. By the time I reached the mess-hall door and had shouldered my way through the flow of French prisoners who were still moving single file outbound to the formation, the tidings had caused a frightened murmur in the ranks and I could hear the whispered information running up my back like a burning fuse through the single file of men heading from the mess-hall doorway.
All of the prisoners inside the hall had by now been prodded to their feet by the three machine-gun-carrying guards and were shuffling forward toward the door. I stopped next to the nearest guard and said, "Go outside and tell the Sergeant to have the prisoners count off by fours."
As the soldier left the hall I looked about at the men who had guessed wrong, for whatever reason, about the war, the pride of Vichy France. My highly selective eye chose the man I needed, a sullen-mouthed troublemaker standing about tenth from the end of the line. I walked along the shuffling line, passed close to the sullen one, and abruptly found myself jerked off my feet with the troublemaker's arm locked tight about my neck, much to the poor Frenchman's surprise. I immediately set to thrashing about with the fellow and was rather hard-pressed to retain him to a posture of belligerency, for he appeared determined to break away from me.
From outside the building we could hear the Sergeant, in appalling French, announce, "Start counting off. Count by four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Understand?"
High time, thought I, to revive that appetite for rebellion that was once as natural to the Frenchman as his church attendance. I had my tormenter by this time in just the grip I had planned, and had thus far been able to keep him from the clutches of the Yank Sergeant who had rushed forward to extricate me. I therefore ducked my head next to my opponent's and cried out in lusty
French, in a voice that easily penetrated to outside the building. "Frenchmen, arise! We have their guns in here! Run! . . . Run!"
Such is the insidious potency of a whispered rumor, and the apparent security generated in a huddled mass, that instantly the formation of Frenchmen outside exploded into a hundred different pieces—running, pushing, screaming, tripping, crawling segments, scattering for every cranny of the prison compound.
Faced with such a display, could the American guards be blamed if within their hearts they lamented, "Is man as far removed from the underbrush as he insists on presuming?"
My antagonist inside the mess hall abruptly broke his stringent grip on me and rose up, his mouth already open to issue his denial of the fearful charge of rabble-rousing. He was delivered a smart blow by the butt of the Yank Sergeant's machine gun for his trouble. Damn mutineer.
"Thanks, Sergeant," I gasped to the guard. "I'll be mentioning your name to General Flotsam if we ever get out of this alive." I looked accusingly at the other Yank guard and snapped, "Keep them covered. What's left of them." Those prisoners who had not bolted out the door scurried back against the wall with their hands raised. "Follow me," I said to my rescuer. "Let's get some Headquarters brass down here."
Running Frenchmen were to be seen everywhere in the compound. Some were being dragged back to the mess hall by angered guards. Others were clambering roofs and wire fences, ignoring, physically, at least, the bellowing of the American guards. The din was decidedly beyond my taste. At least I was spared the ghastly sound of gunfire. The disciplined Yanks were sufficiently confident so that none as yet had resorted to their most compelling entreaty.
As I trotted once more toward the gate, I caught sight of Major Louis Proferra for a second in the corridor between two buildings. He was struggling with a Frenchman he had just dislodged from a roof edge. The Major appeared to be without the need of my aid, so I did not tarry, particularly since in another corridor, separated from Proferra by but a single row of buildings, I noted the staggering figure of Lieutenant Roady emerge from a doorway. In search of your uniform, Lieutenant? Sorry, lad; I have need of your trappings for a few minutes more.
My machine-gun-carrying sergeant and I approached the gate. This of necessity would be my final assault on the exit. If I did not penetrate to the outside on this occasion, I would very likely be faced with some form of rebuke or other administered by the Americans, their sense of humor being what it is.
"Did they bring up a good communications man?" I breathlessly asked the tough-jawed corporal, the gatekeeper, as we reached him. Needless to say, I indicated no desire to pass his cursed portal.
"No, sir," he answered. "They sure didn't. Too busy chasing all these crazy Frenchmen, I guess. And I ain't forgot what Major Proferra said either, about nobody getting out without him with them."
Dunderhead! "Good boy," I said. "Only I'm afraid the Major won't be able to escort anybody. They tell me-"
"Get off that fence!" a voice in the tower above us bellowed. "Get off or I'll blow you off!"
Our eyes followed the track of the tower man's machine gun and discovered a frantic little Frenchman attempting to climb the fence about twenty yards away. "Hold your fire," I called to the tower man. "He doesn't understand you. We'll talk to him."
I looked at the Corporal and my escort Sergeant, urging each to speak up. They both shrugged. "The only French words I know," the Sergeant said brightly, "are for mademoiselles, not for guys."
So neither of you understands French? Ahhhh . . .
"No, no, my French friend," I called to the climbing prisoner. "This outrage, it has gone far enough. There will be no shooting of Frenchmen while I am here."
The prisoner, a man fully possessed with the fear that never again would he hear sympathy in a human voice, stared with startled hunger at the smiling American officer who addressed him in his own tongue. He glanced once more at the horrible machine gun in the tower, then allowed himself to slip back down the fence to the ground.
"There has been a misunderstanding," I called, walking two paces toward the prisoner. "General Beatitude himself has sent me to ensure that the Frenchmen in this terrible place are treated with decency, chivalry. Come, come, my friend; put your hand in mine and we shall go forward together to find your senior officers and put an end to this absurdity. Come, come . . ."
"Act friendly," I muttered over my shoulder to the Yank noncoms. "It looks like we're in luck. This bastard fits the description of the ringleader of the breakout. The swine who's supposed to set off the signal to the German paratroopers. According to my Intelligence report we'll know for sure if he's the guy if he tries to shake hands with me. Smile at him."
The Frenchman had moved to within ten paces. He stopped, frozen to immobility by fear. "Come, come, my friend. Come with me to the conference with the new American commander. A just man. Some hot food, some good wine, and we will establish the new rules here. Come. Take my hand .. ."
The wretch giggled nervously and ran forward to grasp my hand. Once again I found myself in mortal physical combat with a collaborator. The treacherous Frenchman threw me backward to the ground, frightening even himself with his own audacity, I think, for I heard him cry out, "My God," as he fell on top of me.
"Quick, Sergeant!" I managed to shout. "Before he has time to eat the pill!" The Sergeant, becoming rather a specialist by this time, quickly smote the attacker with the butt of his machine gun. I rolled the unconscious man from me and pulled the tail of his shirt from his trousers. Lifting the shirt sufficiently to expose the Frenchman's lower back, I cried happily. "The whole master plan of Operation Counterattack. All laid out in little pinpricks on his back. Damned clever," I said admiringly as I traced out the details on the warm skin with my fingertips, managing also to keep an area of the Frenchman's epidermis hidden from the staring noncoms. What business did they have intruding on top-secret Intelligence data? It was written in French anyway.
"Good God!" I cried, my fingertips encountering a bit of fantastic news. "The ammo dump isn't at Ampere; it's at Vernier! No wonder we missed it. Quick, quick, I must have a portion of this man's skin photographed immediately for the bomber squadrons. Give me a knife."
After a second of fumbling, the Corporal produced a thick pocketknife. I laid the blade against the Frenchman's back, drawing a few drops of blood, and braced myself for the long cross-trunk incision. Then I paused and said, "No, better not. Sometimes it shrivels up and you get lousy negatives. C'mon, we'll have to carry him out to my jeep."
"I'll... I'll open the gate for you," the Corporal stammered through bluish hps as I slapped the bloody knife back in his hand. Of course you will, my boy; even the generals find they must concede ground occasionally. At that, you proved a tenacious adversary—one of the virtues of stupidity.
I and the Sergeant carried that lummox prisoner almost fifty yards before we found a jeep in which to deposit him. I hopped into the vehicle and started it. "Get on the radio," I told the panting Sergeant, "and tell headquarters I'm on my way with the master spy that Ike calls Mr. Rubicon. Tell them about the map, and that we've put down the prisoner riot." This latter statement was evidently true, for as we carried Mr. Rubicon the last ten yards, the shouting and screaming from the compound had abruptly died off following the sounds of two pistol shots.
"Who .. . who will I ask for, sir?" the Sergeant pleaded.
"Colonel Esoteric," I said. "And don't give up or tell anybody about the map until you are talking directly to Colonel Esoteric." The Sergeant ran off toward the cluster of barracks buildings. I fear that every word you utter from herein, Sergeant, will be used against you. You are not quite ready for big-time espionage, my boy.
I jettisoned Mr. Rubicon over the side of the jeep and managed to maneuver the ugly machine away from the parking area without adding its weight to the Frenchman's considerable existing burdens, more by chance than design, though, for I am admittedly an atrocious driver. For instance, as I drove through the opening in the stone wall and onto the main roadway, I very nearly struck a Yank soldier running from the direction of the prison compound.
I braked just short of his kneecaps and cried belliger-128 ently over my panic, "What in hell's the hurry, soldier? Don't you realize this is the General's courier jeep?"
"Sorry, sorry, sir," he stammered. "It's just that down in the compound . . . Well, maybe you better tell the General, sir."
"Tell him what? Speak up."
"Tell him that Lieutenant Farrelli just went and shot Major Proferra. Called him an imposter and shot him." Damned hotheaded Italians.
I drove on quickly and early the next morning achieved the sanctuary of Paris.
Some noise I made must have awakened him. I heard him roll over in the bed in the next room. The light went on. I waited several minutes for him to move, to pick up the telephone perhaps. I heard him grunt; then a wooden drawer being opened. Something heavy, something made of metal, shifted in the drawer, bouncing off the side. I moved swiftly to the bedroom doorway and peeked in.
He was still lying on the bed, rolled on his side and reaching into the drawer of a chest, his back toward me. The hand in the drawer brought forth a heavy pistol. He rolled on his back and stared at the pistol for a full minute. From where I stood I could not tell if the weapon contained bullets. It probably did, though. He was that type of man.
Finally he grunted again, more of a snarl, actually, and raised the pistol. He opened his mouth and ran the barrel a full inch into the cavity. I heard his teeth slide on the metal.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, old man," I said, stepping into the light.
He was dumfounded. He stared at me with blue pain-racked eyes, with the pistol still in his mouth. I walked across the room to his bed. He made no effort to retain the pistol as I pulled it from his hands.
I threw the ugly weapon back in the drawer. The other drawers of the chest I pulled open and grabbed out fistfuls of neatly laid clothing. I flung the clothing about the room.
"What the devil are you up to!" he cried, and attempted to swing his bandaged legs from the bed. "Who are you? What are-"
"I came for that," I shouted at him. My left hand pointed toward the draped window on the far side of the room. As he turned away to look, my right hand snatched my own pistol from beneath my rain gear.
His was obviously a durable skull complex, good, thick bone. Therefore I waited until his head started arching back toward me, bringing the soft temple into alignment with the silencer on my weapon, before I delivered him his rest. His departure was rewardingly prompt. Patience and timing, lost arts in this kinetic world of today, one fears.
I then went about the small apartment scattering furniture, books, and paper. I found his small safe, but it was locked, its treasures beyond my grasp. I've never been good at that sort of thing, safes and the like. A locked door or two, yes, but not the intricate things. Lack of mechanical ability I think they call it.
I did find a few bob in his notecase. Sufficient to purchase a new silencer for the target pistol anyway. It's criminal the way the price of the damn things has gone up. I left the tomb and returned to London.
The fame the gentleman had generated during the war made his demise newsworthy. Despite the grand battles taking place in France, the newspapers devoted a good deal of space to the story. Well, he had always been rather a favorite of Fleet Street's. A vulgar, colorful figure, full of pithy quotes.
One paper, not The Times, even granted him its full headlines: brigadier kinkaid murdered. "Last night at his bachelor quarters at Fort Gysy, one of England's finest army officers, Brig. Laban Kinkaid, was foully murdered by a common sneak thief. ..." And on and on. You know the sort of thing.
Two weeks following the demise of Brigadier Kinkaid I presented myself at a flower-girdled cottage located forty minutes from London. The lady of the house was direct in her salutation. Still, in her own way, she was gracious. She had been expecting me.
"You wasted your time yesterday and the day before, didn't you, Mr. Mandrel]?" she said as we sat to tea.
I did not answer, staring at her politely instead. She said, "Don't you worry; I saw you. First you drove past here in a small delivery van. You went on to the village and then drove back. Several round trips. Yesterday you were through the woods out back leading a group of boys with field packs on their shoulders. I can't imagine where you dug up the lads."
"A small group of Boy Scouts I rented for the day," I admitted.
"And you satisfied yourself there were no police about," she said. "I suppose you do have to be suspicious, in your business. You shouldn't have been, of me. I have few truths I've been able to keep in this life, but I do have the one that says: each man shall pay his honorable debts. You have performed a satisfactory service for me; therefore I will pay you as agreed. It is a filthy world we five in, you come to realize at my age. Mostly because it is a world shaped by old men. The young are much more honorable."
She took her tea. It was far too hot, but her body seemed not to mind. As she replaced the cup, she watched her ugly hand for a moment. She kept her face bent away from me as she spoke.
"I cannot blame you for staring," she said. "Would you guess that I was once the most beautiful girl in Rome? At our Roman embassy, at any rate? The belle of belles. That was a wonderful life. And I was she."
"So I was told," I said.
"What? ... He spoke to you about me?" For a moment her eyes jumped out by themselves, away from the erosion about them. They were quite striking, beautiful, actually, I suppose. It's just that it was so difficult to isolate them from the rest of the face.
But her show of verve was momentary. The eyes fell back behind their wrinkled fids and she said, "You didn't tell him, did you? Tell him I'd sent you? That would have been most cruel."
"I did not mention you to him," I said. "He went his way thinking it was Brigadier Kinkaid who had ordered his demise."
"Oh. Oh, you mean Henri LaCorte told you about me? About Rome? the hand grenade?" I nodded. "I thought you meant Laban Kinkaid," she said. "And did the fine Henri LaCorte, Henri the Nazi lover, the coward, tell you anything else? Henri with the beautiful voice and the dimpled smile and the always greasy hands. It was Henri who let the trigger slip on the grenade. Henri who fell to the ground first. Did he tell you that? Did he tell you that he stayed in France after the Germans came only because he was afraid to come to England and meet me face to face?" The word "face" was always a belligerent word on her lips. "That's why he ran away from the beach at Dunkirk. That's why he was gone when Laban sent the lorry round to pick him up."
"Your vengeance would appear to be on a much more personal level than you previously led me to believe," I said. "Your 'Danny Boy' simile, the polished boots on the parquet floor, these I found rather more touching motives than this vendetta from Rome.
"I don't believe I misled you one bit," she said with sudden, biting anger. "The rubies were the thing. I told you that. And . . . No, it wasn't only the rubies either. It wasn't only the hand grenade, and Rome, a vendetta. He had dishonored and betrayed. His country, bis own men, his one very personal friend ..." I watched with snakelike fascination the abnormal stretch and pivot of her string-bean facial muscles that tensed and snapped contrary to any accustomed design, "Laban never adjusted to that—what happened at Dunkirk. It's all he talked about for a while, telling me the story over and over, and telling me what a different soldier Henri had been in the old A-eighteen trench at Verdun. I was back here in England then, when we had Dunkirk. This wretched, cold country. They'd evacuated me from my beautiful Mediterranean. Driscoll, my husband, Driscoll the pig, was dead. Happened at Crete. I've been assured by some who knew him—Driscoll—that his was a long and terrible death, with much pain. Anyway, before Laban went to North Africa, he came round to visit the girl from Rome, the girl with the hand-grenade face-"
"Why don't we have another pot of tea?" I interrupted. "Then I must be off."
"No! You will listen!" she hissed. "There is no one left now who knows except you, and me. I had thought of putting it all in a memoir—ah, that interests you, doesn't it?
But what would I have? A bitter old woman sitting beside her grave and writing in careful script on cream-colored paper, writing a further indictment on the beastliness of man. There is enough evidence of that already. But I might do it yet, if I'm kept in this . . . this drafty little hovel, in this terrible England, much longer. When will the war end, Mr. Mandrell? When will I be able to get to the blessed Continent—oh, Italy, Italy, and my blue Mediterranean! When?"
"Another six months, I'm afraid," I said. "The Germans fight well. Better than the Americans. But the Yanks have the equipment."
"Oh, you should have heard Laban when it came to discussing the Yanks," she smiled (I think). "He would fume! 'Yank lovers' is what he called the crowd at GHQ. He thinks the British military sold itself out for Yank equipment. You should have seen him when they announced that Eisenhower was in charge of the invasion. Oh, my. He was back from North Africa then, had just received his star. Didn't know about the diabetes either. He was full of his old bachelor games, the skirt-chasing. Something he'd become very expert at in the old days, in the embassies around the world, he and Henri. I told you about that, didn't I? How he and Henri would arrange to get the same posts?" I nodded.
"It was a good time for Laban. Oh, now, wasn't it? They were all rather potting about waiting for D-Day. He'd come out here to see me. We would sit about and talk or read. He'd help me in the garden, when this wretched weather permitted. And do you know . . . can you believe, little by little he did not see the scars any more? He began coming around twice a week, then three times. And one night there was rain and a wind and cold. And he— and very casual he was, believe me—he remarks that he'd best stay over with me. In my one-bedroom cottage. And when he saw that I didn't jump at the chance, he even ... he came over and kissed me! Twenty-one years and one hundred and fourteen days from the day of the hand grenade!" Her voice screeched and her head trembled.
"I counted them!" she raged. "And fourteen of those years were spent living with a thing brought forth out of a monster and delivered by the devil—Lieutenant Driscoll. With his beer and dirty feet and his great body of sweating pig fat. It had been Laban who arranged that marriage. I'd been out of the bandages only a year and needed desperately somebody to cling to. I was still young—God, so young—and didn't know yet! that there is no such thing as an 'accident' in this world. That you are not excused the consequences of an act only because it can be labeled 'accident.' I thought Laban and Henri were so kind, so gallant, the way they paid the doctor, paid my lodging, my food. . . . And then they brought me Driscoll. They'd promised him a lieutenancy and he knew they were giving me money every month. He married me. I heard him once, talking to another officer, and he laughed his sow laugh and he said, "When the light's out over the bed, Mate, she's the same as any other woman.' . . . Then one—one!—kiss from a tired general and I'm supposed to forget all the pain and years. Ha, but didn't Laban go stomping out of here that night when I sent him packing to his cold auto. It was weeks before he came back. I think he finally began to realize. When he came back, it was to tell me he'd signed over his insurance to me. He said nothing about the diabetes, but I think he knew by then."
"You had no trouble with the insurance people?" I said.
"Didn't I!" she said. "They wouldn't pay until I 135 threatened to go to my barrister. They said they weren't satisfied he didn't commit suicide."
"With the gun missing from the room?" I said.
"Oh, they knew well enough they'd have to pay. It's all part of the same filth. The money is in their fist and they hate to leave go of it. I'll receive it next week."
I took the four rubies from my pocket and rolled them on the table.
"Oh, my God, there they are," she said happily. "He wasn't lying. I never knew whether to believe his letter. It had been so long since he'd sent any money at all. Which is why I'm living in—this."
"Rather difficult to get any money from France to England these past few years, you must admit."
"There was no need for him to be in France," she snapped. "He should have been with the Free French. He might have had De Gaulle's place."
"Did you ever find out who sent the letter through for him?"
"Yes, a priest in the town of Chemult. A Father Pep-pard. He has written to me again asking for money to help repair his church. It seems Henri stayed hidden in the church for several days waiting for the Americans. That's when he wrote the letter telling me that he had not forgotten his obligations. The religious influence, I'd say. Those French. Did I tell you what Henri said about the rubies? That they were of a red that reminded him of the lips of the girl in Rome. Quite the poet, Henri. Quite the short memory."
"He was a great talker," I said. "We had a long discussion in the P.O.W. camp. Exceptional conversationalist even with a noose about his neck."
"How did you get him to tell you where the rubies were?"
"He was led to believe that I was an avenger sent by Kinkaid. A paid avenger. He rather logically concluded that he could outbid the Brigadier. He told me the rubies were in his room. He claimed to have a further cache of stones in Switzerland and assumed I would need a live Henri LaCorte to retrieve these."
"Did you believe him? About Switzerland?"
"I am still not certain," I said. "He was probably telling the truth. Are you interested?"
"No. You take half of these, I take half. As we agreed. This is all I need. I know of the most incredible villa that can be had for three thousand pounds. It stands on a rocky hill facing right on the Mediterranean. I'm certain these are worth at least three thousand pounds. Such a red red."
"Do not accept less than two thousand each for them."
She was silent for a moment. She sat and savored every movement of the great flower that was opening within her.
"I have to be off," I said standing. I picked my two of the rubies and pocketed them.
"Which did you take?" she said, a bit sharp.
"The second- and the third-best of the lot," I said.
"I suppose that's fair. I've not met many who are inclined to be fair." She stood up and walked me to the door.
"Would . . . would he have done it, Mr. Mandrell?" she asked. "Laban, would he have waited for the diabetes to get him?"
"When I first saw him," I said, "he had the muzzle of his service revolver in his mouth. I don't think he was going to discharge it then. The act had somehow the look of something he'd done several times already. But one of the times eventually the despair would have washed over his senses. He'd have done it."
She nodded her head bitterly. She said, "Even the insurance. He would have stolen that from me too."
"It occurs to me," I said, "that you could have gotten everything. You could have been the widow Kinkaid. The tired general visiting your cottage sounded like a man who could have been easily led by an intelligent woman."
She opened the front door before she answered. She said, "I couldn't do that. I mean, I could have, as you say, led him to marriage there at the end, before he knew about the diabetes. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. We'd have been here in the cottage together, or someplace together. And every time he turned out a light about the house I'd wonder why he had. The bedroom light. I couldn't."
After a moment I said, "Maybe you'll be lucky. Maybe all of us will be. Maybe the war will be finished in three months.... Good-by."
I turned to walk to my car, but her hand fell lightly on my sleeve. I turned back to her and saw a terrible thing.
"Please . . . please," she said, "kiss me good-by . . . Please ..."
I stared very intently into her eyes. After several moments she finally came to know that I was not going to.
Her hand slipped from my sleeve. Her back slowly took from her shoulders the slight roundness that the begging had put there. A sentence came softly from her lips, very nearly inaudible. I think she said, "Thank you. I needed to know that. I'll not forget it."
Then again I'm not certain if that is what she said.
She left me and closed the door.
The Scotland Yard Commissi
The waiter slid a bowl of dark soup onto the table in r mt of me. Hidden in the quiet depths of the broth were several large chunks of illicit beef. At least one assumed fee substance was beef, but in wartime England one :r.:e$tioned not the origin of any matter that resembled meat. One ate and trusted.
"Don't let the tourists catch sight of the sunken treasure, Frenchy," the waiter said to me. "Lean your snout in over the bowl when you come to the nicey-nice. Don't let tie air at it either. Even the smell of a nice piece of cow •31 get a riot going in here." The tourists were the restaurant's regular, faithful customers, a dozen or so of ■whom were seated between me and the front door. Their plates contained only that sustenance dictated by their fund of ration coupons.
"Never fear, Norman," I said. "Wiz discretion will I treat your generosity."
"With pounds sterling you'll treat it," Norman said. "Don't worry none about that. And speaking of generosity, it's not likely you'll be seeing much of it here in the future. Not with the way the Yard's pushing its muscle about. They grabbed Pat Kelly and Zeke O'Laughlin over in Seho last night. Picked up that cellarful of cigarettes md petrol on Manor Lane, too. I'll bet there was fifty cartons of American in there. There'll be plenty of them wot'll be smoking it up good at the Yard tonight. And his nibs Sir Bruce Peak right in there with the best of them."
"Zat I must doubt, Norman," I said. "Superintendent Sir Bruce Peak, he ees not a man zat weel burn his own evee-dance. In zee annals of all ferocious gaolkeepers, zare was nev-air one like zis Sir Bruce Peak. A man-hunter wizout pa-ral-lel."
"I'm just glad he ain't with the military; I'll say that," Norman observed. Norman Knasel was a deserter from the Canadian army, thus had come by his animosity toward the military policing establishment quite legitimately.
"You know what'd be the best thing could happen to Sir Bruce?" Norman said. "Somebody should hire your friend Mandrell to push him off."
"Monsieur Mandrell, he ees no friend of mine," I said. "Please, Norman, you are not to make zis association."
"Have it your own way, Frenchy. All I know is Frenchy Cortez is one bloke wot can get a message to the high and mighty Mr. Mandrell. Or so I hear, anyway."
"Exaggeration," I sputtered, "exaggeration. I am once see this terrible man. Zat ees all. By chance we attend zee same church service. Nev-air again do I see him."
Norman shrugged. He picked up my empty soup bowl and said, "How about a nice piece of veal for dessert? I can hide it between two biscuits. Only one-and-six to special customers."
"No, no, no. My appetite, eet ees lost."
"Ah, don't be like that, Frenchy. All I meant was somebody should do something about Sir Bruce. He's
really showing his teeth, now the war's near finished. Here, read what he says in today's daily."
Norman stepped into the kitchen and brought me a copy of the newspaper. The periodical had doubled its size in the past week, grown to four pages. Another indication feat the war, and its attendant shortages, was indeed aearly finished.
That great healthy animal the war that had demonstrated such bloodthirsty vigor just two years previous was gradually responding to the overwhelming weight of machinery now employed by mere man. The animal would noo be tamed, then put quietly to sleep. Ah, well, the beast was certain to appear again, if only by popular demand.
"There," Norman said to me. "See what the old fart has to say at the bottom of the page." Norman's nibbled fingernail indicated the portion of the newspaper at which I should intercept the account of the interview. The Scot-Land Yard Superintendent had been in fine vocal form, in statement taking up a full three-quarter column.
I read the following: ". . . And with the proper number of men now being returned from the armed services to my department, I shall soon be able to lay stoutly about me ■ith the club of Justice. I shall crush the heads of those ~ipers that have sucked at our bosom these past few years while our backs were bent saving our England. These bbck-market swine have had the horse laugh on Sir Bruce Peak, and have plied their ugly trade with impunity, :r'y because I have been shamefully undermanned. Now it is my turn. They shall pay with the least valuable of their possessions—their lives! . . ."
"Comes through loud and clear, don't he?" Norman remarked. "Just like gas-bag Winnie."
"True, Norman," I said. "Apparently zare ees no public official alive who can resist zee Churchill argot."
"I don't care how he talks," Norman said. "I just want he should get his nose out of the black market."
"Ah, Norman, what you see, eet ees inevitable. Zee pursuit of zee astute by zee empty-handed righteous. A perennial as venerable as war itself. It always happen zis way."
"Wot do you figure he has up his sleeve there at the end?" Norman asked. "The big secret he's talking about?"
I found the referenced statement at the conclusion of Sir Brace's interview. Here the renowned Scotland Yard Super was quoted as follows: ". . . I'll tell you this, lads. Tell your readers that Sir Bruce Peak will be having an announcement for them shortly. A bit of a statement that will rock the Empire, if I do say so. I'll say no more about it now. And I probably shouldn't have told you that much. Not after the Shabby lack of coverage your dailies have given my department since the war began. But bygones is bygones, as we say at the Yard. With the War news drying up, you lads may find yourselves pressed for a bit of a headline now and then. Just remember who it was at the Yard that briefed you on what's to come when you needed it. Now of course, I'll not be expecting you to print these- last few statements. 'Off the record,' as the Yanks say."
The newspaper involved (not The Times) had performed Sir Bruce the ultimate courtesy. It had printed his complete interview.
"But, Norman," I said to my waiter, "why do you worry about zis man? A buffoon!"
"He may be all of that," Norman said, "but that department he's in charge of is no joke. I tell you he's got everybody in the business as worried about him as they've worried about the V-two bombs. You'll notice how the citizenry of London has developed this nasty tic of peeking over their shoulder at the sky looking for the damn V-two's? Well, now they're looking for Sir Bruce Peak too. Even the likes of Icy Gorman is plenty worried."
"Missouri Gorman's major preoccupation, it would appear to me, should be var-ree singular," I said as I rose from the table and redeemed my chapeau from its wall hanger. "Would not his worry be zat zee god who granted him such an abundance of stupidity should not suddenly question zee legitimacy of a world where zis handicap spawns only gross success?"
"Listen, Frenchy, if being dumb is what it takes to get where Icy Gorman is, I don't want to be smart. .. . That'll be three pounds even."
I paid the outrageous charge. The meal had certainly rot been worth the price, despite the inclusion of that most rare of wartime commodities, the meats. But then, over-all, it was cheaper than if Mandrell, Limited, actually had to sustain a man of "Frenchy's" character in the field. The Frenchy Cortez disguise, the shabby but deb-onaire wanderer of the underworld, had, since its inception, brought the firm two attractive Commissions. (The Waterloo Stationmaster Commission, for one.) Little by little Frenchy had become known about Limehouse and Soho as a chap with his own secretive resources. A chap who sought no portion of your goods ("you don't got to worry none about Frenchy sneaking in behind you to cop your job"), and a char)—herein his strength—a chap who could put one in touch with the very elusive Augustus Mandrell.
As I bid Norman adieu he said, "Wait a minute, Frenchy." He looked about the restaurant; then from the side of his mouth he whispered, "Take it nice and calm on your way home tonight. You know, nice and calm." He turned away and walked to the kitchen.
I shrugged, of course, and left the restaurant.
"Oh, hey, Frenchy, just the man," a voice called to me in the street. Two men whom I knew vaguely were standing at the curb next to an ancient Morris sedan. They had been reading a map that was spread on the roof of the car. One of them, a chap named Duck Miller, had turned and called me. I left the doorway of the restaurant and approached them.
"Here, Frenchy," Duck said, "you know which districts are bombed out. Cop a look at this map. . . ."
I leaned between the two to observe the map. The second man was of the Negro race, a gentleman from the island of Jamaica named Archie.
"What ees eet you ..." I did not complete my question. I had abruptly become conscious of a chilling sound. Both Archie and Duck were tapping softly at the roof of the auto with long, thin knives.
Duck Miller crumpled the map with one hand, the hand not encumbered by the cutlery. He said, "Icy Gorman wants a bit of a talk with you, Frenchy. Hop in the back with Archie like a good fellow."
We all stood very still for a moment. The tapping of the stilettos became noticeably more strident. "But of course," I said, and allowed them to bundle me into the old Morris.
We drove the dark streets to the Blackpool section. Twice we were stopped and asked for identification by military patrols. Evening traffic in a civilian car was the sort of thing that intrigued the military. Duck exhibited some sort of correct papers, products no doubt of Inky Connacher's printing shop.
I was taken to a building that had once housed tins of imported kippers. The structure now sheltered thirty or forty barrels of petrol, stacks of cigarettes, canned meats and puddings, and the like—commodities that had been diverted from normal market channels for one reason and another.
Just inside the building entrance I was thoroughly searched by Archie. He found nothing more lethal than a latchkey. During the frisk, as I believe they call it, I managed to lift Archie's stiletto and secrete it in my own dress.
We proceeded to the interior of the building. Mr. Icy Gorman was waiting for us. He sat at a desk in an area of fetid, petrol-fumed air. He had added to the atmosphere several cubic feet of tobacco smoke, the purity of which had not been enhanced by its period of residence in Mr. Gorman's phlegm-lined lungs.
Icy, a man of forty-eight misused years who wore a brown bowler and soiled spats, explained to me that he wanted a message forwarded to my employer. When I questioned the term "employer," Mr. Gorman said he meant Augustus Mandrell.
I presented my usual ignorance of Augustus Mandrell. I refused to listen to Mr. Gorman with even minimal courtesy until Duck Miller and Archie were sent from the room. Following the departure of the thugs, Mr. Gorman and I got down to business, as they say.
Icy explained that he wanted to commission Augustus Mandrell. I said I would see what I could do with regard to contacting Monsieur Mandrell. I pointed out that I would first have to know the nature of the Commission.
"Sir Bruce Peak is the nature of the Commission," Icy said. "I want the ruddy bastard bumped off."
"Boomth off?" I asked.
"You know," Icy said. "The way they say in the Yank flicks. Taken for a ride. Killed."
"Fantastic," I cried. "Monsieur Mandrell would not consider dees. Zee death by violence of a Scotland Yard super, it would not go unnoticed. Eet would make too many enemies for Monsieur Mandrell."
"Me and some friends, some business associates, you might say," Icy said, "we'd be willing to spend ten thousand pounds to see the job done."
"No, no. No price would tempt Monsieur Mandrell to such indiscretion. The whole of zee Scotland Yard, they would want revenge."
Icy had been standing behind his shabby desk up to this point. Abruptly he sat down. He said, "I don't want any bloody 'no' from you on this, Frenchy Cortez. I want the proposition delivered to Mandrell."
I said I would not consider even delivering such an offer. Icy said that he had no objection to my abstaining from the negotiations. "Just tell me how you go about contacting Mandrell," he said. "I'll put it to him myself."
I explained that I could not divulge such data. Icy said that I could. I said I would certainly refuse. Icy said, "That's up to you."
Suddenly Duck Miller and Archie were back in the room. Icy evidently had some method of passing them a signal from the desk.
"Frenchy here has something he wants to tell me," Icy explained to his lads. "Only he can't seem to remember the words. Help him on a bit."
Duck and Archie moved toward me. "Come on, Frenchy," Duck said. "Speak up. It's hell the old woman will give me if I come home with me duds all over with blood."
I backed away until I was stopped by the stacked barrels of petrol. I produced Archie's knife and said, "I wish to leave zees place immediately. I must warn you, in France I am most notorious with zee knife."
Archie was fumbling at bis empty scabbard. Duck snatched at his own stiletto and shouted, "You stupid frog. I'll cut you from here to Trafalgar."
His arm movement, as he drew back the weapon, ±en swept it forward, was a thing of beauty to watch. One supposes that he would have exhibited a much greater degree of accuracy if my stiletto had not sunk to the hilt into the palm of his throwing hand a moment before he released his knife.
There was a startled moment of inactivity while Duck absorbed this fluctuation in what had been his plans. He galled the knife from his hand and started crying. "He's broke it, he has! He's broke it!" he screamed as he held the wounded, bleeding paw between his thighs. < Poor Mrs. Miller, forever at the scrub board.)
'Get him, Archie!" Icy Gorman commanded his Jamaican.
"A distinct pleasure, sir," Archie said in his charming colonial accent. He moved in on me with his rather oversized hands thrust forward in obvious belligerent intent.
The first blow I delivered broke at least two of Archie's ribs-—which made him pause. My heel striking against his temple removed any further contentiousness he may have been harboring. He rolled to the floor with an unpleasant meaty sound and lay still.
"Let's behave! Let's behave!" Icy Gorman cried at me. He had drawn a small pistol from his desk. This totally illegal weapon was pointed directly at me.
I composed myself and said, "Consider . . . consider, Monsier Gorman. Should you fire your weapon at me and miss . . . Zee bullet it will of course strike zee petrol tanks." I had staggered back against the wall of steel combustibles.
"I won't miss you, Frenchy," Icy said to me. Then to Duck Miller he shouted, "Get up from the floor and lay hold of him. . . . Get up, Duck!"
"It's broke, I tell you. The insides is all cut," Duck said through his tears. He continued to hold his hand between his legs. He did not get up.
I laid my hand on the pet cock of the barrel nearest me and rotated the valve open. A stream of colorless petrol ran from the pet cock and splashed against the pan that sat on the floor just below the barrel.
"Get away from there!" Icy cried at me.
"You are aware," I said, "eet ees not zee petrol zat explodes? No, eet ees zee fumes zat explode. Zee mixture. Zee air and zee petrol fumes in mixture. Such as we 'ave here."
Icy Gorman started around his desk, the pistol still in implacable alignment with myself. "No, no," I cried. "Do not move, Monsieur. Do not force on me zee experiment. . . . You see zis cigarette lighter?" I had been able to grab the lighter from my pocket while his attention had been turned to the injured Duck Miller.
"Eet ees an excellent lighter," I continued as I held it directly in the stream of flowing petrol. Icy Gorman froze at the corner of his desk: His face exposed the terrible conflict that raged within his body. The precious petrol, obtained at God knows what expense in chicanery and audacity, was flowing in a stream of fantastic waste. Mr. Gorman's commercial sense was outraged. But Mr. Gorman's survival sense was also activated. His eyes never left the cigarette lighter in my hand.
"I am told," I said, "zat a stream of petrol weel not explode if eet strikes zee lighted match. Zee match weel extinguish first. Do you believe zat?"
I held the lighter firmly in the running petrol with two fcands. Actually, only one hand held the lighter. The other was employed at stealthily removing the flint element from the device. I suspect that I will never be recognized as a true man of science. I have a tendency to tamper with the validity of the experiments.
"Well, one nev-air knows unless one does try, eh? We--"
"Don't light the bloody thing!" Icy shouted. "You'll blow us half across London."
"And if you shoot your pistol," I said shrugging, "what is zee differ-ance? ... Of course, if you weel throw zee pistol back in zee drawer, we may discourse as gentlemen."
In the intensity of our duel we had overlooked the activity of Duck Miller. Duck had dragged himself to the door. Abruptly he then bolted from the room and ran rem our sight, his mouth issuing a terrible scream. A man with his own peculiar set of emotional problems.
"Monsieur Miller 'as made zee wise choice," I remarked. "Evacuation in zee face of peril, zis ees often zee conclusion of intelligence."
"I'll bloody evacuate you," Mr. Gorman said. He raised his pistol and sighted carefully along its barrel until the weapon aligned with my face. I rewarded his concentration with a great smile, the glistening reflection from my teeth offering him possibly a minor distraction.
My own distraction came from the abnormal torrent of cold sweat running from beneath my arms and coursing wildly over my rib cage. I had earlier in the day jested on the topic of Icy Gorman's stupidity. I was, at this later
"Stop it! Stop it!" Icy cried. He threw the pistol in the drawer. "There," he said. "Now put the bloody torch away and shut down the petrol."
"Wiz pleasure," I said. I did not pocket the lighter yet, for I was conscious that Mr. Gorman stood but a single step from treachery, from the drawer containing the pistol.
"What is zis?" I muttered as I attempted to close the pet cock on the petrol barrel. "Zis valve, ees eet broken?" I twisted frantically at the pet cock and managed only to increase the flow of fluid. The petrol left the barrel now in a great splashing surge that drenched my trousers.
Icy cursed and ran toward the deluge. I backed away from him and watched as he deftly rotated the pet cock to its closed position.
When Mr. Gorman turned to face me again, he discovered that I had Duck Miller's knife ,in my hand. Can it be true that all the great family fortunes of the Empire have had as their origin such men of foresight as Icy Gorman?
"Zay tell me, Monsieur Gorman," I said casually, "zat your most precious possessions prior to zee war were zee
time, gambling my intact epidermis on the assumption that Mr. Gorman had the intelligence to correctly assess the jeopardy I'd built about him.
I shrugged and said, "Eet ees you zat have made zee choice. . . ."
The snap of the cigarette lighter was surprisingly loud in the room. It of course did not ignite.
"Ah, a failure on zee first try," I said gaily, as out of the edge of my eye I saw Icy lower his pistol. "Do not deespair. Zis lighter, it has nev-air failed on zee second try. Here
dark glasses, zee white cane, and zee tin cup. Eet ees obvious you were more legitimately employed zan was realized, eh?"
I prodded him back to his desk, drawing a drop or two of blood. He obediently opened his mouth and allowed me ::- thrust the snout of the pistol therein.
Holding the pistol with one hand, I plied the stiletto nth the other. I cut open his shirt and jacket sleeve on his left arm from cuff to elbow.
"I mus' tell you," I said. "I am zee very sensitive man I am not enjoy zee pistol pointed at me. I am not enjoj zee knife thrown at me. I am not enjoy zee big men whc rush me in zee auto and drive me away. I think I mus nike you remember zis." I laid the knife on his forearm
Icy jumped about in his chair a bit, forcing me tc thrust the pistol far into his throat. He kept repeating some word that was unintelligible to me at first. Thei something, possibly his terror, improved his diction, j heard the word: poison. He explained, his tongue work iag itself around the snout of the pistol, that Duck Mille made a practice of dipping his stiletto in some terribl* poison.
"Nonsense," I told him. "A man who would do zi thing, he ees insane. A man who would employ zee insan* man, zat ees a very insane man, eh? You are not zee in sane man—only zee obnoxious man."
Eventually I was able to plant on Icy Gorman's fore arm a reminder of Frenchy Cortez's sensitivity, severa shallow incisions laid out in a particular pattern. Tb pattern, or design, was a simple one. The cross of Lot raine, an escutcheon popularized during that period b General de Gaulle. Frenchy, you see, was not withou his patriotic side.
The story of Frenchy Cortez and Icy Gorman was circulated quickly through the underworld. The facts were somewhat garbled but the basic outline remained true: Frenchy had cut up Icy with a knife. (Several different motives were attributed to Mr. Cortez.) The knife had contained a layer of poison. ("Ruddy sneaking frog.") Icy was in danger of losing his arm and had been removed to a hospital.
The hospital was one that received a good number of patients suffering the aftereffects of intentional violence. The hospital was under the direct supervision of the Metropolitan Police.
One heard also the following: Several gentleman who fancied themselves to be friends of Mr. Gorman's were spending their days in search of Frenchy Cortez. The police were searching for Frenchy Cortez too—some of them, it was said, to congratulate the foreigner. Frenchy was not to be found. It was whispered, through all-knowing hps, that Monsieur Cortez had found some way to return to his homeland.
I (Augustus Mandrell) had anticipated some sort of reprisal against my agent; therefore I had retired Frenchy Cortez for the time being. It was also my assumption that the future fortunes of Icy Gorman would remain of negligible interest to myself. Yet three days following the knife incident I found myself being escorted to Icy Gorman's hospital room by an Inspector Yarber of the Metropolitan Police.
I was dressed in the uniform of a major in the army of the Free French. My credentials, presented to Inspector Yarber's superiors just half an hour before, identified me as Major Joseph Labonville of the Free French Army Intelligence.
I might mention that in this period in England there was 152
2 good deal of confusion concerning De Gaulle's Free French troops. One of the most active considerations in the minds of the English and American strategists with I [z ird to the invasion of France, if the truth be known, was to find a geographical territory into which De SasDe and his troops could be gracefully dumped. ("Get iem the hell out of my hair.")
Lack of liaison, refusal to co-operate, disobedience, were but a few of the thorns which the Free French military were in the habit of strewing in the path of their allies. Just prior to the D-Day invasion the most charitable description of the relationship between De Gaulle and his English and American counterparts would be "hairline tolerance."
This lack of empathy in the Allied camp was of considerable help to a man intent on obtaining co-operation at government, military, or even police levels in England. When a representative of the Free French Provisional Government arrived at one's office, the reaction was generally: "Give the bastard what he wants and get rid of him. I don't want a dozen phone calls and letters asking why I didn't turn over the ruddy crown jewels to Mister Monsieur."
Thus when Major Joseph Labonville requested permission of the Metropolitan Police to question Icy Gorman he was swiftly, if churlishly, accredited. Inspector Yarber was taken from some, presumably pressing, task and assigned to escort me to Icy Gorman's bedside.
As we approached the hospital room, I remarked to my sullen escort, "I have the high hopes this person Gorman will be of service to our Intelligence. He must know much about the man who injured him, the man you tall Frenchy Cortez. Monsieur Cortez has been on our most wanted list for years. It is he who raped the young wife of Premier de P-. Of course, if one knows
Madame de P-, one suspects ... In this hospital, do
you have perhaps an area exclusively for women?"
"There is," Inspector Yarber said. "They're on another floor."
"Ahhh. When we finish with Monsieur Gorman, perhaps we visit the charming mademoiselles. We will dress in the doctor's smock, eh? We will find a small room —intimate—and we will do the examination of those young ladies who please the eye. Most thorough examination, eh?" I nudged the stern Inspector with a leering elbow.
He did not reply at once. Then he said heavily, "It's against regulations."
Pardon a moment, if you will, the surfacing of the pedant: A good disguise requires more than misleading the eye of the beholder. The dress and the innovations to the face are important, of course, but the truly effective disguise incorporates also a contrived personality. Thus: Inspector Yarber was a middle-aged Englishman with some rather commonplace prejudices about Frenchmen. My disguise became that much more believable each time I reinforced the Inspector's preconceptions.
"Ho-ho," I said, laughing. "What, my dear Inspector, is a regulation, if not the plaything of those in command? But then, if you have reached the age where the thought of the mademoiselle-"
"This here's Icy Gorman's room," the Inspector snapped. "I'll wait out here if you don't mind."
My dear chap, nothing would please me more.
I entered Mr. Gorman's room. He was on the bed with his injured arm caught up in some supporting contraption or other. The two other beds in the room were without occupants. I introduced myself to Icy Gorman, to this man who had accumulated a rather impressive personal, nontaxable fortune in his day. His reward for supplying the less stoic members of the civilian population with those goods that for one reason and another had been des-mated as nonessential for at-home survival: tea, chocolate, tobacco, soaps, etc.
I chatted inanely to the glowering Mr. Gorman for a ■mute. He stared at me silently, watching me move about die room. I was making a search for the presence of any form of recording or transmitting device. The London police didn't go much for such things before the war. But the abnormal inquisitiveness engendered by the conflict, :ae emphasis on detecting the movements and intent of one's adversaries (or allies—not infrequently redundant terns), had spread its ugly visage into many quarters, and in particular into police circles. The Metropolitan Police had not, I felt certain, been immune to the infection.
Then again, I had perhaps underestimated their civility. I found no eavesdropping device in Mr. Gorman's room.
I sat next to the bed then and told the puzzled patient that I was an agent from Mr. Augustus Mandrell. Had Mr. Gorman been serious when he told Frenchy Cortez that he would pay £.10,000 for the demise of Scotland Yard Superintendent Sir Bruce Peak? This question alone removed ley's suspicion, established me as a legitimate representative of Augustus Mandrell. Only Frenchy Cortez and Icy Gorman had known of the original proposition.
"You're bloody well right I was serious," Icy told me. "But it ain't just Sir Bruce I want for the ten thousand pounds now. I'll want Frenchy Cortez too."
"Frenchy Cortez is no more," I said. "Mandrell, Limited, has several regulations governing the behavior of employees. One of these is the requirement that the employee shall not do bodily harm to a prospective client.
Another is that no Commission shall be refused without consulting Mr. Mandrell. Mr. Cortez was guilty of both violations. He has been dealt with."
"That damn Frenchy," Icy growled, "he said Mandrell wouldn't touch the job. Said Mandrell was too afraid of them at the Yard. The revenge and such."
"For the proper price Mr. Mandrell will consider any Commission," I lied. "Ten thousand, incidentally, is not the proper price for a Scotland Yard Super. Twenty thousand is."
Icy refused to consider the increase in fee. "I wouldn't pay twenty thousand to have my own mother done in," he remarked. Odd thought.
"Mandrell, Limited, does not haggle," I said. "Mr. Mandrell has told me he will accept the Commission for twenty. If that sum is beyond your resources, say so. Although it occurs to me that Sir Bruce Peak can do your organization twenty thousand pounds in damages in one short week of diligence. Not to mention the collection of evidence he must be compiling against you personally."
"It's not much evidence he's got," Icy said. "Otherwise they wouldn't be letting me out of here next week, would they? They don't lay hold of Frenchy by the end of the week, they got to let me out."
"In that case, you certainly have nothing to worry about, and I am wasting your time. Good day." I started for the door.
"Half a minute, half a minute. I'll make it fifteen."
I continued to the door. When my hand reached the knob he gave up. He said, "Twenty it is. I'll have to talk to my associates, but if you sit in with me we shouldn't have any trouble."
I walked back to the bed and spent the next ten minutes explaining the ground rules of a Mandrell, Limited, Commission: method of payment, denominations, and nationality of specie, consequences of welching, etc.
When I departed the room I met Inspector Yarber in the outer corridor. I said, "Surprisingly co-operative, your prisoner. He told me much about Frenchy Cortez. Some of it I believe. A very cultured fellow, isn't he?"
"Cultured?" Inspector Yarber yelped. "He's about as cultured as a wart hog. Won't be long now and the lads at the Yard will have Mr. Gorman right where he belongs."
"Eh? Well, perhaps I was wrong," I said. "By the ■ay, do you have a man in the hospital here, an American, - jjned Louis Proferra? I think that's the name Mr. Gor-■ m used. A major in the American military?"
"That we do. You mean Icy Gorman mentioned Major Proferra?"
"He told me Major Proferra should know some things rimot Frenchy Cortez. This Proferra, Mr. Gorman thinks he's of the Intelligence, American?"
"The Major's from some Yank organization called O.S.S.," the Inspector said. "Don't have the whole form myself, just what I hear about. He's not a prisoner here. We're keeping him for Scotland Yard. For Sir Bruce Peak, actually. The Major's got a bullet wound in him. Some mess from a P.O.W. camp he had charge of. A Yank P.O.W. camp, of course. One of his own people shot him, I understand."
Yes, Inspector, a Lieutenant Farrelli shot the Major. I seem to recall the incident now. Farrelli had been told by some mysterious stranger that Major Proferra was a German Gestapo agent. Pure case of mistaken identity. While Lieutenant Farrelli was demonstrating his rarksmanship on Major Proferra, the mysterious stranger led the P.O.W. camp. Possibly out of embarrassment.
It has all been rather well documented in a reminiscence tided "The General LaCorte Commission."
"A ruddy rough war he'd had, this Major Proferra," Inspector Yarber said. "Lost an arm in Teheran he did, in 'forty-one or 'forty-two. Trying to put a stop to some filthy assassin or other."
My dear chap, my bathing habits are a matter of public record. And it was 1942. January, to be factual.
"You say Major Proferra is in your hospital at the request of Superintendent Sir Bruce Peak?" I asked. "The Superintendent's guest, perhaps?"
Inspector Yarber nodded. "Some arrangement with the Yank military. Major Proferra's still recuperating from the bullet at the P.O.W. camp. But it's not much rest he gets from the lads from the Yard. They're in with him every day. They bring him bundles of photographs and other things to look at. It's all very much top secret around here at the hospital."
"But of course you will allow me to question Major Proferra?" I said. "Ask him about Frenchy Cortez?"
"That's not up to me. I've my doubts even my Super can get you to Proferra's room. More than likely you'll have to go through the Yard. Sir Bruce Peak is very close, he is, with who sees the Major. Calls him his mystery witness."
Ah, perhaps it is best. Perhaps we should not meet again, my dear Major Proferra. The Mandrell charm has been spread rather thin in your case.
"My embassy," I said, "I will have them arrange the interview. The Major will still be here a while? He is not dying?"
"He'll be here. He'll be up and about in a few weeks. The man's got himself an iron constitution, the doctors say."
Yes, I am certainly beginning to believe it.
Major Louis Proferra was again my topic of conversation that same evening. I was sitting in a room in a small hotel in Bloomsbury talking to a young man named Bertie Roche.
"Your information was correct," I told young Mr. Roche. "Major Louis Proferra is at the hospital. And he is in close liaison with Sir Bruce Peak."
"Damn right he is," Bertie said. "Keith Coder at the War Office isn't any too bright about some things, but he followed this one right to the end. It was Keith they selected to arrange the whole show. Transferring Major Proferra to London from the hospital in France. Getting aim official leave from O.S.S. for a while and putting aim under War Office jurisdiction for as long as Scotland Yard wants him. And you can be bloody sure there's only one reason they want Proferra about. Sir Bruce Peak is after Augustus Mandrell, and he thinks Proferra can identify Mandrell for him. I'd say you had better get back to that hospital, Mandrell, and do away with Major Proferra. And do a damn sight better job of it than you've done in the past."
The young Mr. Roche I was speaking to enjoyed a rather unique relationship with the firm of Mandrell, Limited. He was an ex-customer who had returned with a complaint about the service. Bertie Roche was the scion Of a socially rigorous Belgravia family. His father had been Sir Robert Roche, Royal Navy Captain of Strait of Malacca fame.
In 1943 Captain Roche had sailed back to England following a smashing success in the South China Sea. Unfortunately the Captain brought back, in addition to his iecorations, a spreading skin rash that was diagnosed by the family physician with considerable alarm. It was decided by the family that their position could hardly be improved by the introduction of anything so controversial as a history of leprosy into their medical record. Young Bertie Roche came to see me, and the Captain Robert Roche Commission was spawned.
My firm had been recommended to Bertie in his hour of need by a gentleman named Keith Coder. Mr. Coder knew of Mandrell, Limited, through a service we had once rendered him (the American Mistress Commission).
"Keith says this Major Proferra has become a fanatic on the topic of Augustus Mandrell," Bertie told me. "They've no proof it was Mandrell who gave them the bad show at the P.O.W. camp. You know, the chap who went in there and hung the French General LaCorte? But Proferra swears it was. Claims the man knew too much about Mandrell to be anybody else. That makes twice Proferra has been involved with Mandrell. He feels he can spot Mandrell now right off if he ever sees him again. It's pretty obvious you'll have to kill him."
"Are you offering me the Commission, Mr. Roche?"
"You mean pay for it?" he said excitedly. "Not on your life. I've already paid one of your Commissions, and damn high it was. Now I want my protection. That idiot Sir Brace Peak, he's about raking up every bit of evidence he can against you. He's as likely as not to stumble on my father's death. He knows you get retained for your Commissions. He's telling them at the War Office and the Yard that it's the people who retain you he wants. My God, he could very well 'rock the Empire,' just as he told the dailies. When Keith brought Major Proferra over from France, he had a chat with Sir Bruce Peak. Do you know what that ass said to Keith? He said that if everything
■■est as planned, if Proferra helped the Yard catch you, - they found the names of all your customers, if they got everything they're after, then you want to know what Sr Bruce Peak sees in the future? He sees himself moving into government. "There'll be some changes on the government scene when this war is over, lad,' he told Keith. There might even be a new face at Ten Downing Screet,' he said. That idiot! Can you picture anything so ... so degrading!"
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Sir Bruce does command some of the requisites of the office. He photographs veil. He phrases his speech in an idiom understood by even the illiterates. 'I shall crush the heads of those vipers mat have sucked at our bosom.' Rather graphic, wouldn't yoa say?"
"For God's sake be serious!"
"'Do not shout at me, sir," I snapped. "Your fee did indeed purchase you the protection you mentioned, and fOB shall receive it. It did not purchase you license to forget your manners."
"AH right, all right. Tm sorry. But I tell you Keith and I ire worried. That's why he told me to come see you and :ell you that they have Proferra at the hospital. Had a spot of trouble locating you. That chap who put me on to you last time, Frenchy Cortez, I couldn't find him anywhere."
"Mr. Cortez has returned to France," I said. "What about it, then?" Bertie said. "When can you go air a Proferra? Is ... is there anything Keith and I might do
tohelp?"
"How very kind of you, sir!" I said, smiling. "Before we : -rx.it ourselves in any direction, suppose we examine me peril. Of the two gentlemen, our two adversaries, which is the more dangerous, Major Proferra or Sir Bruce Peak?"
"I suppose Sir Bruce is, when you put it that way. But you certainly can't.. ." His voice trailed off in pure shock.
"Why not, my boy? Sir Bruce is the engine that keeps the tumbrel rolling. Major Proferra is a fanatic on the subject of Augustus Mandrell only. Sir Bruce is a fanatic on the subject of Mandrell's customers. The solution for your peace of mind would appear obvious."
"But, my God, Mandrell, it's unthinkable! You'd have the whole of the Yard out after you. They'd never rest. They'd pot all of us."
"Suppose there existed irrefutable proof that Mandrell had no hand in the affair? But I am misleading you, Mr. Roche. I have no intention of personally causing the demise of Sir Bruce. Happily a man of Sir Brace's suave, urbane approach to his toil generates many enemies. His most active enemies just now, those most disenchanted with his vigor, are the chaps in the black market. It is they who are going to do away with Sir Brace. Bump him off, I think they call it."
"But you will still be blamed," Mr. Roche said. "Don't you see? The Yard knows your . . . your specialty. They will have to assume you did it Then the investigation goes ahead full bore."
"Not," I said, "not if the event takes place many miles from where I happen to be. If I am seen at point X at the time that Sir Bruce is eliminated at point Y, then even the newest recruit at the Yard must conclude me blameless."
"How the devil would that happen? Nobody knows you. Even the number of times that I've met you, I still don't know what you really look like. Who the devil could say they'd seen you? I mean somebody the police would believe?"
"V»ny, my dear fellow, we've been talking about him rbr the past half hour."
It required Mr. Roche a second or two to locate the light switch. "My God, yes! The American—Major Proferra! I say..."
"Now, my boy, there is a bit of port left in this bottle you so kindly brought with you. Let me hear what you've been up to. I understand you are something of a national hero. How many German aircraft have you to your credit?"
Twenty minutes later we left the building. Mr. Roche went off to his Spitfire base in search of further victories. I went off to my flat. I was in search of something entirely different.
I had to find somebody who was willing to bump off Sir Bruce Peak. Not only bump him off, but also readily admit that he had done so and absorb the consequences of rhe act. Rather a severe request to make of one's friends, I'm afraid.
Arranging the demise of Sir Bruce Peak became a far more rigorous assignment than is normal in a Mandrell, limited, commission. A full eight days were devoted only to faying the groundwork. Eventually, the machine was assembled and I went in search of my volunteer assassin.
I climbed the dark stairs quietly to the second floor of rhe building. There were three doors on the landing. My torch helped me select the correct one and I knocked wftry. I had to knock several times before I heard movement in the flat.
I saw the light of some sort of lantern and heard her moving toward the door. She was shouting as she came. "Stop knocking," she said. "I hear you. This time of sight. It had better be important." Her French contained the accent of the south of France, unpleasant sound. This was not surprising, for the building I stood in was located in the city of Toulon, France.
Considering the life she had lived the past two years, during the Occupation, her lack of fear was remarkable. She flung the door full open and held her lamp up so she could look at me. The light worked also for me. I saw that she wore nothing but a thin nightdress.
"What do you want?" she snapped. The light or her irritation made her twenty-four-year-old face unpleasant.
"Jeannie Champlain?" I stammered. "Are ... are you Jeannie Champlain?"
"You knocked on my door, woke me up, and you don't know who I am? . . . Yes, I am Jeannie Champlain." She was looking carefully at my bearded face, my torn leather jacket.
"Pierre . . . Pierre Cavolt sent me." I said. "He told me your name-"
"Oh, for God's sake," she said and started swinging the door shut.
"The money," I whispered fiercely. "Pierre sent you the money!"
Ah, how the door did stop. "Pierre?" she said. "Pierre who? And can't you speak better? What are you, English? American?"
"English," I said. "I'm sorry I don't speak better French. ... It was Pierre Cavolt who sent the money. He asked me to deliver it. He-"
"Give it to me," she said, holding out her hand.
My, you are quick, my dear. She didn't know me. She didn't know Pierre Cavolt. She had no idea what money I might be talking about. Yet the hand was out.
No, no, my dear. That money is to buy me lodging this 164 night—in your flat. As yet you have shown none of the hospitality that one associates with the Azure Coast.
"You . . . you are really Jeannie Champlain?" I said. "I have to be sure, you know. Pierre said-"
"Pierre, Pierre," she snapped. "What are you talking about? Tell me what you want here or I'll call the police."
My face went pale. "No, no, not the police," I whispered, staring wildly at the other two doors on the landing. "When fee police shot Pierre, he-"
Abruptly her hand jumped out and grabbed my arm. She pulled me inside and closed the door. It was rather a targe flat, three rooms and a small kitchen.
She led me to the kitchen, the one room that did not share an adjoining wall in the other flats. I sat at the table.
In the intimacy of the single room, Miss Champlain became aware of the exposure of her somewhat remarkable anatomy to my naked eye. She pulled a man-size dressing gown from a hook on the door and installed it over her mghtdress. Pasted on the door where the dressing gown had hung was a magazine picture of Joseph Stalin.
"You say the police shot... What was his name? Pierre Cavolt?" she asked.
"He died at my side," I said. "I didn't know he was hit until we had gotten away from the patrol boat. I'm sfraid the whole smuggling operation will go to pot ■ow, with Pierre gone. He was the only leader the Moroccans would listen to."
She looked alertly at my dress again. Yes, I looked like a smuggler, all right. I had spent nearly an hour in my hotel room ensuring that I looked like a smuggler.
"You are a smuggler?" Jeannie said carefully. "Where?"
"Mostly this end of the Med," I said. "Spain, Algeria, France, Morocco. I'm pretty much out of business now.
Had a hell . . . heck of a row with the crew after we slipped the police patrol. They didn't even want to drop me on this side of the Med. Swam the last two miles as it was, once the blighters found out my pistol was empty."
"When was this?" she asked shrewdly. An encounter between a French police boat and a smuggler's launch was an incident that would appear in some official file or other. Miss Champlain's friends in the local government were just the sort who had access to such files.
"Let's see," I said, rubbing my tired eyes with my thumb and middle finger. "Today is Thursday, is it not? Yesterday was that business with the wretched lieutenant of the American Military Police. Bloody good with the sidearms he was, too. Then Tuesday night I buried the money. So it must have been Tuesday a.m. I got ashore, and Monday p.m. we ran afoul of the police boat. Bit of a time one has keeping track when one doesn't sleep."
"You have had no sleep since Monday?"
I allowed my hand to tremble with fatigue as I lit a cigarette. "One becomes accustomed to it," I said, with my embarrassed laugh. "I remember at El Alamein that damn Monty had us on our feet for better than a week. Not that Rommel's lads had it any easier. That was the show that gave me my fill of the military life. After they'd dug the shrapnel out at the field hospital they told me to report back to the front line. I had me a better idea."
"Ah. English deserter, then?" she said. She had me now. By the throat.
"They'll call it desertion, I guess," I said. "I figure I gave them four good years. Dunkirk, Suez, El Al. They got the best of the bargain, if you ask me."
"What did you smuggle? You and Pierre," she asked.
"Whatever brought a price. Coffee, olive oil, cigarettes of course. No girls, though. Pierre wouldn't hear of it.
That's why I threw in with Pierre. Henri Oiestad wanted —-e with his boats, but I couldn't see handing over Frenchwomen to those Moroccan wogs."
The Germans tried all during the Occupation to catch Henri Oiestad, King of the Smugglers," she said. "Trey never could. They offered fifty thousand marks."
"Henri Oiestad," I sneered. "I saw Pierre spit in his face one night. That was the night we met, Pierre and I. We ran up one alley and down another trying to get past Iris thugs, all through the bloody Casbah. When we'd rkally stopped the last of them, we had one bullet left between us. Pierre took the bullet and fired it wild into the air. laughing all the while. That's the sort he was. We went drinking, then, on his boat. It was that night he first told me about you."
"What did he tell you?" she asked, her eyes down alaring at a bit of fluff on the dressing gown she was rolling with her fingers.
"Many things," I said. "You were his favorite topic. On lonely nights, crossing to Barcelona or Palma for a pickup, he'd always talk about Jeannie Champlain. How you grew up together in the Sainte-Anne section of the city. How he was in love with you even in the children's :!isses at Saint-Pius School. How his heart broke when your parents moved to the Valbourdin section." Peck, peck, peck, the familiar names of her life chipped at her suspicion. "How he would walk the four miles to your new kouse on Eclat Boulevard hoping to catch sight of you. And his one great memory, of course, your kissing him good-by at the rail depot in 'thirty-nine when he went ^orth with the army to fight the Germans."
"The depot?" she said. "You mean the depot here in Tr-'jlon?" Her eyes were sharp again.
"Damn," I said hitting the table lightly with my tired 167 fist. "He was always afraid of that. One night when we were laying off Antibes waiting for the signal—Pierre had been drinking somewhat over his quota—and he told me that he had never been certain if you knew exactly who he was at the depot. He said you were kissing a good number of chaps good-by, you and the other girls. He said he told you he was Pierre Cavolt from Sainte-Anne. But there was so much noise and shouting and pushing. You gave him a special kiss. 'For Sainte-Anne,' you cried. Yet he was never certain if the kiss was for Pierre Cavolt or for the old neighborhood. Do you remember, Jeanne . . . er . . . Miss Champlain? It was a memory —the kiss—that Pierre always carried. Did you know it was Pierre you were kissing?" My beseeching eyes begged that she say "yes." Tell me that my friend who died in my arms had not been a fool with a fool's dream.
"Of course I remember," she said. "We went often to say good-by to the young boys in those times. Yes, I knew it was Pierre. But he was torn from me by the crowd before we could talk further. He was so handsome in his uniform. I never heard from him again. I asked and asked of friends. No one knew." A tear ran from the corner of her eyes.
I nodded. "After the surrender," I said, "he was sent home by the Germans. He returned to Toulon to find you. The very day he returned he met two other friends who were leaving that night for Africa in a small boat. In Algeria, it was rumored, there were those who were still willing to fight the Germans. Pierre tried to reach your home. The police patrols ... he couldn't get across the city. He sailed with his friends. They found the rumors were untrue. Algeria had gone over to the Germans. Pierre stayed with the French military for a while. When they tried to send him back to Toulon, to work for Vichy, he escaped. Eventually, of course, he drifted into smuggling in Algiers."
"If I'd only known," she whispered. She dried her eyes then and sighed. After a moment she said, "You mentioned before, I think you said Tuesday night, you said you buried the money."
Yes, my dear, I think the time has come to add some reality to my tale. "Not all of the money," I answered as I rummaged a hand inside my shirt to my money belt. "I promised Pierre I would bring you his share from the =r.uggling. Last thing I was able to grab before I dived overboard was his money belt. That swine Mullallah had 1 half unstrapped from Pierre's body when my bullet caught him in the neck." I let a wad of banknotes roll ■to the table from my fist.
"It's in American invasion script," I said. "Safest money in the market just now. If you hear of the Yanks changing h. though, get it converted right away. They're great for :ranging their script if they think the civilians are hoarding it. Put it in Swiss francs if you find any about."
"How much is here?" she asked, reading the paper.
"About fifteen hundred dollars American."
"And what you buried, what is there?"
"There's another five thousand dollars that belongs to mm."
"When will you get it?" "Oh, I can't get it."
"What do you mean, you can't get it?" she snapped.
"It's just that I can't," I said laughing a bit, my perplexed laugh. "I had a bit of a time just getting into Toulon. I'd never get out, and then back in again. The incident with the American Military Police Lieutenant— I had to shoot him, you see. He's only wounded and he saw me quite plain."
"But my money..." the dear thing said. "Don't worry," I said. "I've sent for it. Maurice will bring it into Toulon for me." "Who is Maurice?"
"Well now ... er ... I really can't tell you that. Maurice has many names, but he is fully reliable. He will bring me the buried money, and I will give you your share. Pierre's legacy to the girl he loved."
"That's why I am so anxious," she said. "Because of Pierre. How soon will Maurice be here?"
"It depends on the police, on his schedule, on a few other things. Probably three days."
"You must have buried it very far from here," she said, probing.
Instead of answering, I stood up. My rise to my feet was laborious and I staggered a bit. "I must be going," I said. "I will be in touch with you as soon as I hear from Maurice."
"Where are you staying?" she asked as she too rose.
"I have the names of a few hotels that are supposed to be safe. The charges are outrageous, but then, one pays for quality. Ha-ha."
"You mean you have no room yet?" she squawked. "Isn't that a little bit stupid? It's night. There are still patrols looking for just the likes of you."
"Oh, I'll make out," I said. "Do you happen to know where the Hotel Chantecler is located?"
"The Chantecler! It's on the other side of the city! You fool, you will never get through without being questioned. You and your terrible French, your English accent. . . . My God, what's that on your back?"
Oh, you noticed? I had turned my left shoulder to the light for the first time, allowing her to view the ragged burned hole in my jacket.
"Ah, yes," I said. "I thought I might ask you about a reliable doctor. One who doesn't ask questions."
"But what. .•. what put the hole in there? Are you . . ."
'"The American Lieutenant." I shrugged. "I'm afraid ws traded even."
"You mean you have a bullet in you?"
"No, no. I got the bullet out. It's quite all right." I Balked toward the front door. "As I said, I'll be in touch irith you as soon as I hear from Maurice. And don't worry; your five thousand is as good as in your hand. . . . Oops!" I bumped against the door frame and very iearly collapsed.
"You idiot!" she whispered fiercely and grabbed me to bold me up. "You won't get two blocks. . . . Oh, God, you'll have to stay here."
"No, no," I said faintly. ". . . Can't let you get into rouble ... Not Pierre's girl..."
I managed, by pure pluck, to stagger to the sofa be-L:e swooning.
The flat was empty when I awoke next morning. My shoes had been removed by my hostess, but otherwise my dress was as it had been when I lay down. Of course my shirt had been partially unbuttoned and rebuttoned, as had my money belt. The four hundred or so dollars I had in the money belt were still in residence. My American cigarettes were gone.
About noon Jeannie returned. Her manner was less i gracious. We ate lunch together, cheese and bread with a cup of coffee that was mostly warm water. The rood, sparse as it was, cheered her somewhat.
She remarked, "I see you shaved. You look much better. Why—" Her voice became quite startled, "why you're even handsome!"
I blushed violently. Jeannie laughed with delight. "Poor Jimmy," she said, as she rumpled my hair on her way to the stove. I had told her my name was James Kane.
"I tried to remove your jacket last night," she said. "To dress your wound. I couldn't roll you over. You must be heavier than you look."
No, my dear. The weight you felt, the resistance, came from my muscles. I could hardly allow you to remove the bandage and find naught beneath it but unblemished flesh. You might possibly conclude me to be a braggart, or worse.
"It's all right," I said. "I changed the bandage. It's only a scratch."
"A forty-five-caliber bullet does not leave only a scratch," she said.
"I assure you, mademoiselle . . . er . . . how did you know the size of the bullet?"
"The shooting of the American is much the topic in the city today," she said. "They think he was shot by some German soldier he caught. There are still a few Boche hiding about."
He probably was. The attack on the American had been fully without my participation. I had chanced to hear of the shooting at my hotel the previous morning. I inquired (the hotel knew me as Major Joseph Labonville, a taciturn French officer having some secret connection with De Gaulle) and found that the assailant had escaped but was thought to be wounded. I had decided to incorporate the incident into my disguise. A heated screwdriver had put the hole in my jacket. A sidewalk poultry shop had supplied the blood for the bandage.
Similar thinking had guided my selection of the role of a smuggler. As I was passing through Marseilles on my way to Toulon, I had heard that the activities of the mmgglers along the coast had reached a proportion labeled "scandalous" by opponents of the government.
"Both the American and the French military are search-sz everywhere for the attacker of the Lieutenant," Jean-nie said. "They are quite upset. Personally I think more ::" the Americans could do with shooting. Then there might be a little chastity left in Toulon when the war is over. Damned chocolate bars."
Good girl, you are finding excuses for me. Your appetite for the five thousand dollars grows strong.
"You cannot go to a hotel now," she continued. "You will have to remain here until you hear from your friend Maurice."
"But . . . but I can't stay here," I protested. "This is | nor flat. You're a girl. You're here alone."
She looked at me sharply to see if I could possibly be
serious.
"I didn't say we had to sleep in the same bed together," she snapped. "There is the sofa. With the bathing
' .: itics, of course, we-" She paused when she saw
the agony of my embarrassment. She cursed mildly and walked into the other room.
A bit later in the day she watched me drop the book I was reading and jump up from the sofa. This occurred ■everal times, after which I would reseat myself with i good deal of uncomfortable squirming. Finally she asked, "What in God's name is the matter? Is your wound hurting?"
I couldn't answer immediately. Then I blurted out a re---est to be directed to the lavatory. She put her forehead against the heel of her hand and shook it. She led me to the hall and toward the rear of the house to the room ::* my obvious heed. She couldn't quite keep from smiling tot the rest of the evening.
At eight she left for a dinner engagement. I remained in the fiat and thwarted starvation with a piece of hard bread and a cup of warm water. The water was heated on the stove, using a single small lump of coal. Miss Champlain was very careful—miserly, actually—with her rationed food. Despite her influence in the local government, she refused to take advantage of "the proletariat." She would accept no more than her fair share of the rationed food. This personal fortitude she had waved in front of me several times like a banner. I would have to stock the larder on my own the next day. What is a smuggler if not a good provider? Besides, I was starving.
After consuming my bread and water, I entered her bedroom and inspected her underwear. She had several rather nice things, new and decidedly not the sort of garment one came by in wartime without a good deal of . . . sacrifice. I left those items arranged in such a fashion so as to leave no doubt that I had been prowling. Jeannie raised quite a fuss when she returned home and found the evidence. She mentioned that she was shocked to find such a nice boy doing such a thing. I of course nearly died of embarrassment.
Her anger did not last long, however, since her evening had been successful. She had dined well, at somebody's expense, some less ascetic comrade, and she had a bit of wine in her. We sat in her bedroom then for a while, both reading. The bedroom contained the only functioning electric light fixture. Jeannie lay on the bed. I sat in a chair facing somewhat away from her.
Several times she caught me peeking at her exposed knee. On the first of these occasions she snorted and pulled her skirt into place. She told me to leave the room and go sleep on the sofa. I sunk deep into my chair and mumbled an apology. I did not leave the room and mademoiselle did not insist.
The book she was reading was titled They Are Not Alone: The People's Rights in a Colonial Government. Hardly the thing to provoke the beast in one.
I slammed my book shut and mumbled, "I'll never get this French language learned. Everytime I think I have it whipped I run across sentences like that."
A few seconds went by before she gobbled the hook. She sighed and said, "Let me see. What can't you understand?"
I opened the book for her. "Up to this point I was doing fine," I said. "I could follow the story. The farmhand Paul ■ants to leave the farm and work in the steel factory making guns for the war. Carlotta, the daughter of the rich farmer, is ordered to make Paul stay so her father mSB continue to make money. Carlotta has lured Paul into the barn and they're lying in the hay. But some of her dialogue makes no sense to me at all."
"Where did you find this book?" Jeannie said. "This trash?"
"In that closet next to the . . . er . . . lavatory. The door was open and I saw all the books." And spent a good hour Meeting just the correct book for you, my dear. "Here now," I said, flipping pages for her, "start here. Here "here Carlotta is watching Paul from the doorway of the barn. He has his shirt off and the sun is sinning on his muscles. . . . Where the heck did I leave the cigarettes?" Jeannie started reading while I went off in search of the cigarettes. When I returned I picked up her book and Bl in the chair. The maid hardly noticed me. Some peat writers are like that. They grab you fast.
It was several minutes later that Jeannie caught me peeking at her knee again. The skirt was not pulled into place this time. Odd how these revisions in policy come about. When my attention again became carnal a minute later, I found that the skirt had miraculously moved a good hand-width upward. I turned away in confusion.
I heard the young lady stretching herself on the bed. When she had again settled, my horrified eye discovered that half of one thigh was now exposed to the edification of any passing rapist. By George, but the mademoiselle had been put together with commendable foresight.
My forehead broke out in hot beads of sweat (child's play) and I turned further away in my chair.
"Cheri." Her voice came after me like a soft tentacle. "Cheri, would you bring me a glass of water?"
I jumped up and ran from the room, mumbling, "Yes, yes . . ." When I returned I found that she had again shifted various portions of herself about on the bed. The view from the doorway very nearly caused the glass of water to drop from my hand. I froze one step inside the door.
"But come over to me," her scorched voice commanded as she let the book fall and raised her arms. "I cannot drink it from here." Her laugh was that of the confident lioness.
I stumbled to the bed, forced the glass into her hand, and again ran from the room. From the dark living room I called, "Good . . . good night. I'd best get to bed, I think."
She allowed me ten minutes to undress. Then she came slithering after me. She stood in the bedroom doorway in a shockingly thin nightdress, forgetting I suppose that the light was behind her. She whispered, "Jimmy, Jimmy, I cannot sleep worrying about you."
She came toward the sofa with an enchanting sway. "I 176 keep thinking it is so cold in this room," she said. "You must be freezing." She took several temperature readings under the blanket with her hand.
"I'm . . . I'm fine," I assured her. "Oh I say . . . er ... did you want me to move onto the bed then?.I mean, if you intend sleeping here?" Evidently she did not.
I must record that Miss Champlain, despite her other faults, did indeed show considerable concern for the welfare of her guests. I would venture that no man could possibly have frozen to death in her flat, ever.
The young lady was still asleep when I left the flat early the next morning. She would find my charming note when she rose: "Miss Champlain: I must get a message to Maurice. Thank you for your hospitality. [Signed] Mr. James Kane."
I returned to my hotel and did some more writing. This second note was addressed to Superintendent Sir Bruce Peak, Scotland Yard, London. It too contained some elements of charm. It went as follows:
Dear Mr. Policeman, Sir Bruce Peak: You do not know me. My name is Jeannie Champlain. I live in Toulon, France. I have heard of you. You are the only brave Englishman I know. You are the People's champion. You chase the enemies of the Proletariat, the black-market reactionaries. I can help you. I have in my possession much evidence about these black-market swine who live in London. An old friend of mine gave me this evidence. His name is Paul Cortez. He told me he was called Frenchy Cortez in your country. He had to escape London because the dictator of the black-market wanted to kill him. Frenchy Cortez even had a fight with a knife with the dictator. The dictator—his name is Icy Gorman—I have much evidence about him. I have maps showing where he hides the food he has stolen from the mouths of the People's children.
177
I have long lists of the subversive agents who sell Icy Gorman his cigarettes, petrol, and other goods needed by the soldiers fighting the great People's war. If you can come to Toulon, I will give you this information. Frenchy Cortez asked me to save the information for him. But I think Frenchy has been a burden to the proletariat too in this war. I have no regard for him. I will give the documents— they fill a large suitcase—only to someone who has been a champion of the People. Even though you come from one of the worst capitalistic countries, I know you are a true comrade in your heart. I have heard people say that someday you will be the leader in your country. Come to the Toulon police headquarters and ask for Major Joseph Labon-ville. He will direct you to me. Major Labonville was in your country recently and questioned the dictator Icy Gorman in your police hospital. The Major has agreed to help us in this venture. He claims to be a comrade, but I am not sure. He is with De Gaulle's military intelligence, so he might be on the side of the capitalists. I do not trust him enough to give him the suitcase. I do not trust anybody but Sir Bruce Peak. I hope you will hurry to Toulon. Frenchy Cortez might come back for his papers.
Your comrade, Jeannie Champlain, Lt. in the World Revolution Army
Actually, Jeannie was only a corporal in the World Revolution Army, but why quibble?
The rest of that day Major Joseph Labonville unleashed his influence in Toulon.
First he visited the headquarters of General DeLattre de Tassigny's First Army in the city.
I limited my appearance to the areas commanded by officers junior to myself. My stern mien as I stalked about their offices was a thing of fearsome beauty. Within half an hour Jeannie's letter to Sir Bruce was on its way to London in a military pouch.
Next I descended on police headquarters and scattered 178 unease within that institution with my credentials. A man from De Gaulle's own policing organization, Military Intelligence, was a man to fear in the year 1944. Even a man only claiming to be an agent from De Gaulle was a man to whom one gave considerable co-operation. And there certainly was no doubling that Major Joseph Labon-ville was such an agent. One look at the man told you that.
The Prefect of the Toulon police looked at me and said, "My department will assist you in any way possible, Major."
I told the dear man that I was expecting a message from the English police at Scotland Yard. "They will probably send some imbecile over," I said. "Then again, con-riering their love of comfort, their absurd addiction to :heir wives, they just might use the radio or telephone. I am to be informed at once when you hear from them. Is that understood?"
"Certainly, Major," the Prefect said. "But the Major must understand my problem here. I have many inexperienced men. I was dismissed from office and thrown in my own gaol by the Germans when they came. I mention this with pride. All records, the Germans destroyed them. My men, such as they are, they try to do their job. They arrest a man, a thief, a black-marketeer. The American soldiers come and demand the man's release. He's one of theirs, they say. Or it is the British who come. And if we say 'no,' our own military come and say 'yes.' And right behind come the Communists, Paul Zardi and his crowd. They demand that the thief, the black-marketeer be kept in jail or they will close the fish market. So you see, a man in my position has his problems. The Major should not be too impatient if we do not reach him immediately with the message from Scotland Yard. There is much confusion. There are so many people of authority, one does not know who is really in authority."
"The Communists, they are very strong in Toulon?" I asked. "You have trouble with them?" I pulled an impressive-appearing little notebook from my tunic and made several bold entries while the Prefect answered.
"They are strong here," he said. "They have good leadership. Paul Zardi is like a general with them. He is their hero, their legend, because of his service with the French Forces of the Interior, the F.F.I. When the Germans broke their agreement with Vichy in November of 'forty-two and came in and occupied the city, it was Paul Zardi who led the most active scuttling crew. They sank nearly every warship in the harbor to keep them from the Germans. After that, Paul Zardi was a leader in the F.F.I. Now that many of the old F.F.I, people have turned to Communism, Zardi is again their leader. I fear that he will easily become the most powerful man in the city, once General De Gaulle allows the free election. I have a dossier on him, if you wish to see it."
"My dear Prefect," I said, "we have a dossier on Paul Zardi in Paris. I venture that ours is even more detailed than your own."
"This does not surprise me," the Prefect said. "I was certain Paris had heard of Zardi. He has been very outspoken since he and his F.F.I, officers were refused appointment in De Tassigny's army."
I nodded and said, "Now, sir, you have the name of my hotel and my room number. Toulon's telephone system is apparently in good order. I shall expect to hear from you the moment you hear from Scotland Yard."
I left police headquarters and took a taxi to an intersection just two streets from Jeannie Champlain's fiat. I walked then to a little garage I had rented a few doors down from Jeannie's. In the garage—it was an area actually about the size of a horse stall—I removed the uniform of Major Labonville and dressed in the tattered attire of Mr. James Kane, British army deserter and ex-smuggler.
Jeannie was at the flat. She was rather stern. There was no visage of the panting young lady who had joined the bashful Britisher on the sofa the night before.
She did soften somewhat when she saw the half a ham and bag of real coffee I'd brought with me. By the time she had cooked us some of the ham and coffee she was quite mellow, actually. I suspect that some of her good humor came not from the food but rather from my mention of her legacy from Pierre Cavolt. I told her that I had made contact with my friend Claude. Claude had said that he had already dug up our money and was making arrangements for its transfer to Toulon. He thought he would have it in the city in two days.
Jeannie stroked my face and said, "Ah, Cherie, you are very efficient for one who knows so little about women. I missed you when you were not here this morning. But . . . you are here now. Come," She led me from the kitchen.
We were drinking more of the coffee later. Jeannie told me that she was very sorry, but I could "not remain at her fiat that night. "You are too much of a temptation for me, Jimmy," she said. "But you must come back tomorrow."
I had not planned to remain with her that night. There were pieces of the machine to be polished and fitted for the final smooth performance. I walked to the garage and put on the uniform of Major Joseph Labonville. Then I removed the cover from the motorbike. The machine was German-made and had cost me thirty pounds. I had purchased it from a farmer in Aubagne the day before my arrival in Toulon and had learned thus far only rudimentary control of the thing. The ugly machine, or my inability to properly drive it, represented the weakest link in my elaborate escape structure. My proficiency had to be improved, for I could allow only thirty-five minutes for the drive to Aubagne, a distance of twenty-five miles.
I spent the rest of that afternoon riding the bike about Toulon. I finally detennined the best route out of the city, then drove on to Aubagne. The drive took forty-seven minutes. Much too long.
I found Claude at his farmhouse. He told me he had the aircraft ready. We went to his barn and climbed into the Potez 63. The Potez 63 was a French military aircraft of prewar vintage. When the Germans conquered France, they had little but laughter for any of the French aircraft. They were generally inferior to the German machines in every respect. The French Air Force was for the most part destroyed by the French themselves when the Germans took over. But the destruction was not in all instances equal. There were some planes that a thoughtful and mechanically inclined man could put back together. Claude the farmer was a thoughtful and mechanical-minded man whose property abutted the deserted air base at Aubagne.
He had during the Occupation somehow come into possession of four aircraft. He had made them operational. Of the four, the Potez 63 was the fastest. His cache of aircraft was known to certain people, chaps whose lack of vertical mobility occasionally proved embarrassing. (The Italian and Swiss borders are but a short flight from Toulon.) Marcel the dwarf, of Paris black-market fame, had told me about Claude and his machines.
While I had been in Toulon arranging the seduction of Jeannie Champlain, Claude had been adding to the fuselage and wings of the Potez the Cross of Lorraine insignia of the Free French Air Force.
Claude was forty-eight years old. He was a pilot. He claimed to have flown the old North African air mail routes with de Saint-Exupery. Whether this biographical data was accurate or not was of no interest to me. I required only that the man be capable of piloting the Potez from Toulon to London at top speed. Claude had graciously consented to provide the transportation. His only reward was to be my good will and £500 sterling.
(Need I point out that there was no similarity between Claude the farmer and the Claude who was out digging up the buried smuggler's treasure? The one Claude was constructed of flesh and blood, the other, of course, purely of verbal tissue.)
While Claude the farmer prepared the engines for ignition, I said, "We will fly only as far as the airdrome at Bourges tonight. That's about three hundred miles. How long will it take?"
"If I hold her wide open we will make it in an hour. The original Potez Sixty-three did only two hundred fifty miles an hour. This one is stripped of all military equipment, and I have improved the engines. She will do nearly three hundred."
I told him that full speed was not necessary on this trip, that I wanted only to inspect our refueling capabilities at Bourges. "The next time we fly we will go at three hundred miles an hour," I said.
"There better be fuel for us at Bourges," he said. "Remember I told you the five hundred pounds did not include fuel. That would have been two hundred pounds extra."
"Undoubtedly you will soon be the richest farmer in the south of France, Claude. Surely you would not want to suffer the indignity of having to identify me as your patron?"
His reply was lost in his clenched teeth.
We took off from the field behind the barn. The flight to Bourges lasted one hour and twenty minutes. We landed at a military airdrome maintained by the French army.
Our Potez 63 caused a nostalgic gathering at the hangar. Old-line French Air-Force personnel came over to look at what had been one of the most modern of French airplanes prior to the war. They felt honored to be allowed to refuel the ship. We accepted the free petrol with what I felt to be superb disinterest. As the empty jerry cans became conspicuous by their number, I was asked if we had hidden fuel tanks aboard our craft. "A ship this size, it does not hold so much fuel."
"But of course we have reserve tanks." I laughed. "They are necessary."
I explained that we were on our way to deliver the plane to General De Gaulle. The General wanted to be transported about in a French aircraft, not an English or American. The General's sentiment was fully approved by those surrounding the plane. Claude and I were cheered as we took off.
When we arrived back over Claude's farm, someone on the ground lit several red flares that identified the location of the landing strip. We came in very roughly but in safety.
In the barn I asked Claude how long he thought it would take us to reach London on the night of our final flight together. He said he thought we might do it in just over three hours. "The weather will have to be with us and the Potez running first-class."
"The latter requirement I will leave to you." I said. "The former will possibly have to be left to chance."
The escape schedule: VA hours for the flight; 36 minutes on the motorbike from Toulon to Claude's farm; another hour devoted to traveling from the London airdrome to the hospital in which the American O.S.S. man Major Louis Proferra lay; 20 minutes or so negotiating my way to Profcrra's room. If all the parts responded to the lubricant, the machine I had assembled would place Augustus Mandrell in London less than six hours following the demise of Sir Bruce Peak: Six hundred miles in six hours. Not an exorbitant speed in the age of high-speed aircraft, yet if there was no known high-speed aircraft available to civilian Mandrell, who would have the audacity to link his name with that sad affair in Toulon?
I left Claude's farm and cycled the dark road back to Toulon. Forty minutes. Getting better.
As I returned my bike to its garage, I noted a battered Renault parked in front of Jeannie Champlain's residence. I knew the owner of the Renault. I knew also why Jeannie had refused me residence in her flat that evening.
At midnight Major Joseph Labonville was awakened at his hotel and informed that there was a telephone call for him at police headquarters. The major rushed to headquarters and stood about properly impatient while the local operator attempted to reopen the priority military telephone connection to London. Two hours elapsed before Toulon was again wired to the British Isles. Eventually, though, Major Labonville and Sir Bruce Peak were at each other's ears on a surprisingly clear connection (one of the unsung benefits of the war).
I spoke to Sir Bruce in nearly flawless English. He asked several predictable questions. Yes, I said, I did know a woman named Jeannie Champlain. Yes, I had seen the suitcase of papers she possessed. Yes, she had repeatedly refused to give them up, even to me. Yes, the documents contained explicit evidence, of a shockingly extensive black-market operation in London. No, she would not surrender the suitcase to the local English military, nor to any "my man" Sir Bruce might dispatch from Scotland Yard.
"You are some sort of symbol to her, Sir Bruce," I said. "She will release the suitcase to you alone."
"But, good God, Major, can't you chaps just go in there some night and take it?"
"You do not understand," I said. "Mademoiselle Champlain has powerful friends. People whom we do not want to antagonize just now. By Ve' I mean of course Paris and the General."
"Well, if she has such influential friends, can't they do something? If they're such law-abiding, God-fearing citizens one would think they-"
"Sir Bruce," I interrupted, "let me explain. Mademoiselle Champlain is the mistress of Paul Zardi. Paul Zardi is the leader of the local Communists. Any abuse of the Mademoiselle would be a slap in the face of Monsieur Zardi. Now you see?"
"A Communist!" Sir Brace choked. "You mean you're all afraid of some Communist?"
"Sir," I snapped, generations of Labonville family honor in my voice, "let me make our position clear. We are not about to chance a transportation strike, a closing of the fish markets, a demonstration parade on Boulevard Strasbourg, purely to humiliate one young girl. We tend to view the activities of the London black market as something less than a French problem. Shall I report to Mademoiselle Champlain that you have no interest in her documents? I might mention also that Monsieur Frenchy Cortez, the owner of the documents, has returned. Military Intelligence is holding him in a secret prison for the time being. Much against his rights as a French citizen. We will be only too happy to release him, before the civilian authorities hear of his plight."
"I ... I see, Major. I didn't understand. Thank you for holding Cortez. I'll be down on the first military transport I can arrange. I should be there tomorrow evening. I understand it's about a ten-hour flight."
That depends on which airline one uses, old man.
"There is an English-American airdrome just north of Marseille," I said. "If you can reach there, I'll meet you with a car."
"Very good of you, Major. Don't worry. I'll get there. A Scotland Yard Super is not without his influence, you'll rind."
I returned to my hotel and slept the contented sleep of the tiller of the soil who has seen the green sprouts responding to his labor.
The next evening I sat in my car at the American airdrome north of Marseille watching the powerful P-51's and P-47's leap from the runways. My machine was the property of the Toulon police, on loan to me for the evening. Sir Bruce Peak arrived at six-thirty in a C-47 with R.A.F. markings.
As I led him to my car it was obvious that he felt his dignity had been somewhat invaded. He said, "Bloody nuisance dragging one's own kit about. Tried to bring one of my men with me, but the R.A.F. gave us their 'priority personnel only' excuse, of course. Well, thank God it's not much longer the military will... Hmmph." Our conversation during the one-hour drive to Toulon was not excessive.
I took Sir Bruce to my hotel room, then explained that I would go and establish an appointment for him with
Mademoiselle Champlain. At the door I paused and said, "We may have a bit of unusual trouble dealing with this girl. She... er... is inordinately fond of men of authority. We shall see."
My first stop was police headquarters. I returned their machine and bade the Prefect adieu. "I've received an order to return to Paris," I told him jubilantly. "I don't mind telling you, my friend, you see before you a very happy man. I think I can trust your discretion. I have been assigned to . . . well, I'd best not give you the name of the department. But it is the most secret agency in the government. Its members answer only to General De Gaulle. Even our names are taken from us. Our faces are changed by the plastic surgeon. It is a great honor. . . . Oh, by the way, that Englishman I spoke to yesterday on the telephone, he is here in Toulon. He may come to you for assistance. Strange sort for an Englishman. Stared at every girl we passed as if he would rip the dress from her body. I mean, more than is normal. Like a madman."
Mandrell, you flatterer. The Prefect would remember my comment. He would be available for comment, should Sir Bruce involve himself in any tawdry incident while in Toulon.
The next leg of the grand plan took me by taxi to my little garage. I retired Major Joseph Labonville for the time being and released the tattered English deserter Jimmy Kane.
Jeannie greeted me with considerable warmth, telling me that she had longed to see me all day. I finally managed to disentangle myself and blurt out my good news. "Claude has arrived in Toulon with the money."
She squealed her delight and clutched me again. "Hold on a minute. Hold on," I said, laughing. "We're going to have some trouble."
My playful kitten froze in mid-leap. "Trouble?" she snapped.
I explained that Claude claimed to have found only a part of the money I buried. "He says there was only two thousand dollars in the hole. He's lying, of course. I saw him when he got off the train. He checked a parcel at the depot. I'm betting the rest of the money's in the parcel."
"I want my full five thousand!" Jeannie said.
"Don't worry; we'll get it. All we have to do is filch the baggage check from him. I know he still has it. I saw him push it into the lining of his trousers. I will bring him here to the flat, about eleven o'clock, say. We must find some way to get his trousers without making him wise."
"But, Jimmie," she said, "for me, that will be child's play." She placed her hands behind her head and thrust forward the several lethal ingredients of her child's play.
"I'm not so sure," I said. "He is a cold man, very reserved. He's likely not to respond, particularly with me here."
"Your Claude," Jeannie murmured, "he sounds interesting. You think he will not respond? Ha!"
"No, no. Let's not gamble on it. Can't you think of any other way to get his trousers?"
And, by George, didn't she, all by herself, devise an alternate device? She would serve Claude and myself coffee and, in the process, spill the beverage on Claude. Claude would retire to the bedroom and hand out his trousers for repair. I said it might succeed, for Claude was a man of fastidious dress.
"But how do we know he will not remove the baggage check in the bedroom?" I said, further testing her conspirator's blood.
"Because I will be in the bedroom with him," she 189 crowed. "I will give him enough time to remove one leg from the trousers. Then I shall run in and, let us say, engage him. I will throw the trousers out to you and close the door. We will see who will not respond."
"And you think you can keep him in there long enough?" I said. "It will take me a few minutes to find the baggage check."
Jeannie smiled and placed her hands behind her head again. I agreed that probably she could detain even the cold-blooded Claude. My dear chap, she could have detained a king on his way to coronation.
"I will hold him until I hear you unlock the front door to leave," she said. "By then your Claude will be . . . well, he will have forgotten all about his trousers. You will have a taxi sound his horn as you drive for the railroad depot. Then I shall throw your Claude from my flat. I do not like a man who steals my money." Nor do I, my dear.
As I was leaving the flat she said, "The coffee, Jimmie, it will all be wasted. There is so little left of what you brought before."
I promised I would try to bring her more coffee.
Then as I opened the door, I chanced to think of something else. "Oh, yes," I said. "Claude is English. Doesn't speak a word of French."
Major Labonville returned to his hotel and brought Sir Brace Peak a disturbing report.
"Mademoiselle Champlain has agreed to see us at eleven tonight," I said. "A very strange girl. She could easily have any man she wants, but it is only one type of man that intrigues her. A man destined for great power."
"Like that Communist Zardi, I suppose?" Sir Bruce said distastefully.
"And like yourself," I said. "She thinks of you as a future leader of your country. She perhaps sees herself as a woman who will help direct the policies of great nations from behind the scenes."
"From beneath the bed sheets is more like it," my pompous guest commented. "Your country has rather a history of that sort of thing, Major, if you don't mind my saying."
"Mind? I'm afraid there are many of my countrymen who are quite proud of it. And it is with this history in mind that we should plan our attack on Mademoiselle Champlain."
"Attack?" Sir Bruce said coldly.
"I mean tactics, of course," I said. "I am afraid that she has contacted you—and insisted on you alone—for a very special reason. I'm sure she will give you the suitcase with the black-market documents, but I suspect she will ask you for future commitments. Perhaps leniency for the Communist Party in England. That sort of thing."
"Absolutely not!" he sputtered. "I will not compromise the Crown. When I am Prime Minister . . . er . . . that is, if the honor should ever come to my shoulders, there shall be no leniency for anybody. They'll all bloody well go it my ... ah ... our way."
"But you still want the documents," I reminded. "Therefore, we do the honorable thing. We steal them. I am quite certain she has brought the suitcase to her flat. It is hidden either in the kitchen or in the parlor. If you could possibly get her out of the flat for ten minutes I'm certain I could find it. Then I would leave and meet you back here."
"How in heaven's name am I to pull that off? Invite her for a stroll in the ruddy garden?" I choose to think that Sir Bruce's travel had made him obstreperous. I mean, one thinks of a future P.M. as a man with rather a bulldog grip on everything, including his temper.
"She may even suggest it herself. Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "She may want to speak to you privately. The point is, we grasp any opportunity to get her out of the kitchen and parlor."
And so went our tactics. At five before eleven we arrived by taxi at Jeannie's house. Although there was no indication of inclemency in the air, Major Labonville unaccountably wore dark rain gear over his brass buttons and medals. On the unlit stairs of Jeannie's flat, the Major lost his mustache, his ramrod posture, and the careful part in his oily hair. Why ... why, by the time the gentlemen reached the flat, one could easily have mistaken the Major's shadowy figure for that of Jimmy Kane!
Jeannie opened the door for us. The only light in the flat came from the electric fixture in the bedroom. I had suggested this.
"Awfully ruddy dark in here, isn't it?" Sir Bruce was quick to observe.
I interpreted his remark to Jeannie. She snapped at Sir Bruce, "There is a war on—in France."
"Eh?" Sir Bruce said. "What did she say about France?"
"She says s"he is wearing her prettiest French gown for you," I told him. "But with the War ..."
Jeannie was wearing a rather nice dressing gown, and there was a fractional touch of perfume about her.
"God," Jeannie said, "why didn't you tell me your Claude was so old. No wonder you describe him as cold. How am I to interest him?" One must recall that the mademoiselle spoke with the wisdom of a twenty-four-year-old.
I interpreted her remark to Sir Bruce. "She says you are even more handsome than the pictures she has seen.
She says you will make a very distinguished Prime Minister. Remember, until we get the suitcase we must play her game, keep her happy."
Jeannie had moved two chairs and a small table into the light from the bedroom doorway. "Come sit over here," she said. Then to me she grumbled, "If I am to thaw him out at all, I'd better start now."
She took the Scotland Yard Superintendent's arm and led him to a chair. On the way she pulled his arm against her and punctured his biceps with a vivid reminder of her youth.
"I have coffee on the stove," she said. "I will bring some. I hope I do not spill it. I spilled some on my leg this morning, and it still hurts. See . . ." She drew aside her dressing gown and unleashed upon Sir Bruce about half a meter of white thigh. To my eye the flesh was unblemished by anything except possibly misbehavior. The mademoiselle could hardly be charged with subtlety. She tweaked Sir Brace's cheek and went off to the kitchen.
"Brazen bit of goods," Sir Bruce grumbled. "A bit too French, if you ask me."
"Her interest in you appears to be ... ah .. . somewhat deeper than I suspected," I said. "We may be able to capitalize on it. If we can just get her into the bedroom for a few minutes."
"Absurd, sir! I'll be no party to such nonsense."
"Two minutes," I said with feeling. "Two minutes, and I'll have this room and the kitchen searched. Two minutes and you will have your evidence against Icy Gorman. ..."
Jeannie returned with two cups of coffee. I noted that she had had sense enough not to heat the liquid. A scalded Sir Bruce" would have been difficult to manipulate. Then again, the saving of precious coal had probably been Jeannie's thought.
Her acting prior to that moment had been more than uneven, but she carried off her big scene with delightful precision. She bent toward Sir Bruce with the coffee cup in her hand and cooed, "A kiss for the pretty waitress, no?"
There was no misunderstanding her pouting lips. Nor, I believe, did Sir Bruce misunderstand the charming valley opening before him as mademoiselle bent her open-necked gown toward him. His eye took on the keen look of the startled explorer.
"Oops ... oh, I am so sorry. .. ."
The coffee spilled down his jacket and over both trouser legs. Sir Bruce, oddly, became more embarrassed than indignant. The Englishman in him.
Jeannie immediately babbled some female cant having to do with the washing out of stains and the virtue of a hot flatiron. I interpreted to Sir Bruce. He said "no."
I snapped, "Don't be an idiot. This is ideal. Let her iron the jacket and trousers. You remain in the bedroom. She brings them in to you. She will insist on helping. Two minutes go by. It is all over."
I took his arm and led him. "For God's sake," I said fiercely, "she's only a slip of a girl. Here, give me the jacket now."
The voice of authority properly applied; we are none immune to it. Sir Bruce removed his jacket, then entered the bedroom muttering, "Remember—just two minutes after she comes in. That's all I'll promise." That shall be more than sufficient, sir.
Jeannie came from the kitchen with an oil lamp. She took the jacket from me and wiped the spilled coffee on the floor with it. She stood up and said, "I'll go in now. Please
He had held out the trousers. Jeannie grabbed them and tossed them out into the dining room. Then she closed the door.
"Now, now, hold on a bit here," I heard Sir Bruce say.
I picked up the trousers and emptied the pockets into my own. I did the same with the jacket, paying particular attention to securing Sir Brace's notecase with his identity papers.
"All right, all right," I heard Sir Bruce say. "I'll sit on the bed. But just sit, mind you."
While I moved the two chairs and table from the pathway to the bedroom, I noted idly that the coffee cup Jeannie had brought for me held no coffee. Where, I wonder, does frugality leave off and the miser take over?
hurry, Jimmy. He is such a cold jackass I might not be able to hold him."
"Wait," I said. "Give him a moment more." We were a bit ahead of schedule, my schedule. "Seriously now, do you think you won't be able to keep him in there?"
She smiled and said, "I have been saving something. See what I have on under my dressing gown?" There was nothing to see.
"That's a girl. Okay, go on in. Tell him you've come for the trousers. Then ... it's up to you."
She snapped open the door and walked in. Sir Bruce had his trousers fully removed and had them up to the light examining the damage. His face went bright red as Jeannie stopped and stared at his ankle-length underwear. She pointed at them and said, "What in heaven's name are those?"
Sir Bruce misunderstood. "No, madam," he said. "I am not about to surrender these. The trousers, yes. But not
"Here now," Sir Bruce said, "you can't do that. Put that thing back on."
Never a dull day at Scotland Yard, they tell me.
Hark! Hold fast, Sir Bruce; -I believe I hear rescue coming. Running footsteps on the stairs below. I extinguished the lamp and unlatched the front door of the flat.
"Haven't you had your two minutes yet, Major?" Sir Bruce called out above the sound of squeaking bed springs. Then he cried, "Let go of them! I told you I wasn't going to-"
At that moment Monsieur Paul Zardi burst through the front door. It is about time, sir. The note I ordered sent to your rooms must have reached you seventeen minutes ago. It is but a fourteen-minute drive from there to Jeannie Champlain's, even in your battered Renault.
I ohserved Zardi's progress from behind the sofa. As he charged forward, a bit of light from the edge of the bedroom doorway glinted on a pistol in his hand. I cannot say that I was surprised. The note I sent him had mentioned that the Englishman was armed. That's the same Englishman who had sworn to rape Jeannie Champlain— the colorful deed to take place that very night. A first class bounder and no doubt about it.
The scene uncovered by Monsieur Zardi when he wrenched open the bedroom door was sufficiently revolting to ignite even a patient, reasonable man. Paul Zardi, F.F.I, hero and Communist leader, had never been called either patient or reasonable by any who knew him. Hotheaded, more likely.
Sir Bruce was seated on the bed attempting to reinstall his underwear. Mademoiselle Champlain had heard run-ing footsteps and knew them to be no part of the plan. She had fallen back on the bed and her expression of worried surprise was sufficient to pass for numbed terror under Zardi's flashing inspection.
"About time you finished, Major," the engrossed Sir Bruce said without looking up. "It's a dirty bit of business I've had on my hands." I'm afraid your defense lacks any real persuasion, old man. You see, Zardi understands English.
As the reports from Monsieur Zardi's revolver rang through the flat, I removed myself. I had been prepared to fire my own silencer-equipped weapon from the parlor, should Zardi prove faint of resolve or deficient of eyesight. Following the fourth shot it was obvious that any contribution I could make would have been superfluous.
Let us be off, Augustus! London is six hundred miles away and the seconds are flowing.
I released the motorbike from the garage. First stop: my hotel, to grab Sir Brace's luggage. I broke open the lock on the valise and left the bag sitting on a sidewalk in the slum area of the city. The inhabitants thereof would see to the proper distribution of the contents.
I reached Claude the farmer's barn in exactly thirty-three minutes. Excellent cycling, Mandrell! Claude was waiting beside the Potez 63. "Let's go!" I cried, grabbing my briefcase from the cycle. "I thought you'd have the engines turning over."
Claude, dependable old Claude, slipped a pistol from his pocket and said, "Why all the rush, Major? We are not going anyplace. Did you think I would fly all the way to England, drop you off, and then be purely on my own for getting back? You're the Major who can order the free petrol at the air bases. I couldn't." As he spoke, three other men moved out of the shadows. One of those was a dwarf.
"Why should Claude wait until he flies to England to 197 collect the five hundred pounds, Major?" the little man asked. "He can collect it right here. And possibly quite a bit more. Let's have a look in the briefcase."
He was called Marcel the dwarf. He controlled the Paris black market. It was he who directed me to Claude the farmer, Claude the aircraft fancier.
"It is imperative that I reach London tonight," I said with straight-backed authority. "You gentlemen may be outside the law, but certainly you are not without some love for France. I am Sir Bruce Peak of Scotland Yard. I am on a mission of grave national peril for both of our governments. If the King does not receive this briefcase by morning, there is an excellent chance that Spain will enter the war on the side of Germany. Franco's first move would be an invasion of France. Do you understand?"
They were startled, but not quite sold.
"When you came to me in Paris," the dwarf reminded me, "you said Icy Gorman of London had sent you. Now you say Scotland Yard."
"My credentials are here," I said opening the briefcase. "May I?" I said asking permission to reach into the case. "I will move slowly." I moved my hand slowly and drew out Sir Bruce Peak's notecase. I must have been overly careful, for the notecase eluded my two-finger grasp and fell to the floor. The dwarf pounced and picked it up. He and his two men read the contents. Claude the fanner and his pistol watched me. But, Claude, you didn't watch all the time. You let your eye follow the fallen notecase for a second.
"Do you want to know what this means to me?" the dwarf asked, holding up the notecase. "It says you are Sir Bruce Peak of Scotland Yard all right. But to me the only voice is the forty-five pounds I find in here. Now, put your briefcase here on the bench."
I shrugged and said, "Certainly. First, let me show you this. You"—I pointed to one of the dwarfs thugs—"put out your hand, to your side. I will prove something." The dwarf nodded, telling the assistant to comply.
The assistant was the man standing at the far right of the group. I raised my briefcase with my right hand. Nobody in the group could see the right side of the case. There was an abrupt pop and a bloody hole appeared in the center of the assistant's held-out palm.
The pop emulated from my silencer-equipped pistol. I had slipped it from the briefcase during the scramble for the notecase and had held it hidden along the right side of the briefcase.
All eyes except mine swung to the screaming assistant. When Claude looked back at me he found my weapon in perfect alignment with his face. "Throw away your pistol, Claude," I snapped. "You are flying me to London." He dropped his gun.
But the dwarf was too quick. His cane flew upward and smashed my pistol from my hand. I ducked away and ran out the door, clawing at the pistol case of Major Labonville's uniform. A bullet from somebody's gun followed me out the door. Nasty sound, those close bullets.
I finally had the Major's pistol unholstered. I fired two quick shots into the barn to discourage pursuit. Then I jumped aboard the motorbike and got it started. As I slewed it around on the soft ground somebody appeared in the barn doorway with a gun. I think it was the man with the wounded hand, for he held his gun rather clumsily in his left hand and his two shots never came near me as I roared down the hill. Vengeful sort of chap. I fired back over my shoulder once at him. He absorbed the bullet in his middle and fell forward to the ground. His second wound would probably not be mortal, nor was it intended to be. I am rather partial to gentlemen who rise up from the stretcher and go after the enemy.
As I reached the gate leading to the road I heard a car start up at the barn. Then strong headlights came down the hill after me. I drove for the main road.
They were still far behind me when I reached the intersection. I had my choice: Toulon or Marseille? Marseille was eight miles closer.
They chased me the full seventeen miles to the city. They could not catch my bike, but I was running out of petrol. I made it to the first fair-size shop area just as the last of the fuel entered the engine. I pushed the bike into an alley and ran for the only building showing an open door that time of night, the Hotel Azure.
Two taxis were unloading guests at the front door as I walked up. I mingled with them but not soon enough. Marcel the dwarf's car came running by, went past, then braked and started backing up. Marcel was renowned as the best marksman in Paris. I did not want Mm located on the other end of a pistol looking at me. I moved quickly into the hotel.
The lobby was quite busy, the bar still being open. The guests appeared to be mostly wartime's traditional postbattle carcass pickers: news correspondents, clerics of one stripe or another, and Red Cross personnel.
I cut through the bar, out another door, and up the stairs. As I reached the second landing, I saw the elevator stop. I waited with pistol in hand to see who should exit the car. A woman of fifty-odd summers and formidable proportions, wearing the uniform of the Swedish Red Cross, was evidently the only passenger. She walked away from me with the stride of a Clydesdale and a mien to match. I followed to her room and pushed through the door behind her.
Fifteen minutes, fifteen precious minutes, later I left the lady—in her matronly underwear, unconscious, bound, gagged and shorn of some necessary curls—on the small balcony located outside the window of her room. But I had been as gentle as possible in view of the kindly service she was, somewhat unwontedly, rendering. I strode off with my newly shaved legs thrust into her fortunately gigantic shoes and my fierce determination contained within her uniform. Major Labonville's uniform I dropped into the elevator shaft. You have served with distinction, mon major.
I encountered kindly farmer Claude in the lobby. He was staring rather pathetically at the elevator. I walked to him and said in French that was touched with Scandinavian, "The two hundred francs, you have got? You, me go up to my room, ya?"
He froze before the bulky Red Cross dame with her lecherous eye and grey curls peeking from beneath the jaunty cap. (Neatly arranged with adhesive around the inside rim of the aforesaid cap—rather a becoming effect, I felt, especially in view of the limited time I had had at my disposal.) He said, "Get away from me. I'm busy."
"To me you say such a thing!" I screeched and struck him on the side of the head with my handbag. Major Labonville's pistol in the bottom of the handbag left rather a black and blue impression on Claude's temple. "What ist this hotel?" I cried. "To your room I should go? I am not!" I managed to get in another blow before he hit the floor. I'm quite certain the second clubbing parted his collarbone.
The airline that endangers a passenger's timetable by failure to maintain its schedule should not, I feel, go scatheless. x
There was a stunned uneasiness in the lobby. As I 201 rummaged through Claude's pocket, a lackey from the desk dashed to my side. "Here, Miss Peters, what are you doing? What-"
The clerk's reaction to a few pungent French phrases delivered in a masculine snarl by my lipsticked mouth was actual nausea that required his immediate withdrawal. I found Claude's automobile key and started for the front door. At that moment Marcel the dwarf and his thug came rushing into the lobby from the stairs. It was to my advantage that they did not see the crumpled figure lying in the wake of the departing Red Cross matron.
I spun toward Marcel, threw out my great plump arms, and cried, "Ach, anodder vun. Anodder displaced little toddler. Where are we to put them all?" I rushed forward to embrace the dwarf. He fled to the bar.
I gained the street and moved to Claude's auto. I had to elbow my way through a stricken group standing in front of the hotel, their upturned faces barometers of some anomaly occurring above us on the moon-bathed face of the building. I raised my skirts and galloped to the auto. I raced the machine out of Marseille.
My wristwatch, now the implacable foe, indicated that I was losing the race. More than one hour had elapsed since the demise of Sir Bruce, and I was still six hundred miles from London.
I drove to the military airdrome located north of the city, the same airdrome at which I had greeted Sir Bruce just hours earlier. The installation next to which I parked was one tended by the Yank Air Force, a happenstance that greatly improved my chances. American officers are as helplessly responsive to a particular set of symbols as my own countrymen are to any manifestation associated with royalty. And here came I into the American operations room with an awesome combination of weapons with which to capture their co-operation: gray-haired and fifty-ish, Mother; member of a Worthy Organization; and, with my fumbling attempts to pull intelligible English from a thick Swedish accent, an Underdog.
I was embroiled in an errand on behalf of the Gold Star Mothers of the World, I wailed to my audience. I had to be in London by morning. Otherwise I must report failure to those mothers who have given their sons to save the world. In that crowded room of clacking teletypes and logistic-numbed clerks I was magnificent!
I was Heart in a machine war. I was the Earth Mother rising above and momentarily suppressing the world of sterile, metallic paperwork. ". . . Vont somebody 'elp me? Please...." Ahhh.
And I received as well as I gave. Located in the ready room, within earshot of my histrionics, stood a young fighter pilot named Mike Crane. Captain Crane ran up to me and blubbered, "You bet we'll help you, Mom." There were the usual tears in his eyes. "I'll get you up as far as the Channel, anyway. I got me a little old P-forty-seven outside that's fitted with a piggyback seat so's I can haul the Old Man around. You say the word and we go right now."
Say the word? I hugged the Captain to my feather-pillow bosom. "Ach, but that I had son such as this!" I cried. Ten minutes later Miss Margaret Peters of the Swedish Red Cross was swaddled in pilot's coveralls, and she and Captain Crane were leaping from the end of the runway into the dark night. Shortly after we were racing north at 375 miles an hour!
During the flight I explained my assignment to mush-hearted Captain Crane. I had just obtained the written confession of an American deserter who had been caught in Marseille, I told him. The deserter had died immediately following the signing. The confession, if returned to London in time, would save the life of a kindly old parish priest in Chicago. (Captain Crane, you may be surprised to learn, was a Catholic from Chicago.) The kindly old priest was due to be electrocuted for the murder of a blind newsman.
"Why, hell—oh, sorry, Mom," the Captain blurted over our radio hookup. "But why couldn't they just radio the news to Chicago from Marseille? I mean, if a priest's life is involved..."
I explained that the district attorney who had obtained the priest's conviction was a politically ambitious man. The D.A. felt that the execution, just or otherwise, would help him attain the governorship. Only the authority of the American ambassador at St. James's would suffice to deter the D.A.
"Boy, things sure are rotten back home," the youth said to me. "Just wait until I get back. I'm sort of a hero now—got me seventeen kills. I'm running for office when I get back. I'll clean that city-hall crowd out."
"Dis iron bird," I said, "how fast it can go?"
"Baby here? Oh, she'll do over four hundred when you're upstairs and you really need it. . . . Yes, sir, I'm going back to U.S. and A. and run for office. I hear the pay's pretty good, too. If you go in high enough."
"You say 'up the stairs' for go faster?" I said.
"Yeah, but you gotta put on the oxygen mask. You wouldn't know how to use it, Mom. ... I'll bet a guy with a clean-cut look, a nice wife, and a pedigreed dog, a German shepherd, I think, could really get the votes. Well, no, maybe not a German shepherd, not with the war. An Irish setter. Lots of Irish in Chicago. I'll-"
"Oxygen mask, what is this?" I said reaching the rubber contraption over his shoulder to show him. "In Sweden
I ban use all the time. Up in mountains, watching Mdle sheepies, we use."
"Yeah? Never heard of that. Well, okay, put it on and we'll go upstairs and hi-ball. What's a few overheated cylinders?"
We attained a higher altitude, and the soft whine from the propeller blades increased in pitch.
"Hardly worth coming up here," Captain Crane said. "We're practically to La Bosie." I detected a bit of petulance in his voice. I should not have indicated such a thirst for speed. I should have shown greater interest in his political career.
"La Bosie?" I said.
"That's right, ma'am," he said, abruptly dispensing with the "Mom" that I had found so engaging. "That's as far north as I can take you. The Old Man would skin me if I left the Continent. Don't worry, I'll scout around and find you a transport flight at La Bosie. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours."
A couple of hours! You idiot, it's been nearly four hours since that regrettable scene in Jeannie Champlain's flat. Your lovely airplane has made up the time lost with Marcel the dwarf and his associates. Do not speak to me of further delay.
I thanked him very much for his excellent flying and for his co-operation that had ensured that I would now reach London before dawn.
"Well, now, I'm not saying you'll actually be there before dawn, ma'am. Depends on how fast we get you a flight at La Bosie."
I will get a flight in time, I assured him. I had to. The priest was due to be executed at midnight Chicago time. That would be 6 a.m. London time, or about dawn. But even if I did not arrive in London on time with the confession, I told him cheerily, I would certainly report to the Chicago voters how Captain Crane had made every effort to save the good friar. (No pun intended, I hastily assured the captain.) The voters were certain to respond to the gallantry of the young fighter pilot, I said.
The Swedish accent, one I generally find troublesome, was breaking particularly well, and I suspect I may have waxed a bit giddy into the microphone. Yes, possibly I had, for Captain Crane then asked if I knew of any age restriction with regard to the office of the governorship of Illinois. I responded that as far as I knew there was none. But the voters, I pointed out, would hardly elect a man, say, in his eighties. "You don't get no smarter when you that old."
"No, no," he said. "I mean can you be too young?"
I said I believed you had to be at least twenty-one. He muttered something disjointed about ". . . old enough to be sacrificed on the altar of mortal combat, too young to buy a glass of beer..."
Then, abruptly, he administered some ablution to the engine, increasing its scream. He cried, "Don't you worry none, Mom. We'll make London in time if I have to blow the magneto off this baby!" The air-speed indicator showed that we were nibbling at the four-hundred-miles-per-hour mark.
I had to switch off my microphone for a moment. The sound of a gloating laugh would hardly have reinforced his zeal.
"You'll be able to see the Channel in a few minutes," he told me. "We'll go a little slower from here. Cylinder-head temperature is running a bit high. If they don't cool down we might have trouble. Just pray it doesn't happen over water."
What sort of imbecile had I been cast with? A recur-206
ring fear in my life has been the vision of entrapment in a disaster-bent machine over whose gyrations I had no personal control. What terrible cerebral malfunction had attacked the captain to allow him to put us airborne in this craft of tenuous stability?
I looked slyly about the airplane with cat-cautious eyes. Yes, there was a parachute aboard, just one. It was his, forming the back rest of his seat. Who, who in such malignant generosity had laid this cursed snare?
"Hey, it doesn't look good, Mom," the captain's brave voice startled me. "Temperature going up fast. I'll have to throttle back." The whine of the engine regressed. We were over the Channel by this time, above the moonlit waves at what appeared a presumptuous height for mere man.
"Oh, baby, she's hot!" the hearse driver informed me. I abruptly discovered that we were trailing a spoor of black smoke and had been for some minutes. Then the engine's cadence changed to a rhythm that even I recognized as failing health.
"Don't worry, Mom." I could feel his optimistic, his fool's grin. "I think we have enough altitude to make one of the emergency fields."
Our speed was in the vicinity of 100 m.p.h. by this time. Captain Crane cranked open the canopy, an unsettling gesture, for I had the momentary impression he was planning to leave me.
As I recall, it was within a minute or so of the canopy's opening that the engine caught fire. We stared silently at the intermittent licks of flame leaking from beneath the cowling.
"Er . . . Mom, I don't want you to get frightened now. I'm passing you back a thing we call a parachute. We
.. . er . . . only have one. See if you can figure out how to put it on."
I was well acquainted with the overly involved strap and lock mechanism of the parachute, but you could not don the contraption in the spare quarters of that P-47. The P-47 was built to be a single-seat fighter plane. The piggyback innovation was well named. The passenger in the home-made rear seat very nearly crouched on the shoulders of the pilot. I contented myself with intruding one leg and one arm into the restraining straps of the parachute.
The fire was well sustained by then. Captain Crane said, "I think you'd better jump for it. If we get too low nobody can use the chute. Besides, with the weight gone I'll have a better chance. We're over land now, nearly to Croydon. I'll get ... er .. . out of your way."
I waited impatiently for him to move. He didn't. After a few moments he said, "I . . . er . . . guess you've seen quite a bit of life, eh, Mom? I mean, living so long and all. Funny ... ha, I haven't seen hardly any. Still pretty young, you know? But I guess I want you to see some more of it in the years, the few years, you have left . . ." There was a pause on the radio. Neither of us said anything; at least, as I recall, I did not voice the terrible invective bloated within me. Then he said, "Well, okay. I'll move out of your way. We sure don't want to miss the boat with the one chute. . . . You've never done any flying, by any chance, have you? ... I didn't think so. Disconnect your radio. We can hear each other if we shout."
He crouched to the side of the cockpit, his face forward close to the windscreen, one hand still on the stick. I scrambled quickly into bis area, with an agility that must have surprised him. I would have gone right on out to the wing, but his hand grabbed me. He cried, "You just pull
this handle as soon as you jump. . . . What the be2. yo* got the damn thing on all wrong! If you don't know- low to use it, why . . . Well, okay, I guess you won't fall o>— of the harness."
I bobbed my head effusively and tried to draw away from his sorely clutching hand. "You just pull this handle, you see?" he kept shouting. He appeared incapable of releasing me.
"Oh, mine God!" I shouted. "The confession—I left it in Marseille!"
Captain Crane very nearly fell out of the aircraft. His hand no longer restrained me. I dived onto the wing and let myself slide off into the slipstream. The jerk was not nearly as abrupt as I have experienced on other occasions, and I had no difficulty retaining my grip on the harness.
As I floated down on some dingy area of East London, I watched the progress of Captain Crane's P-47. One could see the picturesque flames for miles. Abruptly the flames extinguished and one saw nothing. The youngest governor in the history of the state of Illinois. I fear, lad, that the memory of the average voter is flagrantly short. You will have to do better than that. (I must chronicle someday my own experience in the city of Chicago. A rather noteworthy event which I call the St. Valentine's Day Commission. No, no. No relation to that other gross display. I am hardly that old.)
My parachute brought me to a community called Up Thames. I was greeted immediately by two ragged inhabitants, both male.
"Ah, another of the lads coming in by parachute," the one with the mustache said. "Must be the fifth we've had this year, eh, Tom? C'mon, son, we'll get you up to the pub and put a pint or two in you. Owner of the pub I am, and if I can't open it for one of our brave R.A.F. lads, who then? . . . Grab up the chute, Tom. The missus is a wizard with that nylon cloth."
"I must get on to London," I said. "Isn't there some constabulary about with a vehicle?"
"Plenty of time for that," the pub man said. "Come along now. Perhaps we'll make a night of it. Or what's left of the night. It will be dawn in an hour or so."
"Ya, goot," I said. "Ve go drink der schnapps. Der goot Englander schnapps. Ho-ho, they say I'm never make it. Ho-ho. I'm make it, ya?"
"Hold on a bit now," my host said. "Er . . . Tom, why don't you run over to the barracks and get you know who. Me and the . . .er . . . pilot will walk up to the pub."
We had hardly lit the lantern inside the pub when two constables burst through the front door. One of them even held a pistol, taken from their emergency arms supply.
I protested as they laid hold of me. I told them I was Captain Crane of the U.S. Air Force. I had, during my parachute descent, removed my gray wig and Red Cross cap, and had erased some of the painted age from my face with my sleeve. The overalls I was still wearing were anonymous, at least as to sex.
"Jeeze, who'd ya think I was, some Nazi?" said I. "Bin Mike Crane of the good old U.S. and A. as long as I ken remember."
"E's a Yank, right 'nough," one of the constables said. Turning to the pub owner, he said, "I'll thank you to keep a keener eye in your head, Ralphie, and not be rousing two good men from their rest in the middle of the night."
I then learned that my recent chauffeur had not exaggerated his contribution to the debris lying imbedded
in the countryside of western Europe, and possibly in some of the citizenry thereof. My interrogators recognized the name and asked if I was the Captain Crane who had knocked down seventeen Jerrys. I said 'no,' I was the Captain Crane who now had twenty Jerrys under my belt since three Messerschmitts had been so indiscreet as to engage me on my latest trip across the Channel. I felt this was the least I could do for the boy. As it turned out, my magnanimity was ill-timed since, when the increased "kills" were reported, it was admitted by those interested in such matters that the feat bordered on the miraculous. Captain Crane's converted P-47 carried no guns.
The further questions of the constables I parried by resorting to a swoon. They loaded me aboard an ancient vehicle they dragooned from somewhere, and we headed for the barracks at Tomlin. During the drive I saw fit to regain consciousness, and with more than my normal verve. I bounced up screaming, "I'll get you, you dirty Hun, you filthy Bosche . . . You Nazi scum . . ." and the like, and threw both policemen from the machine. Admittedly a rather elderly pair. The war, you know. I drove off leaving them bruised and stunned in the roadside bushes—foxglove, I believe.
London at last!
I stopped my borrowed vehicle at a small rented room located not far from the police hospital where Major Louis Proferra of the O.S.S. lay in pain. I changed quickly into a constable's uniform that had been cached in the room ten days earlier. The parcel of odds and ends I'd ordered from a chap I knew was sitting in the room. It had been secreted in the room just hours before.
I was ready to establish my alibi for the demise of Sir Bruce Peak.
I believe the police report tells the rest of the story as well as anything:
"Report on the Shooting of American Military Officer Within Confines of Metropolitan Police Hospital.
"Incident occurred on above date at 6:12 a.m. (Time of incident of unique importance. See attached Home Office report on death of Sir Bruce Peak.)
"Name of Victim: Louis Proferra, Major, Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.). Resident in hospital. Not confined. Suffering gunshot wound inflicted by fellow O.S.S. officer in P.O.W camp, Welborn, France. (No possibility first attack was related to second attack.) Major Proferra in residence in hospital at request of Superintendent Sir Bruce Peak. Major Proferra chief witness in investigation of activities of one Augustus Mandrell. (See file on A. Mandrell at C.I.D., British Intelligence, Home Office, Military Intelligence, Interpol: Glasgow, Dublin, Madrid, and Zurich police departments.)
"Name of Assailant: Augustus Mandrell. Age: unknown. Description: unknown, many available but all conflicting. (See file.) Occupation: hired assassin. Suspected of multiple occasions of homicide. Dangerous—frequently armed—cunning, vicious, unscrupulous, unprincipled. Mandrell speaks several languages and can lie in each of them." (A good police report, I have always felt, should avoid personal rancor. This one obviously does not. You will understand that I take serious exception to several of the items in the report, the word "unprincipled," for instance. But... let it rave on.)
"Details of Attack: At approximately 5:58 a.m. assailant Mandrell entered room of victim Proferra. (Time of Mandrell's entry of hospital is still under study. See paragraph on Time Element.) Some noise made by Mandrell awakened Proferra; otherwise the identity of the assailant might still be unknown to us." (Clumsy of me.) "Mandrell gloated to Proferra regarding their previous meetings: Teheran in '42, Welbom P.O.W. camp in '44. This weakness on part of Mandrell, the need to gloat (see attached Psychiatric report on A. Mandrell), definitely established identity of Mandrell. Excerpt from statement given by victim Proferra: '. . . It was that bastard, all right. He knew things only he and I know.' At precisely 6:12, victim Proferra, despite a serious wound, made lunge at Mandrell. Courageous action on part of Proferra possibly saved his life. Mandrell fired one shot from his pistol. Instead of inflicting intended mortal wound, bullet struck only right ear of Proferra, removing complete ear. (See attached medical report on attempted reinstallation.)" (Had the idiot remained on his bed, he'd have suffered no more than a missing lobe.)
"Sound of gunfire was heard at security gate in corridor outside room by Constables Harmon and Floyd. They rushed to the site to find door to room open and Mandrell standing there looking into room. Constables Harmon and Floyd assumed Mandrell was a member of hospital force, since he was dressed as such. Mandrell told Harmon and Floyd that assailant had just fled out window. (Window steel mesh had been removed since resident Proferra was not a prisoner. Order to remove mesh believed to have come from Sir Bruce Peak, although no written evidence yet uncovered.) Constables Harmon and Floyd, contrary to department instructions, left posts on second floor of building and went in search of assailant in courtyard below. Information from Harmon and Floyd led other constables who had rushed to scene to proceed also to courtyard, Mandrell meanwhile fled through the unguarded security gate on second floor and proceeded to street. Constables Harmon and Floyd testified at departmental trial that they had received verbal orders to desert posts if emergency indicated such action necessary. Harmon and Floyd maintain Sir Bruce Peak issued the verbal order. Departmental trial decision still pending.
"Time Element: Method used by assailant Mandrell to enter hospital still unknown. Contingent of eight constables passed through second floor security gate at 5:45 a.m. on way to guard duty on upper floors. All eight constables, plus Constables Hiltabiddle and Doieter, who were on duty at second floor security gate until relieved by Harmon and Floyd at 6: a.m., claim that no unknown constable passed the security gate with them. (See new departmental order on subject of crowding through security gates in a body.)
"Whereabouts of assailant Mandrell just prior to attack on Proferra are known. Mandrell was hidden in utility closet located across corridor from Proferra's room. Utility closet locked previous night at 11:30 p.m. Lock on closet tampered with. Evidence found in closet indicates a long and uncomfortable vigil by Mandrell, perhaps as long as several hours. (See paragraph on Evidence in Utility Closet.) Let me point out once again that there is no reason to believe that the hospital force was in any way negligent in this affair, the conclusions of other departments notwithstanding.
"Evidence in Utility Closet: On floor of closet were found several clues which indicate assailant Mandrell spent considerable time therein before he discovered an opportunity to strike at victim Proferra. The length of Man-drell's period of inactivity is, I feel, a direct credit to our security measures. The following indication of lengthy residence were collected: four cigarette stubs, Players. Laboratory analysis confirms that they were smoked in four successive hours.
"Conclusions: Augustus Mandrell entered hospital with intent to kill Major Louis Proferra. Mandrell's motive simple: Proferra was principal witness in investigation of Mandrell being led by Sir Bruce Peak. Time of Mandrell's entry of hospital: sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. Method of entry: unknown.
"Recommended Action: More thorough screening of applications from other departments which request hospital's storage space for ailing witnesses. All future inquiries from other agencies, including Home Office, regarding this affair shall be directed to me personally. There will be no more replies given by other members of this department.
"Note: The monies collected for the Sir Bruce Peak Scholarship Fund at the Police Academy are posted on the main bulletin board.
"Good work, lads."
The report was signed by the Superintendent of the Hospital Force.
The report issued by the Home Office following their investigation of the death of Sir Bruce Peak contains several readable items. The complete report runs some 170 pages. I have utilized only those which are likely to titillate the discriminating reader.
In Chapter 1 we find the following: ". . . Deceased: Sir Bruce Peak, Superintendent, Scotland Yard. Cause of Death: Five bullets in body. (See Chap. 12, Medical Report.) Place of Death: Toulon, France. Agent of Death (Killer): Paul Zardi, French Communist Party Chieftain, General in World Revolution Army. Witness to Death: Mile Jeanne Champlain, mistress of Paul Zardi and Corporal (or Lieutenant; there is conflicting evidence) in World Revolution Army. Mystery Figure in Death:
Major Joseph Labonville, French Military Intelligence (?), confidant of Mile Champlain (?), Member of French government supersecret organization (name unknown) which answers only to General De Gaulle (?)..."
In Chapter 3 we find the following (Chapter 2 contained only brief biographies of the Secretary of the Home Office and several of his staff): "... In essence we know only the following: Sir Bruce received a letter from Jeannie Champlain (see Champlain Letter, appendix page 4) in which she claimed to possess evidence pertaining to the London black-market operation of British subject Icy Gorman. (See Biography.) The letter arrived in London in a French military pouch. The letter entered the pouch at Toulon and was placed there by Major Joseph Labonville. (See Informer's Testimony No. 7.) According to Champlain Letter, evidence against Icy Gorman was given Champlain girl by one Frenchy Cortez (nationality and whereabouts unknown, see Biography).
"Upon receiving Champlain letter, Sir Bruce requested permission to contact Toulon police over military telephone system. (See Royal Army form CR-22 'Communicator Request,' appendix page 14.) Permission was granted. (See R.A. form SRG-108 'Communication Request Granted,' appendix page 15.) Sir Bruce got through to the Toulon police and asked for Major Labonville. Miss Champlain's letter had said Labonville would act as her emissary. Following a several-hour delay, Sir Bruce spoke directly to Labonville. (Unfortunately no tape was made.) Labonville convinced Sir Bruce that Miss Champlain would surrender documents to none but Sir Bruce. The girl evidently thought Sir Bruce to be a Communist of some sort. (British Intelligence has investigated this line of thought. Their report, BIR-12298, is still classified secret.)
"Sir Brace requested air transportation to Toulon. (See RAF form TR" etc.) "Sir Bruce arrived at military field north of Marseille at 6:30 p.m. on evening of death. He was met by a French officer, presumably Major La-bonville. That is the last that is known of him, as reported by reliable British subjects, until the finding of his body in the Toulon morgue two days later. For an account of his movements during those two days, we are dependent unfortunately on the testimony of three parties: the Toulon police, Miss Champlain, and Paul Zardi...."
In Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of the Home Office report, all of which are devoted to Miss Jeannie Champlain, we find the following exerpts:
"... Extraordinarily pretty girl..."
". . . claims she did not write the Champlain Letter. This investigator inclined to believe her. Letter written in low-grade English. Mile. Champlain does not speak or write English. Several attempts by this investigator to trap her into revealing either of these accomplishments, including the ruse of taking her to an American flick: The St. Valentine's Day Hijinks, failed to disprove her assertion____"
". . . definitely has broken liaison with Paul Zardi . . ."
"... appears to lead an exemplary life .. ."
". . . claims she never heard of Frenchy Cortez, never held any documents belonging to him. This investigator inclined to believe. Girl is remarkably candid and without pretense. Keeps her flat up well..."
". . . Since my arrival here, she has ceased visiting Paul Zardi at the jail. Apparently an effort to remake her life after this crashing experience ..."
". . . Girl has several times requested investigation by our government of an individual named James Kane. Claims Kane a deserter of British forces which fought at
El Alamein. Mile Champlain shows strong antagonistic feeling toward J. Kane. Says he engaged in smuggling in west Mediterranean. Claims Kane owes her 5,000 American dollars. She has not, as yet, disclosed basis for this debt. Military research indicates that no such individual listed as deserter. This investigator would recommend further research into J. Kane issue. If he owes the girl the money, he should be made to pay. Her resources, whatever they were, seem to have dried up . . ."
It would appear to me that the Home Office was in a ridiculous hurry to get this report into print. They can't have given a great deal of attention to thoughtful editing. Nonetheless chapters 4, 5, and 6, the Mile Champlain chapters, do eventually serve up their scraps of essential data.
". . . Miss Champlain reports the events of that tragic night as follows. One must keep in mind that this is her account and does not necessarily reflect any official view.
"She reports that she was preparing for bed when a man she had never seen before burst into her flat. He threw her to her bed and attempted to subdue her. A friend of hers, a M. Paul Zardi, chanced to be in the building and heard her pitiful screams. Zardi entered the apartment and shot the attacker. The attacker could not be identified immediately. He had no papers. The Toulon police took his body to the morgue. Two days later, a British Army Intelligence officer sent to investigate the disappearance of Sir Bruce was shown the body. It was Sir Bruce Peak. M. Paul Zardi gives the same account of the incident. There is a report that when the Toulon police first investigated the shooting, Mile Champlain referred several times to the deceased as 'Claude.' (See Informer's Report No. 16.) The girl denies this----"
Let us move on to Chapter 6. Chapter 6 is devoted to 218
Paul Zardi. It is two pages in length. It contains one interesting item: ". . . The trial of Paul Zardi for the shooting of Sir Bruce Peak is still in progress. This investigator is convinced that he will be given a long prison term. Zardi is a notorious Communist and the jury appears a decent sort____"
Chapter 7, the longest in the report with the exception of Chapter 2, deals with the Mystery Figure, Major Joseph Labonville:
". . . Without a doubt the man called Major Labonville is the key to the mystery. He spoke English and French. He could have written the Champlain Letter. All of his actions appear to have had as their intent the luring of Sir Bruce to Toulon: the letter, the long-distance telephone conversation, the meeting of Sir Bruce at Marseille ...
". . . Mile Champlain claims she knows nothing of Major Labonville. The investigator handling that end of the investigation, a sound chap, believes Mile Champlain. Paul Zardi claims Major Labonville is unknown to him. The only person in Toulon who spoke to Major Labonville frequently was the prefect of police. He says only this regarding the major: 'He was every inch a French officer.'...
". . . Major Joseph Labonville cannot be found. The French Ministry claims there is no such man. (See telephone tape recording No. FM-16, Home Office File.) The French Military Intelligence claims there is no such man in their service. (See letters Nos. FI-23 through FI-37, appendix pages 48 through 62.) . . .
". . . There is reason to believe that Major Labonville does exist and has recently been reassigned within the French Military. It has been reported that the Major has joined a highly secret branch of French Intelligence. Within this secret organization one's former identity is completely erased. The members of the group report directly to General De Gaulle. (See Informer's Report No. 3, appendix page 24.) Assuming the accuracy of this 'secret organization' data, the French government may be taking advantage of the group's emphasis on individual anonymity when replying to our requests regarding Major Labonville. When the French Ministry says there is no such man, what they may well mean is: There is no such man
any more. Such, as we all know, is their nature____
". . . The primary question in the Major Labonville portion of the investigation has always been motive. Why would this man seek to discredit and destroy a Superintendent of Scotland Yard? A thorough research into the background of Sir Bruce Peak revealed no known contact throughout his life with anyone named Labonville. All efforts by the Home Office to link the two men have been unsuccessful. However, the Historical Library has unearthed a possible motive in this sad affair. (See Historical Library'Pamphlet Peak-1, Appendix page 1.) The Historical Library Pamphlet details an obscure relationship between Labonville and Peak. In essence the pamphlet gives the following data: During the Battle of Toulon in 1744, the British fleet came off rather poorly. One of the few bright reports to emerge from the encounter was the sinking of one French ship by a far inferior (in firepower) Royal Navy vessel. The British ship was under the command of Sir Hillary Peak, who received his knighthood as a result of his action. The French ship was under the command of one Capt. Joseph Labonville. Capt. Labonville was stripped of command and cashiered from the French navy. Sir Bruce Peak was a direct descendant of Sir Hillary Peak. Research into the descendants of Captain Joseph Labonville is still in progress."
(I knew I could depend on the old gray Historical Library. After all, it was on their own musty shelves that I too stumbled on the ancient engagement between the houses of Peak and Labonville. Which of course influenced to some degree my selection of the name Joseph Labonville.)
On the subject of Labonville, the Home Office continues: ". . . While the relationship between the two families appears somewhat tenuous, it is thought to be of sufficient provocation for the crime. Particularly since no other motive appears to exist. The French mind has always been rather a puzzler to the British...."
There are a few odds and ends floating in the wake of the Scotland Yard Commission that you might care to net.
The personnel of the Yard were understandably agitated by the affair. All of their attempts to penetrate to a righteous conclusion, preferably a hanging of somebody or other, were pretty well frustrated. There was no one around to hang. They did the next best thing, they persecuted an individual.
The name of one British subject had surfaced frequently in the case: Mr. Icy Gorman. The Champlain Letter had mentioned Mr. Gorman. It was the thought of securing evidence against Mr. Gorman and his black-market operation that had lured Sir Bruce to Toulon. Although there existed no evidence that poor Icy was in any way directly involved in the killing, he did suffer a disadvantage of geographical proportions. He was completely available to a vindictive Yard. The London underworld has rarely enjoyed such crushing attention as was unleashed upon it in the weeks following Sir Brace's death. Many a bastion of illegal power crumbled before the wave after wave insatiably curious constables who descended upon lofts, basements, garages, warehouses, flats, and boarded-up shops that had previously rarely known the belligerent tread of a policeman's foot.
Icy Gorman was in particular the recipient of this incivility. He never had a chance. He was awarded eventually fifteen years of penal detention.
You will be relieved to learn, however, that prior to Icy Gorman's arrest, he and I concluded our part in the Scotland Yard Commission. I collected my twenty-thousand-pound fee.
Twenty thousand sounds like a good deal of money, and during that period, prior to devaluating, of course it was. But do not overlook my expenses. For example: you will recall that I gave Mile Jeannie Champlain nearly three hundred pounds on our first meeting. Then there was the French Major's uniform of Joseph Labonville, the English constable's uniform for the final trip to the hospital to visit Louis Proferra, the identity papers here and there, feeding, lodging, taxis, etc. It is not all gravy, my friend.
Incidentally, several days following my return to London, a young man in a flying uniform was discovered wandering the outskirts of Croydon. He was identified as Captain Mike Crane of the U.S. Air Force. He was in a rather battered condition and could not account for his presence in England. The last he recalled, he testified, was standing in the ready room at an American air base north of Marseille. He was arrested and charged with the assault of two constables in the community of Up Thames. Because of his excellent flying record (seventeen kills or twenty kills, there is conflicting evidence) Captain Crane was released back to his command.
The voters of Illinois will have their chance yet. 222
A second edition of the Home Office report followed the first by a fortnight. The difference between the two editions appeared in the form of an addendum.
I shall not quote the addendum directly but shall mention only its memorable items. The addendum had been issued primarily to report on the conclusion of Paul Zardi's trial.
Zardi had been found innocent by the French court. The verdict had received a standing ovation by the courtroom audience, which included Mile Jeannie Champlain in a front-row seat.
In the addendum appeared also a final evaluation of Mile Jeannie Champlain's character. The investigator of that phase of the inquiry was quoted as saying that he personally felt that Mile Champlain had written the Champlain Letter, had impersonated the French officer Major Labonville, had lured Sir Bruce to her bedroom, had fired the five bullets into Sir Bruce, had somehow convinced the police that Paul Zardi had done the shooting, and, finally, had bribed the jury trying Paul Zardi.
It was pointed out in a footnote that this final evaluation of Mile Champlain represented a "minority report."
The portion of the Home Office report that I personally have always found most engrossing was presented without change in both editions. It was located in Chapter 9, a chapter devoted to the following general heading: Other Possible Solutions.
In Chapter 9 we find at last the fruits of skilled toil.
". . . It has been suggested," Chapter 9 states, "that a certain British subject might have been deeply involved in the killing of Sir Bruce. The subject's name is Augustus Mandrell. (See Biography, pages 12 through 27.) Augustus Mandrell is presented as a possible suspect because of Ms obvious motive. Sir Brace Peak had been in the process of mounting an unparalleled offensive against Mandrell and against the people who have retained Mandrell over the years.
"The case against Mandrell, however, collapses because of an odd coincidence. On the very night that Sir Bruce was shot, Mandrell was preparing to assault the man who represented the strongest weapon in the Yard's attack on Mandrell. (See Report on the Shooting of American Military Officer Within Confines of Metropolitan Police Hospital, index page 52 through 60.)
"As the police report shows, there is no doubt it was Augustus Mandrell who attacked Proferra in the hospital. Also, there is the inescapable evidence of Man-drell's occupancy of the hospital for several hours prior to the attack. The Home Office has viewed this evidence and finds it conclusive...."
It is toward the end of Chapter 9 that one finds one's faith in one's fellow man triumphantly restored.
". . . In view of the foregoing, the Home Office regretfully concludes that Augustus Mandrell was not implicated in the murder of Sir Brace Peak...."
Thank you, gentlemen. Vindication does indeed carry within itself its own reward.