Night Journey (24 page)

“How safe am I without papers in the meantime?” I asked.

“Not safe at all. Do not go out. Come about this time on Saturday.”

As I left he added: “There are many German agents in Marseilles, and io some cases they are attempting to supervise our own police arrangements. It is necessary for everyone to act with the utmost caution.”

The next three days I spent Indoors, but ordered newspapers and read them with apprehension. Though no account was accurate, the best and fullest was in a paper published on the previous Sunday when I was struggling out of the valley of the Arve.

“From our Zürich Correspondent.

“Further dramatic light has now been shed on ine murder of Dr von Riehl, the highly-placed German official, in the Milan-Basle express of last Wednesday week. The crime is now attributed to the activities of a famous British spy and saboteur who recently arrived in Italy and is directing widespread attempts to disrupt the Italian war economy.

“In a fracas which developed while the train was passing through the mountainous San Gotthardo region, one of the assassins who had been hired to commit the crime was also killed. He is thought to have been a Hungarian of the Magyar aristocracy. The other has so far escaped all efforts to bring him to justice.

“It is known that the British agent was himself on the train at the time and took a part in the crime. This has been established by a member of the German delegation who was trussed up with bandages which had been used by a Milanese hospital the day before when the secret agent was treated for minor injuries following a street accident.

“There has been an acceleration of the pursuit, and an arrest is expected shortly.

“A British official interviewed in Zurich last night declined to comment on this report. If the truth is as stated it would appear that the European war is about to enter on a new and bitter stage, not unlike the internecine terrorism which for some years preceded the outbreak of war last September.”

It was disconcerting to think of the bandages. On what else had we slipped up? It was disconcerting also to be invested with the major part. The angle from which the article was written disturbed me. Dwight had seen further than Andrews in the matter. How far would we be regarded as common criminals elsewhere?

On Saturday by the midday post a package was delivered addressed to me. Inside were my papers returned: stamped on a page of the passport was my exit permit. An unsigned note said: “Do not call here again. Do not relax your precautions. Avoid the police.”

It was more than I had dared to hope. From experience coming out, I knew that I should have little difficulty in getting a Spanish transit visa once I reached Barcelona. That night I found the French skipper who was leaving on the morning tide on Monday for Barcelona, Tangier and Rabat. He agreed to take me.

The first wan light of Monday's daybreak was barely showing over the harbour as I walked through the drizzle to the Bassin Lazaret. The tramp steamer
Grive
, was easy to find in She semi-darkness; she had had the French colours newly painted on her superstructure, and three men in greasy overalls were retracing the flag painted, for the better view of airmen of all nations, on her hatch.

The dock was empty. A seagull screamed its welcome to the dawn. With a sensation of release I turned to go up the gangway. A hand touched my arm.

Two men, one in civilian clothes, one a policeman.

“Monsieur is a passenger in this ship?”

“Yes.”

Please to show me your
carte d'identité
exit permit.” It was the civilian speaking.

I handed him what he wanted and he scrutinised them with a torch and then scrutinised me. The policeman flashed a torch in my face. The papers were returned. “ You will kindly come with us.”

I looked my alarm. “ What?”

“You must come with us.”

“For what reason?”

“We wish to ask you a few questions.”

“Are my papers not in order?”

“New instructions have been issued that all persons leaving the port shall be questioned by the police. A special watch is kept for those who try to slip away in cargo boats.”

I thought for a moment of some desperate bid to escape. My eyes ran the length of the ship. One man had splashed the first stroke of blue paint on the hatch. The captain was not to be seen.

“You're authority?”

“I am the authority,” said the policeman.

I shrugged dully. I felt overwhelmed by this ultimate defeat on the very brink of freedom. “Very well.”

I did not enjoy the walk to the
préfecture
. “Avoid the police,” Gaston had written. in any event, if I were arrested, my real identity might be established, and that would be the end.

In the
préfecture
I waited half an hour in a bare whitewashed room and then was taken into another room where there was a
Commissaire de Police
. He was a tall dark man with a long narrow nose and a soiled collar with untidy flapping points. At another desk under the window sat a uniformed policeman who looked very sleepy but occasionally roused himself to take notes.

The plain-clothes
agent
explained in a few words and then left, but the policeman who had been with him took up a position by the door as if, absurdly enough, I might try to escape.

The
Commissaire
fixed me with a very sharp gaze and then began to thumb through my papers. I knew that the stamp imprint covering the passport photograph had been faked, and it was possible that the exit permit also was a forgery. I felt that this was not a man who would miss much.

“Julius Favel,” he said at length.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Kindly explain your reasons for leaving France.”

I did so. I had been working in Morocco for some years prior to the war. At the outbreak of war I had been ill, but in May of this year had come to France to join my regiment. Because of the collapse of France I had not succeeded in doing this in time, and after staying with relatives in Lyons I had decided to return to North Africa, where an uncle, who lived in Rabat, had offered me work.

The story sounded thin and unconvincing told in this gaunt, lofty room under the piercing eye of the
Commissaire
. I began to see it would never do.

Silence except for the sound of the thin man opposite breathing through his nose.

You speak French indifferently for a Frenchman, M. Favel.”

“I was born in Saigon.”

“So I see. Your father and mother were French?”

“They were French nationals. My father came from Bordeaux but my mother was Annamese.”

The
Commissaire
rolled himself a cigarette.

I said: “ My father died young. I was brought up by my mother so that French has always been my second language.”

“You have lived long in France?”

“No, I have never lived in France; I have only been on visits.”

He blew a few specks of tobacco off the desk. He sniffed as if conscious of an artificial smell about the story.

“Your papers seem in order. When was this exit permit issued?”

My tongue stumbled. “Last week. I think you will see the date on it.”

“Present times are exceptional, M. Favel. Those who book passages in unimportant cargo vessels and attempt to board them at dawn for a noon sailing are apt to arouse special suspicions—at a time when every traveller is suspect.”

“I see that now. I am sorry.”

He began to cross-examine me about my work in Tangier and Casablanca before the war, about my movements during these recent weeks, about my uncle who offered me work in Rabat. I groped in my imagination for many of the answers and hoped they sounded more convincing to him than they did to me.

“Ah, well.” The
Commissaire
yawned and rubbed a hand distastefully over the stubble on his chin. “ That is the way of it. We are at sixes and sevens in this country just now.” He shovelled the papers together and thrust them at me. “I think you may catch your ship.”

I could have wept with relief. “ I shall be most grateful. Thank you.”

He blew smoke past his cigarette, and flecks of white ash floated over the desk. “Thank you,” I said again, putting the papers in my pocket.

“The police of this city,” he said, “are grossly over-taxed. All these extra duties. Watching the docks and the shipping offices. Keeping a check on the many aliens and refugees. At present we are looking specially for a criminal with newly healed scars on his hands, who it is thought may have come this way. He is wanted for the murder of a Nazi official in Switzerland. That sort of thing.”

I stood there as if all my blood had gone.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yes,” said the
Commissaire
. “ Before you go, monsieur, please show me your palms.”

I knew then that this was the end. I knew that he had seen through my story all the time and had been toying with my excuses for his own amusement Forgetting the bandages had been the pitfall. This was an identification before which ordinary disguise fell away as useless.

Stiffly I took a step forward and extended my hands, palms upwards. It might have been much better if the chase had ended at Lucerne station and saved all the rest. Let
M. le Commissaire
get what credit and pleasure he could from the capture. I could only——

“Thank you, monsieur. That is all. Maurice will show you the way out.”

At the sound of his name the sleepy policeman at the other desk rose and surreptitiously stretched.

I stared at the
Commissaire
. He had looked at my hands and now was dusting away fresh cigarette ash which had fallen like snow on his desk. His expression had not changed. I looked quickly at my hands: in the electric light the scars were plain to be seen.

“Do you,” I began. “ I——”

“I, too, am an overworked man. Regulations and precautions. New instructions from this source and that.” He shrugged and his eyes blinked at mine through the smoke. “But one carries on. One tries to obey. And at the same time one tries to do one's duty as one sees it.”

I struggled to speak. “Perhaps you will——”

He got up. “ Show this gentleman out, Maurice. Good day to you, M. Favel.”

I went out, walking with a distinct effort, not yet quite able to realise why I was free, not able to think as I should have wished a man who contrived to serve France in her downfall but did not forget old friendships or old friends.

I reached England in early December. We got into Liverpool one evening about six; although it was damp I spent the last hours on deck watching for signs of the land which had shown up some time ago but now had disappeared again with the fall of night. The cold air filled my lungs.

Arriving back was not quite so inconspicuous as departure had been. On the dock was Colonel Brown, limping and grey-eyed, to meet me.

I shook hands, surprised and slightly flattered that he was here. He peered at me in the indifferent light.

“Good to see you back, doctor. You're looking tired. With reason, I expect.”

“I am a bad sailor,” I said, “and we have been at sea sixteen days.”

He smiled. “You'll spend the night with me? Then you can go home for a rest—without any fear of internment.”

“Is my sister well?”

“Yes. But we could not notify her in time of your arrival. Also I wanted a private talk with you first.”

We drove to his hotel for dinner. It was, for wartime, a good dinner, but I was too concerned with other things to be able to savour it.

He had nad two reports, but naturally wanted me to fill them in. He was polite enough to wait until dinner was over. Then I told him the whole uneven story.

“Dwight,” I ended, “in the carriage Dwight destroyed everything he could lay his hands on. There would be nothing of value, I am convinced, found on von Riehl's body when it was recovered. So, unless something unexpected of Professor Brayda's was found, the record of his researches is likely to die with the two men.”

“Except for what you know.”

I shrugged. “If you will arrange me a meeting with Carruthers or Dyson or someone of their standing I will explain what I know, but it is hardly likely to be enough to work on. Even supposing you thought it desirable to work on it …”

Colonel Brown did not speak.

I said: “But I think I must warn you that scientific discoveries seldom occur in a vacuum. Sometimes there is one pioneer, but more usually it is as if the climate has become ripe for this or that discovery, and a man in Japan will be only a few months before or behind another man in Paris or London. At this moment there may be someone else somewhere in the world who is thinking along the lines of Professor Brayda.”

He frowned, his quiet introspective frown. “ It is a risk we have to take.”

“Yes, it is a risk we have to take.”

Silence fell.

He said: “ This has not been a pleasant experience for you, Dr Mencken. It turned out all so very different from the way we expected things to go. I'm afraid you'll get no official thanks.”

“I did not expect it.”

“No … J.41 may even get a nomical reprimand. It is not the way we want to wage war.”

All this time I had been urgently wanting to ask him questions. “Am I to take it that reports have come direct from——”

“From J.41? Yes. He is back in Italy. Naturally I know no details. K.9 is also back.”

“K.9?”

“The woman agent you came in contact with.”

I moved muscles gone suddenly stiff K.9. To me only was she a woman, living and breathing, with fine skin and dark eyes and soft hair. To Colonel Brown she was K.9. It was strange that not until the very end of the adventure had I come so close to the conventionals of the trade.

“As for Captain Bonini,” said Brown. “ If he is of any further use he will be used. In this work we can't afford to discard a traitor just because he is a traitor to both sides.”