“But he’s your friend,” she said again. “My friend, too. We have to help him.”
Floyd studied her face, trying to read her mood. “How is Marguerite?”
“Do you really want to know, or are you just changing the subject?”
“I really want to know,” he said. “Do you think the situation in Paris is getting as bad as she says?”
“It’s clearly not getting any better.”
“Maillol said more or less the same thing when I ran into him at Blanchard’s place. It’s frightening that such a change could creep up on us unnoticed.”
“I’m sure people said the same thing twenty years ago.”
“You’re thinking of Marguerite’s comment about the weeds coming back?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Maybe she’s right. Maybe it takes an old person’s perspective to see things so clearly.”
“All the more reason to leave,” Greta said.
“Unless people do something about it here, now, before it’s too late.”
“People like you, Floyd?” She had difficulty hiding her amusement.
“People like us,” he said.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
“Yes. I’ve heard from Susan White’s sister. She telephoned the office just before I drove over.”
“It’s quite the day for developments. What did she want?”
“The tin.”
“Are you going to let her have it?”
“I want her to have it. But I also want to tail her when she leaves the office. For that I’m going to need a little bit of help.”
“I see.”
“Will you do it? If not for me, then for Custine?”
“Don’t push your luck, Floyd.”
“I mean it. Maillol said he could get Custine off the hook if I could come up with something tangible.”
“Like what?”
“Another suspect. I know it’s a long shot, but the girl’s my only lead. If I don’t follow her, Custine’s finished.”
Floyd and Greta pushed through the doors into Le Perroquet Pourpre and followed the line of framed jazz photographs that led downstairs into the basement. At eight on a Friday evening a few regulars had already arrived, but otherwise the place was quiet, with most of the tables still unoccupied. A young kid in a striped shirt was playing “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” solo on the house piano, trying to match Duke’s moves but not quite getting there. Michel nodded coolly at Floyd and Greta, served them drinks without saying a word and went back to polishing the zinc-topped bar. Every now and then he’d raise an eye to the door at the top of the stairs leading down into the room, as if expecting someone else.
Floyd and Greta sipped their drinks without speaking. Five minutes passed, then ten.
“You know why we’re here,” Floyd said, eventually.
Michel stopped polishing and made a big show of putting aside his towel. “You take the easy route getting here?”
“No one followed us,” Floyd assured him.
“You sure of that?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“That’s not much of a guarantee.”
“It’s the best I can give you. You know where he is, don’t you?”
Michel took their empty glasses. “Follow me.”
He raised the folding section of counter at the end of the bar and led them into a back room full of casks and empty wine bottles. Another door led into a meandering brick corridor lined with wooden beer crates. Halfway down this corridor, Michel stopped at an unmarked white door and fished out a set of keys. He opened the door and stepped into another storage room, also piled high with crates. They appeared to fill the room to the back wall, but when Floyd looked closely he saw that the crates had been arranged to conceal another door.
“Through there,” Michel said. “Keep it quick, and keep it quiet. No offence, Floyd, but I’m taking a serious risk here.”
“And it’s appreciated,” Floyd assured him.
The concealed door admitted them to a tiny room not much larger than a broom cupboard. The walls were covered with flaking plaster, which was coming off in scabs to reveal damp, cracked brickwork. A single electric light bulb provided illumination. A mattress on the floor was the only item of furniture. Half-lying on this mattress, his back propped against the wall with only a few thin pillows for comfort, was Custine. A bag of provisions sat by his side. He wore the same clothes he’d had on that morning, but now they were crumpled, sweat-stained and dishevelled, as if he’d had them on for a week.
Custine placed aside a scrap of newspaper he’d been reading. “Don’t mistake this for ingratitude,” he said, “but how did you find me?”
“Lucky guess,” Floyd replied.
“Or rather, a process of deduction,” Greta said. “How many friends do we have left in this city?”
“Not many,” Custine admitted.
“So it wasn’t that difficult to draw up a short list. Michel was pretty near the top.”
“It’s good of him to keep me here,” Custine said, “but I can’t stay for long. It’s too dangerous for him, and too dangerous for me. I take it you weren’t—”
“Followed? No,” Floyd said.
“I’m in a lot of trouble.”
“Then it’s up to us to do what we can to get you out of it,” Greta said.
“But first we have to know what happened,” Floyd added. “All of it, André, from the moment I dropped you off at rue des Peupliers this morning.”
“Did you get my note?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know about the typewriter.”
“The enciphering machine? Yes. What I don’t quite understand is—”
“We used them at the Quai,” Custine said, “for secure communications between different establishments when we were trying to crack major organised-crime operations. The kind of people who tap our telephone lines. When Blanchard showed us the typewriter case—at least, what he thought was a typewriter case—I knew I’d seen one like it before. It was just a question of remembering when and where.”
“I’m glad you did,” Floyd said. “It cleared up a few things.”
“She was a spy.”
“I agree.”
“And she wasn’t acting alone, either, not if someone else is still sending those coded transmissions. She almost certainly has associates in the area.”
“As a matter of fact,” Floyd said, “one of them’s due to walk into the office at nine tomorrow morning.”
Custine’s eye widened. “The sister?”
“She showed up, just like Blanchard said she would.”
“Be very, very careful how you play this,” Custine warned.
“I’ve got the matter in hand. Now I’d like to hear your side of the story. What the hell happened today?”
Custine rearranged himself on the mattress. “I began my investigations on the second floor, with the tenant you didn’t manage to speak to yesterday. He still wasn’t in, so I proceeded to Mademoiselle White’s room and once again set about trying to record those radio transmissions.”
“Did you get anything?”
“Yes—and this time I had the benefit of a Morse book. But as I transcribed the message it became clear that it was meaningless—just a random sequence of letters. I stared at them and stared at them until something about them began to seem oddly familiar. That was when I remembered the Enigma machine in the Quai. It hit me then: it was utterly pointless trying to extract any information from the message. Even if we managed to get our hands on an intact Enigma machine of the same kind that Susan White was using, we would still have no idea of the particular settings that would need to be applied to decipher the message.”
Floyd scratched his head. “How long would it take us to work through all the possibilities?”