“He’s been an amazing friend. I arrived here without a penny, and he’s given me clothes and kept me for nothing ever since. But I can’t run any more. I have no money and Koche can’t give me any, for he has none himself. That wife of his owns the place, and it’s all he can do to persuade her to let me stay. I offered to work, but she wouldn’t have that. She’s jealous of him and likes to have a hold over him. I should get away. It’s dangerous here now. A few weeks back we heard that a Gestapo agent had been sent into France. It’s amazing the way they ferret things out. When you are being hunted you develop an extra sense. You begin to feel when there’s danger. I’ve managed to change my appearance a good deal, but I think I have been identified. I think, too, that I have spotted the agent they sent. But he won’t act until he’s sure. My only chance is to bluff him. You took me off my guard. For a moment I thought I had made a mistake. Koche had put you down as a petty crook.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what you are, Vadassy, but what I’ve told you is the truth. What are you going to do?”
I looked at him. “Frankly, I don’t know,” I said. “I might have believed this story except for one thing. You didn’t explain why the fact of their finding out that your name was Schimler should make your position very much worse. If they couldn’t force you to return when they knew you as Czissar, why should they be able to do so when they had found your real name?”
His eyes were on mine; I saw the corners of his mouth twitch. It was the only hint of emotion he had betrayed. His voice when he replied was flat and toneless.
“It is very simple,” he said slowly; “my wife and child are still in Germany.”
“You see,” he went on after a bit, “when they expelled me from Germany they would not let me see my family. I had not seen them for over two years. Before I was sent to the camp I had heard that my wife had taken the boy to her father’s house outside Berlin. I wrote to her from Belgium and Paris, and we arranged that as soon as I could establish myself in France or England they would join me. But I soon saw that it was all I could do to support myself in Paris. London would have been the same. I was just another German refugee. In Prague I met a man who told me that the Communists had ways and means of getting in and out of Germany undetected. I craved desperately to see my wife, to talk to her, to see the boy. It was that craving that sent me to the address I had been given in the camp. The story about getting in and out of Germany was nonsense, of course. I soon saw that; but when an opportunity did come I took it. On three of my trips with the Czech passport I met my wife in secret.
“She tried to persuade me to take her and the child to Prague with me, but I wouldn’t. I was living on practically nothing, and while they could live in comfort with her father and the boy could go to school I thought it was best that they should do so.
“When the first blow fell I was glad that I had been so sensible. Let the Gestapo get me back if they could! Not, mind you, that it would have done them any good, because the Party knew that no matter how loyal a man was he might eventually be tortured into speaking. When I was followed to Prague the headquarters was moved. I don’t know where they are now. Their address is Poste Restante, Prague. But the Gestapo are very thorough. They wanted me back. And I underestimated them. My Czech passport was too dangerous to use, so I fell back on the old German passport that my wife had kept hidden safely and brought to me when we met. It must have been through my using it that they traced me.
“When I heard, I was terrified. In my wife and son they had hostages. I would have to return or know that my wife was imprisoned in my stead. I thought things over. Until they delivered their ultimatum she would probably be safe-under surveillance, no doubt, but safe. There was only one thing for me to do-go into hiding until I could get news of her. If she were all right and still with her father, I should stay in hiding until perhaps they had grown tired of looking for me, and I could get another passport with which to get her away.”
He stared at the old pipe in his hand. “I’ve waited over four months now, and I’ve heard nothing. I can’t write myself for fear of the German censors. Koche has an accommodation address in Toulon, and he has tried to get letters through. But there has been no reply. I can do nothing but wait. If they find me here I cannot help it. Unless I hear from her very soon I must in any case go back. That is all there is for me to do.”
For a moment there was silence. Then he looked up at me and grinned very faintly. “Can I trust you, Vadassy?”
“Of course.” I wanted to say more, but I could not.
He nodded his thanks. I got up and walked to the door.
“And what about your spy, my friend?” he murmured over his shoulder.
I hesitated. Then: “I shall look for him elsewhere, Herr Heinberger.”
As I pulled the door to behind me I saw him slowly raise his hands to his face. I went quickly.
As I did so I heard another door close near at hand. I paid no attention to it. I had no reason to fear being seen leaving Herr Heinberger’s room. Back in my own room, I took out Beghin’s list and looked at it for a moment. Then I crossed off three names-Albert Koche, Suzanne Koche and Emil Schimler.
14
A t half past four on the afternoon of August the 18th I sat down with a sheet of hotel paper in front of me to solve a problem.
For a long time I stared at the blank paper. Then I held it up to read the watermark. At last I wrote on it, very slowly and clearly, this sentence:
“If it takes one man three days to eliminate three suspects, how long, other factors remaining constant, will it take the same man to eliminate eight more suspects?”
I considered this for a bit. Then I wrote below it: “Answer: eight days,” and underlined it.
After that I drew a gallows with a corpse suspended from it. The corpse I labeled “SPY.” Then I added a fat stomach to it, penciled in large globules of sweat, and altered the label to “BEGHIN.” Last of all I deleted the stomach, added a lot of hair and semicircles under the eyes and rechristened it “ VADASSY.” I made a halfhearted attempt to sketch in the hangman.
Eight days! And I had less than eight hours! Unless, of course, Koche allowed me to stay after all. Schimler was his friend, and if Schimler told him that I was not a crook… But did Schimler really know that I was not a crook? Perhaps I ought to go back to his room and explain. Though what was the use? I had practically no money left. I could not afford to stay any longer in the Reserve even if I were allowed to. That was another contingency that Beghin had omitted to provide for. Beghin! The man’s incompetence and stupidity were monumental.
By the time I had destroyed the sheet of paper on which I had been scribbling and taken another, it was five o’clock. I looked out of the window. The sun had moved round so that now the sea looked like a shimmering pool of liquid metal. The sides of the hills across the bay glowed redly above their fringe of trees. A shadow had begun to move across the beach.
It would be good now, I thought, to be in Paris. The afternoon city heat would have gone. It would be good to sit under the trees in the Luxembourg, the trees near the marionette theater. It would be quiet there now. There would be no one there but a student or two reading. There you could listen to the rustle of leaves unconscious of the pains of humanity in labor, of a civilization hastening to destruction. There, away, from this brassy sea and blood-red earth, you could contemplate the twentieth-century tragedy unmoved; unmoved except by pity for mankind fighting to save itself from the primeval ooze that welled from its own subconscious being.