“If you were under arrest, Vadassy, you would not, as I have already pointed out to you, be sitting here talking to me. You see, my good friend, we had to force his hand. But we had to do it carefully. The agent who arrested you was told to make it clear why you were being arrested. If Duclos had not asked, the agent would have announced that the charge was espionage. Now put yourself in this man’s place. You know that the photographs you have taken have fallen by chance into another person’s hands. What do you do? You try to get them back. Having failed, and suspecting that this person is playing some sort of game, you decide to wait. Then this person is arrested by the police on a charge of espionage. What do you think? What runs through your mind? Firstly, that the police have discovered that the photographs have been taken, secondly, that this person may, in defending himself, lead the police to you. It is time, therefore, for you to go. What is more, you have no time to lose. You understand?”
“Yes, I understand. But supposing he does not leave? What then?”
“The question does not arise. He has left.”
“What?”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Twenty-five past ten. He left the Reserve ten minutes ago in a car he hired from the garage in the village. He was heading for Toulon. We will give him a few more minutes. We have a car following. A report should reach us soon now.” He lit his third cigarette and flicked the match across the room. “Meanwhile I have some instructions for you.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. For obvious reasons it is not desirable that any charge of espionage should be made just yet. The newspapers must not get too inquisitive. I propose to make the arrests on a charge of theft-the theft of a Zeiss Contax camera, value four thousand five hundred francs. Do you see?”
“You mean that you want me to identify the camera?”
“Exactly.” He stared hard at me. “You can do that, can’t you?
I hesitated. There was nothing else for it. He would have to know the truth.
“Well?” he said impatiently.
“I could have identified it.” I felt myself getting red. “There is only one difficulty. The camera now in my room at the Reserve is my own camera. The cameras were re-exchanged.”
To my astonishment, he nodded calmly. “When did it happen?”
I told him. Again that faint smile puckered the corners of his mouth.
“I thought as much.”
“You what?”
“My dear Monsieur Vadassy, I am not a fool and you are painfully transparent. Your careful avoidance of the subject of the cameras on the telephone this morning was very obvious.”
“I didn’t think-”
“Of course you didn’t. However, as you have already found, the two cameras are very much alike. It would be an understandable mistake on your part to identify the camera we hope to find at Toulon as your own property, wouldn’t it?”
I agreed hastily.
“And, of course, if the mistake is discovered later, you will be suitably apologetic?”
“Of course.”
“Very well, that is settled. He got to his feet. “And,” he added genially, “I see no reason why, if all goes well, you should not be able to leave for Paris tomorrow in time for your exigent Monsieur Mathis on Monday.”
For a moment I did not realize what he was saying; then, as the meaning began to filter into my brain, I heard myself babbling incoherent thanks. It was as if I were waking from a nightmare. There was that same almost overpowering sensation of mingled relief and fear: relief that it was, after all, only a nightmare, fear that it might, after all, be real and that the awakening was the dream. Fragments of the nightmare still lingered. I was afraid, afraid to trust myself to think. This was merely another trick of Beghin’s, a trap, a means of gaining my confidence. My thanks died on my lips. He was watching me curiously.
“If you are telling me the truth,” I said sharply, “if you do mean what you say, why don’t you let me go now? Why can’t I go until tomorrow? If you have no charge against me, you cannot keep me here. You have no right to do so.”
He sighed wearily. “None at all. But I have already told you that your assistance is required for identification purposes.”
“But supposing I refuse?”
He shrugged. “I cannot compel you. We should have to manage without you. There are, of course,” he added thoughtfully, “other considerations. You mentioned, I believe, that you had applied for French citizenship. Your attitude in this matter might make all the difference between the success or failure of your application. The French citizen is required to aid the police if requested to do so. A man with so little appreciation of the responsibilities of citizenship as to refuse that aid…”
“I see. More blackmail!”
One of his chubby hands rested on my shoulder. “My dear good Vadassy, I have never come across anyone so given to quibbling over words.” The hand left my shoulder, went to his inside pocket and came out with an envelope in it. “Look! You have spent three days at the Reserve at our request and upon our business. We wish to be fair. Here is five hundred francs.” He thrust the envelope into my hand. “That will more than cover the extra expense. Now then, we ask you to spend an hour of your remaining time here in helping us to arrest the men responsible for all your troubles. Is that unreasonable?”
I looked him in the eyes.
“You avoided the question just now. I ask it again. Who is the spy?”
He caressed his loose jowl thoughtfully and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “I am afraid,” he said slowly, “that I have purposely refrained from telling you. I am afraid, too, that I have no intention of telling you now.”
“I see. Very clever. I shall have to come with you and see for myself. And then I suppose I shall be expected to make this false identification of the camera. Is that it?”
But before he could reply there was a sharp knock at the door and an agent came in, nodded meaningly at Beghin, and went out again.
“That,” said Beghin, “means that our man has passed through Sanary. It’s time we went.” He walked to the door and looked back. “Are you coming, Vadassy?”
I slipped the envelope into my pocket and stood up.
“Of course,” I said, and followed him out of the room.
18
At ten forty-five that night a big Renault saloon swung out of the short side road leading from the Commissariat and sped east along the main coast road.
In the car besides Beghin and myself were two plain-clothes men. One was driving. The other I had recognized as he had sat down beside me in the back. It was my friend of the limonade gazeuse. He refused steadfastly to remember me.
The clouds had gone. The moon, high in the sky, shed a light that made the beams of the headlamps seem pale. As we left the outskirts of St. Gatien, the hum of the engine rose in pitch and the tires slithered on the wet road as we rounded the “S” bends beyond the Reserve headland. I leaned back on the cushions, trying to resolve the chaos of my thoughts.
Here was I, Josef Vadassy, a man who, not two hours before, had been resigned to the loss of his work, his liberty, and his hopes, calmly sitting in the back seat of a French police car on its way to catch a spy!
Calmly? No, that was not quite true. I was anything but calm. I wanted to sing. And yet I was not quite sure what I wanted to sing about. Was it the knowledge that tomorrow, in almost exactly twenty-four hours’ time, I should be sitting in a train nearing Paris? Or was it that soon, tonight, I was to learn the answer to a question, that my problem was to be solved for me, without a pencil and paper? I worried over these alternatives.
I think that all this was part of my body’s reaction to the tension of the last three days. All the evidence points to that conclusion. My stomach rumbled incessantly. I was very thirsty. I kept lighting cigarettes and then pitching them out of the window before I had smoked them. Also, and this was most significant, I had that curious feeling of having forgotten something, of having left something behind in St. Gatien, something that I should need. All nonsense, of course. I had left nothing in St. Gatien that could have been the slightest use to me that night in Toulon.