Gregory's first necessity was to get news of Erika, so he put through a personal call to Sir Pellinore at Carlton House Terrace, knowing that Kuporovitch would have taken her there on landing. He then ordered a light meal and a bottle of champagne, and turned on a hot bath. In spite of his trying day he was not unduly exhausted, because he had had over nine hours' good sleep in the wood near Peronne the previous night, and although he would have much preferred to sink into the comfortable bed after his bath he felt that not a moment should be lost in getting on the track of Madame la Baronne Noire.
Although it was nearly eleven o'clock he thought that there was a good chance that in times like these Colonel Lacroix, the Chief of the famous Deuxieme Bureau, would still be at work at that hour, so he rang up the Surete-Generale. The Colonel was there, and on Gregory's saying that the matter was urgent Lacroix told him to come round as soon as he liked.
He spent a quarter of an hour refreshing himself in the marble bath while the valet cleaned up his clothes as well as possible and found him a razor. Having dressed again he fortified himself with the bottle of bubbly and an omelette aux champignons.
Half-way through his meal the call came through. Erika had survived the journey but seasickness had caused a further haemorrhage, and she was very low. Sir Pellinore did his best to be optimistic but Gregory sensed his anxiety and decided that for himself only work could drug his acute distress and worry.
Ten minutes later he left the hotel. At a quarter to twelve he was taken up to the top floor of the big building on the south bank of the Seine and shown into the fine room which during the daytime had such a lovely view of the spires and domes of Paris.
At a big desk near the wide windows a tiny, grey-haired man, whose lined face resembled that of a monkey, was sitting. His hands were clasped over his stomach and his eyes were cast down in an attitude of Buddhistic contemplation. The desk was remarkable only for the fact that it had not a single paper on it and it seemed to Gregory almost as though the famous Chief of the French Secret Police had not even moved since he had last seen him.
'So you're back from Brussels?' said the Colonel in his gentle voice, suddenly glancing up.
Gregory smiled. 'And how did you know that I had been in Brussels, mon Colonel?’
Motioning Gregory to a chair the little man gave a faint sigh. 'I know so many things, mon ami, that sometimes I almost feel that I know too much, but agents of your ability and courage are not so common in the dark web at the centre of which I sit for me to lose track of one. Through the good Sir Pellinore I have followed your perilous journeys with the greatest interest.'
'I see. Then you'll know of the part I played in the November Putsch and how I succeeded in getting Goering to send me to Finland afterwards?'
'Yes. And I am happy at last to have the opportunity of felicitating you upon the many splendid services that you have rendered to the Allied cause.'
'That's kind of you, sir, and I shall never forget that when I fell down on my first big job it was you who gave me a second chance. A lot of water has flowed under the bridges of the Seine since then, though.'
Suddenly Lacroix's monkey-like little face changed from amiable passivity to black anger. 'Oui. Much water has passed beneath the bridges of the Seine, also many British soldiers have crossed the Channel in the wrong direction.'
Gregory spread out his hands with a peculiarly French gesture that he often made when using that language. 'What would you, mon Colonel? He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. Our men are still alive and free, which, after all, is very much better than if they were prisoners or dead. The B.E.F. will soon be reconstituted and sent back to France.'
'And in the meantime?' asked Lacroix angrily.
'In the meantime things don't look particularly rosy,' Gregory had to admit. 'Still, presumably you're bringing back from Africa every single man you've got, to form an army of manoeuvre in Central France; and with Weygand at the helm I imagine that the people of Paris can still sleep soundly in their beds.'
'They may sleep, but not soundly. Did you know that between one-fifteen and two-fifteen today Paris was raided by two hundred and fifty Nazi planes?'
'The manager of the Saint Regis did mention that you'd had an air-raid but I got into Paris only at ten o'clock and I've seen no signs of any damage that may have been done.'
'They dropped 1,000 bombs, 254 people were killed and 652 injured. Now they have started this sort of thing it is likely to continue. From this point on we must anticipate that at least 1,000 Parisians will become casualties daily; which will lead to a great lowering in the morale and the war effort of the capital.
And do you know why we must submit to this new blow? I will tell you. It is because the British Air Force was withdrawn to protect your Army during its evacuation from Dunkirk and will henceforth be occupied in defending England instead of being able to carry out its allotted task of defending Paris.'
Gregory shrugged. 'Really, sir, it's hardly fair to blame us because during the last few years your own Government has been so criminally slack that you haven't enough planes to protect yourselves.'
'But it was part of the agreement,' said the Colonel in a tired voice. 'France spent 70,000,000 of your pounds sterling upon her great Maginot Line. While Europe was still at peace 6,000,000 of her sons left their normal occupations which were productive to become non-productive for many months, but to fit themselves to defend their country in her hour of need. That was France's contribution. Britain refused to introduce conscription, but her part was to hold the seas and to create an Air Force which should have been strong enough to balance that of Germany, while we held the great German Army at bay on land.
Can you wonder that today in Paris everybody is saying that the English have let us down?'
'Surely, sir,' Gregory replied patiently, 'if we're going to hold an inquest we must go back to the beginning of the present trouble? There would have been no break-through towards the coast, and so no evacuation and no withdrawal of our Air Force, if your Generals Giraud and Huntziger had not made an incredible mess of things at Sedan and allowed the bridges across the Meuse to fall into the enemy's hands.'
Lacroix nodded. 'I give you that. But in spite of the German break-through there need have been no great military disaster had not the British lost their heads. They panicked and they ran.'
Gregory stood up. 'I'm sorry, but I can't remain here if you're going to say things like that. At Louvain, at Oudenarde, at Arras, they fought magnificently, but they were outflanked in the south entirely owing to the incompetence of your own General Staff and they were outflanked in the north through King Leopold throwing his hand in without even warning them. Finding themselves surrounded on three sides by German Armies which were enormously superior in both equipment and numbers, what else could they do but retreat?'
The little Colonel suddenly leapt to his feet; his black eyes flashed; he banged his small, brown fist on his empty desk and almost screamed:
'Mon dieu, mon dieu, mon dieu! What could they do? Why, cut their way through, of course. Gort had a quarter of a million men. With him were three French Armies and many Belgian units who refused to lay down their arms even when they were called upon to do so. The German corridor was only thirty miles in width for several days. Had the whole of that great army been flung against one fifty-mile sector of the corridor, how could the Germans in it possibly have failed to collapse under such a blow?'