trust, Eve, you'll be keeping me company in the BMW. Can't travel without some feminine companionship.'
'Your trust is misplaced,' she shot back at him. 'I'm travelling back by train with Tweed.'
'I suppose you'd accept me as a substitute companion?' Jennie suggested.
'Damn right I will,' boomed Gaunt. 'Jennie and I are on the same waveband.'
Paula glanced at Jennie and then at Gaunt. She had the impression Gaunt had known Eve would refuse, had known Jennie would offer to come with him. Paula had begun to sense that Gaunt and Jennie were working hand in glove without making it obvious.
Gaunt's relationship with the two women intrigued her. At first she'd thought it was Eve who was close to the Squire. Now it appeared Gaunt had used that as a cover, for his closeness to Jennie and Eve had consistently distanced herself from him. Why?
Eve had joined Tweed for dinner soon after the incident of the man with a face like a dog. They were finishing the meal, drinking coffee and Tweed was draining his glass of Riesling while Gaunt wolfed down his huge omelette. At that moment Butler, who had strolled out of the exit on to the street for the second time, came hurrying back. He laid a hand on his chiefs shoulder.
'Excuse me,' Tweed said, standing up. 'Arrangements to make!' He looked at Newman. Take care of the bill for me, Bob.' He guessed that some kind of emergency had just arisen from Butler's action.
Tweed was leaving the Brasserie by the short cut into the hotel when Butler, close behind him, gave a little jerk of his head to Nield who was lingering over coffee at a table by himself.
Having paid the bill earlier, Nield left the table and strolled casually after them. At Tweed's table Gaunt was holding everyone's attention with some outrageous story – except for Newman, who saw Nield leaving.
Passing through the main restaurant – now empty -Tweed led the way into the reception hall and into a small sitting area in a large alcove. There was no one behind the reception counter as the others joined him.
'A crisis?' Tweed enquired in a mild tone.
'A major one,' Butler reported, keeping his voice down as Nield sat in a third chair. 'That gunman we dealt with outside the Brasserie is dead.'
'So what happened?'
'Pete and I sorted him out. I knocked him unconscious with his own Luger, left the gun with him after we'd parked him on a couple of chairs.'
'I poured wine down his jaw and over his windcheater,' Nield added. 'No one wants anything to do with a drunk sleeping it off.'
'You definitely left him unconscious?' Tweed probed.
'Fact one,' Butler began, 'I checked his neck pulse. It was normal. Fact two, there was no blood from the blow I gave him. Now there's blood all down the side of his face – and a second blow has split his skull. Dead as a doornail.'
'Then we leave here fast.' Tweed took out a notebook, checked train times Paula had obtained earlier. 'An express for Basle leaves here in thirty minutes. I'll be aboard – with Paula, Eve, Amberg, Barton Ives, Newman and Philip Cardon. You both know what to do, where to meet us.'
'I drive the Espace to Basle, Pete drives the station wagon,' Butler replied. 'We park near Basle Bahnhof and wait for you to arrive in the station's first-class restaurant.'
'I have phoned Beck,' Tweed told them. 'He has the registration numbers of both vehicles and has given orders to the Swiss border guards to let you through. So you can tape the weapons underneath the chassis of both cars without worry. Now, speed is the order of the day.'
He had stood up, checked his watch. They had to get out of France before the corpse outside was discovered. In the Brasserie there were locals who had nothing better to do than to notice what was going on. He hurried back into the Brasserie to collect the others. It would be a race against time – to cross the frontier before a flic decided to check the body.
They boarded the express with two minutes to spare. At that hour and time of year they found an empty first-class coach. Tweed sat with Barton Ives. Cardon, who had left the table in the Brasserie to guard Amberg before the meal started – the banker had been locked in Tweed's room – sat next to the Swiss further along the coach.
Newman occupied a seat on his own, which gave him a good view of both entrances to the coach. Paula sat chatting with Eve in seats out of hearing of any conversation between Tweed and Ives. Earlier, Tweed had given instructions that he wanted to travel alone with Ives.
Much earlier still, Marler had left Colmar, driving his red Mercedes down the autoroute. His instructions from Tweed had been clear and decisive.
'We are approaching a major crisis – a climax to this whole business might be a better phrase. I'm assuming that in some way Norton will have discovered that Ouchy is our destination. He's discovered everything else we planned to do.'
'I'll drive like the wind – strictly within speed limits, of course,' Marler drawled. 'And when I reach Ouchy?'
'In your own individual way – you can pass for a Frenchman and Ouchy is in French-speaking Switzerland – you check all the hotels which are open at this time of the year. You're looking for recently arrived Americans.
When I say 'recently', I mean today. When I arrive you should know the location of the opposition, if they have arrived. We are going over on to the offensive.'
'It's Switzerland,' Marler said thoughtfully, 'so gunshots are liable to bring the local police running. If a shop is still open when I reach Basle I'll buy some Swiss Army knives. Useful little tools, Swiss Army knives – for silent kills.'
'In this situation you have a free hand. Come to think of it, you usually have one anyway.'
'You did use the word offensive,' Marler reminded Tweed.
The express took about forty minutes to reach Basle from Colmar. During the journey Barton Ives began talking, hoping to Heaven that Tweed would believe him.
'Several years ago, Mr Tweed, I was stationed at FBI headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee. I'd been promoted to senior agent, responsible only to Humphries, the local director. There was a hideous murder in that state soon after I'd settled there. An attractive woman driving a Cadillac across lonely country was somehow persuaded to stop her car after dark. I'd gotten to know the local medical examiner – what you call a. pathologist. He told me the details of the autopsy. Got a strong stomach, Mr Tweed?'
'Reasonably so. Try me.'
'The woman – from a wealthy family – had been savagely raped. Then her throat had been cut. The instrument used was a knife with a serrated blade. Most probably a kitchen knife, the ME said. She had then been sadistically mutilated in a way which suggested the murderer was a psychopath. Quite horrendous. After viewing the body I can tell you I didn't eat much that evening. The mutilation puzzled the ME. He told me it was exactly how he'd commence an autopsy.'
'Someone with medical knowledge?' Tweed queried.
The ME didn't think so. But he thought the sadist who'd inflicted the wounds may once have witnessed an autopsy being performed. That was the first case.'
'You were investigating it?' Tweed asked, puzzled.
'No. The local police handled the case, never even came up with a suspect. As I think you've realized, the FBI only enters the scene when a criminal crosses a state line. I came into the picture when the second rape and murder occurred six months later.'
'Why were you able to do so then?'
'The second victim – again a wealthy woman driving home in the dark – was attacked in another Southern state. I heard about it, checked the details – the same gory procedure had been carried out as in the first case. That strongly suggested the same rapist and killer was in business again – and he'd crossed a state line. Which brought in the FBI and I was given the investigation.'
'Was any evidence left behind in either case?' Tweed enquired.
Tweed was recalling cases he had solved years before -in the days when he had held a high rank while working for the Murder Squad at Scotland Yard. So often chance had fingered the guilty party.
'Not yet.' Ives sighed. 'It was a frustrating time. Then after six months I heard the details of the third case. This time in a different Southern state. By now we were thinking in terms of a serial killer. So the data from case
