playing. Only, now, it was not my body that yielded so thankfully, but my mind. Instead of the slow, pleasant ache creeping through my limbs there was the melody of a choral prelude entwining itself in my consciousness. My eyes closed. If only this would go on. If only this would go on. If only…
When the interruption came I did not at first notice it. There was a murmur of voices from the hall, someone hissed a request for silence, a chair grated on the floor. I opened my eyes in time to see Koche disappearing hurriedly through the door, which he closed softly behind him. A few moments later I heard it open again noisily.
It all seemed to happen in the fraction of a second; but the first intimation I had that anything was wrong was that Frau Vogel stopped suddenly in the middle of a bar. Instinctively I looked across at her first. She was sitting, her hands poised over the keys, staring fixedly over the top of the piano, as though she were looking at a ghost. Then her hands dropped slowly on to the keyboard, sounding a soft discord. My gaze traveled to the door. There, standing on the threshold, were two uniformed agents de police.
They looked round the room menacingly. One of them took a step forward.
“Which of you is Josef Vadassy?”
I stood up slowly, too dazed to speak.
They clumped across the room towards me.
“You are under arrest. You will accompany us to the Commissariat.”
Frau Vogel let out a little cry.
“But…”
“There are no ‘buts.’ Come on.”
They gripped my arms.
Monsieur Duclos darted forward.
“What is the charge?”
“That does not concern you,” retorted the leading agent curtly. He jerked me towards the door.
Monsieur Duclos’s pince-nez quivered. “I am a citizen of the Republic,” he declared fiercely. “I have a right to know.”
The agent glanced round. “Curious, eh?” He grinned. “Very well, the charge is one of espionage. You’ve had a dangerous man among you. Come on, Vadassy. March!”
The Skeltons, the Vogels, Roux, Mademoiselle Martin, the Clandon-Hartleys, Schimler, Duclos, Koche-for an instant I saw their faces, white and motionless, turned towards me. Then I was through the door. Behind me a woman, Frau Vogel, I think, screamed hysterically.
I had received my instructions.
17
I was taken to the Commissariat in a closed car driven by a third agent.
I suppose that this fact should have surprised me. Arrested men are not usually afforded the luxury of a car to convey them to a police poste no more than half a kilometer away. But it did not surprise me. Nothing short of a civic reception by the mayor and corporation of St. Gatien would have surprised me. It had come. That which I had known all along in my heart would happen, had happened. I was under arrest again. My parole had been withdrawn. This, then, was the end. True, I had not expected quite so dramatic an exit from the Reserve; but, all things considered, it was probably better this way-I had at least been spared another night of suspense. It was almost a relief to feel that I had to think for myself no longer, that Monsieur Mathis’s sarcasms could no longer touch me, that I could do nothing but acquiesce.
I wondered what the Skeltons were thinking about it all. It must have been a shock to them. Duclos, of course, would be beside himself with excitement. He would probably be telling the others that he’d known about me all along. Schimler? That did worry me a little. I would have liked him to have known the truth. As for the rest… Koche would not be surprised. The Major, however, would be horrified. He would probably advocate a firing squad. Roux, no doubt, would laugh unpleasantly. The Vogels would click their tongues and look solemn. And yet one of them would be thinking hard, one of them would know that I was neither a spy nor dangerous. That man, the man who had slammed the writing-room door, who had searched my room and taken two spools of film, who had knocked me down, whose fingers had fumbled in my pockets; he would go scot free, while I rotted in prison. What would his thoughts be like? Triumphant? What did it matter? What did it matter what any of them thought? Nothing. All the same, it would be interesting to know which of them really was the spy-very interesting. Well, I should have plenty of time in which to make my guesses.
The tires grated on the shingle square in front of the Commissariat. I was taken into the waiting-room with the wooden forms. As before, an agent waited with me. This time, however, I did not attempt to talk. We waited.
The hands of the clock in the room had crept round to half past ten before the door opened and Beghin came in.
So far as I could see he still had on the same tussore suit that he had been wearing three days previously. In his hand was the same limp handkerchief. He was still sweating profusely. One thing only surprised me. He seemed to be smaller than I had imagined. For the first time I realized what a monster my thoughts had made of him. In my imagination he had grown into an ogre, a foul, corrupt colossus of evil preying upon the innocent who crossed his path-a devil. Now I saw before me a man, fat and gross and sweating, but a man.
For a moment the small, heavy-lidded eyes stared down at me as though he were unable to remember who I was. Then he nodded to the agent. The man saluted, went out of the room and shut the door behind him.
“Well, Vadassy, have you enjoyed your little holiday?” Once again the high-pitched voice took me unawares. I stared back at him coldly.
“I am to be the scapegoat after all, eh?”
He bent down, pulled one of the forms away from the wall and sat down on it, facing me. The wood creaked under his weight. He wiped his hands on the handkerchief.
“It’s been very warm,” he said, and then glanced up at me. “What did they do when you were arrested?”
“Who, the agents? ”
“No, your fellow guests.”
“They did nothing.” I heard my own voice develop an edge to it. I knew, somehow, with half my brain, that I was losing my temper and that I could not help doing so. “They did nothing,” I repeated. “What would you expect them to do? Duclos wanted to know what the charge was. Frau Vogel screamed. Otherwise they just looked. I don’t suppose they’re used to seeing people arrested.” My temper rose suddenly to boiling point. “Though I expect that if they stayed long enough in St. Gatien they would get used to it. Next time one of the fishermen gets drunk and beats his wife you might try arresting Vogel. Or would that be too dangerous? Would the Swiss consul have something to say? Perhaps he would. Or wouldn’t the Department of Naval Intelligence have enough intelligence to see that? Do you know, Beghin, that when you talked to me in that cell three days ago I actually thought that, although you might be a bullying blackguard of a policeman, it was possible that you had some sense. I thought that even if you did threaten and ask insane questions, you at least knew what you were doing. I have found since that I was wrong. You haven’t any sense and you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re a fool. You’ve blundered so many times that I’ve lost count of them. If I hadn’t had a little sense and interpreted your instructions in my own way, your…”
He had been listening calmly; now he got to his feet, his fist drawn back as though he were about to strike me. “If you hadn’t what? ” he shouted savagely.
I did not flinch. I felt reckless and vindictive.
“I see you don’t like the truth. I said that if I hadn’t interpreted your instructions in my own way your precious spy would have taken fright and bolted. You told me to question the guests about their cameras. A lunatic would have seen that that was a fatal mistake.”
He sat down again. “Well, what did you do?” he said grimly: “Fake the information for me?”
“No, I used some sense. You see”-this bitterly-“in my simple innocence I thought that if I could get the
