report from the darkness ahead, and a bullet smacked viciously into the brickwork behind me.
Beghin knelt down and lowered himself on to the leads. I followed suit. Bent double, Henri scuttled across to us out of the shadows.
“He is beyond the corner, between the two walls, Monsieur.”
“I know that, imbecile. Keep down, Vadassy, and stay where you are. Henri, get across to the wall, and work your way towards the gap, under cover. If you see him shine your torch on him. We’ve got him cornered.”
Henri hurried away and Beghin, revolver raised, started to walk slowly along the leads towards the gap. A small cloud obscured the moon for a second or two, and I lost sight of him. A second later there was the flash of a torch, and a moment after two shots crashed out in quick succession. The flashes came from the corner by the gap. As the echo of the shots died away, I heard Beghin calling to Henri not to go any farther.
Unable to resist the temptation any longer, I followed. As I reached the corner I nearly bumped into Beghin, who was peering cautiously into the pitch-black shaft between the walls.
“Did you see him?” I whispered.
“No. He saw us. You’d better get back, Vadassy.”
“I’d rather stay here, if you don’t mind.”
“Then don’t grumble if you get shot. He’s on an iron fire-escape about twenty meters along the wall round this corner. It’s the back wall of a warehouse in the street running parallel to the one we came along. Henri, you get back, and tell them in the street to get some men on to that warehouse. If the watchman is still asleep, tell them to break in. I want them to take him from the rear. And tell them to be quick about it.”
Henri crept away. We waited in silence. In the distance there were the sounds of a train shunting and of cars on the boulevard. Near at hand it was deadly quiet.
“Supposing he slips away before…” I began at last.
He gripped my arm. “Shut up and listen!”
I listened. At first I could hear nothing, then, a very faint grating noise came to my ears. It was an odd sound, hollow and metallic. Beghin drew in his breath sharply. I saw him edge forward to the corner of the brickwork. I bent down and moved forward until I could just see over the parapet. Suddenly the beam of his torch shot out into the darkness. The beam swept over the concrete on the opposite side of the shaft. Then it stopped and I saw the fire-escape.
Roux was nearing the top of it. As the torch caught him he looked round quickly, and half-raised the revolver in his hand. His face was white, and he blinked in the light. Then Beghin’s gun crashed out. The bullet hit the escape with a clang, and whined off into space. Roux lowered his gun and raced for the top. Beghin fired again, and ran forward along the guttering between the walls to the foot of the escape. I hesitated for a second before following him. By the time I reached the fire-escape he was halfway up. I could see his bulk against the sky, a shadow moving slowly across the wall. I went up after him.
A moment later I was sorry that I had done so, for I saw a movement against the skyline.
Beghin stopped and called down to me to go back. At the same moment Roux’s bullet hit the rail near my feet. Beghin fired back, but Roux was no longer visible. The fat man clattered up the last few stairs. When I caught up with him he was raising his head gingerly over the top of the ledge running round the roof. He swore softly.
“Has he got away?”
Without answering me, he stepped over the ledge to the roof.
It was long, narrow, and quite flat. Near us was a large water-tank. At the far end was a triangular structure containing the door leading below. Between was a forest of square steel ventilating-shafts. Beghin drew me into the shadow of the tank.
“We shall have to wait for reinforcements. We should never find him among those ventilators, and he could snipe us if we tried it.”
“But he may get away while we’re waiting.”
“No. We’ve got him here. There’re only two ways off this roof-the fire-escape and that door over there. He’ll probably try to shoot his way out. You’d better stay here when the men arrive.”
But there was another way off the roof, and Roux was to take it.
We did not have to wait long. Almost as soon as Beghin had finished speaking, gardes mobiles with rifles were pouring on the roof through the door. Beghin shouted to them to spread out, and advance towards us. They obeyed promptly. The line began to move. I waited with bated breath.
I don’t quite know what I expected to happen, but what did actually happen was unexpected.
The line of men had almost reached the last row of ventilators, and I was beginning to think that Roux must, after all, have given us the slip, when suddenly I saw a figure dart from behind the ventilators and make for the ledge opposite us. A garde shouted and raced in pursuit. Beghin ran forward. Roux leaped up on the ledge and steadied himself for an instant.
And then I understood. Between the roof on which we stood and that of the next warehouse was a space of about two meters. Roux was going to jump for it.
I saw him crouch for the take-off. The nearest garde was about twenty meters from him, working the bolt of his rifle as he ran. Beghin was still farther away. Then Beghin stopped and raised his revolver.
He fired just as Roux was straightening his body. The bullet hit him in the right arm, for I saw his left hand clutch at it. Then he lost his balance.
It was horrible. For one brief instant he struggled to save himself. Then, as he realized that he was falling, he cried out.
The cry rose to a scream as he disappeared, a scream that stopped abruptly with the dreadful sound of his body hitting the concrete below.
I watched Beghin walk over to the ledge and look down. Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I was violently ill.
When they reached Roux, he was dead.
“His real name,” said Beghin, “was Verrue. Arsene Marie Verrue. We’ve known about him for years. He is- was-a Frenchman, but his mother was an Italian. He was born at Briancon, near the Italian frontier. In 1924 he deserted from the army. Soon after, we heard that he was working as an Italian agent in Zagreb. Then, for a time, he worked for the Rumanian army intelligence service. Afterwards he went to Germany for some other government, probably Italy again. He came here on forged papers. Anything else you want to know?”
We were back in the office of the Agence Metraux. Inspector Fournier had been taken away in an ambulance. Detectives were busy transferring all the papers, files, and books in the office to a van that had been summoned for the purpose. One man was engaged in ripping open the upholstery of the chairs. Another was prizing up the floorboards.
“What about Mademoiselle Martin?”
He shrugged casually. “Oh! She was just his woman. She knew what he was up to, of course. She’s down at the poste now in a faint. We’ll question her later. I expect we shall have to let her go. The one I am glad to get is Maletti, or Metraux, as he calls himself. He’s the brain behind all this. Roux was never important, just an employee. We shall get the rest soon. All the information is here.”
He went over to the man at work on the floor, and began to examine a bundle of papers that had been found below the boards. I was left to myself.
So it was Roux. Now I knew why his accent had seemed so familiar. It was the same accent as that of my colleague Rossi, the Italian at the Mathis School of Languages. Now I knew what Roux had been talking about when he had offered me five thousand francs for a piece of information. It had been the hiding-place of the photographs that he had wanted. Now I knew who had hit me on the head, who had searched my room, who had slammed and locked the writing-room door. Now, I knew, and it did not seem to matter that I knew. In my ears was still that last agonized shriek. In my mind’s eye I saw Mademoiselle Martin and the dead spy standing in front of the Russian billiard table. I saw her pressing against him. But… Roux was never important… just an employee… she was just his woman. Yes, of course. That was the way to look at it.
An agent came into the room with a package in his hand. Beghin left his papers and opened the package. Inside it was a Zeiss Contax camera and a large telephoto lens. Beghin beckoned to me.
“They were found in his pockets,” he said. “Do you want to see the number?”
I looked at the camera in his hand. The lens and shutter mechanism were crushed sideways.
I shook my head. “I’ll take your word for it, Monsieur Beghin.”
