She said, “Where can I get in touch with you?”
I hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, I’m wandering round a bit. That’s how Paris takes me. But you can always leave a message at the Hotel Florida.”
The lift clanked to a stop, and she put out a hand to pull the grille back for me. I stepped in, turned and put my foot down so that the door could not close.
I said, “You approve of this arrangement, Vérité?”
“I approve of all Herr Malacod’s instructions.”
“You do? Even the bit about any duties I may consider necessary and being entirely at my disposal?”
All I wanted was either a smile or a flicker of anger in the deep brown eyes. All I got was a ten degree drop in temperature as the ice-age closed in.
I went down and the last thing I saw of her was a pair of neat black shoes, nylon ankles, and the toe of the right shoe tapping with either impatience or boredom.
Stebelson and the car had gone. I strolled round the corner and found myself on the Seine side, the Avenue de Tokio to be exact. I got a taxi back to the flat, had a couple of whiskies, made myself an omelette, and went to bed just as Paris began to wake up for the night. What I should have done, of course, was to have called up Vérité Latour-Mesmin and taken her to a night club. It would have been a riot.
*
I woke at three o’clock. I knew it was three because as I lay there I heard the chimes go from a couple of church clocks somewhere. And as the last bong went, his shadow slid smoothly between me and the window. I heard the bathroom door sigh open, the handle held first against the flick of the catch, and then gently eased back. He did it nicely, professionally, and one had to be awake to hear it.
Outside a neon light of some kind kept smearing washes of red, blue and green about the room. I don’t know what he expected to find in the bathroom but he was not long deciding that it was not there. He came back and stood pensively between the bed and the window. I watched him with half my head under the sheet and through the faintest crack of an eyelid, just the way I used to do it when my old man would come padding into the room to fill my Christmas stocking. I even gave a faint snore just to reassure him. He relaxed in the way my old man used to relax. I was glad about the relaxing because the dark bulk of his right hand was clubrooted, but not with any Christmas stocking.
He half turned to the window and I came out of bed like the wrath of Christmas past, present and future, and with one hand gripping the corner of the hard bolster affair that the French call a pillow. I slung it at him and caught him on the side of the head. Quite a blow when not expected. As he reeled, I jabbed him behind the knees with my foot and he went down and cracked his head against the door of the wardrobe. I picked up his gun and sat on the edge of my bed, groping with my left hand for my slippers. Never walk about in bare feet, a mother maxim, drilled into me.
As he sat up, hunched over his knees and rubbing the back of his head, I said, “They tell me the whole place is soundproof, and I’m not responsible for the tidying-up when I leave.”
With an American accent, he said, “Christ, what a welcome.” He turned and beat his fist against the wardrobe door. “Old-fashioned French colonial stuff, built to last, solid. A modern factory piece and my head would have gone right through. Howard Johnson’s the name. For the time being, that is.” He stood up.
I said, “Go through into the parlour. Light switch on your left.”
He went through, switched on the light and I followed. I waved him to a chair and sat between him and the door and we looked at each other.
“Nice line in pyjamas,” he said, smiling.
I said, “I’m particular about my bedwear. You never know who you’re going to meet.”
He nodded. “I must have been a disappointment. But don’t judge too soon.”
I said, “The floor is all yours.”
He was one of those chunky, pleasant-looking chaps, very American, with close-cropped sandy hair, and a rugged face. I put him at about twenty-five, and he would not have been out of place in a line-up of Olympic athletes. But not on any American team. I don’t know why. It was all perfect. Too perfect, perhaps, the way the bright boys of all the tribes east of the Rhine are always just too perfect when they tell themselves they must not make any mistake. He had a light silk jacket, smart brown trousers, and great boats of perfectly polished brogue shoes with crêpe soles, and a gold tie-clip with the initials HJ crested on it.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked. His right hand made a move to his jacket pocket.
I waved the gun warningly and he stopped. Then I tossed him a box of matches and my own cigarettes from the table beside me.
“Careful. I like that.” He lit a cigarette.
I said, “Come to the point. I don’t like my sleep broken.”
He was silent for a moment, but not still. There was a slight fidget of the crêpe-soled shoes.
Then he said, “All right, lover-boy – I’ll give it to you straight. You’re in business for money, yes?”
“Yes.”
“We know you’ve got a watching brief for London, and you know that there’s often a gap in
