“What time?”
“Afternoon. I’ll come and fetch you after lunch.” He got up from my bed where he had been sitting and cocking his head owlishly went on, “Where have you put all the stuff you brought back?”
I flicked an eye at my case on the luggage stool and knew he had been through it.
“I took a box at the American Express and left it there. For safety.”
When he was gone I telephoned Vérité and told her not to let anyone in until I arrived the next morning. Myself, I slept happy in the knowledge that the colour slide was already on the way to Wilkins with very explicit instructions as to what I wanted done about it. Express delivery. Mailed at the airport.
I went round to Vérité’s flat early the next morning and had breakfast with her. I don’t know whether it was because she was back in Paris, close to her employer, and the old personality had claimed her again, or whether she had decided that the Melita affair and the night at Polace had lowered her defences too much and the breaches must be built up ... anyway, she was friendly but cool and slightly standoffish. There was no question of giving her a slap on the bottom and asking her if she had slept well.
She gave me bacon and eggs with their eyes shut and some excellent coffee made from a Cona which saved my hand from all that tin-top bashing.
I said, “You’ve passed the stuff to Malacod?”
She nodded. “Last night.”
I said, “Will you ring Malacod and tell him I want to see him this evening at six o’clock. After that I’ll take you out to dinner and dancing at the Lido on the Champs Élysées – fifty-four francs all in and half a bottle of champagne. So you can see I want to be generous and nice.”
She looked at me for a long time and then very quietly she said, “You’ve been very generous and very nice. I wouldn’t want you to be anything else.”
She got up and went to the telephone. It took her some time to get him and when she did she spoke in German. And that took some time too. But when it was over, she turned to me and said, “Herr Malacod agrees. He’ll see you at half-past six. I am to take you.”
“To the same place?”
“No.”
She didn’t sound very friendly.
I said, “What’s eating you?”
She said, “Herr Malacod is no fool.”
“I never thought so. Not with all that money.”
“These notes were written by a British agent.”
“So?”
“How can you explain that to Herr Malacod?”
“Carver luck. It happens.”
I went across to her and she stood her ground. I put my hands on her arms, leaned forward and kissed her chastely on the cheek.
Wilkins came on the telephone half an hour after I got back to the hotel. We had five minutes’ skirmishing about whether I was changing my socks regularly, not letting my hair grow too long, and why had I said I’d paid the electric light bill for the office when I hadn’t – and then she got down to business. She’d had the slide on the big office projector and had spent an hour with it and various reference books. She gave me her findings under different headings, and she had made a good job of it. But then she never did any other kind of job. I finished up with a page of notes that read:
GENERAL
Picture taken some time in spring. Larch in pines background just breaking. Gentians, small crocuses, cowslips along foot of wall. Shadows, early morning or late evening.
MAN
Fiftyish. Five ten, brown eyes. Dress – French, Swiss, Austrian better working class. Smoking dropped-stem, big-bowled pipe – German, Austrian type. Sole, right boot, built up, probably walks slight limp.
WALL NICHE
Small roadside altar, or shrine. Figure, carved wood, is of Madonna and Child. No distinguishing features, but probably local workmanship (possibly Bavarian?).
OVERALL
Somewhere Germany, Switzerland, Austria or poss. Haute Savoie. Part of mountain peak background, snow showing.
Before I rang off, I said, “I’ll let you know any change of address. How are things?”
“Some small jobs came up, so I called in Fisk.”
“That’s fine.” Fisk was an ex-policeman who gave me a hand now and then. “That the lot?”
“No. Harvald is coming home at the end of the month on leave.”
I smiled. Harvald was her Suez pilot boy-friend. When he turned up Wilkins took off. A royal command would not have stopped her.
“Don’t worry. If I’m not back, shut up shop or leave it to Fisk. Give Harvald my love. Tell him it’s time he made an honest woman of you.”
There was a snort and the receiver went down at the other end.
I got up from the little table by the window at which I had been speaking and went into the bathroom. As I closed the door behind me, I saw Howard Johnson sitting on the turned down lid of the lavatory seat. He lit a cigarette and grinned at me, no malice showing at all.
I said, “How long have you been here?”
“Idle question.”
I went over to the basin and turned the tap to wash my hands, watching him. “How’s the arm?”
“It wasn’t broken, only badly sprained. It’s almost a hundred per cent now. Interesting talk on the phone with your Wilkins?”
“Yes. Her fiancé is coming back. Means I’ve got to close the office up for a while.” I washed my hands, briefly, watching him, and stepped to the towel rail and picked up a towel. There was nothing I could do about the notes on the slide out by the telephone. And there was nothing I could do for myself, because in addition to the cigarette in his left hand, he was covering me with an automatic in his right.
He said, “All nice and clean now, lover-boy?”
“Sure.” I tossed the towel at the rail and it fell to the ground in a tangle.
“Good,” he said. “Not to worry, though.
