embarrassing incident occurs.'
'He's right, sir,' said the aide. 'There are still a great many French paying no attention to official German time.'
The little general nodded. 'Willy,' he said to the aide. 'Go in there and discreetly inform all General Staff officers you can find that the story is out on this place. I'll wait for you in the car.'
'Would you like me to help, Herr Colonel?'
'Yes, thank you, Captain Willms. And thank you for your presence of mind.'
I clicked my heels again and followed the colonel through the door while the little general explained things to the doorman in what sounded like excellent French.
I went up a curving, cast-iron staircase and found myself in a tall, elegant room with a chandelier as big as the underside of an iceberg, and several rococo murals that might have been painted by Fragonard if ever he'd been asked to illustrate the memoirs of Casanova with extreme obscenity. The vaulted gilt ceiling looked like the inside of a Faberge egg. There were plenty of chairs and sofas that had been upholstered with the aid of an air- compressor; they had long legs and narrow ankles with ball and claw feet. The girls seated on the chairs and sofas had long legs and narrow ankles, and for all I knew, ball and claw feet as well, only I wasn't paying that much attention to their feet because there were other details of their appearance that commanded my attention first. All of them were naked. The angle of this gold-plated puff-house was that every man with a red stripe on his trouser leg might sit in leisurely judgement of these Olympian beauties like Paris with his especially inscribed apple. There was even a bowl of fruit on the table.
These were attractive thoughts but I was in a hurry and before the 'temps perdu' patronne could give me her couple- mother spiel I had grabbed a natural blonde and herded her towards a bedroom with a couple of well-placed slaps on her well-placed derriere. It wasn't that I was interested in having her but I was in urgent need of a door to lock and wait behind while the general's aide set about raising the alarm. Already I could hear him warning other officers that the police were on their way to raid the place. And it wasn't very long before the sound of many boots was heard on the stairs as the maison's exclusive clientele left the building hurriedly. Meanwhile, I tried to reassure my beautiful naked companion that there was nothing at all to worry about and asked her questions about Willms, Kestner and Schaumberg. Her name was Yvette and she spoke excellent German, as did nearly all of the girls at number twenty-two. Probably that was why they'd been selected to work there in the first place.
'General Schaumberg is the deputy commander of Berlin,' she explained. 'He seems to spend most of his time touring Parisian brothels. Him and his adjutant, who's a German count. The Graf Waldersee. And there's a prince in tow as well: the Prince von Ratibor. The prince and his dog are here at least twice a week. All brothel certificates are issued by Schaumberg's office, and together with Kestner and Willms they've already made it into a nice little racket. The Germans win both ways. They get paid off for a certificate. They get laid by the best whores. But the brains of the outfit is Willms. He used to be a flic so he knows how a maison works. A bastard, too. Takes a slice of everything. Most evenings he's in his office here up on the top floor, cooking the books to show Schaumberg.'
'Is he here now?'
'He was. I expect he's already on the phone to Schaumberg's office trying to find out what the Hell's going on. What is going on?'
I thought it best not to tell her any more than she needed to know.
After about half an hour I went upstairs. There was no one to be seen but I could hear someone on the floor above shouting in French. I quickened my steps and arrived on a landing outside an open office door. Willms was on the telephone behind a desk. He was sitting next to an open safe as if he thought it might keep him warm. Perhaps it would have done, too, there was enough money in it.
Seeing me there, he put down the phone and nodded.
'I suppose it was you,' he said. 'The person who gave out that the gendarmerie was coming to raid this place.'
'That's right. I didn't want to embarrass any of those red stripes when I put you under arrest, Willms.'
'Me? Under arrest?' He chuckled. 'It's you who's going to be in trouble, Gunther. Not me. Half of the General Staff in Paris are sharing in this particular bottle, my friend. Some very important heads are going to feel sore about what you've done here tonight.'
'They'll get over it. In a few days those Wehrmacht counts and princes will forget a rat like you ever even existed, Willms.'
'The amount of coal they're raking back from this place? I don't think so. See, you're trying to flood a very nice little money pit, here. The only question is, why? Or maybe you've got something against your brother officers having a thump now and again.'
'I'm not arresting you for being a pimp, Willms. Though that's what you are. Personally I've got nothing at all against pimps. A man can't help what he is. No, I'm arresting you for attempted murder.'
'Oh? And whose murder is it that I'm supposed to have attempted?'
'Mine.'
'You can prove that, can you?'
'I'm a detective, remember? I've got a little thing called evidence. Not to mention a witness. And if I'm right, a motive, too. Not that I'll need any of these things when Himmler finds out what you've been up to here in Paris, Willms. He's rather less understanding than me when it comes to the conduct of men wearing the uniform of his beloved SS. Somehow I get the feeling that his opinion of your conduct is going to matter a lot more than General Schaumberg's.'
'You're serious, aren't you?'
'I always take it seriously when someone tries to gas me with the contents of a chemical fire extinguisher. And by the way, I checked back with the Alex. It seems that before you joined the police, you worked for the fire brigade.'
'I don't see that proves a thing.'
'It proves you know something about fire extinguishers. And it would account for how it was that the missing plug from the extinguisher that almost killed me was found in your hotel room.'
'Says who?'
'The witness.'
'You think that a court martial will accept the word of a Frenchman against the word of a German officer?'
'No. But they might accept it against the word of a greasy little pimp.'
'You might be right,' said Willms. 'We'll have to see, won't we?'
Uttering a weary sort of sigh he sat back in his chair and, in the same movement, pulled open the drawer of his desk. Even before I saw the gun I knew it was there, and after that it was simply a question of who could shoot first, him or me. On my SS soft-shell holster there was just a brass stud to keep the flap down, but even so I was no Gene Autry and the Luger was in his hand before the Walther P38 was in mine. It was the Walther's double- action trigger that probably saved my life. Like most policemen I was in the habit of carrying it with one in the chamber and the hammer down. All I had to do was squeeze the trigger. Willms ought to have known that. The toggle-lock action on his Luger was much more cumbersome, which was why cops didn't carry them, and by the time his pistol was ready to fire I was already shouting a warning. I might have finished the warning, too, if he hadn't started to straighten his arm and aim the gun at me, at which point I fired at the side of his head.
For a moment I thought I'd missed.
Willms sat down, only he didn't sit on the chair, but on the floor, like a boy scout dropping onto his backside beside a camp fire. Then I saw the blood boiling out of his skull like hot mud. He collapsed onto his side and lay still except for his legs, which straightened slowly, like someone trying to get comfortable enough to die; and all the time his head painted the beige carpet a very dark shade of red, as if an indifferent claret had been poured onto the floor by a truculent guest in an unsatisfactory restaurant.
With shaking hands I made my Walther safe and then holstered it, asking myself if I couldn't have aimed at something other than his head. At the same time I told myself that one of the easiest ways to end up dead is to leave your wounded adversary with an opportunity to shoot you.
I bent down and made sure the Luger was safe, too, and it was then I started to see how much of a jam I
