An Expensive Place to Die

Part II of a new novel

Synopsis: It was as fine as any springtime past in Paris--lyrics by Dumas and music by Offenbach. I was watching the birds above the rooftops from the window of my dingy apartment in the Rue St. Ferdinand when the Embassy courier came. What he had to deliver was some very modern stuff--secret documents with test-result data on nuclear fallout. London wanted me, he said, to see that these sensitive papers got stolen by a certain Monsieur Datt.

And who was Datt? At dinner, I found out from a painter named Jean-Paul, who said, "He is a doctor and a psychiatrist. They say he uses LSD a great deal. His clinic is as expensive as any in Paris, but he gives the most scandalous parties there, too." Moreover, showing an interest in the murky affairs of M. Datt could lead to some rather sticky things--as I found out when I went to a show of new paintings. Meeting Maria, the girl with the green eye shadow, for instance. Or ending up in the office of Sûreté Chief Inspector Loiseau, a place with that kind of cramped, melancholy atmosphere policemen relish. There were, Loiseau told me, certain disagreeable probabilities in store for me if I asked too many questions about Datt's clinic. One could find himself being fished out of a quiet backwater of the St. Martin canal in the morning and end up stiff on a slab in the Medico-Legal Institute, awaiting identification. When I left the office, I found Maria outside in a car. She drove me directly to the clinic in the Avenue Foch.

It was gray and gaunt on the outside, but it had rooms of ornate fin-de-siècle luxury within. There was a party going on. After a while, Datt appeared and asked me for a private word in his office. The word turned out to be more like a heavy brass candlestick against the back of the head. When I came to, I found that I had been given LSD and now I was getting an injection of Amytal truth serum.

In a few moments, I could hear Datt asking me questions, and I heard myself--as I seemed to slide through the coruscating light of a million prisms--chatting, talking on and on. I could hear Maria translating into French. Later, when the effects of the drug began to wear off, I realized that I had betrayed my department and my country. They had opened me up like a cheap watch and laughed at the simple construction. It was then that I blacked out.

Taken to Maria's apartment and finally fully alert, I asked her about the nightmare interrogation. She told me to relax--that my secrets were safe. She'd translated just enough to satisfy Datt, nothing harmful. "If you are doing something that's illegal or dangerous, that's your worry. Just for the moment I feel a little responsible for you. . . . Tomorrow you can start telling your own lies," she said. Then she turned out the light and joined me under the covers--with only the radio on.

I Stayed in Maria's flat, but the next afternoon Maria went back to my rooms to feed Joey. She got back before the storm. She came in blowing on her hands and complaining of the cold.

"Did you change the water and put the cuttlefish bone in?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"It's good for his beak," I said.

"I know," she said. She stood by the window, looking out over the fast-darkening boulevard. "It's primitive," she said, without turning away from the window. "The sky gets dark and the wind begins to lift hats and boxes and finally dustbin lids, and you start to think this is the way the world will end."

"I think politicians have other plans for ending the world," I said.

"The rain is beginning. Huge spots, like rain for giants. Imagine being an ant hit by a," the phone rang, "raindrop like that." Maria finished the sentence hurriedly and picked up the phone.

She picked it up as though it were a gun that might explode by accident.

"Yes." she said suspiciously. "He's here." She listened, nodding and saying "Yes." "The walk will do him good," she said. "We'll be there in about an hour." She pulled an agonized face at me. "Yes," she said to the phone again. "Well, you must just whisper to him and then I won't hear your little secrets, will I?" There was a little gabble of electronic indignation, then Maria said, "We'll get ready now or we'll be late." and firmly replaced the receiver. "Byrd," she said. "Your countryman. Mr. Martin Langley Byrd, craves a word with you at the Café Blanc." The noise of rain was like a vast crowd applauding frantically.

"Byrd," I explained, "is the man who was with me at the art gallery. The art people think a lot of him."

"So he was telling me," said Maria.

"Oh, he's all right," I said. "An exnaval officer who becomes a bohemian is bound to be a little odd."

"Jean-Paul likes him," said Maria, as though it were the epitome of accolades. I climbed into my newly washed underwear and wrinkled suit. Maria discovered a tiny mauve razor and I shaved millimeter by millimeter and swamped the cuts with cologne. We left Maria's just as the rain shower ended. The concierge was picking up the potted plants that had been standing on the pavement.

"You are not taking a raincoat?" she asked Maria.

"No," said Maria.

"Perhaps you'll only be out for a few minutes," said the concierge.

She pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose and peered at me.

"Perhaps," said Maria, and took my arm to walk away.

"It will rain again, heavily," called the concierge. She picked up another pot and prodded the earth in it.

Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves. This rainstorm pounced hastily like an inexperienced lover, and then as suddenly was gone. The leaves drooped wistfully and the air gleamed with green reflections. It's easy to forgive the summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there's no malignity in it.

Byrd and Jean-Paul were already seated at the café. Jean-Paul was as immaculate as a shopwindow dummy, but Byrd was excited and disheveled. His hair was awry and his eyebrows almost nonexistent, as though he'd been too near a water-heater blowback. They had chosen a seat near the side screens and Byrd was wagging a finger and talking excitedly. Jean-Paul waved to us and folded his ear with his fingers. Maria laughed. Byrd was wondering if Jean-Paul was making a joke against him but deciding he wasn't, continued to speak.

"Simplicity annoys them," Byrd said. "It's just a rectangle, one of them complained, as though that was a criterion of art. Success annoys them. Even though I make almost no money out of my painting, that doesn't prevent the critics who feel my work is bad from treating it like an indecent assault, as though I have deliberately chosen to do bad work in order to be obnoxious. They have no compassion, you see, that's why they call them critics--originally the word meant a captious fool; if they had compassion they would show it."

"How?" asked Maria.

"By painting. That's what a painting is, a statement of love. Art is love, stricture is hate. It's obvious, surely. You see, a critic is a man who admires painters--he wants to be one--but cares little for paintings, which is why he isn't one. A painter, on the other hand, admires paintings but doesn't like painters." Byrd, having settled that problem, waved to a waiter. "Four grandes crèmes and some matches," he ordered.

"I want black coffee," said Maria.

"I prefer black, too," said Jean-Paul.

Byrd looked at me and made a noise with his lips. "You want black coffee?"

"White will suit me," I said. He nodded an appreciation of a fellow countryman's loyalty. "Two grandes crèmes and two small blacks," he ordered.

The waiter arranged the beer mats, picked up some ancient checks and tore them in half. When he had gone, Byrd leaned toward me. "I'm glad," he said--he looked around to see that the other two did not hear. They were talking to each other--"I'm glad you drink white coffee. It's not good for the nerves, too much of this very strong stuff." He lowered his voice still more. "That's why they are all so argumentative," he said in a whisper. When the coffees came, Byrd arranged them on the table, apportioned the sugar, then took the check.

"Let me pay," said Jean-Paul. "It was my invitation."

"Not on your life," said Byrd. "Leave this to me, Jean-Paul. I know how to handle this sort of thing, it's my part of the ship."

Maria and I looked at each other without expression. Jean-Paul was watching closely to discover our relationship.

Byrd relished the snobbery of certain French phrases. Whenever he changed from speaking French into English, I knew it was solely because he intended to introduce a long slab of French into his speech and give a knowing nod and slant his face significantly, as if we two were the only people in the world who understood the French language.

"Your inquiries about this house," said Byrd. He raised his forefinger.

"Jean-Paul has remarkable news."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Seems, my dear fellow, that there's something of a mystery about your friend Datt and that house."

"He's not a friend of mine," I said.

"Quite, quite," said Byrd testily. "The damned place is a brothel, what's more----"

"It's not a brothel," said Jean-Paul as though he had explained this before. "It's a maison de passe. It's a house that people go to when they already have a girl with them."

"Orgies," said Byrd. "They have orgies there. Frightful goings on, Jean-Paul tells me, drugs called LSD, pornographic films, sexual displays . . ."

Jean-Paul took over the narrative. "There are facilities for every manner of perversion. They have hidden cameras there and even a great mock torture chamber, where they put on shows . . ."

"For masochists," said Byrd. "Chaps who are abnormal, you see."

"Of course he sees," said Jean-Paul. "Anyone who lives in Paris knows how widespread are such parties and exhibitions."

"I didn't know," said Byrd. Jean-Paul said nothing.

Maria offered her cigarettes around and said to Jean-Paul, "Where did Pierre's horse come in yesterday?"

"A friend of theirs with a horse," Byrd said to me.

"Yes," I said.

"Nowhere," said Jean-Paul.

"Then I lost my hundred nouveaux," said Maria.

"Foolish," said Byrd to me. He nodded.

"My fault," said Jean-Paul.

"That's right," said Maria. "I didn't give it a second look until you said it was a certainty."

Byrd gave another of his conspiratorial glances over the shoulder.

"You," he pointed to me as though he had just met me on a footpath in the jungle, "work for the German magazine Stern."

"I work for several German magazines," I admitted. "But not so loud, I don't declare all of it for tax."

"You can rely upon me," said Byrd. "Mum's the word."

"Mum's the word," I said. I relished Byrd's archaic vocabulary.

"You see," said Byrd, "when Jean-Paul told me this fascinating stuff about the house on Avenue Foch, I said that you would probably be able to advance him a little of the ready if you got a story."

"I might," I agreed.

"My word," said Byrd, "what with your salary from the travel agency and writing pieces for magazines, you must be minting it. Absolutely minting it, eh?"

"I do all right," I admitted.

"All right. I should think you do. I (continued on page 118) Expensive Place To Die (continued from page 112) don't know where you stack it all if you are not declaring it for tax. What do you do, hide it under your bed?"

"To tell you the truth," I said, "I've sewn it into the seat of my armchair."

Byrd laughed. "Old Tastevin will be after you, tearing his furniture."

"It was his idea," I joked, and Byrd laughed again, for Tastevin had a reputation for being a skinflint.

"Get you in there with a camera," mused Byrd. "Be a wonderful story. What's more, it would be a public service. Paris is rotten to the core, you see. It's time it was given a shaking up."

"It's an idea," I agreed.

"Would a thousand quid be too much?" he asked.

"Much too much," I said.

Byrd nodded. "I thought it might be. A hundred more like it, eh?"

"If it's a good story, with pictures, I could get five hundred pounds out of it. I'd pay fifty for an introduction and guided tour with cooperation, but the last time I was there I was persona non grata."

"Precisely, old chap," said Byrd. "You were manhandled, I gather, by that fellow Datt. All a mistake, wasn't it?"

"It was from my point of view," I said. "I don't know how Monsieur Datt feels about it."

"He probably feels désolé," said Byrd. I smiled at the idea. "But really," he said, "Jean-Paul knows all about it. He could arrange for you to do your story; but meanwhile, mum's the word, eh? Say nothing to no one about any aspect. Are we of one mind?"

"Are you kidding me?" I said. "Why would Datt agree to expose his own activities?"

"You don't understand the French, my boy."

"So everyone keeps telling me."

"But really. This house is owned and controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. They use it as a check and control on foreigners--especially diplomats--blackmail, you might almost say. Bad business, shocking people, eh? Well, they are. Some other French Johnnies in government service--Loiseau is one--would like to see it closed down. Now do you see, my dear chap, now do you see?"

"Yes," I said. "But what's in it for you?"

"Don't be offensive, old boy," said Byrd. "You asked me about the house. Jean-Paul is in urgent need of the ready; ergo, I arrange for you to make a mutually beneficial pact." He nodded. "Suppose we say fifty on account and another thirty if it gets into print?"

A huge tourist bus crawled along the boulevard, the neon light flashing and dribbling down its glasswork. Inside, the tourists sat stiff and anxious, crouching close to their loud-speakers and staring at the wicked city.

"OK," I said. I was amazed that he was such an efficient bargain maker.

"In any magazine anywhere," Byrd continued. "With ten percent of any subsequent syndication."

I smiled. Byrd said, "Ah, you didn't expect me to be adept at bargaining, eh?"

"No," I said.

"You've a lot to learn about me. Waiter," he called. "Four kirs." He turned to Jean-Paul and Maria. "We have concluded an agreement. A small celebration is now indicated."

The white wine and cassis came. "You will pay," Byrd said to me, "and take it out of our down payment."

"Will we have a contract?" asked Jean-Paul.

"Certainly not," said Byrd. "An Englishman's word is his bond. Surely you know that, Jean-Paul. The whole essence of a contract is that it's mutually beneficial. If it isn't, no paper in the world will save you. Besides," he whispered to me in English, "give him a piece of paper like that and he'll be showing everyone; he's like that. And that's the last thing you want, eh?"

"That's right," I said. That's right, I thought. My employment on a German magazine was a piece of fiction that the office in London had invented for the rare times when they had to instruct me by mail. No one could have known about it unless they had been reading my mail. If Loiseau had said it, I wouldn't have been surprised, but Byrd . . . !

Byrd began to explain the theory of pigment to Jean-Paul in the shrill voice that he adopted whenever he talked art. I bought them another kir before Maria and I left to walk back to her place.

We picked our way through the dense traffic on the boulevard.

"I don't know how you can be so patient with them," Maria said. "That pompous Englishman Byrd, and Jean-Paul holding his handkerchief to protect his suit from wine stains."

"I don't know them well enough to dislike them," I explained.

"Then don't believe a word they say," said Maria.

"Men were deceivers ever."

"You are a fool," said Maria. "I'm not talking about amours, I'm talking about the house on the Avenue Foch; Byrd and Jean-Paul are two of Datt's closest friends. Thick as thieves."

"Are they?" I said. From the far side of the boulevard I looked back. The wiry little Byrd--as volatile as when we'd joined him--was still explaining the theory of pigment to Jean-Paul.

"Comédiens," Maria pronounced. The word for "actor" also means a phony or impostor. I stood there a few minutes, looking. The big Café Blanc was the only brightly lit place on the whole tree-lined boulevard. The white coats of the waiters gleamed as they danced among the tables laden with coffeepots, citron pressé and soda siphons. The customers were also active--they waved their hands, nodded heads, called to waiters and to each other. They waved ten-franc notes and jangled coins. At least four of them kissed. It was as though the wide dark boulevard were a hushed auditorium, respecting and attentive, watching the drama unfold on the stagelike terrasse of the Café Blanc. Byrd leaned close to Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul laughed.

• • •

We walked and talked and forgot the time. "Your place," I said finally to Maria. "You have central heating, the sink is firmly fixed to the wall, you don't share the W. C. with eight other people, and there are gramophone records I haven't even read the labels of yet."

"Very well," she said, "since you are so flattering about its advantages." I kissed her ear gently. She said, "But suppose the landlord throws you out?"

"Are you having an affair with your landlord?"

She smiled and gave me a forceful blow that many French women conveniently believe is a sign of affection.

"I'm not washing any more shirts," she said. "We'll take a cab to your place to pick up some linen."

We bargained with three taxi drivers, exchanging their directional preferences with ours; finally one of them weakened and agreed to take us to the Petit Légionnaire.

I let myself into my room, with Maria just behind me. Joey chirped politely when I switched on the light.

"My God," said Maria, "someone's turned you over."

I picked up a heap of shirts that had landed in the fireplace.

"Yes," I said. Everything from the drawers and cupboards had been tipped onto the floor. Letters and check stubs were scattered across the sofa and quite a few things were broken. I let the armful of shirts fall to the floor again; I didn't know where to begin on it. Maria was more methodical; she began to sort through the clothes, folding them and putting trousers and jackets on the hangers. I picked up the phone and dialed the number Loiseau had given me.

"Un sourire est différent d'un rire," I said. France is one place where the romance of espionage will never be lost, I thought.

Loiseau said, "Hello."

"Have you turned my place over, Loiseau?" I said.

"Are you finding the natives hostile?" Loiseau asked.

"Just answer the question," I said.

"Why don't you answer mine?" said Loiseau.

"It's my jeton," I said. "If you want (continued on page 235) Expensive Place To Die (continued from page 118) answers, you buy your own call."

"If my boys had done it, you wouldn't have noticed."

"Don't get blasé, Loiseau. The last time your boys did it--five weeks back--I did notice. Tell 'em if they must smoke, to open the windows; that cheap pipe tobacco makes the canary's eyes water."

"But they are very tidy," said Loiseau. "They wouldn't make a mess. If it's a mess you are complaining of."

"I'm not complaining about anything," I said. "I'm just trying to get a straight answer to a simple question."

"It's too much to ask of a policeman," said Loiseau. "But if there is anything damaged, I'd send the bill to Datt."

"If anything gets damaged, it's likely to be Datt," I said.

"You shouldn't have said that to me," said Loiseau. "It was indiscreet, but bonne chance, anyway."

"Thanks," I said, and hung up.

"So it wasn't Loiseau?" said Maria, who had been listening.

"What makes you think that?" I asked.

She shrugged. "The mess here. The police would have been careful. Besides, if Loiseau admitted that the police have searched your home other times, why should he deny that they did it this time?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," I said. "Perhaps Loiseau did it to set me at Datt's throat."

"So you were deliberately indiscreet to let him think he'd succeeded?"

"Perhaps." I looked into the torn seat of the armchair. The horsehair stuffing had been ripped out and the case of documents that the courier had given me had disappeared.

"Gone," said Maria.

"Yes," I said. "Perhaps you did translate my confession correctly after all."

"It was an obvious place to look. In any case, I was not the only person to know your 'secret': I heard you telling Byrd this evening."

"That's true, but was there time for anyone to act on that?"

"It was two hours ago," said Maria. "He could have phoned. There was plenty of time."

We began to sort out the mess. Fifteen minutes passed, then the phone rang. It was Jean-Paul. "I'm glad to catch you at home," he said. "Are you alone?"

I held a finger up to my lips to caution Maria. "Yes," I said. "I'm alone. What is it?"

"There's something I wanted to tell you without Byrd's hearing."

"Go ahead."

"Firstly, I have good connections in the underworld and the police. I am certain that you can expect a burglary within a day or so. Anything you treasure should be put into a bank vault for the time being."

"You're too late," I said. "They were here."

"What a fool I am. I should have told you earlier this evening. It might have been in time."

"No matter," I said. "There was nothing here of value except the typewriter." I decided to solidify the free-lance-writer image a little. "That's the only essential thing. What else did you want to tell me?"

"Well, that policeman, Loiseau, is a friend of Byrd's."

"I know," I said. "Byrd was in the War with Loiseau's brother."

"Right," said Jean-Paul. "Now, Inspector Loiseau was asking Byrd about you earlier today. Byrd told Inspector Loiseau that . . ."

"Well, come on."

"He told him you are a spy. A spy for the West Germans."

"Well, that's good family entertainment. Can I get invisible ink and cameras at a trade discount?"

"You don't know how serious such a remark can be in France today. Loiseau is forced to take notice of such a remark, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. And it's impossible for you to prove that it's not true."

"Well, thanks for telling me," I said. "What do you suggest I do about it?"

"There is nothing you can do for the moment," said Jean-Paul. "But I shall try to find out anything else Byrd says of you, and remember that I have very influential friends among the police. Don't trust Maria, whatever you do."

Maria's ear went even closer to the receiver. "Why's that?" I asked.

Jean-Paul chuckled maliciously. "She's Loiseau's ex-wife, that's why. She, too, is on the payroll of the Sûreté."

"Thanks," I said. "See you in court."

Jean-Paul laughed at that remark--or perhaps he was still laughing at the one before.

• • •

Maria applied her make-up with unhurried precision. She was by no means a cosmetics addict, but this morning she was having lunch with Chief Inspector Loiseau. When you had lunch with an ex-husband, you made quite sure that he realized what he had lost. The pale-gold English wool suit that she had bought in London. He'd always thought her a muddleheaded fool, so she'd be as slick and businesslike as possible. And the new plain-fronted shoes; no jewelry. She finished the eye liner and the mascara and began to apply the eye shadow. Not too much; she had been wearing much too much the other evening at the art gallery. You have a perfect genius, she told herself severely, for getting yourself involved in situations where you are a minor factor instead of a major factor. She smudged the eye shadow, cursed softly, removed it and began again. Will the Englishman appreciate the risk you are taking? Why not tell M. Datt the truth of what the Englishman said? The Englishman is interested only in his work, as Loiseau was interested only in his work. Loiseau's lovemaking was efficient, just as his working day was. How can a woman compete with a man's work? Work is abstract and intangible, hypnotic and lustful; a woman is no match for it. She remembered the nights she had tried to fight Loiseau's work, to win him away from the police and its interminable paperwork and its relentless demands upon their time together. She remembered the last bitter argument about it. Loiseau had kissed her passionately in a way he had never done before, and they had made love and she had clung to him, crying silently in the sudden release of tension, for at that moment she knew that they would separate and divorce, and she had been right.

Loiseau still owned a part of her, that's why she had to keep seeing him. At first they had been arranging details of the legal separation, custody of the boy, then agreements about the house. Then Loiseau had asked her to do small tasks for the police department. She knew that he could not face the idea of losing her completely. They had become dispassionate and sincere, for she no longer feared losing him; they were like brother and sister now, and yet . . . she sighed. Perhaps it all could have been different; Loiseau still had an insolent confidence that made her pleased, almost proud, to be with him. He was a man, and that said everything there was to say about him. Men were unreasonable. Her work for the Sûreté had become quite important. She was pleased with the chance to show Loiseau how efficient and businesslike she could be, but Loiseau would never acknowledge it. Men were unreasonable. All men. She remembered a certain sexual mannerism of his and smiled. All men set tasks and situations in which anything a woman thinks, says or does will be wrong. Men demand that women should be inventive, shameless whores, and then reject them for not being motherly enough. They want them to attract their men friends, and then they get jealous about it.

She powdered her lipstick to darken it and then pursed her lips and gave her face one final intent glare. Her eyes were good, the pupils were soft and the whites gleaming. She went to meet her ex-husband.

• • •

Loiseau had been smoking too much and not getting enough sleep. He kept putting a finger around his metal wrist-watch band; Maria remembered how she had dreaded those nervous mannerisms that always preceded a row. He gave her coffee and remembered the amount of sugar she liked. He remarked on her suit and her hair and liked the plain-fronted shoes. She knew that sooner or later he would mention the Englishman.

"Those same people have always fascinated you," he said. "You are a gold digger for brains, Maria. You are drawn irresistibly to men who think only of their work."

"Men like you," said Maria. Loiseau nodded.

He said, "He'll just bring you trouble, that Englishman."

"I'm not interested in him," said Maria.

"Don't lie to me," said Loiseau cheerfully. "Reports from seven hundred policemen go across this desk each week. I also get reports from informers, and your concierge is one of them."

"The bitch."

"It's the system," said Loiseau. "We have to fight the criminal with his own weapons."

"Datt gave him an injection of something, to question him."

"I know," said Loiseau.

"It was awful," said Maria.

"Yes, I've seen it done."

"It's like a torture. A filthy business."

"Don't lecture me," said Loiseau. "I don't like Amytal injections and I don't like Monsieur Datt or that clinic, but there's nothing I can do about it." He sighed. "You know that, Maria." But Maria didn't answer. "That house is safe from even my wide powers." He smiled, as if the idea of his endangering anything were absurd. "You deliberately translated the Englishman's confession incorrectly, Maria," Loiseau accused her.

Maria said nothing. Loiseau said, "You told Monsieur Datt that the Englishman is working under my orders. Be careful what you say or do with these people. They are dangerous--all of them are dangerous; your flashy boyfriend is the most dangerous of all."

"Jean-Paul, you mean?"

"The playboy of the Buttes Chaumont," said Loiseau sarcastically.

"Don't keep calling him my boyfriend," said Maria.

"Come, come, I know all about you," said Loiseau, using a phrase and a manner that he employed in interrogations. "You can't resist these flashy little boys, and the older you get, the more vulnerable you become to them." Maria was determined not to show anger. She knew that Loiseau was watching her closely and she felt her cheeks flushing in embarrassment and anger.

"He wants to work for me," said Loiseau.

"He likes to feel important," explained Maria, "as a child does."

"You amaze me," said Loiseau, taking care to be unamazed. He stared at her in a way that a Frenchman stares at a pretty girl on the street. She knew that he fancied her sexually and it comforted her--not to frustrate him but because to be able to interest him was an important part of their new relationship. She felt that in some ways this new feeling she had for him was more important than their marriage had been, for now they were friends, and friendship is less infirm and less fragile than love.

"You mustn't harm Jean-Paul just because of me," said Maria.

"I'm not interested in Drugstore cowboys," said Loiseau. "At least not until they are caught doing something illegal."

Maria took out her cigarettes and lit one as slowly as she knew how. She felt all the old angers welling up inside her. This was the Loiseau she had divorced--this stern, unyielding man who thought that Jean-Paul was an effeminate gigolo merely because he took himself less seriously than Loiseau ever could. Loiseau had crushed her, had reduced her to a piece of furniture, to a dossier--the dossier on Maria; and now the dossier was passed over to someone else, and Loiseau thought the man concerned would not handle it as competently as he himself had done, Long ago Loiseau had produced a cold feeling in her, and now she felt it again. This same icy scorn was poured upon anyone who smiled or relaxed; self-indulgent, complacent, idle--these were Loiseau's words for anyone without his self-flagellant attitude toward work. Even the natural functions of her body seemed something against the law when she was near Loiseau. She remembered the lengths she went to to conceal the time of her periods, in case he should call her to account for them, as though they were the mark of some ancient sin.

She looked up at him. He was still talking about Jean-Paul. How much had she missed--a word, a sentence, a lifetime? She didn't care. Suddenly the room seemed cramped, and the old claustrophobic feeling that made her unable to lock the bathroom door--in spite of Loiseau's rages about it--made this room unbearably small. She wanted to leave.

"I'll open the door," she said. "I don't want the smoke to bother you."

"Sit down," he said. "Sit down and relax."

She felt she must open the door.

"Your boyfriend Jean-Paul is a nasty little casserole,"* said Loiseau, "and you might just as well face up to it. You accuse me of prying into other people's lives; well, perhaps that's true, but do you know what I see in those lives? I see things that shock and appall me. That Jean-Paul. What is he but a toe rag for Datt, running around like a filthy little pimp. He is the sort of man that makes me ashamed of being a Frenchman. He sits all day in Le Drugstore and the other places that attract the foreigners. He holds a foreign newspaper, pretending that he is reading it--although he speaks hardly a word of any foreign language--hoping to get into conversation with some pretty little girl secretary or, better still, a foreign girl who can speak French. Isn't that a pathetic thing to see in the heart of the most civilized city in the world? This lout sitting there chewing Hollywood chewing gum. Speak to him about religion and he will tell you how he despises the Catholic Church. Yet every Sunday, when he's sitting there with his hamburger, looking so transatlantique, he's just come from Mass. He prefers foreign girls because he's ashamed of the fact that his father is a metalworker in a junk yard, and foreign girls are less likely to notice his coarse manners and his phony voice."

Maria had spent years hoping to make Loiseau jealous, and now, years after their divorce had been finalized, she had succeeded. For some reason the success brought her no pleasure. It was not in keeping with Loiseau's calm, cold, logical manner. Jealousy was weakness, and Loiseau had very few weaknesses.

Maria knew that she must open the door or faint. Although she knew this slight dizziness was claustrophobia, she put out the half-smoked cigarette in the hope that it would make her feel better. She stubbed it out viciously. It made her feel better for about two minutes. Loiseau's voice droned on. How she hated this office. The pictures of Loiseau's life, photos of him in the army, slimmer and handsome, smiling at the photographer as if to say, "This is the best time of our lives, no wives, no responsibility." The office actually smelled of Loiseau's work; she remembered that brown card that wrapped the dossiers and the smell of the old files that had come up from the cellars after goodness knows how many years. They smelled of stale vinegar. It must have been something in the paper, or perhaps the fingerprint ink.

"He's a nasty piece of work, Maria," said Loiseau. "I'd even go so far as to say evil. He took three young German girls out to that damned cottage he has near Barbizon. He was with a couple of his so-called artist friends. They raped those girls, Maria, but I couldn't get them to give evidence. He's an evil fellow; we have too many like him in Paris."

Maria shrugged. "The girls should not have gone there, they should have known what to expect. Girl tourists--they only come here to be raped; they think it's romantic to be raped in Paris."

"Two of these girls were sixteen years old, Maria, they were children; the other, only eighteen. They'd asked your boyfriend the way to their hotel and he offered them a lift there. Is this what has happened to our great and beautiful city: that a stranger can't ask the way without risking assault?"

Outside, the weather was cold. It was summer and yet the wind had an icy edge. Winter arrives earlier each year, thought Maria. Thirty-two years old, it's August again, but already the leaves die, fall and are discarded by the wind. Once August was hot midsummer, now August was the beginning of autumn. Soon all the seasons would merge, spring would not arrive and she would know the menopausal womb winter that is half life.

"Yes," said Maria. "That's what has happened." She shivered.

• • •

It was two days later when I saw M. Datt again. The courier was due to arrive any moment. He would probably be grumbling and asking for my report about the house on the Avenue Foch. It was a hard gray morning, a slight haze promising a scorching-hot afternoon. In the Petit Légionnaire there was a pause in the business of the day; the last petit déjeuner had been served, but it was still too early for lunch. Half a dozen customers were reading their newspapers or staring across the street, watching the drivers argue about parking space. M. Datt and both the Tastevins were at their usual table, which was dotted with coffeepots, cups and tiny glasses of calvados. Two taxi drivers played "ping-foot," swiveling the tiny wooden footballers to smack the ball across the green-felt cabinet. M. Datt called to me as I came down for breakfast.

"This is terribly late for a young man to wake," he called jovially. "Come and sit with us." I sat down, wondering why M. Datt had suddenly become so friendly. Behind me the ping-foot players made a sudden volley. There was a clatter and a mock cheer of triumph as the ball dropped through the goal mouth.

"I owe you an apology," said M. Datt. "I wanted to wait a few days before delivering it, so that you would find it in yourself to forgive me."

"That humble hat doesn't fit," I said. "Go a size larger."

M. Datt opened his mouth and rocked gently. "You have a fine sense of humor," he proclaimed once he had got himself under control.

"Thanks," I said. "You are quite a joker yourself."

M. Datt's mouth puckered into a smile like a carelessly ironed shirt collar. "Oh, I see what you mean," he said suddenly, and laughed. "Ha, ha, ha," he laughed. Madame Tastevin had spread the Monopoly board by now and dealt us the property cards to speed up the game. The courier was due to arrive, but getting closer to M. Datt was the way the book would do it.

"Hotels on Lecourbe and Belleville," said Madame Tastevin.

"That's what you always do," said M. Datt. "Why don't you buy railway stations, instead?"

We threw the dice and the little wooden disks went trotting around the board, paying their rents and going to prison and taking their chances just like humans. "A voyage of destruction," Madame Tastevin said it was.

"That's what all life is," said M. Datt. "We start to die on the day we are born."

My Chance card said, "Faites des réparations dans toutes vos maisons," and I had to pay 2500 francs on each of my houses. It almost knocked me out of the game, but I scraped by. As I finished settling up, I saw the courier cross the terrasse. It was the same man who had come last time. He took it very slow and stayed close to the wall. A coffee crème and a slow appraisal of the customers before contacting me. Professional. Sift the tails off and duck from trouble.

He saw me but gave no sign of doing so.

"More coffee for all of us," said Madame Tastevin. She watched the two waiters laying the tables for lunch, and now and again she called out to them, "That glass is smeary." "Use the pink napkins, save the white ones for evening." "Be sure there is enough terrine today. I'll be angry if we run short." The waiters were keen that Madame shouldn't get angry; they moved anxiously, patting the cloths and making microscopic adjustments to the placing of the cutlery. The taxi drivers decided upon another game and there was a rattle of wooden balls as the coin went into the slot.

The courier had brought out a copy of L'Express and was reading it and sipping abstractedly at his coffee. Perhaps he'll go away, I thought, perhaps I won't have to listen to his endless official instructions. Madame Tastevin was in dire straits; she mortgaged three of her properties. On the cover of L'Express there was a picture of the American Ambassador to France shaking hands with a film star at a festival.

M. Datt said, "Can I smell a terrine cooking? What a good smell."

Madame nodded and smiled. "When I was a girl, all Paris was alive with smells: oil paint and horse sweat, dung and leaky gas lamps, and everywhere the smell of superb French cooking. Ah!" She threw the dice and moved. "Now," she said, "it smells of diesel, synthetic garlic, hamburgers and money."

M. Datt said, "Your dice."

"OK," I told him. "But I must go upstairs in a moment. I have so much work to do." I said it loud enough to encourage the courier to order a second coffee.

Landing on the Boulevard des Capucines destroyed Madame Tastevin.

"I'm a scientist," said M. Datt, picking up the pieces of Madame Tastevin's bankruptcy. "The scientific method is inevitable and true."

"True to what?" I asked. "True to scientists, true to history, true to fate, true to what?"

"True to itself," said Datt.

"The most evasive truth of all," I said.

M. Datt turned to me, studied my face and wet his lips before beginning to talk. "We have begun in a bad ... a silly way." Jean-Paul came into the café--he had been having lunch there every day lately. He waved airily to us and bought cigarettes at the counter.

"But there are certain things that I don't understand," Datt continued. "What are you doing carrying a caseload of atomic secrets?"

"And what are you doing stealing it?"

Jean-Paul came across to the table, looked at both of us and sat down.

"Retrieving," said Datt. "I retrieved it for you."

"Then let's ask Jean-Paul to remove his gloves," I said.

Jean-Paul watched M. Datt anxiously. "He knows," said M. Datt. "Admit it, Jean-Paul?"

"On account," I explained to Jean-Paul, "of how we began in a bad and silly way."

"I said that," said M. Datt to Jean-Paul. "I said we had started in a bad and silly way and now we want to handle things differently."

I leaned across and peeled back the wrist of Jean-Paul's cotton gloves. The flesh was stained violet with "nin."*

"Such an embarrassment for the boy," said M. Datt, smiling. Jean-Paul glowered at him.

"Do you want to buy the documents?" I asked.

M. Datt shrugged. "Perhaps. I will give you ten thousand new francs, but if you want more than that, I would not be interested."

"I'll need double that," I said.

"And if I decline?"

"You won't get every second sheet, which I removed and deposited elsewhere."

"You are no fool," said M. Datt. "To tell you the truth, the documents were so easy to get from you that I suspected their authenticity. I'm glad to find you are no fool."

"There are more documents," I said. "A higher percentage will be Xerox copies, but you probably won't mind that. The first batch had a high proportion of originals to persuade you of their authenticity, but it's too risky to do that regularly."

"Whom do you work for?"

"Never mind who I work for. Do you want them or not?"

M. Datt nodded, smiled grimly and said, "Agreed, my friend. Agreed." He waved an arm and called for coffee. "It's just curiosity. Not that your documents are anything like my scientific interests. I shall use them merely to stimulate my mind. Then they will be destroyed. You can have them back . . ." The courier finished his coffee and then went upstairs, trying to look as though he were going no farther than the toilets on the first floor.

I blew my nose noisily and then lit a cigarette. "I don't care what you do with them, monsieur. My fingerprints are not on the documents and there is no way to connect them with me; do as you wish with them. I don't know if these documents connect with your work. I don't even know what your work is."

"My present work is scientific," explained Datt. "I run my clinic to investigate the patterns of human behavior. I could make much more money elsewhere; my qualifications are good. I am an analyst. I am still a good doctor. I could lecture on several different subjects: upon Oriental art, Buddhism or even Marxist theory. I am considered an authority on existentialism and especially upon existentialist psychology: but the work I am doing now is the work by which I will be known. The idea of being remembered after death becomes important as one gets old." He threw the dice and moved past Départ. "Give me my twenty thousand francs," he said.

"What do you do at this clinic?" I peeled off the toy money and passed it to him. He counted it and stacked it up.

"People are blinded by the sexual nature of my work. They fail to see it in its true light. They think only of the sex activity." He sighed. "It's natural, I suppose. My work is important merely because people cannot consider the subject objectively. I can; so I am one of the few men who can control such a project."

"You analyze the sexual activity?"

"Yes," said Datt. "No one does anything they do not wish to do. We do employ girls, but most of the people who go to the house go there as couples, and they leave in couples. I'll buy two more houses."

"The same couples?"

"Not always," said Datt. "But that is not necessarily a thing to be deplored. People are mentally in bondage, and their sexual activity is the cipher that can help to explain their problems. You're not collecting your rent." He pushed it over to me.

"You are sure that you are not rationalizing the ownership of a whorehouse?"

"Come along there now and see," said Datt. "It is only a matter of time before you land upon my hotels in the Avenue de la République." He shuffled his property cards together. "And then you are no more."

"You mean the clinic is operating at noon?"

"The human animal," said Datt, "is unique in that its sexual cycle continues unabated from puberty to death." He folded up the Monopoly board.

It was getting hotter now, the sort of day that gives rheumatism a jolt and expands the Eiffel Tower six inches. "Wait a moment," I said to Datt. "I'll go up and shave. Five minutes?"

"Very well," said Datt. "But there's no real need to shave; you won't be asked to participate." He smiled.

I hurried upstairs: the courier was waiting inside my room. "They bought it?"

"Yes," I said. I repeated my conversation with M. Datt.

"You've done well," he said.

"Are you running me?" I lathered my face carefully and began shaving.

"No. Is that where they took it from, where the stuffing is leaking out?"

"Yes. Then who is?"

"You know I can't answer that. You shouldn't even ask me. Clever of them to think of looking there."

"I told them where it was. I've never asked before," I said, "but whoever is running me seems to know what these people do even before I know. It's someone I know. Don't keep poking at it. It's only roughly stitched back."

"That, at least, is wrong," said the courier. "It's no one you know or have ever met. How did you know who took the case?"

"You're lying. I told you not to keep poking at it. Nin; it colors your flesh. Jean-Paul's hands were bright with it."

"What color?"

"You'll be finding out," I said. "There's plenty of nin still in there."

"Very funny."

"Well, who told you to poke your stubby peasant fingers into my stuffing?" I said. "Stop messing about and listen carefully. Datt is taking me to the clinic; follow me there."

"Very well," said the courier without enthusiasm. He wiped his hands on a large handkerchief.

"Make sure I'm out again within the hour."

"What am I supposed to do if you are not out within the hour?" he asked.

"I'm damned if I know," I said. They never ask questions like that in films. "Surely you have some sort of emergency procedure arranged?"

"No," said the courier. He spoke very quietly. "I'm afraid I haven't. I just do the reports and pop them into the London dip-mail secret tray. Sometimes it takes three days."

"Well, this could be an emergency," I said. "Something should have been arranged beforehand." I rinsed off the last of the soap and parted my hair and straightened my tie.

"I'll follow you, anyway," said the courier encouragingly. "It's a fine morning for a walk."

"Good," I said. I had a feeling that if it had been raining he would have stayed in the café. I dabbed some lotion on my face and then went downstairs to meet M. Datt. Upon the great bundle of play money he had left the waiter's tip: one franc.

Summer was here again; the pavement was hot, the streets were dusty and the traffic cops were in white jackets and dark glasses. Already the tourists were everywhere, in two styles: beards, paper parcels and bleached jeans, or straw hats, cameras and cotton jackets. They were sitting on the benches, complaining loudly, "So he explained that it was one hundred new francs or it would be a thousand old francs, and I said, 'Gracious me, I sure can understand why you people had that revolution.'"

Another tourist said, "But you don't speak the language."

A man replied, "I don't have to speak the language to know what that waiter meant."

As we walked, I turned to watch them and caught sight of the courier strolling along about 30 yards behind us.

"It will take me another five years to complete my work," said Datt. "The human mind and the human body; remarkable mechanisms but often ill-matched."

"Very interesting," I said. Datt was easily encouraged.

"At present my researches are concerned with simulating the registering of pain, or rather, the excitement caused by someone pretending to have sudden physical pain. You perhaps remember that scream I had on the tape recorder. Such a sound can cause a remarkable mental change in a man, if used in the right circumstances."

"The right circumstances being that film-set-style torture chamber where I was dumped after treatment."

"Exactly," said Datt. "You have hit it. Even if they can see that it's a recording and even if we tell them that the girl is an actress, even then the excitement they get from it is not noticeably lessened. Curious, isn't it?"

"Very," I said.

The house on the Avenue Foch quivered in the heat of the morning. The trees before it moved sensuously, as though anxious to savor the hot sun. The door was opened by a butler; we stepped inside the entrance hall. The marble was cold and the curve of the staircase twinkled where sunbeams prodded the rich colors of the carpeting. High above us the chandeliers clinked with the draft from the open door.

The only sound was a girl's scream. I recognized it as the tape recording that Datt had mentioned. The screams were momentarily louder, as a door opened and closed again somewhere on the first floor beyond the top of the staircase.

"Who is up there?" said Datt as he handed his umbrella and hat to the butler.

"Monsieur Kuang-t'ien," said the butler.

"A charming fellow," said Datt. "Major-domo of the Chinese Embassy here in Paris."

Somewhere in the house a piano played Liszt, or perhaps it was a recording.

I looked toward the first floor. The screams continued, muffled by the door that had now closed again. Suddenly, moving noiselessly like a figure in a fantasy, a young girl ran along the first-floor balcony and came down the stairs, stumbling and clinging to the banister rail. She half fell and half ran, her mouth open in the sort of soundless scream that only nightmares produce. The girl was naked, but her body was speckled with patches of bright, wet blood. She must have been stabbed 20, perhaps 30 times, and the blood had produced an intricate pattern of rivulets, like a tight bodice of fine red lace. I remembered M. Kuangt'ien's poem: "If she is not a rose, a rose all white,/Then she must be redder than the red of blood."

No one moved until Datt made a half-hearted attempt to grab her, but he was so slow that she avoided him effortlessly and ran through the door. I recognized her face now: it was the model that Byrd had painted, Annie.

"Get after her." Datt called his staff into action with the calm precision of a liner captain pulling into a pier. "Go upstairs, grab Kuang-t'ien, disarm him, clean the knife and hide it. Put him under guard, then phone the press officer at the Chinese Embassy. Don't tell him anything but he must stay in his office until I call him to arrange a meeting. Albert, get on my personal phone and call the Ministry of the Interior. Tell them we'll need some C.R.S. policemen here. I don't want the Police Municipale poking around too long. Jules, get my case and the drug box and have the transfusion apparatus ready; I'll take a look at the girl." Datt turned, but stopped and said softly, "And Byrd, get Byrd here immediately; send a car for him."

He hurried after the footmen and butler, who were running across the lawn after the bleeding girl. She glanced over her shoulder and gained fresh energy from the closeness of the pursuit. She grabbed at the gatepost and swung out onto the hot, dusty pavement of the Avenue Foch, her heart pumping the blood patches into shiny bulbous swellings that burst and dribbled into vertical stripes.

"Look!" I heard the voices of passers-by calling.

Someone else called, "Hello, darling," and there was a laugh and a lot of wolf whistles. They must have been the last thing the girl heard as she collapsed and died on the hot, dusty Parisian pavement under the trees in the Avenue Foch. A bewhiskered old crone carrying two baguettes came shuffling in her threadbare carpet slippers. She pushed through the onlookers and leaned down close to the girl's head.

"Don't worry, chérie, I'm a nurse," she croaked. "All your injuries are small and superficial." She pushed the loaves of bread tighter under her armpit and tugged at her corset bottom. "Just superficial," she said again, "so don't make so much fuss." She turned very slowly and went shuffling off down the street, muttering to herself.

There were 10 or 12 people around her by the time I reached the body. The butler arrived and threw a car blanket over her. One of the bystanders said, "Tant pis," and another said that the jolie pépée was well barricaded. His friend laughed.

A policeman is never far away in Paris, and they came quickly, the blue-and-white corrugated van disgorging cops like a gambler fanning a deck of cards. Even before the van came to a halt, the police were sorting through the bystanders, asking for papers, detaining some, prodding others away. The footmen had wrapped the girl's body in the blanket and began to heave the sagging bundle toward the gates of the house.

"Put it in the van." said Datt.

One of the policemen said. "Take the body to the house." The two men carrying the dead girl stood undecided.

"In the van." said Datt.

"I get my orders from the Commissaire de Police." said the cop. "We are on the radio now." He nodded toward the van.

Datt was furious. He struck the policeman a blow on the arm. His voice was sibilant and salivatory. "Can't you see that you are attracting attention, you fool? This is a political matter. The Ministry of the Interior is concerned. Put the body in the van. The radio will confirm my ruling." The policeman was impressed by Datt's anger. Datt pointed at me. "This is one of the officers working with Chief Inspector Loiseau of the Sûreté. Is that good enough for you?"

"Very well," said the policeman. He nodded to the two men, who pushed the body onto the floor of the police van. They closed the door.

"Journalists may arrive," said Datt to the policeman. "Leave two of your men on guard here and make sure they know about article ten."

"Yes," said the policeman docilely.

"Which way are you going?" I asked the driver.

"The meat goes to the Medico-Legal," he said.

"Ride me to the Avenue de Marigny," I said. "I'm going back to my office."

By now the policeman in charge of the vehicle was browbeaten by Datt's fierce orders. He agreed to my riding in the van without a word of argument. At the corner of the Avenue de Marigny I stopped the van and got out. I needed a large brandy.

• • •

I expected the courier from the Embassy to contact me again that same day, but he didn't return until the next morning. He put his document case on top of the wardrobe and sank into my best armchair.

He answered an unasked question. "It's a whorehouse," he pronounced. "He calls it a clinic, but it's more like a whorehouse."

"Thanks for your help," I said.

"Don't get snotty--you wouldn't want me telling you what to say in your reports."

"That's true," I admitted.

"Certainly it's true. It's a whorehouse that a lot of the Embassy people use. Not just our people--the Americans, etc., use it."

I said, "Straighten me up. Is this just a case of one of our Embassy people getting some dirty pictures back from Datt? Or something like that?"

The courier stared at me. "I'm not allowed to talk about anything like that," he said.

"Don't give me that stuff," I said. "They killed that girl yesterday."

"In passion," explained the courier.

"It was part of a kinky sex act."

"I don't care if it was done as a publicity stunt," I said. "She's dead and I want as much information as I can get to avoid trouble. It's not just for my own skin; it's in the interests of the department that I avoid trouble."

The courier said nothing, but I could see he was weakening.

I said, "If I'm heading into that house again just to recover some pictures of a secretary on the job, I'll come back and haunt you."

"Give me some coffee," said the courier, and I knew he had decided to tell me whatever he knew. I boiled the kettle brewed up a pint of strong black coffee.

"Kuang-t'ien," said the courier, "the man who knifed the girl. Do you know who he is?"

"Major-domo at the Chinese Embassy, Datt said."

"That's his cover. His name is Kuang-t'ien, but he's one of the top five men in the Chinese nuclear program."

"He speaks damn good French."

"Of course he does. He was trained at the Laboratoire Curie, here in Paris. So was his boss, Chien San-chiang, who is head of the Atomic Energy Institute in Peking."

"You seem to know a lot about it," I said.

"I was evaluating it this time last year."

"Tell me more about this man who mixes his sex with switchblades."

He pulled his coffee toward him and stirred it thoughtfully. Finally, he began:

"Four years ago, the U-2 flights picked up the fourteen-acre gaseous diffusion plant taking hydroelectric power from the Yellow River not far from Lanchow. The experts had predicted that the Chinese would make their bombs as the Russians and French did, and as we did, too: by producing plutonium in atomic reactors. But the Chinese didn't; our people have been close. I've seen the photos. Very close. That plant proves that they are betting all or nothing on hydrogen. They are going full steam ahead on their hydrogen research program. By concentrating on the light elements generally and by pushing the megaton instead of the kiloton bomb, they could be the leading nuclear power in eight or ten years if their hydrogen research pays off. This man Kuang-t'ien is their best authority on hydrogen. See what I mean?"

I poured more coffee and thought about it. The courier got his case down and rummaged through it. "When you left the clinic yesterday, did you go in the police van?"

"Yes."

"Um. I thought you might have. Good stunt, that. Well, I hung around for a little while; then when I realized that you'd gone, I came back here. I hoped you'd come back, too."

"I had a drink," I said. "I put my mind in neutral for an hour."

"That's unfortunate," said the courier. "Because while you were away, you had a visitor. He asked for you at the counter, then hung around for nearly an hour; but when you didn't come back, he took a cab to the Hotel Lotti."

"What was he like?"

The courier smiled his mirthless smile and produced some 8 x 10 glossy pictures of a man drinking coffee in the afternoon sunlight. They weren't good-quality photographs. The man was about 50, dressed in a lightweight suit, with a narrow-brimmed felt hat. His tie had a small monogram that was unreadable and his cuff links were large and ornate. He had large black sunglasses which in one photo he had removed to polish. When he drank coffee, he raised his little finger high and pursed his lips.

"Ten out of ten," I said. "Good stuff--waiting till he took the glasses off. But you could use a better D-and-P man."

"They are just rough prints," said the courier. "The negs are half-frame, but they are quite good."

"You are a regular secret agent," I said admiringly. "What did you do--shoot him in the ankle with the toecap gun, send out a signal to H.Q. on your tooth and play the whole thing back on your wrist watch?"

He rummaged through his papers again, then slapped a copy of L'Express upon the tabletop. Inside, there was a photo of the U. S. Ambassador greeting a group of American businessmen at Orly airport. The courier looked up at me briefly.

"Fifty percent of this group of Americans work--or did work--for the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of the remainder are experts on atomic energy or some allied subject. Bertram: nuclear physics at MIT. Bestbridge: radiation sickness report of 1961. Waldo: Fallout experiments and work at the Hiroshima hospital. Hudson: hydrogen research--now he works for the U. S. Army." He marked Hudson's face with his nail. It was the man he'd photographed.

"OK," I said. "What are you trying to prove?"

"Nothing. I'm just putting you in the picture. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said. "Thanks."

"I'm just juxtaposing a hydrogen expert from Peking with a hydrogen expert from the Pentagon. I'm wondering why they are both in the same city at the same time and especially why they both cross your path. It's the sort of thing that makes me nervous." He gulped down the rest of his coffee.

"You shouldn't drink too much of that strong black coffee," I said. "It'll be keeping you awake at night."

The courier picked up his photos and the copy of L'Express. "I've got a system for getting to sleep," he said. "I count reports I've filed."

"Watch resident agents jumping to conclusions," I said.

"It's not soporific." He got to his feet.

"I've left the most important thing until last," he said.

"Have you?" I said, and wondered what was more important than the Chinese People's Republic preparing for nuclear warfare.

"The girl was ours."

"What girl was whose?"

"The murdered girl was working for us, for the department."

"A floater?"

"No. Permanent; warranty contract, the lot."

"Poor kid," I said. "Was she pumping Kuang-t'ien?"

"It's nothing that's gone through the Embassy. They know nothing about her there."

"But you knew?"

"Yes."

"You are playing both ends."

"Just like you."

"Not at all. I'm just London. The jobs I do for the Embassy are just favors. I can decline if I want to. What does London want me to do about the girl?"

He said, "She has an apartment on the Left Bank. Just check through her personal papers, her possessions. You know the sort of thing. It's a long shot, but you might find something. These are her keys--the department held duplicates for emergencies--small one for mailbox; large ones, front door and apartment door."

"You're crazy. The police were probably turning it over within thirty minutes of her death."

"Of course they were. I've had the place under observation. That's why I waited a bit before telling you. London is pretty certain that no one--not Datt nor Loiseau nor anyone--knew that the girl worked for us. It's probable that they just made a routine search."

"If the girl was a permanent, she wouldn't leave anything lying around," I said.

"Of course she wouldn't. But there may be one or two little things that could embarrass us all . . ." He looked around the grimy wallpaper of my room and pushed my ancient bedstead. It creaked.

"Even the most careful employee is tempted to have something close at hand."

"That would be against orders."

"Safety comes above orders," he said. I shrugged my grudging agreement. "That's right," he said. "Now you see why they want you to go. Go and probe around there as though it's your room and you've just been killed. You might find something where anyone else would fail. There's an insurance of about thirty thousand new francs if you find someone who you think should get it." He wrote the address on a slip of paper and put it on the table. "I'll be in touch," he said. "Thanks for the coffee, it was very good."

"If I start serving instant coffee," I said, "perhaps I'll get a little less work."

• • •

The dead girl's name was Annie Couzins. She was 24 and had lived in a new piece of speculative real estate not far from the Boul' Mich. The walls were close and the ceilings were low. What the accommodation agents described as a studio apartment was a cramped bed-sitting room. There were large cupboards containing a bath, a toilet and a clothes rack, respectively. Most of the construction money had been devoted to an entrance hall lavished with plate glass, marble and bronze-colored mirrors that made you look tanned and rested and slightly out of focus.

Had it been an old house or even a pretty one, then perhaps some memory of the dead girl would have remained there, but the room was empty, contemporary and pitiless. I examined the locks and hinges, probed the mattress and shoulder pads, rolled back the cheap carpet and put a knife blade between the floor boards. Nothing. Perfume, lingerie, bills, a postcard greeting from Nice, ". . . some of the swimsuits are divine . . ." a book of dreams, six copies of Elle, laddered stockings, six medium-priced dresses, eight and a half pairs of shoes, a good English wool overcoat, an expensive transistor radio tuned to France Musique, tin of Nescafé, tin of powdered milk, saccharin, a damaged handbag containing spilled powder and a broken mirror, a new saucepan. Nothing to show what she was, had been, feared, dreamed of or wanted.

The bell rang. There was a girl standing there. She may have been 25, but it was difficult to say. Big cities leave a mark. The eyes of city dwellers scrutinize rather than see; they assess the value and the going rate and try to separate the winners from the losers. That's what this girl tried to do.

"Are you from the police?" she asked.

"No. Are you?"

"I'm Monique. I live next door in apartment number eleven."

"I'm Annie's cousin, Pierre."

"You've got a funny accent. Are you a Belgian?" She gave a little giggle, as though being a Belgian was the funniest thing that could happen to anyone.

"Half Belgian," I lied amiably.

"I can usually tell. I'm very good with accents."

"You certainly are," I said admiringly.

"Not many people detect that I'm half Belgian."

"Which half is Belgian?"

"The front half."

She giggled again. "Was your mother or your father Belgian, I mean?"

"Mother. Father was a Parisian with a bicycle."

She tried to peer into the flat over my shoulder. "I would invite you in for a cup of coffee," I said, "but I mustn't disturb anything."

"You're hinting. You want me to invite you for coffee."

"Damned right I do." I eased the door closed. "I'll be there in five minutes."

I turned back to cover up my searching. I gave a last look to the ugly, cramped little room. It was the way I'd go one day. There would be someone from the department making sure that I hadn't left "one or two little things that could embarrass us all." Goodbye, Annie, I thought. I didn't know you, but I know you now as well as anyone knows me. You won't retire to a little tabac in Nice and get a monthly check from some phony insurance company. No, you can be resident agent in hell, Annie, and your bosses will be sending directives from heaven, telling you to clarify your reports and reduce your expenses.

I went to apartment number 11. Her room was like Annie's: cheap gilt and film-star photos. A bath towel on the floor, ashtrays overflowing with red-marked butts, a plateful of garlic sausage that had curled up and died.

Monique had made the coffee by the time I got there. She'd poured boiling water onto milk powder and instant coffee and stirred it with a plastic spoon. She was a tough girl under the giggling exterior and she surveyed me carefully from behind fluttering eyelashes.

"I thought you were a burglar," she said, "then I thought you were the police."

"And now?"

"You're Annie's cousin, Pierre. You're anyone you want to be, from Charlemagne to Tin-Tin; it's no business of mine, and you can't hurt Annie."

I took out my notecase and extracted a 100-new-franc note. I put it on the low coffee table. She stared at me, thinking it was some kind of sexual proposition.

"Did you ever work with Annie at the clinic?" I asked.

"No."

I placed another note down and repeated the question.

"No," she said.

I put down a third note and watched her carefully. When she again said no, I leaned forward and took her hand roughly. "Don't no me," I said. "You think I came here without finding out first?"

She stared at me angrily. I kept hold of her hand. "Sometimes," she said grudgingly.

"How many?"

"Ten, perhaps twelve."

"That's better," I said. I turned her hand over, pressed my finger against the back of it to make her fingers open and slapped the three notes into her open palm. I let go of her and she leaned back out of reach, rubbing the back of her hand where I had held it. They were slim, bony hands with rosy knuckles that had known buckets of cold water and Marseilles soap. She didn't like her hands. She put them inside and behind things and hid them under her folded arms.

"You bruised me," she complained.

"Rub money on it."

"Ten, perhaps twelve times," she admitted.

"Tell me about the place. What went on there?"

"You are from the police."

"I'll do a deal with you, Monique. Slip me. three hundred and I'll tell you all about what I do."

She smiled grimly. "Annie wanted an extra girl sometimes, just as a hostess . . . the money was useful."

"Did Annie have plenty of money?"

"Plenty? I never knew anyone who had plenty. And even if they did, it wouldn't go very far in this town. She didn't go to the bank in an armored car, if that's what you mean." I didn't say anything

Monique continued: "She did all right, but she was silly with it. She gave it to anyone who spun her a yarn. Her parents will miss her, so will Father Marconi; she was always giving to his collections for kids and missions and cripples. I told her over and over she was silly with it. You're not Annie's cousin, but you throw too much money around to be the police."

"The men you met there. You were told to ask them things and to remember what they said."

"I didn't go to bed with them . . ."

"I don't care if you took thé anglais with them and dunked the gâteau sec, what were your instructions?" She hesitated, and I placed five more 100-franc notes on the table but kept my fingers on them.

"Of course I made love to the men, just as Annie did, but they were all refined men. Men of taste and culture."

"Sure they were," I said. "Men of real taste and culture."

"It was done with tape recorders. There were two switches on the bedside lamps. I was told to get them talking about their work. So boring, men talking about their work, but are they ready to do it? My God, they are."

"Did you ever handle the tapes?"

"No, the recording machines were in some other part of the clinic." She eyed the money.

"There's more to it than that. Annie did more than that."

"Annie was a fool. Look where it got her. That's where it will get me if I talk too much."

"I'm not interested in you," I said. "I'm only interested in Annie. What else did Annie do?"

"She substituted the tapes. She changed them. Sometimes she made her own recordings."

"She took a machine into the house?"

"Yes. It was one of those little ones, about four hundred new francs they cost. She had it in her handbag. I found it there once when I was looking for her lipstick to borrow."

"What did Annie say about it?"

"Nothing. I never told her. And I never opened her handbag again, either. It was her business, nothing to do with me."

"The miniature recorder isn't in her flat now."

"I didn't pinch it."

"Then who do you think did?"

"I told her not once. I told her a thousand times."

"What did you tell her?"

She pursed up her mouth in a gesture of contempt. "What do you think I told her, M. Annie's cousin Pierre? I told her that to record conversations in such a house was a dangerous thing to do. In a house owned by people like those people."

"People like what people?"

"In Paris one does not talk of such things, but it's said that the Ministry of the Interior or the S. D. E. C. E.* owns the house to discover the indiscretions of foolish aliens." She gave a tough little sob but recovered herself quickly.

"You were fond of Annie?"

"I never got on well with women until I got to know her. I was broke when I met her, at least I was down to only ten francs. I had run away from home. I was in the laundry, asking them to split the order because I didn't have enough to pay. The place where I lived had no running water. Annie lent me the money for the whole laundry bill--twenty francs--so that I had clean clothes while looking for a job. She gave me the first warm coat I ever had. She showed me how to put on my eyes. She listened to my stories and let me cry. She told me not to live the life that she had led, going from one man to another. She would have shared her last cigarette with a stranger. Yet she never asked me questions. Annie was an angel."

"It certainly sounds like it."

"Oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that Annie and I were a couple of Lesbians."

"Some of my best lovers are Lesbians," I said.

Monique smiled. I thought she was going to cry all over me, but she sniffed and smiled. "I don't know if we were or not," she said.

"Does it matter?"

"No, it doesn't matter. Anything would be better than to have stayed in the place I was born. My parents are still there; it's like living through a siege, besieged by the cost of necessities. They are careful how they use detergent, Nescafé is measured out. Rice, pasta and potatoes eke out tiny bits of meat. Bread is consumed, meat is revered and Kleenex tissues never afforded. Unnecessary lights are switched off immediately; they put on a sweater instead of the heating. In the same building, families crowd into single rooms, rats chew enormous holes in the woodwork--there's no food for them to chew on--and the W. C. is shared by three families, and it usually doesn't flush. The people who live at the top of the house have to walk down two flights to use a cold-water tap. And yet in this same city, I get taken out to dinner to three-star restaurants where the bill for two dinners would keep my parents for a year. At the Ritz, a man friend of mine paid nine francs a day to them for looking after his dog. That's just about half the pension my father gets for being blown up in the War. So when you people come snooping around here, flashing your money and protecting the République Française's rocket program, atomic plants, supersonic bombers and nuclear submarines or whatever it is you're protecting, don't expect too much from my patriotism."

She bit her lip and glared at me, daring me to contradict her, but I didn't contradict. "It's a lousy, rotten town," I agreed.

"And dangerous," she said.

"Yes," I said. "Paris is all of those things."

She laughed. "Paris is like me, cousin Pierre; it's no longer young, and too dependent upon visitors who bring money. Paris is a woman with a little too much alcohol in her veins. She talks a little too loud and thinks she is young and gay. But she has smiled too often at strange men and the words 'I love you' trip too easily from her tongue. The ensemble is chic and the paint is generously applied, but look closely and you'll see the cracks showing through."

She got to her feet, groped along the bedside table for a match and lit her cigarette with a hand that trembled very slightly. She turned back to me. "I saw the girls I knew taking advantage of offers that came from rich men they could never possibly love. I despised the girls and wondered how they could bring themselves to go to bed with such unattractive men. Well, now I know." The smoke was getting in her eyes. "It was fear. Fear of being a woman instead of a girl, a woman whose looks are slipping away rapidly, leaving her alone and unwanted in this vicious town."

She was crying now and I stepped closer to her and touched her arm. For a moment, she seemed about to let her head fall upon my shoulder, but I felt her body tense and unyielding. I took a business card from my top pocket and put it on the bedside table next to a box of chocolates. She pulled away from me irritably. "Just phone if you want to talk more," I said.

"You're English," she said suddenly. It must have been something in my accent or syntax. I nodded.

"It will be strictly business," she said. "Cash payments."

"You don't have to be so tough on yourself," I said. She said nothing.

"And thanks," I said.

"Get stuffed," said Monique.

• • •

First there came a small police van, its klaxon going. Cooperating with it was a blue-uniformed man on a motorcycle. He kept his whistle in his mouth and blew repeatedly. Sometimes he was ahead of the van, sometimes behind it. He waved his right hand at the traffic, as if by just the draft from it he could force the parked cars up on the pavement. The noise was deafening. The traffic ducked out of the way, some cars went willingly, some begrudgingly, but after a couple of beeps on the whistle, they crawled up on the stones, the pavement and over traffic islands like tortoises. Behind the van came the flying column: three long blue buses jammed with garde-mobile men, who stared at the cringing traffic with a bored look on their faces. At the rear of the column came a radio car. Loiseau watched them disappear down to the Faubourg St. Honoré. Soon the traffic began to move again. He turned away from the window and back to Maria.

"Dangerous," pronounced Loiseau. "He's playing a dangerous game. The girl is killed in his house, and Datt is pulling every political string he can find to prevent an investigation taking place. He'll regret it." He got to his feet and walked across the room.

"Sit down, darling," said Maria. "You are just wasting calories in getting annoyed."

"I'm not Datt's boy," said Loiseau.

"And no one will imagine that you are," said Maria. She wondered why Loiseau saw everything as a threat to his prestige.

"The girl is entitled to an investigation," explained Loiseau. "That's why I became a policeman. I believe in equality before the law. And now they are trying to tie my hands. It makes me furious."

"Don't shout," said Maria. "What sort of effect do you imagine that has upon the people who work for you, hearing you shouting?"

"You are right," said Loiseau. Maria loved him. It was when he capitulated so readily like that that she loved him so intensely. She wanted to care for him and advise him and make him the most successful policeman in the whole world.

Maria said, "You are the finest policeman in the whole world."

He smiled. "You mean, with your help I could be." Maria shook her head. "Don't argue," said Loiseau. "I know the workings of your mind by now."

Maria smiled, too. He did know. That was the awful thing about their marriage. They knew each other too well. To know all is to forgive nothing.

"She was one of my girls," said Loiseau. Maria was surprised. Of course Loiseau had girls; he was no monk, but it surprised her to hear him talk like that to her.

"One of them?" She deliberately made her voice mocking.

"Don't be so bloody arch, Maria. I can't stand you raising one eyebrow and adopting that patronizing tone. One of my girls." He said it slowly to make it easy for her to understand. He was so pompous that Maria almost giggled. "One of my girls, working for me as an informant."

"Don't all the tarts do that?"

"She wasn't a tart, she was a highly intelligent girl giving us first-class information."

"Admit it, darling," Maria cooed, "you were a tiny bit infatuated with her." She raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"You stupid cow," said Loiseau. "What's the good of treating you like an intelligent human?" Maria was shocked by the rusty-edged hatred that cut her. She had made a kind, almost loving remark. Of course the girl had fascinated Loiseau and had in turn been fascinated by him. The fact that it was true was proved by Loiseau's anger. But did his anger have to be so bitter? Did he have to wound her to know if blood flowed through her veins?

Maria got to her feet. "I'll go," she said. She remembered Loiseau once saying that Mozart was the only person who could have understood him. She had long since decided that that, at least, was true.

"You said you wanted to ask me something."

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. Sit down and tell me."

She shook her head. "Another time."

"Do you have to treat me like a monster, just because I won't play your womanly games?"

"No," she said.

There was no need for Maria to feel sorry for Loiseau. He didn't feel sorry for himself and seldom for anyone else. He had pulled the mechanism of their marriage apart and now looked at it as if it were a broken toy, wondering why it didn't work. Poor Loiseau. My poor, poor, darling Loiseau. I, at least, can build again, but you don't know what you did that killed us.

"You're crying, Maria. Forgive me. I'm so sorry."

"I'm not crying and you're not sorry." She smiled at him. "Perhaps that's always been our problem."

Loiseau shook his head, but it wasn't a convincing denial.

Maria walked back toward the Faubourg St. Honoré. Jean-Paul was at the wheel of her car.

"He made you cry," said Jean-Paul. "The rotten swine."

"I made myself cry," said Maria.

Jean-Paul put his arm around her and held her tight. It was all over between her and Jean-Paul, but feeling his arm around her was like a shot of cognac. She stopped feeling sorry for herself and studied her make-up.

"You look magnificent," said Jean-Paul. "I would like to take you away and make love to you."

There was a time when that would have affected her, but she had long since decided that Jean-Paul seldom wanted to make love to anyone, although he did it often enough, heaven knows. But it is a good thing to hear when you have just argued with an ex-husband. She smiled at Jean-Paul, and he took her hand in his large tanned one and turned it around like a bronze sculpture on a turntable. Then he released it and grabbed at the controls of the car. He wasn't as good a driver as Maria was, but she preferred to be his passenger rather than drive herself. She lolled back and pretended that Jean-Paul was the capable, tanned he-man that he looked. She watched the pedestrians and intercepted the envious glances. They were a perfect picture of modern Paris: the flashy automobile, Jean-Paul's relaxed good looks and expensive clothes, her own well-cared-for appearance--for she was as sexy now as she had ever been. She leaned her head close upon Jean-Paul's shoulder. She could smell his after-shave perfume and the rich animal smell of the leather seats. Jean-Paul changed gear as they roared across the Place de la Concorde. She felt his arm muscles ripple against her cheek.

"Did you ask him?" asked Jean-Paul.

"No," she said. "I couldn't. He wasn't in the right mood."

"He's never in the right mood, Maria. And he's never going to be. Loiseau knows what you want to ask him, and he precipitates situations so that you never will ask him."

"Loiseau isn't like that," said Maria. She had never thought of that. Loiseau was clever and subtle; perhaps it was true.

"Look," said Jean-Paul, "during the last year, that house on the Avenue Foch has held exhibitions, orgies, with perversions, blue movies and everything, but has never had any trouble from the police. Even when a girl dies there, there is still little or no trouble. Why? Because it has the protection of the French Government. Why does it have protection? Because the activities at the house are filmed and photographed for official dossiers."

"I'm not sure you're right. Datt implies that, but I'm not sure."

"Well, I am sure," said Jean-Paul. "I'll bet you that those films and photos are in the possession of the Ministry of the Interior. Loiseau probably sees every one of them. They probably have a private showing once a week. Loiseau probably saw that film of you and me within twenty-four hours of its being taken."

"Do you think so?" said Maria. A flush of fear rose inside her, radiating panic like a two-kilowatt electric fire. Jean-Paul's large, cool hand gripped her shoulder. She wished he would grip her harder. She wanted him to hurt her so that her sins would be expiated and erased by the pain. She thought of Loiseau seeing the film in the company of other policemen. Please, God, it hadn't happened. Please, please, God. She thought she had agonized over every aspect of her foolishness, but this was a new and most terrible one.

"But why would they keep the films?"

Maria asked, although she knew the answer.

"Datt selects the people who use that house. Datt is a psychiatrist, a genius . . ."

". . . An evil genius."

"Perhaps an evil genius," said Jean-Paul objectively. "Perhaps an evil genius, but by gathering a select circle of people--people of great influence, of prestige and diplomatic power--Datt can compile remarkable assessments and predictions about their behavior in everything they do. Many major shifts of French Government policy have been decided by Datt's insights and analysis of sexual behavior."

"It's vile," said Maria.

"It's the world in our time."

"It's France in our time," Maria corrected. "Foul man."

"He's not foul," said Jean-Paul. "He is not responsible for what those people do. He doesn't even encourage them. As far as Datt is concerned, his guests could behave with impeccable decorum; he would be just as happy to record and analyze their attitudes."

"Voyeur."

"He's not even a voyeur. That's the odd thing. That's what makes him of such great importance to the Ministry. And that's why your ex-husband could do nothing to retrieve that film, even if he wished to."

"And what about you?" asked Maria casually.

"Be reasonable," said Jean-Paul. "It's true I do little jobs for Datt, but I am not his confidant. I've no idea of what happens to the film . . ."

"They burn them sometimes," Maria remembered. "And often they are taken away by the people concerned."

"You have never heard of duplicate prints?"

Maria's hopes sank. "Why didn't you ask for that piece of film of us?"

"Because you said let them keep it. Let them show it every Friday night, you said."

"I was drunk," said Maria. "It was a joke."

"It's a joke for which we are both paying dearly."

Maria snorted. "You love the idea of people seeing the film. It's just the image you love to project. The great lover . . ." She bit her tongue. She had almost added that the film was his sole documentary proof of heterosexuality, but she closed her eyes. "Loiseau could get the film back," she said. She was sure, sure, sure that Loiseau hadn't seen that piece of film, but the memory of the fear remained.

"Loiseau could get it," she said desperately, wanting Jean-Paul to agree on this one, very small point.

"But he won't," said Jean-Paul. "He won't because I'm involved, and your ex-husband hates me with a deep and illogical loathing. The trouble is that I can understand why he does. I'm no good for you, Maria. You would probably have managed the whole thing excellently except that Loiseau is jealous of your relationship with me. Perhaps we should cease to see each other for a few months."

"I'm sure we should."

"But I couldn't bear it, Maria."

"Why the hell not? We don't love each other. I am only a suitable companion, and you have so many other women you'd never even notice my absence." She despised herself even before she'd completed the sentence. Jean-Paul detected her motive immediately, of course, and responded.

"My darling little Maria." He touched her leg lightly and sexlessly. "You are different from the others. The others are just stupid little tarts who amuse me as decorations. They are not women. You are the only real woman I know. You are the woman I love, Maria."

"Monsieur Datt himself," said Maria, "he could get the film."

Jean-Paul pulled into the side of the road and double-parked. "We've played this game long enough, Maria," he said.

"What game?" asked Maria. Behind them a taxi driver swore bitterly as he realized they were not going to move.

"The how-much-you-hate-Datt game," said Jean-Paul.

"I do hate him."

"He's your father, Maria."

"He's not my father; that's just a stupid story that he told you for some purpose of his own."

"Then where is your father?"

"He was killed in 1940 in Bouillon, Belgium, during the fighting with the Germans. He was killed in an air raid."

"He would have been about the same age as Datt."

"So would a million men," said Maria. "It's such a stupid lie that it's not worth arguing about. Datt hoped I'd swallow that story, but now even he no longer speaks of it. It's a stupid lie."

Jean-Paul smiled uncertainly. "Why?"

"Oh, Jean-Paul. Why. You know how his evil little mind works. I was married to an important man in the Sûreté. Can't you see how convenient it would be to have me thinking he was my father? A sort of insurance, that's why."

Jean-Paul was tired of this argument. "Then he's not your father. But I still think you should cooperate."

"Cooperate how?"

"Tell him a few snippets of information."

"Could he get the film if it was really worth while?"

"I can ask him." He smiled. "Now you are being sensible, my love," he said. Maria nodded as the car moved forward into the traffic. Jean-Paul planted a brief kiss on her forehead. A taxi driver saw him do it and tooted a small, illegal toot on the horn. Jean-Paul kissed Maria's forehead again, a little more ardently. The great Arc de Triomphe loomed over them as they roared around the Etoile like soapsuds round the kitchen sink. A hundred tires screamed an argument about centrifugal force, then they were into the Avenue de la Grande Armée. The traffic had stopped at the traffic lights. A man danced nimbly between the cars, collecting money and whipping newspapers from window to window like a fan dancer. As the traffic lights changed, the cars slid forward. Maria opened her paper, the ink was still wet and it smudged under her thumb. AMERICAN TOURIST DISAPPEARS, the headline said. There was a photograph of Hudson, the American hydrogen-research man. The newspaper said he was a frozen-foods executive named Parks, which was the story the U. S. Embassy had given out. Neither the face nor either name meant anything to Maria.

"Anything in the paper?" asked Jean-Paul. He was fighting a duel with a Mini-Cooper.

"No," said Maria. She rubbed the newsprint on her thumb. "There never is at this time of year. The English call it the silly season."

•

Les Chiens is everything that delights the yé-yé set. It's dark, hot and squirming like a tin of live bait. The music is ear-splitting and the drinks remarkably expensive even for Paris. I sat in a corner with Byrd.

"Not my sort of place at all," Byrd said. "But in a curious way, I like it."

A girl in gold crocheted pajamas squeezed past our table, leaned over and kissed my ear. "Chéri," she said. "Long time no see," and thereby exhausted her entire English vocabulary.

"Dash me," said Byrd. "You can see right through it, dash me."

The girl patted Byrd's shoulder affectionately and moved on.

"You do have some remarkable friends," said Byrd. He had ceased to criticize me and begun to regard me as a social curiosity well worth observing.

"A journalist must have contacts," I explained.

"My goodness, yes," said Byrd.

The music stopped suddenly. Byrd mopped his face with a red silk handkerchief. "It's like a stokehold," he said. The club was strangely silent.

"Were you an engineer officer?"

"I did gunnery school when I was on lieutenants' list. Finished a commander; might have made captain if there'd been a little war, rear admiral if there'd been another big one. Didn't fancy waiting. Twenty-seven years of sea duty is enough. Right through the hostilities and out the other side, more ships than I care to remember."

"You must miss it."

"Never. Why should I? Running a ship is just like running a small factory; just as exciting at times and just as dull, for the most part. Never miss it a bit. Never think about it, to tell you the truth."

"Don't you miss the sea, or the movement, or the weather?"

"Good grief, laddie, you've got a nasty touch of the Joseph Conrads. Ships, especially cruisers, are large metal factories, rather prone to pitch in bad weather. Nothing good about that, old boy--damned inconvenient, that's the truth of it! The navy was just a job of work for me, and it suited me fine. Nothing against the navy, mind, not at all, owe it an awful lot, no doubt of it, but it was just a job like any other; no magic to being a sailor." There was a plonking sound as someone tapped the amplifier and put on another record. "Painting is the only true magic," said Byrd. "Translating three dimensions into two--or, if you are a master, four." He nodded suddenly, the loud music started. The clientele, who had been stiff and anxious during the silence, smiled and relaxed, for they no longer faced the strain of conversing together.

On the staircase, a wedge of people were embracing and laughing, like advertising photos. At the bar a couple of English photographers were talking in Cockney and an English writer was explaining James Bond.

A waiter put down four glasses full of ice cubes and a half bottle of Johnnie Walker on the table before us. "What's this?" I asked.

The waiter turned away without answering. Two Frenchmen at the bar began to argue with the English writer, and a bar stool fell over. The noise wasn't loud enough for anyone to notice. On the dance floor, a girl in a shiny plastic suit was swearing at a man who had burned a hole in it with his cigarette. I heard the English writer behind me say, "But I have always immensely adored violence. His violence is his humanity. Unless you understand that, you understand nothing." He wrinkled his nose and smiled.

One of the Frenchmen replied, "He suffers in translation." One of the photographers was clicking his fingers in time to the music.

"Don't we all?" said the English writer, and looked around.

Byrd said, "Shocking noise."

"Don't listen," I said.

"What?" said Byrd.

The English writer was saying ". . . a violent Everyman in a violent but humdrum . . ." he paused, "but humdrum world." He nodded agreement to himself. "Let me remind you of Baudelaire. There's a sonnet that begins . . ."

"So this bird wants to get out of the car . . ." one of the photographers was saying.

"Speak a little more quietly," said the English writer. "I'm going to recite a sonnet."

"Belt up," said the photographer over his shoulder. "This bird wanted to get out of the car . . ."

"Baudelaire," said the writer. "Violent, macabre and symbolic."

"You leave bollicks out of this," said the photographer, and his friend laughed.

The writer put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Look, my friend . . ."

The photographer planted a right jab into his solar plexus without spilling the drink he was holding. The writer folded up like a deck chair and hit the floor. A waiter grabbed toward the photographer but stumbled over the English writer's inert body.

"Look here," said Byrd, and a passing waiter turned so fast that the half bottle of whisky and the four glasses of ice were knocked over. Someone aimed a blow at the photographer's head. Byrd got to his feet, saying quietly and reasonably, "You spilled the drink on the floor. Dash me, you'd better pay for it. Only thing to do. Damned rowdies."

The waiter pushed Byrd violently and he fell back and disappeared among the densely packed dancers. Two or three people began to punch each other. A wild blow took me in the small of the back, but the attacker had moved on. I got both shoulder blades rested against the nearest piece of wall and braced the sole of my right foot for leverage. One of the photographers came my way, but he kept going and wound up grappling with a waiter. There was a scuffle going on at the top of the staircase, and then violence traveled through the place like a flash flood. Everyone was punching everyone, girls were screaming and the music seemed to be even louder than before. A man hurried a girl along the corridor past me. "It's those English that make trouble," he complained.

"Yes," I said.

"You look English."

"No, I'm Belgian," I said. He hurried after the girl. When I got near the emergency exit, a waiter was barring the way. Behind me, the screaming, grunting and breaking noises continued unabated. Someone had switched the music to top volume.

"I'm coming through," I said to the waiter.

"No," he said. "No one leaves."

A small man moved quickly alongside me. I flinched away from what I expected would be a blow upon my shoulder, but it was a pat of encouragement. The man stepped forward and felled the waiter with two nasty karate cuts. "They are all damned rude," he said, stepping over the prostrate waiter. "Especially waiters. If they showed a little good manners, their customers might behave better."

"Yes," I said.

"Come along," said Byrd. "Don't moon around. Stay close to the wall. Watch the rear. You!" he shouted to a man with a ripped evening suit who was trying to open the emergency door. "Pull the top bolt, man, ease the mortise at the same time. Don't hang around, don't want to have to disable too many of them; this is my painting hand."

We emerged into a dark side street. Maria's car was drawn up close to the exit. "Get in," she said.

"Were you inside?" I asked her.

She nodded. "I was waiting for Jean-Paul."

"Well, you two get along," said Byrd.

"What about Jean-Paul?" Maria said to me.

"You two get along," said Byrd. "He'll be quite safe."

"Can't we give you a lift?" asked Maria.

"I'd better go back and see if Jean-Paul is all right," said Byrd.

"You'll get killed," said Maria.

"Can't leave Jean-Paul in there," explained Byrd. "Close ranks. Jean-Paul's got to stop hanging around in this sort of place and get to bed early. The morning light is the only light to paint in. I wish I could make him understand that."

Byrd hurried back toward the club. "He'll get killed," said Maria.

"I don't think so," I said. We got into Maria's E-type.

Hurrying along the street came two men in raincoats and felt hats.

"They are from the P. J. crime squad," said Maria. One of the men signaled to her. She wound the window down. He leaned down and touched his hat in salute. "I'm looking for Byrd," he said to Maria.

"Why?" I asked, but Maria had already told them he was the man who had just left us.

"Police Judiciaire. I'm arresting him for the murder of Annie Couzins," he said. "I've got sworn statements from witnesses."

"Oh, God," said Maria. "I'm sure he's not guilty; he's not the violent type."

I looked back to the door, but Byrd had disappeared inside. The two policemen followed. Maria revved the motor and we bumped off the pavement, skimmed past a moto and purred into the Boul' St. Germain. The visitors had spread through Paris by now and they strolled around entranced, in love, jilted, gay, suicidal, inspired, bellicose, defeated; in clean cotton St.-Trop, wine-stained Shetland, bearded, bald, bespectacled, bronzed. Acned little girls in bumbag trousers, lithe Danes, fleshy Greeks, nouveau-riche Communists, illiterate writers, would-be directors--Paris had them all that summer; and Paris can keep them.

"You didn't exactly inspire me with admiration," said Maria.

"How was that?"

"You didn't exactly spring to the aid of the ladies."

"I didn't exactly know which ones were ladies," I said.

"All you did was to save your own skin."

"It's the only one I've got left," I explained. "I used the others for lampshades." The blow I'd had in my kidneys hurt like hell. I'm getting too old for that sort of thing.

"Your funny time is running out," said Maria.

"Don't be aggressive," I said. "It's not the right mood for asking favors."

"How did you know I was going to ask a favor?"

"I can read the entrails, Maria. When you mistranslated my reactions to the injections that Datt gave me, you were saving me up for something."

"Do you think I was?" she smiled. "Perhaps I just salvaged you to take home to bed with me."

"No, it was more than that. You are having some sort of trouble with Datt and you think--probably wrongly--that I can do something about it."

"What makes you think so?" The streets were quieter at the other end of St. Germain. We passed the bomb-scarred façade of the war ministry and raced a cab over the river. The Place de la Concorde was a great concrete field, floodlit like a film set.

"There's something in the way you speak of him. Also, that night when he injected me, you always moved around to keep my body between you and him. I think you had already decided to use me as a bulwark against him."

"Teach Yourself Psychiatry, volume three."

"Volume five. The one with the coupon for the Do-It-Yourself Brain Surgery Kit."

"Loiseau wants to see you tonight. He said it's something you'll enjoy helping him with."

"What's he doing--disemboweling himself?" I said.

She nodded. "Avenue Foch. Meet him at the corner at midnight." She pulled up outside the Café Blanc.

"Come and have coffee," I suggested.

"No. I must get home," she said. I got out of the car and she drove away.

Jean-Paul was sitting on the terrace drinking a Coca-Cola. He waved and I walked over to him. "Were you in Les Chiens this evening?" I asked.

"Haven't been there for a week," he said. "I was going tonight, but I changed my mind."

"There was a bagarre. Byrd was there."

Jean-Paul pulled a face but didn't seem interested. I ordered a drink and sat down. Jean-Paul stared at me.

• • •

Jean-Paul stared at the Englishman and wondered why he had sought him out. It was more than a coincidence. Jean-Paul didn't trust him. He thought he had seen Maria's car in the traffic just before the Englishman sat down. What had they both been plotting? Jean-Paul knew that no woman could be trusted. They consumed one, devoured one, sapped one's strength and confidence and gave no reassurance in return. The very nature of women made them his . . . was "enemy" too strong a word? He decided that enemy wasn't too strong a word. They took away his manhood and yet demanded more and more physical love. "Insatiable" was the only word for them. The other conclusion was not worth considering--that his sexual prowess was under par. No. Women were hot and lustful and, if he was truthful with himself, evil. His life was an endless struggle to quench the lustful fires of the women he met. And if he ever failed, they would mock him and humiliate him. Women were waiting to humiliate him.

•

"Have you seen Maria lately?" Jean-Paul asked.

"She gave me a lift here."

Jean-Paul smiled but did not comment. So that was it. At least the Englishman had not dared to lie to him. He must have read his eyes. He was in no mood to be trifled with.

"How's the painting going?" I asked.

"Were the critics kind to your friend's show the other day?"

"Critics," said Jean-Paul, "find it quite impossible to separate modern painting from teenage pregnancy, juvenile delinquency and the increase in crimes of violence. They think that by supporting the dull, repetitious, representational type of painting that is out of date and unoriginal, they are also supporting loyalty to the flag, discipline, a sense of fair play and responsible use of world supremacy."

I grinned. "And what about those people who like modern painting?"

"People who buy modern paintings are very often interested only in gaining admittance to the world of the young artists. They are often wealthy vulgarians who, terrified of being thought old and square, prove that they are both by falling prey to quick-witted opportunists who paint modern--very modern--paintings. Provided they keep on buying pictures, they will continue to be invited to bohemian parties."

"There are no genuine painters?"

"Not many," said Jean-Paul. "Tell me, are English and American exactly the same language, exactly the same?"

"Yes," I said.

Jean-Paul looked at me. "Maria is very taken with you."

I said nothing.

"I despise all women, because they all despise one another. They treat one another with a cruelty that no man would inflict upon another man. They never have a woman friend who they can be sure won't betray them."

"That sounds like a good reason for men to be kind to them," I said.

Jean-Paul smiled. He felt sure it was not meant seriously.

"The police have arrested Byrd for murder," I said.

Jean-Paul was not surprised. "I have always thought of him as a killer."

I was shocked.

"They all are," said Jean-Paul. "They are all killers for their work. Byrd, Loiseau, Datt, even you, my friend, are killers if work demands."

"What are you talking about? Whom did Loiseau kill?"

"He killed Maria. Or do you think she was always like she is now--treacherous and confused, and constantly in fear of all of you?"

"But you are not a killer?"

"No," said Jean-Paul. "Whatever faults I have, I am not a killer, unless you mean . . ." He paused before carefully pronouncing the English word, "a 'lady-killer.' "

Jean-Paul smiled and put on his dark glasses.

This is the first publication of a new spy thriller by the author of "The Ipcress File" Copyright © 1966 By Vico Patentverwertungs. Und Vermogensverwaltungs Ges. M. B. H.

* Informer.

* I Ninhydrin: a color reagent, reddish-black powder. Hands become violet because of amino acid in the skin. Three days before it comes off. Washing makes it worse.

* Service de Documentation Extérieure et Contre-Espionnage.

This is the second installment of a new novel by Len Deighton. Part III will appear next month.