When I looked up, a pamouse was standing in the middle of the floor, surveying me curiously.
Pamice liked to show themselves like that, no one knew for certain why. Perhaps it was because, having been timid, no-account creatures for so long, they now enjoyed proving to themselves their own new courage and importance in the world. They liked to see people jump.
It was a habit they’d grow out of, if I had anything to do with it. Ignoring the mouse, I looked carefully though apparently casually round the cell. I soon found the mousehole. And there seemed to be only one. I made sure of that before I moved.
I got up and moved about the cell, still ignoring the mouse. It also appeared to ignore me. I knew, however, that the slightest move of aggression would make it dart out of the way, to survey me calmly from somewhere else. I didn’t make any such move. Instead, when I moved suddenly, it was to place myself between the mouse and the hole.
The mouse watched me warily, realizing that it had been out-maneuvered. I advanced on it slowly. It made a feint to run to my left, changed course, and darted straight at me. I didn’t move. Consequently, when it made its quick change of direction — to the right — I was ready for it and turned with it. It did get past me, but I was able to make a straight run for the hole, knowing the mouse must try to reach it. And just as it made its last straight dash, I caught it on my toe and flicked it hard against the wall.
Given even two seconds to recover, it would have been away again. But I took advantage of the instant when it was too dazed to know where it was or what it was doing. I crushed the creature under my foot and then, having no wish to examine it, pushed its dead body into the hole. That would discourage any other pamice which came that way.
The brisk little encounter had its reaction. I went over to the window, frowning, angry and bitter that I should be held on a charge so obviously ridiculous. I was a little uneasy, however, when it occurred to me how difficult it might be to prove my innocence.
The cell window looked out on a small, enclosed courtyard, which seemed to have no purpose at all except perhaps to depress prisoners. It was just large enough and the walls were just high enough to prevent anyone in the cell from seeing anything but the three walls and the irregular paving of the yard. I stared at them for ten minutes or so.
At the end of that time a multiply welcome diversion occurred. A girl’s head appeared over the back wall, and then the rest of the girl. She sat astride the wall for a moment, assuring herself that her clothes hadn’t suffered too much from the rough treatment they were getting. Then she brought her other leg over and dropped down into the courtyard. The way she had performed the operation didn’t suggest that she made a habit of climbing over walls. However, if it wasn’t done with undue skill, it was certainly done with determination and fair competence.
She was the girl I had seen in the café.
She came and stood outside the barred window. “Hallo, Mister Page-Turner,” she said in English, “I’ve come to blackmail you.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
“I’m perfectly serious,” she told me fiercely. “And the sooner you realize it, the quicker we can get down to business.”
I knew she was serious, but I couldn’t stop laughing nevertheless.
She was a slight, dark girl, with Parisian smartness and assurance. She wore the sort of summer dress which American women would wear loosely and sloppily and team with dark glasses, a white plastic handbag, and flat-heeled white sandals, not hideously, but totally without chic effect. This girl might have stepped straight from a Paris salon instead of having just climbed over a wall. Her dress was tailored, made for her and no one else. She was the kind of girl who would look cute in the ridiculous outfits one sometimes saw in the fashion magazines, outfits in which American or English girls were always a shade embarrassing. She was thin, neither busty nor hippy, yet one knew without any visual evidence to support the idea that if she wore a swimsuit she would produce the necessary curves from somewhere, casually, without fuss or falsies.
Now that I had a closer look at her, I revised some of my earlier impressions of her.
I wondered if there was anyone left in the Commissariat but me — whether, if this girl was an ally, she’d be able to let me out. I investigated the point indirectly.
“Why did you come that way?” I inquired.
She shrugged impatiently. “Don’t waste time on things that don’t matter. I came that way because I want to talk to you first, and this is the best way to do it.”
“First?” I said. “Before what?”
“Let’s get to the point. Are you going to England?”
She talked English far too well to be French, despite a just perceptible French inflection. She never had to hesitate, searching for a word or an idiom. She was English, then, despite her Parisian appearance, and she wanted to get back to England. The question was, could she get me out of my cell, and if so, was I to take her with me?
“You are going to England, aren’t you?” she demanded.
“What makes you think that?” I asked, still temporizing.
“Are you or aren’t you?”
When I did leave Sambères, I didn’t want anyone to know where I’d gone. I didn’t want to admit I meant to go to England, in case the girl failed to get me out and perhaps told someone else …
“Because if you aren’t,” said the girl, losing patience, “good-by.” She turned.
“What are you suggesting?” I asked. “I presume you are suggesting something.”
“I’ll let you out if you take me to England.”
I couldn’t complain that she never came to the point, anyway.
“And you’d better hurry up too,” she added, “or you’ll have lost the chance.”
She was a most self-possessed, decisive, independent creature. If it hadn’t been for that coolness in her manner, which was still there, I’d have liked her very much.
“Roget’s gone to a place nine miles away,” I said. “There’s plenty of time — ”
“They went by car. There’s not so much time.”
“What’s your name? You’re English, aren’t you?”
“Ginette Margalet. And it’s none of your business whether I’m English or not. Are you never going to make up your mind? Yes or no?”
“You trust me? What’s to stop me agreeing and then running away when you let me out?”
“I trust you, as far as I have to. I’ve nothing to lose.” She shrugged.
“Or suppose I took you with me and then murdered you, as I did my wife?” I asked with sudden bitterness.
“You didn’t murder your wife. I was watching as Roget talked to you.”
“Why didn’t you speak up?”
“A fool like that might have locked me up too. Besides, why should I?”
She was a character, this Ginette.
“You’re alone?” I inquired.
“No, I have my mother, father, three aunts, and four uncles with me,” she said sarcastically.
I paused just for a moment. I had no choice, really. Obviously I had to accept her offer. “All right — yes,” I said at last.
She didn’t give any sign of pleasure or satisfaction, merely turned again to go back over the wall.
“Wait,” I said. “How are you going to get me out? How are we going to reach the coast? How are we going to get to England?”
She raised her eyes to heaven. “What a man to chatter,” she exclaimed. “You’ll see, won’t you? All right, then. But there is one other thing…. You promise to take me to England?”
“If I can, yes.”
“And do you promise not to try to take advantage of me?”
“What do you mean, take advantage of you?” I asked, not because I was in any doubt about what she meant but to see what she would say.
I should have known better. She said what she meant, in plain words, and very few of them.
I withdrew, figuratively. “I promise,” I said. “Now let me out.”
She looked at me steadily for a moment or two. I expected her to speak, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned and went back to the wall. There was nothing she could use as a step. I watched curiously to see how she proposed to climb the wall.
It gave her no undue trouble. She jumped, grasped the top, and pulled herself up slowly but steadily — her thin arms must be much stronger than they looked. On the top of the wall she paused again to get her breath back, then dropped out of sight.
She reminded me of Mil, but when I pinned down the idea and examined it I saw that the only resemblance was that while they were both essentially feminine, if something unfeminine had to be done they neither of them would hesitate a moment before doing it. Obviously Ginette didn’t think much of climbing walls as a pastime, but if a wall had to be climbed, it had to be climbed, that was all.
If someone had been left on guard at the Commissariat, which seemed likely, Ginette got rid of him somehow, for I saw no one. She unlocked the cell door and I paused only to retrieve my guns, ammunition, and money from the drawer and cupboard where Roget had put them. I had to smash the locks to do it. That made it more necessary to get away. Roget, I suspected, was the kind of petty official who would be very much more concerned over a small crime against him, like smashing locks in his office or escaping from his cells, than over any major crime against anyone else. The fact that I had broken into his drawer and his cupboard, even if only to retrieve my own property, would virtually prove, to a man like him, that I was a habitual criminal and murderer.
“We’ll have to steal a car,” said Ginette casually, as we made our way through the Commissariat. “I’ve got one picked out.”
I wasn’t shocked at the idea. I had been thinking along the same lines myself. But I didn’t like it and said so.
“If people in an emergency start breaking the law right and left, just because it is an emergency,” I said slowly, “there isn’t much chance of law and order being able to deal with the situation. That would mean that the forces which should be occupied in dealing with the emergency would have to be used, instead, to keep the ordinary individual in line — ”
“Quite right,” Ginette sneered. “Let’s get back to your cell and I’ll lock you in again.”
“No, look, Ginette,” I protested. “If people simply ignore law and order whenever trouble starts, things are going to be in a terrible state very soon.”
“They’re going to be in a terrible state anyway.”
We had reached what was apparently a side door. Ginette picked up a valise which had been left leaning against it and paused with her hand on the locking bar, frowning at what she obviously regarded as stupid scruples on my part.
“I mean,” I persisted, “suppose we have to fight not only the paggets, but men too?”
“We have to do that anyway,” she said cynically. “At least, I have to. Why do you think I’m alone here, having to take a chance on you, maybe a murderer for all I know?”
That was a new point of view to me.
“You mean — men?” I asked doubtfully.
She looked at me with scorn. “What did you think I meant — fish?”
“Does that matter so much, now?”
She looked at me penetratingly. “To me it does. But we’ve wasted quite enough time. Are we going to steal a car?”
“I say no.”
She looked exasperated. “I should have finished this stupid argument with you while you were still in your cell. I should have made this a condition. It’s too late now.”
We were perfectly safe where we were. “If everybody breaks the law,” I began stubbornly, “there’s no law left any more …”
Suddenly I realized the absurdity of my position. All along, I had thought of myself as a realist, abandoning all conventions and feelings that were no longer important — when I left Gloria’s body where it lay, for example. And here I was, arguing against stealing a car when the alternative might be execution for the murder of Gloria. I had met someone who was much more realistic than I was. I should be glad that Ginette had been able to find a car to steal, no easy matter these days.
“All right,” I said. “Are you quite sure this car you’ve picked out is ready for the road?”
“Of course,” she said irritably, showing no pleasure at my capitulation. “Think I’d leave that to chance?”