Latimer stared. His jaw had dropped and he knew that he looked ridiculous and that there was nothing to be done about the fact. Dimitrios was alive. It did not even occur to him to question the statement seriously. He knew instinctively that it was true. It was as if a doctor had warned him that he was suffering from a dangerous disease, the symptoms of which he had been only vaguely aware. He was surprised beyond words, resentful, curious and a little frightened, while his mind began to work feverishly to meet and deal with a new and strange set of conditions. He shut his mouth, then opened it again to say, feebly: ‘I can’t believe it.’
Mr Peters was clearly gratified by the effect of his announcement.
‘I scarcely hoped,’ he said, ‘that you would have had no suspicions of the truth. Grodek, of course, understood. He had been puzzled by certain questions I asked him some time ago. When you came he was even more curious. That was why he wanted to know so much. But as soon as you told him that you had seen the body in Istanbul, he understood. He saw at once that the one thing that rendered you unique from my point of view was the fact of your having seen the face of the man buried as Dimitrios. It was obvious. Not to you, perhaps. I suppose that when one sees a perfect stranger on a mortuary slab and a policeman tells one that his name is Dimitrios Makropoulos, one assumes, if one has your respect for the police, that one has the truth of the matter. I knew that it was not Dimitrios you saw. But… I could not prove it. You, on the other hand, can. You can identify Manus Visser.’ He paused significantly and then, as Latimer made no comment, added: ‘How did they identify him as Dimitrios?’
‘There was a French carte d’identité, issued in Lyons a year ago to Dimitrios Makropoulos, sewn inside the lining of his coat.’ Latimer spoke mechanically. He was thinking of Grodek’s toast to the English detective story and of Grodek’s inability to stop himself laughing at his own joke. Heavens! What a fool the man must have thought him!
‘A French carte d’identité!’ echoed Mr Peters. ‘That I find amusing. Very amusing.’
‘It had been pronounced genuine by the French authorities and it had a photograph in it.’
Mr Peters smiled tolerantly. ‘I could get you a dozen genuine French cartes d’identité, Mr Latimer, each in the name of Dimitrios Makropoulos and each with a different photograph. Look!’ He drew a green permis de séjour from his pocket, opened it and, with his fingers over the space taken up by the identifying particulars, displayed the photograph in it. ‘Does that look very much like me, Mr Latimer?’
Latimer shook his head.
‘And yet,’ declared Mr Peters, ‘it is a genuine photograph of me taken three years ago. I made no effort to deceive. It is simply that I am not photogénique, that is all. Very few men are. The camera is a consistent liar. Dimitrios could have used photographs of anyone with the same type of face as Visser. That photograph I showed you a few moments ago is of someone like Visser.’
‘If Dimitrios is still alive, where is he?’
‘Here in Paris.’ Mr Peters leaned forward and patted Latimer’s knee. ‘You have been very reasonable, Mr Latimer,’ he said kindly. ‘I shall tell you everything.’
‘It’s very good of you,’ said Latimer bitterly.
‘No! No! You have a right to know,’ said Mr Peters warmly. He pursed his lips with the air of one who knows justice when he sees it. ‘I shall tell you everything,’ he said again and relit his cheroot.
‘As you may imagine,’ he went on, ‘we were all very angry with Dimitrios. Some of us threatened revenge. But, Mr Latimer, I have never been one to beat my head against a wall. Dimitrios had disappeared and there was no way of finding him. The indignities of prison life a memory, I purged my heart of malice and went abroad to regain my sense of proportion. I became a wanderer, Mr Latimer. A little business here, a little business there, travel and meditation – that was my life. I could afford to sit, when I wished, in a café and see this world of ours go by and try to understand my fellow men. How little true understanding there is! As I go through this life of ours, Mr Latimer, I sometimes wonder if perhaps it is not all a dream and if one day we shall not wake up to find that we have only been asleep like children in a cradle rocked by the Great One. That will be a great day. I have, I know, done things of which I have been ashamed, but the Great One will understand. That is how I think of the Great One: as someone who understands that it is sometimes necessary, for business reasons, to do unpleasant things; someone who understands not as a judge in a courtroom,’ he added a trifle vindictively, ‘but as a friend.’
He wiped the corners of his mouth. ‘You will think, Mr Latimer, that I am something of a mystic. Perhaps I am. I do not believe in coincidence. If the Great One wills that one shall meet a person, then one meets him. There is nothing strange about it. That was why, when I met Visser, I was not surprised. It was a little under two years ago that I met him, and in Rome.
‘I had not, of course, seen him for five years. Poor fellow! He had had a bad time. A few months after his release from prison he was pressed for money and forged a cheque. They sent him back to prison for three years and then, when he came out, deported him. He was almost penniless and he could not work in France where he knew useful people. I could not blame him for feeling bitter.
‘He asked me to lend him money. We had met in a café and he told me that he had to go to Zürich to buy a new passport, but that he had no money. His Dutch passport was useless because it was in his real name. I would have liked to have helped him; for, although I had never liked him very much, I felt sorry for him. But I hesitated. So often one’s generous instincts run away with one. I should have been wiser to have said at once that I had no money to lend, but as I hesitated he knew that I had money. It was a foolish mistake on my part I thought at the time. It is only since that I have learned that my generous instinct was working for my own good.
‘He became very pressing and swore that he would pay me back. This life of ours is so difficult sometimes, is it not? A person swears that he will repay money and you know that he is sincere. Yet you know also that he may tomorrow tell himself with equal sincerity that your money is his by right of need, that you can afford to lose so insignificant a sum and that you must in any case pay for your magnanimity. And then he grows to dislike you and you have lost a friend as well as your money. I decided to refuse Visser.
‘At my refusal he became angry and accused me of not trusting him to pay a debt of honour, which was a foolish way for him to talk. Then he pleaded with me. He could prove, he said, that he would be able to repay the money and began to tell me some interesting things.
‘I have said that Visser had known a little more about Dimitrios than the rest of us. That was true. He had taken a lot of trouble finding it out. It was just after that evening when he had pulled out a pistol to threaten Dimitrios and Dimitrios had turned his back upon him. Nobody had treated him like that before and he wished to know more about the man who had humiliated him: that, at least, is what I believe. He himself said that he had suspected that Dimitrios would betray us, but that, I knew, was nonsense. Whatever his reason, however, he decided to follow Dimitrios when he left the Impasse.
‘The first night that he tried he was unsuccessful. There was a large closed car waiting at the entrance to the Impasse and Dimitrios was driven off in it before Visser could find a taxi in which to follow. The second night he had a hired car ready. He did not come to the meeting, but waited for Dimitrios in the Rue de Rennes. When the closed car appeared, Visser drove off after it. Dimitrios stopped outside a big apartment house in the Avenue de Wagram and went inside while the big car drove away. Visser noted the address and about a week later, at a time when he knew that Dimitrios would be here in this room, he called at the apartment house and asked for Monsieur Makropoulos. Naturally, the concièrge knew of no one of that name, but Visser gave him money and described Dimitrios and found that he had an apartment there in the name of Rougemont.
‘Now Visser, for all his conceit, was no fool. He knew that Dimitrios would have foreseen that he might be followed and guessed that the Rougemont apartment was not his only place. Accordingly he set himself to watch Monsieur Rougemont’s comings and goings. It was not long before he discovered that there was another way out of the apartment house at the rear and that Dimitrios used to leave that way.
‘One night when Dimitrios left by the back entrance Visser followed him. He did not have far to go. He found that Dimitrios lived in a big house just off the Avenue Hoche. It belonged, he found, to a titled and very chic woman. I shall call her Madame la Comtesse. Later Visser saw Dimitrios leave with her for the opera. Dimitrios was en grande tenue and they had a large Hispano to take them there.
‘At that point Visser lost interest. He knew where Dimitrios lived. No doubt he felt that he had in some way obtained his revenge by discovering that much. He must, too, have been tired of waiting about in the streets. His curiosity was satisfied. What he had discovered was, after all, very much what he might have expected to discover. Dimitrios was a man with a large income. He was spending it in the same way as other men with large incomes.
‘They told me that, when Visser was arrested in Paris, he said very little about Dimitrios. Yet he must have had ugly thoughts, for he was by nature a violent man and very conceited. It would have been useless, in any case, for him to have tried to have Dimitrios arrested, for he could only have sent them to the apartment in the Avenue de Wagram and the house of Madame la Comtesse off the Avenue Hoche, and he knew that Dimitrios would have gone away. He had, as I said, other ideas about his knowledge.
‘I think that, to begin with, he had intended to kill Dimitrios when he found him, but as he began to get short of money his hatred of Dimitrios became more reasonable. He probably remembered the Hispano and the luxury of the house of Madame la Comtesse. She would perhaps be worried to hear that her friend made his money by selling heroin and Dimitrios might be ready to pay good money to save her that worry. But it was easier to think about Dimitrios and his money than it was to find them. For several months after he was released from prison early in 1932, Visser looked for Dimitrios. The apartment in the Avenue de Wagram was no longer occupied. The house of Madame la Comtesse was shut up and the concièrge said that she was in Biarritz. Visser went to Biar-ritz and found that she was staying with friends. Dimitrios was not with her. Visser returned to Paris. Then he had what I think was quite a good idea. He himself was pleased with it. Unfortunately for him, it came a little too late. He remembered one day that Dimitrios had been a drug addict, and it occurred to him that Dimitrios might have done what many other wealthy addicts do when their addiction reaches an advanced stage. He might have entered a clinic to be cured.
‘There are five private clinics near Paris which specialize in such cures. On the pretext of making enquiries as to terms on behalf of an imaginary brother, Visser went to each one in turn, saying that he had been recommended by friends of Monsieur Rougemont. At the fourth his idea was proved to be good. The doctor in charge asked after the health of Monsieur Rougemont.
‘I think that Visser derived a certain vulgar satisfaction from the thought of Dimitrios being cured of a heroin addiction. The cure is terrible, you know. The doctors go on giving the patient drugs, but gradually reduce the quantity. For him the torture is almost unbearable. He yawns and sweats and shivers for days, but he does not sleep and he cannot eat. He longs for death and babbles of suicide, but he has not the strength left to commit it. He shrieks and screams for his drug and it is withheld. He… But I must not bore you with horrors, Mr Latimer. The cure lasts three months and costs five thousand francs a week. When it is over the patient may forget the torture and start taking drugs again. Or he may be wiser and forget paradise. Dimitrios, it seems, was wise.
‘He had left the clinic four months before Visser visited it, and so Visser had to think of another good idea. He did think of it, but it involved going to Biarritz again and he had no money. He forged a cheque, cashed it and set off again. He reasoned that as Dimitrios and Madame la Comtesse had been friends, she would probably know his present whereabouts. But he could not simply go to her and ask for his address. Even if he could have invented a pretext for doing so, he did not know under what name Dimitrios was known to her. There were difficulties, you see. But he found a way to overcome them. For several days he watched the villa where she was staying. Then, when he had found out enough about it, he broke into her room one afternoon, when the house was empty except for two drowsy servants, and looked through her baggage. He was looking for letters.
‘Dimitrios had never liked written records in our business, and he never corresponded with any of us. But Visser had remembered that on one occasion Dimitrios had scribbled an address for Werner on a piece of paper. I remembered the occasion myself. The writing had been curious: quite uneducated, with clumsy, badly formed letters and many flourishes. It was this writing that Visser was looking for. He found it. There were nine letters in the writing. All were from an expensive hotel in Rome. I beg your pardon, Mr Latimer. You said something?’
‘I can tell you what he was doing in Rome. He was organizing the assassination of a Yugoslav politician.’
Mr Peters did not seem impressed. ‘Very likely,’ he said indifferently. ‘He would not be where he is today without that special organizing ability of his. Where was I? Ah, yes! The letters.
‘All were from Rome and all were signed with initials which I shall tell you were “C. K.”. The letters themselves were not what Visser had expected. They were very formal and stilted and brief. Most of them said no more than that the writer was in good health, that business was interesting and that he hoped to see his dear friend soon. No tu-toi, you know. But in one he said that he had met a relation by marriage of the Italian royal family and in another that he had been presented to a Roumanian diplomat with a title. He was very pleased with these encounters, it seems. It was all very snob, and Visser felt that Dimitrios would certainly wish to buy his friendship. He noted the name of the hotel and, leaving everything as he found it, went back to Paris en route for Rome. He arrived in Paris the following morning. The police were waiting for him. He was not, I should think, a very clever forger.
‘But you may imagine the poor fellow’s feelings. During the three interminable years that followed he thought of nothing but Dimitrios; of how near he had been to him and how far he was now. He seemed, for some strange reason, to regard Dimitrios as the one responsible for his being in prison again. The idea served to feed his hatred of him and strengthen his resolve to make him pay. He was, I think, a little mad. As soon as he was free he got a little money in Holland and went to Rome. He was over three years behind Dimitrios, but he was determined to catch up with him. He went to the hotel and, posing as a Dutch private detective, asked to be permitted to see the records of those who had stayed there three years before. The affiches had, of course, gone to the police, but they had the bills for the period in question and he had the initials. He was able to discover the name which Dimitrios had used. Dimitrios had also left a forwarding address. It was a Poste Restante in Paris.
‘Visser was now in a new difficulty. He knew the name, but that was useless unless he could get into France to trace the owner of it. It was no use his writing his demands for money. Dimitrios would not go on calling for letters for three years. And yet he could not enter France without being turned at the frontier or risking another term of imprisonment. He had somehow to get a new name and a new passport, and he had no money with which to do so.
‘I lent him three thousand francs, and I will confess to you, Mr Latimer, that I felt myself to be truly stupid. Yet I was sorry for him. He was not the Visser I had known in Paris. Prison had broken him. Once his passions had been in his eyes, but now they were in his mouth and cheeks. One felt he was getting old. I gave him the money out of pity and to get rid of him. I did not believe his story. I never expected to hear from him again. You may, therefore, imagine my astonishment when, a year ago, I received here a letter from him enclosing a mandat for the three thousand francs.
‘The letter was very short. It said: “I have found him as I said I would. Here, with my profound thanks, is the money you lent me. It is worth three thousand francs to surprise you.” That was all. He did not sign it. He gave no address. The mandat had been bought in Nice and posted there.
‘That letter made me think, Mr Latimer. Visser had recovered his conceit. He could afford to indulge it to the extent of three thousand francs. That meant that he had a great deal more money. Conceited persons dream of such gestures, but they very rarely make them. Dimitrios must have paid, and since he was not a fool he must have had a very good reason for paying.
‘I was idle at the time, Mr Latimer; idle and a little restless. I had my books, it is true, but one wearies of books, the ideas, the affectations of other men. It might be interesting, I thought, to find Dimitrios for myself and share in Visser’s good fortune. It was not greed that prompted me, Mr Latimer; I should not like you to think that. I was interested. Besides, I felt that Dimitrios owed me something for the discomforts and indignities I had experienced because of him. For two days I played with the idea. Then, on the third day, I made up my mind. I set out for Rome.
‘As you may imagine, Mr Latimer, I had a difficult time and many disappointments. I had the initials, which Visser, in his eagerness to convince me, had revealed, but the only thing I knew about the hotel was that it was expensive. There are, unfortunately, a great many expensive hotels in Rome. I began to investigate them one after the other, but when, at the fifth hotel, they refused, for some reason, to let me see the bills for 1932, I abandoned the attempt. Instead, I went to an Italian friend of mine in one of the Ministries. He was able to use his influence on my behalf and, after a lot of chi-chi and expense, I was permitted to inspect the Ministry of Interior archives for 1932. I found out the name Dimitrios was using, and I also found out what Visser had not found out – that Dimitrios had taken the course, which I myself took in 1932, of purchasing the citizenship of a certain South American republic which is sympathetic in such matters if one’s pocketbook is fat enough. Dimitrios and I had become fellow citizens.
‘I must confess, Mr Latimer, that I went back to Paris with hope in my heart. I was to be bitterly disappointed. Our consul was not helpful. He said that he had never heard of Señor C. K. and that even if I were Señor C. K.’s dearest and oldest friend he could not tell me where he was. He was offensive, which was unpleasant, but also I could tell that he was lying when he said that he had no knowledge of Dimitrios. That was tantalizing. And yet another disappointment awaited me. The house of Madame la Comtesse off the Avenue Hoche had been empty for two years.
‘You would think, would you not, that it would be easy to find out where a chic and wealthy woman was? It was most difficult. The Bottin gave nothing. Apparently she had no house in Paris. I was, I will confess, about to abandon the search when I found a way out of my difficulty. I reflected that a fashionable woman like Madame la Comtesse would be certain to have gone somewhere for the winter sports season that was just over. Accordingly, I commissioned Hachettes to purchase for me a copy of every French, Swiss, German and Italian winter sports and social magazine which had been published during the previous three months.
‘It was a desperate idea, but it yielded results. You have no idea how many such magazines there are, Mr Latimer. It took me a little over a week to go through them all carefully, and I can assure you that by the middle of that week I was very nearly a social-democrat. By the end of it, however, I had recovered my sense of humour. If repetition makes nonsense of words it makes even more fantastic nonsense of smiling faces, even if their owners are rich. Besides, I had found what I wanted. In one of the German magazines for February there was a small paragraph which said that Madame la Comtesse was at St Anton for the winter sports. In a French magazine there was a couturier’s picture of her in skating clothes. I went to St Anton. There are not many hotels there, and I soon found that Monsieur C. K. had been in St Anton at the same time. He had given an address in Cannes.
‘At Cannes I found that Monsieur C. K. had a villa on the Estoril, but that he himself was abroad on business at the moment. I was not discontented. Dimitrios would return to his villa sooner or later. Meanwhile I set myself to discover something about Monsieur C. K.
‘I have always said, Mr Latimer, that the art of being successful in this life of ours is the art of knowing the people who will be useful to one. I have in my time met and done business with many important people – people, you know, who are informed of what goes on and why – and I have always taken care to be helpful to them. It has paid me. A man, for example, who is interested in selling field guns to the Greek Government will be glad to know the personal expectations in the affair of the responsible Greek official. This official in his turn will be glad to know that his expectations are clearly understood without he himself having had to submit to the indignity and risk of stating them directly. By performing that delicate exchange of courtesies, I secure the gratitude of both parties. I am then in a position to ask favours in return.
‘So, where Visser might have had to prowl about in the darkness in search of his information, I was able to get mine from a friend. It proved easier than I had expected to do so, for I found that, in certain circles, Dimitrios, with the name of Monsieur C. K., had become quite important. In fact, when I learned just how important he had become, I was pleasantly surprised. I began to realize that Visser must be living on the money he got from Dimitrios. Yet what did Visser know? Only that Dimitrios had dealt illegally in drugs; a fact that it would be difficult for him to prove. He knew nothing about the dealings in women. I did. There must, I reasoned, be other things, too, which Dimitrios would prefer not to be generally known. If, before I approached Dimitrios, I could find out some of those things, my financial position would be very strong indeed. I decided to see some more of my friends.
‘Two of them were able to help me. Grodek was one. A Roumanian friend of mine was another. You know of Grodek’s acquaintance with Dimitrios when he called himself Talat. The Roumanian friend told me that in 1925 Dimitrios had had questionable financial dealings with Codreanu, the lamented leader of the Roumanian Iron Guard, and that he was known to, but not wanted by, the Bulgarian police.
‘Now there was nothing criminal about any of those affairs. Indeed, Grodek’s information depressed me somewhat. It was unlikely that the Yugoslav Government would apply for extradition after so many years; while, as for the French, they might hold that, as Dimitrios had rendered some sort of service to the Republic in 1926, he was entitled to a little tolerance in the matter of dealings in drugs and women. I decided to see what I could find out in Greece. A week after I arrived in Athens and while I was still trying unsuccessfully to trace in the official records a reference to my particular Dimitrios, I read in an Athens’ paper of the discovery, by the Istanbul police, of the body of a Greek from Smyrna with the name of Dimitrios Makropoulos.’
He raised his eyes to Latimer’s. ‘Do you begin to see, Mr Latimer, why I found your interest in Dimitrios a little difficult to explain?’ And then, as Latimer nodded: ‘I, too, of course, inspected the Relief Commission dossier, but I followed you to Sofia instead of going to Smyrna. I wonder if you would care to tell me now what you found out from the police records there?’
‘Dimitrios was suspected of murdering a moneylender named Sholem in Smyrna in 1922. He escaped to Greece. Two years later, he was involved in an attempt to assassinate Kemal. He escaped again, but the Turks used the murder as a pretext for issuing a warrant for his arrest.’
‘A murder in Smyrna! That makes it even clearer.’ Mr Peters smiled. ‘A wonderful man, Dimitrios, don’t you think? So economical.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let me finish my story and you will see. As soon as I read that newspaper paragraph, I sent a telegram to a friend in Paris asking him to let me know the whereabouts of Monsieur C. K. He replied two days later, saying that Monsieur C. K. had just returned to Cannes after an Aegean cruise with a party of friends in a Greek diesel yacht which he had chartered two months previously.
‘Do you see now what had happened Mr Latimer? You tell me that the carte d’identité was a year old when they found it on the body. That means that it was obtained a few weeks before Visser sent me that three thousand francs. You see, from the moment Visser found Dimitrios, he was doomed. Dimitrios must have made up his mind at once to kill him. You can see why. Visser was dangerous. He was such a conceited fellow. He might have blurted out indiscretions at any time when he had been drinking and wanted to boast. He would have to be killed.
‘Yet, see how clever Dimitrios was! He could have killed Visser at once, no doubt. But he did not do so. His economical mind had evolved a better plan. If it were necessary to kill Visser, could he not dispose of the body in some advantageous way? Why not use it to safeguard himself against the consequences of that old indiscretion in Smyrna? It was unlikely that there would be consequences, but here was his chance to make certain of the fact. The body of the villain, Dimitrios Makropoulos, would be delivered to the Turkish police. Dimitrios, the murderer, would be dead and Monsieur C. K. would be left alive to cultivate his garden. But he would require a certain amount of co-operation from Visser himself. The man would have to be lulled into feeling secure. So, Dimitrios smiled and paid up and set about getting the identity card which was to go with Visser’s dead body. Nine months later, in June, he invited his good friend Visser to join him on a yachting trip.’
‘Yes, but how could he have committed the murder on the yachting trip? What about the crew? What about the other passengers?’
Mr Peters looked knowing. ‘Let me tell you, Mr Latimer, what I would have done if I had been Dimitrios. I would have begun by chartering a Greek yacht. There would be a reason for its being a Greek yacht: its home port would be the Piraeus.
‘I would have arranged for my friends, including Visser, to join the yacht at Naples. Then I would have taken them on their cruise and returned a month later to Naples, where I would have announced that the cruise would end. They would disembark; but I would stay on board saying that I was returning with the yacht to the Piraeus. Then I would take Visser aside privately and tell him that I had some very secret business to transact in Istanbul, that I proposed to go there on the yacht, and that I would be glad of his company. I would ask him not to tell the disembarking passengers who might be angry because I had not asked them, and to return to the yacht when they had gone. To poor, conceited Visser, the invitation would be irresistible.
‘To the captain I would say that Visser and I would leave the yacht at Istanbul and return overland, after we had transacted our business, to Paris. He would sail the yacht back to the Piraeus. At Istanbul Visser and I would go ashore together. I would have left word with the crew that we would send for our baggage when we had decided where we should be staying for the night. Then, I would have taken him to a boîte I know of in a street off the Grande Rue de Pera, and later that night I should find myself poorer by ten thousand French francs, while Visser would be at the bottom of the Bosphorus at a place where the current would carry him, when he was rotten enough to float, out to Seraglio Point. Then I would take a room in a hotel in the name and with the passport of Visser, and send a porter to the yacht with a note authorizing him to collect both Visser’s luggage and mine. As Visser, I would leave the hotel in the morning for the station. His baggage, which I should have searched overnight to see that there was nothing in it to identify it as Visser’s, I would deposit in the consigne. Then I would take the train to Paris. If inquiries about Visser are ever made in Istanbul, he left by train for Paris. But who is going to inquire? My friends believe he left the yacht at Naples. The captain and crew of the yacht are not interested. Visser has a false passport, he is a criminal: such a type has an obvious reason for disappearing of his own free will. Finish!’
Mr Peters spread out his hands. ‘That is how it would occur to me to deal with such a situation. Perhaps Dimitrios managed it a little differently, but that is what might well have happened. There is one thing, however, that I am quite sure he did. You remember telling me that some months before you arrived in Smyrna, someone examined the same police records that you examined there? That must have been Dimitrios. He was always very cautious. No doubt he was anxious to find out how much they knew about his appearance, before he left Visser for them to find.’
‘But that man I told you about looked like a Frenchman.’
Mr Peters smiled reproachfully. ‘Then you were not quite frank with me in Sofia, Mr Latimer. You did enquire about this mysterious man.’ He shrugged. ‘Dimitrios does look like a Frenchman now. His clothes are French.’
‘You’ve seen him recently?’
‘Yesterday. Though he did not see me.’
‘You know exactly where he is in Paris, then?’
‘Exactly. As soon as I discovered his new business I knew where to find him here.’
‘And, now that you have found him, what next?’
Mr Peters frowned. ‘Come now, Mr Latimer. I am sure that you are not quite as obtuse as all that. You know and can prove that the man buried in Istanbul is not Dimitrios. If necessary you could identify Visser’s photographs on the police files. I, on the other hand, know what Dimitrios is calling himself now and where to find him. Our joint silence would be worth a lot of money to Dimitrios. With Visser’s fate in mind, we shall know, too, how to deal with the matter. We shall demand a million francs. Dimitrios will pay us, believing that we shall come back for more. We shall not be as foolish as to endanger our lives in that way. We shall rest content with half a million each – nearly three thousand pounds sterling, Mr Latimer – and quietly disappear.’
‘I see. Blackmail on a cash basis. No credit. But why bring me into the business? The Turkish police could identify Visser without my help.’
‘How? They identified him as Dimitrios and buried him. They have seen perhaps a dozen or more dead bodies since then. Weeks have gone by. Are they going to remember Visser’s face well enough to justify their beginning expensive extradition proceedings against a rich foreigner because of their fourteen-year-old suspicions about a sixteen-year-old murder? My dear Latimer! Dimitrios would laugh at me. He would do with me as he did with Visser: give me a few thousand francs here and there to keep me from making myself a nuisance with the French police and to keep me quiet until, for safety’s sake, I could be killed. But you have seen Visser’s body and identified it. You have seen the police records in Smyrna. He knows nothing about you. He will have to pay or run an unknown risk. He is too cautious for that. Listen. In the first place, it is essential that Dimitrios does not discover our identities. He will know me, of course, but he will not know my present name. In your case, we shall invent a name. Mr Smith, perhaps, as you are English. I shall approach Dimitrios in the name of Petersen and we shall arrange to meet him outside Paris at a place of our own choosing to receive our million francs. That is the last that he will see of either of us.’
Latimer laughed but not very heartily. ‘And do you really suppose that I shall agree to this plan of yours?’
‘If, Mr Latimer, your trained mind can evolve a more ingenious plan, I shall be only too happy to…’
‘My trained mind, Mr Peters, is concerned with wondering how best to convey this information which you have given me to the police.’
Mr Peters’ smile became thin. ‘The police? What information, Mr Latimer?’ he inquired softly.
‘Why, the information that…’ Latimer began impatiently and then stopped, frowning.
‘Quite so,’ nodded Mr Peters approvingly. ‘You have no real information to convey. If you go to the Turkish police they will no doubt send to the French police for Visser’s photographs and record your identification. What then? Dimitrios will be found to be alive. That is all. I have not, you may remember, told you the name that Dimitrios uses now or even his initials. It would be impossible for you to trace him from Rome as Visser and I traced him. Nor do you know the name of Madame la Comtesse. As for the French police, I do not think that they would be interested either in the fate of a deported Dutch criminal or excited by the knowledge that somewhere in France there is a Greek using a false name who killed a man in Smyrna in 1922. You see, Mr Latimer, you cannot act without me. If, of course, Dimitrios should prove difficult, then it might be desirable to take the police into our confidence. But I do not think that Dimitrios will be difficult. He is very intelligent. In any case, Mr Latimer, why throw away three thousand pounds?’
Latimer considered him for a moment. Then he said: ‘Has it occurred to you that I might not want that particular three thousand pounds? I think, my friend, that prolonged association with criminals has made it difficult for you to follow some trains of thought.’
‘This moral rectitude…’ began Mr Peters wearily. Then he seemed to change his mind. He cleared his throat. ‘If you wished,’ he said with the calculated bonhommie of one who reasons with a drunken friend, ‘we could inform the police after we had secured the money. Even if Dimitrios were able to prove that he had paid money to us, he could not, however unpleasant he wished to be, tell the police our names or how to find us. In fact, I think that that would be a very wise move on our part, Mr Latimer. We should then be quite sure that Dimitrios was no longer dangerous. We could supply the police anonymously with a dossier as Dimitrios did in 1931. The retribution would be just.’ Then his face fell. ‘Ah, no. It is impossible. I am afraid that the suspicions of your Turkish friends might fall upon you, Mr Latimer. We could not risk that, could we!’
But Latimer was scarcely listening. He knew that what he had made up his mind to say was foolish and he was trying to justify its folly. Peters was right. There was nothing he could do to bring Dimitrios to justice. He was left with a choice. Either he could go back to Athens and leave Peters to make the best deal he could with Dimitrios or he could stay in Paris to see the last act of the grotesque comedy in which he now found himself playing a part. The first alternative being unthinkable, he was committed to the second. He really had no choice. To gain time he had taken and lit a cigarette. Now he looked up from it.
‘All right,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ll do what you want. But there are conditions.’
‘Conditions?’ Mr Peters’ lips tightened. ‘I think that a half share is more than generous, Mr Latimer. Why my trouble and expenses alone… !’
‘Just a moment. I was saying, Mr Peters, that there are conditions. The first should be very easy for you to fulfil. It is simply that you yourself retain all the money that you are able to squeeze from Dimitrios. The second…’ he went on and then paused. He had the momentary pleasure of seeing Mr Peters disconcerted. Then, he saw the watery eyes narrow quite appreciably. Mr Peters’ words as they issued from his mouth were charged with suspicion.
‘I don’t think I quite understand, Mr Latimer. If this is a clumsy trick…’
‘Oh no. There is no trick, clumsy or otherwise, Mr Peters. “Moral rectitude” was your phrase, wasn’t it? It will do. I am prepared, you see, to assist in blackmailing a person when that person is Dimitrios, but I am not prepared to share in the profits. So much the better for you, of course.’
Mr Peters nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I see that you might think like that. So much the better for me, as you say. But what is the other condition?’
‘Equally inoffensive. You have referred mysteriously to Dimitrios’s having become a person of importance. I make my helping you get your million francs conditional on your telling me exactly what he has become.’
Mr Peters thought for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Very well. I see no reason why I should not tell you. It so happens that the knowledge cannot possibly be of any help to you in discovering his present identity. The Eurasian Credit Trust is registered in Monaco and the details of its registration are not therefore open to inspection. Dimitrios is a member of the Board of Directors.’