After a time Madeleine slept fitfully with her head pillowed on Kuporovitch’s broad chest, but he did not sleep at all. He did not want to; every moment was far too precious for him to let it be lost even in drowsing, and during the long night he had ample opportunity to consider their situation from every possible angle. His musings at last produced a plan. Its very audacity gave him strong hopes that it might be successful; but the first and all-important step in it hung entirely upon the Gestapo’s attitude to Luc Ferrière.
In the cold grey light of the November dawn Madeleine woke fully. After she had tidied herself as best she could they walked up and down to ease their cramped limbs and restore their circulation; but he said nothing of his project for the time being as he did not wish her to suffer too great a disappointment if it failed to materialise. Instead, he just told her that he had thought of a place where they might possibly remain hidden, but that he would not be able to find out for certain until about nine o’clock.
Her confidence in him was so strong that she did not even question him further, and having warmed themselves a little they sat down on a bench again until full daylight had come. They then left the Bois and, going out into the Boulevard Maillot, found a small eating-house where they were able to get a rough-and-ready, but satisfying, breakfast.
Until nine o’clock they took advantage of the steamy heat of the little place by remaining there on the excuse of reading through a paper. The news was mainly about the new Graeco-Italian war which had opened in the previous week, and the Greeks seemed to be putting up an unexpectedly strong resistance. Army leave had been stopped in Turkey, as it was feared that the war might suddenly spread right through the Balkans. Little news was given of British activities, but in small paragraphs it was admitted that the R.A.F. had bombed Naples on October the 31st and Berlin the following night, so in spite of the Germans’ oft-proclaimed wiping-out of the Royal Air Force it was evidently still very much in being.
Having discussed the news in guarded tones, Kuporovitch left Madeleine in the café and went along to a call-box, from which he rang up Luc Ferrière’s house. To his great satisfaction the Mayor answered the telephone personally, and Kuporovitch, having made himself known, asked him how he had got on the previous night.
Ferrière was extremely sarcastic at this unexpected concern for him, but between bursts of abuse it emerged that the Gestapo had arrived shortly before midnight, and on untying the Mayor had accepted his story; which, after all, was the truth.
Stefan ignored the angry sarcasm and, speaking with the geniality of an old friend, said he was so glad to hear that everything was all right and was only sorry that he had had to put Monsieur Ferrière to so much inconvenience. He then rang off.
On returning to the café he told Madeleine that things promised well but they would be unable to take any further steps until the coming night, so they must devise some means for passing the day.
As it was Sunday Madeleine suggested that they should go to High Mass and give thanks for their miraculous preservation. Kuporovitch willingly agreed, and, considering it wisest to keep away from the centre of the city, where the Germans were always more numerous, they decided to make their devotions at the Church of St. Augustus, near the Gare Saint Lazare. On approaching the church they noticed the statue of Joan of Arc which stands before it, and it seemed almost as though they had been directed there, as an omen that the Patron Saint of France would give them her protection.
They lunched in a small restaurant behind the station and planned to spend the afternoon in the Musée Cernuschi near by, as, although all the heating in the public buildings had been turned off, it would at least be warmer indoors than out. Many of the most valuable pieces in the great Paris museums had been evacuated for safe-keeping at the beginning of the war, and since the Occupation Hitler and his colleagues had openly stolen a number of others, removing them to Germany. But as one of the lesser known museums the Cernuschi had not yet been despoiled, and most of its treasures of Chinese and Japanese art were still on show; so they spent an interesting but rather tiring three hours in the galleries.
Dusk had come again when they left the building, but they still had several hours before Kuporovitch could put the second stage of his plan into operation, so they took refuge in one of the smaller cinemas on the Boulevard de Clichy, and afterwards had another light meal. At half-past nine the Russian decided that the time had come when they might go into action.
He then told Madeleine that he intended to pay a second visit to Luc Ferrière’s house. From his telephone conversation with the Mayor that morning he had good reason to believe that the Gestapo had accepted the explanation offered, but there was always a chance that either the Mayor had lied to him or that the police might now be keeping a watch on the house. If they were he would be walking into a trap, and he had no intention of taking Madeleine with him. In spite of her unwillingness to accept it, he forced her to take all the remaining money that he had in his wallet, then took her into a café not far from Ferrière’s house, where he carefully gave her final instructions.
Having secured the telephone number of the café he gave her name to the waiter as Mademoiselle Olivaux and told him that she was expecting a telephone call during the next half-hour. He then told Madeleine that she was to remain there until he rang her up to say that it was all right for her to come along to Ferrière’s house. If he did not ring up before eleven o’clock she was to assume that he had met with unexpected trouble, and must fend for herself that night. If he succeeded in getting away he would meet her the following morning at eight o’clock at the bench in the Bois on which they had slept; but if he failed to put in an appearance there by nine she would know that he had been captured. In that event she was to telephone Lieutenant Ribaud, banking on his chivalry to stretch a point in her case and help her to get safely out of Paris; or, failing that, seek his advice as to how she could best hide or escape from the danger area without compromising him.
‘Dear Stefan,’ she murmured, stretching out a hand across the little marble-topped table and clasping his. ‘You think of everything; but I shall be holding thumbs for you all the time, and, if prayers have any meaning, mine to Sainte Jeanne this morning will bring you her protection.’
With a last long look into her shining eyes he kissed her hand and went out into the night.
On reaching Ferrière’s house he rang the bell with his left hand, and with his right grasped the automatic in his overcoat pocket, so that if need be he could shoot through the coat and would not be taken at a disadvantage should an S.S. guard open the door to him. But his wise precaution proved unnecessary; it was the old housekeeper who answered his ring.
Putting a finger to his lips to enjoin caution he whispered: ‘Is Monsieur le Maire in, and alone?’
She shook her head, and Kuporovitch drew back a step as he enquired: ‘Are the police still here then?’
‘No, no! It is not the police; only a young Frenchman who arrived about ten minutes ago. I believe he’s a friend of Mademoiselle Lavallière because immediately I showed him in he asked Monsieur Ferrière if he knew what happened to her.’
‘I see,’ Kuporovitch paused a moment. ‘Is he by any chance a tall young man—dark, good-looking and with side-whiskers; rather like a Spaniard?’
‘Yes, you have described him exactly.’
‘In that case, I know him, so I will go in.’ Kuporovitch had described Pierre Ponsardin, and felt certain now that it must be the young artist. While the housekeeper closed the front door he strode down the passage and, throwing open the door of the sitting-room, walked straight in, with his gun in his hand.
As he had supposed, the visitor was Pierre, who was surprised and delighted to see him, but it was quite otherwise with the lean owner of the house. Springing to his feet, Ferrière exclaimed:
‘What! You again! Go away, go away! You will be my ruin!’
‘I trust not,’ said the Russian affably, ‘but that depends almost entirely on whether you are willing to give me your co-operation.’
‘No, no!’ wailed the Mayor. ‘This is too much! It is only by the grace of God that the Nazis accepted my story of what happened last night. They may still regard me with suspicion. It is enough for them to see you enter my house and leave it for them to have me shot.’
‘I have no intention of leaving it at the moment,’ replied Kuporovitch, and turning to Pierre he added: ‘So you got away after all. Congratulations, mon ami! I am more delighted than I can say to know it.’
‘It was a horribly narrow shave,’ Pierre admitted. ‘I got out on the roof and nearly ran into a group of gendarmes, but I was just in time to hide behind the chimney-stacks, and they missed me in the darkness. Afterwards, I managed to get down through another house farther along the street. But what’s happened to Madeleine? I’ve been simply frantic with anxiety about her. It occurred to me that, in view of Monsieur Ferrière’s official position and his being an old friend of the Lavallières’, he might be able to get me some information; but he says he cannot help.’
Raising his gun, Kuporovitch prodded the Mayor with it in the stomach, as he said:
‘Then this knobbly-kneed old Quisling is meaner than even I thought him. Be of good cheer, Pierre. With Monsieur Ferrière’s unconscious aid we got Madeleine out of the Cherche-Midi prison last night. At the moment she is sitting in the Café du Rhône up the street and just round the corner to the left. Now that I have satisfied myself that there are no Gestapo people here I should be obliged if you would go and fetch her.’
‘So she’s safe!’ cried Pierre. ‘Thank God for that!’ And, his face wreathed in smiles, he ran from the room.
The Russian could now give his undivided attention to his unwilling host. Pocketing his gun, he settled himself comfortably in an armchair, and remarked: ‘We may as well begin as we mean to go on. Am I not right, Monsieur le Maire? It is with that in mind that I am making myself at home. It is my pleasure to announce to you that Madeleine and I, and possibly young Monsieur Ponsardin as well, propose to remain with you as your guests—probably for some weeks to come. I hope that we shall all settle down very happily together.’
‘What!’ screamed the Mayor, flinging up his long arms. ‘Settle down! Have you in my house! To stay! With half the police in Paris after you! But you must be crazy!’
‘On the contrary,’ beamed Kuporovitch, ‘I fancy that, all things considered, I’m extremely sane. After last night the Gestapo will certainly not imagine that Madeleine and I would venture back here; so you see, provided we do not go out, except at night, and are careful not to expose ourselves at any of the windows, we shall be safer here than anywhere else in Paris.’
‘I will not have it! I will hand you over to the police!’ cried the Mayor with a show of spirit.
‘Oh no, you won’t!’ Kuporovitch grinned, tapping the pocket that held his gun. ‘You’d be dead before you reached your own doorstep.’
‘So you plan to keep me a prisoner in my own house,’ sneered Ferrière. ‘You seem to have overlooked the fact that the people in my office will come to enquire for me. Either you’ll be discovered by them, or you must allow me to continue my official duties; how do you propose to stop my reporting you the moment I am out of range of that horrible weapon which you handle so casually?’
‘That we shall arrange in good time, but for the moment I hope the position is clear.’
‘And what of my housekeeper, Madame Chautemps? Do you think she will submit to this invasion without telling the neighbours?’
‘I do,’ nodded Kuporovitch. ‘It so happens that Madame Chautemps is a de Gaullist.’
‘Quel horreur! A de Gaullist in my house! What I shall do without her after all these years I cannot think, but I will dismiss her in the morning.’
‘You’ll do no such thing: but it’s most fortunate for us that this good woman should feel as most French people outside official circles do. I am confident that she can be relied on not to betray us.’
‘But you cannot stay here! You cannot!’ insisted the Mayor desperately. ‘Think what would happen to me if later on it was discovered that I had been hiding you. The Gestapo would cut me in little pieces.’
‘They wouldn’t treat you any worse than they’re already treating far better Frenchmen than you.’
‘But I have done nothing to deserve it, and I serve France in my own way, for what I honestly believe to be her best interests. Have you no mercy?’
‘No, none at all,’ said the Russian quietly.
At that moment there were footsteps in the hall, and Pierre came in with Madeleine.
Kuporovitch told them of his intentions and asked Pierre if he too would like to avail himself of Monsieur Ferrière’s unwilling hospitality; but the young artist shook his head.
‘It’s a comfort to know that there’s this place to come to in an emergency, but at the moment I don’t see why I should leave my old apartment. The police have no record of me at all. They didn’t even see me in the nursing-home, so there’s no reason why they should suspect me. It seems to me, too, that at any time this old devil may think up some way to betray you. Why don’t you come and stay with me? There’s not much room, but we’ll manage somehow, and you’d both be safer there than here.’
‘Yes, yes! The young man is right,’ said Ferrière eagerly. ‘Why don’t you go and stay with him?’
But Kuporovitch quelled him with a frown.
‘Thank you, no. Both Madeleine and I are known to the police. We are also known to the concierge and other people in the block where Monsieur Ponsardin has his apartment; so we should be running the gravest risk to go there, although I think he’s quite right as far as he himself is concerned.’
At Madeleine’s suggestion Madame Chautemps was then called in. The position was explained to her, and she was asked if she would like to leave or preferred to stay on and take the risk that later she might get into serious trouble for not having reported to the police that two people were hiding in the house.
‘I’ll stay,’ she said at once. ‘Otherwise who’s to do for you? Monsieur le Maire can’t do his own shopping, otherwise the tradesmen would soon begin to suspect that something fishy was going on; and if you get some flighty young baggage in to take my place you wouldn’t be able to trust her farther than you could see her.’
‘But the work will be too much for you,’ interjected the agitated Mayor, ‘and this is not a very large house. We couldn’t make them very comfortable.’
‘It’s quite large enough,’ replied Madame Chautemps grimly; ‘and if the work proves a big burden on my old bones I’ve no doubt Mademoiselle will help me.’
‘Of course I will!’ exclaimed Madeleine. ‘And thank you a thousand times for helping us.’
‘It’s a pleasure, Mademoiselle, now that I know you and your friends are on the right side.’
Kuporovitch also thanked her, then he said: ‘Monsieur le Maire has just set us a pretty little problem. If he suddenly neglects all his official duties without giving any adequate explanation an investigation will at once be made which would lead to our discovery; on the other hand, once he has left the house we have no means of ensuring that he won’t betray us. Have any of you any suggestions as to how we could get over that?’
‘Perhaps you could make him give you some form of security to ensure his behaving himself,’ murmured Pierre. ‘Something that you could destroy if he attempts to double-cross you.’
‘An excellent idea,’ smiled Kuporovitch; ‘but what?’
‘Take his stamp collection,’ said Madame Chautemps. ‘He’s simply crazy about those stamps of his. He spends every night of his life playing about with them, and, although he’s so mean that you wouldn’t believe it about other things, he spends goodness knows what on those little bits of paper. I’ve heard tell that his collection is worth half a million francs.’
‘The very thing!’ exclaimed the Russian, and, jumping up, he seized the two large stamp albums which still lay open on Ferrière’s big desk.
‘You can’t, you can’t!’ wailed the Mayor, tears coming into his weak eyes. ‘Those albums represent a lifetime of patient industry. How can you be so ruthless to rob me of them?’
‘We have no intention of doing so,’ Kuporovitch replied quietly. ‘We are merely confiscating them temporarily as a guarantee of your good behaviour. If all goes well you shall have them back when we have made other plans and decide to leave your house; but if not you will never see them again, and they will be burnt to the last five kopek stamp in the collection.’
As he spoke he handed the volumes to Pierre and added:
‘If we keep them here he might arrange a surprise raid in which I’m caught napping before I have time to destroy them. You’d better take these away with you, Pierre, and deposit them in a bank or some safe place. Then, if anything goes wrong with us, you’ll be able to make Monsieur le Maire pay the penalty.’
Ferrière continued to protest and plead, but Kuporovitch saw that Madeleine was dropping with fatigue, so he cut him short by saying: ‘All is fixed up most satisfactorily. I’m sure you will see the sense of holding your tongue when you leave the house tomorrow. It only remains now for you to show us our rooms.’
The Mayor was in a corner, and he knew it. With a helpless little shrug of his lean shoulders he looked across at his housekeeper, who said at once: ‘We’ll put Mademoiselle in the Blue Room, and the gentleman can have Monsieur Georges’ old room. It won’t take me long to get them ready.’ And she left them.
On hearing her dead fiancés’ name Madeleine went pale. It was getting on for five months now since his death, and in recent weeks she had been so fully occupied that she had had little time to brood upon it. With a sudden feeling of guilt she realised that she had hardly thought about him at all since becoming the matron of the nursing-home, but this mention of him, and the fact that she was in the house where he had lived, brought the whole tragedy back vividly to her.
Seeing her agitation, Kuporovitch walked over to the side-table on which there was a decanter of brandy and some glasses. As he poured her out a stiff tot he said to the Mayor: ‘While we’re in your house I fear you will have to regard us as an army of occupation. We shall take what we want, and I shall give you chits for it. After all, there won’t be much difference between that and the worthless marks the German Army is foisting on the French people; although actually my paper is a better bet, as I am a comparatively honest person, and if I escape death or capture until the end of the war I shall pay you in real money afterwards.’
Ferrière groaned, but made no protest, as the Russian poured out two more goes of cognac for Pierre and himself. Then he looked across at the Mayor with an amused smile and said: ‘Won’t you join us?’
‘Why not?’ sighed his victim. ‘I might as well at least drink a small share of my own brandy.’ It was his final surrender, and Kuporovitch knew then that they would have no more trouble with him, at all events for the time being.
When they had finished their drinks Pierre left them, it having been agreed that neither of the parties should attempt to get in touch with the other for the next few days, except in a case of emergency. He had hardly gone when Madame Chautemps came downstairs to say that the rooms were ready, and, well-satisfied with the evening’s proceedings, having wished her and their host good-night, the two fugitives from the Gestapo went up to bed.
Next morning when they came down to breakfast the Mayor seemed to have accepted the situation which had been forced upon him, and his principal concern was now for the safety of his precious stamp collection. Madeleine assured him that Pierre was absolutely honest and that there was no cause to fear that it would not be returned intact to him in due course if all went well.
When he had gone out to his official duties Kuporovitch made a full inspection of the house to ascertain its resources. He had no food-card of his own, and they dared not present Madeleine’s. They could not go out in daylight while the shops were open, yet they had to live somehow and might even have to face a lengthy siege there.
Monsieur Ferrière’s cellar was a great disappointment as, although, like all Frenchmen, he knew what was good from having been born with a natural palate, he was a very moderate drinker and never entertained. The cellar held only about three dozen bottles of claret, burgundy and sauterne, five bottles of brandy, two of Armagnac, and no champagne, liqueurs or non-French wines at all. On the other hand, a second cellar revealed that Monsieur le Maire had had the forethought to lay in a good supply of emergency stores, and the piles of tins and boxes comforted the Russian with the thought that they would certainly not suffer from starvation for several weeks at least.
Madeleine meanwhile had a chat with Madame Chautemps, during which they arranged to share the work of the house between them. Food was now becoming so difficult to obtain that even the possession of a ration-card was no definite guarantee of actually getting the goods, and to make certain of doing so it was often necessary to queue up early at the shops in order to get one’s share before the items ran out. In consequence, shopping was a lengthy process, and it was decided that the housekeeper should give most of her time to it while Madeleine made all the beds and kept the house clean.
That evening they waited with some anxiety for the Mayor’s return, since, in spite of his apparently philosophic acceptance of their presence, there was still a chance that he might decide to risk his stamp collection as less precious than his life—which would be in jeopardy as long as they remained with him—but he arrived back at his normal hour, showing no change of attitude from that which he had displayed in the morning.
When he saw that dinner consisted mainly of things from his hoarded stores he began to complain most bitterly, saying that the food situation would get infinitely worse before the war was over and that at this rate they would consume the whole of his stock in a month.
Kuporovitch told him not to worry, as when the hue and cry for Madeleine and himself had died down a little he would be able to go out again and somehow or other would obtain additional supplies.
The week passed quickly, as although neither of the refugees showed their noses outside the house there was plenty to do inside it, even for the Russian, who was by no means a bad cook, and had volunteered to take over the preparation of the meals.
On Sunday, November the 10th, the news came through that Libreville, the capital of Gabon in West Africa, had surrendered to General de Gaulle and the Free French Forces; so, in spite of Ferrière’s anti-de Gaullist feelings, they held a little celebration at which they insisted that Madame Chautemps should join them, selecting for dinner that night some of the Mayor’s most precious tinned foods and a few of the best bottles of wine from his cellar.
Now that they had been for eight days in the house Kuporovitch felt the time had come when, provided that he exercised caution, he might go out occasionally with reasonable safety. On the Monday he telephoned Ribaud and fixed a meeting for that night at the Café du Rhône, just round the corner.
The French detective was in a high good humour. He had heard three days before from Lacroix that the little Colonel had succeeded in getting safely away and that he was now back in Vichy. Gregory too had escaped, but parted from Lacroix on the night that the home was raided to make his own way back to England; and as Kuporovitch had enormous faith in Gregory’s ability to look after himself this was great good news.
They laughed a lot over the way in which the Quisling Mayor of Batignolles had been pressed against his will into the service of the Free French cause, and Ribaud was pleased to hear that Pierre Ponsardin had also managed to evade capture and could be found when wanted at his old address. As they spoke of their friends who had been caught in the home their laughter left them, as both of them knew that nothing could be done to help these poor people. They must be written off just like soldiers who had fallen on the battlefield, only to be remembered with honour; but their number was not large and, according to Ribaud, their loss would have no very serious effect upon the ever-growing movement to sabotage the German war effort and eventually restore freedom to France.
On the nights that followed Kuporovitch went out on other missions. He was an old soldier and a scrounger of the first water, who, considering himself at war again, had no scruples whatever about looting, now that he was living in enemy territory. His first exploit was to break into Lavinsky’s office in the early hours of one morning, and he came away with a sackful of samples of black market goods that he had seen there. They used some of them later that week in another celebration dinner when the splendid news leaked through that the British Fleet Air Arm had scored a magnificent victory by torpedoing a number of Italy’s most powerful warships in Taranto harbour. But in Paris that week this good news was more than offset by the knowledge that the Germans had, contrary to the armistice agreement, incorporated the French province of Lorraine into the Greater Reich and had begun forcibly to deport all French citizens from it.
Now that one-half of France was occupied, and the other in a state of uneasy non-belligerence with Germany, there were no steps at all which the French could take by way of retaliation, and the Nazis’ cynical disregard for the terms of the armistice spread a gloom over all Paris. Madeleine became subject to the general helpless anger and depression, but Kuporovitch sought to console her by saying that, apart from the unfortunate folk who were actually being deported, the measure would do their own cause good in the long run, as it would show the French people more clearly than ever that no faith could ever be put in the word of the Nazis and that collaboration with them could only end in France being devoured piecemeal.
Kuporovitch’s night forays mostly took him out to the nearer suburbs, as he did not like to rob the smaller shops. During the autumn nearly everyone who had a garden had dug it up to grow vegetables against the winter, and selecting the larger ones in a different neighbourhood each night he pilfered potatoes from one, greens from a second, fruit from a third, and so on. Occasionally, also, he secured a chicken or a tame rabbit; all of which good fresh food made a better contribution to the Mayor’s table than two extra rations would have done, and helped them to sustain themselves against the rigours of the cold, which continued to prove their greatest inconvenience.
Ferrière’s wireless was only a small one upon which they could not listen to foreign broadcasts, but there had now sprung up in Paris such a thirst for outside news that, in spite of the heavy penalties announced by the Germans for listening to the B.B.C., or passing on statements made in its bulletins, practically every shopkeeper had become a channel for forbidden information, so Madame Chautemps was able to furnish them with the latest news after her daily shopping expeditions and long waits in queues.
The German aerial assault on Britain seemed to have petered out, but on November the 15th they again launched one of the biggest blitzes that they had ever attempted against London; yet the following day the underground grapevine news service showed the writing on the wall. The Nazis had lost seventeen planes destroyed against one British.
With the passing days, Madeleine began to get increasingly anxious about her mother. It was now over a fortnight since she had been to see her. The old lady knew nothing of her daughter’s secret activities, but by this time would be wondering why Madeleine had neglected her for so long. In consequence, they got in touch with Pierre, and he came to dine with them.
He reported that Madame Lavallière was much as usual, except that she suffered most severely from the cold and whenever he went in to see her she was always complaining of her daughter’s neglect. As Kuporovitch absolutely forbade Madeleine to go to see her, it was agreed that Pierre should tell Madame Lavallière, without giving her any details, that Madeleine had made herself liable to prosecution by the police through repeating news given out by the B.B.C., so she had had to change her address and disappear for the time being, and she might be caught if she visited her old home, although she would do so as soon as the affair had blown over.
Pierre said that Ribaud had been to see him only the previous day and told him that fresh arrangements had now been made for continuing underground work against the enemy, and that he was to go to a certain house where he would be given a number of pamphlets, which he was to distribute at night by pushing them through letter-boxes; so he would be on the job again very shortly.
On November the 20th it was announced with a great blare of trumpets that Hungary had joined the Axis, but nobody took very much notice of that, as for a long time past it had been clear that the wretched Hungarians had very little option in resisting German pressure, once it was brought to bear upon them. As against that the Greeks were standing up magnificently to the Italian invasion, and a few days later the news trickled through that they were now advancing on all fronts.
This good news gave Kuporovitch another opportunity to indulge his love of celebrations, and in order to produce something special for the feast he put into execution a plan which he had been considering for some days. For the first time since he had been living in Ferrière’s house he took the risk of going out in daylight, and late in the afternoon paid a visit to the Paris Zoo, to inform himself where the cages and compounds of various animals were situated. That night he went back again, and, having got in under cover of the darkness, he captured and killed a small roebuck, which he brought home in triumph, thus providing the household for some days with most excellent venison.
It was the morning after this exploit that the people of Paris were once more driven to fresh anger and hatred against their oppressors. Fifteen French newspapers had published accounts of the havoc caused by British air attacks on Le Havre, and all fifteen were suppressed, thus robbing the Parisians of one of their main sources of material for the eternal discussions which they loved to hold in their cafés.
On the 28th Ribaud telephoned and asked Kuporovitch to meet him in the Café du Rhône that evening. When he arrived, instead of asking him to sit down, the detective took him straight out to the car, which he was still allowed to run on account of his official duties. Once they were in it he said: ‘The big Chief’s in Paris again and asked me to bring you to see him at his new headquarters.’
As they drove through the almost deserted streets the detective told his companion with grim satisfaction about the death of M. Chiappe, which had occurred the day before. Chiappe had been a cunning and ambitious Corsican who had climbed to power with Laval and at one time had been Chief of the Paris Police. Lacroix, who had had to work with him, had loathed him, as had Ribaud and most of his other subordinates.
Apparently the Vichy Government had grounds for distrusting the Governor of Syria and feared that he might go over to de Gaulle; so the Quisling Chiappe had been sent to supersede him. But the aircraft in which he had set off the day before had got mixed up in an air-battle between British and Italian planes, which was raging over a sea-battle off the coast of Sardinia that had resulted in the British Navy inflicting severe damage on an Italian battleship and three cruisers. The plane in which Chiappe was travelling had been shot down by an Italian pilot who mistook it for one of the enemy, and Ribaud was immensely tickled to think that this ace-Quisling whom he had had reason to hate personally had come to such an unexpected and sticky end.
They drove right across Paris and on past the Luxembourg to the Observatoire, near which Ribaud left his car in a garage; then they walked for a little distance across the Place Denfert-Rochereau to the Avenue d’Orléans and entered the courtyard of a large private house on the right side of the road.
At the doorway under the big porte-cochère Ribaud rang the bell, knocked twice and then rang the bell again, upon which it was opened by a man who was dressed as a servant but did not look or behave like one. He and Ribaud just nodded to each other, and the detective walked in with Kuporovitch behind him. Crossing the tiled hall, he led the Russian into a big salon at the back of the house, where eight or ten people were already assembled. Lacroix was among them, and he immediately came forward to greet the new arrivals.
Evidently the business of the meeting had not yet begun, and while they waited for another half-dozen people to arrive, either singly or in couples, Lacroix told Kuporovitch of his escape after the nursing-home was raided and that he hoped that by this time Gregory was back in England; but he had had no news of him. As the clock struck ten Lacroix seated himself at the head of a long table, and on the others taking seats round it he addressed them.
At first the proceedings did not mean very much to Kuporovitch, as the only person present whom he knew, other than Lacroix and Ribaud, was Madame Idlefonse, and the first part of the Colonel’s dissertation mainly concerned the excellent progress of the movement in the provinces of both Occupied and Unoccupied France. This was the result of a strong campaign, by means of the secret distribution of handbills and the pasting up at night on walls of subversive posters for strengthening anti-Nazi feeling; but Lacroix gave it as his opinion that they were now in a position to take more ambitious measures and to indulge in actual sabotage. He then asked for suggestions.
Various ideas were put forward, and Kuporovitch contributed as his quota the proposal that explosives should be smuggled into the cellars of the Hôtel Crillon and the German Headquarters blown up. Such an apparently impossible plan caused a certain amount of mild laughter until he related how he had actually got into the cellars himself, and, having done it once, saw no reason why he should not do it again; only this time, instead of delivering sacks of coal, it would be sacks of dynamite.
A big redheaded bull of a man, who proved to be an ex-Communist Deputy named Léon Baras, was all in favour of the idea, as were several of the others; but Lacroix vetoed it on the grounds that such an act would be certain to bring about the most ghastly reprisals. He pointed out that one of the great strangleholds which the Germans possessed over the French people was the fact that they still held over a million French soldiers who had been captured in the Battle for France, as prisoners in concentration camps. The Nazis were perfectly capable of butchering hundreds—if not thousands—of these unfortunate men. In his view, although lives should not be given undue value where the freedom of France was concerned, any such massacre, while causing the most bitter anger among the French people, would also antagonise them against the anti-Nazi movement, from fear that still more of their men might die as reprisals from the further activities of the freedom fighters.
He went on to say that he hoped, and had little doubt, that the time would come when the whole nation would rise to exterminate its enemies, but at present there was no sense in killing one German if ten, twenty, or even more Frenchmen were to lose their lives as a result. Therefore, as yet they must confine their activities to the sabotage of German war materials and avoid killing, except in self-defence.
The majority of the meeting expressed itself in agreement with his views and proceeded to go into details with regard to the destruction of bridges, the derailing of trains and the firing of German supply dumps. Then, after a two-hours’ session, it closed, and the members departed, singly or in couples, at intervals of about five minutes.
Kuporovitch remained with Ribaud and Lacroix until nearly the last, and he spent some more time talking to a little pale-faced man, with a shock of white hair whom the others had addressed as ‘The Professor’. It transpired that the Professor was the owner of the house, a distinguished chemist, and now engaged on the secret manufacture of time-bombs, to be used for sabotage.
At a little before one Ribaud and Kuporovitch made their adieux and left the house. As they went out Ribaud told the Russian to memorise the place and the way to it well, as he might be asked to attend future meetings on his own, since people were summoned in accordance with whom Lacroix wished to see at any particular time. He also reminded the Russian of the signal to secure admission; one ring, two knocks, and another ring. They then collected the car and Ribaud dropped Kuporovitch at the corner of the Rue Cardinet, from which he had to walk only a few hundred yards to Ferrière’s house.
The first week in December was uneventful, except that on one night during it Kuporovitch participated in a plan arranged at the meeting by forming one of a squad of saboteurs who managed to get on board a row of barges in the Seine which contained valuable war material, and scuttle them. Pierre came to dinner again on Sunday, and Madeleine was upset to hear that her mother was suffering more acutely than ever from the cold, so that at times she even wept from it. But there seemed nothing that they could do to aid the invalid. All the fuel stores in Paris were now heavily guarded against night raids, and even Kuporovitch’s ingenuity was not sufficient to devise a way in which they might heat Madame Lavallière’s apartment. Gas and electricity for cooking were now cut to the barest minimum, and the only heat that anyone in Paris, except the Germans and a few officials, could get was from crowding round a stove to warm their hands when a meal was being prepared.
In vain Madeleine cursed the Nazis for the distress they were inflicting upon her bedridden mother, but none of the others could think of any way to alleviate her sufferings. Madeleine wanted to risk a midnight visit to comfort her, but Kuporovitch still would not hear of it and Pierre too said he thought it would be most unwise. He said he was convinced that in recent weeks the Bonards had gone over to the enemy, because their son had been killed in a British air raid on Calais; and it was next to impossible to get into the block without the concierge or his wife being aware of it.
On the night of December the 9th they heard of the British offensive in Libya, and it cheered them a lot to think that after the great peril through which she had passed Britain now felt herself strong enough to launch an attack in force against one, at least, of the Axis partners.
The following night Kuporovitch was summoned to another meeting at the house of the Professor. Fresh plans for further sabotage were entered into, and he learned from Lacroix that, although the Colonel had no news of Gregory himself, their friend must have succeeded in getting back to England, as a large sum of money had arrived during the previous week via the trusted man at the French Consulate in Lisbon. This had lifted a great weight off the little Colonel’s shoulders and enabled him to give all his plans a new impetus.
During the days that followed there was great excitement over the serious differences of opinion which had arisen in the Vichy Government. Marshal Pétain defied the Germans by dismissing Laval and appointing Flandin as Foreign Minister in his place. The French Senate and Chamber of Deputies were dissolved, and a Consultative Assembly substituted for them: then Laval was arrested. Otto Abetz, Hitler’s Gauleiter in Paris, went personally to Vichy and secured Laval’s release; but he was not reinstated, and Madeleine and her friends took this as a good indication that the first signs of resistance to the Nazis were now being forced upon the Vichy Government by the will of the French people.
They were cheered too by the news of the British successes in North Africa. In their first drive they had taken 26,000 Italian prisoners. By December the 15th they were fighting on Libyan soil, and by the 16th both Sollum and Fort Capuzzo, two great Italian strongholds, had been captured.
Kuporovitch was now out every night, either as one of the leaders of the gangs of Paris saboteurs or foraging for supplies. While attempting to fire a portion of the great Citroën motor works, which had been taken over by the Germans, he was very nearly captured, but he managed to get away by scattering the inflammable liquid that he was carrying over the two guards who attacked him, instead of on the roof of the shed, which had been his objective.
The Italians had now been driven far back into Albania, and two of their divisions, caught with brilliant generalship by the Greek Chief of Staff, General Papagos, had been entirely destroyed. On the 19th the British had surrounded Bardia, and the number of Italian prisoners taken to date had risen to over 31,000. It was on the night that this news came through that Madeleine was summoned to her first meeting at the Professor’s house, and as she might not have been able to find it on her own Kuporovitch was instructed to take her.
Lacroix was now making secret visits to Paris from Vichy nearly every week, and he told them that he had at last had news of Gregory, but he feared that it was not too good. Gregory had got safely home but had been caught in the heavy raid on London of November the 15th. He had been crushed under the blitzed building, and it had been thirty hours before they had been able to get him out. Fortunately his head had been protected by a fallen beam, but his left leg had been broken and he had sustained severe injuries to his body. For some weeks he had hung between life and death, but he had managed to pull through and recently had been transferred to the country, where he was convalescing; but the Colonel thought it would be several months before he was fit to take an active hand in the game again.
Lacroix had wanted to see Madeleine because he felt that sufficient time had now elapsed since the police had been hunting for her for the majority of them to have forgotten her description; and he had work for her to do. Now that the number of his sabotage squads was increasing, so too were their casualties through brushes with night-watchmen, sentries and police; so he had found it necessary to establish a genuine nursing-home where they could have their injuries attended to and remain in bed until they recovered.
She at once expressed her willingness to undertake such work, but Kuporovitch intervened to say that, although the police might have forgotten their description, if either of them were seen coming in and out of Luc Ferrière’s house regularly in the daytime the neighbours would begin to wonder who they were. As they had no ration-cards for use at local shops, suspicion might be aroused through some officious gossip, which would lead to an investigation and an arrest.
The Colonel agreed, but thought that might be got over, and introduced Madeleine to a handsome white-haired woman, the Marquise de Villebois, who was running her house as a home for him.
When the situation was explained the Marquise said that she already had her own daughter and another girl, both of whom had trained as V.A.D.s in the early part of the war. They were quite able to run the house and look after the patients in the daytime; but she badly wanted a reliable night nurse, as she and the two girls were on their feet all day. The house was in the Boulevard Saint Germain, and they all agreed that if Madeleine set out after dark each night, and returned before the neighbours were up each morning, there was no great likelihood of her being recognised during her journeys backwards and forwards in the Metro; so everything having been fixed up she set about her new duties the following night.
The thought of Christmas, and to the French the even more important festival of the New Year, was now in everybody’s mind; but little of the spirit of Christmas animated the gloomy captive city. The thousands of once well-stocked shops, in which the Parisians had bought their food luxuries and elegant useless trifles so casually, were now almost empty. Even wine, the very life-blood of the French people, was at a premium, and hard to come by. There were queues in every street each morning, while shivering housewives waited anxiously to see if they could obtain their meagre rations. There was no heating in any of the great blocks, and coal, coke and firewood were as precious as diamonds.
Now that Britain had broken the power of the Luftwaffe and was actually taking the offensive in Libya, no one could see any possible ending to the war. Many people in Paris were now bankrupt and starving. Thousands of others had sons, husbands or lovers who had been in the Forces at the time of the collapse and were now in German concentration camps. Thousands more had wives, daughters, and sweethearts who were missing—just disappeared—they knew not where—in the terrible upheaval which had shaken the country to its foundations the previous summer. For days past there had been snow and bitter winds; the pavements were slippery with ice and the streets full of dirty slush. On every hand there was misery, destitution and despair.
Yet there was at least one person in Paris who thoroughly enjoyed the life he was leading. Stefan Kuporovitch was a man without a home, and for the time being Ferrière’s house suited him admirably. It was roomy enough and as comfortable as they could reasonably wish, except for the cold, and even that caused him far less inconvenience than most people, because he was used to the Arctic winters of his native Russia.
He had long since made up his mind that their unwilling host set much too high a price upon his stamp collection to betray them; so, barring some unforeseen accident which they could not possibly guard against, they were perfectly safe as long as they chose to stay there. As he hated inactivity and was adventurous by nature, he got a big kick out of his nightly prowlings after supplies, or skilfully planned acts of sabotage. They had plenty to eat, and, as he had found means to supplement the contents of the cellar, plenty to drink. Above all, he was living in the same house as the girl he adored. For him the approach of Christmas meant only another excuse for one of his celebrations.
On Christmas Eve he took Madeleine to the house of the Marquise de Villebois, then paid another visit to the Zoological Gardens. The animals were not so numerous now, as it had proved difficult to get the right kinds of food to feed many of them, and the authorities had doubtless also decided that venison at this time of acute shortage was better in a pot than running about on four legs. However, on his previous visit he had marked down a handsome Chinese goose with exotic plumage. Having broken into the cage he wrung the bird’s neck and, skilfully evading the night-watchman, at which art he was now a past-master, brought it home to provide them with an excellent Christmas dinner.
Pierre joined them for the meal, and, although he avoided the question of Madeleine’s mother as far as he could, it emerged that she had recently been ill and that her sufferings from the cold were more acute than ever.
Madeleine wished to go to her that evening, but both Kuporovitch and Pierre flatly refused to let her, as Pierre was now fully convinced that Madame Bonard was in league with the police. He had seen her talking to an agent de ville on more than one occasion, and considered it a foregone conclusion that she had been told to keep a watch for Madeleine in the hope that sooner or later she would go to her mother.
Under great pressure Madeleine gave way and tried to salve her conscience by sending presents and loving messages by Pierre that night; but during the following days the mental picture of her mother—ill, lonely, unable to leave her bed and shivering with cold—haunted and tormented her. She had hoped that Kuporovitch would let her risk a visit at Christmas, and now Christmas was gone; but there was still the New Year, and she felt that she could not possibly allow that of all days in the year to pass without giving her mother the consolation of her presence. In consequence, she decided not to tell the others anything about it, so that they should have no opportunity of preventing her, and instead of going back to the nursing-home on New Year’s Eve creep back at night to her old home.
So intent was she on this project that the news that Admiral Darlan had had a most important two-day conference over Christmas in Paris with Otto Abetz, and that the Germans had succeeded in burning down a large area of the city of London by the use of thousands of incendiary bombs on December the 29th, passed her by unheeded. On the evening of the 31st, carrying a special parcel of good things, which she had quite unscrupulously taken from Monsieur Ferrière’s hoarded stores, she set out at eight o’clock, which was her usual time of leaving for the nursing-home.
It was nearly two months now since she had been in the Rue Saint Honoré, but nothing seemed altered, as far as she could see in the frosty starlight. A bitter wind cut her face as she walked down the street, and the gutters were piled high with snow, but there were even fewer people than usual about. At this hour they were nearly all employed in eating the New Year’s Eve dinner that they had managed to scrape up somehow; and it was largely on this that Madeleine counted to engage the attention of the concierge and his wife.
She knew that on entering the main door of the building a little hanging bell would ring; but as she was aware of its exact position she was able to carry out her plan of opening the door very gently, just a crack, then raising the point of her umbrella until it became wedged between the bell and the door. The trick worked, and she managed to get inside with only a faint jingle.
There was a light in the concierge’s room, and the sounds of laughter. Very cautiously she stole past it and up the stairs, not daring to take the lift to the third floor. With her own key she let herself into the apartment and was surprised to find it in complete darkness.
Switching on the light, she went forward with her heart almost in her mouth, dreading, almost foreseeing, what she might find. In the bedroom her mother was lying, but not in a natural sleep. Her hands had been carefully folded across her breast, and a small crucifix had been placed upon them. She must have died earlier that day, or perhaps the preceding night before Madame Bonard came up to attend to her in the morning.
The room was positively icy. Madeleine’s teeth began to chatter as she stood there, but her heart was burning with a wild anger. She knew that it was this desperate cold which the German Occupation had brought to Paris that had killed her mother. Between grief and hatred she was almost overcome as she knelt at the bedside, sobbing bitterly.
It was Pierre’s voice that roused her. ‘Madeleine! What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come. I was just on my way over to break the news to you.’
‘When—when did she die?’ sobbed Madeleine.
‘Last night; but I didn’t know about it until this afternoon. On my way out just now I saw the light, so I came in to see who was here. You shouldn’t have come, Madeleine! If that old woman downstairs knows you’re here she’ll tell the police, and you’ll be in most desperate danger.’
Even as he spoke they both heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.