"A tape recording. When you’ve heard it, I'm sure you’ll appreciate its importance as I do—and also,” Gleicher added with a wink, "its extremely confidential character, Herr Arvers. This document must not be divulged to any subordinate. That’s why I didn’t bring it here. But if you’d be so kind as to come around to my place—it’s only a step, Herr Arvers—you’ll be able to see for yourself immediately.”
It was no longer possible to be mistaken about his attitude. This was irony—ponderous, German irony.
Arvers made yet another attempt to master his feelings and recover his position by haughtily declaring it was probably nothing but the usual trash, for which it was scarcely worth his while to go to so much trouble. Gleicher then told him he would be well advised to take the trouble; his manner was suddenly so solemn that Arvers once again felt he was losing ground. His mental anguish had become so intense that he could not bring himself to ask for further details about the mysterious tape.
Yet he still could not make up his mind. He had already been to Gleicher’s villa. Until now he had not been afraid of the possibility of foul play on Gleicher’s part, believing the man to be too compromised to be able to do him any harm; but this evening his manner was distinctly alarming. The German read his thoughts.
“Believe me, Herr Arvers, you have nothing to fear. I give you my word, this isn’t a trap.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Arvers replied sharply. “Let’s be off.”
They went out into the dark. Gleicher led the way without saying a word and Arvers asked no questions. This traitor, whom he thought he held in the palm of his hand, was beginning to appear a formidable person, an enemy to be added to the long list of those who were bent on disturbing the harmonious development of his dreams.
Gleicher showed him into the living room, which was brightly lit. Arvers gave a start as he saw there was someone there already. Otto rose to his feet as they came in.
“Gently, now, Herr Arvers,” Gleicher chuckled.
“You're very jumpy, aren’t you? It’s only Otto, the friend I was telling you about. He has known about you for a long time. He wanted to meet you in person. You can trust him completely. He knows whom he’s dealing with . . . don’t you, Otto?”
Otto nodded, grinning at his chief's playful remark. Gleicher seemed extremely pleased with himself and poured drinks for them.
“Herr Arvers is in rather a hurry, Otto,” he went on.
“We mustn’t waste his precious time. We’d better start our little audition right away. Are you ready, Herr Arvers?”
Arvers acquiesced with a gesture. Otto went over and switched on the tape recorder he had brought in and placed in a comer of the room. Then he straightened up and remained standing by the machine, watching Arvers intently. All they could hear at first were a few indistinct sounds.
“Listen carefully, Herr Arvers/’ Gleicher repeated. “It’s a really remarkable recording.”
22
At first Arvers did not understand at all. He failed to recognize his own voice. For a few seconds he thought he was listening to a stranger talking and felt a momentary sense of relief—but only for a few seconds, as though some perverse power had decided to grant him this brief respite so that the blow it dealt him later should be all the more crushing.
Then, with the gradual progression of a refined torture, while his heart began to thunder and the walls of his palace of illusions started to crumble about his ears, he felt himself sinking into a bottomless pit of disaster by sufficiently slow degrees for his conscious mind to grasp every detail of this utter hell.
A dismal swarm of gruesome memories, which the miraculous will of a mind bent on self-preservation had warded off for several months, now started circling around him, approaching more closely at each successive revolution, spinning faster and faster, drawing nearer and nearer to a certain central image, the axis of their rotation—a human shape none other than himself, bound hand and foot, lying powerless on a heap of straw in a room in a tumble-down farmhouse.
Faster and faster, in time with the accelerated rhythm of his heart, the demons of reality, released from the dark cage in which he had kept them imprisoned, started to smother him under their loathsome wings, whispering in his ear in a conspiratorial tone, murmuring one after another their scraps of partial evidence, then raising the pitch and hastening the pace of their monstrous accusations until their yelps dissolved into a single prolonged shriek. This clamor brought to life a former state of being that, in spite of the sublime crusade of oblivion waged by his mind, had existed at some point in the past, leaving its mark in the indelible archives of time and space. Bit by bit this state emerged from the mists in which he had hidden it away, his ignominy intensifying at each revolution of the tape. The words now came back to him like long-lost friends. They were so familiar that he moved his lips and involuntarily uttered them at the same time as the machine—sometimes even a split second before—unconsciously allowing his present voice to serve as an accompaniment to this sinister echo from the past.
When Cousin had dared to open his eyes again, the Gestapo officer had his back turned toward him and was bending over an instrument Cousin had never seen before, which was connected by some wires to a dry-cell battery. He thought it might be a generator, clutching at the wild hope that he was simply going to be subjected to a few electric shocks—how gentle that torture now seemed!—but it wasn’t that at all. The officer looked around, abandoned the mysterious machine, and signaled to one of his men. The man walked over toward Cousin brandishing the poker, the point of which was glowing as brightly as a star.
That was the precise moment he had given in—at the mere sight of the red-hot iron. He could not bear the idea of its contact with his flesh. He was overwhelmed by the anticipation of the pain. He surrendered in a flash, in wild haste bom of headlong panic. Up till then he had somehow hoped to gain a little time by arguing with his executioners. These vague intentions were in- stantly obliterated by the gleam of the poker.
There was only one thought left in his head, only one desire onto which his mind could fasten—to be quick about it, so as not to give the man time to take another step. His dominating terror now was that he might not be able to talk soon enough, that at the last moment—just when there was nothing he would refuse them—he might not be able to make them understand, that he might not have time to convince them he was at their mercy, body and soul, only too ready to do whatever they asked. Provided they had no doubt on that score! Provided they did not think they would need to break down his resistance by a brief application of the iron!
And so, with his brain inflamed by the urgency of his surrender, he succeeded, in the time it took for the man to take one step forward, in spitting out his glass capsule—the poison he had never had any intention of swallowing—and in blurting out these words, words the tape was now playing back to him with relentless fidelity:
“Stop, stop! I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything, everything! I’ll do whatever you wish! The whole network . . . the links with London . . . names and addresses. I’ll give you the whole thing.”
With cruel perfection the machine reproduced all the fine nuances of his terror—his stumbling speech, for instance, when he almost choked, so thickly did the words gather in his throat, so anxious was he to furnish immediately as much information as possible.
Since the Gestapo officer appeared to hesitate, he had hastened to repeat his offer.
“It’s extremely urgent ... As you see, I’m not trying to hide anything . . . Tonight, this evening . . . No time to lose . . . A raid organized . . . The roundhouse . . . A party of twenty . . . Rendezvous at the Café du Commerce ... I can give you the address . . . The recognition signal is . . .”
His abject terror came over with surprising clarity. There was no need for him to mention this operation—no need, except, perhaps, the urgency to make it quite plain to them that torture was superfluous. He insisted on making this gratuitous confession because he felt it was the best proof of his readiness to fall in with their wishes.
“Tonight . . . In a few hours; you’ll just barely have time . . . Twenty men . . . At the Café du Commerce. There are some submachine guns hidden away there . . . Also some explosives.”