He felt he was waking up to a glorious dawn after a hideous nightmare. It cost him scarcely any effort to assume the air of negligence that fitted in with his present frame of mind.
“I strangled him with a length of piano wire. It's the surest way and the most silent.”
Claire, having recovered from her surprise, pushed him aside and, stepping over the body without so much as glancing at it, rushed into the living room. She made straight for the fireplace, then stood there wringing her hands. The grate was red-hot, the logs crackling. A poker half embedded in the embers suggested that the fire had been rekindled recently. She rummaged among the glowing ashes but could find no identifiable remains. Then she suddenly noticed a flat leather cylinder case lying on the table. In a towering rage she snatched it up and hurried back to the front door. Arvers was in the process of telling Austin the whole story.
“I had my suspicions about his loyalty, but it was only tonight, when he turned up for the meeting, that I knew for sure—all he had in mind was to lead you into a trap. How do I know? I overheard a conversation between him and his assistant.”
He was making up the story as he went along, like an expert novelist who, on taking up his pen, has not yet worked out his plot in detail but whose inspiration is directed at each fresh chapter by the general idea of his book: a beacon serving both as guide and support in his efforts to produce out of the void the necessary chain of events. He had recovered all his intellectual faculties and confidence in his own mastery.
“Yes, as you still hadn’t arrived, I pretended to go upstairs and leave them together. In actual fact, I listened at the door. It was then I heard this conversation, which left me in no doubt as to their intentions. To begin with, I realized at once that Gleicher was the important figure, a senior Abwehr officer. . . . Otto?—a me
re subordinate. They had been deliberately misleading us right from the start. I also discovered that all the information they had provided was manufactured by the Abwehr—a vast deception scheme, in fact.”
Not knowing exactly how much his chief had found out, he took great pains not to diverge too far from the actual facts. What he said tallied so closely with what Austin had seen for himself that the latter was disconcerted and began almost to reproach himself for having thought of Arvers as a traitor.
“After that it was only too clear what Gleicher’s intentions were. There was no question of establishing contact with the Allies. They were both sniggering at the thought of this trick and at our gullibility. All they were after was to get one or several members of our service into their clutches and thus deliver a fatal blow to our clandestine organization. The trap wasn’t set for
tonight, but for another meeting he was going to arrange later. There was already considerable danger in his meeting you and being able to identify you.
“I was appalled. It was lucky you didn’t show up. I only began to breathe freely again after they left. Then I followed them in the dark. I heard the car. It was Otto, and I knew that Gleicher would be spending the night here.”
Based as it was on facts that were strictly true, the story was taking shape of its own accord. Even if they had spied every gesture he had made in the course of the evening, they could not question a single point in his tale.
Austin would have given anything just then to have been able to lay bare Arvers’ cranium and look into the tortuous folds of his brain; for a moment he felt that this was the only certain means of arriving at the truth when confronted with such a mind. But Austin was mistaken. If he had been in a position to carry out the operation and inspection, even then, in the innermost whorls of the gray matter, he would have found nothing but confirmation of the noble intentions that permeated the story.
The subjective slant Arvers gave to the events was at the same time so natural and so intoxicating that he began to believe in it himself. In the course of his description he produced a revised, improved version of reality, one corresponding so closely to his secret ambition that his mind was unable to question it. Molding, manipulating the raw material of the facts in such a way as to make it yield a satisfactory meaning—that was what he had done all his life. The profession in which he was a past master was now revealed in all its glorious majesty. The exultant sense of his own virtue almost brought tears of enthusiasm to his eyes as he gave the finishing touches to his personality by means of the skillful magic of words.
“He was alone, I knew. He didn't suspect a thing—he thought I had been completely taken in. I couldn’t wait any longer; the opportunity was too good to miss. I came and knocked at the door and told him you had just arrived and wanted to see him. He went back to get his coat. I followed him inside and then I strangled him with this wire. He didn’t utter a sound.’’
His voice had the very ring of truth, and the proof of what he asserted was there in the passage. Austin was under his spell; once again he began to suspect that Claire was out of her mind or had invented the whole story to bring about Arvers’ downfall. She would never be convinced of his good will, Arvers realized. But what did Claire matter, after all? He had thwarted her; her whole demeanor showed she was conscious of her defeat. There she stood in front of him, fuming with rage, to be sure, but powerless. Even though she still held in her trembling hands the case he had not had time to destroy, she knew she could not use it against him. Why, she had not even thought it worth mentioning! What was this insignificant object compared to the massive corpse stretched out at their feet?
Austin was brought back to reality by the first rays of dawn. It suddenly occurred to him that he had heavy responsibilities and that this was no time to indulge—as he had been doing for the last few minutes—in theoretical inquiries into the various symptoms of insanity. There were more urgent things to attend to than forming a diagnosis. They would have to move away from here; the area had become too dangerous. As soon as the murder of Gleicher was discovered, the
Abwehr would institute brutal reprisals. Unable to decide which of his colleagues could be trusted, he gave his instructions to both of them, in a cold, authoritative voice.
“The first thing is to get rid of the body; that will give us a breathing space. It’s too late to move it outside. Is there anywhere in the villa we could hide it?”
The cellar, which was half filled with stacked-up logs, seemed to be the most suitable place.
“You take him down there and stow him away,” he told Arvers. “Claire will give you a hand. I’ll go and warn her mother to dispose of all traces of you and then clear out herself. I’ll also have to tip off various other people. I’ll come back and get you in the car, which I’ve left outside the village. I think we’d better make for Paris.”
Arvers made no comment; he took off his coat and set to work. He felt lighthearted, almost jubilant. Claire opened her mouth as though to protest, but Austin silenced her with a commanding gesture. She looked abashed, appeared to acquiesce, and went off to help Arvers. Austin cast a final puzzled glance in her direction, then shrugged his shoulders, left the house, and hurried off toward the village.
They worked down in the cellar for a long time, watching each other furtively but without saying a word. He dislodged the heavier logs while she helped to shift them.
“That ought to do it,” he said finally. “The hole’s big enough. Let’s go and get the body.”
She followed him up to the ground floor. Exhausted by their efforts, panting for breath, they went and sat down in the living room for a moment, keeping away from the fireplace in which embers still glowed. Outside, the sun was beginning to light up the garden.
“Come on,” he said after a moment. “We haven’t much time. Austin will be back soon and we have to have everything ready by then.”
To his intense delight, he had once again assumed the tone of a determined leader. She stood up and they went into the corridor.
“You take the feet,” he told her.
She obeyed without protest. He bent down, slipped his arms under those of the corpse, and started lifting it off the floor. His back was turned to the front door. Claire, who had taken hold of Gleicher’s legs, suddenly let them drop. He looked up in surprise. She had her eyes fixed on a point directly behind him. Her mother was standing there on the threshold. She had come in without a sound, and in her hand she held one of the big revolvers they had left with her for safekeeping.
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