God Speed the Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Jerome Ross Page B

cloths back on the tables.
    Marc sipped the bitter brew. It had the taste of almonds in it.
    “Why didn’t you ask the prefect of police about this Monsieur Lapin?” René asked.
    “I did not think he would know him,” Marc said.
    The men filed out one by one, some murmuring, “ Bonsoir, Gaucher.” Gaucher returned to the bar. The woman there did not move. Gaucher said, “Go home to your husband, madame. Not every woman in St. Hilaire has one to go home to.”
    “Go to hell, Gaucher,” she said, and getting off the stool she pulled her skirts from between her buttocks.
    Gaucher came round and got the bottle of Armagnac. He went to the door after the woman and when she was gone rechecked the lock and threw the inside bolt. He turned off the lights, leaving only one small lamp burning behind the bar. He waited. Marc went to the bar and paid him. The barman said, “Have you eaten, René?”
    “Not enough.”
    “Who has? Come in when you are through.” Gaucher disappeared into the kitchen, the door swinging closed behind him.
    Marc went back to the table. “You are Monsieur Lapin?”
    “I may know his brother,” René said, and Marc knew he had made his contact.
    Marc said, “I did not know he had a brother,” the prescribed answer.
    Rene shook his hand with an attempted cordiality. Marc understood. There would have been many others before him and the Resistance man was having to operate under the nose of the prefect of police. René” said, “My name is René Labrière. I am a photographer. You may have seen my sign in the window.”
    “Marc Daridan. I am an architect—or was about to become one when the axe fell on Paris.”
    “Who sent you to Monsieur Lapin?”
    “‘Richelieu.’”
    “ Reseau Soleil ?”
    Marc nodded.
    “A dirty business,” René said. “Only tonight I heard ‘Richelieu’ himself is on the run.”
    “I botched a job for them,” Marc said.
    René shrugged. “It happens.”
    Marc felt he had to tell the story to someone. He wanted to justify himself; then it occurred to him that every man who came to Labrière would do the same thing. He waited.
    René said, “If it is all over, tell me about it. Otherwise, I do not want to know.”
    “It is all over for everyone except me,” Marc said. “Two months ago ‘Richelieu’ discovered that his reseau was being infiltrated by what is now known as the Milice. ”
    Even as the trainman had, René said, “Fascist bastards.”
    “’Richelieu’ decided that I was the ideal person to join their corps, to recommend myself to their intelligence and find out who the infiltrator was…”
    René stopped him. “You were not a member of Reseau Soleil ? No, no, of course not. Otherwise you could not have infiltrated the infiltrators.”
    “I was not even a member of the Resistance. I knew ‘Richelieu’ in…a different capacity.” To the purpose of telling his story clearly Marc refrained from telling René then that his work up until the Milice accepted him had been with the Jewish refugee committee. Or was it to that purpose? He questioned himself even as he passed over the information.
    “Go on,” René said.
    “The Milice needed a man like me. For one thing, I am fluent in German. I lived with them, ate with them, drank with them. I became an interpreter in their school for spies. I memorized thirty faces, finding a particular characteristic in each one—a scar—there were many scars, I can tell you—the shape of the head—the ears. It was the terror of my life that when the time came I might identify the wrong man.”
    “And did you?” René said. Then, “Forgive me. Tell it in your own way.”
    “There is no point in being melodramatic,” Marc said. “When I was ready I contacted ‘Richelieu.’ The entire Reseau Soleil met in the basement of a burnt-out church. There was even a grave ready for the traitor. Almost the moment I walked in I was able to identify one of them as a member of the corps. But you see,