Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

The incident caused a minor scandal among the Resistance forces which split into two opposing views. Some said that the Leopard had acted correctly, had sacrificed everything to reach his rendezvous on time. Others were not so charitable- Lucie Devaud had a courageous record as a courier-and argued that he could have taken the girl out with him if he hadn't been so concerned to save his own skin. But then the surge of war, the later attempt to set up a Communist Republique du Sud, smothered the incident and it was forgotten, particularly when the Leopard himself was shot dead in Lyon…

Over thirty years later all this came back to Dieter Wohl when he read in the paper the name of the woman who had tried to kill Guy Florian. And by now Wohl himself had started to write his memoirs, so it seemed too good an opportunity to miss-to try and prompt people who might know something into writing him, to furnish more material for his book. On Friday, to December, he wrote a letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, referring to his wartime diary and the fact that he was writing his memoirs, and to give his communication an air of authority he mentioned the name of a certain Annette Devaud, who had also been a member of the Leopard's Resistance group, even going so far as to include her last known address of over thirty years ago. To make his letter even more arresting he quoted a sentence from one of Col Lasalle's provocative broadcasts. 'Who is this Lucie Devaud who last night tried to kill a certain European statesman?' At the conclusion of his letter Wohl added a question of his own. Is Annette Devaud still alive in Saverne, I wonder?

Wohl succeeded in his aim even more swiftly than he could have hoped. The letter was printed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday, 1 4 December, and was duly read on the same day by Paul-Henri Le Theule, the Secret Service officer attached to the French Embassy in Bonn. Le Theule, thirty-eight years old and only a child at the war's end, knew nothing about the Leopard, but his eye was caught by the brief reference to Col Rene Lasalle. Hard up for material to pad his next report, he cut out the letter and added it to the meagre pile waiting for the next Paris diplomatic bag.

The bag was delivered to Paris on Saturday, 18 December, but it was only Sunday morning when Roger Danchin, working his way through a pile of paperwork, came across the cutting, which he showed to Alain Blanc who happened to be with him Dictating a memo to the Elysee, Danchin sent both memo and cutting across the road and by lunchtime Guy Florian had seen both documents. At three in the afternoon Soviet Ambassador Leonid Vorin, who had lunched with Alain Blanc, arrived at the Elysee, talked briefly with the president and then hurried back to his embassy in the rue de Grenelle.

Returning to Colmar aboard the turbo-train from Strasbourg at seven on Sunday evening, Lansky hurried the few steps from the station across the place to the Hotel Bristol where he found his two companions waiting impatiently for him in Vanek's bedroom. He told them how he had dealt with Noelle Berger and Vanek was relieved. 'It means Philip is now alone in the house and we may be able to turn his girl's disappearance to our advantage, but we must advance the time of our visit…'

`Why?' asked Lansky. 'Late on a Sunday night would be much safer. ..'

`Because,' Vanek explained with sarcastic patience, 'Philip will soon begin to worry about what has happened to her. If we leave him to worry too long he may call the police…'

While Lansky had been away in Strasbourg the other two men had continued their research on Robert Philip, each of them taking turns to watch No. 8 from a small park further down the Avenue Raymond Poincare while they pretended to feed the birds or to be waiting for someone. And it was because it was difficult to keep Philip's villa under observation from a closer point-and a tribute also to their skill-that they escaped the notice of the occasional patrol-car which came gliding along the avenue while the officer behind the wheel checked on the same villa.

At three in the afternoon, throwing bread for some sparrows, Vanek saw Philip emerge from the house, come down the steps and walk to the gate which he proceeded to lean on while he smoked a cigarette. Slipping behind a tree, Vanek used the monocular glass he always carried to study the Frenchman close up. Under the flashy, camel-hair coat he wore, Vanek noticed between the railings that the Frenchman was still clad in pyjama trousers. On Sundays Philip rarely dressed; slopping about the house in his night-things was his way of relaxing. And also, he was thinking, that when Noelle returned it would be so much easier to flop her on the bed when all he had to divest himself of was pyjamas. Left alone in the house, Philip was lusting for his latest mistress.

`That could be a bit of luck, too,' Vanek informed Brunner later, 'bearing in mind the method we shall adopt…'

It was close to nine o'clock when Brunner walked up the steps leading to the porch of No. 8 and rang the bell. At that hour on a Sunday the snowbound Avenue Raymond Poincare was deserted and very silent. Lights were on behind the curtained bay window at the front and Brunner's ring on the bell brought a quick-but cautious-reaction. A side curtain overlooking the porch was drawn back and Philip stood in the window, still wearing his dressing-gown over his pyjamas. Holding a glass, he stared at Brunner suspiciously, then dropped the curtain. A few moments later the door was opened a few inches and held in that position by a strong chain.

`Mr Robert Philip?' Brunner inquired.

`Yes, What is it?'

Expecting to see Noelle Berger laden with packages, Philip was taken aback by the arrival of this stranger. Brunner presented the Siirete Nationale card he had carried since the Commando had left Tabor.

`Surete, sir. I am afraid I have some bad news about an acquaintance of yours, a young lady. May I come in for a moment?'

Worried as he was about his mistress, Philip was a wary man who had not survived all these years in the half-world of gunrunning by accepting people or identity cards at face value; in fact, he himself had more than a nodding acquaintance with false papers.

`I don't know you,' he said after a moment. 'And it just happens that I know most of the police in Colmar…'

`That doesn't surprise me…' Brunner made an impatient gesture. 'I was transferred here from Strasbourg only last week…'

`Wait there while I get some clothes on…' The door slammed shut in Brunner's face. Inside the hall Philip frowned, sensing something odd about this unknown visitor. He reached for the phone on a side-table and something hard and pipe-like pressed against his back, digging through the silk dressing-gown as a voice spoke quietly. 'If you make a sound I shall shoot you. Take your hand away from that phone. Now, face the wall…' While Brunner was distracting the Frenchman's attention, keeping him at the front of the house, Vanek had gone round the side-path to the back of the house. He had followed the same route earlier-soon after dark when Philip had drawn the curtains over the front windows-and had found the french doors which were locked and without a key in the hole. Now, using the skeleton keys, he had let himself inside and come into the hall while Philip was talking to his unexpected visitor.

`Don't move… Vanek pressed the Luger muzzle against Philip's back again to remind him it existed, then he turned the key in the front door, drew the bolt and removed the chain. Brunner himself turned the handle, came inside and closed the door quickly. 'Fasten it up again,' Vanek ordered. 'No one saw you? Good…'

Prodding Philip up the staircase ahead of him, Vanek waited until they were on the upper landing, then handed the Luger to Brunner and quickly explored the first floor. All the curtains were closed in the darkened bedrooms and he found what he was looking for leading off a large double bedroom at the back -a bathroom. Switching on the light, he studied the room for a moment and then nodded to Brunner who prodded Philip inside his own bathroom. 'What the hell is going on?' the Frenchman blustered. 'The police station is just round the corner and..'