Dennis Wheatley - The Dark Secret of Josephine

"There are now only a few minor details that I do not know about this matter; such as why you choose him for your agent."

"It was owing to a man I met soon after landing at Nantes. He told me that Citizen Fouché was a skilful homme d'affaires , and not above sharing any profit to be obtained from a valuable piece of information. My friend gave me a letter of introduction to him."

"I see. Let us proceed to business, then. Be good enough to hand over Madame de Beauharnais's diary."

"I... I have not got it."

"That is a lie. You are much too clever to have passed it on to Fouché. Had you done so, you know well enough he would have had no further truck with you."

"I tell you I have not got it."

"Then that is most unfortunate for you." Roger drew from his pocket the Order of Transportation, opened it held it to the light and told her to read it. Then he said:

"When I came here I had no idea that you were Madame Remy. But I was prepared to make a bargain with her, and I will do so with you. Give me the diary, and agree to leave Paris for good tomorrow morning, and I will have this order suspended. It will be marked 'to be executed only in the event of the person named being found to have returned to the Capital'. Should you refuse, I will call in my men to arrest you, and I snail see to it myself that you start on your journey to Cayenne tomorrow."

"No!" she exclaimed with a violent shake of the head. "I'll not give it up. Send me to Cayenne if you will. I am no flabby European to take a fever and die of it. For once I'd have something for which to thank my black blood. I'll be little worse off there than I am here, and I'm not yet so ill-favoured that I could not seduce one of the guards into aiding my escape."

At her outburst Roger's confidence in his prospects of success suddenly slumped to near zero. It had not occurred to him that for a mulatto prostitute transportation threatened few of the terrors it would have held for an ordinary French woman. All he could do now was to play his subsidiary card; so he said:

"I think you underrate the horrors that you will have to face. I am told that conditions in the convict ships are appalling, and that many people die upon the voyage. Be advised by me and take the easier way. Your refusal, too, may have been influenced by lack of money. If so, I will give you a hundred louis; and that will see you back to the West Indies in comfort."

Again she stubbornly shook her head. "No. I know enough of Voodoo to survive the voyage, and within a month of reaching Cayenne I will have escaped. Then I will join another fraternity of sea-rovers. The diary is safe enough where it is. Later I will return and collect it Having kept it so long, I'll not give it up. It is my life-line to a secure old age.

Roger had already thought of threatening her with prison, but whatever charge was trumped up against her she could not be kept there indefinitely. Then, as he sought desperately in his mind for a way to get the better of her, the expression 'life-line' that she had used gave him a sudden inspiration. Since she was who she was, he still had a forgotten ace up his sleeve.

Refolding the transportation order, he said quietly: "You seem to have overlooked one thing. Piracy is just as much a crime punishable by death in France as it is in England. Unless you produce that diary, I will charge you with it; then the thing you count your life-line will become the rope that works the blade of the guillotine."

At that her jaw fell; then she screamed: "You fiend! You devil!" and came at him with hands rigid like claws in an attempt to tear his eyes out. Thrusting her off, he gave her a swift jab in the stomach, which sent her reeling and gasping for breath back again on to the couch.

Standing over her Roger said firmly: "Now! Do I send you to your death or will you give me the diary?"

Still whimpering, the fight at last gone out of her, she pulled herself to her feet, and slouched across to a door at the far end of the studio under the steep stairway. Roger followed her and, as she opened it could just make out by the faint light that beyond it there lay a kitchen. Going inside she fished about for a moment in its near darkness, and emerged holding a heavy meat chopper.

Alert to the possibility that she meant to attack him with it, Roger watched her warily. But without a glance at him she went up the twenty or more narrow stairs to the small landing; then, using the blunt back of the heavy chopper, she began to hammer with it at the end of one of the many short cross beams that supported the roof of the studio. After half a dozen blows the nails that held the end of the beam to a larger rafter were loosened enough for her to pull it down. It was hollow, and thrusting her hand into the cavity she drew out a small leather-bound book. Then she came down the stairs and handed it to him.

"Thank you," he said. "Allow me to congratulate you on having thought of such a good hiding-place. We might have hunted the house for a month without coming upon it Indeed, I doubt if we would have found it short of pulling the whole building to pieces."

With a shrug, she walked past him, threw the chopper on to the table, and sat down again on the couch. Meanwhile, he flicked over the leaves of the little book to make quite certain that it was the thing that he had gone to so much trouble to obtain. It was a thick book and all but the last dozen of its pages were covered with a round childish scrawl. Soon he came upon the name William repeated three times on the same page, then on a passage that made nun raise his eyebrows. It was, he thought, remarkable how indiscreet young girls could be during the first upsurge of physical passion, in confiding their feelings and experiences to paper. Little wonder Madame de Beau­harnais could not face the thought of her diary falling into the hands of an unscrupulous publisher. There was no law to prevent the printing of such material, however personal; and there were still innumerable books on sale describing, without the least truth, obscenities of the most revolting kind said to have been practised by Marie Antoinette, which had been published while she was a Queen living in splendour at Versailles.

Slipping the book into his pocket, he walked over to Lucette, and said: "Now, about yourself. If you will tell me where you wish to go when you leave Paris tomorrow morning, I will do my best to aid you, and will provide the money for your journey."

"I think I had best return to the Indies," she murmured despondently. "With food to be had for the asking and the warmth of the sunshine, life is at least easier there."

"Very well. I will endeavour to secure you a passage in a blockade runner."

As he spoke, there came an urgent knocking on the front door.

Muttering a filthy oath, she pulled herself to her feet. "I expect that is a customer. I must open to him, but will say that I am engaged."

Roger watched her cross the room, pull aside the coarse curtain and unlatch the door. It was immediately thrust wide. With a cry of surprise, she took a pace back. Slamming the door to behind him, Fouché stepped after her into the room.

Snatching up his sword-cane Roger called out to him: "So you followed me! What do you want here?"

Thrusting his way past Lucette, Fouché advanced to the table, and halted. Glaring across at Roger, he panted: "I had hoped that you might still have to collect the order of transportation you spoke of from Barras, before threatening to execute it. Even had I had the luck to pick up a coach I might have managed to get here a few minutes before you."

"Then you have had your half-hour's walk for nothing," said Roger quietly. "I already had the order: but it will not now be needed."

Fouché's pale eyes switched from Roger's waist-line to Lucette's neck and he said sharply to her: "Then you have told him where the diary is?"