Dennis Wheatley - The Dark Secret of Josephine

She gave a sullen nod. "He has it, We argued over it for some time, but I surrendered it to him five minutes since."

"You fool! You black, besotted bitch!" he snarled. "Did you not have the sense to realize that had you kept it hidden it might yet have meant big money for us both?"

"For you, perhaps, but not for me!" she cried with sudden defiance. "He has the power to send me to the guillotine, and would have done so had I held out against him. I know this man! He is my enemy; my jinx! Had I not bought my life with the book he would have delighted in bringing about my death."

"You know him?"

Roger felt a sudden awful sinking in the pit of his stomach, but there was nothing he could do to stop Lucette shouting back:

"Know him; do I not! He says now that he is a Frenchman, but I find that hard to credit seeing how first we met. Everyone then believed him to be an English milor. He had an English wife, English friends and was upon an English ship. In Martinique, too, everyone spoke of him as Son Excellence Mister Brook. But I care not what he is. I know only that he would gladly see me dead."

"So!" Fouché" hardly breathed the word. Then, swinging round on Roger, his cry of triumph rang to the rafters. "A witness! The one witness I needed to support my oath! Mort Dieu; you are now no better than carrion in the executioner's cart!"

Left with no time to think or plan for such an emergency, and made desperate by the terrifying turn events had taken, Roger whipped out his sword-cane. Across the table he made a furious lunge at Fouchi; but his enemy sprang back, pivoted on his heels and dashed for the door. Swerving sideways Roger jumped over the couch, but Lucette threw herself m his way. Before he could get past her Fouché" had wrenched the door open and was bellowing into the darkness:

"Corporal Peltier! Bring your men! Citizens! Help! Quick! Come to my aid!"

Still hoping to transfix Fouché with one well directed thrust which would silence him instantly and for ever, Roger leapt after him. Fouché" was standing in the doorway. He was still yelling for help, but from fear of another attack had his head half-turned towards the room. Roger's lunge was aimed high to take him through the throat. Fouché jerked his head back so sharply that it hit the open door a resounding crack. The movement saved him. The flashing point missed his Adam's apple by the fraction of an inch, then buried itself in the wooden door jamb. The thrust had been delivered with tremend­ous force. Under the impact the thin blade snapped. Roger was left holding only the handle and ten inches of the steel. Next moment Peltier and his three men blocked the doorway and came pushing past Fouché into the studio.

Giving way before them, Roger darted back behind the table. He was at his wits' end for a sound course to pursue, and could think of nothing but an attempt to exert his authority. If he could succeed in that it might save him for the moment. He would then at least have a chance of destroying the all-important diary, and perhaps be able to escape from Paris before on a joint information laid by Fouché and Lucette a warrant was issued for his arrest. Pulling the order for Lucette's transportation from his pocket, he waved it in the faces of the advancing soldiers and cried:

"Touch me if you dare! I am the agent of Citizen Director Barras. Here is my warrant Your own officer charged you to obey my orders. They are that you arrest Citizen Fouché and this woman."

Fouché's shouts had attracted several people. As they came running up behind the soldiers he slammed and bolted the door to keep them out. Turning, he hurried back into the centre of the room. His friend the Corporal gave him an anxious look, and asked eagerly:

"What's bin 'appenin', Citizen? I saw 'im attack yer! 'E'd no right ter do that, even if 'e is a police agent What d'yer want us ter do?"

"Ignore his orders and accept mine," replied Fouché promptly. "What I have long believed the Citoyenne Remy here has now con­firmed. He is an English spy."

"Sacre" bleu !’ exclaimed the Corporal. "An English spy! An' 'e's an aristo ter boot or my name's not Jacques Peltier. ‘E 'as both the looks an' the smell o' one."

"You have been told a lie," Roger cut in sharply. "I am neither. This absurd charge is based upon my having been abroad on a secret mission which occupied me for many months after 9th Thermidor. Before that I was a member of the Paris Commune. As a Citizen Commissioner from its founding mere are thousands of people in Paris who can vouch for my identity and my patriotism."

"That's true, that is," nodded a tall guardsman with ginger hair. "I knew 'im by sight before that too, when I were a pot-man in the Jacobin Club. I 'eard 'im speak there against our going to war over the Spanish Treaty."

"Yes," supplemented one of the others, a thick-set man with a swarthy face. ‘ I thought I recognized him, and I do now."

"Don't be taken in by that," snapped Fouché "He has acted as one of Pitt's agents from the beginning. For years past he has consistently betrayed us. He is the son of an English Admiral and his name is Brook."

"You lie!" retorted Roger. "This is a plot by which you are attempting to evade arrest."

"It is the truth, as the Citoyenne Remy can confirm."

"I do!" shrilled Lucette, turning to the soldiers. "He is an English milor. I was for a week with him last year in an English ship."

"You are mistaken," said Roger firmly. "I have a cousin named Robert MacElfic who much resembles me. It was him you must have met."

She gave a harsh laugh. "That lie will not serve you. Citizen Fouché is right. You are an Englishman and a spy. I will swear to that with my dying breath."

"You see!" added Fouché triumphantly. "He admits to having English relatives. He admits, too, to having been abroad at the time the Citoyenne Remy says she met him. What more do you require?"

"That's enough for me," growled Peltier, glancing-round at the three guardsmen. "Well men; what der yer say?"

The ginger-haired one looked doubtful, but the swarthy man said: "I'd sooner take Citizen Fouché's word than his," and the third soldier nodded his agreement.

As Roger took in the expressions of suspicion, anger and hatred on the faces of the five people who formed a semi-circle round him, he knew that his situation was desperate. If he once let them haul him off to a police office nothing could then prevent a full enquiry into his past. He had spared no pains to get accepted a history of himself as water-tight as he could make it, but there were some small holes in it, such as his statement that he had been born in Strassburg, which could never be covered up.

He had had, too, as the only means of throwing discredit on Lucette's identification of him, to say that it was his cousin, Robert MacElfic, whom she had met. She knew that for a lie, and it would not be difficult for French authorities to check a statement by her that from January to August a Mr. Roger Brook had been Governor of Martinique, Should he once be caught out on even a few minor matters, under skilful interrogation the whole false edifice he had built up would gradually be torn to pieces. Yet, although he knew that his life depended on it, he could think of no way out of the impasse with which he was faced, except to shout at the soldiers again:

"This is a plot, I tell you! This man and woman are in league together. Both are under sentence, one to banishment and the other to transportation. Don't be fooled by their lies, or you will rue it. I order you to arrest them!"

"Nay!" cried Fouché. "It is him you must arrest; or never again will you be able to call yourselves true patriots."

"Come lads!" Peltier took a step forward. "Let's take 'im ter the police office. They'll 'ave the truth ahrt of 'im, an' by me old mother's grave I vow Citizen Fouché 'as the rights of it."