Ashenden Read online

  ‘I’ll dress myself.’

  Ashenden watched her as she took off her dressing-gown and slipped a dress over her head. She forced her feet into shoes obviously too small for her. She arranged her hair. Every now and then she gave the detectives a hurried, sullen glance. Ashenden wondered if she would have the nerve to go through with it. R. would call him a damned fool, but he almost wished she would. She went up to the dressing-table and Ashenden stood up in order to let her sit down. She greased her face quickly and then rubbed off the grease with a dirty towel, she powdered herself and made up her eyes. But her hand shook. The three men watched her in silence. She rubbed the rouge on her cheeks and painted her mouth. Then she crammed a hat down on her head. Ashenden made a gesture to the first detective and he took a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and advanced towards her.

  At the sight of them she started back violently and flung her arms wide.

  ‘Non, non, non. Je ne veux pas. No, not them. No. No.’

  ‘Come, ma fille, don’t be silly,’ said the detective roughly.

  As though for protection (very much to his surprise) she flung her arms round Ashenden.

  ‘Don’t let them take me, have mercy on me, I can’t, I can’t.’

  Ashenden extricated himself as best he could.

  ‘I can do nothing more for you.’

  The detective seized her wrists and was about to affix the handcuffs when with a great cry she threw herself down on the floor.

  ‘I will do what you wish. I will do everything.’

  On a sign from Ashenden the detectives left the room. He waited for a little till she had regained a certain calm. She was lying on the floor, sobbing passionately. He raised her to her feet and made her sit down.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she gasped.

  ‘I want you to write another letter to Chandra.’

  ‘My head is in a whirl. I could not put two phrases together. You must give me time.’

  But Ashenden felt that it was better to get her to write a letter while she was under the effect of her terror. He did not want to give her time to collect herself.

  ‘I will dictate the letter to you. All you have to do is to write exactly what I tell you.’

  She gave a deep sigh, but took the pen and the paper and sat down before them at the dressing-table.

  ‘If I do this and . . . and you succeed, how do I know that I shall be allowed to go free?’

  ‘The Colonel promised that you should. You must take my word for it that I shall carry out his instructions.’

  ‘I should look a fool if I betrayed my friend and then went to prison for ten years.’

  ‘I’ll tell you your best guarantee of our good faith. Except by reason of Chandra you are not of the smallest importance to us. Why should we put ourselves to the bother and expense of keeping you in prison when you can do us no harm?’

  She reflected for an instant. She was composed now. It was as though, having exhausted her emotion, she had become on a sudden a sensible and practical woman.

  ‘Tell me what you want me to write.’

  Ashenden hesitated. He thought he could put the letter more or less in the way she would naturally have put it, but he had to give it consideration. It must be neither fluent nor literary. He knew that in moments of emotion people are inclined to be melodramatic and stilted. In a book or on the stage this always rings false and the author has to make his people speak more simply and with less emphasis than in fact they do. It was a serious moment, but Ashenden felt that there were in it elements of the comic.

  ‘I didn’t know I loved a coward,’ he started. ‘If you loved me you couldn’t hesitate when I ask you to come. . . . Underline couldn’t twice.’ He went on. ‘When I promise you there is no danger. If you don’t love me, you are right not to come. Don’t come. Go back to Berlin where you are in safety. I am sick of it. I am alone here. I have made myself ill by waiting for you and every day I have said he is coming. If you loved me you would not hesitate so much. It is quite clear to me that you do not love me. I am sick and tired of you. I have no money. This hotel is impossible. There is nothing for me to stay for. I can get an engagement in Paris. I have a friend there who has made me serious propositions. I have wasted long enough over you and look what I have got from it. It is finished. Good-bye. You will never find a woman who will love you as I have loved you. I cannot afford to refuse the proposition of my friend, so I have telegraphed to him and as soon as I shall receive his answer I go to Paris. I do not blame you because you do not love me, that is not your fault, but you must see that I should be a stupid to go on wasting my life. One is not young for ever. Good-bye. Giulia.’

  When Ashenden read over the letter he was not altogether satisfied. But it was the best he could do. It had an air of verisimilitude which the words lacked because, knowing little English, she had written phonetically, the spelling was atrocious and the handwriting like a child’s; she had crossed out words and written them over again. Some of the phrases he had put in French. Once or twice tears had fallen on the pages and blurred the ink.

  ‘I leave you now,’ said Ashenden. ‘It may be that when next you see me I shall be able to tell you that you are free to go where you choose. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Spain.’

  ‘Very well, I will have everything prepared.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. He left her.

  There was nothing now for Ashenden to do but wait. He sent a messenger to Lausanne in the afternoon, and next morning went down to the quay to meet the boat. There was a waiting-room next to the ticket-office and here he told the detectives to hold themselves in readiness. When a boat arrived the passengers advanced along the pier in line and their passports were examined before they were allowed to go ashore. If Chandra came and showed his passport, and it was very likely that he was travelling with a false one, issued probably by a neutral nation, he was to be asked to wait and Ashenden was to identify him. Then he would be arrested. It was with some excitement that Ashenden watched the boat come in and the little group of people gathered at the gangway. He scanned them closely but saw no one who looked in the least like an Indian. Chandra had not come. Ashenden did not know what to do. He had played his last card. There were not more than half a dozen passengers for Thonon, and when they had been examined and gone their way he strolled slowly along the pier.

  ‘Well, it’s no go,’ he said to Félix, who had been examining the passports. ‘The gentleman I expected hasn’t turned up.’

  ‘I have a letter for you.’

  He handed Ashenden an envelope addressed to Madame Lazzari on which he immediately recognised the spidery handwriting of Chandra Lal. At that moment the steamer from Geneva which was going to Lausanne and the end of the lake hove in sight. It arrived at Thonon every morning twenty minutes after the steamer going in the opposite direction had left. Ashenden had an inspiration.

  ‘Where is the man who brought it?’

  ‘He’s in the ticket-office.’

  ‘Give him the letter and tell him to return to the person who gave it to him. He is to say that he took it to the lady and she sent it back. If the person asks him to take another letter he is to say that it is not much good as she is packing her trunk and leaving Thonon.’

  He saw the letter handed over and the instructions given and then walked back to his little house in the country.

  The next boat on which Chandra could possibly come arrived about five and having at that hour an important engagement with an agent working in Germany, he warned Félix that he might be a few minutes late. But if Chandra came he could easily be detained; there was no great hurry since the train in which he was to be taken to Paris did not start till shortly after eight. When Ashenden had finished his business he strolled leisurely down to the lake. It was light still and from the top of the hill he saw the steamer pulling out. It was an anxious moment and instinctively he quickened his steps. Suddenly he saw someone running towards him and recognised the m
an who had taken the letter.

  ‘Quick, quick,’ he cried. ‘He’s there.’

  Ashenden’s heart gave a great thud against his chest.

  ‘At last.’

  He began to run too and as they ran the man, panting, told him how he had taken back the unopened letter. When he put it in the Indian’s hand he turned frightfully pale (‘I should never have thought an Indian could turn that colour,’ he said), and turned it over and over in his hand as though he could not understand what his own letter was doing there. Tears sprang to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. (‘It was grotesque, he’s fat, you know.’) He said something in a language the man did not understand and then in French asked him when the boat went to Thonon. When he got on board he looked about, but did not see him, then he caught sight of him, huddled up in an ulster with his hat drawn down over his eyes, standing alone in the bows. During the crossing he kept his eyes fixed on Thonon.

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Ashenden.

  ‘I got off first and Monsieur Félix told me to come for you.’

  ‘I suppose they’re holding him in the waiting-room.’

  Ashenden was out of breath when they reached the pier. He burst into the waiting-room. A group of men, talking at the top of their voices and gesticulating wildly, were clustered round a man lying on the ground.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he cried.

  ‘Look,’ said Monsieur Félix.

  Chandra Lal lay there, his eyes wide open and a thin line of foam on his lips, dead. His body was horribly contorted.

  ‘He’s killed himself. We’ve sent for the doctor. He was too quick for us.’

  A sudden thrill of horror passed through Ashenden.

  When the Indian landed Félix recognised from the description that he was the man they wanted. There were only four passengers. He was the last. Félix took an exaggerated time to examine the passports of the first three, and then took the Indian’s. It was a Spanish one and it was all in order. Félix asked the regulation questions and noted them on the official sheet. Then he looked at him pleasantly and said:

  ‘Just come into the waiting-room for a moment. There are one or two formalities to fulfil.’

  ‘Is my passport not in order?’ the Indian asked.

  ‘Perfectly.’

  Chandra hesitated, but then followed the official to the door of the waiting-room. Félix opened it and stood aside.

  ‘Entrez.’

  Chandra went in and the two detectives stood up. He must have suspected at once that they were police-officers and realised that he had fallen into a trap.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Félix. ‘I have one or two questions to put to you.’

  ‘It is hot in here,’ he said, and in point of fact they had a little stove there that kept the place like an oven. ‘I will take off my coat if you permit.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Félix graciously.

  He took off his coat, apparently with some effort, and he turned to put it on a chair, and then before they realised what had happened they were startled to see him stagger and fall heavily to the ground. While taking off his coat Chandra had managed to swallow the contents of a bottle that was still clasped in his hand. Ashenden put his nose to it. There was a very distinct odour of almonds.

  For a little while they looked at the man who lay on the floor. Félix was apologetic.

  ‘Will they be very angry?’ he asked nervously.

  ‘I don’t see that it was your fault,’ said Ashenden. ‘Anyhow, he can do no more harm. For my part I am just as glad he killed himself. The notion of his being executed did not make me very comfortable.’

  In a few minutes the doctor arrived and pronounced life extinct.

  ‘Prussic acid,’ he said to Ashenden.

  Ashenden nodded.

  ‘I will go and see Madame Lazzari,’ he said. ‘If she wants to stay a day or two longer I shall let her. But if she wants to go to-night of course she can. Will you give the agents at the station instructions to let her pass?’

  ‘I shall be at the station myself,’ said Félix.

  Ashenden once more climbed the hill. It was night now, a cold, bright night with an unclouded sky and the sight of the new moon, a white shining thread, made him turn three times the money in his pocket. When he entered the hotel he was seized on a sudden with distaste for its cold banality. It smelt of cabbage and boiled mutton. On the walls of the hall were coloured posters of railway companies advertising Grenoble, Carcassonne and the bathing places of Normandy. He went upstairs and after a brief knock opened the door of Giulia Lazzari’s room. She was sitting in front of her dressing-table, looking at herself in the glass, just idly or despairingly, apparently doing nothing, and it was in this that she saw Ashenden as he came in. Her face changed suddenly as she caught sight of his and she sprang up so vehemently that the chair fell over.

  ‘What is it? Why are you so white?’ she cried.

  She turned round and stared at him and her features were gradually twisted to a look of horror.

  ‘Il est pris,’ she gasped.

  ‘Il est mort,’ said Ashenden.

  ‘Dead! He took the poison. He had the time for that. He’s escaped you after all.’

  ‘What do you mean? How did you know about the poison?’

  ‘He always carried it with him. He said that the English should never take him alive.’

  Ashenden reflected for an instant. She had kept that secret well. He supposed the possibility of such a thing should have occurred to him. How was he to anticipate these melodramatic devices?

  ‘Well, now you are free. You can go wherever you like and no obstacle shall be put in your way. Here are your ticket and your passport and here is the money that was in your possession when you were arrested. Do you wish to see Chandra?’

  She started.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘There is no need. I thought you might care to.’

  She did not weep. Ashenden supposed that she had exhausted all her emotion. She seemed apathetic.

  ‘A telegram will be sent to-night to the Spanish frontier to instruct the authorities to put no difficulties in your way. If you will take my advice you will get out of France as soon as you can.’

  She said nothing, and since Ashenden had no more to say he made ready to go.

  ‘I am sorry that I have had to show myself so hard to you. I am glad to think that now the worst of your troubles are over and I hope that time will assuage the grief that I know you must feel for the death of your friend.’

  Ashenden gave her a little bow and turned to the door. But she stopped him.

  ‘One little moment,’ she said. ‘There is one thing I should like to ask. I think you have some heart.’

  ‘Whatever I can do for you, you may be sure I will.’

  ‘What are they going to do with his things?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’

  Then she said something that confounded Ashenden. It was the last thing he expected.

  ‘He had a wrist-watch that I gave him last Christmas. It cost twelve pounds. Can I have it back?’

  9 Gustav

  When Ashenden, given charge of a number of spies working from Switzerland, was first sent there, R., wishing him to see the sort of reports that he would be required to obtain, handed him the communications, a sheaf of typewritten documents, of a man known in the secret service as Gustav.

  ‘He’s the best fellow we’ve got,’ said R. ‘His information is always very full and circumstantial. I want you to give his reports your very best attention. Of course Gustav is a clever little chap, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get just as good reports from the other agents. It’s merely a question of explaining exactly what we want.’

  Gustav, who lived at Basle, represented a Swiss firm with branches at Frankfurt, Mannheim and Cologne, and by virtue of his business was able to go in and out of Germany without risk. He travelled up and down the Rhine, and gathered material about the movement of troops, the manufacture of munit
ions, the state of mind of the country (a point on which R. laid stress) and other matters upon which the Allies desired information. His frequent letters to his wife hid an ingenious code and the moment she received them in Basle she sent them to Ashenden in Geneva, who extracted from them the important facts and communicated these in the proper quarter. Every two months Gustav came home and prepared one of the reports that served as models to the other spies in this particular section of the secret service.

  His employers were pleased with Gustav and Gustav had reason to be pleased with his employers. His services were so useful that he was not only paid more highly than the others, but for particular scoops had received from time to time a handsome bonus.

  This went on for more than a year. Then something aroused R.’s quick suspicions; he was a man of an amazing alertness, not so much of mind, as of instinct, and he had suddenly a feeling that some hanky-panky was going on. He said nothing definite to Ashenden (whatever R. surmised he was disposed to keep to himself), but told him to go to Basle, Gustav being then in Germany, and have a talk with Gustav’s wife. He left it to Ashenden to decide the tenor of the conversation.

  Having arrived at Basle, and leaving his bag at the station, for he did not yet know whether he would have to stay or not, he took a tram to the corner of the street in which Gustav lived and, with a quick look to see that he was not followed, walked along to the house he sought. It was a block of flats that gave you the impression of decent poverty and Ashenden conjectured that they were inhabited by clerks and small tradespeople. Just inside the door was a cobbler’s shop and Ashenden stopped.

  ‘Does Herr Grabow live here?’ he asked in his none too fluent German.

  ‘Yes, I saw him go up a few minutes ago. You’ll find him in.’

  Ashenden was startled, for he had but the day before received through Gustav’s wife a letter addressed from Mannheim in which Gustav by means of his code gave the numbers of certain regiments that had just crossed the Rhine. Ashenden thought it unwise to ask the cobbler the question that rose to his lips, so thanked him and went up to the third floor on which he knew already that Gustav lived. He rang the bell and heard it tinkle within. In a moment the door was opened by a dapper little man with a close-shaven round head and spectacles. He wore carpet slippers.