The Assassins

PETER USTINOV

AT WHAT age should assassins retire? This burning question was exercising Monsieur Ambroise Plageot, the newly appointed head of the bureau of the French Sûreté entitled Éloignement. The purpose of this department is to safeguard the persons of foreign dignitaries visiting France by rounding up all potential assassins and sending them away for a while. M. Plageot’s brow furrowed as he looked up from the pile of documents before him and studied the figure of the man who was seated opposite him.

“You say that you had a pleasant relationship with my predecessor, Monsieur Latille?”

“Oh, yes, sir. It was a bit of a blow to all of us when he retired.”

“All of you? There are more of you?”

“Six in all. Members of the Nihilist International.”

“Nihilism went out before the turn of the century.”

“That’s what many people think.”

Plageot sighed. He was half amused, half mystified, but being a good civil servant, he could allow himself to show neither emotion. His eye roved once again over the documents. The earliest one was dated July 18, 1903. It was yellowed and fragile. Attached to it was a dignified photograph of a youth with a vast shock of black hair whose long neck emerged from a butterfly collar several sizes too large. His name was Bratko Zvoinitch. The spindly, nervous hand of some long-dead policeman proclaimed that he had been detained at the request of the consul general of Montenegro as a suspected member of a terrorist organization.

Briefly Plageot fingered his way through the other papers in the Zvoinitch file. In 1910, when he was arrested again, he was called Bruno Silberberg.

“ Why did you change your name to Silberberg?”

“Did I? Oh, you know, I’ve had so many names in my life, I really can’t remember why I adopted any particular one.”

“Why choose Silberberg? You’re not Jewish, are you?”

“ If I had been, I would hardly have called myself Silberberg. You have to be a gentile to choose a Jewish name voluntarily. I think I occasionally chose a Jewish name in order to identify myself more closely with that great and victimized race. Revolutionaries can really exist only when they are in the minority. They are the living conscience of mankind. They are the forerunners of progress, the martyrs who lead the way. They act the dream instead of waiting lazily for the reality which may follow a century later.”

“ I see.”

Plageot looked over his glasses and compared the face of the dark youth on the photograph with the wizened and asthmatic figure before him. There was no hair left, not a strand, not the trace of a root. The head was polished and locked into an awkward stooping position by some misfortune. His inability to move his head, the wrinkles at the back of his neck, and his great hooded eyelids, one of them billowing over three quarters of his right eye like a sail, gave him the aspect of a tortoise, at once wise and ridiculous. The name of the maker of his jacket was clearly visible, as the garment stood up of its own accord to enclose flesh which was no longer there. His perpetual smile was not humorous so much as ironic, as though he expected little of men, but the firm lines near the corners of his mouth suggested that he was used to taking more than they offered. There was something Levantine about the sultry sweetness of his expression, a resignation, a closeness to history, a somnolence brought about by years of intense heat, a low opinion of the value of tangible things, a weary exasperation with the ephemeral.

When he spoke, it was in a voice which was scarcely audible, clogged with dust and black tobacco. His words were formed delicately out of wheezy gusts of breath and sounded as though they came from far away. Plageot couldn’t help liking the fellow. He had substance.

“Remind me of some of the other names I used,” he said suddenly.

Plageot obliged. “Vladimir Ilikov, René Saboureau, Wolfgang Tichy, Antal Solomon, Count Napoléon de Souci. . . .”

At the mention of the last name, he broke into frank laughter, which was transformed almost at once into painful coughing. At length the fit subsided, and he looked up at Plageot, exhausted but dimly amused.

“ I was always at my worst when I tried to be aristocratic,” he wheezed. “ I could never think of a name. Napoléon de Souci. . . . What an idiotic idea! The Organization ordered me to infiltrate the royal family of Saxony from the inside in order to facilitate the murder of one of its members. We were aiming low in those days. They saw through me, of course. I no sooner presented my card than I was rushed away and deported. I didn’t look like a Count Napoléon de Souci, you understand. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine what a Count Napoléon de Souci would look like.” He grew more serious. “No, I was my best, at my most dangerous, when I was a man of the people.”

“Dangerous?” asked Plageot. “And yet, looking through your file, I cannot find the evidence of a single crime you have committed. Certainly no murder. Always you have been arrested on suspicion.”

“I was never lucky in France,” said Zvoinitch, with a sigh.

“Then why did you stay here? You seem to have no family ties here, and certainly no ties of blood.”

“ I love France,” murmured Zvoinitch. “Unless you kick me out, I will never leave.”

IN SPITE OF himself, Plageot was moved. He closed the file and lit a Gauloise cigarette. “Very well,” he said, “let me recapitulate. I cannot reach any decision unless the problem is clear in my own mind. I took over this bureau yesterday, and you have consistently indicated by your insinuations that I don’t know my way around yet. This I understand as well as you do. But put yourself in my shoes for a moment. A man of eighty-four enters my office —”

“ Eighty-five. ”

“ Eighty-five; I beg your pardon. Far be it from me to shorten your life. You enter my office, supporting yourself on two sticks, and announce that you are a violent and notorious assassin. Because I am polite by nature, I ask you to sit down. You do so with evident relief, having negotiated four flights of stairs. Then you produce a copy of this morning’s Aurore, in which the imminent arrival of the Imam of the Hejjaz is announced, in order to promote better understanding between the French people and his people. I ask you what this fact has to do with your visit. You express surprise and tell me that my predecessor, Monsieur Latille, would have understood. Since I insist, you explain to me that the life of the Imam is in danger. I become interested and ask you if you have any information which leads you to believe this. You smile pityingly and tell me that you may be tempted to kill him if I do not deport you for one week to Corsica. My dear fellow, have you any idea where the Hejjaz is?”

“It doesn’t matter where it is,” replied the old man. “ I am against all autocrats, and the people of that unfortunate land, wherever it is, deserve to be liberated. No despot is safe while I am alive.”

“Tell me,” asked Plageot, “what would my predecessor, Monsieur Latille, have done?”

“There was no argument with him,” replied Zvoinitch. “He recognized the danger which we constitute to the guests of the Republic. He would have signed the authorization at once, and we would have been on the plane tonight.”

“Tonight?” Plageot was frankly surprised. “But the Imam does not arrive until the day after tomorrow.”

“Monsieur Latille was not one to take risks where desperate men are involved.”

“I see. By ‘we’ I presume you mean yourself and your five colleagues.”

“Yes.”

“And where are your five friends?”

“They are all packed and ready to go.”

“ How is that?”

“When we read of the visit of the Imam in this morning’s paper we held a meeting, and I was sent as a delegate representing our group.”

Plageot took out a pencil. “Would you mind giving me the names of your friends?”

“ Is that necessary? Monsieur Latille —”

“Monsieur Latille is no longer here,” Plageot said sharply.

“Very well. Asen Popoff, of the Bulgarian Nihilist International. Yahuda Achron, of the Jewish branch. Professor Semyon Gurko, of the Ukrainian Separatist Nihilist Union. Lazar Perlesco, of the Nihilist Center of the Banat. And Madame Perlesco, better known in Nihilist circles as Rosa Liechtenstein.”

“Well,” said Plageot, “I can’t give you an answer today.”

Zvoinitch made no attempt to disguise his annoyance. “Tomorrow may be too late,” he said.

“That is a risk we will have to take.”

Zvoinitch rose with difficulty, seeming to think that he was more impressive at his full five-footeight. “You are young,” he declared darkly. “Anyone who is young in charge of a government department must be considered promising. Your career may well be ruined by your shortsightedness.”

“Do you know what I think?” Plageot answered. “ I think you should see a doctor.”

“ Is that so? Before long you may find yourself in the position of being seen by a doctor.”

“Are you threatening me now?”

“ I threaten anyone who stands in my way.”

He tucked his miserable suitcase under one arm, took a stick in either hand, and hobbled to the door.

“It may interest you to know,” Zvoinitch whispered, “that the Imam of the Hejjaz arrives on Air France, Flight 178, from Baghdad at 7:48 on Wednesday morning. He is staying at the Hotel Raphael. He leaves on Sunday for Marseilles on the Train Bleu. Guard him well.”

HE WAS gone. Plageot stubbed out his cigarette in irritation. He rang for Mademoiselle Pelbec, his assistant. After a moment she entered. She was one of those devoted functionaries who haunt French ministries, walking hither and thither with bits of paper, forever stamping something. An open pair of scissors hung from her belt on a chain. Her blouse was homemade and ill-fitting enough for one strap of her brassière to be permanently visible, gathered with the strap of her slip in the loop of a gigantic safety pin. Her hair was dull red, her mouth twitched incessantly, and she had no eyebrows.

“ You rang,” she announced, and made it sound like an accusation.

She had been eight years with M. Latille, and she resented his retirement.

“Mademoiselle Pelbec,” Plageot said, “what do you know of a man called Zvoinitch, who says he is a nihilist?”

Mlle. Pelbec became guarded and seemed to be choosing her words with some caution.

“Well, I know Monsieur Latille considered him a rather dangerous character,” she replied.

“If he is so dangerous, why was he not deported?”

“Oh, dear me, no,” Mlle. Pelbec blurted, and then steadied herself. “While Monsieur Latille considered him dangerous, he did not consider him as dangerous as he considered himself, if you follow my meaning.”

“ Frankly, no. From one meeting, I consider him a harmless crank.”

“You mean you are not sending him to Corsica?” Mlle. Pelbec asked in horror.

“Why should I?”

“Well, he never reports without good reason. The relationship between him and Monsieur Latille was quite remarkable. For as long as I remember, Monsieur Latille never had to send for them. They would report of their own accord whenever they read in the papers that anyone of any importance was visiting Paris. It was an extraordinary example of cooperation between the potential criminal and the potential pursuer. If all criminals were as public-spirited as the six of them, there would be no more crime.”

“ Precisely,” said Plageot dryly. “ I believe them to be utterly harmless.”

“Is any of us utterly harmless?” asked Mlle. Pelbec. “They never killed anyone in France, true, but in Macedonia their record is terrible.”

“ How do you know?”

“ Monsieur Latille told me so.”

Plageot grunted. “There’s no evidence of it here,” he said,

“Monsieur Latille wouldn’t have invented such information. Why should he?”

“I wonder. That will be all, Mademoiselle Pelbec.”

She left on her dignity, muttering about upstarts and ingratitude.

Plageot stared out of the window, where a summer day was fading. Then he called another department of the Sûreté Nationale. In reply to his question about the Imam’s arrival, he was told that the potentate was due on Air France, Flight 264, from Geneva at 9:12 on Wednesday morning, and that he would be staying as the guest of the President of the Republic. Smiling grimly, he replaced the receiver. He prepared to dismiss the matter from his mind momentarily when the phone rang. The man at the other end told him that he had been given the wrong information and that the Imam would not be staying at the Elysées but at the Hotel Raphael.

Plageot cursed. “But tell me,”he asked, “is he flying in from Geneva and not from Baghdad?”

“The information I gave you about the flight is correct,” said the voice.

“And where does the Imam go after Paris?”

“Monte Carlo.”

“Monte Carlo, not Marseilles.”

“No, no, Monte Carlo. The Imam is coming here to better the lot of his underprivileged people, but he is incalculably wealthy himself and likes to gamble.”

Plageot smiled. “And I presume,” he added, “that he will fly to Nice and then proceed by car.”

“No,” said the voice, “ he is booked all the way on the Train Bleu.”

“What? Thank you.” Plageot hung up and thought.

Two of the facts supplied by the old man were right, two were wrong. A policeman’s function was to be suspicious, and yet it was far easier to suspect someone trying to allay suspicion than it was to suspect someone trying to attract it. It would be dreadful if the Imam did perish, blown to pieces by the traditional bunch of flowers containing the infernal machine in its scented bosom. His conscience would be indelibly marked if that should happen; he could never face Mlle. Pelbec again, that was sure. Damn Zvoinitch! With all his clumsiness, he knew what he was doing, setting little balls of doubt rolling. He was just too sinister not to be ridiculous, yet not ridiculous enough to be quite harmless. Plageot called for the files of the people Zvoinitch had named as his collaborators. Their police records were remarkably similar. All had multitudinous aliases.

Plageot made some rapid calculations on his pad and came to the remarkable conclusion that their combined ages came to 508 years, Yahuda Achron being the youngest of the group at seventy-nine, Madame Perlesco the oldest at ninety-two.

It was more and more disturbing, more and more absurd. There was only one key to the mystery - Latille. Plageot searched his diary for the number and telephoned Latille at home.

“Hullo, is Monsieur Latille in?” he asked.

A woman’s voice seemed hesitant.

“Who is speaking?”

“Ambroise Plageot. Is that Madame Latille?”

“ Yes.”

“Ah, Madame. This is Plageot, your husband’s successor. You may remember me from the little party the day before yesterday to celebrate your husband’s retirement. It was I who was selected to present him with the commemorative inkwell.”

“Indeed I remember you, Monsieur. The inkwell is on my mantelpiece. It is very beautiful, as indeed was your speech.”

“ I flatter myself that I chose my words with some felicity. Is your husband in, Madame?”

“ Just a second,” she said.

M. Latille came to the phone. “ Hullo, Plageot. How’s everything at the office, old man?”

“That’s just it, Latille. I have a question which only you can answer. Would you have a moment to see me?”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“No.”

There was a pause at the other end. “Oh, very well. Come around at once, if you insist.”

“Thank you,” Plageot said, already feeling more a master of the situation.

Plageot was unmarried, but he had a mistress, who might as well have been his wife, because he was not entirely faithful to her. This happened to be her birthday. He called her. “ Annik,” he said in his most authoritative voice, “ I will be late - three quarters of an hour. What’s that, you’re dressed to go out? So much the better; then you won’t keep me waiting when I do arrive.”

He put on his rakish black hat and left the office for the day.

MY DEAR Plageot,” said M. Latille, entering his humble drawing room, “please excuse the disorder, but we are leaving tomorrow morning for Dinard.” He was a colorful personality, this Latille, with his unkempt gray hair, his tiny goatee, and his watery blue eyes, more of an artist, to look at, than a functionary. Plageot, so accurate, so dogmatic, so razor sharp, felt awkward in the presence of such floridity.

“ I realize you must be very busy. I can only stay for a moment in any case, so I will come straight to the point. It is about a certain Zvoinitch.”

M. Latille lost his geniality and sat heavily.

“Yes,” he said, “ I was afraid you would ask me about him. When I opened this morning’s paper and saw that the Imam of the Hejjaz was arriving tomorrow, it spoiled my day. I became fretful with anticipation of the worst. I hoped to get away before the storm broke.”

Plageot sat down also. “But what is the mystery?” he asked. “Either the fellow is dangerous or he is not. It must be a relatively simple question to decide.”

“It is far from simple,” Latille said sadly. “I feel at the moment rather like the head cashier of a bank, trusted by all, who is suddenly discovered to have embezzled millions of francs.”

“Why do you feel like that?” demanded Plageot in a strong voice.

“Because — because I could never make up my mind whether these superannuated revolutionaries were dangerous or not. Eventually, I could stand the uncertainty no longer, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt.”

“You mean that you acceded to their request and sent them to Corsica without due reason?”

“ Precisely.”

Plageot’s manner became very stiff and selfrighteous. “You realize that you utilized the taxpayers’ money in these caprices of yours, Latille?”

“Of course I realize it, my dear fellow, although I can’t pretend that it caused me much anguish. The end result of most of the taxpayers’ money is far less charitable and far less useful. Look at the amount of it which was poured into the Maginot Line, and a lot of good that did.”

“If everyone thought as you, there would be chaos!”

“There is chaos in any case, my dear Plageot, not because all men think like me but because all men think differently from each other. As Voltaire wisely said, it is up to each one of us to cultivate his own garden. Two bits of sound common sense placed in juxtaposition can easily lead to chaos. About that we can do nothing. All we can do is to keep our house in order.”

Plageot rose and paced the floor agitatedly. “I did not come here,” he said, “to indulge in a metaphysical discussion.”

“No,” replied Latille reasonably, “you came here to ask if six old assassins are dangerous or not. I give you my answer. I don’t know.”

“You surprise me, Latille, and you shock me. Now I understand why Zvoinitch told me he had a very agreeable working arrangement with you.”

Latille smiled. “Did he say that? That was very kind of him, if a little tactless, seeing as he hadn’t got your measure yet.”

Plageot stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean by that?” he exploded. “Are you now attempting to justify your actions?”

“I don’t think they need justification. Up to yesterday your department was my department. I ran it for eight years, and I don’t regret my decision in regard to these men. All I dreaded was the day on which I would have to explain myself. There is a difference between explanation and justification.”

“There is no time to dwell on fine points of interpretation,” cried Plageot. “Explain yourself, then.”

Latille spoke softly and with amusement.

“I remember the first time Zvoinitch came to my office. He was called Zbigniew at the time. It was in 1946, when Paris was brimful of Allied generals. At that time, I was struck by his honesty. He told me he couldn’t resist making attempts on the lives of foreign notables. I thought I might send him to a psychiatrist, but somehow it seemed a little eccentric to try to cure the foibles of a man over seventy, which had hardened, according to his file, into an ineradicable habit. Had he been a youth, I would not have hesitated. In view of his age, however, I decided to dispatch him to Corsica. Admittedly, I became a little suspicious when he suddenly produced as many as five friends, all suffering from the same peculiar temptation. Still, the last thing we wanted was a dead Allied diplomat or general on our hands, especially at a time when we were doing our utmost to make our battered country attractive for tourists. After a while, a degree of stability was reestablished, and these old people were allowed to return to France.

“Then someone like Molotov came to Paris — I forget who, exactly — but suddenly the place was teeming with Russian security officers with the most alarmingly comprehensive lists of exactly whom they wished removed. When they used the word ‘removed,’ I suspect that they meant a more irrevocable course of action than mere transportation to Corsica. In my eagerness to show the Russians that their lists were far from complete I ostentatiously sent our six friends abroad once again. I didn’t have to round them up. As usual, they reported of their own accord, and during the presence of General Serov in my office I was able to demonstrate to the Russian that opposition to the regime is civic-minded in a democracy.

“When Tito arrived, the same procedure was repeated, and it happened again when Adenauer appeared. Then one day they turned up for no particular reason. I asked them to what I owed the pleasure of their visit — and it was a pleasure, Plageot, I promise you. They combined the qualities of emotion and of ridicule, as good clowns do. They were, in short, a relief from the dreary parade of grim, ugly, charmless people who engage our attentions day in and day out.

“They explained, without batting an eyelid, that the Shah of Persia was due in France. I laughed. ‘You’re not going to pretend,’ I said, ‘that you wish to assassinate the poor defenseless Shah. He has troubles of his own, finding out how to drag gasoline from the soil, without any more trouble from you.’

“Zvoinitch took over at this point. He is their spokesman. His eyes gleamed with a cunning so transparent it was touching. ' Look at Madame Perlesco’s file,’ he said, ‘and see what happened in the late summer of 1912.’ I did so. She had been arrested in Ispahan and deported to France at the request of the Persian government for consistently shouting insults at the royal house in public.

“ ‘The Persians must have been appallingly sensitive,’ I observed.

“ ‘Shrewd, shrewd,’ he corrected. ‘They recognized danger when they saw it. In those countries it is not the practice to conduct assassinations personally. Instead, you incite the mob, and they do the work collectively.’

“The story was incredible but expounded so ingeniously, and they had packed their few belongings so painstakingly, that I gave in.

“Some nine months later, they really went too far. They came to my office, all packed and ready to go, on the pretext that the Prince of Monte Carlo was due. I told them to go home. They insisted that the consequences of my decision would be dire. I replied that they were abusing my kindness. Zvoinitch suddenly brandished a huge pistol of Arabic design, which he produced from his voluminous pocket.

“‘Have you a license for that?’ I asked him. In moments of peril I always find courage in being lighthearted. He answered that the Nihilist International had no license for anything and that this formed part of their general policy.

“ I began to laugh. This seemed to enrage Zvoinitch, who pointed his pistol out of the window and pulled the trigger. There was a resounding report which set up an intense singing in my ears. Unfortunately, the dramatic effect was somewhat spoiled by Perlesco, who shouted, ‘Fool, there goes the last of the gunpowder!’

“ I rose and pointed to the door with a trembling finger.

“ ‘Out! Out!’ I yelled,‘and never come back!’

“They left in confusion, just as some people working in neighboring offices came in to see what had happened.

“When it was announced some time later that the Emperor of Ethiopia was about to pay us a visit, I half expected them to return, but the days passed and they did not come. I was troubled by remorse, Plageot. Perhaps I myself was growing older and could sense the yawning cave of retirement before me, ever closer, ever closer. Whatever the reason, I felt myself the prey to a terrible compassion for these old idiots. By throwing them out of my office, I began to sense the kind of guilt I associate with kicking a dog or stealing a sweet from a child. In itself my gesture had been unimportant, but I suspected that it had assumed a vast importance to them, since their world was so constricted. I prayed for them to return so that I could clear my conscience.

“Then, only a few hours before the arrival of the Negus at Orly Airport, the door to my office opened tentatively. It was Zvoinitch! I leaped to my feet and blurted out, ‘ My God, where have you been? I thought I’d have to come and get you!’

“Zvoinitch smiled feebly and began to shake. ‘ Then we can go to Corsica?’

“ ‘ Here are your papers,’ I said with a sigh of relief.

“That was the last I saw of them.”

PLAGEOT stared at Latille as though he had just watched some military secrets being sold.

“ One thing you have not explained,” he snorted. “Why do these people wish to go to Corsica? Is it the meeting place of the Nihilist International?”

“ Oh, no,” said Latille, with a smile of charming frankness. “I don’t believe the Nihilist International exists any more. No, I think they like the climate of Corsica. They regard it as a vacation. A vacation we pay for.”

Plageot hovered on the brink of physical disintegration. He was purple with outrage.

“This is the most scandalous sequence of events which has ever come to my notice,” he roared. “ You are a victim of your own weakness and sentimentality, Latille, and because of your approaching dotage you project your self-pity onto a group of harmless nitwits who —”

Latille held up a hand to stay the avalanche.

“Harmless?” he flashed. “If that pistol had been aimed at a man, it would have taken his head off. They do not lack imagination to the extent that you do, Plageot. They may be mad, but they are imaginative. At this moment they may be seated in some garret, concocting some diabolical device in order to dispatch the Imam of the Hejjaz — not, Plageot, because they have anything against the Imam, but because it is their way of telling you that it is time for them to go to Corsica.”

“Arrest them, then! Throw them into prison! Teach them a lesson!”

“That’s your way, isn’t it? Prison. It’s still at the public expense, Plageot. It may be cheaper at the Cherche-Midi, but the food they eat is paid for by the taxpayer. The people of France must pay for either my tolerance or your intolerance.”

“ Deport them, then.”

“Where to? Who would take them? My dear boy, you have a very low opinion of France and of her traditions.”

“France is not a charitable organization!”

“France is the home of the cultivated mind. You’re so ambitious that you will rise to the top of the tree and scatter the seeds of your personal misery far and wide. Thank God I am not your contemporary.”

Plageot trembled. His mouth worked meaninglessly and his eyes stared. “What the hell are you talking about?” he cried.

“ Why was I so civilized in regard to these curious characters? Because I am happy in myself, and he who is happy is generous. He wishes to give others the secret. I have been married for forty-one years, and no cross word has ever passed between my wife and myself. We had humor and resilience. I knew I would never rise to the top, and I was reconciled to my mediocrity. I could even joke about it when the occasion demanded it. Our daughters are not very beautiful. They have my wife’s face and my figure. Consequently, they found husbands who married them for the most subtle of their qualities, and they are all as happy as we are. When my wife drove our car into a tree last year, I welcomed the opportunity of walking again. There is some advantage to every disaster.”

“What has this to do with me or with the efficient administration of the department?”

“Everything,” said Latille. “You are a thoroughly miserable character. Your humor is sarcastic, as though all your thoughts turned rancid in the filter of your mind. Head of a department in your early forties, you are deemed one of the most promising men in the police, and it is to be expected that you will end up as prefect of Lyon, or Marseilles, at least, making life difficult down there with your dreary little pettifogging decisions. Or else you may end up as resident in one of our minor possessions, confusing the natives and passing the time by altering the traffic regulations from day to day. I know your sort. Life is a dossier, memory is a file, ambition is a badge, love is a regulation. You are a bachelor. Why? Because you are selfish. You need women more than you like them, and you like them more than you love them, and you love them more than you can love one of them. At the moment you are living with a second-rate actress. Again, why? Because you have reached a grade in which it is de rigueur to live with a second-rate actress. You never take a spiritual risk. You are dead. You see what you want to see, feel what you want to feel, and your charm goes about as deep as Eau de Cologne. Mind you, I only say this because I like you. Unlike those unfortunate nihilists, you are still redeemable. We can make a man of you yet.”

Just then Mme. Latille entered. She was of surprising ugliness, but her smile radiated warmth and amusement. “Jules,” she chided, “you haven’t offered our guest a glass of port!”

Plageot, sobered by the presence of a lady, said, “ I regret, Latille, that I will have to ask for a thorough investigation of your activities and bring this case to the attention of the prefect.”

Latille shrugged his shoulders and grinned sadly. “Do as you wish, but don’t be surprised if the Imam is blown sky-high while you are engaged in your corrective measures and the Arab world rises against us in vengeance simply because you were dealing with matters of greater importance.”

Plageot stormed out and proceeded to a most unhappy birthday celebration with his mistress. Annik did what she could to cheer up her lover, but all he could do now was to think of her as a second-rate actress. He argued over the check with the waiter, the proprietor was called, the car wouldn’t start, and when they reached his apartment, a fuse had blown out. Annik dressed in a brief, transparent pair of black pajamas and lay around on her pink sheets, exuding desire, but he sat grimly on a chair, facing the wall.

Suddenly he phoned the Sûrceté. “ Inspecteur Bréval,” he said, “are you on duty tonight? This is Plageot. Éloignement. There are six people I want followed. This is urgent, top priority. I will give you their names and addresses.”

When he had finished his conversation, he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. Soon he was asleep. His dreams were peopled with murderers. Everyone carried some lethal instrument. Mlle. Pelbec tried to stab him with her scissors. He couldn’t open a door without finding Latille there, followed by a battalion of happy and hideous daughters. When he went to the cubbyholes to fetch his mail, he saw that many tiny naked women were filed there, one for every grade. The prefect’s cubbyhole contained one of the most distinguished actresses in France, six inches tall. “ Bon jour, Plageot,” she said with a captivating smile. “ One day you will be a prefect and you will inherit me.” He awoke, covered with perspiration and on the verge of tears.

“Curse Latille!” he cried aloud.

THE next morning two detectives were waiting to see him.

“Well?” he asked. “ Did you find any of them?”

“No, sir,” replied the detective.

“Fools!” Plageot brought his fist down on the desk.

“With all due respect, we are not to blame for the absence of the suspects.”

“No, no, of course not. I didn’t sleep very well. I am nervous.”

The day passed slowly. Plageot could do no work. At four o’clock in the afternoon, a phone call from His Excellency Djamil Al-Haroun IbnIbrahim Al-Salaoui, chief economic advisor to His Serenity the Imam of the Hejjaz, announced the fact that a threatening letter had been received by the delegation in Geneva on the eve of their departure. Apparently the letter, postmarked Soissons, was brief and to the point. It said, “Death Awaits You in Paris.” There was no signature, but an amateurish picture of a decapitated head and a gory scimitar.

In a way, Plageot was relieved. Now there were no more ambiguity, no more fear of looking ridiculous. He informed all relevant departments of the nature of the threat. At six o’clock a man walking with the aid of two sticks was arrested but released after an hour of questioning. He turned out to be a retired colonel with a glorious record. He also intended to sue the police. The operations proceeded under an evil star.

The Geneva police called at eight to report the arrival of a menacing telegram at the hotel of the Arabian delegation. It read: WE MEANT WHAT WE SAID IN THE LETTER. THE SCIMITAR OF VENGEANCE IS POISED. It had been sent from Bordeaux. Bordeaux? Plageot examined the map. Soissons was quite far from Paris, Bordeaux much further. This must mean that the organization was larger than he thought. He looked at his watch and became nervous. Time was running short.

At eight o’clock the prefect, M. Vagny, held a conference, which Plageot attended.

“Gentlemen,” the prefect said, gravely, “we are taking every precaution to ensure the safety of the Imam of the Hejjaz. Obviously what I tell you here is of the utmost secrecy. At the last moment, the Imam and his party will be switched from the Air France plane which was to have taken them to Orly onto a Swissair plane which will land at Le Bourget. The Swissair plane lands ten minutes earlier. From there a Citroën car bearing a false Imam will proceed directly to the Hotel Raphael, while the real Imam will go in a Delage by a more circuitous route. The floor waiters on the second floor of the Raphael have all been replaced by policemen. The elevator operator will be Detective Vaubourgoin, one of our best men. We will infiltrate the kitchen staff with our lads. If the assassins strike, they will find us waiting. We cannot afford to underestimate the threat to the Imam’s life or overestimate the importance of his survival to our country. That will be all, gentlemen. To your posts.”

JUST before the Air France plane was due to leave Geneva it was searched by the Swiss police. A bomb with a timing device was found aboard, gaily ticking away under a seat. Most of the passengers had already taken their seats when one of them, a distinguished gentleman of swarthy appearance, collapsed. He was taken off with suspected appendicitis. It was under his seat that the bomb was found. He was promptly arrested by the Swiss authorities and turned out to be a member of an Arabian secret society in favor of a return to power of the Imam’s deposed uncle, a dissipated gentleman who lives in Rome. The French were informed of these findings when the Swissair plane was already very close to Paris. The Swiss also added that, while the would-be murderer was still believed to have been a bona fide appendectomy patient, he had used the phone in the airport clinic and was talking agitatedly in Arabic when the police broke in to arrest him. He may have realized that the Imam would not be a passenger on that plane and may have warned the other members of his conspiracy about this.

The French police prowling through Orly Airport noticed a suspicious group of Arabs who were drinking coffee nervously at the bar and chatting furtively. Plageot walked up and down with Inspector Lagnon but saw no trace of the nihilists.

“ Is the plane late?” he asked suddenly.

“Didn’t you hear?” Lagnon replied surreptitiously. “They got a message through just now. They found a bomb aboard. The plane won’t be coming at all. They caught the man, but they think he had time to warn the other members of his organization that the Imam would land at Le Bourget.”

“What?” cried Plageot. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He ran out, waved to his car, and set out in the direction of Le Bourget at full speed.

He arrived at Le Bourget just as the Imam and his party were sweeping out of the plane in a flurry of white, their dark glasses sparkling as brightly as their teeth.

Inspector De Valde met Plageot. “ It’s all right. They’ve just phoned through from Orly. They’ve captured all the assassins. Eight of them. Arabs.”

“That’s what they think!” cried Plageot. There among the crowd was Zvoinitch with five old people. “Arrest those people!”

“What for?” asked the baffled De Valde.

“Those are your assassins!”

“But, I tell you, they telephoned —”

“Do as I say!”

Discreetly, the six nihilists were rounded up and bustled away.

Zvoinitch looked triumphant. “Oh, please let me hear the thing explode,” he pleaded with Plageot, as the little group stood on the pavement.

“What thing?” Plageot screamed, shaking Zvoinitch mercilessly by the lapels.

Zvoinitch rapped him painfully on the knuckles with one of his sticks. “The bomb,” he said.

“Where is it?” Plageot was nursing his hand.

“ Will you send us to Corsica?”

Plageot caught sight of the Imam and his party approaching their car. Customs formalities had been dispensed with in the interests of hospitality.

“Very well,” he hissed, “but where is it?”

“ Under the rear wheel of the car. When the car moves off — pouff!” Zvoinitch made an eloquent gesture.

Like lightning, Plageot ran off and dived under the Imam’s car. Running madly with a black box in his hand, followed by two of his men, he threw himself into the gentlemen’s convenience. To the consternation of the old attendant who stood there, he filled a sink with water and dropped the black box into it.

“Get out!” he cried to the attendant, and to his men he gasped, “Cordon off this area. Bring the bomb-removal people.”

On the way back to Paris, he gave in to dreams of glory. He heard the congratulations of ministers, read the envy in the eyes of his colleagues, and was tinglingly surprised at his own incredible courage. Half an hour later, he sat at his desk. Napoleon could not have felt more sure of himself when he seized the crown from the Pope’s hands. The six assassins were lined up before him. He did not offer them seats. It was better for them to stand. He had called in De Valde to witness his triumph.

“What was the name of your contact in Geneva?” he asked.

“ Geneva? We have no contact in Geneva,” Zvoinitch said.

“And in Soissons?”

“Nor in Soissons.”

“And in Bordeaux?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

Zvoinitch shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t care for boors.

“Perhaps the name of Mohammed-Bin-Mohammed will refresh your memories?” Plageot barked.

The assassins looked at each other, then shook their heads. “ It’s not a name any of us have ever used,” said Zvoinitch.

“You choose to joke,” said Plageot with an unpleasant inflection. “I advise you to take this examination more seriously, for your own sakes. The game’s up, you know. Mohammed-BinMohammed is arrested. He has confessed.”

“ I don’t understand why you are asking all these meaningless questions,” Zvoinitch remarked gently. “You promised us we could go to Corsica.”

“ Corsica?” Plageot laughed harshly. “ I think you are more likely to end up in a shadier place.”

“But you promised!” Zvoinitch was indignant.

“Shut up!”

There was silence, and the receding echo of Plageot’s rudeness.

“ I will tell you what occurred, since you refuse to tell me,” Plageot murmured. “You were expecting the Imam at Orly, but we forestalled you. Your contact in Geneva, Mohammed-Bin-Mohammed, entered the plane as a passenger and carefully placed his bomb under his seat. Then he looked around and realized that the Imam would not be traveling on that craft. He quickly feigned illness and was carried to the airport clinic. While the nurse was out of the room, he telephoned you at some prearranged number and had time to tell you to go to Le Bourget before the Swiss authorities arrested him. You moved quickly to Le Bourget with the bomb you had prepared in case the attempt in the airplane failed. Quickly identifying the car destined to carry the Imam by the quantity of policemen surrounding it, you stooped to tie your shoe and placed the bomb under the back wheel, and then retired amid the crowd to watch the results of your lethal handiwork. Can you deny this?”

De Valde looked at Plageot in admiration. For lucidity, for shrewdness, for grasp, this assessment of a situation would be hard to equal. It was a model of police work.

“We went to Le Bourget because we guessed that the Imam would land there,” said Zvoinitch.

“Lies!” snapped Plageot. “The other day you told me the Imam would land at Orly in an Air France plane.”

“Did I? I was guessing. One usually forgets a guess. That’s why honesty is the best policy.”

“It is indeed. You even mentioned the flight number.”

“ I made it up, knowing that you would forget it. As far as Air France goes, that was in the papers.”

“ But the Air France morning flight from Geneva does not go to Le Bourget.”

“How was I to know that?” Zvoinitch replied. “ I relied on my instinct. If I had been wrong, we would have found our way into the Hotel Raphael.”

“Ah! At last a confession! And how did you know about the Hotel Raphael?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Zvoinitch. “The Hotel Lancaster puts out its refuse bins very early every morning. If you get there in good time, you’ll find the reports of the celebrity service almost every day. They’re a little late by the time we get them, but they’re good enough for us. They announce imminent arrivals on occasion.”

Plageot smiled grimly. “Never underestimate the ingenuity of the trained criminal mind,” he said to De Valde.

“ Remarkable,” muttered De Valde.

Just then M. Kellerer of the police laboratory entered. He wore a white lab coat.

“Aha!” said Plageot. “Now for the incriminating evidence!”

“Are you sure this is the correct article?” asked the perplexed Kellerer.

“ Positive,” said De Valde. “ I supervised its removal from the sink in the men’s toilet myself and transported it here.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Plageot demanded.

Kellerer opened it. “ It’s empty,” he said. “It’s just an empty box.”

“But that wire leading from it,” Plageot stuttered, “does it signify nothing?”

“Nothing at all. It’s just soldered onto the outside.”

“Could it not have contained something which dissolved under the water?”

“Out of the question.”

De Valde began laughing, at first softly, then hysterically.

Plageot’s irritated question, “What are you laughing at, De Valde?” only made matters worse.

Kellerer felt that the laughter would be contagious and prudently left with the evidence, a smile growing on his face.

“For God’s sake, De Valde, pull yourself together!” yelled Plageot.

“The idea ... of your breaking the world’s record for the two-hundred-meter ... in order to make an empty box harmless ... by immersing it under water in the gents’ convenience. Oh, it’s too good, too good!” De Valde sobbed, holding on to the side of the desk.

“De Valde! Return to your office!”

But it was too late. The laughter was sweeping like a forest fire through the assassins. De Valde left with difficulty. As Plageot stood before his desk, tears of rage filled his eyes.

“Silence! Silence! I demand silence!" he bellowed like a child in a tantrum. “ I shall arrest you,” he announced, when the noise had calmed down a little.

“On what grounds?” asked Zvoinitch.

“I’ll — I’ll find grounds. . . .”

“ Presumably we’ll stand trial, whatever grounds you find. The courtroom would be an ideal place for us to ventilate this story, perhaps even to immortalize it.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“Not at all,” said Zvoinitch. “Blackmail entails a financial transaction. If we have to go to court, we will have to swear to tell the truth. I am only threatening to do exactly what I have to do on oath in any case.”

Plageot looked around like a madman.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll send you away, but it’ll be to the Sahara, to the Chad — UbangiShari, where the heat is unbearable.”

“Monsieur Plageot,” Zvoinitch replied calmly, “we are very conscious of the fact that every time we are sent away from France it is at the public expense. If you wreak your vengeance on us by sending us to Equatorial Africa, it will not be we who suffer so much as the poor taxpayer. The fare is considerably more expensive. I should hate to think that our good-natured romp would end up as a burden on the man in the street, simply because your feelings are hurt.”

These particular sentiments, expressed with such solicitous nobility, were too much for Plageot, who just sat down and wept.

After a moment, he rang for Mlle. Pelbec.

“The documents, Mademoiselle,” he said wearily, “ for Corsica.”

“Here they are,” replied Mlle. Pelbec, laying them on his desk.

“You had them ready?”

“Oh, yes, since I saw in the papers that the Imam was arriving.”

“I am back-dating them to yesterday, before the Imam’s arrival, for the record,” Plageot said, handing them the documents.

The situation was delicate. The assassins just nodded politely and left, not even deigning to express their thanks for fear of arousing another storm.

As Plageot sat alone, his soul was a desert. He heard laughter from the office next door, and he could not conceive that the reason for it might be other than the story of his disgrace on its journey round the vast agglomeration of buildings. He grew grim, and his mouth set into a powerful and melancholy curve. Such things are sent to try a man, to temper his steel. With a painful sob still in his heart, he gazed at the sky and knew that he would go far.

“Mademoiselle Pelbec,” he called militarily, “bring me the deportation files nineteen and twenty-one, at once!”

It is only in fairy stories that a chastening experience makes a lasting difference in a man’s character. M. Plageot became, if anything, harder and more disagreeable. He used every opportunity to discredit both De Valde and Kellerer without really analyzing his reasons for hating them. His relations with Annik were cold, contrived, and artificial. When he wished to be hurtful, he called her a second-rate actress. Only in one regard did the incident of the six assassins affect him. Knowing that they would never retire and that he would have to wait for them to die, he never again opened his morning paper without a sickening trepidation.