City of Secrets (17 page)

Damn. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone occupying the room!
The notion passed through his mind that someone had been posted guard without his knowledge. But then the draft from the window made the nightshirt move slightly, and he realized that the garment was too long and too flimsy to be a man’s.

Unthinking, he tossed the rest of the rope coil at the figure and jumped to one side. But the gun didn’t go off. The woman dropped it, muttered something, recovered, and made a lunge for the gun on the carpet.

Devin got there first, slamming one hand down over the weapon and the other over the woman’s hand. She fell onto her side with a muffled cry, and when he touched her, she made a quick movement to roll over out of his reach. He let go of the pistol and took hold of her other hand, pinning her to the floor.

Still she said nothing, but the echo of a familiar perfume rose from her dark hair.

“Good God! Maddie!”

He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he knew without a doubt that it was she. She drew a sharp breath, confirming his instinctive recognition. She knew him, too.

“What are
you
doing here?” she hissed.

“I should ask you the same thing,” he countered, still holding her to the floor.

“I paid for the key, which is more than you did!”

“This suite is supposed to be empty.”

“Well, it isn’t!”

That much was obvious. He almost laughed at the joke on him and made a move to release her. But then, realizing suddenly that she had nothing on under that delicate, almost transparent nightdress, he hesitated. She stopped wriggling, as if aware at the same time that the movement of her breasts against his arm had aroused him.

“Let me go.”

Her voice was wary, but low and husky; she wasn’t ready to scream for help yet. Unable to resist the temptation, he lowered himself on top of her again, feeling the whole of her long, luscious body along his. She moved her head, but he followed the movement, capturing her mouth easily with his own. Hers felt soft, yielding. He tested it lightly with his tongue, and the lips parted just long enough to let him enter. For a moment he hoped she would let him go deeper into those delicious depths; he thought that she must know, too, that his body was meant to lie with hers like this, fitting so perfectly with it. He let one of her hands go to move his own down over the length of her, lingering at her breast and at the soft mound of her abdomen, before she began suddenly to struggle.

She tore her mouth away, and for a moment he could think of nothing but reclaiming it, tasting more of that sweetness that fired his imagination until he knew exactly what making love to her would be like, and he wanted it more than anything he could imagine.

But there was nothing flimsy about the woman beneath the soft silk. She stopped struggling, and he could feel her stiffen in readiness. She raised her knee abruptly, and he only just stopped her from hitting him in the groin. She did succeed in knocking him off balance, but he rolled over, leaping to his feet like a cat.

But she was quick, too. Her hand reached out and found the pistol, and when he looked at her, she was on her knees and pointing it at him again. She was breathing hard, but he knew she had the advantage, and not just because of the pistol.

“Get out of here or I’ll call for help.” Her voice was steady, but for some reason she was giving him a chance to get away unseen by anyone else. He hesitated only an instant. Far better to be thought a thief than a rapist.

But what a waste!
He grinned and picked up the rope as he backed toward the window. In another ten seconds he was hanging off the side of the building again. This time he didn’t wait to look down.

Grant never did get any sleep that night. He spent the remaining few hours before sunrise alternately cursing his stupidity for not checking to be certain that those rooms were in fact unoccupied and trying to rid his mind of the sensation of Madeleine Malcolm’s all-too-desirable body under his.

What would she have done if he had gone right back—by her front door this time—and demanded to be let in? Fool! What makes you think she wants you as much as you want her? God knows, she has no reason even to trust you.

He spent an hour pacing his own room and wasting energy in useless conjecture and even more useless, if irresistible, fantasies about her. He had felt oddly protective of her, even when he’d had her in his physical power, as if he had been a third presence, watching her about to be violated by some fool who had stumbled into her room and was taking advantage of what he found. That protectiveness, that urge to guard her from himself, was all that had kept him from taking her there and then.

Finally, he pulled aside the dark curtains on his window to see that the sky was getting light over the rooftops, so he changed his clothes for the work he expected to do that day and went down to the desk to find out what he should have done in the first place.

“Oui, monsieur”
the clerk told him, “the suite of the prince is reserved for the week coming, as arranged, but
pour maintenant
Madame Malcolm is using it.
Oui,
she is aware that she is required to change her rooms within the week, so that His Highness’s usual suite can be made ready for him.”

Devin hadn’t shaved, and he had put on an old tweed coat and vest, with a frayed black tie knotted around his neck, so he was not surprised that the clerk eyed him suspiciously. He knew who Grant was, but he nevertheless maintained his professional discretion as far as refusing even to mention the number of the suite, much less to divulge why Madame Malcolm was in there in the first place. Devin had no desire to rub his nose in his own inefficiency by pressing him, so he let it go. At least he could be confident of the Ritz staff’s remaining close-mouthed.

Then he went out into the cool morning air to do something else he should have done sooner. He paid a call on Claude Fournier.

#

Devin had met Fournier when the Frenchman was a young, idealistic reporter for one of Paris’s most popular daily newspapers—too idealistic to be satisfied for very long with having to report on social events and civic happenings. Their first encounter had been during Grant’s first trip abroad with the prince, the year the Eiffel Tower was completed. The prince, of course, wanted to see the tower, and the newspapers, of course, wanted to report what he had to say about it, and Claude was among the more aggressive reporters who dogged the prince’s every movement.

As the prince’s trips abroad grew more frequent, Devin got to know and enjoy both Paris and his most useful contact there. He watched Claude’s career blossom—if a career dodging libel suits and policemen’s clubs could be said to blossom—with keen interest. When Jean Grave, the great leader of anarchist thought in France and editor of the influential weekly newspaper
La Revolte,
invited the young Fournier to join his staff, Claude leapt at the chance. And he picked just the right time to join the anarchist cause, which would reach its peak in Paris a few years later. Bombs rocked the city in those years, and violent verbal blasts from the anarchist reviews did nearly as much damage. Philosophers like Grave and revolutionaries like Vaillant, who was guillotined for throwing a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies, had little in common, but at the time neither group was above using the other as a means to an end.

Fournier started his own newspaper,
L’Indépendant,
in 1892 and used it the way small boys used slingshots, to tease and goad the adults on the street into paying attention to him. Devin had thought at the time that Claude positively reveled in the excitement and that it made him feel more alive to be constantly in danger of being closed down or thrown into jail.

But then the adults did sit up and take notice. In 1894, in
the wake of the assassination of France’s President Carnot by an Italian anarchist, emergency laws were passed to control the press. Fournier had a last moment of glory during the Trial of Thirty, when the best-known anarchist theorists were put on trial to try to prove they were responsible for the bombings. Claude’s witty and satirical speech against the futile efforts of the authorities to find the real instigators made headlines in papers other than his own.

Claude kept his newspaper, but something happened to it after the trial. It lost many of its best writers, but what was worse, it lost its spirit. Rivals jeered at it, renaming it
Le Dependant
when Claude actually wrote an editorial in support of the new government. Devin knew that Claude had simply decided to try to change what he did not like in France by working with the established authority instead of against it, but few of Fournier’s other friends saw the change as anything but a betrayal.
L’Indépendant
changed, too, from an inky, slapdash, but lively weekly broadsheet to a slick, tired monthly review that was in greater peril of closing down from lack of revenue than from removal of its editor on sedition charges. And Claude was no longer a zealous young reporter; he was tired too.

The last time Grant saw Fournier was when he was in Paris tracing the infamous valet Michel Lamont, and it was Claude who had discovered Lamont’s background and connections and had put Devin on to the man called Frank Hartwell. Grant had attempted, in disguise, to infiltrate the anarchist group led by Hartwell and found himself being interviewed—as if he had applied for a position as a clerk to a bank—by the man himself, who spoke English with an accent Devin couldn’t place, but well enough to be suspicious of this too-eager recruit. He was rejected for the “job” and never got to Hartwell again, although God knew, he’d tried.

#

Devin tracked Claude down having breakfast with two of his colleagues in a workingman’s café on the boulevard Saint-Martin. They had been there since the café opened, judging by the pile of saucers growing on the marble-topped table, and seemed in no hurry to get back to work, although it was more likely that there was no work to get back to.

Marius Galembert, a middle-aged man with unkempt hair and wire-rimmed glasses, sat next to Claude, reading
Le Matin;
Jean-Pierre Landy, a good-looking young man with long hair and a scar on his chin, was playing solitaire at the next table. Devin had met Galembert before but knew Landy only by sight. None of them was talking to the others. Fournier was smoking a cigarette and staring off into space.

Devin walked into Claude’s range of vision and saw his presence register on the sleepy eyes. They widened in surprise, and Claude jumped up to embrace him.

“Bonjour, mon ami! Comment allez-vous? When did you arrive in Paris?”

“Two days ago,” Devin said, and Claude looked pleased that he had come to see him so quickly. Galembert got up, shook Devin’s hand without saying a word, and removed himself to Landy’s table. Landy looked up, nodded, and went back to his cards.

“Sit down, sit down,” Fournier said. “What will you take? Coffee, yes?”

“Coffee, yes,” Devin said and signaled the waiter who, with a quick balletic movement, brought them two large cups and a plate of rolls. Fournier downed the coffee at once but ignored the food.

“Why aren’t you dead yet?” Devin asked. “You never eat anything, that I can see.”

Fournier smiled. “But this is Paris, my friend. You breathe, and nourishment enters by the nostrils. Take a deep breath and
regardez!
You see my meaning.”

He suited the action to the words, but Devin preferred the coffee. “I know what you mean, Claude; it becomes clear, or rather not so clear, as soon as one steps off the train. But I’m afraid we English cannot live on air, however potent.”

“Since you have so little air in your great, clumsy London,” Claude countered, replaying an old theme between them, “I am not surprised you come to Paris. You are here for pleasure this time, I hope?”

When Devin did not respond, Fournier glanced at him. “So. Business, is it? Not the same as before?”

“I’m afraid so. Things have got more complicated. I need your help again, Claude. I need information.”

Fournier shrugged.
“Hélas.
I might have guessed. If I can tell you, I will ... on condition.”

Devin smiled, knowing what was coming. “What condition this time?”

“You must take me to dinner at a new little bistro I have discovered on the rue Caulaincourt. There is a little waitress there who is—” He kissed his finger to his lips in the classic Gallic compliment. “And she has no doubt a sister or a friend. They always do.”

“I will buy you dinner, my friend, but I must decline the sweet.”

Claude raised an eyebrow. “What is this? You cannot have had a surfeit of—what do you English call them?—crumpets, since you arrived?”

“No, rather an insufficiency of
madeleines.”

Claude’s black eyes lit with curiosity, but when Grant offered nothing more, he shrugged. “Ah, well, I will not make you explain that. The ways of the English in love have always been incomprehensible to me … and yours the most mysterious of all. You are too discreet,
mon ami,
too English.
Eh bien,
I do not even know why I call you a friend. You are everything I am against.”

“I’m a workingman, too, Claude.”

“But see whom you work for! You have been in the army, too. The archbishop of Canterbury is no doubt a cousin. It is the poor, like us, who lead real lives, not the privileged like you and your—hah!—employer.”

“Put it in an editorial, Claude.”

Fournier laughed, with no rancor behind it. “And too sure of yourself also, like those equally useless friends and cousins. But what can I do with you? You are too old to teach. Tell me instead what information you need. I warn you that I have not the resources I once did.”

“You have just grown lazy, my friend,” Devin said. “You may not have any new resources, but I cannot believe you have lost contact with the old ones, and those will suffice. I am looking for an American, an innocent who has become involved with the more dangerous kind of anarchist. The rumor is that he is dead, but I must prove it.”