Prelude for War (42 page)

“A number of hideous
things may happen to you in due
course, Mr Templar. But
for the present I am not concerned
with them. I know
quite well that you have a temperament
which
would probably resist interrogation for a long time;
and
at the moment time is precious. We shall therefore start
with Lady Valerie, whose powers of resistance are cer
tainly less than yours. The Sons of France have an excellent
treatment for obstinacy. Unless we are given the informa
tion we require, Lady Valerie will be tied up over there”—
Luker pointed with one hand—“and flogged until we do get
it.”

The Saint’s eyes travelled
in the direction indicated by Luker’s hand. In the wall to which Luker was
pointing there
were two iron rings, a yard apart,
cemented into the stone about seven feet from the ground. The wall around them
was
stained a different colour from the rest; and in spite
of his jest the Saint felt as if cold fingers crept up his spine.

Lady Valerie looked in the
same direction, and her
breath caught in her
throat.

“But I don’t
know,” she cried out quiveringly. “I don’t
know
what happened to the negative. Simon, I don’t know
what
you did with it!”

“That’s true,”
said the Saint, in a voice of terrible sin
cerity.
“Leave her out of it. She doesn’t know. She couldn’t
tell you, even if you flogged her to death.”

He might as well have
appealed to a graven image. Luker was not even interested.

“In that case I hope
that your natural chivalry will induce you to spare her any unnecessary
suffering,” he said. “You will of course be allowed to watch the
proceedings, so that
your sympathies may be
fully aroused. A word from you
at any time will save her
any further—discomfort.” He brought his hands together again with an air
of finality.
“Since I understand that you were
proposing to marry Lady Valerie, your affection for her should not encourage
you to
hesitate.”

Simon looked at the girl.
She stared back at him, her eyes
wide with terrified
entreaty.

“Oh, Simon, must I be
flogged?” she said faintly.

Her face was white and
terror-stricken; her lips trembled
so that the words
would hardly come out. And yet in a queer way it was plain that she was only
asking him to tell her,
whatever he might say.

The Saint felt that
everything inside him was cold and
stiff, as if the
rigour of death had already touched him.
somehow
he kept all weakness out of his face.

He spoke to Marteau in
French.

“Monsieur le
Commandant, I ask nothing for myself. But
you
have ideals, and you would wish to be called a gentle
man.
Will you be proud to record the torture of a helpless
girl as the glorious
beginning of the revolution in which you
believe?”

Marteau’s face flushed, but
the arrogant unyielding lines
deepened around his mouth.

“The individual,
monsieur, is of no more importance than
an
ant compared with the destiny of France.” His dark
eyes glowed with a mystic light. “Tomorrow—today—we
make history, and France takes her rightful place among
the nations of Europe. I can give way to no sentimental re
luctance to do anything that may be necessary to safeguard
the trust which is in my hands. Those who are not with us
are our enemies.” The glow faded from his eyes, leaving
only the hard lines still shifting about his mouth. “As a
man, I confess that I should prefer to spare Mademoiselle;
but that responsibility is yours. As a leader, with the destiny
of France in my care, my own course cannot falter.”

“I see,” said
the Saint softly. “And if I told you what you
want
to know, I suppose we should be murdered just the
same,
only without the trimmings.”

Marteau’s face grew colder
and more distant.

“I should like you to
understand, monsieur, that the Sons
of France do not
commit murder. Although your guilt is
perfectly evident,
you will receive a fair trial by court-
martial
; naturally, if you are found guilty, you must expect
to
suffer the due penalty.”

“Exactly.” Luker
spoke in English and the old ironical
gleam was back in
his eyes. “You’ll get a fair trial by court-
martial,
and you’ll be shot immediately afterwards. The
day
after tomorrow we shall probably start court-martialling
traitors in batches of twenty. I’ll try to arrange for you both
to be in the first batch. But you must agree that that will be
far preferable to the same inevitable result with the prelimi
nary addition of what I think you called the trimmings.”

“Of course,” said
the Saint. “You’re so generous that it
brings
a lump into my throat.”

But his smile was very
tight and cold.

His shoulders ached with a
weary hopelessness. No one except himself, not even Luker, could guess what
dregs of
defeat he had to taste. Death he could
have met carelessly:
he had lived with it at his
elbow for so long that it was
almost a friend. He had
fenced and bantered with it, and
lightheartedly made
rendezvous and broken them, but never
without the calm
knowledge that the day must come, how
ever distant, when
they would have to sit down together
and talk business.
Death with trimmings, even, would not
have made him
cringe; he had faced that, too, and other
men
had gone through it, men many of them forgotten and
nameless
now, who had endured their brief futile agony
that
was swept away and obliterated like a ripple in the long river of time. But
here he was not alone. He had to sentence
the
girl in the acceptance of his own fate.

And there was nothing to
give it even a plausible ultimate
glory. They died,
anyway. And if he died, and let the girl
die,
without speaking under any torture, it achieved no more
than just that. It was not a question of keeping the photo
graph safe for what might be done with it. There would be
no one left to do anything with it, after Patricia and the others had
been rounded up in the morning. And even if
they
escaped, there would be nothing to be done. The negative
would remain where it was hidden, in his fountain pen,
and would probably be destroyed along with his body and
the clothes he was wearing; or at the best someone would appropriate
it, and the most likely person to appropriate it
was
one of the Sons of France, and even if he found it it
would
alter nothing. If the Saint was silent and it was never
found, it would only mean that Luker and Marteau would
be worried about it for some time, but nothing would hap
pen, and their anxieties would ease with every day that
went by, and soon they would be too strong to care. How
could he condemn the girl to that extra unspeakable ugliness
of death for no better reason than to leave Luker and Mar
teau with a little unnecessary trepidation, and to give his pride the
boast that they had never been able to make him
talk?

But the bitterness of
surrender fought against letting
him speak.

He saw Luker watching him
steadily, and knew that the
other was following almost
every step in his inevitable thoughts. Luker’s eyes were hardening with the
cold certainty of triumph.

“Perhaps you would
like to discuss it with your fiancee,
Mr Templar,” he
said. “I shall arrange for you to be given five minutes alone. I’m sure
that that will be sufficient for
you to reach the only
conclusion that two sensible people
can come to.”

4

They were in a tiny box of
a cell furnished with a small
wooden table, a wooden chair and a wooden cot
with a straw
paillasse; all the articles of
furniture were securely bolted
to the
floor. It smelt sour and musty. A faint dismal light
came through an iron grille over the door which
seemed to
be the only means of
ventilation.

Valerie dropped limply on
to the cot and leaned back
against the wall in an
attitude of supreme weariness.

“Alone at last,”
she said. And then: “My God, I’m tired.”

“You must be,”
said the Saint. “Why don’t you go to
sleep?”

She smiled weakly.

“With a man in my
room? What would the dear vicar
say?”

“Probably the same
thing that the Bishop said to the
actress.”

“What was that?”

” ‘It is a far far
bedder thing——
‘ “

”’—I do now than I
have ever done,’” she said; and
then her voice
broke. She said huskily: “Simon … will it
hurt
dreadfully?”

The Saint’s mouth felt dry,
but the palms of his hands
were wet. He knew exactly
how cruelly shrewd Luker had
been in giving them those
few minutes to think. If he had
had any doubts before, he
could not have kept them long.

The only thing left to
discover was what else might be
done with the postponement.

He went over and sat down
on the end of the cot, beside
her, and against the wall.
The wall was of naked bricks,
roughly laid, and age had
mouldered the mortar in many of
the courses and neglect had
let it crumble away. He felt the
surface behind him with his
numbed finger tips. It seemed
to be harsh and abrasive.
…

“Does dying frighten
you very much ?” he asked gently.

Her head was tilted back
against the wall and her eyes
were half closed.

“I don’t know… .
Yes, I’d always be terrified. But I
don’t think I’d
mind so much just being shot. This … being flogged—to death—it makes me go
sort of shuddery
deep inside. I want to scream and howl
and weep with
terror, and I can’t… . I’m afraid
I’d never have been
any good to you, Simon. I suppose your
girl friend would go to it with a brave smile and her head held high and all
that sort of thing, but I can’t. I’m afraid I’m going to dis
grace you horribly before it’s over… .”

He was rubbing his bound
wrists against the brickwork
behind him, tentatively at
first, then with a more determined
concentration. He
could feel the dragging resistance against
each
movement, could hear the slurred grating sounds that
it
produced. He bent his head towards her until his lips
were
almost touching her ear.

“Listen,” he
whispered. “You’re not going to be flogged.
We
can prevent that, at least. But you heard what Luker
said.
Whatever else happens, we’re booked for the firing
squad
within the next couple of days. So we have to be shot,
anyway.
Personally I’d rather be shot on the run, and at
least
give them a fight for their money. I’m going to try
to
make a getaway. I don’t suppose it ‘ll make a damn bit of difference, but I’m
going to try it.”

She looked at him, quickly,
as if all her muscles had
stiffened. And then they
relaxed again.

“Of course—you
couldn’t take me with you,” she said
wistfully.
“I’d only be in the way.”

It was hard to keep the
rope pressed firmly enough
against the brick and at
the same time keep his flesh away.
There seemed to be
more protruding bones in his hands and wrists than he had ever dreamed of, and
his skin was much less tough than the rope. Fierce twinges of rasping agony
stabbed up his arms, but he could not allow himself to heed
them.

He said: “If you feel
the same way that I do, and you’d
like to take a
chance, we’ll have a shot at it together.”

She had begun to stare at
the curious rhythmic twitching of his shoulders.

“What are you
doing?”

The sweat was standing out
in beads on his forehead
although she could not see
that; and his teeth were clamped
together in stubborn
endurance of the torture that he was
inflicting on
himself while he tore the flesh off his bones as
he
fought to fray off the strands of hemp that tied his
hands.
But his heart was blazing with a savage exaltation
that
partly deadened pain.