This is For Real (7 page)

Although Dorey would admit it to no one but himself, he was convinced that Washington had become dissatisfied with his work and had put Warley over him to find some excuse to get rid of him before his three years were up. Dorey had told himself often enough that it would be through no fault of his own if Warley succeeded.

It was true what Rossland had said. Anything that looked promising that arrived through the mail or over the telephone, Dorey kept to himself. He was now living in hopes that he would pull off something so big that Washington would relent and not only remove Warley but extend his three years to even five.

Thinking about Warley, Dorey drove across Pont de la Concorde, edged his way into the rush of traffic that roared along the Quai d’Orsay and finally reached Avenue Bosquet. In one of the small side streets off the avenue, he had his apartment. He spent five or six minutes of irritating frustration, trying to find parking space for his car. Finally, he had to leave the car at the far end of the road and then walk back. Although this happened every night, it never failed to anger him.

As he entered the lobby of the building, the concierge who he tipped regularly and well, nodded and smiled at him through her window. He nodded back and got in the lift that took him to the fourth floor.

He entered his apartment and closed the door. Taking off his light overcoat, he hung it in the hall closet, then walked into his large, well-furnished living-room, clicking on the lights as he did so.

He crossed to the desk and sat down, took keys from his pocket and unlocked a drawer. Just as he was about to take from the drawer a thick file of papers, the telephone bell rang.

He frowned, hesitated, then lifted the receiver.

“John?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Janine. I wanted to be sure you were back. I am coming over in half an hour.”

“Certainly,” Dorey said and hung up.

He sat for some minutes staring down at the snowy white blotter on his desk, then he closed and locked the desk drawer. He got up and walked over to one of the big easy chairs. His thin bird-like face was thoughtful. His eyes, behind the glittering lenses of his spectacles were a little uneasy. He picked up a copy of the
New Yorker
that was lying on an occasional table and began to flick through it. He was flicking through it for the fourth time without having registered any of its contents when the front doorbell rang.

He looked carefully through the spy-hole before opening the door.

Janine Daulnay moved quickly past him into the hall. Dorey closed the door as she turned, pulling off her gloves, to give him a faint impersonal smile. She was a woman between thirty and thirty-five years of age: trim, medium height, dark and wearing an expensive mink coat. She had big, dark eyes: their mocking expression gave her a sophistication that most men found irresistible, but not Dorey. Long ago, he had decided that women were not only dangerous, but a nuisance. He disliked dealing with them, although he accepted the fact they were necessary.

“Come in and sit down,” he said, leading the way into the living-room. “I have still a lot of work to do. I’m afraid you can’t stay long. What is it?”

She took off her coat, dropped it on a chair, then followed him into the living-room. As she sat down, she gave the hem of her Dior dress a little tug to hide her beautiful knees.

“Have you given Harry Rossland a job?” she asked.

This unexpected question so startled Dorey that for a split second his usual poker face expression slipped.

Janine noted the slip as she noted every change in any man’s expression.

“Why do you ask?” Dorey said carefully.

“Look, John. I either work with you or I don’t,” Janine said quietly. “I’m asking you a simple question: is Rossland working for you tonight?”

Dorey regarded this immaculate, cold-faced woman and he remembered various things she had done for him in the past. He wished now he had consulted her before he had talked to Rossland.

“He is working for me tonight,” he said.

“Something important?”

“Could be. I don’t know yet.”

She opened an expensive handbag, took out a gold cigarette case, removed a cigarette and lit it with a gold lighter.

“Do you want to tell me about it, John?”

Dorey hesitated.

“What is all this? It is really nothing to do with you, Janine.”

She let smoke drift down her small nostrils and she smiled.

“All right. If that’s the way you want to play it.” She smoothed down her skirt. “Then I’ll go and let you get on with your work.”

As she made no move, Dorey said, “You know I rely on you, Janine. You know something, don’t you? What is it?”

She sighed and flicked ash onto the Persian carpet.

“All right. It was mere chance. I saw Harry Rossland tonight. He was being followed by a youngish man with a beard. Ahead of him was another man. Harry caught on to the bearded man, but not to the front tail. He lost the bearded man in the Métro. I didn’t think it was all that important so I let him go. Then I remembered seeing the bearded man before.” She paused, then went on, “He works for Herman Radnitz.”

Dorey sat forward.

“You’re sure?”

She made an impatient gesture.

“You should know by now, John: I’m always sure.”

“Well?”

“I wondered, knowing Rossland worked for you. I had a date, but I passed it up. I went to the George V Hotel. Radnitz was in the bar, waiting. The bearded young man appeared, talked with Radnitz, then left. He returned after five minutes and made a telephone call. I was, by then curious, so I called Harry’s apartment. There’s no answer. So I called you and here I am.”

Dorey took off his glasses and began to polish them with his handkerchief. He looked disturbed. For a long moment he frowned in thought while Janine watched him.

“This happened in a hurry,” he said finally. “I should have talked to you, but there wasn’t time. I didn’t take it very seriously at first. I thought Rossland could handle it.”

“People get into a rut,” Janine said. “They get too sure of themselves. I think you’re getting too sure of yourself, John. You won’t accept the fact that Rossland is finished. I told you that before, but you are so used to him, you continue to employ him. Well, never mind … just what is all this about?”

“This morning I had a telephone call from a woman who called herself Madame Foucher. She said she had information to sell,” Dorey said, shifting in his chair. “We get quite a lot of nuts offering information. I thought she could be another of them. She said she couldn’t give me details over the telephone but would I meet her? She said she would be at a third rate cellar club tonight. She then said that her business was to do with the security of America and she hung up. So I decided to send Rossland to meet her.”

Janine stubbed out her cigarette in the ash tray by her side.

“What has he to report?”

“I’m waiting. He’s not seeing the woman himself. He has given the job to one of his men.”

“Why?”

“You know Rossland. He keeps to the sidelines.”

“Then who is seeing this woman?”

“I told you … one of his men.”

“You don’t know who he is?”

Dorey took off his glasses and began to polish them again.

“No.”

“When do you expect to hear?”

“They don’t meet until eleven.”

She glanced at her watch. The time now was quarter to eleven.

“I don’t think you should wait,” she said. “If Radnitz is in this, it could be dangerous.”

Dorey was thinking the same thing. He went over to the telephone and dialled Rossland’s number. After a long pause, he replaced the receiver.

“He’s not there.”

They looked at each other.

“He could be there,” Janine said and got to her feet. “I think we should go. This is bothering me.”

Dorey nodded. He went to his desk, unlocked a drawer and took from it a .38 automatic. He checked it with the hand of an expert, then put it in his hip pocket. He went to the closet for his coat.

Twenty minutes later, they were riding up in the lift to Rossland’s apartment.

As Dorey was about to ring the bell, he saw the door stood ajar. He took out his gun and transferred it to the pocket of his overcoat, then he gently pushed open the door and moved into the hall. Janine followed him. The lights were on in the sitting-room. Moving like a ghost, Dorey edged the door and looked into the room. He gave a convulsive grunt when he saw Rossland.

“Shut the door,” he said softly. “He’s in there … he’s dead.” Her face expressionless, Janine closed the front door. She then entered the sitting-room and came close to Dorey who was looking down at Rossland. She gave the murdered man one horrified glance, then turned away.

“Look at his hand,” she said unsteadily.

Again Dorey grunted. Grimacing, he joined her as she looked around the room.

“Doesn’t look as if they searched here,” she said. “They were in a hurry. They persuaded him to talk, killed him and cleared out.”

“We’d better leave, Janine,” Dorey said, moving to the door. “We don’t want to be caught here.”

They left the apartment as quietly as they had come in.

Once in Dorey’s car Janine said, “This is something big, John. You shouldn’t have given it to Rossland. You should have seen this woman yourself.”

“How was I to know?” Dorey said defensively. “I tell you I’m always getting cranks calling me on the telephone.”

“Where is this cellar club?”

“Boul’ Clichy.”

“We’ll go there.”

Dorey glanced at her.

“It’ll be too late. It’s half past eleven.”

“We’ll go there,” Janine repeated, “and hurry.” As Dorey started the car and edged out into the traffic, she went on, “This is Radnitz’s work. I’m sure of it! If this isn’t something really big, he wouldn’t have had Rossland killed. Haven’t you any idea who Rossland sent to meet this woman? Don’t you know any of his men?”

“No. Rossland would never tell me the names of his agents. He was scared I might take them away from him.”

“This isn’t going to look very good to Warley, is it, John?” she said quietly. “You get the tip-off. Instead of reporting to Warley, you turn Rossland on to it … Rossland of all people. He turned an unknown onto it and Radnitz moves in. By now Radnitz will have caught Rossland’s man and he’ll know what the woman has to sell … something important to the security of America. Not brilliant, is it?”

Dorey felt his hands turn clammy. There were times when he found himself uneasy about Janine. Not for the first time, he wished he had made her his mistress. There was a time when she would have been willing. As his mistress, he might have had a firmer hold on her.

“We all make mistakes,” he said. “I don’t see how I can be blamed.”

She lit a cigarette.

He glanced at her uneasily, then decided it would be better not to make further excuses.

They reached the cellar club at a few minutes to midnight. By then Dorey had recovered from the shock of Rossland’s death and his nimble brain was working efficiently again.

“You had better wait in the car,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”

She nodded and he entered the club.

The fat man in the green smoking jacket whose name was Husson, greeted him.

“I want to talk to you,” Dorey said curtly and showed his Embassy pass. “This could be police business.”

Husson looked startled. Dorey’s air of authority impressed him. If the police came here and found that trick mirror, he thought, there would be a lot of tiresome unpleasantness.

He led Dorey to a small office behind the bar.

“Now, monsieur, what can I do for you?” he asked, waving Dorey to a chair and sitting behind the desk.

“A woman who calls herself Madame Foucher has been here I understand,” Dorey said.

He saw Husson hesitate, then nod.

“That is right, monsieur.”

“Is she here now?”

“She left some time ago.”

“She met someone?”

“An American came to see her.”

“What can you tell me about Madame Foucher?”

Husson lifted his shoulders.

“She came here yesterday, asked for a private room where she could meet a friend tonight at eleven. She paid well. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t oblige her, monsieur.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She was coloured: unusually tall, handsome, young and well-dressed.”

“Coloured?” Dorey said, leaning forward to stare at Husson.

“West African … Senegalese I should imagine.”

Dorey then remembered the woman’s odd accent when she had spoken to him on the telephone. He should have known she was Senegalese and he was irritated with himself for not knowing.

“The man kept the appointment?”

“Yes, monsieur. He has only just left with two other men. He hasn’t been gone more than ten minutes.”

“Who were these other two men?”

“I don’t know. They came into the club, had a drink, then the next time I noticed them, they were leaving with this American who had the rendezvous with Madame Foucher.”

“Can you describe them?”

Husson thought for a moment. “I didn’t particularly notice them, monsieur. It isn’t easy to see people in the club. I think the smaller man had a beard. I didn’t notice the other man.”

“And the American?”

Husson gave him a fairly accurate description of Girland which meant nothing to Dorey.

“You have never seen Madame Foucher before?”

“No.”

“Did she have a car?”

“I wouldn’t know. She arrived and I took her to the room.”

“She didn’t tell you the name of this man who visited her?”

“No, monsieur.”

Dorey gave up. At least he had found out something, but he couldn’t see for the moment if it were going to be of any use to him. Rossland’s man had met the woman. She had gone, then Radnitz’s men had taken this man away.

He stood up.

“Thank you. I think you have given me all the information I need,” he said.

Husson looked sharply at him.

“There will be no trouble?”

“No, there will be no trouble,” Dorey returned and leaving the club, he joined Janine in the car.