The sudden revelation of his valor marked the culminating point of his dream, the well-nigh inaccessible summit toward which all his efforts were directed and beyond which it was impossible to progress any further. Even to maintain a footing there made a consider- able demand on his intellectual resources and, as usual, involved a number of precise material details to bolster his enthusiasm. He promptly applied himself to this task, exploring the various means of communication by which the news would, to use the expression he kept turning over in his mind, “burst upon the world”—the press, the radio . . . The idea of the radio was especially attractive. He paused for a moment at the vision of a typical family group gathered around their radio, listening to the startling announcement and repeating his name to one another with deference and admiration.
The telephone rang. A deathly chill gripped his body and mind, destroying the fruits of his heroic labor. At once he was plunged into the misery of reality all over again. A recently acquired reflex sent him rushing over to the instrument to lift the receiver before the initial ring had ceased. He knew what to expect. This was not the first time that Gleicher or Otto, eager to maintain their ascendency, reminded him of their presence in this way. He no longer dared to move from the living room for fear Claire might answer the phone. It was Gleicher’s voice, and in the background he could hear a faint buzzing sound.
“Listen, Herr Arvers!”
He was familiar with the ritual of these calls. The German would bring the tape recorder up to the mouthpiece. With the receiver glued to his ear, Arvers would then wait for the words he knew by heart, and which sounded more and more odious to him each time he heard them. As usual, the tape had been switched on before the call was put through, so that by now it had reached the essential passage: “I’ll tell you everything, everything! I’ll do whatever you wish . . .” The machine was then moved away from the telephone and Gleicher’s commanding voice broke in:
“Can you hear me, Herr Arvers? Can you hear me all right? Why don’t you answer?”
“I can hear you,” Arvers replied in a muffled whisper.
"Your friends in London seem to be taking their time. . . . You can’t do anything about it? I think you can, you know. You have their confidence; it’s merely a question of persuading them to make up their minds. You ought to know better than I do how to convince them. Don’t forget I’ll hold you responsible if there’s any hitch.”
He fell silent for a moment. The buzzing sound could still be heard at the other end of the line. Arvers could no longer distinguish the words but contrived to grasp the meaning from the intonation, as Gleicher continued:
“Perhaps you think I haven’t the means to carry out my threat? Don’t deceive yourself, Herr Arvers. Only today I was thinking of the various possible methods. There are any number, but there’s one in particular that appeals to me because of its simplicity, and also, I must admit, its originality. What do you think of this as an idea—include the recording in one of our routine broadcasts? How do you feel about that? I suppose you know that all your secret services make a point of listening in to Radio Paris—not to mention at least twenty million Frenchmen. ... I hope I’ve made myself clear, Herr Arvers. I only wanted to be sure you weren’t thinking of kicking against the pricks, as the saying goes.”
He had finished speaking, but Arvers heard him bring the tape recorder back again so he would not miss the final words. At last there was a click at the other end of the line. He slumped weakly into the armchair. The nightmare was already hovering above his head, ready to bear down on him, and there was no longer any possibility of summoning his fantasies to the rescue. Gleicher’s threat to broadcast the tape had the effect of an icy shower on him, shriveling once and for all the apotheosis of his dream and making a mockery of his deep spiritual struggles.
In this way Colonel Count von Gleicher occasionally reminded Arvers of his presence, at irregular intervals and at various times of day. He had the mind of a gentleman and not a policeman, as he never ceased to proclaim. His sense of honor bristled at the thought of resorting to physical pressure to break down a hu- man being’s resistance. The noble and infinitely more effective weapon he had decided to use in this special form of warfare (he had impressed this on Otto, who had at last understood) was psychology.
26
“I heard him. I remember the words exactly. He shouted: ‘I’ll tell you everything, I’ll do whatever you wish.’ And again, later on: ‘I can be extremely useful to you; I have the confidence of my superiors.’ What more do you want as proof of his treachery?”
Deeply moved by Claire’s agitation, Austin gently increased the pressure of his arm around her shoulder to try to calm her down.
He had returned to France a few days earlier but had not yet notified Arvers of his arrival. He wanted to have a word with his companion first. He had sent her a message at her mother’s, fixing a rendezvous in front of the movie house at Rennes, where they used to meet. They had exchanged no more than a word or two before taking their seats side by side in the darkness of the half-empty auditorium. Austin leaned toward her, put his arm around her shoulders, brought his face up close to hers, and started questioning her under his breath. He had already noticed what a nervous state she was in. She was clearly at the end of her tether, and her condition was a s
ource of anxiety to him, both as a doctor and as head of the mission. At the same time he could not suppress a feeling of pity, intensified by the position he had adopted, which made him acutely aware of the trembling of her body.
Her opening words did nothing to reassure him as to her mental balance. She had meant to give him a methodical account of how her suspicions had developed and had then been confirmed during one of Gleicher’s nocturnal visits, but she lost control of herself as soon as she mentioned Arvers’ name. Her fury was manifested in sudden violent outbursts, and he had to caution her several times to lower her voice.
“My brother wasn’t a traitor. It was Arvers, only Arvers, all the time.”
All the symptoms of an obsession, Austin thought to himself with a sigh. For the last few months her only purpose in living has been to justify her brother by proving the other man’s guilt, and now it’s beginning to take the form of hallucinations. Has the first result of my boss’s diabolical policy been to derange her mind?
He went on questioning her with infinite patience, concealing his skepticism.
“You say you heard him?”
“Utterly despicable, it sounded. One would have sworn he was groveling at the German’s feet.” He asked her to try to put things in their proper order. She made a great effort to pull herself together and started on her story from the beginning.
Puzzled by the change in Gleicher’s attitude that night, she had followed behind when he and Arvers went out of the house and had watched them go into the villa next door. There she had paused for some time. She was furious with herself for having hesitated so long, and her mother had since reproached her in the strongest terms. With a little more presence of mind, she could have heard the beginning of the conversation. She had eventually decided to slip into the garden and had crept up to one of the windows. With her ear glued to the shutters, she had heard the sound of a man's voice and could distinguish a word here and there. It was Arvers’ voice, she was absolutely certain. He seemed to be gasping for breath and in the grip of a mortal terror. She had remembered one phrase of his, word for word: “I’ll tell you everything, everything! I’ll do whatever you wish”; then, a little later on: “I can be extremely useful to you; I have the confidence of my superiors.” As though begging for mercy. At first she thought they were torturing him, but she had examined him closely and he showed no signs of ill-treatment on his return. No doubt Gleicher had merely threatened him, and that had been all that was needed.
After that? Someone drew the heavy curtains behind the window, muffling the sounds from within, and she had not been able to hear any more. But wasn’t that enough? That was what must have happened at the Lachaume farm. He was the one who had talked, not her brother.
Austin peered at her in the darkness, unable to come to any conclusion, trying desperately to find something in her expression on which to base a diagnosis. It was quite possible she had imagined the whole thing as a result of misinterpreting an odd phrase here and there. Yet he was impressed by the continuity of her account and by her faithful repetition of the words Arvers had used. She had now mastered her emotions sufficiently to give him further details.
“Ever since then he has been a different man. He is even more suspicious of me than before. He has had a few more meetings with Gleicher, but he’s the one who always puts himself out and goes over to the villa next door. He has received a number of telephone calls, during which he himself hardly says a word, apart from replying in a terrified voice: ‘Yes . . . Certainly . . . I understand . . .’ After each call he looks completely washed out. He lies sprawled in his chair, on the point of collapse. He never moves out of arm’s reach of the telephone—he’s afraid I might answer it . . . But I’m going to find out what they say to him. I’ve now got the means at my disposal."
“What means?’’
She told him without a moment's hesitation that the day before, while Arvers was out of the house visiting Gleicher, she had taken the opportunity to connect one of her receivers to the telephone line. From her room she could now listen in to all their conversations.
Austin disapproved of this procedure but, bearing in mind the importance of a possible betrayal, he felt he had no right to question it. Furthermore, she was so completely convinced of Arvers’ villainy that no amount of reasoning would have changed her opinion. The best thing was to let her go ahead, take advantage of her scheme, which results would justify if she was right and which would expose her mistake if she was wrong—unless, of course, she was completely
out of her mind? He looked at her again. She seemed to read his thoughts and forced herself to speak more calmly.