This process began with the release of his mental faculties, which gradually recovered their power. Soon afterward he became conscious of reality and was once again capable of rational thought. He realized then that the situation he had done his utmost to avoid was now even more dreadful than when he was still in the hands of the enemy.
Nothing held him back. He merely had to open the door and he would be free. Free? Free to go back among friends, to answer all their questions and tell them the whole story? It was at this precise point that something was set in motion in his mind and he understood for the first time the imperious commands of that sovereign power which, mindful of his interests, was now calling upon him to take action. At the same time he
felt that the chains that had seemed to bind him tightly were loosening.
The voice commanded that he should first get out of his handcuffs. He applied himself to this task without hurrying, with the cool deliberation inspired by his urge to obey. It was not very difficult; in a short time he succeeded in setting himself free, without ceasing to watch Morvan out of the corner of his eye, without making a sound that might have alerted him. At that moment he was imbued with the resolution and calm courage of the hero who inhabited his dreams, and he rejoiced at the thought.
Morvan opened his eyes and saw that Cousin was free. He seemed to divine his intention and reached down for the submachine gun, which had fallen by the side of his bed. Cousin forestalled him. Nothing hindered the play of his muscles any longer, and his instinct of self-preservation was matched on the physical plane by perfect coordination. He leaped forward and snatched up the weapon just as Morvan was about to lay hands on it. He counted this success as his first victory.
But the elimination of a troublesome witness was not the essential part of his act. The mind makes many other demands! It demands belief in its own virtue. His own mind now demanded that Morvan be the traitor and he, Cousin, a judge created by a divine Providence. It was no effort for him to perform this sublime intellectual feat. He even raised himself to such heights of credulity that he felt the need to express himself out loud, to shout so as to convince Morvan even more of his utter ignominy.
“Swine! Traitor! Think of your comrades who are even now paying for your foul crime with their own precious blood!”
He raged at Morvan for the best part of a minute, in the grip of a fury it was only natural for the hero of his dreams to feel in these circumstances. He spat in his face and clouted him over the head before emptying the rest of the magazine into his breast.
The sound of his words had intensified his righteous indignation. At the thought of those dead comrades, sacrificed through cowardice, his anger knew no bounds. And such was the miracle of his imagination that when he found himself the sole survivor in the room, when he saw that Morvan was dead beyond all doubt and that his own voice could not be heard by any ear but his own, he still went on in the same tone.
Alone among the dead, for his ear alone, he uttered the words that put his sacred mission in its true perspective and made him appear as the glorious avenging angel:
“This is the just reward for all traitors.”
32
He had recovered this same state of grace when he entered the villa at Gleicher’s heels, and once again he whispered the romantic words that gave expression to his radiant metamorphosis:
“This is the just reward for all traitors.”
And at that moment, just as when he had shot Morvan dead, professional artistic distortion coming to his aid, a fierce, intransigent patriotism strengthened his arm.
He knew every inch of the villa, which was constructed on the same plan as his own. The living room, which opened out onto a long corridor, was the only part of the house that Gleicher used. He slept there on a sofa, after playing his favorite records over and over again. Arvers was acquainted with his habits. In the middle of the night, he knew, he would always find Gleicher there sitting in front of a log fire, prepared to listen to the music till daybreak. He was also well aware that the German never left the house without his overcoat. He had rehearsed all the necessary gestures and now performed them with clockwork precision.
He slipped past the door of the living room and hid behind a cupboard. He had taken from his pocket the object Austin and Claire had noticed: it was the piano wire he had not been able to bring himself to use on Bergen. He wound the two ends around his wrists to get a firmer grip and tested the tension of his muscles. Gleicher was on his way back, buttoning up his coat, without having bothered to turn off the phonograph. He emerged from the room and had taken one step toward the front door when Arvers pounced on him.
Several minutes had passed since Arvers had disappeared inside, and Austin was still pondering over his strange behavior. He listened in vain: the phonograph drowned every other sound.
The music finally stopped and the house fell silent. Standing beside him, her brow wrinkled, Claire seemed to be working out a problem in her head. Suddenly she put a hand to her forehead and cried out in a tone of despair:
“The tape, the tape recording! That’s what he’s after; he’d do anything to get his hands on it.”
Her voice rang out in the silence. Austin seized her by the arm to keep her quiet, but she shook him off and again cried out:
“He’s going to destroy it. We’ll be too late.”
She started running toward the villa, throwing caution to the winds, and pushed open the front gate with a metallic clang that made Austin wince. He followed her, realizing there was no point in hiding since she had almost certainly revealed their presence.
He caught up with her on the doorstep. He caught up with her there because that was where she had stopped dead in her tracks, as he also did, at Arvers’ sudden reappearance on the threshold. A smile of triumph hovered on his lips. Behind him they could see a lifeless body stretched out in the corridor. He pushed the door open with a sweeping, almost spectacular ges- ture and stood aside to let them view his handiwork.
He showed no sign of surprise; in fact, he seemed to be expecting them. He was no longer frightened of them—rather the reverse. He rejoiced in their presence here and also in his own perspicacity that had led him to foresee it. They had turned up at the very moment he had hope —as providential witnesses to his valor.
Having derived sufficient pleasure from their bewilderment, he broke the silence in a tone of supreme detachment.
“I’ve liquidated him,” he said.
“What!”
Austin, in turn, had been unable to suppress a cry of amazement. His nerves were strained by the long nocturnal vigil and, above all, by the ghastly sensation of being surrounded on all sides by lunatics who were trying to pass themselves off as sane.
“Gleicher—I’ve just liquidated him,” Arvers explained calmly. “He was a traitor. I had suspected it for some time, but I only had proof of it tonight. . . . I strangled him.”