V for Vengeance Read Free Page A

sooner be dead.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘In any case, I will be if the Germans get me.’
    Her eyes grew wide with terror. ‘But, Georges, what have you done? You are not even a soldier, but a Civil Servant. What have you done that the Germans should want to kill you?’
    He was smiling now, right into her eyes, and he held her twitching hands firmly.
    â€˜I have deceived you,
chérie
, I confess it; but I know that you’ll forgive me when I tell you that it was my duty to do so. I’ve always led you to believe that I was a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior. You’ll remember it was at a dance for the employees of the Ministry that your father introduced us, only a few weeks before he died. When the war came you weren’t very proud of me, were you? In one way you were glad that I had a safe job which gave me exemption and kept me out of danger, but there were times when you felt that a man of thirty ought to have been in uniform, and you would have liked your fiancé to be a soldier. Eh?’
    â€˜Oh, perhaps; but what does that matter now?’ Madeleine knew that he had guessed her feelings rightly. It was that almost unconscious feeling that he should not have skulked behind his Civil Service job while France was in peril which in recent months had made her feelings towards him a little less warm than they had been before the war, and caused her to contemplate, just at odd moments, entering into a flirtation with some other attractive man. But she knew now that she could never have thought of anyone but Georges seriously. Gripping his hands again, she murmured:
    â€˜Please! Don’t let’s talk about the past. You’re in danger, and I love you. Oh, Georges, I love you so!’
    â€˜
Chérie
, forgive me! I don’t blame you for what you thought, and theoretically, at least, I
was
a clerk in theMinistry of the Interior. But I haven’t been sitting at a desk in the Préfecture at Rouen, as you believed, all through the war. My work has taken me to many places, and that is why I have never been able to get back to Paris on leave. The fact is that I am a member of the
Deuxième Bureau.
’
    â€˜The Secret Police!’ she breathed.
    â€˜Yes—in the anti-espionage section, and I have had much to do with the catching and shooting of numerous Nazi spies.’
    â€˜But surely the Germans would not shoot you because of that? You were only doing your duty.’
    He shrugged. ‘Some of us know too much about the Boche to be healthy. Besides, if our poor France is to be crushed beneath the conqueror’s heel it is men like myself who will organise resistance until she shall be free again. We understand underground methods, and therefore we are much more dangerous than any ordinary patriot. The Gestapo know that, so they will leave nothing undone to hunt us down and kill us.’
    â€˜But nobody knows you were in our Secret Service. Even I didn’t know, so how could they possibly find that out?’
    He frowned. ‘There’s a fair chance that by assuming another identity I may be able to keep under cover. But I’ve got to work quickly. You see, by this time the Gestapo will have taken over at the
Sûreté.
There are hundreds of files there connecting me with various cases in the past, and it’s most unlikely that they’ll all have been destroyed or removed in the last few days during the evacuation. The Germans will lose no time in going through them, and they may be on their way to my old home now in the hope of catching me there, or trying to find out where I’ve got to.’
    â€˜That’s why you came here?’
    â€˜Yes, I had to get out of our Headquarters at Rouen at a moment’s notice. The Germans were already entering the town. I have only the clothes that I stand up in and very little money. I want you to telephone—not from here, but from a call-box. Ring up Uncle Luc and ask