Текст книги "Night Probe!"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
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Then he watched in fascination as the wings and engines began to slowly tilt upward while the fuselage and tail remained horizontal. When they reached ninety degrees and were facing skyward the plane stopped its forward motion and began to settle to the uneven ground.

Soon after the wheels touched the grass, Pitt walked up to the cockpit door and opened it. A boyish face with freckles and red hair broke into a cheery grin. "Morning. You Pitt?"

"That's right."

"Climb in."

Pitt climbed in, secured the door and sat in the copilot's seat. "This is a VTOL, isn't it?"

"Yeah," the pilot replied. "Vertical takeoff and landing, made in Italy, Scinletti 440. Nice little flier, finicky at times. But I sing Verdi to it and it's putty in my hands."

"You don't use a helicopter?"

"Too much vibration. Besides, vertical photography works best from a high-speed airplane." He paused. "By the way, the name's Jack Westler." He didn't offer to shake hands. Instead, he eased the throttles toward their stops, and the Scinletti began to rise.

At about two hundred feet, Pitt twisted in his seat and stared back at the wings as they turned horizontal again. The craft began increasing its forward speed and soon returned to level flight.

"What area would you like to photo-map?" asked Westler.

"The old railroad bed along the west bank of the Hudson as far as Albany."

"Not much left."

"You're familiar with it?"

"I've lived in the Hudson River valley all my life. Ever hear of the phantom train?"

"Spare me," Pitt replied in a weary tone.

"Oh…... okay," Westler dropped the subject. "Where do you want to begin rolling the film?"

"Start at the Magee place." Pitt looked around the rear cabin. It was void of equipment. "Speaking of film, Where is the camera and its operator?"

"You mean cameras, plural. We use two, their lenses set at different angles for a binocular effect. They're mounted in pods under the fuselage. I operate them from here in the cockpit."

"What altitude will you fly?"

"Depends on the focal lenses. Altitude is computed mathematically and optically. We're set to make our run at ten thousand feet."

The view of the valley from above was heady. The landscape unfurled and spread to the horizons, crisp and green, crowned by spring clouds. From five thousand feet the river took on the shape of a huge python crawling through the hills, with low islands sometimes dotting the channel like stepping-stones in a small stream. A vineyard country here, and an orchard land, broken by an occasional dairy farm.

When the altimeter read ten thousand, Westler made a sweeping turn to slightly west of north. The De Soto crept beneath, looking like a tiny model in a diorama.

"Cameras are rolling," Westler announced.

"You make it sound like a movie production," said Pitt.

"Almost. Each picture overlaps the next by sixty percent. That way, one particular object will show up twice at slightly different angles with varied highlights. You can detect things that are invisible from ground level, remnants of man-made disturbances hundreds or even thousands of years old."

Pitt could see very clearly the scar of the track bed. Then it abruptly stopped and vanished into a field of alfalfa. He pointed downward.

"Suppose the target is completely obliterated?"

Westler peered through the windshield and nodded. "Okay, there's a case in point. When the land over the area of interest was used for agriculture, the vegetation will assume a subtle color difference due to elements foreign to the native soil composition. The change might be missed by the human eye, but the camera optics and enhanced color tone in the film will exaggerate features in the earth beyond reality."

In no time at all, it seemed to Pitt, they were approaching the southern outskirts of New York State's capital. He gazed down at the oceangoing cargo ships docked at the port of Albany. Acres of railroad tracks fanned out from the storage warehouses like a giant spider's web. Here the old railbed disappeared for good under the heavy foot of modern development. "Let's make another run," said Pitt.

"Coming around," acknowledged Westler.

Five more times they swept the fading New York Quebec Northern tracks, but the faint, fragile line through the countryside still looked solitary, undivided by discernible offshoots.

Unless the cameras spotted something he couldn't detect, the only hope he had of finding the Manhattan Limited was Heidi Milligan.

The maps had vanished from the portfolio in the railroad museum, and Heidi had no doubt who had stolen them.

Shaw had returned to the hotel later that night, and they had made fluid and gentle love until early morning. But when she awoke, he was gone. Too late she realized that he had listened in on her conversation with Admiral Sandecker. More than once, during their lovemaking, she had thought of Pitt. It was very different with him. Pitt's style was consuming and savage and impelled her to respond with savage intensity. Their time in bed had been a competition, a tournament that she never won. Pitt had drowned her, left her floating in a haze of exhausted defeat. Deep down it galled her independent ego and her mind refused to accept his superiority, and yet her body hungered for it with sinful abandon.

With Shaw the act was tender and almost respectful, and she could control her responses. Together they nurtured each other; apart they were like two gladiators circling, scheming for an opening to defeat the other. Pitt always left her spent and with a feeling she'd been used. Shaw was using her too, only for a different purpose, but strangely it didn't seem to matter. She longed to come back to him like someone returning from a stormy voyage.

She sat back in a chair in the library room of the museum and closed her eyes. Shaw thought he had forced her into a dead end by stripping the records. But there were other sources of railroad lore, other archives, private collections or historical societies. Shaw knew she could not afford the time-consuming journeys to check them out. So now she had to think of another avenue to explore. And what Shaw couldn't know, couldn't project in his scheming mind, was that she wasn't trapped at all.

"Okay, Mr. Smart-Ass," she muttered to the silent bookshelves, "here's where you get yours."

She called over the yawning curator, who was still grumbling about inconsiderate FBI agents.

"I'd like to see your old dispatch records and logbooks."

He nodded cordially. "We have cataloged samplings of old dispatch material. Don't have them all, of course. Too voluminous to store. Just tell me what you want and I'll be happy to search it out for you."

Heidi told him, and by lunchtime she had found what she was looking for.

Heidi stepped off the plane at the Albany airport at four o'clock in the afternoon. Giordino was there waiting for her. She brushed off an offer of a wheelchair and insisted on walking on her crutches to the car.

"How are things going?" she asked as Giordino pulled the car into traffic and turned south.

"Doesn't look encouraging. Pitt was poring over aerial photographs when I left the boat. No trace of a branch track showed up anywhere."

"I think I've found something."

"We could damn well use a piece of luck, for a change," Giordino muttered.

"You don't sound enthusiastic."

"My school spirit has been bled out of me."

"Things that bad?"

"Figure it out. The President goes before the Canadian Parliament tomorrow afternoon. We're dead. No way in hell we'll come up with a treaty by then…... even if one exists, which I doubt."

"What does Pitt think?" she asked. "About the train being someplace else besides buried in the river, I mean?"

"He's convinced it never reached the bridge."

"What do you believe?"

Giordino gazed expressionless down the road. Then he smiled. "I believe it's a waste of breath to argue with Pitt."

"Why, because he's stubborn?"

"No," Giordino answered. "Because he's usually right."

For hours Pitt had stared through binocular glasses at the photo blowups, his brain interpreting the detail in three dimension.

The zigzag rail fences separating pastures from bordering woodlands, the automobiles and houses, a red-and-yellow hot-air balloon that made a colorful splash against the green landscape-they were all revealed in amazing clarity. Even an occasional railroad tie could be distinguished on the weed strewn track bed.

Time after time he retraced the almost arrow-straight line between the destroyed bridge and the outskirts of Albany's industrial section, his eyes straining to pick out a minute detail, the tiniest suggestion of an abandoned rail spur.

The secret stayed kept.

He finally gave in and was leaning back in a chair resting his eyes when Heidi and Giordino entered the De Soto's chartroom. Pitt stood tiredly and embraced her. "How's the leg?" he asked.

"On the mend, thank you."

They helped her to a chair. Giordino took her crutches and leaned them against a bulkhead. Then he set her briefcase on the deck beside her. "Al tells me you've drawn a blank," she said.

Pitt nodded. "Looks that way."

"I have some more bad news for you." He said nothing, waiting. "Brian Shaw knows everything," she said simply.

Pitt read the embarrassment in her eyes. "Everything covers a lot of territory."

She shook her head in frustration. "He stole the maps of the old rail line from the museum before I had a chance to study them."

"Do him damned little good unless he'd got a clue to their value."

"I think he's guessed," Heidi said softly.

Pitt sat thoughtful for a moment, rejecting any attempt at cross-examining Heidi. The damage was done. How Shaw came to lay his hands on the key to the enigma no longer mattered. Incredibly, he felt a tinge of jealousy. And he couldn't help wondering what Heidi saw in the older man. "Then he's in the area."

"Probably sneaking around the countryside this minute," added Giordino.

Pitt looked at Heidi. "The maps may be worthless to him. Nothing resembling a rail spur shows on the aerial photos."

She picked up the briefcase, set it in her lap and opened the locks. "But there was a rail spur," she said. "It used to cut off the main line at a place called Mondragon Hook Junction." The atmosphere in the chartroom suddenly galvanized.

Pitt said, "Where is that?"

"I can't pinpoint it exactly without an old map."

Giordino quickly glanced through several topographical maps of the valley. "Nothing here, but these surveys only go back to nineteen sixty-five."

"How did you discover this Mondragon Hook?" asked Pitt.

"Elementary reasoning," Heidi shrugged. "I asked myself where I would hide a locomotive and seven Pullman cars where no one could find them for a lifetime. The only answer was underground. So I began working backward and checked old Albany dispatch records before nineteen fourteen. I hit pay dirt and found eight different freight trains that hauled ore cars loaded with limestone."

"Limestone?"

"Yes, the shipments originated from ajunction called Mondragon Hook and were destined for a cement plant in New Jersey."

"When?"

"In the eighteen nineties."

Giordino looked skeptical. "This Mondragon Hook could have been hundreds of miles from here."

"It had to be below Albany," said Heidi.

"How can you be sure?"

"New York Quebec Northern records don't list ore cars carrying limestone on any freight trains that passed through Albany. But I did run across a mention of them in a dispatch log from the Germantown rail yard where there was a switch of locomotives."

"Germantown," said Pitt. "That's fifteen miles downriver."

"My next step was to search through old geological maps," Heidi continued. She paused and slipped one from her briefcase and flattened it on the table. "The only underground limestone quarry between Albany and Germantown lay here." She made a mark with a pencil. "About nine miles north of the DeauvilleHudson bridge and three-quarters of a mile west."

Pitt put the binocular glasses to his eyes and began scanning the aerial photos. "Here, due east of the quarry site, is a dairy farm. The house and barnyard have erased all remains of the junction."

"Yes, I see it," Heidi said excitedly. "And there's a paved road that runs toward the New York State Thruway."

"Small wonder you lost the trail," Giordino said. "The county laid asphalt over it."

"If you look closely," said Pitt, "you can pick out a section of old rail ballast as it curves from the road for a hundred yards and ends at the foot of a steep hill, or mountain as the natives would label it."

Heidi peered through the binoculars. "Surprising how clear everything becomes when you know what to search for."

"Did you happen to turn up any information on the quarry" Giordino asked her.

"That part was easy," Heidi nodded. "The property and the track right-of-way were owned by the Forbes Excavation Company, which operated the quarry from eighteen eighty-two until nineteen ten, when they encountered flooding. All operations were halted, and the land was sold to neighboring farmers."

"I hate to be a wet blanket," said Giordino. "But suppose the quarry was an open pit?"

Heidi gave him a considering look. "I see what you mean. Unless the Forbes Company mined the limestone from inside the mountain, there'd be no place to hide a train." She scanned the photo again. "Too much growth to tell for sure, but the terrain appears unbroken."

"I think we should scout it out," Pitt said.

"All right," Giordino agreed. "I'll drive you."

"No, I'll go alone. In the meantime, call Moon and get some more bodies up here-a platoon of marines, in case Shaw brings in reinforcements. And tell him to send us a mining engineer, a good one. Round up any old-timers around the countryside who might remember any strange goings-on at the quarry. Heidi, if you feel up to it, kick the local publishers out of bed and dig through old papers for any relevant news items that were pushed to the back pages by the Deauville-Hudson bridge collapse. I'll know better where we stand when I inspect the quarry."

"Not much time left," Giordino said gloomily. "The President makes his speech in nineteen hours."

"I don't have to be reminded." Pitt reached for his coat. "All that's left for us now is to get inside that mountain."

The sun had set and was replaced by a quarter moon. The evening air was crisp and sharp. From his vantage point high above the old quarry entrance Shaw could see the lights of villages and farms miles away. It was a fair and picturesque land, he thought idly.

The sound of a piston-engined plane intruded on the silent countryside. Shaw twisted around and looked skyward, but could see nothing. The plane was flying without navigation lights. He judged by the sound of the engines that it was circling at only a few hundred feet above the hill. Here and there the light of a star was blotted by what Shaw knew were parachutes.

Fifteen minutes later, two shadows moved out of the trees below and climbed toward him. One of the men was Burton Angus The other was stockily built. In the darkness he could have passed for a huge rolling rock. His name was Eric Caldweiler, and he was former superintendent of a coal mine in Wales.

"How did it go?" Shaw asked.

"A perfect jump, I'd say," Burton-Angus replied. "They practically landed on top of my signal beam. The officer in command is a Lieutenant Macklin."

Shaw ignored one of the cardinal rules of undercover night operations and lit a cigarette. The Americans would know of their presence soon enough, he reasoned. "Did you find the quarry entrance?"

"You can forget about it," said Caldweiler. "Half the hillside slipped away."

"It's buried?"

"Aye, deeper than a Scotsman's whiskey cellar. The overburden is thicker than I care to think about."

Shaw said, "Any chance of digging through?"

Caldweder shook his head. "Even if we had a giant dragline, you're talking two or three days."

"No good. The Americans could show up at any time."

"Might gain entry through the portals," said Caldweiler, stoking up a curved briar pipe. "Providing we can find them in the dark."

Shaw looked at him. "What portals?"

"Any heavily worked commercial mine requires two additional openings: an escape way in case the main entrance is damaged, and an air ventilation shaft."

"Where do we start searching?" Shaw asked anxiously.

Caldweder was not to be rushed. "Well, let's see. I judge this to be a drift mine-a tunnel in the side of the hill where the outcropping broke the surface. From there the shaft probably followed the limestone bed on a down% yard slope. That would put the escape way somewhere around the base of the hill. The ventilator? Higher up, facing the north."

"Why north?"

"Prevailing winds. Just the ticket for cross-ventilation in the days before circulating fans."

"The air vent it is then," said Shaw. "It would be better hidden in the hillside woods and less exposed than the escape portal below."

"Not another safari up the mountain," Burton-Angus complained.

"Do you good," said Shaw, smiling. "Work off the fancy buffets of those embassy row parties." He mashed out the cigarette with his heel. "I'll go and round up our helpers."

Shaw turned and made his way into a heavy thicket near the base of the hill about thirty meters from the old rail spur. He tripped over a root at the edge of a ravine and fell, arms outstretched for the slamming impact. Instead, he rolled down a weed-blanketed slope and landed on his back in a bed of gravel.

He was lying there gasping, trying to get his knocked-out breath back, when a figure materialized above him, silhouetted against the stars, and touched the muzzle of a rifle to his forehead.

"I rather hope you're Mr. Shaw," a polite voice said.

"Yes, I'm Shaw," he managed to rasp.

"I'm pleased." The gun was pulled back. "Let me help you up, sir."

"Lieutenant Macklin?"

"No, sir, Sergeant Bentley."

Bentley was dressed in a military black-and-gray camouflaged night smock with pants that tucked into paratroop-style boots. He wore a dark beret over his head and his hands and feet were the color of ink. He carried a netted steel helmet in one hand. Another man stepped out of the darkness. "A problem, sergeant?"

"Mr. Shaw had a bit of a tumble."

"You Macklin?" asked Shaw, getting his breath back. A set of teeth gleamed brightly.

"Can't you tell?"

"Under that minstrel makeup you all look alike to me."

"Sorry about that."

"Have you accounted for your men?"

"All fourteen of us, sound and fit. Which is quite something for a jump in the dark."

"I'll need you to look for a portal into the hill. Some sign of excavation or depression in the earth. Begin at the base of the hill and work toward the summit on the north side."

Macklin turned to Bentley. "Sergeant, gather the men and have them form a search line ten feet apart."

"Yes, sir." Bentley took four steps and was swallowed up in the thicket.

"I was wondering," Macklin said idly.

"What?" asked Shaw.

"The Americans. How will they react when they find an armed force of Royal Marine paratroopers entrenched in upstate New York?"

"Hard to say. The Americans have a good sense of humor."

"They won't be laughing if we have to shoot a few of them."

"When was the last time?" Shaw muttered in thought.

"You mean since British men-at-arms invaded the United States?"

"Something like that."

"I believe it was in eighteen hundred and fourteen when Sir Edward Parkenham attacked New Orleans."

"We lost that one."

"The Yanks were angry because we burned Washington."

Suddenly they both tensed. They heard the roaring protest of a car engine as it was shifted into a lower gear. Then a pair of headlights turned off the nearby road onto the abandoned rail spur. Shaw and Macklin automatically dropped to a crouch and peered through the grass that grew on the lip of the ravine.

They watched the car bump over the uneven ground and come to a stop where the track bed disappeared under the slope of the hill. The engine went quiet and a man got out and walked in front of the headlights.

Shaw wondered what he would do when he met up with Pitt again. Should he kill the man? A hushed command to Macklin, even a hand signal, and Pitt would go down under a dozen knife thrusts from men who were trained in the art of silent murder.

Pitt stood for a long minute, staring up at the hill as if challenging it. He picked up a rock and threw it into the darkness of the slope. Then he turned and climbed back behind the steering wheel. The engine came to life and the car made a U-turn. Only when the taillights became dim red specks did Shaw and Macklin stand up.

"I thought for a moment that you were going to order me to snuff the beggar," said Macklin.

"The thought crossed my mind," reed Shaw. "No sense in prodding a hornet's nest. Things should get warm enough come daylight. "Who do you suppose he was?"

"That," said Shaw slowly, "was the enemy."

It was good to capture a moment of togetherness. Danielle looked radiant in a bareback dinner dress of green shadow-print silk chiffon. Her hair was center-parted and swept back with a comb of gilded flowers decorating one side. A gold spiral choker adorned her throat. The candlelight glinted in her eyes when she glanced across the table.

As the maid cleared the dishes, Sarveux leaned over and kissed her softly on one hand.

"Must you go?"

"I'm afraid so," she said, pouring him a brandy. "My new fall wardrobe is ready at Vivonnes, and I made an early appointment for tomorrow morning to have my final fittings."

"Why must you always fly to Quebec? Why can't you find a dressmaker in Ottawa?" Danielle gave a little laugh and stroked his hair.

"Because I prefer the fashion designers in Quebec to the dressmakers of Ottawa."

"We never seem to have a moment alone."

"You're always busy running the country."

"I can't argue the point. However, when I do make time for you, you're always committed elsewhere."

"I'm the wife of the Prime Minister," she smiled. "I can't close my eyes and turn my back on the duties expected of me."

"Don't go," he said tonelessly.

"Surely you want me to look nice for our social engagements," she pouted.

"Where will you be staying?"

"Where I always stay when I spend the night in Quebec City at Nanci Soult's townhouse."

"I'd feel better if you returned home in the evening."

"Nothing will happen, Charles." She bent down and kissed him lukewarmly on the cheek. "I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. We'll talk then."

"I love you, Danielle," he said quietly. "My dearest wish is to grow old with you by my side. I want you to know that." Her only reply was the sound of a door shutting.

The townhouse was in Nanci Soult's name, a fact that was unknown to Nanci herself.

A best– selling novelist and a native Canadian, she lived in Ireland to beat the staggering taxes brought on by inflation. Her visits to family and friends in Vancouver were infrequent, and she had not set foot in Quebec in over twenty years.

The routine never varied.

As soon as the official car dropped Danielle at the townhouse and a Mountie was stationed outside the entrance gate, she went from room to room slamming doors, flushing the toilet and setting the FM radio dial on a station that broadcast soothing music.

When her presence was secure, she walked into a closet and parted the clothes, revealing a door that led into a seldom used stairwell in the adjoining building.

She hurried down the steps to a single-car, interior garage that opened on a back alley. Henri Villon waited punctually in his Mercedes-Benz. He reached over and embraced her as she leaned across the front seat.

Danielle relaxed for the automatic response of his kiss. But the show of affection was fleeting. He pushed her back and his expression turned businesslike.

"I hope this is important," he said. "It's becoming more difficult to break away."

"Can this be the same man who recklessly made love to me in the Prime Minister's mansion?"

"I wasn't about to be elected President of Quebec then."

She withdrew to her side of the car and sighed. She could sense that the excitement and passion of their clandestine meetings was fading. There was no illusion to be shattered. She had never kidded herself into believing their special relationship could go on forever. All that was left now was to bury the hurt and remain cordial, if not intimate friends. "Shall we go somewhere?" he saidlbreaking her reverie. "No, just drive around."

He pressed the button to the electric garage door opener and backed into the alley. The traffic was light as he drove down to the riverfront and joined a short line of cars waiting to board the ferry to the east shore.

Nothing more was said between them until Villon steered the Mercedes up the ramp and parked near the bow, where they had a view of the lights dancing on the St. Lawrence. "We have a crisis on our hands," she said finally. "Does it concern you and me or Quebec?"

"All three." "You sound grim."

"I mean to be," she paused. "Charles is going to resign as Prime Minister of Canada and run for President of Quebec."

He turned and stared at her. "Repeat that."

"My husband is going to announce his candidacy for President of Quebec."

Villon shook his head in exasperation. "I can't believe he'd do it. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Why? There's no rhyme or reason for such a stupid decision."

"I think it stems from anger."

"He hates me that much?"

She lowered her eyes. "I think he suspects something between us. Perhaps even knows. He may be out for revenge."

"Not Charles. He's not given to childish reactions."

"I was always so careful. He must have had me followed. How else could he have caught on?"

Villon tilted his head back and laughed. "Because I as good as told him."

"You didn't!" she gasped.

"To hell with that fastidious little toad. Let him stew in righteous self-pity for all I care. There's no way the sniffling bastard can win the election. Charles Sarveux has few friends in the Parti quebecois. The mainstream of support belongs to me."

The ferry dock was only a hundred meters away when a man got out of the fifth car behind Villon's Mercedes sedan and joined the passengers returning to the parking deck after lining the railings to enjoy the view.

Through the rear window he could see two profiles in conversation, muffled voices seeping from the rolled-up windows.

Casually he moved alongside the Mercedes, pulled open the rear door as if he owned the car, and slipped into the back seat.

"Madame Sarveux, Monsieur Villon, good evening."

Confusion swept Danielle's and Villon's faces, replaced with disbelieving shock, then fear when they saw the.44 magnum revolver held in a rocklike hand, slowly wavering from one head to the other and back again.

Villon had genuine reason for his astonishment.

He felt as though he was staring in a mirror.

The man in the rear seat was his exact double, a twin, a clone. He could see every detail of the face from the spotlights on the landing dock that shone through the windshield.

Danielle let out a low moan that would have worked its way into a hysterical scream if the gun barrel hadn't whipped across her cheek.

The blood sprang from the gash in her otherwise flawless skin and she sucked in her breath at the instant agony.

"I have no qualms about striking a woman, so please spare yourself any senseless resistance." The voice was a precise imitation of Villon's.

"Who are you?" Villon demanded. "What do you want?"

"I'm flattered -the original cannot tell the fake." The voice took on a new inflection, one that Villon recognized in a horror stricken flash. "I'm Foss Gly, and I intend to kill you both."

A light drizzle began to fall and Villon turned on the windshield wipers. The gun muzzle was pressed into the nape of his neck, the pressure never easing since they left the ferryboat.

Danielle sat beside him, holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to her face. Every few minutes she made little strange noises in her throat. She looked like a woman lost in a nightmare, a woman numbed by terror.

All questions and pleas had been met by icy silence. Gly opened his mouth only to issue driving directions. They were rolling through a rural area now, marked by the lights of an occasional farmhouse. Villon had no recourse but to do as he was told. He could only hope and wait for an opportunity to act, to somehow gain the attention of a passing motorist, or with luck, a cruising policeman.

"Slow down," Gly ordered. "A dirt road is coming up on your left. Take it."

With a sinking dread, Villon turned off the highway. The road had been recently graded, and it appeared well traveled by heavy construction equipment.

"I thought you were dead," Villon said, trying for a response. Gly did not answer.

"That British intelligence agent Brian Shaw said you crashed a stolen boat into the side of a Japanese cargo ship."

"Did he tell you my body was never found?" At last he had Gly in a talking mood. That was a start.

"Yes, there was an explosion…..."

"Tied down the helm, set the throttles to FULL and jumped clear five miles before the collision. With all the traffic on the St. Lawrence, I figured it was only a question of time before the boat struck another vessel."

"Why are you made up to look like me?"

"Isn't it obvious? After you're dead, I'm going to take your place. I, and not you, will be the new President of Quebec."

Five seconds passed before the staggering disclosure penetrated Villon's mind. "In God's name, that's madness!"

"Madness? Not really. Smart brains, I'd call it."

"You'll never get away with such a crazy scheme."

"Ah, but I already have." Gly's tone was calm, conversational. "How do you think I walked through Jules Guerrier's front door, past his bodyguard up to his room and murdered him? I've sat at your desk, met most of your friends, discussed political differences with Charles Sarveux, made an appearance on the floor of the House of Commons. Why, hell, I've even slept with your wife and with your mistress up there on the front seat.

Villon was dazed. "Not true…... not true…... not my wife."

"Yes, Henri, it's all true. I can even describe her anatomy, beginning with…..."