The words seemed to carry an implicit threat, but Mallory refused to be drawn, and de Beaumont smiled faintly and led the way across to where a flight of stone steps lifted a hun-dred feet into the gloom, curving round one wall of the cave. They mounted the steps and emerged on to a stone landing, and de Beaumont led the way to the far end of a passage, passing several doors. One or two stood open to show narrow service bunks and grey blankets neatly folded. From a side entrance there came the smell of cooking.
He opened another door and they entered a large hall, great curved beams of oak arching into the gloom. There was a wide marble staircase and, above it, a gallery. At one side logs blazed in an immense medieval fireplace.
“Quite a sight, isn’t it? The money these Victorian indus-trialists must have had to throw around, and every stone brought in by boat.”
His tone was casual, mannered. He might have been a rather complacent host showing a friend over his new place. They went up the great staircase and moved along the gal-lery to the far end. De Beaumont opened a door to disclose a narrow spiral staircase. At intervals there were slotted windows and Mallory could see far out to sea as they moun-ted higher and higher.
They reached a stone landing and paused outside a door. De Beaumont went in, leaving it ajar. The room contained a great deal of radio equipment and an operator sat before a transmitting set, headphones clamped to his ears. He stood up when de Beaumont appeared. There was a murmur of conversation and then the Colonel came back outside.
He continued up the spiral staircase, Mallory, Guyon and
Marcel following behind, Jacaud bringing up the rear. At
last they emerged on a small landing and de Beaumont
opened his final door.
The room was circular in shape and quite large. It wascomfortably furnished, Persian carpets covering the floor, logs burning brightly in the wide fireplace. The walls were lined with books except for a section perhaps twenty feet long covered by a velvet curtain. De Beaumont pulled it to one side, revealing a curved glass window.
“One of my little improvements. On a clear day you can see France.” He indicated a chair by the fire. “If you please.”
Mallory sat in the chair and Jacaud moved to stand behind him, the sub-machine-gun held ready. Marcel stood by the window, a revolver in his right hand held against his thigh. Guyon remained by the door and Mallory looked across at him. Guyon returned his gaze calmly, giving nothing away, and Mallory turned to de Beaumont, who was now sitting in the opposite chair.
“I will not insult your intelligence by fencing with you, Colonel Mallory,” he said. “For some time I was a prisoner of the Viets in Indo-China. There is little they failed to teach me at first hand about the extraction of information from the uncooperative. Jacaud was senior warrant officer of my regiment. He shared my experiences. I need hardly add that he would welcome an opportunity to experiment.”
“No need to go on,” Mallory said. “I get the point.”
“Excellent,” de Beaumont said. “We can get down to business. As you may now have deduced for yourself, Cap-tain Guyon is something of a double agent. When theDeuxieme offered him employment they were not aware that he was already a loyal member of the O.A.S. A most convenient arrangement. He confirms the fact that theBureau had no real grounds for suspectingL’Alouette to be in hiding here. That his assignment to lie de Roc to work with you was at the request of British Intelligence. I’d like to know why.”
“We had a man here watching you,” Mallory said. “Just routine, because of who you are and what you are. He drifted in on the tide the other evening. Accidental drown-ing was the coroner’s verdict.”
“He had a habit of taking long walks on the cliffs after dark with a pair of night-glasses,” de Beaumont said. “Rather dangerous. Someone should have warned him.”
“You made a mistake there,” Mallory said. “To my chief it meant only one thing. Our man had seen something import-ant. With the French combing every creek and inlet on their side of the Channel it gave him a rather nasty feeling to think that she might be sitting it out in the Channel Islands.”