V for Vengeance (42 page)

Having carried it home he set to work at once to practice typing and make some rough drafts of various letters. To
begin with his efforts were deplorable, but he soon got the hang of the thing, and before the night was over had managed to produce two letters which had only a few minor typing errors in them.

Thereafter he worked away like a beaver. In view of the special business upon which he was now employed it had been decided that until the great coup was either made or had to be abandoned he should give up his co-operation with the sabotage parties; so he worked most of each night and a good part of the day, indefatigably turning out letter after letter and addressing them to a number of people whose names and addresses Lacroix had given him. As the days passed his speed increased, and he rarely made a bad slip in his typing. Madeleine furnished him with all the paper he required and gradually the stack of letters, bearing varying dates as far back as the previous autumn, and done up in separate bundles for each person, grew higher in the locked cupboard where he kept them.

The news continued to be depressing, as the Germans achieved victory after victory in their Balkan campaign. On the 26th April Athens fell. By the end of the month the British had been compelled to evacuate the mainland. The Greek Army had surrendered and the Germans were in possession of the entire peninsula, as well as all the Greek islands of the Aegean from which they could so easily menace Turkey.

Many of Lacroix's most fearless helpers were Communists, so it was decided that Labour Day, the first of May, should be signalised by some special act of sabotage against the Germans.

The enemy was now taking full advantage of the great canal system of Northern France to transport goods by water from Paris, through Belgium to the German frontier; so plans were prepared for the blowing-up of certain locks which connected the various basins of the terminal barge port in North-Eastern Paris, and the big bridge which carries the Rue de Crimée over them.

All the approaches to the wharves were now strongly guarded at night by German sentries, and they had to be lured away from their posts in order to avoid the reprisals which would follow if any of them were killed. As a general
rule the women of Paris showed their antagonism to the Nazis much more strongly than the men, and except in the brothels, which were now under German police supervision, it was extremely difficult for a German soldier to get a French girl even to talk to him. In consequence, the saboteurs had developed a practice of using attractive girls who were in the movement to occupy the attention of the sentries while the freedom-fighters crept past them in the darkness and laid their charges of explosives.

Several of these brave women had recently been caught, and at a meeting which Madeleine and Madame de Villebois's daughter, Jeanne, attended, fresh volunteers were asked for. As it was not possible to carry out these major acts of sabotage in which many freedom-fighters were employed very frequently, Madeleine and Jeanne did not feel that an occasional night devoted to acting as decoys would greatly interfere with their duties at the nursing-home; so they both offered their services.

Pierre was most unwilling that Madeleine should undertake such work, not only from its danger but from its nature, as it was quite on the cards that she would have to submit to being cuddled and kissed in some dark corner by a German sentry for a quarter of an hour or more. Much as she herself loathed the thought of that, she declared her determination to go through with it, as it was the best contribution which she could make to this blow against their oppressors.

The day started off badly as there were a number of labour demonstrations against the Germans. These had nothing to do with Lacroix's secret movement, and, while they were of value as showing the growing hatred of the population, they served no useful purpose at all, but led to clashes with the police in which a number of the demonstrators were injured. These minor riots, too, although easily suppressed, had the unfortunate effect of putting the Germans on their guard against graver disturbances; but it was too late to cancel the orders of the sabotage parties, and when Madeleine and Pierre set out that night they both felt an uneasy foreboding that special measures might have been taken which would jeopardise the success of the intended operation.

They formed two of a party that had been allotted the
bridge, and Madeleine left Pierre and the other men who had gathered at a small café about three hundred yards from it to go forward with Jeanne de Villebois.

The two girls sauntered along as though out for an evening stroll and willing to indulge themselves in any amusement that offered. At the end of the bridge they were challenged by two German sentries. Halting there, they proceeded to poke fun at the men, asking if they thought that two pretty girls were likely to rush upon them and disarm them.

One of the soldiers who spoke a little French said: ‘So you think yourselves pretty, do you? Come here, and let's have a look at you.'

The girls moved up nearer, and, as Jeanne was also something of a beauty, the Germans at once displayed a lively interest in them.

‘Perhaps you'd like to search us for weapons,' Madeleine laughed, and her invitation immediately provoked a little horse-play. The Germans were not rough, because they thought they were on a good thing, and they chipped the two girls just as any other young men might have done in a similar situation; but soon the affair took a more serious turn.

Heinrich, as the taller of the two was called, sought to lead Madeleine away from her friend to the other side of the bridge, and after a pretence of being unwilling she gave way to him. Leaning his rifle against the railings he immediately tried to kiss her, and she thought the next few moments were as hateful as any that she had ever spent in her life.

It was not that the young man himself was at all unpleasant, and in that she was fortunate, but the whole time that he was holding her tightly to him and kissing her she could not get out of her mind the things he represented. She knew that underneath he was just a soulless brute who would not have scrupled for one second to kill her if he had been ordered to do so, because for many years past he had been educated in the belief that any sort of brutality was absolutely justified, provided it was committed in the interests of Germany and the Fuehrer.

Soon, with his hot breath on her neck, he began to explore her person. She was almost sick with shame and rage, but she managed to fob him off and began to talk of their meeting
again when he was off duty, and they could find a more comfortable place in which to make love.

‘That'd be fine,' he grinned, ‘but there's no time like the present; and you're a peach of a girl—the prettiest I've seen in all Paris. Come now!' And he pushed her roughly, for the first time, against the stone coping at the end of the bridge.

She was wondering wildly now if Pierre and the others had had time to plant their mine so that she might break away and run for it, but if she did so prematurely she might endanger their lives. The sounding of a horn had been agreed upon as the signal which they were to give when they were ready. She had not heard it but might have missed it while she was struggling with the amorous soldier, and he was muttering loud endearments in her ear.

She was grappling with him now, but even in the midst of her distress and confusion she caught a faint cry from the other side of the road. Jeanne, too, was evidently in difficulties, and Madeleine knew that her friend must be near the limit, or she would never have cried out. To do so might bring an N.C.O. or other soldiers running out of the guardhouse, which was a shed about fifty yards away along the canal bank.

Her own situation was now near desperate, as the young German had her pinned up in an angle of the stonework at the bridge's end, but Jeanne's cry gave her a second's respite. Heinrich heard it too, and stiffened suddenly, evidently fearful that he might be caught by his N.C.O. and suffer the most rigorous penalties of the iron Prussian discipline for his flagrant neglect of his duties.

‘Stop!' Madeleine gasped. ‘Let me go! That fellow over there is hurting my friend.' But the door of the guardhouse was not flung open, and reassured, the lusty young German, now wrought up to a terrific state of excitement, set upon her, throwing caution to the winds, determined to overcome her by brute force.

Suddenly a shot rang out from the centre of the bridge. There came the sound of shouts and running feet. On account of the demonstrations earlier in the day the Germans had placed sentries there as well as at the two ends so that if anyone should pass the latter without calling out that all was
well the person concerned would fall straight into a trap. Madeleine and Jeanne had done their part, and Pierre and his friends had succeeded in getting past the two sentries the girls were engaging unseen, but they had run straight on to the others.

Next moment everything was in wild confusion. Heinrich grabbed his rifle with one hand and struck Madeleine violently in the face with the other, as he snarled: ‘So you were acting as a decoy, you filthy little bitch! I'll teach you. As soon as we've sorted this I'll turn you into the guardhouse and pull your clothes off. Then the whole lot of us will take turns at having some fun with you.'

A man raced by in the darkness. Heinrich lifted his rifle and fired. The man let out a strangled scream and pitched headforemost in the roadway. There were more shouts from the centre of the bridge. The guard was now tumbling out of the shed, and an N.C.O. was bawling orders. Half-stunned by the blow she had received Madeleine swayed and fell to her knees.

At that second there was a violent explosion about two hundred yards away. Another gang of saboteurs had succeeded in blowing up one of the canal locks. The ground shook, and pieces of debris came whistling through the air.

For an instant the light of the flash made everything as bright as day. Madeleine saw Jeanne running head down twenty yards away. A belated cart had pulled up right at the entrance of the bridge. Its driver, a burly workman, was staring down at Madeleine and Heinrich, who had grabbed her just as she had staggered to her feet. The German was too intent on preventing Madeleine from getting away to take any notice of the carter. Suddenly the burly man sprang down from his seat, and raising his whip brought it cracking down in the sentry's face.

The German let out a yell and staggered back, releasing Madeleine. The cart hid them from the other soldiers. Before Heinrich could recover, its driver had seized him by the neck and, forcing him back against the railings of the bridge, slung him into the canal.

‘Run,
Mademoiselle
, run, or these devils will get you!' cried the carter; and as he scrambled up again to his driver's seat Madeleine raced away after Jeanne.

Fear lent her new strength, and she dashed down the street, her legs flying under her. A soldier sent a bullet after her which ripped her beret from her head. At the shock she tripped and almost fell, but recovered herself and raced on again. A moment later the shouting and firing were dying away behind her. She saw Jeanne ahead, still running, and putting on a fresh spurt caught her up.

The two girls dived down a side turning and dropped into a walk. Both were panting as though their lungs would burst, and Jeanne was sobbing bitterly.

‘It's all right,' gasped Madeleine. ‘They won't follow us as far as this—they'd lose themselves in the darkness.'

‘That brute!' sobbed Jeanne. ‘That filthy brute! I don't think I'll ever feel clean again.

Madeleine took her arm. ‘Yes, I don't think I've ever hated anything so much, but we had to do it, and it's all over now.'

After a few minutes they had more or less recovered themselves. A late bus took them to the Opéra, and they parted there to make their respective ways home.

Madeleine waited up anxiously for Pierre, wondering whether he had been one of the men who had been shot, or if he had managed to get away. To her great relief he reached Ferrière's house about three-quarters of an hour after herself, and he was unwounded.

Kuporovitch was upstairs in his room typing, and Luc Ferrière had gone to bed, so they had the sitting-room to themselves, and Madeleine used some of their precious supply of coffee to make them a cup apiece so as to warm them up before they went to bed.

Pierre reported that two of their squad had been shot, and one, he thought, captured, but the other two had managed to escape unharmed with him. He was in a restless mood and would not sit down, but walked about the room. Madeleine made light of her own unpleasant experiences, as she knew that it would only infuriate him to know what she had been through; but suddenly he burst out:

‘I won't have you do this sort of thing again. It makes me positively sick to think of it. I expect you'll say that I have no right to interfere, but I have got a right. I've loved you for years—you know that! And any man who loves a girl as I
love you has every right to protect her from such beastliness.'

‘Pierre darling,' she laid a hand on his arm as he paused beside her chair, ‘I know you love me, and, of course, you hate it. The thought of that German messing me about tonight must have been even worse for you than the actual experience was for me. But try not to think of it. Every one of us must be prepared to give everything we've got for France, and if a girl like myself can be useful that way, then it would be plain cowardice for her to shirk her duty.'

‘No one can accuse me of being unpatriotic,' he said abruptly. ‘I've proved my love of France with the risks I've taken night after night all through this winter. You know that.'

‘Of course I do,' she murmured.

‘But there's a limit,' he went on quickly. ‘You and I have been lucky so far—extraordinarily lucky—but our luck can't hold for ever. The British and the Germans have reached a stalemate, so it's absolutely impossible now to foresee any ending to this damned war at all. If we carry on as we've been doing we're bound to be caught. I don't mind that for myself so much, but the thought of you in a German concentration camp drives me simply crazy. You must agree that I've been patient, but it's getting on for a year now since Georges' death, and I've been watching you pretty closely. You've got over that, I'm certain of it; so I'm not going to keep silent any longer. I love you. I want to marry you. Madeleine, let me take you out of this to safety.'