Free V for Vengeance by Dennis Wheatley Page B

and rows of hangers. The locust flight was easing now, but it had left the great Paris stores and luxury shops almost bare.
    This licensed sack of Paris had naturally increased the rancour of the French against their conquerors, because it affected them personally, striking deep at the pockets of the traders, both great and small, and at the standard of comfort to whichall but the poorest sections of the community had long been accustomed. It was now only possible for them to get meagre supplies of the most simple things, such as salad oil, fresh fruit, eggs, soap flakes and toilet paper, with the greatest difficulty, while the delicacies which they loved were obtainable only at fantastic prices through the black markets which were springing up everywhere.
    Yet this sudden dearth of everything also had the effect of intensifying anti-British feeling. German propagandists and their French collaborators never tired of pointing out by radio and Press that all the ills which were afflicting France were attributable to her ex-Ally.
    It was urged that if the wise counsels of such men as Bonnet, Laval, Baudouin and other pro-Fascist leaders had been heeded France would have taken the hand of friendship which Germany had proffered in 1939; but she had foolishly preferred to reject it and sacrifice herself to the interests of Britain, who, as ever, had been unprepared to defend her own bloated Jew-controlled Empire. Then there was the now old story of the British having begun their preparations for evacuation three weeks before the final decision was reached in France, and having gone home directly the really serious fighting started. It was conveniently forgotten that the British Army had been under the French High Command, that Gamelin had ordered it forward into Belgium and that it had been forced to retire only because its position had been rendered untenable by the French collapse hundreds of miles farther south at Sedan.
    Churchill’s refusal to allow the bulk of the R.A.F. fighter squadrons to cross the Channel during the critical phase of the Battle for France, and the attack on the French Fleet at Oran, were also constantly dug up, but the main point upon which the Nazi propagandists were tireless was that the British decision to fight on was now the sole cause of all that France was suffering.
    As long as the British remained obdurate no proper peace could be established, and until that happened Germany could not withdraw her Armies of Occupation. Almost unarmed as the British were, and with every one of their Allies already knocked out, how could these madmen conceivably hopeever to defeat Hitler? Therefore, it was argued, for humanity’s sake, they should have had the decency to throw in their hand and bring an end by a negotiated peace to the nightmare which was now afflicting all the people of Europe.
    This feeling became so strong in Paris that great numbers of the French openly gave their support to Laval’s policy of co-operation with the Germans, in the belief that the only way out of their own miseries now lay in bringing about Britain’s complete defeat as speedily as possible.
    By the beginning of September Kuporovitch was well enough to go downstairs, and each afternoon he went for a short walk, at first round the colonnades of the Palais-Royal and later, when he was stronger, in the Jardin des Tuileries and up the Champs Elysées, with Madeleine. The weather was excellent, and being out in the open air on those sunny September afternoons caused him to achieve a great bound forward in renewed vitality, so that towards the middle of the month he declared himself once more fit for anything. It was on the 19th he impulsively announced that to celebrate his full recovery they must go out that very night to dinner, and she smilingly agreed.
    It was nearly thirteen weeks since his accident, and in all that time he had not had a meal in a restaurant, so he insisted that they should go somewhere really