Free Shape of Fear by Hugh Pentecost Page B

out of Bernardel; gone to him with my innocent story and persuaded him to get me in with Colonel Valmont, the most dangerous enemy of the drug peddlers. He documented the fact that after I’d gotten in with Valmont, a half a dozen traps set by the colonel had failed to be sprung. Someone close to the colonel was tipping his hand. Who but me, he asked? He accused me of using Juliet to stay close to the colonel, to win his trust. Valmont had told Juliet the morning of his murder that he had guessed the identity of someone high up in the government who was working the drug racket. He had told her he wouldn’t let her share the secret. It was too dangerous. But he was, he told her, going to tell me. Girard made the shrewd guess that the colonel had gotten in touch with me and that I’d had to move fast to silence him. He said I’d then made a patsy out of Bernardel again, persuading him to supply me with an alibi. He understood, he told the authorities, why Bernardel would help me, believing I was a fighter on his side.”
    Digger’s short laugh was mirthless. “It was touch and go for a few minutes there. I could see Bernardel was shaken. It could all be the way Girard suggested. I could have lied to him from the start; I could have been in on the drug racket from the beginning; I could have used him to get in with Valmont; I could have used Juliet to pull the wool over the colonel’s eyes; I could have killed the colonel when I found out he was on to someone higher up in my racket. Bernardel knew I knew the colonel was on to something; that I had been at the apartment. So help me, if I’d been in his shoes, I think I’d have thrown me to the wolves. When the magistrate asked h im if he still stood by his story of the alibi, I was certain Bernardel would admit it was a fake. Well—he didn’t. ‘It’s not a story, Monsieur,’ he told the magistrate. ‘It’s a fact.’ ”
    Digger put his empty whisky glass down on the sideboard. “I don’t think the magistrate or Girard or any of the police officials in that room believed him. I know Juliet didn’t. Bernardel’s position was evidently such that his word had to be accepted by the officials. I don’t know what may have gone on behind closed doors. Perhaps Bernardel told the truth but convinced them of my innocence. I’ve even thought he may have told them the truth, admitted doubts of his own, and persuaded them to let me go free so that I might lead them to the big shots. At the time, the thing that mattered most was that Juliet had no doubts. She believed everything between us had been false; that I had simply used her to place myself in a position to spy on her father and had then killed him in cold blood. I was never able to get to her, to talk to her, to tell her my story. Girard was now her protector, never giving her a chance to think any way but his way. And in the end he—he got her.”
    Digger didn’t go on, and after a moment or two Chambrun asked him a question.
    “Surely when you were alone with Bernardel, he must have made it clear to you how he felt?”
    “Oh, he told me over and over that he never doubted my story for an instant. But he advised me to leave France for a while. He couldn’t guarantee me protection, either from legal or illegal troubles. Hell, they couldn’t even guarantee the safety of their own President. I didn’t want to go.”
    “Why?”
    “My dear fellow,” Digger said in a weary voice, “my one chance with Juliet was to find her father’s real murderer—the man I’d seen leaving by the fire escape and driving away in that Peugeot.”
    “Would you know him if you saw him again?”
    “No. Big man—big as I am. I only saw him from behind. But I didn’t have a chance, working by myself. I couldn’t hope for help from the authorities. They were pretty well convinced about me. Through a friend of mine I got to a high official of Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization. Their headquarters is