Free The Sultan's Daughter by Dennis Wheatley Page A

yours and make it more difficult for me to get a fair hearing I vow I’ll see to it that you are sent to the galleys. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to admit that you may have been mistaken I’ll see that you are treated decently and perhaps even arrange an exchange for you.’
    For the better part of a minute Giffens remained silent, then he muttered, ‘I’ll ’ave to think about it. I told the bloke what did the interpreting that my politics was red-’ot Republican, an’ arter that they treated me very friendly-like. So as things be I ain’t afraid they’ll send me to the galleys. But say I goes back on what I said about ye, all the odds is they’ll act very different. I’ve still ’alf a mind that you’se lying; but even given I’m wrong about that, maybe none’ll be found as knows you for a French Colonel, so they’ll shoot you just the same. That ’ud be ’ard luck on you, but on me too. No sayin’ I were a Republican would do me no good then. They’d clamp the fetters on me an’ afore you was cold in your grave I’d find meself a slave in a dockyard.’
    There was sound reasoning behind Giffen’s argument. As Roger knew only too well, the chances of coming across an officer with whom he could claim acquaintance were all too slender and, although he continued to argue with the man for some while longer, he could not persuade him to commit himself.
    Nevertheless, being by nature an optimist, Roger derived some little comfort from their conversation. It was Giffens who had denounced him and if, as he now thought probable, he was to be given some form of trial, Giffens would be the principal witness against him. It was no small achievement to have both sown doubt in his mind and scared him. Whereas before he would undoubtedly have given his evidence with malicious gusto, it now seemed fairly certain that even if hedid not hedge he would exercise some degree of caution in what he said.
    As the cart jogged on across the windswept downs both its occupants began to suffer from the cold. Giffens could slap his arms across his chest now and then to keep his circulation going. He had also had a hot breakfast, whereas Roger had an empty stomach and, with his hands tied behind him, could do no more than drum with his feet on the floorboards of the cart. Except that it had a hood the cart might easily have been taken for a tumbril and after an hour in it Roger’s spirits had again fallen so low that he began to think of it as one in which he was being driven to the guillotine.
    At length, between the undrawn curtains above the backboard, glimpses of occasional houses could be seen. Then the cart clattered down a succession of mean streets, to pull up outside a big building in a square, after a journey that had lasted about two hours. As Roger was helped out, he recognised the place as Boulogne and the building as its Hotel de Ville.
    His guards hustled him inside, took him down a flight of stone stairs to a basement and handed him over to a turnkey, who locked him, cold, hungry and miserable, into a cell. But he was not left to shiver there for long. After a quarter of an hour the turnkey returned with a companion, and they marched him up to the ground floor again, then into a spacious courtroom.
    Earlier that morning the uniforms of Roger’s captors had confirmed his belief that they were not Regular troops but Coastguards, with similar functions to the English Preventives, whose principal task was to stop smuggling. In consequence, as he had feared might be the case, he now saw that he was about to be tried not by a military but by a civil court. That meant that he would stand less chance of convincing its members that he was a Colonel in the French Army.
    At one time the courtroom had been a handsome apartment, but the walls were now stained with damp, the windows long uncleaned, with numerous cracked panes, and the