Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction (13 page)

Commissaire Lapointe was counting the large denomination banknotes he had discovered in the old man’s safe. ‘Degenerates who were apparently helping to make you rich, m’sieu! We also know about your arms brokering.’ He replaced the money in the safe and locked it pocketing the key. ‘Have you told us everything? Have the passages been used by members of the German so-called ”underground”? Is it they who gave you the photographs? In exchange for guns?’

’I don’t know who they were. They appeared in this room one day, having pushed aside the cabinet. It’s true they had come to know of me through my interest in perfectly legal discontinued ordnance. They gave me the photographs in return for using the door occasionally. They were foreign civilians, they assured me. They spoke poor French, but I could not recognise the accents. As for the woman, she came and went only by day. She never asked to use my premises out of normal hours. I never saw her with anyone else. She was never gone very long. This is, I promise you, the longest she has ever been d-down there…’ With a shudder he turned his back on the mysterious doorway.

’Well,’ Lapointe decided, ‘we shall have to wait for her, I think. For the moment you will be charged with distributing pornography. Take him away.’

After the proprietor had been led off, still snivelling, the metatemporal detectives settled down to await Mrs Persson’s return, having replaced the door and cabinet exactly as they had discovered it. But the afternoon turned to evening, long after the print-seller would have closed up, and still she made no appearance.

Eventually, Bardot was dispatched to Mrs Persson’s apartments and soon returned to report that her apartment was unoccupied, save for two somewhat hungry and outraged Siamese cats. ‘I fed them and changed their litter, of course, but…’ He shrugged.

This news brought a frown to Begg’s aquiline features. ‘I think I know Mrs Persson pretty well. She would not desert her cats, especially without making arrangements to feed them. She has not only broken her usual habits, but probably did not do so willingly.’

‘My God, Begg! Do you mean she has been captured by whoever it was she has been seeing behind that cabinet? Murdered? By Zenith, perhaps? Could he be playing a double game?’

‘Possibly, old man… Instinct tells me that, if she is not found soon, she will be in no condition to help us with our enquiries.’

‘Her paymasters? They have turned against her? Or did Zenith betray her?’ Lapointe drew a deep breath.

‘Monsieur le commissaire, time is in all likelihood running out for Mrs Persson, if she still lives. We could be further away than we thought from discovering which public place is under threat. And we have, if Monsieur Zenith told me what I think he did, only three more days at most before they strike! Come on, gentlemen! Help me shift his cabinet.’

The doorway again revealed, Begg took a small but powerful electric lantern from his overcoat pocket and, a serviceable Webley.45 revolver in his other hand, led the way down into the echoing darkness. The two sergeants were left behind to guard the entrance.

From somewhere below there came a slow, rhythmic, almost tuneful booming as if of some great clock. It was a sound familiar to three of the detectives and there was not one in whom it did not cause a thrill of horror. For a second Begg hesitated, and then continued down the long flight of stone steps which revealed, by the marks in the mould which grew inches thick upon them, signs of recent usage.

Only Bardot had not heard the sound before. ‘What on earth is it?’ he enquired of Sinclair.

The pathologist frowned, clearly wondering if he should reply. Then he made up his mind, speaking rapidly and quietly: ‘Well, firstly, old man, it is not exactly of our earth. We believe it is a regulator of sorts. It is what we, who have travelled frequently between the worlds, sometimes refer to as the Cosmic Regulator. Others know it as the Grand Balance. I have heard it more than once, but never seen it. There are many conflicting descriptions. I have wondered if every person who has seen it has imposed their own image upon it. The Regulator is said to lie at the very centre of the multiverse, if the multiverse can be said to possess a centre.’

’Have you ever known anyone who has seen it?’ whispered Bardot, wiping cold sweat from his brow. He had only recently been transferred to the STP.

Sinclair nodded. ‘I believe Begg has set eyes on it, and perhaps Lapointe. But even they, articulate as they are, have never described it. It is often represented in mythological iconography as a kind of scale, with one side representing Chaos and the other Law, but nobody knows its true form, if it has one at all.’

‘Law and Chaos? Are those not Zoroastrian conceptions? The forces which war for control of the world?’

‘So far nobody has ever managed to gain power over the Balance, but should someone eventually succeed, it will mean the end of Time but not of consciousness. If Chaos or Law controls existence, we shall
continue to live at the exact moment before the extinction of everything.
For eternity! Or so the theory goes. But there will always be madmen to challenge that conception, to believe that by controlling the Cosmic Balance they can exert their own desired reality upon the multiverse. Heaven help us if Hitler and his lunatics are close to making such an attempt!’

Only half-comprehending this idea, Bardot firmed his shoulders and continued to follow Begg’s thin ray of light down into the sonorous darkness.

As they reached the bottom of the steps, they found themselves on uneven flagstones, peering through a series of vaults supported by ancient pillars.

‘No doubt,’ suggested Sinclair, ‘these are your famous Parisian catacombs?’

‘Possibly. I am not familiar with every aspect of them.’ Bardot peered into the rustling darkness.

The strange, distant booming continued. Whether the noise was mechanical or natural, it was impossible to determine. Lapointe and Begg both cocked their heads to listen. The echoes resounding through the vaults made it almost impossible to determine their source. At one moment Sinclair thought it might be water, at another some sort of engine. He was of a disposition to discount his own metaphysical speculation.

The vaults seemed endless and their darkness sucked the light from Begg’s lantern, yet the detective continued to lead the way as if he had some idea where the labyrinth offered an exit.

‘The arcades above us are a maze,’ remarked Lapointe, ‘which to some degree trace this other maze below.’

‘Remarkable,’ murmured Begg. ‘I had some idea of what to expect, but had no idea we were so close to the Regulator. This is not the first time I have used such a gate myself to move between one reality and another. But I have never before felt so near the centre. What about you, Lapointe?’

‘I must admit I have never heard it except as a very distant echo,’ replied the Frenchman. ‘Until now I have used mechanical means to negotiate the spaces between realities. We are issued with Roburian speedshells by the department. Naturally, old friend, I knew that you had not always taken advantage of such vehicles…’

‘One learns,’ the detective muttered, almost to himself. ‘One learns.’ His progress seemed almost erratic and without logic as he moved backwards and forwards, then side to side, keeping the mysterious sound constantly at a certain distance, treading a trail which only he could sense.

Now they made out a silvery light ahead.

‘Can it be possible that the Arcades de l’Opéra lead directly to the roads between the worlds?’

Hearing this, Sinclair gave an involuntary shudder.

Above them the great arches grew taller and taller until they were impossibly high, no longer structures of human architecture, but part of a natural vault which had become part of the night itself. And then all four men gasped, pausing in their tracks as Begg’s lantern revealed a long, twisting pathway which seemed to vanish into infinity. Above them, as well as below them, were other paths, all of them crossing and re-crossing. And on some could be distinguished tiny figures, not all of them human shapes, walking back and forth along these causeways.

When Sir Seaton Begg turned to address his fellow detectives his eyes might have been glistening with tears.

‘Gentlemen,’ he whispered, dousing the lantern, ‘I believe we have discovered the roads between the worlds!’

And now their eyes became used to the light which emanated from the moonbeam roads themselves. They stretched in every possible direction, both above and below. The legendary trails which led to all possible planes of the multiverse.

‘I have dreamed of this discovery,’ said Begg. ‘On occasions I have glimpsed these roads as I passed from one aspect of reality to another, but I never suspected I would ever discover access to them by accident. To think, the gateway to them has existed in Paris, presumably since the beginning of time, their patterns perhaps unconsciously imitated by the architect who designed the galleries above. Our mythologies and folktales have hinted, of course. There have been sensational tales. Yet they hardly prepare one for the reality. Is this Zenith’s and Mrs Persson’s secret, do you think?’

‘And is it also Hitler’s?’ asked Lapointe grimly. ‘Are his ambitions greater than we ever expected?’

Dwarfed by the vast network of moonbeam roads, the detectives were frozen in their uncertainty. There were no maps, no evident routes to follow. They had discovered an extraordinary, mysterious reality!

‘At least it is no longer a mystery as to how Zenith was able to evade our men. And Mrs Persson also. How long have they known of this route?’ Bardot wondered.

Begg shook his head slowly. ‘I believe Mrs Persson has probably been using these roads for a very long time. Yet it is my guess that she did not come this far voluntarily.’

‘How on earth can you make that supposition, Begg?’ enquired Lapointe.

‘Her cats,’ said Begg. ‘I know she would never have left her cats unattended. She would have brought them with her or she would have made arrangements for them to be looked after. No, gentlemen, if she was not faced with an overwhelming emergency, I believe Mrs Persson was lured down here and then made a prisoner.’

‘By Zenith?’

‘Possibly.’

‘If not by Zenith, then by whom?’

‘By Hitler. Or one of his people.’ Begg placed his foot firmly upon the road which led away into the darkness. There seemed nothing below them but other roads, on which those tiny wayfarers came and went.

‘How do you know she came this way, old man?’ Taffy Sinclair wished to know.

‘I have only instinct, Taffy. An instinct honed, I might say, by a lifetime spent travelling between the worlds.’

From somewhere, still unseen, came the booming of that unearthly balance.

With the familiar world far behind them, Begg and his fellow detectives were by now crossing a long, sinuous causeway from which gleamed a faint silvery light.

‘What surprises me,’ said Lapointe, is why so few people have reported finding this entrance to the moonbeam roads.’

‘I suspect because it is not always open,’ Begg suggested. ‘If Mrs Persson came this way but was abducted, perhaps she opened the gate but had no time to close it. My guess is that Hitler’s men, with whom she was clearly involved in some way, had stumbled on the road and bribed Caron, who had already sold them arms, with those filthy photographs. No doubt they also bribed M. Caron to let them know when she next planned to use his shop. Your men said they saw others enter the shop and not re-emerge, eh?’

‘Three of them. Isn’t it possible Mrs Persson unwittingly led them here?’

‘Impossible to say, Lapointe. I am hoping that mystery will shortly be solved!’

‘But how do you know we are even on the right road?’

Then Begg pointed downward. Stretching ahead of them the others now detected the faintest of pale traces, almost like ghostly drops of blood.

‘What is it?’ Lapointe wanted to know.

‘I believe those frauds of mystics like to call it ectoplasm,’ said Begg, ‘but I prefer to think of it as the traces left by every human soul as it passes through the world – or, in this case, between them. Only those “old souls” like Mrs Persson, who has moved for so long between one plane and another that she has developed a form of longevity we might even call immortality, leave such clear traces.’ His smile was grim. ‘We are still on her trail.’

Only when he looked back did Taffy Sinclair see, not unexpectedly, similar glowing traces running behind them. And he knew for certain who had left them.

After a further passage of time, when the booming of that ghostly balance seemed somewhat closer, Sinclair realised they had left the moonbeam roads and were again passing through a more earthly sequence of vaulted chambers. Again the electric lamp was in Begg’s left hand. Again his right hand gripped his service revolver. Was it his imagination, the Home Office pathologist asked himself, or was there something almost familiar about the smell of the air? Pine trees? Impossible.

‘Where are we?’ enquired Lapointe, still in a whisper.

‘If I am not mistaken, my old friend,’ answered the Englishman, ‘we are somewhere in the Bavarian mountains. Probably near a place called Berchtesgaden. Either that, or my nose deceives me!’

‘So we were right!’ Bardot exclaimed. ‘Mrs Persson is working for the German insurgents!’

‘That, Inspector Bardot,’ responded Begg, ‘remains to be discovered.’

Soon the ground began to slope upward and they heard the sound of voices, almost drowning that of the mysterious balance. They were unmistakeably speaking German and the loudest of them had a distinct Austrian accent.

Sir Seaton doused his lamp. But he did not return his revolver to his pocket.

The unseen Austrian’s voice rose with excitement. ‘Victory is in our grasp, my friends. Almost our entire army is passing through the Eagle Gate as we speak, to assemble in the Great Siegfried Cavern, awaiting our signal. Those degenerate fools thought they had defeated us, reduced us to a mere rabble. But they reckoned without our heritage, the ancient Nordic secrets locked deep within our Bavarian homeland. The Hollow Earth theory has been proven a scientific fact. You have done well, Frau Persson, by voluntarily showing us this road. We should have been sad if you were to become the subject of the next set of pictures sold in Paris by Herr Caron. By next Saturday the course of history will be changed forever. We shall strike a blow against the Jewish race from which it will never recover. If you continue to cooperate, you shall witness my becoming world leader, master of time and space. You will make a fitting consort. We shall rule the universe together!’