to his sides. He shook his head slowly, an expression of sorrowful puzzlement on his face. "May I at least ask you gentlemen what this is all about?"
"Herr Eigen, we will talk later. We have an interrogation chamber outfitted for that purpose. For now, you will come with us, and do not make any sudden moves or we are ordered to shoot."
Ordered: these were men acting under orders from above, from superior officers. They were drones, low-level street agents, and this was good, Metcalfe considered. They did not act on their own initiative. They responded to authority.
Metcalfe smiled, glanced at Ducroix. But the Frenchman's eyes were steely, opaque, his arms still in the firing position, the Luger steady. He radiated no sympathy, no recognition of their old camaraderie. He seemed a changed person ruthless, unyielding.
"Gentlemen," said Metcalfe, "aren't you required at least to tell me what you're taking me in for?"
He heard the jingling of bells as the door to the bookshop was opened.
"Turn, please," the first German said. "Walk toward the door. Arms at your sides."
"No, the back way, please!" interrupted Ducroix. "No one must see him come out of my shop!" He pointed with his gun toward one end of the workroom, where Metcalfe now noticed a door. It probably led to the alley.
"Is this about documents," Metcalfe persisted. "Papers?" He raised his voice. "About the documents I use in order to get Gerhard Mauntner his cognac, his cigarettes, his caviar? To get Frau Mauntner her silk stockings, her perfume? Gentlemen, really... you can't be serious." By invoking the name of the number two man at the Paris headquarters of the Gestapo, an occasional client of his, Metcalfe was pulling out his heaviest ammunition. These street agents, obedient to the core, would do nothing to contravene the wishes of a man as highly placed as Mauntner.
"Oh, we are quite serious," the second German replied calmly. There was a note of ominous pleasure in his voice. "After all, Gerhard Mauntner's signature is on the arrest form. We are obeying Gruppenfuhrer Mauntner's express personal orders. Move, please."
They had called his bluff! His ruse had been exposed for the lie it was. There was nothing to do now but go along with the agents. He glanced again at Ducroix, who had not relaxed his firing stance at all, though beads of sweat had appeared on the man's forehead. A tiny smile played about the forger's lips. The lover of poetry appreciated the irony, the delicious spectacle of a fabulist being caught in the web of his own fiction.
"Well," Metcalfe said, "there's obviously some terrible mistake, but we'll straighten this out at the rue des Saussaies."
He began walking toward the back of the room, past the great steel Linotype machine. One of the agents fell in beside him, grabbing him by the elbow. In his other hand the Gestapo man pointed his Walther. The second agent followed close behind.
Ducroix, Metcalfe saw in his peripheral vision, had lowered his gun at last and wheeled himself toward his shop, no doubt to attend to the customer who had entered the shop, the crisis having passed. Now it was just the two Gestapo agents and him, but he was still outnumbered, outgunned.
As he walked, he lowered his head shamefacedly, and he began cowering, quivering with visible fear. "Oh, God," he murmured. "This is terrifying. I've been afraid of this happening for so long-"
Metcalfe's knees buckled, and he slumped to the floor with an anguished wail escaping his lips. He was a trembling wreck, overcome with fright. The agent at his side loosened his grip on Metcalfe's arm momentarily as he was pulled downward by Metcalfe's sagging weight.
Collapsing to the floor, Metcalfe pulled the German down with him; then he spun, lightning-fast, slamming the man's head against the stone floor. The crack of the Gestapo man's head hitting the stone was audible: the skull had fractured. His eyes rolled up into their sockets, the whites of his eyes all that showed.
In a split second Metcalfe bounded to his feet, the unconscious man's Walther in his hand. As he lunged to his right, behind the steel machinery, he fired off a shot at the other German.
"Drop the weapon or you'll die!" the German shouted. Fear had taken over his once phlegmatic face. He fired at Metcalfe, but the round pinged off the steel hulk of the Linotype press. Shielded by the iron-and-steel press, Metcalfe pointed the stolen weapon between a gap in the machinery, aimed carefully as