The Stone Leopard Read Online Free PDF Page A

by now, in his shirt-sleeves. Coffee had been brought in to them and the room was full of smoke as Grelle used up cigarette after cigarette. The rain was still lashing the windows.
    `It doesn't,' Grelle agreed, 'but I was the one who heard every word he said and he frightened me. I think I can judge when a man is telling the truth. . .
    `This Leopard then--you think he was really telling the truth about that ?' Boisseau, small and heavily-built, with almond-shaped eyes and thick eyebrows, had made no attempt to keep the scepticism out of his voice. 'Personally, I have never heard of him. . .'
    `But you are younger than me.' The prefect lit another cigarette. 'The Leopard is on file, a very old and dusty file by now. And yes, I do think Gaston Martin was telling the truth —as he believed it to be.'
    `Which could be a very different thing. . .'
    `Quite true. You see, there's something you don't know. The Communist Resistance leader known during the war as the Leopard is dead.'

    On Saturday morning, 11 December, David Nash, who had just returned from Europe aboard the night flight from Brussels, flew from New York to Washington for an emergency meeting with Andrew MacLeish at the State Department. The two men locked themselves away in a small room on the second floor and MacLeish listened without saying a word for fifteen minutes; it was one of his strong points, that he could absorb a verbal report without interruption, soaking up information like a sponge.
    `And Lasalle gave absolutely no indication of the identity of this alleged cabinet minister who could be a secret Communist agent ?' he inquired eventually. 'This man he calls the second Leopard—because he has adopted the pseudonym of the dead wartime Communist Resistance leader ?'
    `None at all,' Nash replied promptly. 'He played the whole thing very close to the chest. What he did tell me was that he believes he was on the verge of uncovering the agent when he had his titanic row with Florian—which ended in his flight from France. Since then he hasn't been able to carry his investigation any further and he's worried stiff that a coup d'etat is planned to take place while Florian is in Moscow on this coming visit. He suspects that the Russians invited the president to Russia to get him out of Paris at the crucial moment, The attempted assassination decided Lasalle—to make contact with me. He's pretty certain that if it had succeeded the coup d'etat led by the second Leopard would have taken place at once.'
    `So he wants us to complete the investigation that he started. . .
    `He has this list of three witnesses who worked closely with the original Leopard during the war. . .
    `A list he wouldn't give you,' MacLeish snapped.
    `I'm not sure I blame him for that,' Nash countered. 'He's very security-conscious and that I like. He'll only hand over the list to the agent we provide to go inside France to meet these people. . .
    `What the hell can these three so-called witnesses tell us?' MacLeish demanded irritably. 'If the original Leopard is dead I don't see the connection. . .
    `Lasalle believes someone who was in the Leopard's wartime Resistance group cleverly took over his name as the code-name the Russians would know him by. So to find this top Communist agent we have to dig back into the past, to find who could fit. Find out who he was in 1944 and we'll know who he is today.'
    MacLeish, whose other strong point was his ability to take a quick decision, drummed his thick fingers on the table like a man playing a piano. 'So the deadline is 23 December when Florian takes off for Moscow, which gives us exactly eleven days. You're going to have to move damned fast. .
    `So I can send someone in ?' Nash interjected.
    `You can send someone in,' MacLeish decided, 'but not an American. If Florian's security apparatus got hold of him the French would have a field day. I can hear Florian's next anti- American speech now—Yankee agent discovered trying to smear Paris cabinet