V for Vengeance by Dennis Wheatley Page B

other, since in front of their captors they had to keep up the appearance of being no more than casual acquaintances who had met the previous afternoon.
    When they had been taken down to the entrance-hall Stefan kissed her hand gallantly and said with a lightness that he was far from feeling that he hoped they would meet again in happier times.
    She pressed his fingers and nodded dumbly, fearful of speaking lest she betrayed her emotion. Having nursed him back from death’s door through all these tragic weeks, she naturally felt a special interest in him, but it was not until she was on the point of losing him altogether that she realised how much the jovial Russian’s companionship had meant to her. In a vague way she had realised that once he was fully recovered he would probably move from her mother’s apartment. But in the uncertainty of the times no one in Paris was inclined to make any plans for the future, so she had never actually visualised his leaving and what his departure might mean to her; and, now, overnight, through sheer ill-luck, their separation had been decreed before she had even had time to get used to its possibility. With a heavy heart she turned away and went out into the grey street, while he was led down to the basement and locked into a cell.
    For five days Kuporovitch was kept a prisoner. He was given scanty and uninteresting but sufficient meals, and, although he questioned his warders frequently, they could give him no idea as to how long he might be confined there; so he could only assume that it was not convenient for the authorities to send him into Unoccupied France at once and that he must wait upon their pleasure.
    On Sunday the 15th he was taken upstairs and out to a waiting car, in which there were two
agents de ville.
The car drove off, and as soon as it was outside Paris took the road to Melun, continuing on through Nemours, Montargis, Gien and Nevers to Moulins, which they reached late in the afternoon. It was here that the new frontier had been established, dividing Occupied from Unoccupied France. At the barrier Kuporovitch’s captors handed him, together with a packet of papers, over to other police officers who were under the control of the Vichy Government. He was then marched away to a large barrack-like building on the outskirts of the town and locked up in a small room with barred windows for the night. The following morning he was takenout again, put in another police car, and driven the remaining fifty odd miles to Vichy.
    The famous spa on the banks of the River Allier was crowded to overflowing. Normally it has a population of only some 17,000 people; now, as the capital of Unoccupied France, it was called on to house not only the headquarters of the Civil Ministries, of the fighting services, the prisoners of war and refugee organisations, and the Diplomatic Corps, but also the thousands of hangers-on and stray people of every nationality who were trying to get jobs, news of missing relatives, or permits, either to return to their homes in Occupied France, from which they had fled before the invader, or to leave the country.
    It had no doubt been chosen on account of its many luxury hotels, which in times of peace accommodated the great numbers of wealthy people who came from all over Europe to do the cure, as these lent themselves readily for conversion into Ministries and as quarters for the more important officials, but they housed only a comparatively small portion of the swarms of bureaucrats, police, soldiers, diplomats and refugees who now thronged the little town.
    The great thermal establishment, where in pre-war days the ailing had received their massage or strolled about to the music of the band while sipping their mugs of tepid water, had now been taken over by the Forces, as, although under the terms of the armistice the French Army was to be reduced to a purely token force, its disbandment had not yet been completed, and this entailed enormous