The Smoking Mirror
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Synopsis
Celia McNeill is under arrest during her vacation to France and, desperate for cash, she makes a deal with card master Sergei Radetzkoy, whom she meets while being detained in Dieppe.
He says he's just lucky at cards, but the crooks who follow him from the casino aren't interested in his winnings. They demand to know his 'system'. The fashionable folk who rescue him don't conceal their interest in his extraordinary success at the casino either - an interest that leads to murder ...
Release date: March 14, 2014
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Print pages: 256
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The Smoking Mirror
Helen McCloy
May 1940
He was standing with a policeman at his elbow just inside the gate of the customs’ shed. He was French and official. Dark, shapely overcoat, pale gray gloves, and hard
felt hat were the official uniform in the France of 1940.
Celia wondered why he was here.
The policeman whispered to her, “Monsieur l’Inspecteur must see all passports coming off the English boat tonight.”
She held out her own passport, sure that anything signed by an American secretary of state would pass muster anywhere.
He turned the pages slowly, reading each one, then snapped it shut and dropped it in his overcoat pocket. “If mademoiselle will have the goodness to wait for a few moments. . .
.”
She was so surprised she answered his French in English. “But . . . why . . . ?”
“Wait, if you please.”
He was still speaking French, so she went on in French herself. “I must get to Paris tonight and . . .”
Her voice died. He was already looking at the joint passport of the couple in line behind her.
Every pair of eyes in that line was fixed upon her now. How many Parisian dinner tables would be regaled this evening with tales about a dangerous woman criminal who was detained by police on
the pier at Dieppe? What could she have been smuggling? Diamonds? Dope?
Not one of them would have believed that she had no more idea of why she was being detained than they had.
Last in line was a young man, tall and thin. She could hardly see his face. He wore his hat tipped forward so that a half-mask of shadow lay across his eyes. He carried his head high with a
touch of arrogance. He wore no overcoat, but the May evening was warm enough to excuse that.
As he came face to face with the Inspector, he made a little gesture of negation, hands held apart, a wide space between them. It was then she noticed that his jacket cuffs were threadbare. She
was unused to a combination of arrogance and poverty. She found it rather appealing.
“Passport?” The Inspector was curt.
French cadences flowed from the young man almost like poetry, but it all boiled down to the fact that his passport had been stolen.
“When did this happen, monsieur?”
“I had it in my hip pocket when I got on the boat in Newhaven. Just now I looked and it was no longer there.”
“Anything else gone?”
“No, fortunately my wallet was in my breast pocket.”
“Nationality?”
“I have—had—a Nansen passport.”
“You are a stateless person?”
“I was born in Russia. My parents brought me out in 1918 when I was one year old.”
He glanced towards Celia as he spoke. For the first time she saw his eyes—haunted eyes. How could it be else if you were a second-generation exile? She had known others like him with no
memory of their homeland and no thought of counterrevolution, just people trying to come to terms with the times under a handicap.
“Your name?”
“Sergei Radetzkoy.”
Celia ventured into French again. “Can’t all these things be sorted out when we get to Paris?”
The Inspector rattled off a volley of French at machine-gun speed. At that pace she could not understand a syllable.
“Pardon, monsieur?”
He took a deep breath and tried again, still in French but now with a long pause between each word as if that would help her to understand.
“You . . . speak . . . French?”
“A bit.”
“A . . . little . . . bit.”
This was one lesson in French style she would never forget. Perhaps the best way to learn a language was to get in trouble with the police.
The Inspector now lengthened the pause between each of his words.
“You . . . do . . . not . . . have . . . a . . . visa . . . from . . . the French . . . consul . . . in . . . England.”
“Visa?”
The Russian intervened. “Permit me, monsieur?” He went on in English as fluent as his French. If she had not known he was Russian, she would have taken him for an Englishman.
“You’re supposed to get a visa from the French consul in London if you are coming from there to enter France. Apparently you didn’t.”
“Oh, dear, I forgot. Is it important?”
“That depends. Are you a tourist only here for a week or so?”
“No, I’m applying for a job in the Paris office of an American newspaper feature service. I certainly hope it will last longer than a week or so.”
“Then you’re in trouble. To get a job in France a foreigner needs a work permit. To get one, your papers must be in perfect order, including a passport with a visa.”
“What happens now?”
“I’ll try to find out.” He turned back to the Inspector speaking French slowly so she could understand.
“Mademoiselle says she simply forgot to get a visa from the French consul in London. She is anxious to comply with all regulations because she hopes to be living and working in Paris for
some time to come. Is there any way she could get a visa now in Dieppe?”
“Visas can only be obtained from French consuls abroad.”
“Can’t I go back to England to get a French visa?”
“No, you cannot leave France now.”
“Why not?”
“You cannot leave a country until you have entered it. Officially you have not entered France.”
“Then can I go on to Paris tonight?”
“No, you will have to remain here in Dieppe until the affair is arranged between your government and mine.”
“How long will that take?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Is there an American consul in Dieppe?”
“He has no jurisdiction over French visas.”
Once more Sergei Radetzkoy intervened. “Just what is to become of us tonight, monsieur? After all, mademoiselle has not committed a serious crime, and I am merely the victim of a
crime.”
“So you say.” The Inspector brooded for a moment, then shrugged. “Ah, well, if you will each give me your parole not to go beyond the city limits, I shall put you both under
town arrest until this is settled.”
Sergei looked at her and nodded, almost imperceptibly. She was grateful for the hint.
“Of course you have my parole,” she said.
“And mine.” When Sergei smiled, his blue eyes were bright as the Baltic on a sunny day.
“Now follow me.” The Inspector moved towards the other end of the shed where customs and immigration officers were waiting.
Celia and Sergei fell into step behind him. She whispered, “What does town arrest mean?”
“God knows, but we’ll soon find out.”
Night had fallen while they were going through customs. In the street outside it was too dark to see much. There was no moon, windows were blacked out and the glass in street
lamps painted blue. War had turned the old Channel port into a medieval town once more.
Celia and Sergei sat in the back of a police car. The Inspector got in front beside a uniformed police driver. He had to drive so slowly that it seemed a long time before the car stopped in one
of the narrower streets.
The Inspector got out. “Wait in the car while I see if Madame Grosjean will receive you.”
They could just see him in the starlight, crossing the pavement to a tall, double door and pressing a bell set in a round depression like a saucer. A smaller door opened in one leaf of the
double door. He stepped across a high threshold and the door closed behind him.
The driver kept his eyes on the roadway ahead and remained silent as if the seats behind him were empty.
Celia opened her lips. Before she could speak, Sergei laid a finger across his own lips. He was right, of course. No matter how innocent you were, you didn’t talk when you were under
arrest and a policeman could hear you.
The Inspector came back.
“Madame Grosjean has agreed to let you stay here until your affairs are settled. You will each pay sixty francs a day half-board. This includes breakfast and dinner and a room for each of
you. Now if you will please come inside. . . .”
Sergei carried Celia’s suitcase and his own. They passed through the outer door into a paved courtyard. An inner door was standing ajar.
The woman on the threshold must have been a girl at the turn of the century. She still wore her skirt long, and her hair was dressed high in a coil above an impeccable pompadour, though now it
was gunmetal gray.
Her hostility burned behind a transparent veil of scrupulous politeness.
“This lady and gentleman will be happier dining by themselves in the salon. My other guests are only halfway through dinner in the dining room. I see no reason to disturb them.”
This was code. She was really saying: I shall protect my respectable guests by segregating these jailbirds the police are forcing upon me.
“As you please, madame,” said the Inspector. “And now permit me to present Mademoiselle . . .” He glanced at Celia’s passport. “Mock-neel?”
“Mock-neel?” cried Madame. “What kind of name is that?”
“Polish, perhaps. The first three letters are all consonants, M, C, N. How does one pronounce a name like that?”
“McNeill,” said Celia.
“Just as I said, Mock-neel.”
Madame Grosjean was looking at Sergei. “And this monsieur is . . . ?”
“Sergei Radetzkoy, at your service, madame.”
She did not return his smile.
“Your rooms are on the floor above at the head of the stairs. Here are your keys. This is the salon.”
She threw open a door on the right. It was a little Victorian parlor, preserved intact—Brussels carpet, plush curtains edged with ball fringe, buttoned-down upholstery, and a working
fireplace where coal smoldered in an iron basket-grate.
In the center a round table had been laid with a white cloth and set for two, presumably while Celia and Sergei were waiting outside in the car.
“It looks very comfortable, madame,” said Celia.
“Then perhaps we can regularize our accounts now by your paying a week in advance?”
There was a split second of shock. Celia saw a gleam bounce off Sergei’s eyes like a blue spark struck from flint.
She turned to the Inspector. “Are we to be here a whole week?”
“At least that.”
Celia took four hundred-franc notes and one fifty-franc note out of her handbag.
Madame started to say something about change, but Celia waived this.
“Let the extra thirty francs go towards next week’s bill.”
It was a small gesture, but she hoped it might establish credit and goodwill.
Sergei was not to be outdone. He handed Madame five hundred-franc notes and told her that he, too, would apply the extra amount against next week’s bill.
It was all in vain. Madame didn’t even thank them. She made out receipts and left the room with a perfunctory “Bon appetit.”
At table Celia had her first look at Sergei in a good light. He seemed younger than his twenty-three years. He was lean and brittle looking as a Russian wolfhound, but nothing else about him
suggested Russia. His face was a classic oval with a slightly aquiline nose, a face that would have been at home in either England or Italy. There was probably an interesting mixture of bloodlines
here.
The door opened and a small man came in bearing a platter of stew on a tray much too big for him. He was the first person to smile at them since they had stepped on French soil.
“Good evening, monsieur, ’dame. I am Charles. My wife’s the cook. She’s called Charlotte. Isn’t that lucky? It helps people remember our names. Cider or
Evian?”
They both chose cider.
“Please ring when you are ready for dessert.” He was still smiling as he went out, closing the door behind him.
Sergei watched Celia taste her drink and laughed.
“You thought it was going to be hard cider?”
“I hoped it was going to be hard cider.”
“This is the kind of place where you pay extra for anything like that.”
“I really need a drink tonight.”
“And you shall have it.”
He took a flat, silver flask out of a breast pocket. It was silver and had once been handsome. Now it was dented and scratched.
“Vodka?” Celia asked.
“Heavens, no. I’m not all that Russian. My mother was English, and I went to school in England. I’ve had jobs in France and Italy. I’m pretty much at home anywhere. This
is cognac. We both need it tonight.”
“Just a little for me, please.”
“Oh, come off it!” He poured a healthy slug into her glass of cider, the only glass available.
After the first sip she began to feel alive again.
Dessert was a delicious cream cheese called petit suisse, country bread, and f. . .
He was standing with a policeman at his elbow just inside the gate of the customs’ shed. He was French and official. Dark, shapely overcoat, pale gray gloves, and hard
felt hat were the official uniform in the France of 1940.
Celia wondered why he was here.
The policeman whispered to her, “Monsieur l’Inspecteur must see all passports coming off the English boat tonight.”
She held out her own passport, sure that anything signed by an American secretary of state would pass muster anywhere.
He turned the pages slowly, reading each one, then snapped it shut and dropped it in his overcoat pocket. “If mademoiselle will have the goodness to wait for a few moments. . .
.”
She was so surprised she answered his French in English. “But . . . why . . . ?”
“Wait, if you please.”
He was still speaking French, so she went on in French herself. “I must get to Paris tonight and . . .”
Her voice died. He was already looking at the joint passport of the couple in line behind her.
Every pair of eyes in that line was fixed upon her now. How many Parisian dinner tables would be regaled this evening with tales about a dangerous woman criminal who was detained by police on
the pier at Dieppe? What could she have been smuggling? Diamonds? Dope?
Not one of them would have believed that she had no more idea of why she was being detained than they had.
Last in line was a young man, tall and thin. She could hardly see his face. He wore his hat tipped forward so that a half-mask of shadow lay across his eyes. He carried his head high with a
touch of arrogance. He wore no overcoat, but the May evening was warm enough to excuse that.
As he came face to face with the Inspector, he made a little gesture of negation, hands held apart, a wide space between them. It was then she noticed that his jacket cuffs were threadbare. She
was unused to a combination of arrogance and poverty. She found it rather appealing.
“Passport?” The Inspector was curt.
French cadences flowed from the young man almost like poetry, but it all boiled down to the fact that his passport had been stolen.
“When did this happen, monsieur?”
“I had it in my hip pocket when I got on the boat in Newhaven. Just now I looked and it was no longer there.”
“Anything else gone?”
“No, fortunately my wallet was in my breast pocket.”
“Nationality?”
“I have—had—a Nansen passport.”
“You are a stateless person?”
“I was born in Russia. My parents brought me out in 1918 when I was one year old.”
He glanced towards Celia as he spoke. For the first time she saw his eyes—haunted eyes. How could it be else if you were a second-generation exile? She had known others like him with no
memory of their homeland and no thought of counterrevolution, just people trying to come to terms with the times under a handicap.
“Your name?”
“Sergei Radetzkoy.”
Celia ventured into French again. “Can’t all these things be sorted out when we get to Paris?”
The Inspector rattled off a volley of French at machine-gun speed. At that pace she could not understand a syllable.
“Pardon, monsieur?”
He took a deep breath and tried again, still in French but now with a long pause between each word as if that would help her to understand.
“You . . . speak . . . French?”
“A bit.”
“A . . . little . . . bit.”
This was one lesson in French style she would never forget. Perhaps the best way to learn a language was to get in trouble with the police.
The Inspector now lengthened the pause between each of his words.
“You . . . do . . . not . . . have . . . a . . . visa . . . from . . . the French . . . consul . . . in . . . England.”
“Visa?”
The Russian intervened. “Permit me, monsieur?” He went on in English as fluent as his French. If she had not known he was Russian, she would have taken him for an Englishman.
“You’re supposed to get a visa from the French consul in London if you are coming from there to enter France. Apparently you didn’t.”
“Oh, dear, I forgot. Is it important?”
“That depends. Are you a tourist only here for a week or so?”
“No, I’m applying for a job in the Paris office of an American newspaper feature service. I certainly hope it will last longer than a week or so.”
“Then you’re in trouble. To get a job in France a foreigner needs a work permit. To get one, your papers must be in perfect order, including a passport with a visa.”
“What happens now?”
“I’ll try to find out.” He turned back to the Inspector speaking French slowly so she could understand.
“Mademoiselle says she simply forgot to get a visa from the French consul in London. She is anxious to comply with all regulations because she hopes to be living and working in Paris for
some time to come. Is there any way she could get a visa now in Dieppe?”
“Visas can only be obtained from French consuls abroad.”
“Can’t I go back to England to get a French visa?”
“No, you cannot leave France now.”
“Why not?”
“You cannot leave a country until you have entered it. Officially you have not entered France.”
“Then can I go on to Paris tonight?”
“No, you will have to remain here in Dieppe until the affair is arranged between your government and mine.”
“How long will that take?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Is there an American consul in Dieppe?”
“He has no jurisdiction over French visas.”
Once more Sergei Radetzkoy intervened. “Just what is to become of us tonight, monsieur? After all, mademoiselle has not committed a serious crime, and I am merely the victim of a
crime.”
“So you say.” The Inspector brooded for a moment, then shrugged. “Ah, well, if you will each give me your parole not to go beyond the city limits, I shall put you both under
town arrest until this is settled.”
Sergei looked at her and nodded, almost imperceptibly. She was grateful for the hint.
“Of course you have my parole,” she said.
“And mine.” When Sergei smiled, his blue eyes were bright as the Baltic on a sunny day.
“Now follow me.” The Inspector moved towards the other end of the shed where customs and immigration officers were waiting.
Celia and Sergei fell into step behind him. She whispered, “What does town arrest mean?”
“God knows, but we’ll soon find out.”
Night had fallen while they were going through customs. In the street outside it was too dark to see much. There was no moon, windows were blacked out and the glass in street
lamps painted blue. War had turned the old Channel port into a medieval town once more.
Celia and Sergei sat in the back of a police car. The Inspector got in front beside a uniformed police driver. He had to drive so slowly that it seemed a long time before the car stopped in one
of the narrower streets.
The Inspector got out. “Wait in the car while I see if Madame Grosjean will receive you.”
They could just see him in the starlight, crossing the pavement to a tall, double door and pressing a bell set in a round depression like a saucer. A smaller door opened in one leaf of the
double door. He stepped across a high threshold and the door closed behind him.
The driver kept his eyes on the roadway ahead and remained silent as if the seats behind him were empty.
Celia opened her lips. Before she could speak, Sergei laid a finger across his own lips. He was right, of course. No matter how innocent you were, you didn’t talk when you were under
arrest and a policeman could hear you.
The Inspector came back.
“Madame Grosjean has agreed to let you stay here until your affairs are settled. You will each pay sixty francs a day half-board. This includes breakfast and dinner and a room for each of
you. Now if you will please come inside. . . .”
Sergei carried Celia’s suitcase and his own. They passed through the outer door into a paved courtyard. An inner door was standing ajar.
The woman on the threshold must have been a girl at the turn of the century. She still wore her skirt long, and her hair was dressed high in a coil above an impeccable pompadour, though now it
was gunmetal gray.
Her hostility burned behind a transparent veil of scrupulous politeness.
“This lady and gentleman will be happier dining by themselves in the salon. My other guests are only halfway through dinner in the dining room. I see no reason to disturb them.”
This was code. She was really saying: I shall protect my respectable guests by segregating these jailbirds the police are forcing upon me.
“As you please, madame,” said the Inspector. “And now permit me to present Mademoiselle . . .” He glanced at Celia’s passport. “Mock-neel?”
“Mock-neel?” cried Madame. “What kind of name is that?”
“Polish, perhaps. The first three letters are all consonants, M, C, N. How does one pronounce a name like that?”
“McNeill,” said Celia.
“Just as I said, Mock-neel.”
Madame Grosjean was looking at Sergei. “And this monsieur is . . . ?”
“Sergei Radetzkoy, at your service, madame.”
She did not return his smile.
“Your rooms are on the floor above at the head of the stairs. Here are your keys. This is the salon.”
She threw open a door on the right. It was a little Victorian parlor, preserved intact—Brussels carpet, plush curtains edged with ball fringe, buttoned-down upholstery, and a working
fireplace where coal smoldered in an iron basket-grate.
In the center a round table had been laid with a white cloth and set for two, presumably while Celia and Sergei were waiting outside in the car.
“It looks very comfortable, madame,” said Celia.
“Then perhaps we can regularize our accounts now by your paying a week in advance?”
There was a split second of shock. Celia saw a gleam bounce off Sergei’s eyes like a blue spark struck from flint.
She turned to the Inspector. “Are we to be here a whole week?”
“At least that.”
Celia took four hundred-franc notes and one fifty-franc note out of her handbag.
Madame started to say something about change, but Celia waived this.
“Let the extra thirty francs go towards next week’s bill.”
It was a small gesture, but she hoped it might establish credit and goodwill.
Sergei was not to be outdone. He handed Madame five hundred-franc notes and told her that he, too, would apply the extra amount against next week’s bill.
It was all in vain. Madame didn’t even thank them. She made out receipts and left the room with a perfunctory “Bon appetit.”
At table Celia had her first look at Sergei in a good light. He seemed younger than his twenty-three years. He was lean and brittle looking as a Russian wolfhound, but nothing else about him
suggested Russia. His face was a classic oval with a slightly aquiline nose, a face that would have been at home in either England or Italy. There was probably an interesting mixture of bloodlines
here.
The door opened and a small man came in bearing a platter of stew on a tray much too big for him. He was the first person to smile at them since they had stepped on French soil.
“Good evening, monsieur, ’dame. I am Charles. My wife’s the cook. She’s called Charlotte. Isn’t that lucky? It helps people remember our names. Cider or
Evian?”
They both chose cider.
“Please ring when you are ready for dessert.” He was still smiling as he went out, closing the door behind him.
Sergei watched Celia taste her drink and laughed.
“You thought it was going to be hard cider?”
“I hoped it was going to be hard cider.”
“This is the kind of place where you pay extra for anything like that.”
“I really need a drink tonight.”
“And you shall have it.”
He took a flat, silver flask out of a breast pocket. It was silver and had once been handsome. Now it was dented and scratched.
“Vodka?” Celia asked.
“Heavens, no. I’m not all that Russian. My mother was English, and I went to school in England. I’ve had jobs in France and Italy. I’m pretty much at home anywhere. This
is cognac. We both need it tonight.”
“Just a little for me, please.”
“Oh, come off it!” He poured a healthy slug into her glass of cider, the only glass available.
After the first sip she began to feel alive again.
Dessert was a delicious cream cheese called petit suisse, country bread, and f. . .
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