With his two granddaughters snuggled on his lap and his grandson sitting on the arm of the overstuffed chair with his head on one bony shoulder, Etienne Duron looked to be truly at peace with the world that had used him and most of his family and possessions so cruelly in the last decade.
Grief and long privation had prematurely aged the retired army officer to a marked degree, so that he appeared ten to fifteen years older than his actual fifty-three. But despite his emaciation, his patched shirt and his worn-shiny, threadbare suit, he was most distinguished-looking, Milo thought upon his initial introduction by Martine to her widowed father.
Shortly, they sat down to a meal consisting of a boned and poached fish in aspic, a small bowl of beans, a loaf of cheap bread and a bare liter of sourvin ordinaire.
With a sad smile, Grandpere Duron apologized, saying, “As one ages, the appetite goes and one forgets to buy food.” It was a patently lame excuse and Milo was quick to notice that the older man ate only a bit of bread and drank one glass of the terrible wine.
To little Per’s loud plaint of being still hungry when no more food remained upon the table, Milo said, “It’s time for you and your sisters to go upstairs with Mathilde and have your nap. When you wake up, there will surely be some chocolates and marzipan waiting for you. Now all of you kiss your mother and go.”
While Martine and her father were clearing the table, Milo went out and walked until he found a taxi. The prewar Austin looked to be held together only by rust, friction tape and prayer, but it did get him to one of the addresses given him by John Bannister. A brief conversation and the handing over of a letter of international credit and Milo was again being accorded the by now familiar royal treatment by the fawning bank staff.
He stepped from the bank through the open rear door of a Rolls-Royce, but before he would allow the uniformed chauffeur to start the engine, he explained certain of his needs to the slim, handsome man.
Wide-eyed, amazement tinged with something else in his voice, the driver turned to face Milo, saying, “You are the new son-in-law of Colonel Etienne Duron? Please pardon my impertinence, monsieur, but the order was for only one Monsieur Moray. Is monsieur by any chance a former capitaine of infantrie of the American Army, and is his Christian name Milo?”
Puzzled, Milo just nodded. “Yes, my full name is Milo Moray, and yes, I was a captain of infantry for a while, though I retired in the rank of major. I’m just another civilian now.”
The chauffeur stared at him, something approaching awe shining from his dark eyes. Then he turned, started the car, put it into gear and smoothly pulled out into the busy traffic, blithely, cutting off a huge, lumbering van with a body of corrugated metal, a battered taxi and a bus in his acceleration across three lanes of fast-moving vehicles.
The man handled the car with flawless perfection, but drove at a breakneck pace and with gut-wrenching abandon, rounding traffic circles with a careless dis-regard of other vehicles of any size, somehow managing to avoid stationary obstacles when he zipped through right-angle turns into narrow side streets. Every so often, he would come to a full stop, apply the brake and get out with a murmured “Moment, s’il vous plait, M’sieu Moray. “
The first stop was to speak with a one-legged boot-black, lead him over to the Rolls and let him look in at Milo. The next one was a gendarme, then there were assorted men and a few women, another gendarme, a score or more of taxi drivers and porters outside the main railway passenger terminal. Finally on their way to the main market, the chauffeur stopped only three times more—two women who looked to Milo like cheap streetwalkers and yet another gendarme.
Bidding M’sieu Moray to remain in the car, the chauffeur sped off afoot into the crowded, bustling open-air market. He was nowhere in sight when, by ones and twos and three, men and women and even children began to slowly dribble up to finally surround the Rolls, all of them staring in silence at Milo, whispering among themselves and pointing. Milo began to get a little edgy; he was carrying a fair sum of money now, in cash, and not a few of the crowd looked the part of hoodlums. He was a little relieved when a cassocked priest pushed through the crowd and walked up to the car, then tapped on the rolled-up window.
Once the glass no longer separated them, the priest asked, “Is M’sieu then truly the kind and generous sometime-capitaine Milo Moray, he who was so unbelievably kind to a poor man he never did meet and to that poor man’s desperate young daughter?”
“Father,” Milo asked his own question, “please, tell me, just what the devil is going on. From the moment I got into this car, the driver has been running it all over Paris and hopping out at odd times and places to drag people over to look at me as if I were some well-known dignitary or a two-headed calf.”
The priest did not smile, just nodded with solemnity. “You are most well known, m’sieu, but by name and charitable deeds only. Those who fought les Boches in Paris and her environs, those of the Resistance, we all have honored your name for more than three years, now. After the untimely demise of the brave Henri Gallion—he never, ever fully re-covered from the unmentionable things that the Gestapo did to him, and despite the warmth and food and comforts and medicines that your unparalleled generosity afforded his last few months of life, he died of pneumonia in July of 1945—his daughter, Nicole, and a prostitute named Angelique Laroux spreawd your fame far and wide within the circle of the Resistance. We tried many times to find you, and we did find your former battalion and company, only to discover that you had been seconded to another unit, but when we tried to find that unit, we always struck a blank wall, for some reason. Frankly, after all this time, we had despaired of ever finding you alive.
“Now, to suddenly find that you not only still live and are in Paris and even are married to a French-woman, the daughter of a most distinguished, deco-rated, retired French army officer, this all your chauffeur, Marcel Noyes, found so exciting that he could not but share with his fellow Resistance friends the rare honor of actually seeing you. I, too, am most honored, M’sieu Moray. I would be the more so could I shake your hand in the American fashion. I am Father Arsenne Mullineaux.” The hand extended through the window was a bit grubby, but his clasp was firm.
Upon seeing the handclasp, the people moved in closer, and a big, burly bear of a man pushed forward out of the crowd. As he came in closer, Milo thought that he looked a little like the common conception of a pirate, with his flapping eyepatch, his scar-laced face and his rolling gait. The husky man’s bearing marked him as a leader, and the priest instinctively moved a little to the side for him, thus confirming his status.
“It is really him, then, Father Arsenne?” he asked. “Marcel told the whole truth for a change, then, and we at last have found Milo Moray?” His voice matched his size, a basso growl.
Upon being assured that this gentleman in the back seat of the Rolls was the one, only and original Monsieur le Capitaine Milo Moray, he said shyly, “M’sieu, this sight of you is the God-sent answer to many a prayer. When you could not be found, after Germany capitulated, it was feared by many that les Boches had killed you and that you lay somewhere in an unmarked grave.
“I am Rene Febvre, called l’Petit. I have done many bad things in my forty years, but still I would shake the hand of a true saint, if he would permit me . . . ?”
At Milo’s acquiescence, the hand that came through the window was at least as large as that of a mountain gorilla and almost as hairy. There was the clear hint of enormous strength in the hand, but also of gentleness.