It happened like this: I took the train to Dover as my employers directed, crossed the Channel by steamer to Calais, and arrived at the Gare du Nord at seven in the evening. I then went to my hotel in the rue Notre-Dame des Victoires. Not a grand hotel by any means; the Baring family was far too cautious with its money to allow luxury; it was why many people hankered after a job with the Rothschilds, who had a finer appreciation of their employees' comforts. But it had running water, was clean and was only a short distance from the Bourse: I have stayed in much worse. My business, such as it was, could be dealt with in half an hour the following morning, and so I had the evening to myself. Or to attend to the note that was pushed under my door ten minutes after I arrived. It contained an address, and a time. Nothing more. 15, rue Poulletier. Nine o'clock.
Now, the hero of a spy story would have managed to discover the whereabouts of this address and get there with such ease it might not even be mentioned. I, on the other hand, took some forty-five minutes to acquire a map which even gave the location (shops never close in adventure stories; alas, they shut promptly at seven-thirty in reality) and then another hour to get there. Perhaps there was a tram which might have taken me, but I never discovered it. It was raining – a fine, persistent and depressing drizzle – and all the carriages were occupied. I had no umbrella, so had to walk, my hat getting sodden, my coat turning into blotting paper, into an area of Paris I had never even visited in daylight before.
This was the Ile Saint-Louis, an infested, rat-ridden tangle of criminality and sedition lying at the very heart of the city. It had once been fashionable and well-to-do, but those days had long since passed. Every building was crumbling and neglected, there was no street lighting (and, I guessed, not much progress had been made in installing modern sewage) and it was deathly quiet. The police of Paris never venture onto the island between sundown and sunrise; it becomes an independent country in the dark, answerable to no authority, and anyone who goes there must take full personal responsibility for his fate. Most of the revolutionaries, many of the anarchists and criminals who grace the pages of the popular press with their activities, give their address as the Ile Saint-Louis; they inhabit great houses which once echoed to the laughter of the aristocracy and now are cut up into dozens of squalid little rooms for rent by the month, the day or the hour. It is a den of cut-throats and fugitives, perfect for people who need or wish to disappear. The address I was seeking lay right at its heart, past the raddled women standing in the alleyways; past the men with narrow faces and suspicious eyes who watch as you walk by; past the long shadows, and sudden noises of something moving behind you; past the soft laughter that you hear faintly down side alleys.
It was terrifying. I have never in my life been so petrified, and if this disappoints, then I am sorry to disabuse you still further of any notions of heroism. I did not join a banking house to get my head kicked in down some malodorous Parisian alleyway. I was cursing myself and that wretched civil servant for bringing about my presence there. I could have turned on my heel and walked out, the banks of the Seine were scarcely a hundred yards away and there at least was some gas lighting. The bridge to the Ile-de-la-Cité was another few minutes' walk. Even less if you ran in total panic, not caring for your dignity. I did not take this course. Instead, I stopped at every flicker of light coming from an open window and consulted my map, wiping the rain from my eyes, and slowly made my way forward, getting ever close to my destination, keeping all thoughts of what on earth I might find there at the back of my mind. I have always had a stubborn streak in me; it can be a disadvantage, sometimes.
I could not decide whether I was being manfully determined or childishly stupid. I continued until I reached the door on the left that the curt instructions had mentioned. I gently pushed it with my hand. It was not locked. It was hardly on hinges at all, and was kept in place mainly by its own weight as it dragged on the floor and leaned against the door posts. Knocking seemed a little absurd in the circumstances, so I put my shoulder to it and levered it up and forwards until a gap large enough for me to slip through opened up.
