The Stone Leopard by Colin Forbes

colonel remarked. Lennox gathered the interrogation had been preceded by a physical session which had reduced the agent, a man called Favel, to a moaning wreck. `While trying to escape from the barracks,' Lasalle explained, `he accidentally shot a sergeant. The men who questioned him before me were the sergeant's friends. So . .'
    An hour after Lasalle had begun his own interrogation just before midnight Favel had started rambling on about the wartime Resistance. At first Lasalle had thought this was a trick to veer the interrogation into other channels; later he had become interested as the prisoner made repeated references to the Leopard. At intervals—the interrogation had continued for over twelve hours—the broken man had told a strange story about a man who would one day rise from the dead to liberate France from the capitalist yoke. This man, had, in fact, already risen from the dead and was walking the streets of Paris.
    `It seemed absolute nonsense for a long time,' Lasalle explained. 'I thought I was dealing with a religious maniac— which seemed odd for a dedicated Communist—and then he told me he had been hiding in the barracks....'
    `Hiding ?' Lennox queried.
    `Hiding from his own people,' Lasalle said impatiently. 'I had got it the wrong way round—instead of trying to spy for the Communist cell in Marseilles he was fleeing from them. What better place to hole up than in a military barracks—or so he thought. They were trying to kill him—I think because he knew too much.'
    Tut he did know something?'
    `He said it was no common spy he was talking about—a civil servant who photographs documents at dead of night and passes over microfilm inside a cigar or some such absurdity. No, Favel was referring to a highly placed mandarin close to the centre of power. To a man who for years had waited and worked his way up steadily—without having a single contact with any Communist organization. That is the genius of the idea—with no Communist contacts it is impossible to detect him.'
    'Favel named the man ?'
    Lasalle made a gesture of resignation. 'He did not know who he was—only that he existed. What finally convinced me was a tragedy. The day after I completed my interrogation, Favel escaped from the barracks—twenty-four hours later he was found at the bottom of a cliff with his neck broken.'
    `His so-called friends caught up with him?'
    `I'm convinced of it,' Lasalle replied. 'I started my own investigation and eventually I came up with those three names on the list. I visited one of them—Leon Jouvel in Strasbourg— but I think my position frightened him. I came away feeling sure that he knew something. Shortly after that, I had my great confrontation with Florian and had to flee my own country. . .
    Lennox asked other questions. Both Jouvel and Philip, the two Frenchmen on the list of witnesses, lived in Alsace. Was it a coincidence ? 'Not at all,' Lasalle explained. 'The Leopard favoured men from Alsace in his Resistance group—he believed they were more reliable than the more excitable men from the Midi.' The colonel smiled sarcastically. 'He was, I am sure, a realist in everything.'
    `But the Leopard is dead,' Lennox pointed out. 'He died in Lyon in 1944. . . '
    `Which is the clever part of the whole thing. Don't you see ?'
    `Frankly, I don't,' Lennox replied.
    `The man has to have a code-name for the few occasions when he is referred to in Soviet circles. So they chose the name of a man known to be dead. What is the immediate reaction if the name ever slips out? It must be nonsense. He is dead! My God, what was your own reaction ?'
    `I see what you mean,' Lennox said slowly. 'You're saying there is . . .'
    `A second Leopard—who was in some way connected with the Leopard's original Resistance group. This unknown man would easily think of using this name—if he once worked with the man whose name he has stolen. One of those three witnesses on that list should be able to clear up the mystery. .