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The newspapers plunged gleefully into the guessing game: Argoud, they said, had been captured by les barbouzes (the bearded ones), the legendary triggermen of the French secret services. It was speculated that the Esmeralda phone call was simply the government's way of establishing an alibi after its agents had illegally kidnaped Argoud in Germany. Argoud's attorney pointedly cited two similar "illegal" kidnapings: that of Adolf Eichmann by the Israelis and even more to the point, that of the émigré Duke d'Enghien, who, suspected of plotting against Napoleon, was snatched in Germany by French police and then tried and executed.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Parisians agreed that l'affaire Argoud was truly rocambolesqne, incredible. To cap it, police last week rounded up nine other S.A.O. men in a Paris apartment, charged them with having planned (though they failed even to attempt) the assassination of Premier Georges Pompidou last year. Argoud's arrest had another result: it caused a one-day adjournment in the trial of nine defendants (TIME, Feb. 22) accused of being part of the gang that tried to kill De Gaulle at Petit-Clamart.
Meanwhile, the government will seek to establish that Argoud was a member of the Council of National Resistance, which ordered the ambush at Petit-Clamart, and the rest of France will keep guessing who accomplished Argoud's capture.