in a great hurry.
The nurse has finally come back and-as if she had forgotten him-asked him what he was waiting for. He has answered that he was waiting for Doctor Juard.
“But the doctor left a moment ago, didn’t you see him just now?”
It was hard to believe that she was not making fun of him. How could he have guessed that the man he has just seen was Doctor Juard, since he did not know him. And why hadn’t she announced his visit as he had asked her to?
“Don’t be angry, Monsieur; I thought the doctor would have spoken to you before he went out. I had told him you were here. He’s just been called on an emergency case, and it was impossible for him to stay-even a minute. Since the doctor has a very busy afternoon, he’s asked if you could meet him at exactly four-thirty in the hall of the railway station, between the telephone booths and the snack bar; it’s the only way you can meet him today: he won’t be coming back here until late tonight. When I saw the doctor come in here, I assumed he was going to arrange the meeting himself.”
On his way through the room, the little doctor had glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “There are some funny doctors around here.”
Since he had plenty of time, Wallas went around to Marchat’s apartment building. But his ring at the door remained unanswered. That wasn’t important, one way or the other, Laurent having repeated to him the essentials of his conversation with the man who believed himself doomed to die. Still, he would have liked to judge the man’s mental equilibrium for himself. Laurent described him as raving mad, and the way he had behaved in the commissioner’s office justified, at least in part, this opinion. But on certain points, Wallas is not so sure as the commissioner of the insanity of Marchat’s fears: the execution of a new victim is in fact only too likely for this very evening.
Having walked back downstairs, Wallas has asked the concierge of the building if he knew when his tenant would be coming in. Monsieur Marchat had just left in his car for several days, with his entire family; he had probably heard of the death of a close relative: “The poor fellow was all worked up.”
The businessman lives in the southern part of town, not far from the wood export offices. From here, Wallas proceeded toward the station, walking back along the Rue de Berlin and through the courthouse square. He then followed an endless canal bordered on the other side by a row of old houses whose narrow gables have been rotted away by the water for centuries, until they lean over the canal most alarmingly.
Walking into the station hall, he saw the little chromium-plated stand at once, where a man in a white apron was selling sandwiches and bottles of soda pop. About five yards to the right there was a telephone booth-just one. He began walking up and down, glancing frequently at the dial of the clock. The doctor was late.
The hall was full of people hurrying in all directions. Wallas did not budge an inch from the place indicated by the nurse, for the crowd was so thick that he was afraid he might miss the doctor when he arrived.
Wallas began to be worried. The hour agreed on had long since passed and the disagreeable impression his visit to the clinic had made on him was growing stronger minute by minute. There had certainly been a misunderstanding. The nurse had garbled the message, either in understanding or transmitting it-perhaps in both.
He would have to telephone to the clinic to ask for an explanation. Since there was no phone book in the one booth standing here, Wallas has asked the man behind the soda fountain where he might find one. While handing out bottles and counting change, the man indicated a place in the hall where Wallas, despite his efforts, could see nothing but a newsstand. It seemed to him that the boy had not understood what he wanted. He has nevertheless started toward the tiny stall where there was obviously no trace of a phone book. A few stationery articles were exhibited among the illustrated magazines and the brightly colored covers of the detective stories; Wallas has asked to see some erasers.
It was at this moment that Doctor Juard appeared. He had been waiting at the other end of the hall, where the real snack bar and a whole row of telephone booths are.
The doctor was unable to tell him anything new. Wallas did not want to speak of the conspiracy, out of discretion, and Juard merely repeated what he had said that morning to the chief commissioner.
Quite naturally Wallas has taken, from the station square, the same streetcar as the evening before-the one that had taken him near the Rue des Arpenteurs. He got off at the same stop, and now follows the Boulevard Circulaire that brings him back to the little brick house and the wretched room over the Cafe des Allies. It is completely dark now. Wallas is no further along than when he arrived, the day before, by this same route.
He walks into the huge stone apartment building that stands at the corner of the street. He is going to be forced, for the counter-questioning of the concierge, to show his pink card and, most likely, to admit, at the same time, his little deception of this morning concerning his mother’s supposed friendship with Madame Bax.
From the greeting of the heavy-set, jovial man, Wallas sees that the latter recognizes him. When he reveals the object of his visit to him, the concierge smiles and merely says:
“I knew this morning that you were from the police.”
The man then explains that an inspector has already come by to question him, whom he has told that he knew nothing. Wallas then refers to the youth whose disturbing manners the concierge had mentioned. The other man raises his arms to heaven:
“Disturbing!” he repeats.
It had seemed to him, in fact, that the inspector was attaching to this young man an importance which he himself was far from…etc. Wallas discovers, as he expected, that Commissioner Laurent made no mistake in suspecting his subordinate of immoderate “zeal.” Hence the concierge did not say that there had been quarreling during these encounters, but only that at moments “voices were raised.” Nor did he say that the student often seemed to be drunk. Yes, he saw him point to the house as he walked by to a friend, but he did not say that his gesture was threatening; he only mentioned “sweeping gestures”-the kind all boys that age make, impassioned or nervous. Lastly the concierge adds that the professor had already received, in the past-though rarely, as a matter of fact-visits from students at the School of Law.
The cafe is warm and cheerful despite the heavy atmosphere-smoke, men’s breath, and the vapors of white wine. There are a good many people-five or six drinkers laughing and talking in loud voices, all at once. Wallas has returned to this place as to a refuge; he would like to have told someone to meet him here; he would wait for hours, lost in the noise of these trifling discussions-drinking hot rum at this rather isolated table…
“Greetings,” the drunk says.
“Hello.”
“You kept me waiting,” the drunk says.
Wallas turns around. Here, too, there is no isolated table where he can be quiet.
He has no desire to go upstairs to his room, which he remembers is gloomy and which is probably quite cold as well. He walks over to the bar, where three men are standing.
“Well,” the drunk shouts behind him, “aren’t you going to sit down over here?”
The three men turn around at the same time and stare at Wallas without the slightest embarrassment. One is wearing a grease-stained mechanic’s suit; the two others are in heavy navy blue pea jackets with big collars. It occurs to Wallas that his bourgeois clothes are betraying his profession. Fabius would have started by dressing up as a sailor.
…Fabius comes in. He is wearing a bargeman’s uniform and rolls his hips when he walks-the token of imaginary pitching on stormy seas.
“Not much to catch today,” he remarks to no one in particular. “Guess all the herring are already canned…”
The three men stare at him with surprise and suspicion. Two other customers, standing in front of the stove, have broken off a conversation-though one they were deeply involved in-to stare at him too. The manager wipes a rag across the bar.
“All right, are you coming?” the drunk repeats during the silence. “I’ll ask you the riddle.”
The two sailors, the mechanic, the other two men next to the stove all go back to their previous conversations.
