The Erasers (27 page)

When she came into the shop, there was a short, sickly looking man there, wearing a long gr
eenish coat and a dirty hat. He
did not say what he wanted right away, merely murmuring
“
Good morning
”
vaguely between his teeth. He glanced around the room, and after a pause slightly too long to seem natural he decided on the rack of post cards, which he calmly went over to examine. He said something like:

“
…
choose a card
…
”

“
Take your time,
”
the saleswoman replied.

But the man
’
s manner had something so unusual about it that she was going to call Wallas in, on some excuse, to show that she was not alone, when the man stopped in front of one of the cards; he took it out of the stand and examined it carefully. Then, without saying another word, he put a coin down on the counter (the price of the card was indicated on the rack) and left the shop, taking his find with him. It was the little house in the Rue des Arpenteurs, the
“
scene of the crime!
”
Wasn
’
t that a funny customer?

When Wallas is finally able to leave, there is no longer any chance of finding the strange collector of photographs. The Rue Victor-Hugo is empty in both directions. It is impossible to know which way the stranger turned.

Wallas therefore heads for the Juard Clinic—or at least where he imagines it to be, for he has forgotten to ask directions from the young woman, and he prefers—without any real reason, moreover—not to go back to her shop again.

He has just turned into the next street, when he sees in front of him, at the next intersection, the little man in the green coat staring at his post card, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Wallas walks toward him without having exactly decided what he is going to do; having no doubt noticed him, the other man begins walking again and immediately disappears around the corner to the right. A few seconds later, Wallas, walking faster, reaches the intersectio
n. To the right extends a long,
straight street without shops or any kind of doorway in which a man could be concealed; it is completely empty, aside from a tall pedestrian far in the distance, who is quickly disappearing down the street.

Wallas continues to the first crossing and looks in all directions. Still no one. The little man has vanished.

Wallas
has continued his pursuit. He has systematically explored all the neighboring streets. Afterward, still unwilling to give up, although the chances of finding any trace of the unknown man are henceforth very slight, he has retraced his steps, turning, turning back, passing the same places two or three times, unable to tear himself away from the intersection where he had seen the man for the last time.

Discouraged by this incident, he could make up his mind to leave only when he saw what time it was in a jewelry store window: he had just time enough to get to the police station, where in his presence Laurent was to question the post office employees summoned at Wallas
’
request.

But on the way, Wallas once again reviews the circumstances of the appearance and the subsequent disappearance of the purchaser of the post card—the little man standing in the middle of the sidewalk, his eyes fixed on the photograph he is holding in both hands, quite close to his face, as if he expected to discover some secret in it—and then the empty streets in every direction.

Already irritated by his own obstinacy in pursuing a shadow, Wallas vainly tries to relegate this incident to its proper place
—
a minor one, after all. It is most likely a case of some lun
atic
who collects criminal documents; he doesn
’
t have much to occupy him in this sleepy little town: the murder described by the morning papers is a windfall for him; after lunch, he went to look at the
“
scene of the crime
”
and on the way home he was struck by the stationery shopwindow, where he recognized the house; he immediately went in, but didn
’
t know what to ask the saleswoman; in order to put a good face on the matter, he looked through the rack of post cards that happened to contain the object of his desire; he immediately bought the card and couldn
’
t keep from examining it on the way home. As for his disappearance, it is even more easily explicable: after having turned at the intersection, he went into one of the first houses
—
he had reached his own residence.

This reconstruction is very plausible—the most plausible, in fact—but Wallas keeps going back to the sight of the little man in the green coat standing in the middle of the sidewalk, as if this presence had something irreducible about it which no explanation—however plausible—could account for.

At the police station, Laurent and Wallas begin by deciding on the questions to ask the post office employees: what do they know about the so-called Andre WS? Is he known in the neighborhood? Does anyone know where he lives? How long has he had a
poste restante
number in the Rue Jonas post office? Does he come for his mail often? Does he receive a lot? Where are his letters sent from? Lastly, why is he not coming back any more? Has he given any reason? When did he come for the last time?
…
etc. It is also a question of establishing as accurate a description as possible of the man in the torn raincoat.

The employees, who were waiting in an adjoining room, are shown in. There are three; the girl from the sixth window is named Juliette Dexter, her se
rious and thoughtful expression
inspires confidence; afterward come Lebermann, Emilie, fifty one, unmarried, who works at the next window and is always interested in what is happening around her; also a woman whc no longer belongs to the post office staff, a Madame Jean, has been summoned.

Madame Jean, because she once obtained a graduation certificate, performed, during the summer, the functions of temporary clerk at the Rue Jonas post office; and for the month of September, during Mademoiselle Dexter
’
s vacation, she replaced the latter at her window. Apparently her work was not regarded as entirely satisfactory, since the administration has preferred not to continue the experiment and to do without her service. Madame Jean, who at present is a simple domestic in the house of a businessman on the Boulevard Circulaire, is not at all bitter about this unfortunate effort. She prefers manual work. The attraction of a higher salary had led her to give it up; she has returned to it, after three months, with a kind of relief: the various tasks she was assigned during her stay at the post office all appeared somewhat odd to her, both complicated and futile, something like a game of cards, for instance; the internal operations, even more than those carried on at the windows, were subject to certain secret regulations and engendered a number of rituals that were generally incomprehensible. Madame Jean, who had always slept very well up to the time she worked in the post office, had begun, after a few weeks of this new job, to suffer from obsessive nightmares in which she had to reproduce whole volumes of sibylline writings which she transcribed, for lack of time, quite incorrectly, distorting the signs and confusing their order, so that the work had to be done over and over again.

Now she had recovered her old calm and the post office had almost returned for her to the status of an ordinary shop where stamps and letter-cards were sold, when su
ddenly a police in
spector came to question her about her previous month
’
s activities. Immediately her suspicions returned, her mistrust, her fears: so something really wrong was going on in the Rue Jonas post office after all. Unlike her former colleague, Emilie Leber-mann, whom the promise of scandal hugely excited, Madame Jean was quite reluctant about coming to the police station, determined to open her mouth only enough to avoid any personal difficulties. Besides, there would be no problem: she has seen nothing, she knows nothing.

Nevertheless she is not too surprised to find in the commissioner
’
s office the well-dressed (but suspiciously reticent) gentleman who asked her, this very morning, the way to the
“
main post office
”
in order to send, he said, a telegram. So he
’
s mixed up in this business! He doesn
’
t need to worry, in any case, that she
’
ll say anything to the police about his comings and goings this morning.

This is the third time she has seen him today, but he has not recognized her; since he has only seen her up to now in an apron and without a hat, there is nothing surprising about that.

Madame Jean notices with some satisfaction that the commissioner is questioning Juliette Dexter first—quite pleasantly, moreover.

“
You know,
”
he says to her,
“
the man receiving
poste res-tante
mail under the name of Andre WS
…
”

The girl opens her eyes wide and turns toward the telegram clerk. She opens her mouth to speak
…
but says nothing and sits bolt upright on her chair, staring back and forth at the two men.

Then Wallas has to begin by explaining that he is not Andre WS, which plunges the girl into still greater astonishment:
“
But
…
the letter
…
just now?
…
”

Yes, he was the one who took the letter, but it was the first time he had ever been seen in the Rue Jonas. He has taken advantage of his resemblance to the man in question.

“
Well well
…
Well well
…
”
the old maid keeps saying, flabbergasted.

Madame Jean, however, shows nothing and continues to stare at the floor straight ahead of her.

The girl
’
s testimony is explicit: the man who calls himself Andre WS resembles Wallas almost exactly. She did not hesitate when she saw the latter present himself at the window
—
despite the change of clothes.

The other man was wearing quite modest and rather shabby clothes. He almost always wore a beige raincoat that was too tight for his powerful frame; on reflection, he must have been heavier than Wallas.

“
And he had glasses.
”

It is the old maid who adds this detail. But Mademoiselle Dexter protests: Andre WS has never worn glasses. Her colleague insists on her point: she remembers distinctly, she even pointed out, one day, that it made him look like a doctor.

“
What kind of glasses?
”
Laurent asks.

They were thick-rimmed tortoise-shell glasses with slightly tinted lenses.

“
What color were they tinted?
”

“
A kind of smoky gray.
”

“
Were the two lenses exactly the same color, or was one of them a little darker than the other?
”

She hadn
’
t noticed this detail, but it
’
s quite possible, as a matter of fact, that one of the lenses was darker. It
’
s hard to tell about the visitors—who come up to the windows with the light behind them—but she remembers now that…

Laurent asks Juliette Dexter the exact time of the last visit of the man with the
poste restante
number.

“
It was around five-thirty or six,
”
she answers;
“
he always came around then—a little later, maybe, at the beginning of the month, when it took longer to get dark. In any case, it was when we were busiest.
”

Wallas interrupts her: he had understood, from what the girl had told him when she gave him the letter, that the other man had come by shortly before, toward the end of the morning.

“
Yes, that
’
s right,
”
she says after a moment
’
s thought;
“
but that time it wasn
’
t you yet. He came a little after eleven, as he did from time to time, as well as making his evening visits.
”

Did he come regularly every evening? And when did his visits start? No, he didn
’
t come regularly: sometimes more than a week passed without him showing up, and then they would see him every evening for four or five days—and even mornings, too, sometimes. When he came, it was because he was expecting a message or a series of messages; mail never came for him during his periods of absence. He received mostly pneumatic messages and telegrams, rarely ordinary messages; the pneumatic messages came from within the city itself, obviously, the telegrams from the capital or elsewhere.

The girl stops talking, and since no one asks her anything further, she adds after a moment:

“
He should have found his last pneumatic when he came by this morning. If he didn
’
t, it
’
s the fault of the central service.
”

But her reproach almost seems to be addressed to Wallas. And no one knows if the tinge of regret in her voice refers to that urgent letter which has not reached its addressee, or to the inefficient functioning of the post office system in general.