The Erasers (30 page)

As suddenly as it had begun, the uproar stops, again making way for the confused murmur of the crowd.

People are hurrying in all directions. They must have guessed
—
or imagined they guessed—the meaning of the announcement, for the agitation has redoubled. Among the curtailed movements—each of which affects only an extremely small section of the hall—between a timetable and a ticket window from an information booth to a newsstand—or even within less defined areas, animated here and there with vague, hesitant discontinuous, aleatory movements—in the middle of thi
s
swarming mass occasionally interrupted, up to now, by some less episodic trajectory, distinct currents now appear; in on
e
corner a single file has started across the entire hall in a decis
ive
diagonal; farther on, scattered impulses unite in a series o
f
calls and quick steps whose impetus clears a wide passage unti
l
it comes to a halt against one of the exits; a woman slaps
a
little boy, a gentleman feverishly searches through his ma
ny
pockets for the ticket he has just bought; on all sides people are shouting, dragging suitcases, hurrying.

Doctor Juard has neither suitcase nor ticket. He is not interested in the train schedules. He has not understood what the loudspeaker has said. Neither his movements nor his general attitude have undergone any important change since a moment ago: he takes five steps along the wall, between the snack bar and the telephones, turns around, takes two steps in the opposite direction, glances at his watch, looks up at the big clock, continues straight ahead to the first telephone booth, turns back, stops, stands still for a few seconds
…
and then starts slowly toward the snack bar. He is waiting for someone who has not come.

Again the warning buzzing can be heard and suddenly the whole hall echoes to the rumbling of the divine voice. It is a clear and strong voice; one must listen to it carefully to realize that what it is saying is incomprehensible.

This last message is shorter than the previous one. It is followed by no appreciable change among the crowd. Doctor Juard, who has stood stock still, begins walking toward the row of telephone booths again.

But these words that do not seem to have achieved their purpose leave him with a vague sensation of discomfort. If the announcement was not for the travelers, perhaps it concerned him:
“
Doctor Juard is wanted on the telephone.
”
He did not imagine he could be summoned by so monstrous a voice. And upon reflection, it is indeed unlikely that the official station loudspeakers should bother to transmit personal messages between train departures.

Having reached the row of telephone booths once again, the little doctor realizes that the
latter are not marked with num
bers making it possible to distinguish them, and that consequently the voice could not have specified which telephone he should answer. Now he would have to pick up all the receivers, one after the other
…
This presents no insurmountable difficulty, and if a station employee came to ask him to account for his behavior, he would explain that no one has told him which of these telephones he was wanted on. Nothing more natural, after all. Unfortunately, he risks intercepting other messages and consequently finding himself mixed up in some new drama, as if the situation in which he is struggling were not complicated enough already. He thinks back to the unlucky day when he made the other man
’
s acquaintance, following an error of the same kind: he had dialed the wrong number, and immediately events had followed one another so quickly that he had not been able to disengage himself; one thing led to another and he ended up by agreeing to
…
Besides, the other man left him no choice.

Then was there only one surgeon in the whole town, so that Dupont too had to come to his clinic to hide out? To the clinic of Doctor Juard, the
“
gang doctor
!”
This title, though rather unsuitable in fact, corresponds none the less to the state of mind he himself has been in since that single encounter; he feels tied hand and foot; and since there is no question of his using what he knows against them, he can only see the other side of his position: he is in their hands, at their mercy. At the first slip they will get rid of this useless supernumerary. If they knew, for instance, that their latest victim has been hiding in his own clinic since last night…

Why doesn
’
t that Wallas get here? Juard is growing impatient. He wasn
’
t the one who asked for an interview; all he did was to arrange the meeting place, to keep the special agent
’
s investigations away from the clinic. There are too many people sniffing around the phony dead man already.

Occasionally the little docto
r is astonished that the catas
trophe has not already occurred. Dupont is supposed to have been dead some twenty hours by now; Juard himself, who has given him asylum
…
He couldn
’
t betray the professor
’
s confidence either and hand him over to his enemies. Moreover, where would he find them? He
’
ll use this excuse, he
’
ll claim he didn
’
t know where the bullet came from either, he
’
ll say
…
But what good would it all do? The other man isn
’
t used to weighing the fate of his victims so long. Juard has realized from the start, without exactly admitting it to himself, that he was condemning himself by helping the professor—besides, he considered his help absurd: the other man doesn
’
t let himself be fooled so easily as that.

Yet nothing has happened yet today. Time is passing quite normally. Dupont is calmly waiting for the car the minister promised. As the time set for Dupont
’
s departure approaches, the little doctor
’
s confidence increases despite himself.

But now he is afraid that this Wallas—who needed him?
—
might spoil everything at the last minute; he is anxious about this delay that nothing in the special agent
’
s insistence a half-hour ago could have suggested. Juard could take advantage of it to get away without seeing him, particularly since his professional obligations do not allow him to stay here until tonight; but he cannot make up his mind to leave: the policeman might arrive from one minute to the next, and if he sees no one at the rendezvous he will go back to the Rue de Corinthe—which must be avoided at all costs.

The little doctor continues to walk back and forth between
the
snack bar and the telephones, five steps in one direction,
f
ive steps in the other. He does not know which side to take
…h
e stops a moment. He glances at his watch—although he had
s
een the time on the big clock
scarcely twenty seconds before. H
e sets limits beyond which he
will wait no longer; but he exc
eeds them, one after the other—and still does not leave.

To the left of the clock is posted a sign a foot and a half high in red capital letters:

DO NOT BLOCK EXIT

Symmetrically posted, a slogan in blue letters on a yellow background:
“
Don
’
t Leave Without Taking
The Times
.”

All at once Juard decides someone is playing tricks on him; this notion strikes him with such violence that it gives him an almost physical sensation, analogous to that afforded by a misstep that causes a sudden loss of balance.

The man named Wallas doesn
’
t care about being on time at this absurd rendezvous: it
’
s the clinic he
’
s interested in! He is there at this very moment, busily rummaging through everything; since he has a search warrant, no one dares say a thing. By choosing this unexpected spot—the station—Juard has only reinforced the special agent
’
s suspicions, while giving free rein to his curiosity.

Perhaps there is still time to keep Dupont from being discovered. Juard has not a minute to lose. While he is crossing
the hall, he thinks of a way to arrange matters, when a new
cause for alarm strikes him: this Wallas is a phony policeman,
he
’
s looking for the professor in order to kill him

The little doctor stops short in order to think.

He is in front of the newsstand, whose wares he pretends to be examining. Don
’
t leave without taking
The Times.
He steps forward on the pretext of buying the evening edition.

A customer, bending over the counter, straightens up an( steps back a little to make room for Juard in front of the ti
ny
stand; then he exclaims:

“
Oh, Doctor!
”
he says,
“
I was looking for you.
”

***

Doctor Juard has now described for the third time the di
s
covery of the burglar in the study, the revolver shot, the
“
fles
h
wound,
”
and death on the operating table. He knows his story by heart by this time; he is aware of repeating it more naturally than he did this morning in the commissioner
’
s office; and when he is asked an additional question, he furnishes the requested detail without difficulty, even if he improvises. This fiction has gradually assumed enough weight in his mind to dictate the right answers to him automatically; it continues of its own accord to secrete its own details and hesitations—just as reality would, in such circumstances. Juard is not far, at moments, from being taken in himself.

His interlocutor is not trying, moreover, to complicate his task. He furnishes the next clue appropriately: it is obvious that he is already accustomed to this version of the facts and does not dream of contesting it.

“
Could you suggest from approximately what distance the shot was fired?
”

“
About five or six yards; it
’
s difficult to give an exact figure.
”

“
The bullet penetrated the body from in front?
”

“
Yes, directly in front, between the fourth and fifth ribs. For a bullet fired by a man running away, it was skillfully aimed.
”

“
There was no other wound, was there?
”

“
No, just the one.
”

The dialogue moves along easily—so easily that it becomes almost disturbing, like the overly cunning camouflage of a trap. Juard wonders if Wallas does not know more than he is admitting.

Isn
’
t it obvious, in fact, that the special agent knows the
w
hole truth? He wouldn
’
t have been transferred from the
c
apital for just a burglary. Then what is he trying to get out of
t
he doctor? The latter cautiously asks a few indirect questions
t
o try to find out if it is really necessary to continue this farce;
b
ut Wallas remains immured in their original conventions,
ne
ither because he feels they are
more certain or because he has
not understood the signals of complicity Juard has made to him, or else for still other reasons.

The little doctor would especially like to know what kind of protection he can count on from the police. Despite the misunderstanding that burdens their conversation, he has a certain sympathy for Wallas; but he does not have the impression that his help could be very effective in dealing with so powerful an organization. He does not even wear a uniform. As for the men from the police station, though they have more apparent prestige, Juard is too close to them not to know how much he can expect from them and what he can count on there.

The relative confidence Wallas inspires in him still does not keep him from staying on the defensive: the so-called
“
special agent
”
may also be in the other man
’
s pay.

On the other hand, it is not impossible that his sincerity is so complete that he doesn
’
t even know what has really happened.