"It's perfect! Perfect!" I said expressionlessly. "My client will be satisfied…"
"My commission, then?"
"Right away!"
I added four hundred francs to the three thousand I had already given him.
"No new orders for the moment?"
"No…not yet. Really this snuffbox…It's most uncommon. You have a knack."
"Yes, yes," he agreed absentmindedly.
He pocketed the bills, shut his suitcase, bid me farewell, and set off at an easy pace.
From that day on I knew no sleep. The incident had made the facts plain: all this was unnatural. I should have realized earlier, of course. Even the cleverest, luckiest, most well-connected and zealous broker could not repeat such tours de force week after week. For even if the affair of the snuffbox with a semaphore had impressed me the most, the truth was that Delaunay brought me the most eclectic and singular curios every week.
I didn't for a moment think him a thief. But then how did he locate the very personal merchandise I asked of him with the required promptness and precision? I'd sooner have believed he'd made a deal with the devil! I don't believe in the devil, but none of the theories I'd put together held up, and I was dying of curiosity.
I waited until I'd taken a few more orders and passed them on to Delaunay, and then I put Lambert on his trail. Lambert was a private eye. I'd made his acquaintance during a love affair that was, as they say of certain illnesses, painful and protracted. I'd learned to appreciate his seriousness and his discretion. I charged him with tracking Delaunay's every step and keeping me informed from day to day of all his movements. Shabby behavior, maybe-but I wanted to put my mind to rest on the subject.
One, two, three days went by without a call from Lambert. Furious, I phoned him at his agency. I got his secretary. The girl told me her boss had stuck to Delaunay like gum to the sole of a shoe. So to speak, that is, because Delaunay hardly ever left his place. When he did, he never went far. He frequented a restaurant, a movie theater, and the public library, all a stone's throw from where he lived. He lived alone in two rooms and a kitchen on the highest floor of a modest building. He had no visitors, and barely spoke a word to his neighbors. Lambert hadn't deemed it necessary to inform me of the poverty of his findings. He'd thought it better to wait and learn more before calling.
I was quite concerned by what was in my eyes a crucial point: "All right, so he isn't going anywhere for the moment. But does he make any calls?"
"No. Never. He doesn't have a telephone, and never uses the pay phone in the street."
"What? But there's no such thing as a broker without a phone! He never gave me his number so I'd leave him alone, and he's not in the phone book, but he must have a phone!"
"Mr. Lambert checked, Mr. Thyll. Mr. Delaunay is unlisted because he doesn't have a phone, simple as that."
Staggered by this revelation, I hung up after insisting that I be kept abreast of the smallest wrinkle in his routine. I was more intrigued than ever. I'd pictured a frenetic Delaunay, moving heaven and earth, making calls day and night… but he loafed around all day, caught flicks, read paperbacks. He was taking it easy, just as if he wouldn't soon have to deliver a World War I English officer's hat in mint condition; a statuette the subject didn't matter) about eight inches tall and, most importantly, of jade without any saussurite, and more olive than green; and finally a silver sugar bowl with a display stand in the Villard style.
Five days after my call, in the early evening, while I was closing up, Delaunay appeared, suitcase in hand. He seemed weary. It certainly wasn't from exerting himself for my sake! Ever since my call to order, Lambert had phoned me every night to say that Delaunay hadn't changed his quiet habits in the slightest.
"Well?" I said.
"I'm still missing the sugar bowl," he said. "Next time… But the rest was no problem."
From his suitcase he pulled a heavy object wrapped in newspaper and a splendid box for a regulation English army cap.
I remained seated long after he'd left, my head in my hands, unmindful of the hour, and of an appointment awaiting me on the other side of Paris. In front of me, atop my desk beside a brown woolen cap encircled by a broad red ribbon, an eight-inch hermit in olive jade, standing firmly on his crooked legs, seemed to taunt me with a goodnatured condescension.
Eight days later, Delaunay brought me the sugar bowl. And yet I knew perfectly well from Lambert that he'd kept on going to the movies or, locked away in his room, reading the books he'd gotten from his local library.
I admit that what follows is not to my credit. Nevertheless, you must imagine my state of mind. I no longer thought of anything else. Sleep escaped me. I lost interest in life. Usually quite the gourmand, I picked at my profiteroles, and I must have seemed so tormented that those around me began to worry for my health.
One afternoon, while Delaunay was at the movies, I broke into his apartment. I'd arranged everything with Lambert. He'd had the keys copied and kept watch in front of the building.
I was exceedingly uncomfortable. After all, the escapade could cost me quite a bit. My shirt grew damp with sweat just thinking about the headlines: Edmond Thyll, Well-Known Antiques Dealer, Caught Red-Handed in Burglary. But you had to know what you wanted, and I wanted to know.
The door to Delaunay's opened easily. I slipped through the gap. I closed it without a sound, and started to explore the place. The place: a bare and cheerless foyer, two tastelessly furnished rooms, the kitchenette of a bachelor who takes most of his meals out. I'd been expecting a broker's lair-that is, a mess. Crates stuffed with bric-a-brac, piles of empty frames, tables and small pieces of furniture awaiting restoration, jam jars full of odd bits of molding and keys kept just in case… But nothing of the sort. No artistic touches. Nothing in the least picturesque. It was clean, well-ordered, impersonal to an unusual degree. The best broker in the business put out his cigarettes in complimentary ashtrays of enameled metal, with ads in the bottom, and kept his pens in an empty mustard jar.
I cursed my own foolishness and slumped into a chair. What had I been hoping for? That Delaunay might have been so kind as to scrawl his secret on the wall? I staved seated for a long moment, contemplating his pitiful furniture with a confounded eye. And little by little the notion of writing made its way into my mind. Delaunay might not've written his secret on the wall, but maybe he'd written it somewhere else. He lived alone. Lonely people write. I myself began a novel after every break-up, only to abandon it joyously each time I found a new companion. The human heart is a vase filled with humors and tears. One good blow, and out splash its contents. Neglect it, and it rots; parasites proliferate, spin out their filaments, mount an assault on the walls, scale them, and spread…
I leapt up and ran to the bed. In the drawer of the bedside table, I found a large spiral notebook. I opened it to a page at random and read, in a low voice, the first lines my eyes fell across:
These lines might have seemed obscure, but I was certain right away of holding, in this notebook, the key to the mystery. I tucked it in my coat and left the apartment.
That day I photocopied the notebook, and read it that night. I meant to have Lambert replace the original the next day, and I'd already called and told him to come pick it up in the morning, but this turned out to be unnecessary. I'd just opened up shop when Delaunay walked in.
He headed straight for me. "My manuscript! Give it back!"
"What are you talking about, my friend?"
He shook his head menacingly. "You broke into my apartment yesterday afternoon-you, or someone you hired! A manuscript was stolen… the manuscript for a novel. Give it back, if you know what's good for you."