Bona cocks his ears. The footsteps have stopped in front of his door.
A pause. No one.
Lightly, but distinctly, the agreed-upon signal is given…a faint knock, three quick, almost imperceptible knocks, a faint knock…
“We won’t talk about it any more, now that it’s settled.”
But Garinati does not quite understand the meaning of these words; he insists: he will begin again, and this time he will not make any mistakes. Finally the admission escapes him: he will put out the light, if this precaution is indispensable, although from another point of view…”
“You didn’t put it out?” Bona asks.
“I couldn’t. Dupont came back upstairs too soon. I barely had time to recognize things around me.”
“But you saw him come down, and you went up right after that?”
“I had to wait until the old woman left the kitchen too.”
Bona says nothing. Garinati is even guiltier than he thought. It is fear that made him confuse his actions, as it is making him confuse his words now:
“I went up right away. He probably wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t see in the dark either, could I? But I’ll start over, and this time…”
He stops, seeking encouragement from his chief’s stern face. Why has Bona suddenly abandoned the friendly tone he had been using the last few days? That stupid detail of the light switch is only an excuse…
“You should have turned out the light,” Bona says.
“I’ll go back, I’ll turn out the light. I’ll go tonight.”
“Tonight is someone else’s job.”
“No, it’s my job: it’s my job to finish the job I started.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Garinati. What are you talking about?”
“I’ll go back to the house. Or I’ll go find him wherever he’s hiding. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”
Bona stops examining the horizon to stare at his interlocutor.
“You said you’ll kill Daniel Dupont now?”
“I swear I will!”
“Don’t swear anything, Garinati: it’s too late.”
“It’s never…”
It’s never too late. The failure automatically goes back to the starting point for the second try… The hands go once around the dial and the condemned man makes his theatrical gestures again, pointing to his chest once more: “Aim for the heart, soldiers!” And again…
“Don’t you read the papers?” Bona asks.
He leans over to look for something in his briefcase. Garinati takes the folded newspapers that is handed to him and reads the first paragraph his eyes focus on:
“A daring burglar made his way at nightfall yesterday…” He reads slowly, carefully; when he reaches the end, he starts over to be sure he has not missed anything: “A daring burglar…” He looks up at Bona, who is staring over his head, without smiling.
Garinati reads the article through once again. He says in a low voice:
“He’s dead. Of course. I had turned out the light.”
All right, this man is crazy.
“It must be a mistake,” Garinati says. “I only wounded him.”
“He died of it. You’re lucky.”
“Maybe this newspaper’s made a mistake?”
“Don’t worry: I have my own informants. Daniel Dupont is dead-a little late, that’s all.”
After a pause, Bona adds less severely:
“After all, you did kill him.”
The way you throw a dog a bone.
Garinati tries to make Bona explain; he is not convinced; he wants to tell about his reservations. But his chief soon wearies of this weak man’s “probablys” and “maybes”:
“All right, that’s enough. We won’t talk about it any more, now that it’s settled.”
“Did you find the man named Wallas?”
“I know where he spent the night.”
“What is he doing this morning?”
“This morning, I had to…”
“You’ve let him get away. And you haven’t picked up his trail?”
“I had to come here and…”
“You were late. Anyway you had several hours to do it in. Where do you expect to find him now? And when?” Garinati does not know what to answer any more.
Bona stares at him sternly:
“You were supposed to report to me last night. Why didn’t I see you?”
He would like to explain his failure, the light, the fact that he did not have time enough… But Bona does not give him a chance; he interrupts him harshly:
“Why didn’t you come?”
That is just what Garinati was going to talk about, but how can you make someone understand things if he does not want to listen to you? Still, he will have to start with that light, it is the cause of everything: Dupont turned it on again too soon and saw him before he could shoot, so that he did not…
“Now about this Wallas they’ve sent us, what’s he done since he’s been here?”
Garinati tells what he knows: the room in the Cafe des Allies, Rue des Arpenteurs; his departure very early this morning…
“You’ve let him escape. And you haven’t picked up his trail?”
Of course that’s unfair: how could he know Wallas would be leaving so early, and it is not easy to find someone you have never seen, in a city this size.
Besides, why bother spying on this policeman who cannot do anything more than anyone else? Wouldn’t it be better to get ready for tonight’s job? But Bona seems reserved; he pretends not to hear. Garinati goes on nevertheless: he wants to make up for his mistake, go back to Daniel Dupont’s house and kill him.
Bona seems surprised. He stops staring at the horizon to look at his interlocutor. Then he leans over toward his briefcase, opens it, and takes out a folded newspaper:
“Don’t you read the papers?”
Garinati holds out his hand without understanding.
Even his footsteps have changed: they are slow, almost sluggish; they have lost their vitality. They gradually fade away down the staircase.
Far away, the same bluish-gray color as the chimneys and the roofs, blending into them despite slight movements whose direction, moreover, is difficult to determine because of the distance, two men-chimneysweeps maybe, or roofers-are preparing for the early approach of winter.
Downstairs the door to the building can be heard closing.
2
The latch clicks as it falls back into place; at the same time the door has just slammed against the jamb and vibrates noisily, producing unexpected echoes in the frame as well. But no sooner has it started than this tumult suddenly stops; in the calm of the street a faint whistle can then be heard-something like a jet of steam, thin and continuous-which probably comes from the factories opposite, but so dissolved in the air that no precise source could accurately be attributed to it-so faint, in fact, that it might be, after all, just a buzzing in the ears.
Garinati hestitates in front of the door he has just shut behind him. He does not know in which direction he will follow this street he is standing in the middle of, where on one side as on the other… How can Bona be so sure of Daniel Dupont’s death? There was not even any question of arguing about it. Yet the mistake-or the lie-in the morning papers is easily explained, and in any of several ways. Besides, no one, in so serious a matter, would be satisfied with that kind of information, and it is obvious that Bona either found out for himself or used some informant. Garinati, moreover, knows that his victim did not seem seriously hurt-that he had not, in any case, lost consciousness right away, and that it is unlikely he did so before help arrived. So then? Did the informants make a mistake? Maybe Bona does not always pay enough…
Garinati raises his hand to his right ear which he covers and releases several times; then he does the same thing to the other ear…His chief’s conviction still bothers him; he himself is not absolutely certain he only hit the professor on the arm; if the professor was seriously hurt, he might have been able to take a few steps to get away, guided by the instinct of self-preservation, and then collapsed later on…