Mechanically, Dupont has turned the doorknob of the little door. The latter opens without resistance. It was not locked.
The house is dark and silent.
The professor takes off his glasses, which are bothering him. He has stopped in the vestibule and tries to figure out the situation…Did Marchat come after all? No, since it was the front door keys that had been given to him. And old Anna, if she hadn’t left, would be in the kitchen at this hour…that’s not certain…in any case, she would have left a light on in the hall or on the stairs…
Dupont opens the kitchen door. No one there. He presses the light button. Everything is put away, as in a house where no one lives any longer. And all the shutters are closed. Dupont turns on the light in the hall. As he passes he opens the living room and dining room doors. No one, of course. He starts up the stairs. Perhaps Anna forgot to lock the little door when she was leaving. She has been growing absent-minded the last few months.
On the second floor, he goes to the housekeeper’s room. It is obvious that the room has been put in order for a long absence.
Having reached his study door, the professor holds his breath. Last night, the murderer was waiting for him there.
Yes, but last night the little door was open: the man didn’t need a key to get in; tonight he would have had to force the lock, and Dupont noticed nothing of the kind. And if the man found the door open this time too, it is because old Anna had not locked it, in any case…It is impossible to reassure himself with arguments of this kind; with a bunch of skeleton keys, a specialist can easily open all ordinary locks. Someone has made his way into the house and is waiting, in the study, in the same place as yesterday, to finish the job.
Objectively, there is no reason to suppose this is not true. The professor is not easily frightened; nevertheless, at this moment he regrets that he was not sent a real bodyguard from the capital. However, there can be no question of leaving without taking with him the files he needs.
Marchat has told him on the telephone that the police commissioner did not think it had been a murder: he was convinced it was a suicide. Dupont turns around. He goes to get his revolver. Last night, when he departed for the clinic, he left it on the night table… Just before he goes into the bedroom he stops again: it may be here that the trap has been set for him.
These successive, more or less chimerical fears annoy the professor. With an impatient gesture he turns the handle; all the same he takes the precaution of not opening the door at once; he quickly thrusts in his hand to turn on the light and glances slowly around the door, ready to draw back if he sees anything unusual…
But the bedroom is empty: no thug is posted behind the bed, nor in the corner next to the chest. Dupont sees only his own face in the mirror, where the traces of an anxiety that now seems ludicrous to him still remain.
He walks straight over to the night table. The revolver is no longer on the marble top. He finds it in the drawer, in its usual place. He probably will not use it, any more than he had the night before, but you never know: if he had been armed last night when he came upstairs from the dining room, he would certainly have used it then.
The professor checks to see that the safety catch has not been slipped back on and returns, walking steadily, his weapon in his hand, to the study. He will have to use only one arm-fortunately, his right. First put the revolver in his pocket, open the door, turn on the ceiling light and, as fast as possible, grasp the revolver while kicking open the door. This little farce-useless as the one he has just executed-makes him smile in anticipation.
Wallas listens to his heart pounding. Since he is quite close to the window, he has heard the car stop, the garden gate open, the heavy footsteps crunching across the gravel. The man has tried to get in through the front door. He has shaken it a few times, without success, then has walked around the house. Consequently Wallas could tell it wasn’t Marchat who had changed his mind and come for the dead man’s papers; it was neither Marchat nor someone sent by him-or by the old housekeeper. It was someone who did not have the keys to the house.
The crunching footsteps have passed underneath the window. The man went to the little door which the special agent has left open for him on purpose. The hinges have creaked slightly when he pushed the door open. To be sure his victim would not escape, the man has looked in every room he passed on the ground floor and then upstairs.
Now Wallas sees the slit of light widening along the jamb, with unendurable slowness.
Wallas aims at the place where the murderer will appear, a black figure outlined against the illuminated doorway…
But the man obviously distrusts this room plunged in darkness. A hand moves forward, gropes for the switch…
Wallas, dazzled by the light, only distinguishes the quick movement of an arm lowering toward him the muzzle of a heavy revolver, the movement of a man firing As he throws himself to the floor, Wallas pulls the trigger.
6
The man has fallen forward, his right arm outstretched, the left folded under him. His hand remains clenched on the butt of the revolver. He no longer moves.
Wallas stands up. Fearing a trick, he approaches cautiously, his gun still aimed, not knowing what he should do.
He walks around the body, keeping out of reach of a possible reaction. The man still does not move. His hat has remained pulled down over his forehead. The right eye is partly open the other is turned down toward the ground; the nose is crushed against the carpet. What can be seen of the face looks quite gray. He is dead.
It is nervousness that makes Wallas lose the rest of his discretion. He leans down and touches the man’s wrist, trying to find his pulse. The hand releases the heavy revolver and dangles limply in his grasp. The pulse has stopped. The man i certainly dead.
Wallas decides he must look through the corpse’s pockets (For what?) Only the right overcoat pocket is accessible. H‹ thrusts in his hand and removes a pair of spectacles, one o whose lenses is very dark and the other much lighter.
“Can you say whether it was the right lens that was darker or the left?”
The left lens…on the right side…The right lens on the left side…
It is the left lens that is darker. Wallas puts the glasses on the floor and straightens up. He does not want to continue the search. He feels instead like sitting down. He is very tired.
In self-defense. He saw the man aiming at him. He saw the finger squeezing the trigger. He perceived the considerable interval of time it took him to react and fire back. He was sure tie didn’t have very quick reflexes.
Yet he had to admit that he fired first. He didn’t hear the other revolver fire before his own; and if the two explosions had occurred at exactly the same moment, there would be some trace of the stray bullet on the wall or in the backs of the books. Wallas raises the window curtain: the panes are also intact. His adversary did not have time to fire.
It is only the tension of his senses that gave him, at the time, that impression of slow motion.
Wallas presses his palm against the muzzle of his gun; it feels distinctly warm. He turns back toward the body and leans down to touch the abandoned revolver. It is quite cold. Taking a better look, Wallas realizes that the left sleeve of the overcoat is empty. He feels the shape of the arm under the material. Was this arm in a sling? “A flesh wound in the arm.”
He must inform Laurent. From now on this is a matter for the police. The special agent cannot continue to handle the case alone, now that there is a corpse.
The commissioner will not be at his office this late. Wallas looks at his watch; it shows seven thirty-five. Then he remembers that it had stopped at seven-thirty. He raises it to his ear and hears the faint ticking. It must be the detonation that has started it going again-or else the shock, if he bumped it when he threw himself to the floor. He will call the commissioner at his office; if he is no longer there, someone can certainly tell Wallas where to find him. He has noticed a telephone in the bedroom.