The Erasers

3

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 lunatic 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 serious 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 suddenly a police inspector 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.

Mademoiselle Dexter saw the man in the tight raincoat for the first time when she returned from her vacation, early in

October; but the poste restante number had already been rented for some time since. When? She couldn’t say exactly; it will be easy, of course, to find the date in the post office records. As for knowing if the man had already come during the month of September, they will have to ask her replacement about that.

Unfortunately, Madame Jean does not remember; she didn’t notice, at the time, that name of Andre WS nor did she recall having ever seen this face-Wallas’ face-with or without glasses.

Mademoiselle Lebermann thinks that he had come already, that he had even come long before, for that very remark she had made about his looking like a doctor must have dated from August, since it was in August that Doctor Gelin had taken on an assistant and she had thought at first that this was…

“Could you say,” the commissioner asks her, “if it was the right lens that was darker, or the left?”

The old maid takes several minutes to answer.

“I think,” she says finally, “that it was on the left side.”

“That’s strange,” Laurent says thoughtfully. “Think carefully; wasn’t it more likely the right eye?”

“Wait a minute, Commissioner, wait a minute: I said ‘on the left side,’ on my left side-for him that meant his right eye.”

“Good, that sounds better,” the commissioner says.

He would like to know, now, if the beige raincoat did not have a rip across the right shoulder last night. The girl didn’t look up when the man turned around, and she hadn’t seen any such rip from the front. Mademoiselle Lebermann, on the other hand, had looked up and watched him as he left: there had been an L-shaped tear across the right shoulder.

Lastly, they are not in agreement as to the contents of the telegrams either: the girl can remember extremely short and commonplace texts-confirmations, counter-orders, meetings-without any detail that suggests the nature of the business referred to; Mademoiselle Lebermann refers to long messages with obscure phrases that must have had a secret meaning.

“Telegrams are always short because of the price,” Juliette Dexter adds, as though she had not heard what her colleague had just declared. “People don’t repeat what the correspondent already knows if they don’t have to.”

Madame Jean has no opinion about what is or is not said in a telegram.

Alone again, Wallas and Laurent add up what they have just learned. The total is soon reached, for they have learned nothing at all. Andre WS never told the post office girl anything that could furnish a lead or suggest his activities; he was not talkative. On the other hand, he does not seem to have been someone from the neighborhood: at least, no one knows him there.

Mademoiselle Lebermann has given her personal opinion at the end of the questioning: a doctor specializing in illegal operations. “There are some funny doctors around here, you know,” she has added knowingly.

There is no reason to reject this hypothesis a priori, but Laurent points out that his own, according to which it is merely the wood export market that is in question, has a better chance of being the right one after all; and besides, it would fit in better with the way the messages happened to be grouped.

Furthermore, it is still not certain that this Andre WS is the person Madame Bax saw from her window at nightfall, in front of the gate of the house in the Rue des Arpenteurs. The rip the drunk described in the back of the raincoat might have served to identify him, but the young post office employee has specified she saw nothing of the kind; now it is impossible, on this point, to take into account the affirmative testimony of the old maid, and the raincoat alone-without the rip-is not proof enough; any more-obviously-than the resemblance to Wallas which, if it were to be taken seriously, would just as well lead to accusing the latter.

Before leaving the commissioner, Wallas also examines a police report, the work of one of the two inspectors who, the evening before, made the first examinations of the dead man’s residence.

“You’ll see,” Laurent remarked as he handed him the slender file of typed pages, “it’s an interesting piece of work. This boy is a little young, of course: you can tell it’s his first crime. For instance, he wrote this memorandum on his own, since our investigation has officially been interrupted. I even think he must have made additional investigations on his own account, after having been told to finish up. The enthusiasm of a neophyte, you understand.”

While Wallas is reading the document, the commissioner makes a few further remarks-apparently ironic ones-as to the young inspector’s conclusions and the naivete with which he has received the suggestions of people who “obviously were taking him in.”

The text begins as follows: “On Monday, October twenty-sixth, at eight minutes after nine…”

The first pages discuss in detail, but without digressions or commentary, the telephone call from Doctor Juard and the information furnished by the latter as to the professor’s death and the attack itself. Then comes an extremely precise description of the house and its environs: the corner of the Rue des Arpenteurs, the little garden with its hedge of spindle trees and its fence, the two doors to the house-one in front, the other at the rear-the arrangement of the ground-floor rooms, the staircase, the carpet, the study on the second floor; the arrangement of the furniture in this last room is also analyzed in scrupulous detail. Then follow the police observations proper: bloodstains, fingerprints, objects apparently not in their normal place or position…“lastly the fingerprints number 3-right hand-also figure distinctly on a cubical paperweight weighing between seven and eight hundred grams, placed to the left of the manuscript page-about ten centimeters away.”

Aside from these exaggeratedly detailed notations, the memorandum furnishes more or less the substance of the first reports made by the inspectors, to whom Laurent had introduced Wallas this morning. However, two new indications appear in it: the recent damaging of the buzzer system at the gate (which is no news to Wallas) and fresh tracks discovered on the narrow strip of lawn along the west end of the house; the measurements of these footprints are indicated, as well as the average length of the strides.

A little more attention is paid, this time, to the housekeeper’s words. Wallas even recognizes, in the phrases quoted, the old woman’s favorite expressions. In particular, the complete story of the damaged telephone line is given and Madame Smite’s vain efforts to have it repaired.

After taking the housekeeper’s testimony, the zealous inspector has interviewed the concierge from the apartment house across the street and the manager of a “small cafe located some twenty yards away, at number 10”-the Cafe des Allies. The concierge refers to the regular visitors to the house; he himself often sits-particularly in the spring and summer-on his doorstep in the afternoons, just opposite the garden gate; consequently he has been able to observe that very few people visited the victim: the postman, the employee from the public utilities system, occasionally a salesman of Venetian blinds or vacuum cleaners, as well as four or five gentlemen whom it is difficult at first glance to distinguish from salesmen-for they wear the same type of suit and carry the same briefcase-but who are businessmen from the city, professors, doctors, etc. It is apparent that the author only reproduces all these trifling remarks out of a concern for objectivity; and despite the care he takes to present what follows with the same detachment, he obviously regards it as much more important. It concerns a young man, apparently a student, extremely simply dressed, short, even somewhat puny; this boy had apparently come several times during the course of the summer, then after a lacuna of more than a month, three times in a row during the second week in October-the week when it was so warm; since the window of the room where Dupont was sitting was open then, the concierge could hear the tone of the conversation frequently rising during these visits; the last day, the visit ended in a violent quarrel. It was the young man who did most of the shouting, the concierge thinks; this boy seemed very nervous and may have been drinking a little too much-he sometimes went into the Cafe des Allies when he left the professor’s house. Lastly, the day before the murder, he walked along the canal with a friend-much taller and stronger than himself, and certainly older too. They stopped in front of the little house and the student pointed to one of the rooms on the second floor; he was obviously overexcited, he was explaining something to his companion with animation, making threatening gestures.

Although Madame Smite is extremely deaf (and “rather peculiar”) and “seems to be completely ignorant of her employer’s associates,” it is possible that she can give the name of this young man and say what he was doing in the house.

It would be best to question the housekeeper once again; unfortunately she has left the city. In her absence, the inspector has attempted to question the manager of the Cafe des Allies; he points out, by the way, that “members of this profession are generally quite well informed as to the private life of their customers.” The manager had no desire to talk, and it required all the inspector’s patience and diplomacy to get to the bottom of the affair:

Some twenty years ago, Dupont “had relations regularly” with a woman “in modest circumstances” who, subsequently gave birth to a son. The professor, who had “done everything to keep this regrettable event from occurring” (?) and whom the woman attempted to pressure into an alliance, persisted in his refusal to marry her. Finding no other way to bring to an end the “proceedings of which he was the object” he soon afterward married a young girl of his own circle. But the illegitimate child, having grown up, now returned with the intention of obtaining large sums of money, “which provoked stormy arguments whose echoes were heard by the neighbors.”

In his conclusions, the inspector begins by proving that Daniel Dupont himself has, on a number of points, “distorted the truth.”

“The mere examination of the material evidence,” he writes, “proves, without there being any need to bring in the evidence of the witnesses, that:

“First, there were two aggressors, not just one: the man with the small hands (fingerprints number 3) and small feet (tracks on the lawn) who took such short strides, cannot be the one, necessarily tall and strong, who twisted the wire of the electric buzzer at the garden gate; furthermore, if the first man was obliged to walk on the lawn to avoid making the gravel crunch, it is because there was already someone walking beside him, on the brick rim of the path; had he been alone, he would have chosen this wide rim himself.

“Second, at least one of these two men was familiar with the house and not an anonymous malefactor: it is apparent that he was well acquainted with the premises and the household habits.

“Third, he was certainly recognized by the professor; the latter claimed to have been attacked before even having had time to open the door all the way, thereby explaining that he didn’t see his murderer’s face; actually, he went into the study and spoke to the two men: there was even a struggle between them, as is indicated by the disorder of the room (piles of books knocked over, chair moved, etc.) and the fingerprints (number 3) on the paperweight.

“Fourth, the motive of the crime is not theft: someone who knew the house so well would also know that there was nothing to steal in this room.

“Dupont was unwilling to reveal his murderer, for the latter was too closely involved with him. He even concealed as long as possible the seriousness of his wound, hoping that his friend Doctor Juard would take care of him, and that scandal would be avoided. It is for this reason that the housekeeper believed Dupont had only received a ‘flesh wound in the arm? “

And the whole scene is reconstructed. The young man, after having vainly appealed to his rights, to filial love, to pity, and finally to blackmail, determined, as a last resort to attempt force. Since he is a weakling and afraid of his father, he has sought the services of a friend, stronger and older than himself, whom he will introduce as his attorney but who is actually his thug. They have decided to make their visit on Monday, October 26, at seven-thirty in the evening…

Daniel Dupont reaches the study door, his eyes on the floor, his hand already stretched toward the doorknob that he is preparing to turn, when he is suddenly struck by this thought: “Jean is here waiting for me!” The professor stops and holds his breath. Perhaps Jean has not come alone: didn’t he threaten him, the other day, with bringing his “lawyer” with him? Who knows what today’s children are capable of?

Cautiously he turns around and tiptoes into the bedroom to get the revolver he has kept, since the war, in the drawer of his night table. But just as he is slipping off the safety catch, he feels a sudden qualm: he is not going to fire at his own son, after all; it’s only to frighten him.

Back in the hallway, the weight of the revolver in his hand seems unrelated to the fear that ran through him a minute earlier; by comparison this sudden fear vanishes altogether: why should his son have come tonight? Moreover, Dupont is not afraid of him. He puts the gun in his pocket. Starting tomorrow, he will have the house doors locked at nightfall.

He turns the doorknob and opens the study door. Jean is there waiting for him.

He is standing between the chair and the desk. He has been reading the papers there. Another man is standing in front of the bookcase, to one side, his hands in his pockets-obviously a bad type.

“Good evening,” Jean says.

His eyes are bright, both arrogant and apprehensive; he must have been drinking again. His mouth grimaces in a parody of a smile.

“What are you doing here?” Dupont asks coldly.

“I came to talk to you,” Jean says. “That’s (gesture of his chin) Maurice…he’s my attorney (another grimace).”

“Good evening,” Maurice says.

“Who let you in?”

“No one,” Jean says. “I know the house.”

Which means: “I’m a member of the family!”

“Well, you can leave the way you came,” the professor says calmly. “It’s just as easy: you know the way.”

“We’re not leaving just yet,” Jean says; “we came to talk-to talk business.”

“We’ve already exhausted the subject, my boy. Now you’re going to leave.”

Dupont walks toward his son with a determined expression; he sees the boy’s eyes fill with fear…fear and hatred…He repeats:

“You’re going to leave.”

Jean picks up the first thing he finds within his reach: the heavy paperweight with sharp edges. He brandishes it, ready to strike. Dupont steps back and puts his hand on his revolver.

But Maurice has seen the gesture and is already in front of Dupont, quicker to take aim himself:

“Let go of that and take your hand out of your pocket.”

After that no one speaks. With his dignity at stake, Dupont feels that he cannot obey this contemptuous treatment in front of his son.

“The police are coming,” he says. “I knew you’d be here waiting for me. Before coming in I telephoned from the bedroom.”

“The cops?” Maurice says. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It won’t be long, don’t worry.”

“We have time enough to get things straight!”

“They’ll be here any minute.”

“The telephone’s been cut for two days,” Jean says.

This time, Dupont’s anger is too much for him. Everything happens in a flash: the professor’s sudden movement to take out his gun, the shot that hits him full in the chest, and the young man’s shrill cry:

“Don’t shoot, Maurice!”