The Erasers

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.

The door is open. The light is on. The drawer of the night; able is wide open. The revolver is no longer there.

Wallas picks up the receiver. Number 124-24. “It’s a direct line.” The ringing at the other end of the line is interrupted at once.

“Hello!” a distant voice says.

“Hello, this is Wallas, it’s…”

“Oh good, I just tried to call you. This is Laurent speaking. I’ve made a discovery-you’ll never guess! Daniel Dupont! He isn’t dead at all! Do you hear me?” He repeats, separating each syllable: “Daniel Dupont is not dead!”

Then who said the telephone in the house wasn’t working?