MORCOL (coming out of the seventh tavern in the rue Blanche, having drunk the same number of absinthes).
Another f****** fiasco! However hard I Run about the Streets, Scour the Countryside and Plough through the Waves, I’m still up a gum-tree. However hard I live it up, I’ll still have to give up. It’s like looking for a camel in a sieve. And yet I’m using all my reasoning powers … I’m reasoning … and, as the saying goes, reason rules all things. But here there seems to be rhyme without reason. It may rhyme but it accordeth not. What can I do, though? Miaow at the moon? Spit on my feet? Gnaw my teeth? These are all procedures which are infallibly fallible when it comes to solving a problem, and ones that have never figured among the methods I am in the habit of employing. I shall reject them with a flip of the finger – and let’s start by liberating our spirits from the noxious effluvia we have just been ingurgitating.
Which he does.
And now let us consider things clearly, and in the first place let us dismiss the flight-hypothesis. With such a fledgling there can be no question of anything other than a brief escapade; he wouldn’t be able to go far, which means that he couldn’t have gone beyond the rue Blanche. He wouldn’t have dared venture into any other district. Must we come back to the idea of theft, then? or of kidnapping? but who would be interested in such a colourless character, one wonders, except a colleague. A colleague who’s got stuck, and is looking for characters for his novel. My client must have been right.
A VOICE IN THE FOG Coming, darling?
MORCOL Oh, oh? Whisper who dares?
A VOICE IN THE FOG Don’t be afraid, my popsy-copsy.
MORCOL Does this anonymous person think he’s being funny?
LN (appearing under the light of a street lamp: her shadow is projected along the pavement and extends into the distance). I repeat, my handsome, what I have just said: are you coming?
MORCOL What for? (to Morcol). In any case it isn’t a he, it’s a she.
LN What for? that’s a good one. You wouldn’t be a virgin at your age, would you? (she recognises him). Hell!
MORCOL I have a feeling, Mademoiselle, that I’ve met you before somewhere.
LN There’s no mystery about it. At the Globe and Two Worlds Tavern, where I was having an absinthe with a friend.
MORCOL Ah yes. The young man who was one metre 77 tall and who wasn’t called Dicky Ruscombe.
LN That’s right.
MORCOL And this Dicky Ruscombe – he wouldn’t by any chance be one of your customers, would he?
LN I don’t know anyone of that name.
MORCOL (to Morcol). One more reason to think that it isn’t a flight, but a theft.
LN So?
MORCOL So nothing. Good-bye Mademoiselle. I shall continue my enquiry.
LN What about the time you’ve made me waste? I demand compensation.
MORCOL That’s logical, since Mademoiselle is on the beat.
LN I’m the drummer of Arcole.
She beats him gently on the stomach: it reverberates.
MORCOL Search me from top to toe – you will find nothing but Reason. Here – here’s a franc.
LN That’ll come in handy for my piggy-bank.
MORCOL (alone in the street).
Just an insignificant incident.
Let us resume our argument at the point where I left it. It can only be a colleague.
He rings at Lubert’s door.
HUBERT Who is it?
MORCOL The detective.
Hubert opens the door.
HUBERT Already? Have you found him?
MORCOL Not yet. Keep calm, keep calm.
HUBERT I’m dying with impatience.
MORCOL Die by all means but keep calm. My intellectual powers have caused me to change my mind. It can only be a theft. We cannot entirely reject the hypothesis that it is one of your colleagues, but I am also considering your various acquaintances. I want you to give me the names and addresses of all the people to whom you are linked by any sort of tie, of blood, of hostility, but in particular of friendship.
Lubert does so.
Morcol goes out.
HUBERT (alone). I didn’t put Mme de Champvaux’s name on the list. I am a man of honour.