Read Online Monsieur Monde Vanishes by Georges Simenon - Free Book Online Page A

From time to time he put his ear against the communicating door and then went back to his place beside the window; because of the biting cold, he had put on his overcoat and thrust his hands deep into the pockets.
    At about ten o’clock it struck him that the noise from the town and the harbor would prevent him from hearing a call from the next room, and he regretfully closed the window. His heart was heavy then; he ruefully smiled as he looked at himself in the glass, wearing his overcoat, beside an unmade bed in a hotel bedroom where he didn’t know what to do.
    He ended by sitting on a chair as though in a waiting room, beside the communicating door, and (again as though in a waiting room) he indulged in speculations and forebodings, he counted to a hundred, then to a thousand, tossed coins to decide whether to stay there or not, until at last he gave a start, like a man suddenly awakened, for he must have dozed off. Somebody was walking, not with soft barefoot steps, but on high heels that made a sharp tapping sound.
    He hurried around and knocked.
    â€œCome in!”
    She was fully dressed already, with a little red hat on her head, her handbag in her hands, and she was just about to go out. A few minutes later and he’d have missed her. She had spruced herself up as if nothing had happened, her make-up was spick and span with a strange mouth painted on, smaller than the real one, so that the pale pink of her own lips showed below it like an undergarment.
    He stood awkwardly in the doorway, while after glancing sharply at him—as though to make sure he really was last night’s visitor, whose face she could hardly remember—she hunted for her gloves.
    â€œAre you feeling better?”
    â€œI’m hungry,” she said.
    She found her gloves at last—they were red, like her hat—left the room, and showed no surprise at his following her down the stairs.
    The hotel looked quite different. By daylight the lobby, which was also the entrance hall, seemed more luxurious. The reception clerk behind the mahogany counter was wearing a morning coat, the walls were covered with laminated wood paneling, there were green plants in the corners and a green-uniformed doorman outside the door.
    â€œTaxi, messieurs-dames? ”
    The girl refused, while Monsieur Monde, without knowing why, avoided meeting the eyes of the reception clerk, although the latter did not know him. The fact was that Monsieur Monde was ill at ease in his skimpy clothes. He felt awkward. Perhaps he regretted the loss of his mustache?
    Once on the sidewalk he walked on the left of his companion, who stepped out briskly, paying no attention to him yet showing no surprise at his presence. She turned left immediately, and they found themselves on the corner of La Canebière and the Old Port; she pushed open a glazed door and threaded her way between the tables of a restaurant with the ease of a regular customer.
    Monsieur Monde followed. There were three floors of huge, wide-windowed rooms where people were eating, where hundreds of people were eating, packed close together, while between the tables, along the passages, up and down the stairs, ran waiters and waitresses bearing dishes of bouillabaisse or crayfish, plates of shellfish stacked in pyramids.
    The sun poured in through the bay windows, which went right down to the floor like those in big stores, so that the whole room could be seen from outside. Everyone was eating. People stared at one another with blank or curious eyes. Sometimes someone would raise a hand, calling out impatiently: “Waiter!”
    A strong odor of garlic, saffron, and shellfish assaulted one’s senses. The dominant note was the red of the crayfish gleaming on the waiters’ outstretched arms and on nearly every table, and whose slender empty shells lay piled on the plates of departing guests.
    The young woman had found two places by a wall. Monsieur Monde sat down opposite her. He