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

immediately wondered what she was looking at so intensely behind his back and, on turning around, discovered a mirror in which she could see herself.
    â€œI’m looking pale,” she said. “Waiter!”
    â€œComing!” Running up, he thrust into their hands a huge mimeographed menu, scrawled over with red and violet ink. And she studied this menu with the utmost gravity.
    â€œWaiter!”
    â€œMadame?”
    â€œAre the andouillettes good?”
    Monsieur Monde raised his head. He had just made a discovery. If he had asked the same question, for instance, he was convinced that the waiter, any waiter on earth, would naturally have answered yes, thus doing his duty as waiter. Can one imagine a waiter telling his customers: “They’re horrible! Don’t!”?
    The waiter was, in fact, saying “Yes” to the young woman, but not a meaningless “Yes.” You could feel that he was telling her the truth, that he regarded her differently from the hundreds of customers thronging the three floors of the vast eating mill.
    With her he was both respectful and familiar. He recognized somebody of his own sort. He congratulated her on her success. He did not want to do her a disservice. It was therefore necessary to understand the situation, and he turned to Monsieur Monde, sizing him up.
    â€œIf you’ll allow me to advise you …”
    He never lost contact with the girl. Between these two, imperceptible signs were enough. He seemed to be asking her: “Playing high?”
    And as she remained impassive, he bent forward to point out certain dishes on the menu card.
    â€œShellfish, of course, to start with … It wouldn’t be worth coming to Marseilles and not eating shellfish.… D’you like sea urchins?”
    He spoke with an exaggerated accent.
    â€œAnd then some of our own bouillabaisse, with crayfish.”
    â€œI’ll have crayfish by itself!” she interrupted. “Without mayonnaise. I’ll make my own dressing.”
    â€œAnd an andouillette …”
    â€œDo you have gherkins?”
    â€œAnd what wine?”
    Somewhere near Chaussée d’Antin, in Paris, there was a restaurant with some resemblance to this one, and there, from outside, you could see through the windows large numbers of people munching their food. Now, heaven knows why, Monsieur Monde had sometimes envied them, although he did not really know what for—perhaps for sitting there in a crowd, all more or less alike, side by side, feeling at ease in an atmosphere of facile glitter, of stimulating vulgarity.
    The customers, for the most part, must be visitors from the country, or people of moderate means who had decided to treat themselves to a good meal. At the table next to theirs, in the full sunlight, there sat in state a huge middle-aged woman, whose fur coat made her look even vaster, wearing diamonds, real or fake, in her ears and on her fingers, giving her orders in a loud voice, drinking hard and laughing heartily, her companions being two youths who could hardly have been more than twenty.
    â€œWere you following us?”
    He gave a start. His companion, whose name he did not know, was looking sternly at him, with a stubborn frown, and there was such cold lucidity in her gaze that he reddened.
    â€œYou’d better tell me the truth. Do you belong to the police?”
    â€œMe? I give you my word of honor …”
    She believed him readily; she probably knew a policeman when she saw one. But she went on, nonetheless: “How did you happen to be there last night?”
    And he explained volubly, as though to justify himself: “I’d just arrived from Paris.… I wasn’t asleep.… I’d only just dozed off.… I heard …”
    â€œWhat did you hear?”
    He was too honest to lie. “Everything you said.”
    The waiter was covering their table with overlapping dishes of hors d’oeuvres and