Mr Hire's Engagement by Georges Simenon

Author:Georges Simenon [Simenon, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 0141978465
Google: L7UWBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00M4S8NGE
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2014-11-04T22:00:00+00:00

VII

'BOLDNESS does it!' Mr. Hire kept assuring himself.

And as he made his way along, he mumbled continually:

'Sorry . . . Sorry . . .'

It was raining cats and dogs, and the problem this morning was not how to slip through the crowd, but how to steer an umbrella through the mass of other umbrellas. The umbrella cover was so wet that, once in the tram, Mr. Hire had to hold it at arm's length.

'Boldness does it!'

The inspector was sitting opposite him, not the little bearded fellow but the one who was always in the concierge's lodge, and Mr. Hire was fixing him with an unblinking stare. The tram jangled its bell and set off towards Paris. In spite of the depressing weather and the sullen faces around him, Mr. Hire stuck out his chest as he had done the night before when he was playing skittles, and sat very upright on his bench. He looked out from under his inky-black eyebrows with the glare that grown-ups turn on noisy children to frighten them into silence. With slow, ceremonious movements, when the conductor approached, he took off his glove, brought out his pocket-book, and produced his season-ticket from it.

'Boldness does it!'

At the Port d'Italie he ignored the Métro and seated himself in a bus, in the first-class section, while the inspector stayed outside on the platform. As he drew near to his destination, he was overcome by a kind of giddy impatience. In the Place du Châtelet he literally flung himself out of the bus and scampered along the Quai des Orfèvres.

'Boldness does it!'

Not till he was mounting the dusty expanse of stairs in Police Headquarters did he unfold the paper summoning him there for the following day, and read the superintendent's name.

'Superintendent Godet, please?' he was asking the office-boy a moment later.

And he shot a piercing glance at the lad, sighed, fidgeted a little with his feet, like a gentleman in a great hurry who ought to be admitted at once.

'Were you sent for?'

'Yes . . . No . . . Take him my card . . .'

An hour went by. At first there were five visitors waiting in the glass-panelled room furnished with green armchairs, at the end of a passage that echoed like a drum, along which people were continually walking, stopping, starting off again, opening doors and walking further. Then there were seven visitors, then only six, then three, then five again. The messenger came from time to time to call one of them, but it was never Mr. Hire.

'You aren't forgetting me?'

No! The messenger shook his head, and went up to a nondescript young woman who had been the last to arrive.

'Was it you who asked to see Monsieur Godet? Will you please come this way?'

All the same, it was with an air of importance that Mr. Hire paced up and down the waiting-room, his briefcase under his arm, or paused under the tablet bearing the names of policemen killed in the war. At last the

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