Halfway up the drafty, foul-smelling stairs, he saw Joseph Grand, the clerk, hurrying down to meet him.
He was a man of about fifty years of age, tall and drooping, with narrow shoulders, thin limbs, and a yellowish mustache.
“He looks better now,” he told Rieux, “but I really thought his number was up.”
He blew his nose vigorously.
On the top floor, the third, Rieux noticed something scrawled in red chalk on a door on the left: Come in, I’ve hanged myself.
They entered the room.
A rope dangled from a hanging lamp above a chair lying on its side. The dining-room table had been pushed into a corner.
But the rope hung empty.
“I got him down just in time.” Grand seemed always to have trouble in finding his words, though he expressed himself in the simplest possible way. “I was going out and I heard a noise.
When I saw that writing on the door, I thought it was a—a prank.
Only, then I heard a funny sort of groan; it made my blood run cold, as they say.”
He scratched his head.
“That must be a painful way of—of doing it, I should think.
Naturally I went in.”
Grand had opened a door and they were standing on the threshold of a bright but scantily furnished bedroom.
There was a brass bedstead against one of the walls, and a plump little man was lying there, breathing heavily. He gazed at them with bloodshot eyes.
Rieux stopped short.
In the intervals of the man’s breathing he seemed to hear the little squeals of rats.
But he couldn’t see anything moving in the corners of the room.
Then he went to the bedside.
Evidently the man had not fallen from a sufficient height, or very suddenly, for the collar-bone had held.
Naturally there was some asphyxia.
An X-ray photograph would be needed.
Meanwhile the doctor gave him a camphor injection and assured him he would be all right in a few days.
“Thanks, Doctor,” the man mumbled.
When Rieux asked Grand if he had notified the police, he hung his head.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t.
The first thing I thought, was to—”
“Quite so,” Rieux cut in. “I’ll see to it.”
But the invalid made a fretful gesture and sat up in bed. He felt much better, he explained; really it wasn’t worth the trouble.
“Don’t feel alarmed,” Rieux said. “It’s little more than a formality. Anyhow, I have to report this to the police.”
“Oh!”
The man slumped back on the bed and started sobbing weakly.
Grand, who had been twiddling his mustache while they were speaking, went up to the bed.
“Come, Monsieur Cottard,” he said. “Try to understand.
People could say the doctor was to blame, if you took it into your head to have another shot at it.”
Cottard assured him tearfully that there wasn’t the least risk of that; he’d had a sort of crazy fit, but it had passed and all he wanted now was to be left in peace.
Rieux was writing a prescription.
“Very well,” he said. “We’ll say no more about it for the present.
I’ll come and see you again in a day or two.
But don’t do anything silly.”
On the landing he told Grand that he was obliged to make a report, but would ask the police inspector to hold up the inquiry for a couple of days.
“But somebody should watch Cottard tonight,” he added.
“Has he any relations?”
“Not that I know of. But I can very well stay with him. I can’t say I really know him, but one’s got to help a neighbor, hasn’t one?”
As he walked down the stairs Rieux caught himself glancing into the darker corners, and he asked Grand if the rats had quite disappeared in his part of the town.
Grand had no idea.
True, he’d heard some talk about rats, but he never paid much attention to gossip like that.
“I’ve other things to think about,” he added.
Rieux, who was in a hurry to get away, was already shaking his hand.