Thus for two or three days Marcel and Louis would be alone at the post.
They’d fix up the final details in the course of the night, and he could count on them to see it through.
Rambert thanked them.
“Pleased?” the old woman asked.
He said yes, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
The next day was very hot and muggy and a heat-mist veiled the sun.
The total of deaths had jumped up.
But the old Spanish woman lost nothing of her serenity.
“There’s so much wickedness in the world,” she said. “So what can you expect?”
Like Marcel and Louis, Rambert was stripped to the waist.
But, even so, sweat was trickling down his chest and between his shoulder-blades.
In the dim light of the shuttered room their torsos glowed like highly polished mahogany.
Rambert kept prowling round like a caged animal, without speaking.
Abruptly at four in the afternoon he announced that he was going out.
“Don’t forget,” Marcel said. “At midnight sharp. Everything’s set.”
Rambert went to the doctor’s apartment.
Rieux’s mother told him he would find the doctor at the hospital in the upper town.
As before, a crowd was circling in front of the entrance gates.
“Move on, there!” a police sergeant with bulging eyes bawled every few minutes.
And the crowd kept moving, but always in a circle.
“No use hanging round here.” The sergeant’s coat was soaked in sweat.
They knew it was “no use,” but they stayed on, despite the devastating heat.
Rambert showed his pass to the sergeant, who told him to go to Tarrou’s office.
Its door opened on the courtyard.
He passed Father Paneloux, who was coming out of the office.
Tarrou was sitting at a black wood desk, with his sleeves rolled up, mopping up with his handkerchief a trickle of sweat in the bend of his arm. The office, a small, white-painted room, smelt of drugs and damp cloth.
“Still here?” asked Tarrou.
“Yes.
I’d like to have a word with Rieux.”
“He’s in the ward. Look here!
Don’t you think you could fix up whatever you’ve come for without seeing him?”
“Why?”
“He’s overdoing it.
I spare him as much as I can.”
Rambert gazed thoughtfully at Tarrou.
He’d grown thinner, his eyes and features were blurred with fatigue, his broad shoulders sagged.
There was a knock at the door. A male attendant, wearing a white mask, entered.
He laid a little sheaf of cards on Tarrou’s desk and, his voice coming thickly through the cloth, said: “Six,” then went out.
Tarrou looked at the journalist and showed him the cards, spreading them fanwise.
“Neat little gadgets, aren’t they?
Well, they’re deaths.
Last night’s deaths.”
Frowning, he slipped the cards together.
“The only thing that’s left us is accountancy!”
Taking his purchase on the table, Tarrou rose to his feet.
“You’re off quite soon, I take it?”
“Tonight, at midnight.”
Tarrou said he was glad to hear it, and Rambert had better look after himself for a bit.
“Did you say that—sincerely?”
Tarrou shrugged his shoulders.