Out of the Dark by Patrick Modiano Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted to tell you that he knows all about it …'
    She was looking defiantly into my eyes:
    'For now, there's nothing I can do … We need him …'
    I was about to ask her a question, but she reached over and turned off the lamp. She leaned toward me and I felt the caress of her lips on my neck.
    'Wouldn't you like to think about something else now?' She was right. You never knew what trouble the future might hold.
    Around seven o'clock in the evening, someone knocked on the door and said in a gravelly voice: 'You're wanted on the telephone.' Jacqueline got up from the bed, slipped on my raincoat, and left the room without turning on the light, leaving the door ajar.
    The telephone hung on the wall in the corridor. I could hear her answering yes or no and repeating several times that 'there was really no need for her to come tonight,' as if the person on the other end didn't understand what she was saying, or as if she wanted to be begged.
    She closed the door, then came and sat down on the bed. She looked funny in that raincoat; it was too big for her, and she'd pushed the sleeves up.
    'I'm meeting him in half an hour … He's going to come and pick me up … He thinks I'm alone here …' She drew nearer to me and said, in a lower voice: 'I need you to do me a favor … '
    Cartaud was going to take her to dinner with some friends of his. After that, she didn't really know how the evening would end. This was the favor she wanted from me: to leave the hotel before Cartaud arrived. She would give me a key. It belonged to the apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann. I was to go and pick up a suitcase, which I would find in one of the cupboards in the dentist's office, 'the one next to the window.' I would take the suitcase and bring it back here, to this room. All very simple. She would call me at about ten o'clock to let me know where to meet her.
    What was in this suitcase? She smiled sheepishly and said, 'Some money.' I wasn't particularly surprised. And how would Cartaud react when he found it missing? Well, he would never suspect that we were the ones who had stolen it. Of course, he had no idea that we had a copy of the key to his apartment. She had had it made without his knowledge at the 'Fastkey' counter in the Gare Saint-Lazare.
    I was touched by her use of the word 'we,' because she meant herself and me. All the same, I wanted to know if Van Bever was in on this plan. Yes. But he preferred to let her tell me about it. So I was only to play a minor role in all this, and what they wanted from me was a sort of burglary. To help me overcome my qualms, she went on to say that Cartaud wasn't 'a good person,' and that in any case 'he owed it to her …'
    'Is it a heavy suitcase?' I asked her.
    'No.'
    'Because I don't know if it would be better to take a taxi or the métro.'
    She seemed amazed that I wasn't expressing any misgivings.
    'It doesn't bother you to do this for me?'
    She probably wanted to add that I would be in no danger, but I didn't need encouraging. To tell the truth, ever since my childhood, I had seen my father carrying so many bags – suitcases with false bottoms, leather satchels or overnight bags, even those black briefcases that gave him a false air of respectability … And I never knew just what was in them.
    'It will be a pleasure,' I told her.
    She smiled. She thanked me, adding that she would never again ask me to do anything like this. I was a little disappointed that Van Bever was involved, but there was nothing else at all that bothered me about it. I was used to suitcases.
    Standing in the doorway of her room, she gave me the key and kissed me.
    I ran down the stairs and quickly crossed the quai in the direction of the Pont de la Tournelle, hoping not to meet tip with Cartaud.
    In the métro, it was still rush hour. I felt at case there, squeezed in with the other travelers. There was no risk of drawing attention to myself.
    When I came back with the suitcase, I would definitely take the métro.
    I