Missing Person Read Free Page A

asked the taxi driver to wait for me in the little Rue Charles-Marie-Widor and proceeded on foot until I reached Rue Claude-Lorrain, where the Russian Church was.
    A detached, one-story building, with net curtains at the windows. On the right, a very wide path. I took up my position on the pavement facing it.
    First I saw two women who stopped in front of the door opening on to the street. One had short brown hair and wore a black woollen shawl; the other was a blonde, very made up, and sported a gray hat which was shaped like a Musketeer's. I heard them speaking French.
    A stout, elderly man, completely bald, with heavy bags under his Mongolian slits of eyes, extracted himself from a taxi. They started up the path.
    On the left, from Rue Boileau, a group of five people came toward me. In front, two middle-aged women supported a very old man by the arms, an old man so white- haired, so fragile, he seemed to be made of dried plaster. There followed two men who looked alike, father and son no doubt, both wearing well-cut, gray striped suits, the father dandified, the son with wavy blond hair. Just at this moment, a car braked level with the group and another alert, stiff old man, enveloped in a loden cape, his gray hair cut short, got out. He had a military bearing. Was this Styoppa?
    They all entered the church by a side door, at the end of the path. I would have liked to have followed them, but my presence among them would have attracted attention. I was having increasing qualms that I might fail to identify Styoppa.
    A car had just pulled to one side, a little further off, on the right. Two men got out, then a woman. One of the men was very tall and wore a navy blue overcoat. I crossed the street and waited for them.
    They come closer and closer. It seems to me that the tall man stares hard at me before starting up the path with the two others. Behind the stained glass windows which look out on to the path, tapers are burning. He stoops as he passes through the door, which is much too low for him, and I know it is Styoppa.
    The taxi's engine was running but there was no one at the wheel. One of the doors was ajar, as if the driver would be returning any moment. Where could he be? I glanced about me and decided to walk round the block to look for him.
    I found him in a café close by, in Rue Chardon-Lagache. He was seated at a table, with a glass of beer in front of him.
    "Are you going to be much longer?" he asked
    "Oh ... another twenty minutes."
    Fair-haired, pale-skinned, with heavy jowls and protruding eyes. I don't think I have ever seen a man with fleshier ear lobes.
    "Does it matter if I let the meter run?"
    "It doesn't matter," I said.
    He smiled politely.
    "Aren't you afraid your taxi might get stolen?"
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    "Oh, you know ..."
    He had ordered a pâté sandwich and was eating with deliberation, gazing at me gloomily.
    "What exactly are you waiting for?"
    "Someone who'll be coming out of the Russian church, down the road."
    "Are you Russian?"
    "No."
    "It's silly . . . You should have asked him when he was leaving ... It would have cost you less ..."
    "Never mind."
    He ordered another glass of beer.
    "Could you get me a paper?" he said.
    He started searching in his pocket for the change, but I stopped him.
    "Don't worry..."
    "Thanks. Get me Le Hérisson . Thanks again ..."
    I wandered about for quite a while before finding a newsstand in Avenue de Versailles. Le Hérisson was printed on a creamy green paper.
    He read, knitting his brows and turning over the pages after moistening his index finger with his tongue. And I contemplated this fat, blond, blue-eyed man, with white skin, reading his green paper.
    I didn't dare interrupt him in his reading. At last, he consulted his tiny wrist watch.
    "We must go."
    In Rue Charles-Marie-Widor, he sat down behind the wheel of his taxi and I asked him to wait for me. Again, I stationed myself in front of the Russian church, but on the opposite side of the