OU_214051 UNIVERSA - Osmania University

A CRIME IN HOLLAND I65
" Get along with you! " growled Maigret. " Allons , vaf "
The boy understood the tone rather than the words. His hand
went to his cap in an awkward salute. He opened his mouth to
speak....
" That's all right. ... Go on. Run "
For the quartermaster was already leaving the top of the gangway.
One of the cadets was taking over the watch.
Through the port-holes they could be seen unlashing their
hammocks and chucking their clothes down on their sea-chests.
Maigret stayed where he was till he saw Cor join them. The boy
went down the ladder shyly and awkwardly, his shoulders hunched
and crooked, and threaded his way towards one of the end hammocks.
Before he got to it, however, he had received a flying pillow
full in the face.
•
The inspector had not taken ten steps towards the town when he
caught sight of Oosting, who, like him, had been watching the
cadets return on board. They were both of them getting on in
years, both of them big, heavy, and placid. Wasn't it rather absurd
that they should have been watching that crowd of young men and
boys climbing into their hammocks and engaging in pillow-fights?
Didn't it make them look like two old hens, watching over a
too-adventurous brood of chicks?
They looked at one another. The Baes did not flinch. With a
leisurely movement he touched the peak of his cap.
They knew perfectly well that all conversation between them was
impossible. All the same, the Mayor of Workum couldn't help
saying:
" Goed avond. ..."
" Bonne nuit..." echoed Maigret.
They were both taking the same road, a road which, after something
like two hundred yards, became a street of the town.
They were walking practically abreast. To avoid doing so, one
of them would have had deliberately to slacken his pace. And neither
wanted to.
Oosting, in his sabots. Maigret, in his city clothes. One with
a clay pipe between his teeth, the other with a briar.
The third house they came to was a caff, and Oosting went
in after shaking the mud off his sabots, which, in any case, he left
at the entrance according to the Dutch custom.