OU_214051 UNIVERSA - Osmania University

THE SAILORS' RENDEZVOUS 247
men, bare to the waist, were washing themselves. Among them
Maigret recognized P'tit Louis.
His eye caught a movement: one of the sailors nudged his companion
and pointed at Maigret and the girl. Maigret frowned.
" That's considerate, isn't it? " went on the voice beside him.
" He knows what proportions a scandal assumes in a small town like
Quimper. He wanted to give me back my freedom."
It was a clear morning. The girl in her grey tailored suit could
have been a student or a teacher.
" It shows that my parents must have confidence in him too, for
them to have let me come! And yet my father would prefer to see
me married to a commercial traveller. ..."
Maigret made her stay for a while in the waiting-room of the
police station while he made some notes.
Half an hour later they both went into the prison.
•
It was a very grumpy Maigret who stood with hunched shoulders,
his hands behind his back, his pipe gripped between his teeth, in a
corner of the cell. He had told the authorities that he was not working
on the case in any official capacity, but was only following it out
of curiosity.
Several people had described the radio operator to him, and the
mental image he had made corresponded in every detail to the lad
before him.
A tall, thin young man in a crumpled but correct suit, his face
at once serious and timid, like a boy who is top of the class. Clusters
of freckles under his eyes, and hair cropped short like stubble.
He jumped up when the door opened, and for a long moment he
held back from the girl as she came towards him. She had literally
to throw herself into his arms and remain there by force while he
cast distracted looks all round.
" Marie! . . . Who's that? . . . How . . . ? "
He was in a highly nervous state, but made every effort to conceal
it. Only his spectacles were rather moist and his lip trembled.
" You shouldn't have come. . . ."
He looked at the unknown figure of Maigret, and then at the
door, which had been left ajar.
He had no collar on and no shoelaces, but a reddish beard of
several days' growth. Desperate as was his situation, all this troubled