Oh my heart, my poor heart! How wildly it was beating!

I stayed for about two weeks in Rouen. The man never returned. My God! My God! Who in the world would ever be able to get in his way? Take him by surprise? On the morning of my sixteenth day there I received from my gardener, whom I had left in charge of the looted and still deserted house, the following strange letter:

Monsieur,

May I inform Monsieur that last night something occurred here that no one, not even the police, can account for. All the furniture has come back; all, without exception and down to the smallest article. The house is now exactly as it was on the day before the robbery. We cannot get our heads around it. It happened between Friday night and the early hours of Saturday morning. The paths are all trampled over as though everything had been dragged from the gate to the front door. It was the same in reverse on the day we found them to have disappeared.

We await instructions from Monsieur whose humble servant I remain, Raudin, Philippe.

Oh no! No! No! No! I will not go back!

I took the letter to the commissioner of Rouen.

‘A clever little restitution,’ he said. ‘Let’s play dead. We’ll pick him up one of these days.’

But he’s never been picked up. No, they’ve never managed to pick him up and now I’m as terrified of him as if I had a wild beast on my tracks. Nowhere to be found! He is nowhere to be found, that monster with the moon-skull! They’ll never catch him!

He’ll never go back to that place of his! What does he care about it? I’m the only one who can catch him and I won’t do it!

I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!

And even if he does go back, even if he does return to his shop, who could prove that my furniture was there? There’s only my word to go on and I can tell that’s not being seen as entirely reliable these days. Oh, no! I could no longer go on living that way. I could no longer keep secret what I had seen. I could not carry on living as normal with the fear at the back of my mind that something like that could start up again. I came to see the director of this clinic and told him everything. After a lengthy consultation, he said: ‘Would you be willing, Monsieur, to come and live with us here for a while?’

‘More than willing, Monsieur.’

‘Do you have money?’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘Would you like a private room?’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘Would you like to have friends come and see you?’

‘No, Monsieur, no one. The man in Rouen might want to get his own back and follow me here.’