Apart from this stone, which fell from no one knows where, no fresh element that might have furthered the progress of the investigation has come to light in the past twenty-four hours. I close the newspaper and, without hesitating further, decide to leave my hiding-place: still the same tiny, comfortless room tucked away in a quarter that its last inhabitants are deserting, where an obsolete disguise enables me to present (to whom?) that modest, reassuring, retired-murderer look for which I am known. It's a quiet little life with no problems between the stove that smokes and the ever-open window that looks out on a landscape becoming daily less coherent...But what am I saying? And to whom?...All questions not worth asking from now on. Once more the hunt resumes. Already, down at the end of the long passage, shut in a last room behind parallel vertical bars, motionless, the lovely and still very new prisoner is inexplicably smiling at me from her cage. Then the image recurs of the iron bed half buried in the wet sand on the long, deserted beach, right at the edge of the little waves. Something--I don't know what--is moving to and fro, borne by the foam. Something once again drives me outside myself in search of pleasure.