The second examination of the prisoner brought nothing new. Johann Knoll refused to speak at all, or else simply repeated what he had said before. This second examination took place early the next morning, but Muller was not present. He was taking a walk in Hietzing.
When they took Johann Knoll in the police wagon to the City Prison, Muller was just sauntering slowly through the street where the murder had been committed. And as the door of the cell shut clangingly behind the man whose face was distorted in impotent rage and despair, Joseph Muller was standing in deep thought before the broken willow twig, which now hung brown and dry across the planks of the fence. He looked at it for a long time. That is, he seemed to be looking at it, but in reality his eyes were looking out and beyond the willow twig, out into the unknown, where the unknown murderer was still at large. Leopold Winkler’s body had already been committed to the earth. How long will it be before his death is avenged? Or perhaps how long may it even be before it is discovered from what motive this murder was committed. Was it a murder for robbery, or a murder for personal revenge perhaps? Were the two crimes committed here by one and the same person, or were there two people concerned? And if two, did they work as accomplices? Or is it possible that Knoll’s story was true? Did he really only rob the body, not realising that it was a dead man and not merely an intoxicated sleeper as he had supposed? These and many more thoughts rushed tumultuously through Muller’s brain until he sighed despairingly under the pressure. Then he smiled in amusement at the wish that had crossed his brain, the wish that this case might seem as simple to him as it apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. What was this devil that rode him and spurred him on to delve into the hidden facts concerning matters that seemed so simple on the surface? The devil that spurred him on to understand that there always was some hidden side to every case? Then the sigh and the smile passed, and Muller raised his head in one of the rare moments of pride in his own gifts that this shy unassuming little man ever allowed himself. This was the work that he was intended by Providence to do or he wouldn’t have been fitted for it, and it was work for the common good, for the public safety. Thinking back over the troubles of his early youth, Muller’s heart rejoiced and he was glad in his own genius. Then the moment of unwonted elation passed and he bent his mind again to the problem before him.
He sauntered slowly through the quiet street in the direction of the four houses. To reach them he passed the fence that enclosed this end of the Thorne property. Muller had already known, for the last twenty-four hours at least, that the owner of the fine old estate was an artist by the name of Herbert Thorne. His own landlady had informed him of this. He himself was new to the neighbourhood, having moved out there recently, and he had verified her statements by the city directory. As he was now passing the Thorne property, in his slow, sauntering walk, he had just come within a dozen paces of the little wooden gate in the fence when this gate opened. Muller’s naturally soft tread was made still more noiseless by the fact that he wore wide soft shoes. Years before he had acquired a bad case of chilblains, in fact had been in imminent danger of having his feet frozen by standing for five hours in the snow in front of a house, to intercept several aristocratic gentlemen who sooner or later would be obliged to leave that house. The police had long suspected the existence of this high-class gambling den; but it was not until they had put Muller in charge of the case, that there were any results attained. The arrests were made at the risk of permanent injury to the celebrated detective. Since then, Muller’s step was more noiseless than usual, and now the woman who opened the gate and peered out cautiously did not hear his approach nor did she see him standing in the shadow of the fence. She looked towards the other end of the street, then turned and spoke to somebody behind her. “There’s nobody coming from that direction,” he said. Then she turned her head the other way and saw Muller. She looked at him for a moment and slammed the gate shut, disappearing behind it. Muller heard the lock click and heard the beat of running feet hastening rapidly over the gravel path through the garden.
The detective stood immediately in front of the gate, shaking his head. “What was the matter with the woman? What was it that she wanted to see or do in the street? Why should she run away when she saw me?” These were his thoughts. But he didn’t waste time in merely thinking. Muller never did. Action followed thought with him very quickly. He saw a knot-hole in the fence just beside the gate and he applied his eyes to this knot-hole. And through the knot-hole he saw something that interested and surprised him.
The woman whose face had appeared so suddenly at the gate, and disappeared still more suddenly, was the same woman whom he had seen bidding farewell to Mr. Thorne and his wife on the Tuesday morning previous, the woman whom he took to be the housekeeper. The old butler stood beside her. It was undoubtedly the same man, although he had worn a livery then and was now dressed in a comfortable old house coat. He stood beside the woman, shaking his head and asking her just the questions that Muller was asking himself at the moment.
“Why, what is the matter with you, Mrs. Bernauer? You’re so nervous since yesterday. Are you ill? Everything seems to frighten you? Why did you run away from that gate so suddenly? I thought you wanted me to show you the place?”
Mrs. Bernauer raised her head and Muller saw that her face looked pale and haggard and that her eyes shone with an uneasy feverish light. She did not answer the old man’s questions, but made a gesture of farewell and then turned and walked slowly towards the house. She realised, apparently, and feared, perhaps, that the man who was passing the gate might have noticed her sudden change of demeanour and that he was listening to what she might say. She did not think of the knot-hole in the board fence, or she might have been more careful in hiding her distraught face from possible observers.
Muller stood watching through this knot-hole for some little time. He took a careful observation of the garden, and from his point of vantage he could easily see the little house which was apparently the dwelling of the gardener, as well as the mansard roof of the main building. There was considerable distance between the two houses. The detective decided that it might interest him to know something more about this garden, this house and the people who lived there. And when Muller made such a decision it was usually not very long before he carried it out.
The other street, upon which the main front of the mansard house opened, contained a few isolated dwellings surrounded by gardens and a number of newly built apartment houses. On the ground floor of these latter houses were a number of stores and immediately opposite the Thorne mansion was a little cafe. This suited Muller exactly, for he had been there before and he remembered that from one of the windows there was an excellent view of the gate and the front entrance of the mansion opposite. It was a very modest little cafe, but there was a fairly good wine to be had there and the detective made it an excuse to sit down by the window, as if enjoying his bottle while admiring the changing colours of the foliage in the gardens opposite.
Another rather good chance, he discovered, was the fact that the landlord belonged to the talkative sort, and believed that the refreshments he had to sell were rendered doubly agreeable when spiced by conversation. In this case the good man was not mistaken. It was scarcely ten o’clock in the forenoon and there were very few people in the cafe. The landlord was quite at leisure to devote himself to this stranger in the window seat, whom he did not remember to have seen before, and who was therefore doubly interesting to him. Several subjects of conversation usual in such cases, such as politics and the weather, seemed to arouse no particular enthusiasm in his patron’s manner. Finally the portly landlord decided that he would touch upon the theme which was still absorbing all Hietzing.
“Oh, by the way, sir, do you know that you are in the immediate vicinity of the place where the murder of Monday evening was committed? People are still talking about it around here. And I see by the papers that the murderer was arrested in Pressburg yesterday and brought to Vienna last night.”
“Indeed, is that so? I haven’t seen a paper to-day,” replied Muller, awakening from his apparent indifference.
The landlord was flattered by the success of the new subject, and stood ready to unloose the floodgates of his eloquence. His customer sat up and asked the question for which the landlord was waiting.
“So it was around here that the man was shot?”
“Yes. His name was Leopold Winkler, that was in the papers to-day too. You see that pretty house opposite? Well, right behind this house is the garden that belongs to it and back of that, an old garden which has been neglected for some time. It was at the end of this garden where it touches the other street, that they found the man under a big elder-tree, early Tuesday morning, day before yesterday.”
“Oh, indeed!” said. Muller, greatly interested, as if this was the first he had heard of it. The landlord took a deep breath and was about to begin again when his customer, who decided to keep the talkative man to a certain phase of the subject, now took command of the conversation himself.
“I should think that the people opposite, who live so near the place where the murder was committed, wouldn’t be very much pleased,” he said. “I shouldn’t care to look out on such a spot every time I went to my window.”
“There aren’t any windows there,” exclaimed the landlord, “for there aren’t any houses there. There’s only the old garden, and then the large garden and the park belonging to Mr. Thorne’s house, that fine old house you see just opposite here. It’s a good thing that Mr. Thorne and his wife went away before the murder became known. The lady hasn’t been well for some weeks, she’s very nervous and frail, and it probably would have frightened her to think that such things were happening right close to her home.”
“The lady is sick? What’s the matter with her?”
“Goodness knows, nerves, heart trouble, something like that. The things these fine ladies are always having. But she wasn’t always that way, not until about a year ago. She was fresh and blooming and very pretty to look at before that.”
“She is a young lady then?”
“Yes, indeed, sir; she’s very young still and very pretty. It makes you feel sorry to see her so miserable, and you feel sorry for her husband. Now there’s a young couple with everything in the world to make them happy and so fond of each other, and the poor little lady has to be so sick.”
“They are very happy, you say?” asked Muller carelessly. He had no particular set purpose in following up this inquiry, none but his usual understanding of the fact that a man in his business can never amass too much knowledge, and that it will sometimes happen that a chance bit of information comes in very handy.
The landlord was pleased at the encouragement and continued: “Indeed they are very happy. They’ve only been married two years. The lady comes from a distance, from Graz. Her father is an army officer I believe, and I don’t think she was over-rich. But she’s a very sweet-looking lady and her rich husband is very fond of her, any one can see that.”
“You said just now that they had gone away, where have they gone to?”
“They’ve gone to Italy, sir. Mrs. Thorne was one of the few people who do not know Venice. Franz, that’s the butler, sir, told me yesterday evening that he had received a telegram saying that the lady and gentleman had arrived safely and were very comfortably fixed in the Hotel Danieli. You know Danieli’s?”
“Yes, I do. I also was one of the few people who did not know Venice, that is I was until two years ago. Then, however, I had the pleasure of riding over the Bridge of Mestre,” answered Muller. He did not add that he was not alone at the time, but had ridden across the long bridge in company with a pale haggard-faced man who did not dare to look to the right or to the left because of the revolver which he knew was held in the detective’s hand under his loose overcoat. Muller’s visit to Venice, like most of his journeyings, had been one of business. This time to capture and bring home a notorious and long sought embezzler. He did not volunteer any of this information, however, but merely asked in a politely interested manner whether the landlord himself had been to Venice.
“Yes, indeed,” replied the latter proudly. “I was head waiter at Baner’s for two years.”
“Then you must make me some Italian dishes soon,” said Muller. Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Franz, the old butler of the house opposite.
“Excuse me, sir; I must get him his glass of wine,” said the landlord, hurrying away to the bar. He returned in a moment with a small bottle and a glass and set it down on Muller’s table.
“You don’t mind, sir, if he sits down here?” he asked. “He usually sits here at this table because then he can see if he is needed over at the house.”
“Oh, please let him come here. He has prior rights to this table undoubtedly,” said the stranger politely. The old butler sat down with an embarrassed murmur, as the voluble landlord explained that the stranger had no objection. Then the boniface hurried off to attend to some newly entered customers and the detective, greatly pleased at the prospect, found himself alone with the old servant.
“You come here frequently?” he began, to open the conversation.
“Yes, sir, since my master and myself have settled down here—we travelled most of the time until several years ago—I find this place very convenient. It’s a cosy little room, the wine is good and not expensive, I’m near home and yet I can see some new faces occasionally.”
“I hope the faces that you see about you at home are not so unpleasant that you are glad to get away from them?” asked Muller with a smile.
The old man gave a start of alarm. “Oh, dear, no, sir,” he exclaimed eagerly; “that wasn’t what I meant. Indeed I’m fond of everybody in the house from our dear lady down to the poor little dog.”
Here Muller gained another little bit of knowledge, the fact that the lady of the house was the favourite of her servants, or that she seemed to them even more an object of adoration than the master.
“Then you evidently have a very good place, since you seem so fond of every one.”
“Indeed I have a good place, sir.”
“You’ve had this place a long time?”
“More than twenty years. My master was only eleven years old when I took service with the family.”
“Ah, indeed! then you must be a person of importance in the house if you have been there so long?”
“Well more or less I might say I am,” the old man smiled and looked flattered, then added: “But the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernauer, is even more important than I am, to tell you the truth. She was nurse to our present young master, and she’s been in the house ever since. When his parents died, it’s some years ago now, she took entire charge of the housekeeping. She was a fine active woman then, and now the young master and mistress couldn’t get along without her. They treat her as if she was one of the family.”
“And she is ill also? I say also,” explained Muller, “because the landlord has just been telling me that your mistress is ill.”
“Yes, indeed, more’s the pity! our poor dear young lady has been miserable for nearly a year now. It’s a shame to see such a sweet angel as she is suffer like that and the master’s quite heart-broken over it. But there’s nothing the matter with Mrs. Bernauer. How did you come to think that she was sick?”
Muller did not intend to explain that the change in the housekeeper’s appearance, a change which had come about between Tuesday morning and Thursday morning, might easily have made any one think that she was ill. He gave as excuse for his question the old man’s own words: “Why, I thought that she might be ill also because you said yourself that the housekeeper—what did you say her name was?”
“Bernauer, Mrs. Adele Bernauer. She was a widow when she came to take care of the master. Her husband was a sergeant of artillery.”
“Well, I mean,” continued Muller, “you said yourself that when the gentleman’s parents died, Mrs. Bernauer was a fine active woman, therefore I supposed she was no longer so.”
Franz thought the matter over for a while. “I don’t know just why I put it that way. Indeed she’s still as active as ever and always fresh and well. It’s true that for the last two or three days she’s been very nervous and since yesterday it is as if she was a changed woman. She must be ill, I don’t know how to explain it otherwise.”
“What seems to be the matter with her?” asked Muller and then to explain his interest in the housekeeper’s health, he fabricated a story: “I studied medicine at one time and although I didn’t finish my course or get a diploma, I’ve always had a great interest in such things, and every now and then I’ll take a case, particularly nervous diseases. That was my specialty.” Muller took up his glass and turned away from the window, for he felt a slow flush rising to his cheeks. It was another of Muller’s peculiarities that he always felt an inward embarrassment at the lies he was obliged to tell in his profession.
The butler did not seem to have noticed it however, and appeared eager to tell of what concerned him in the housekeeper’s appearance and demeanour. “Why, yesterday at dinner time was the first that we began to notice anything wrong with Mrs. Bernauer. The rest of us, that is, Lizzie the upstairs girl, the cook and myself. She began to eat her dinner with a good appetite, then suddenly, when we got as far as the pudding, she let her fork fall and turned deathly white. She got up without saying a word and left the room. Lizzie ran after her to ask if anything was the matter, but she said no, it was nothing of importance. After dinner, she went right out, saying she was doing some errands. She brought in a lot of newspapers, which was quite unusual, for she sometimes does not look at a newspaper once a week even. I wouldn’t have noticed it but Lizzie’s the kind that sees and hears everything and she told us about it.” Franz stopped to take a drink, and Muller said indifferently, “I suppose Mrs. Bernauer was interested in the murder case. The whole neighbourhood seems to be aroused about it.”
“No, I don’t think that was it,” answered the old servant, “because then she would have sent for a paper this morning too.”
“And she didn’t do that?”
“No, unless she might have gone out for it herself. There’s a news stand right next door here. But I don’t think she did because I would have seen the paper around the house then.”
“And is that all that’s the matter with her?” asked Muller in a tone of disappointment. “Why, I thought you’d have something really interesting to tell me.”
“Oh, no, that isn’t all, sir,” exclaimed the old man eagerly.
Muller leaned forward, really interested now, while Franz continued: “She was uneasy all the afternoon yesterday. She walked up and down stairs and through the halls—I remember Lizzie making some joke about it—and then in the evening to our surprise she suddenly began a great rummaging in the first story.”
“Is that where she lives?”
“Oh, no; her room is in the wing out towards the garden. The rooms on the first floor all belong to the master and mistress. This morning we found out that Mrs. Bernauer’s cleaning up of the evening before had been done because she remembered that the master wanted to take some papers with him but couldn’t find them and had asked her to look for them and send them right on.”
“Well, I shouldn’t call that a sign of any particular nervousness, but rather an evidence of Mrs. Bernauer’s devotion to her duty.”
“Oh, yes, sir—but it certainly is queer that she should go into the garden at four o’clock this morning and appear to be looking for something along the paths and under the bushes. Even if a few of the papers blew out of the window, or blew away from the summer house, where the master writes sometimes, they couldn’t have scattered all over the garden like that.”
Muller didn’t follow up this subject any longer. There might come a time when he would be interested in finding out the reason for the housekeeper’s search in the garden, but just at present he wanted something else. He remembered some remark of the old man’s about the “poor little dog,” and on this he built his plan.
“Oh, well,” he said carelessly, “almost everybody is nervous and impatient now-a-days. I suppose Mrs. Bernauer felt uneasy because she couldn’t find the paper right away. There’s nothing particularly interesting or noticeable about that. Anyway, I’ve been occupying myself much more these last years with sick animals rather than with sick people. I’ve had some very successful cures there.”
“No, really, have you? Then you could do us a great favour,” exclaimed Franz in apparent eagerness. Muller’s heart rejoiced. He had apparently hit it right this time. He knew that in a house like that “a poor dog” could only mean a “sick dog.” But his voice was quite calm as he asked: “How can I do you a favour?”
“Why, you see, sir, we’ve got a little terrier,” explained the old man, who had quite forgotten the fact that he had mentioned the dog before. “And there’s been something the matter with the poor little chap for several days. He won’t eat or drink, he bites at the grass and rolls around on his stomach and cries—it’s a pity to see him. If you’re fond of animals and know how to take care of them, you may be able to help us there.”
“You want me to look at the little dog? Why, yes, I suppose I can.”
“We’ll appreciate it,” said the old man with an embarrassed smile. But Muller shook his head and continued: “No, never mind the payment, I wouldn’t take any money for it. But I’ll tell you what you can do for me. I’m very fond of flowers. If you think you can take the responsibility of letting me walk around in the garden for a little while, and pick a rose or two, I will be greatly pleased.”
“Why, of course you may,” said Franz. “Take any of the roses you see there that please you. They’re nearly over for the season now and it’s better they should be picked rather than left to fade on the bush. We don’t use so many flowers in the house now when the family are not there.”
“All right, then, it’s a bargain,” laughed Muller, signalling to the landlord. “Are you, going already?” asked the old servant.
“Yes, I must be going if I am to spend any time with the little dog.”
“I suppose I ought to be at home myself,” said Franz. “Something’s the matter with the electric wiring in our place. The bell in the master’s room keeps ringing. I wrote to Siemens & Halske to send us a man out to fix it. He’s likely to come any minute now.” The two men rose, paid their checks, and went out together. Outside the cafe Muller hesitated a moment. “You go on ahead,” he said to Franz. “I want to go in here and get a cigar.”
While buying his cigar and lighting it, he asked for several newspapers, choosing those which his quick eye had told him were no longer among the piles on the counter. “I’m very sorry, sir,” said the clerk; “we have only a few of those papers, just two or three more than we need for our regular customers, and this morning they are all sold. The housekeeper from the Thorne mansion took the very last ones.”
This was exactly what Muller wanted to know. He left the store and caught up with the old butler as the latter was opening the handsome iron gate that led from the Thorne property out onto the street.
“Well, where’s our little patient?” asked the detective as he walked through the courtyard with Franz.
“You’ll see him in a minute,” answered the old servant. He led the way through a light roomy corridor furnished with handsome old pieces in empire style, and opened a door at its further end.
“This is my room.”
It was a large light room with two windows opening on the garden. Muller was not at all pleased that the journey through the hall had been such a short one. However he was in the house, that was something, and he could afford to trust to chance for the rest. Meanwhile he would look at the dog. The little terrier lay in a corner by the stove and it did not take Muller more than two or three minutes to discover that there was nothing the matter with the small patient but a simple case of over-eating. But he put on a very wise expression as he handled the little dog and looking up, asked if he could get some chamomile tea.
“I’ll go for it, I think there’s some in the house. Do you want it made fresh?” said Franz.
“Yes, that will be better, about a cupful will do,” was Muller’s answer. He knew that this harmless remedy would be likely to do the dog good and at the present moment he wanted to be left alone in the room. As soon as Franz had gone, the detective hastened to the window, placing himself behind the curtain so that he could not be seen from outside. He himself could see first a wide courtyard lying between the two wings of the house, then beyond it the garden, an immense square plot of ground beautifully cultivated. The left wing of the house was about six windows longer than the other, and from the first story of it it would be quite easy to look out over the vacant lot where the old shed stood which had served as a night’s lodging for Johann Knoll.
There was not the slightest doubt in Muller’s mind that this part of the tramp’s story was true, for by a natural process of elimination he knew there was nothing to be gained by inventing any such tale. Besides which the detective himself had been to look at the shed. His well-known pedantic thoroughness would not permit him to take any one’s word for anything that he might find out for himself. In his investigations on Tuesday morning he had already seen the half-ruined shed, now he knew that it contained a broken bench.
Thus far, therefore, Knoll’s story was proved to be true—but there was something that didn’t quite hitch in another way. The tramp had said that he had seen first a woman and then a man come from the main house and go in the direction of the smaller house which he took to be the gardener’s dwelling. This Muller discovered now was quite impossible. A tall hedge, fully seven or eight feet high and very thick, stretched from the courtyard far down into the garden past the gardener’s little house. There was a broad path on the right and the left of this green wall. From his position in the shed, Knoll could have seen people passing only when they were on the right side of the hedge. But to reach the gardener’s house from the main dwelling, the shortest way would be on the left side of the hedge. This much Muller saw, then he heard the butler’s steps along the hall and he went back to the corner where the dog lay.
Franz was not alone. There was some one else with him, the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernauer. Just as they opened the door, Muller heard her say: “If the gentleman is a veterinary, then we’d better ask him about the parrot—”
The sentence was never finished. Muller never found out what was the matter with the parrot, for as he looked up with a polite smile of interest, he looked into a pale face, into a pair of eyes that opened wide in terror, and heard trembling lips frame the words: “There he is again!”
A moment later Mrs. Bernauer would have been glad to have recalled her exclamation, but it was too late.
Muller bowed before her and asked: “‘There he is again,’ you said; have you ever seen me before?”
The woman looked at him as if hypnotised and answered almost in a whisper: “I saw you Tuesday morning for the first time, Tuesday morning when the family were going away. Then I saw you pass through our street twice again that same day. This morning you went past the garden gate and now I find you here. What-what is it you want of us?”
“I will tell you what I want, Mrs. Bernauer, but first I want to speak to you alone. Mr. Franz doesn’t mind leaving us for a while, does he?”
“But why?” said the old man hesitatingly. He didn’t understand at all what was going on and he would much rather have remained.
“Because I came here for the special purpose of speaking to Mrs. Bernauer,” replied Muller calmly.
“Then you didn’t come on account of the dog?”
“No, I didn’t come on account of the dog.”
“Then you—you lied to me?”
“Partly.”
“And you’re no veterinary?”
“No—I can help your dog, but I am not a veterinary and never have been.”
“What are you then?”
“I will tell Mrs. Bernauer who and what I am when you are outside—outside in the courtyard there. You can walk about in the garden if you want to, or else go and get some simple purgative for this dog. That is all he needs; he has been over-fed.”
Franz was quite bewildered. These new developments promised to be interesting and he was torn between his desire to know more, and his doubts as to the propriety of leaving the housekeeper with this queer stranger. He hesitated until the woman herself motioned to him to go. He went out into the hall, then into the courtyard, watched by the two in the room who stood silently in the window until they saw the butler pass down into the garden. Then they looked at each other.
“You belong to the police?” asked Adele Bernauer finally with a deep sigh.
“That was a good guess,” replied Muller with an ironic smile, adding: “All who have any reason to fear us are very quick in recognising us.”
“What do you mean by that?” she exclaimed with a start. “What are you thinking of?”
“I am thinking about the same thing that you are thinking of—that I have proved you are thinking of—the same thing that drove you out into the street yesterday and this morning to buy the papers. These papers print news which is interesting many people just now, and some people a great deal. I am thinking of the same thing that was evidently in your thoughts as you peered out of the garden gate this morning, although you would not come out into the street. I know that you do not read even one newspaper regularly. I know also that yesterday and today you bought a great many papers, apparently to get every possible detail about a certain subject. Do you deny this?”
She did not deny it, she did not answer at all. She sank down on a chair, her wide staring eyes looking straight ahead of her, and trembling so that the old chair cracked underneath her weight. But this condition did not last long. The woman had herself well under control. Muller’s coming, or something else, perhaps, may have overwhelmed her for a moment, but she soon regained her usual self-possession.
“Still you have not told me what you want here,” she began coldly, and as he did not answer she continued: “I have a feeling that you are watching us. I had this feeling when I saw you the first time and noticed then—pardon my frankness—that you stared at us sharply while we were saying goodbye to our master and mistress. Then I saw you pass twice again through the street and look up at our windows. This morning I find you at our garden gate and now—you will pardon me if I tell the exact truth—now you have wormed yourself in here under false pretenses because you have no right whatever to force an entrance into this house. And I ask you again, what do you want here?”
Muller was embarrassed. That did not happen very often. Also it did not happen very often that he was in the wrong as he was now. The woman was absolutely right. He had wormed himself into the house under false pretenses to follow up the new clue which almost unconsciously as yet was leading him on with a stronger and stronger attraction. He could not have explained it and he certainly was not ready to say anything about it at police headquarters, even at the risk of being obliged to continue to enter this mysterious house under false pretenses and to be told that he was doing so. Of course this sort of thing was necessary in his business, it was the only way in which he could follow up the criminals.
But there was something in this woman’s words that cut into a sensitive spot and drove the blood to his cheeks. There was something in the bearing and manner of this one-time nurse that impressed him, although he was not a man to be lightly impressed. He had a feeling that he had made a fool of himself and it bothered him. For a moment he did not know what he should say to this woman who stood before him with so much quiet energy in her bearing. But the something in his brain, the something that made him what he was, whispered to him that he had done right, and that he must follow up the trail he had found. That gave him back his usual calm.
He took up his hat, and standing before the pale-faced woman, looking her firmly in the eyes, he said: “It is true that I have no right as yet to force my way into your house, therefore I have been obliged to enter it as best I could. I have done this often in my work, but I do it for the safety of society. And those who reproach me for doing it are generally those whom I have been obliged to persecute in the name of the law. Mrs. Bernauer, I will confess that there are moments in which I feel ashamed that I have chosen this profession that compels me to hunt down human beings. But I do not believe that this is one of those moments. You have read this morning’s papers; you must know, therefore, that a man has been arrested and accused of the murder which interests you so much; you must be able to realise the terror and anxiety which are now filling this man’s heart. For to-day’s papers—I have read them myself—expressed the public sentiment that the police may succeed in convicting this man of the crime, that the death may be avenged and justice have her due. Several of these papers, the papers I know you have bought and presumably read, do not doubt that Johann Knoll is the murderer of Leopold Winkler.
“Now there are at least two people who do not believe that Knoll is the murderer. I am one of them, and you, Mrs. Bernauer, you are the other. I am going now and when I come again, as I doubtless will come again, I will come with full right to enter this house. I acknowledge frankly that I have no justification in causing your arrest as yet, but you are quite clever enough to know that if I had the faintest justification I would not leave here alone. And one thing more I have to say. You may not know that I have had the most extraordinary luck in my profession, that in more than a hundred cases there have been but two where the criminal I was hunting escaped me. And now, Mrs. Bernauer, I will bid you good day.”
Muller stepped towards the window and motioned to Franz, who was walking up and down outside. The old man ran to the door and met the detective in the hall.
“You’d better go in and look after Mrs. Bernauer,” said the latter, “I can find my way out alone.”
Franz looked after him, shaking his head in bewilderment and then entered his own room. “Merciful God!” he exclaimed, bending down in terror over the housekeeper, who lay on the floor. In his shock and bewilderment he imagined that she too had been murdered, until he realised that it was only a swoon from which she recovered in a moment. He helped her regain her feet and she looked about as if still dazed, stammering: “Has he gone?”
“The strange man? ... Yes, he went some time ago. But what happened to you? Did he give you something to make you faint? Do you think he was a thief?”
Mrs. Bernauer shook her head and murmured: “Oh, no, quite the contrary.” A remark which did not enlighten Franz particularly as to the status of the man who had just left them. There was a note of fear in the housekeepers’s voice and she added hastily: “Does any one besides ourselves know that he was here?”
“No, Lizzie and the cook are in the kitchen talking about the murder.”
Mrs. Bernauer shivered again and went slowly out of the room and up the stairs.
If Franz believed that the stranger had left the house by the front entrance he was very much mistaken. When Muller found himself alone in the corridor he turned quickly and hurried out into the garden. None of the servants had seen him. Lizzie and the cook were engaged in an earnest conversation in the kitchen and Franz was fully occupied with Mrs. Bernauer. The gardener was away and his wife busy at her wash tubs. No one was aware, therefore, that Muller spent about ten minutes wandering about the garden, and ten minutes were quite sufficient for him to become so well acquainted with the place that he could have drawn a map of it. He left the garden through the rear gate, the latch of which he was obliged to leave open. The gardener’s wife found it that way several hours later and was rather surprised thereat. Muller walked down the street rapidly and caught a passing tramway. His mood was not of the best, for he could not make up his mind whether or no this morning had been a lost one. His mind sorted and rearranged all that he knew or could imagine concerning Mrs. Bernauer. But there was hardly enough of these facts to reassure him that he was not on a false trail, that he had not allowed himself to waste precious hours all because he had seen a woman’s haggard face appear for a moment at the little gate in the quiet street.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg