Muller’s goal was the prison where Johann Knoll was awaiting his fate. The detective had permission to see the man as often as he wished to. Knoll had been proven a thief, but the accusation of murder against him had not been strengthened by anything but the most superficial circumstantial evidence, therefore it was necessary that Muller should talk with him in the hope of discovering something more definite.
Knoll lay asleep on his cot as the detective and the warder entered the cell. Muller motioned the attendant to leave him alone with the prisoner and he stood beside the cot looking down at the man. The face on the hard pillow was not a very pleasant one to look at. The skin was roughened and swollen and had that brown-purple tinge which comes from being constantly in the open air, and from habitual drinking. The weather-beaten look may be seen often in the faces of men whose honest work keeps them out of doors; but this man had not earned his colouring honestly, for he was one of the sort who worked only from time to time when it was absolutely necessary and there was no other way of getting a penny. His hands proved this, for although soiled and grimy they had soft, slender fingers which showed no signs of a life of toil. But even a man who has spent forty years in useless idling need not be all bad. There must have been some good left in this man or he could not have lain there so quietly, breathing easily, wrapped in a slumber as undisturbed as that of a child. It did not seem possible that any man could lie there like that with the guilt of murder on his conscience, or even with the knowledge in his soul that he had plundered a corpse.
Muller had never believed the first to be the case, but he had thought it possible that Knoll knew perfectly well that it was a lifeless body he was robbing. He had believed it at least until the moment when he stood looking down at the sleeping tramp. Now, with the deep knowledge of the human heart which was his by instinct and which his profession had increased a thousand-fold, Muller knew that this man before him had no heavy crime upon his conscience—that it was really as he had said—that he had taken the watch and purse from one whom he believed to be intoxicated only. Of course it was not a very commendable deed for which the tramp was now in prison, but it was slight in comparison to the crimes of which he was suspected.
Muller bent lower over the unconscious form and was surprised to see a gentle smile spread over the face before him. It brightened and changed the coarse rough face and gave it for a moment a look of almost child-like innocence. Somewhere within the coarsened soul there must be a spot of brightness from which such a smile could come.
But the face grew ugly again as Knoll opened his eyes and looked up. He shook off the clouds of slumber as he felt Muller’s hand on his shoulder and raised himself to a sitting position, grumbling: “Can’t I have any rest? Are they going to question me again? I’m getting tired of this. I’ve said everything I know anyhow.”
“Perhaps not everything. Perhaps you will answer a few of my questions when I tell you that I believe the story you told us yesterday, and that I want to be your friend and help you.”
Knoll’s little eyes glanced up without embarrassment at the man who spoke to him. They were sharp eyes and had a certain spark of intelligence in them. Muller had noticed that yesterday, and he saw it again now. But he saw also the gleam of distrust in these eyes, a distrust which found expression in Knoll’s next words. “You think you can catch me with your good words, but you’re makin’ a mistake. I’ve got nothin’ new to say. And you needn’t think that you can blind me, I know you’re one of the police, and I’m not going to say anything at all.”
“Just as you like. I was trying to help you, I believe I really could help you. I have just come from Hietzing—but of course if you don’t want to talk to me—” Muller shrugged his shoulders and turned toward the door.
But before he reached it Knoll stood at his side. “You really mean to help me?” he gasped.
“I do,” said the detective calmly.
“Then swear, on your mother’s soul—or is your mother still alive?”
“No, she has been dead some time.”
“Well, then, will you swear it?”
“Would you believe an oath like that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“With the life you’ve been leading?”
“My life’s no worse than a lot of others. Stealing those things on Monday was the worst thing I’ve done yet. Will you swear?”
“Is it something so very important you have to tell me?”
“No, I ain’t got nothin’ at all new to tell you. But I’d just like to know—in this black hole I’ve got into—I’d just like to know that there’s one human being who means well with me—I’d like to know that there’s one man in the world who don’t think I’m quite good-for-nothin’.”
The tramp covered his face with his hands and gave a heart-rending sob. Deep pity moved the detective’s breast. He led Knoll back to his cot, and put both hands on his shoulders, saying gravely: “I believe that this theft was the worst thing you have done. By my mother’s salvation, Knoll, I believe your words and I will try to help you.”
Knoll raised his head, looking up at Muller with a glance of unspeakable gratitude. With trembling lips he kissed the hand which a moment before had pressed kindly on his shoulder, clinging fast to it as if he could not bear to let it go. Muller was almost embarrassed. “Oh, come now, Knoll, don’t be foolish. Pull yourself together and answer my questions carefully, for I am asking you these questions more for your own sake than for anything else.”
The tramp nodded and wiped the tears from his face. He looked almost happy again, and there was a softness in his eyes that showed there was something in the man which might be saved and which was worth saving.
Muller sat beside him on the cot and began: “There was one mistake in your story yesterday. I want you to think it over carefully. You said that you saw first a woman and then a man going through the neighbouring garden. I believe that one or both of these people is the criminal for whom we are looking. Therefore, I want you to try and remember everything that you can connect with them, every slightest detail. Anything that you can tell us may be of the greatest importance. Therefore, think very carefully.”
Knoll sat still a few moments, evidently trying hard to put his hazy recollections into useful form and shape. But it was also evident that orderly thinking was an unusual work for him, and he found it almost too difficult. “I guess you better ask me questions, maybe that’ll go,” he said after a pause.
Then Muller began to question. With his usual thoroughness he began at the very beginning: “When was it that you climbed the fence to get into the shed?”
“It just struck nine o’clock when I put my foot on the lowest bar.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Quite sure. I counted every stroke. You see, I wanted to know how long the night was going to be, seein’ I’d have to sleep in that shed. I was in the garden just exactly an hour. I came out of the shed as it struck ten and it wasn’t but a few minutes before I was in the street again.”
“And when was it that you saw the woman in the garden next door?”
“H’m, I don’t just know when that was. I’d been in on the bench quite a while.”
“And the man? When did you see the man?”
“He came past a few minutes after the woman had gone towards the little house in the garden.”
“Ah! there you see, that’s where you made your mistake. It is more than likely that these two did not go to the little house, but that they went somewhere else. Did they walk slowly and quietly?”
“Not a bit of it. They ran almost... Went past as quick as a bat in the night.”
“Then they both appeared to be in a hurry?”
“Yes indeed they did.”
“Ah, ha, you see! Now when any one’s in a hurry he doesn’t go the longest way round, as a rule. And it would have been the longest way round for these two people to go from the big house to the gardener’s cottage—for the little house you saw was the gardener’s cottage. There is tall thick hedge that starts from the main building and goes right down through the garden, quite a distance past the gardener’s cottage. The vegetable garden is on the left side of this hedge and in the middle of the vegetable garden is the gardener’s cottage. But you could have seen the man and the woman only because they passed down the right side of the hedge, and this would have given them a detour of fifty paces or more to reach the gardener’s house. Nov do you think that two people who were very much in a hurry would have gone down the right side of the hedge, to reach a place which they could have gotten to much quicker on the left side?”
“No, that would have been a fool thing to do.”
“And you are quite sure that these people were in a hurry?”
“That’s dead sure. I scarcely saw them before they’d gone again.”
“And you didn’t see them come back?”
“No, at least I didn’t pay any further attention to them. When I thought it wouldn’t be any good to look about in there I turned around and dozed off.”
“And it was during this dozing that you thought you heard the shot?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right.”
“And you didn’t notice anything else? You didn’t hear anything else.”
“No, nothin’ at all, there was so much noise anyway. There was a high wind that night and the trees were rattling and creaking.”
“And you didn’t see anything else, anything that attracted your attention?”
“No, nothing—” Knoll did not finish his sentence, but began another instead. He had suddenly remembered something which had seemed to him of no importance before. “There was a light that went out suddenly.”
“Where?”
“In the side of the house that I could see from my place. There was a lamp in the last window of the second story, a lamp with a red shade. That lamp went out all at once.”
“Was the window open?”
“Yes.”
“There was a strong wind that night, might not the wind have blown the lamp out?”
“No, that wasn’t it,” said Knoll, rising hastily.
“Well, how was it?” asked Muller calmly.
“A hand put out the lamp.”
“Whose hand?”
“I couldn’t see that. The light was so low on account of the shade that I couldn’t see the person who stood there.”
“And you don’t know whether it was a man or a woman?”
“No, I just saw a hand, more like a shadow it was.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter much anyway. It was after nine o’clock and many people go to bed about that time,” said Muller, who did not see much value in this incident.
But Knoll shook his head. “The person who put out that light didn’t go to bed, at least not right away,” he said eagerly. “I looked over after a while to the place where the red light was and I saw something else.”
“Well, what was it you saw?”
“The window had been closed.”
“Who closed it? Didn’t you see the person that time? The moonlight lay full on the house.”
“Yes, when there weren’t any clouds. But there was a heavy cloud over the moon just then and when it came out again the window was shut and there was a white curtain drawn in front of it.”
“How could you see that?”
“I could see it when the lamp was lit again.”
“Then the lamp was lit again?”
“Yes, I could see the red light behind the curtain.”
“And what happened then?”
“Nothing more then, except that the man went through the garden.”
Muller rose now and took up his hat. He was evidently excited and Knoll looked at him uneasily. “You’re goin’ already?” he asked.
“Yes, I have a great deal to do to-day,” replied the detective and nodded to the prisoner as he knocked on the door. “I am glad you remembered that,” he added, “it will be of use to us, I think.”
The warder opened the door, let Muller out, and the heavy iron portal clanged again between Knoll and freedom.
Muller was quite satisfied with the result of his visit to the accused. He hurried to the nearest cab stand and entered one of the carriages waiting there. He gave the driver Mrs. Klingmayer’s address. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon now and Muller had had nothing to eat yet. But he was quite unaware of the fact as his mind was so busy that no mere physical sensation could divert his attention for a moment. Muller never seemed to need sleep or food when he was on the trail, particularly not in the fascinating first stages of the case when it was his imagination alone, catching at trifles unnoticed by others, combining them in masterly fashion to an ordered whole, that first led the seekers to the truth. Now he went over once more all the little apparently trivial incidents that had caused him first to watch the Thorne household and then had drawn his attention, and his suspicion, to Adele Bernauer. It was the broken willow twig that had first drawn his attention to the old garden next the Thorne property. This twig, this garden, and perhaps some one who could reach his home again, unseen and unendangered through this garden—might not this have something to do with the murder?
The breaking of the twig was already explained. It was Johann Knoll who had stepped on it. But he had not climbed the wall at all, had only crept along it looking for a night’s shelter. And there was no connection between Knoll and the people who lived in the Thorne house. Muller had not the slightest doubt that the tramp had told the entire truth that day and the day preceding.
Then the detective’s mind went back to the happenings of Tuesday morning. The little twig had first drawn his attention to the Thorne estate and the people who lived there. He had seen the departure of the young couple and had passed the house again that afternoon and the following day, drawn to it as if by a magnet. He had not been able then to explain what it was that attracted him; there had been nothing definite in his mind as he strolled past the old mansion. But his repeated appearance had been noticed by some one—by one person only—the housekeeper. Why should she have noticed it? Had she any reason for believing that she might be watched? People with an uneasy conscience are very apt to connect even perfectly natural trivial circumstances with their own doings. Adele Bernauer had evidently connected Muller’s repeated passing with something that concerned herself even before the detective had thought of her at all.
Muller had not noticed her until he had seen her peculiar conduct that very morning. When he heard Franz’s words and saw how disturbed the woman was, he asked himself: “Why did this woman want to be shown the spot of the murder? Didn’t she know that place, living so near it, as well as any of the many who stood there staring in morbid curiosity? Did she ask to have it shown her that the others might believe she had nothing whatever to do with the occurrences that had happened there? Or was she drawn thither by that queer attraction that brings the criminal back to the scene of his crime?”
The sudden vision of Mrs. Bernauer’s head at the garden gate, and its equally sudden disappearance had attracted Muller’s attention and his thoughts to the woman. What he had been able to learn about her had increased his suspicions and her involuntary exclamation when she met him face to face in the house had proved beyond a doubt that there was something on her mind. His open accusation, her demeanour, and finally her swoon, were all links in the chain of evidence that this woman knew something about the murder in the quiet lane.
With this suspicion in his mind what Muller had learned from Knoll was of great value to him, at all events of great interest. Was it the housekeeper who had put out the light? For now Muller did not doubt for a moment that this sudden extinguishing of the lamp was a signal. He believed that Knoll had seen clearly and that he had told truly what he had seen. A lamp that is blown out by the wind flickers uneasily before going out. A sudden extinguishing of the light means human agency. And the lamp was lit again a few moments afterward and burned on steadily as before. A short time after the lamp had been put out the man had been seen going through the garden. And it could not have been much later before the shot was heard. This shot had been fired between the hours of nine and ten, for it was during this hour only that Knoll was in the garden house and heard the shot. But it was not necessary to depend upon the tramp’s evidence alone to determine the exact hour of the shot. It must have been before half past nine, or otherwise the janitor of No.1, who came home at that hour and lay awake so long, would undoubtedly have heard a shot fired so near his domicile, in spite of the noise occasioned by the high wind. There would have been sufficient time for Mrs. Bernauer to have reached the place of the murder between the putting out of the lamp and the firing of the shot. But perhaps she may have rested quietly in her room; she may have been only the inciter or the accomplice of the deed. But at all events, she knew something about it, she was in some way connected with it.
Muller drew a deep breath. He felt much easier now that he had arranged his thoughts and marshalled in orderly array all the facts he had already gathered. There was nothing to do now but to follow up a given path step by step and he could no longer reproach himself that he might have cast suspicion on an innocent soul. No, his bearing towards Mrs. Bernauer had not been sheer brutality. His instinct, which had led him so unerringly so many times, had again shown him the right way when he had thrust the accusation in her face.
Now that his mind was easier he realised that he was very hungry. He drove to a restaurant and ordered a hasty meal.
“Beer, sir?” asked the waiter for the third time.
“No,” answered Muller, also for the third time.
“Then you’ll take wine, sir?” asked the insistent Ganymede.
“Oh, go to the devil! When I want anything I’ll ask for it,” growled the detective, this time effectively scaring the waiter. It did not often happen that a customer refused drinks, but then there were not many customers who needed as clear a head as Muller knew he would have to have to-day. Always a light drinker, it was one of his rules never to touch a drop of liquor during this first stage of the mental working out of any new problem which presented itself. But soft-hearted as he was, he repented of his irritation a moment later and soothed the waiter’s wounded feelings by a rich tip. The boy ran out to open the cab door for his strange customer and looked after him, wondering whether the man was a cranky millionaire or merely a poet. For Joseph Muller, by name and by reputation one of the best known men in Vienna, was by sight unknown to all except the few with whom he had to do on the police force. His appearance, in every way inconspicuous, and the fact that he never sought acquaintance with any one, was indeed of the greatest possible assistance to him in his work. Many of those who saw him several times in a day would pass him or look him full in the face without recognising him. It was only, as in the case of Mrs. Bernauer, the guilty conscience that remembered face and figure of this quiet-looking man who was one of the most-feared servants of the law in Austria.
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