An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (15 page)

“A fair number, sir.”

“You must have a good many if you were stopping rat holes for three hours—they were knocking at least that long,” observed the magistrate.

“Well, yes, there are a good many,” Schlieker admitted dubiously. He smelt the trap, but did not see it.

“And you keep apples in the cellar!” shouted the magistrate. “You’re lying, Schlieker. The rats wouldn’t leave you a single apple.”

“Rats don’t eat apples,” said Schlieker in an effort to retrieve himself.

“You expect a country magistrate to believe that, you oaf?” yelled Schulz. “Thode, do rats eat apples?”

“Mine do, sir,” growled Thode. “Just as many as they can get, sir.”

“There!” cried the magistrate triumphantly. “We’ve caught you, Schlieker. Your wife wasn’t sorting apples, so you must have heard the knocking!”

“Yes, sir,” said Schlieker calmly.

“Eh?” said the magistrate, in bewilderment. “Why didn’t you open the door, then?”

“Because we were ashamed.”

“Ashamed? Whatever for?”

“Because the whole village of Unsadel was looking on, and we come from Biestow.”

“Indeed,” observed the magistrate. “By the way, Schlieker, which of the back wheels on your cart had been broken?”

“It was the left front wheel, sir. But it wasn’t broken; the cart was all right.”

“All right! Then that was a lie too?”

“Yes, sir. But I won’t tell any more lies now, sir. I see you’re one too many for me.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to try any of your dodges on me, Schlieker?” yelled the little magistrate. “How dare you address me in that fashion! Now I suppose you’re going to tell me another pack of lies? . . .”

“No, sir, I’m going to tell the truth now.”

“Then you didn’t mean to hand over the children?”

“Yes, I did, sir,” said Paul, with a very blue glitter in his eyes. “I really meant to give up the children yesterday, but that little toad Rosemarie fooled me and I couldn’t.”

“Ha,” said Schulz in high good humor. “That’s more like it. Lying is more in your line than confessing. Well, then, what steps did you take to hand them over?”

“At five
A.M
. I put the Thürke girl and the children into the boat. . . .”

“Oh, so your cousin at Biestow didn’t have the boat?”

“No, sir, that’s only what I told Herr Gneis.”

“Only! You two-faced liar! Go on: why into the boat?”

“Because I wanted them to go by water. . . .”

“That’s another lie, Schlieker!” roared Schulz. “Thode, can you get to the Welfare Office from Unsadel by boat?”

“Only during Noah’s flood, sir.”

“There you are, Schlieker.”

“I’m telling the truth, sir. I arranged with the brat to meet me on the road to Kriwitz, where the three silver birches stand by the lake.”

“But it would have been much simpler to go through the village.”

“We couldn’t face it, sir, my wife and I. We didn’t want the village folk to know we had to give up the children. That’s why I sent them with Rosemarie across the lake to the other end of the village, and I was going to meet her there and put them on the cart.”

“You couldn’t face what? You mean you didn’t want the people to gloat over you, eh?”

“Just that, sir. But when I got to the place there wasn’t a sign of the children. That little brute Rosemarie! I waited and waited—she never came. At last I went home, and my wife and I searched the shore for hours, but, of course, it was no use. And that’s why I didn’t open the door, sir, when they knocked. I just didn’t know what to say. They wouldn’t have believed my story, and I couldn’t produce the children.”

The magistrate had listened to all this with dispassionate attention. Then he picked up Constable Gneis report, glanced at it, and put it away with an air of deep resolve.

“Did anyone see you drive through the village, Schlieker?” he asked.

“Maybe, maybe not, sir. On the way out it was still quite dark, and on the way home I was too busy wondering where the children had got to and the girl too.”

“Ah,” said the magistrate, “ah.” He stroked his beard meditatively, and looked steadily at Paul. But Paul stood unmoved; he had learnt how to wait.

“Now listen to me,” began the magistrate with great deliberation. “Have you had any quarrel lately with Rosemarie Thürke, such as might induce her to treat you in this way? I had thought you were getting on better: she has not appeared here for some time.”

“That is easy to understand,” said Schlieker. Then he aimed his poisoned arrow, drew the bow, and let fly. “She doesn’t bother about you or the Guardians since she’s been going around with that nasty old man of hers.”

“With whom?” yelled the magistrate, springing from the high chair as though the arrow had struck him. “What do you mean?”

“Just this, sir,” pursued Schlieker coolly. “Yesterday evening an old codger turned up at my place and started talking through his nose about the soul and its salvation. He must be pretty near seventy. Said he was a friend of the late Pastor Thürke and wanted to see how Rosemarie was getting on.”

Schlieker cleared his throat scornfully.

“He wouldn’t go away, but kept saying he must see Rosemarie and speak to her. He kissed her, too—the girl’s hardly sixteen—so I locked him in my coalshed, while I had a word with Gottschalk. But in the morning he had gone, and I have an idea who let him out, for Marie disappeared with the children just afterwards. The old man put her up to it, sir, or I’ll eat a pound of arsenic. . . .”

But the magistrate slumped back bewildered in his chair and groaned. “Either you’ve gone mad, Schlieker, to tell me such a story, or . . . no, I know a thing or two about Rosemarie Thürke. That child and an old man? It’s out of the question!”

“But I dare say the child herself is quite innocent, sir,” said Schlieker, in an insinuating tone. “Of course he acts like a kind and fatherly old gentleman, but he’s an old rascal at heart. He’s taken my runaway boy, Philip Münzer, along too.”

“That’s enough out of you, Schlieker,” exclaimed the magistrate angrily. “What on earth has your half-witted boy got to do with it?”

“Just this: he’s the only person that knows the old fellow’s Berlin address. He’s been to see him there—ask Herr Gneis.”

“There must be something in all this,” muttered the magistrate. “No one could have invented it. Sergeant, get Constable Gneis at once. Then go to Herr Mühlen-feldt and ask him whether he has seen anything of his ward, Thürke, in the company of an old man. And then bicycle over to Frau von Wanzka and ask her the same question. Of course, if you see the girl or the old fellow, bring them along at once.”

“Very good, sir.”

The door slammed and Sergeant Thode departed.

“And now listen to me, Schlieker,” said the magistrate, addressing his prisoner in quite a different tone, “we both know you’re a bad lot, but we won’t talk about that now. . . .”

“Sir . . .” began Schlieker indignantly.

“Silence!” roared the magistrate. “Whether you exonerate yourself of this business over the children, I don’t yet know. What you have told me may be true, or it may not—we’ll soon get to the bottom of that. But as for this story about the old man, you must tell me the truth and nothing but the truth, or you’ll get to know me, Schlieker, as you have never known me before.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Schlieker gravely.

“I let a lot of things slide in my district. I’ve freed a young hoodlum who pulled a knife in a dance hall, but I won’t have an old man playing about with a girl who is hardly more than a child, understand?”

“Certainly not, sir! If only she hadn’t let him out of
my coalshed. Perhaps she’s not a child any more by now?—”

“What did the man look like, Schlieker? Describe him exactly.”

Three hours later, exactly at noon, as the village sat down to its dinner, Paul Schlieker from Biestow came back to his home in Unsadel. He was in high good humor; his story had all but knocked that conceited little fellow off his perch.

It certainly looked like a case of abduction below the age of consent; that was what had infuriated little Schulz. For the magistrate was an austere little man, and very severe on any offenses against morals. And now, without having even seen the old gentleman, he had taken a violent dislike to him, and whatever doubts Constable Gneis might cast on Schlieker’s veracity, the magistrate would believe the story. There was enough evidence in its favor, from the runaway boy to the complete disappearance of the child.

Paul Schlieker had become an important, indeed, a commendable person. He had kept his eyes wider open than Constable Gneis, and there were no grounds for holding him in jail.

Thus it came to pass that Paul Schlieker entered Unsadel in fine feather. He was not going to creep back like a released criminal. The Unsadelers, who had all been so eager to watch his departure in charge of the constable, should now have the pleasure of witnessing his return.

By a stroke of luck, on the way from Kriwitz to Unsadel, he had fallen in with old Lau, who tramped
about the countryside buying hides. By a little persuasion and the promise of a calfskin gratis (moth-eaten, but he didn’t mention that to Lau), he managed to borrow a flute that lured the villagers from their doorways.

In this fashion Paul Schlieker made his way to Unsadel, and just as he passed the windmill and entered the village, he set the flute to his lips and burst into one of old Lau’s insinuating cadences.

The Unsadelers promptly jumped up from their dinner tables, and Pa said to Ma: “Silly old goat, why on earth does he come at dinnertime? Ma, you hold on to him while I fetch the cowhide down from the loft, and aren’t there three rabbitskins behind the stove in Grandpa’s room?”

But when they came out, they beheld, not the old cringing Lau, but their fellow villager Paul Schlieker. Sweeping off his hat he grinned malignantly at the villagers who stood in their doorways laden with hides and pelts. He rejoiced in their abuse, every curse they flung at him warmed his heart; and when they merely stood, pale with fury, and spat at him, he made an extra bow.

Thus he made his way through the village, bobbing and grimacing and piping on his flute, the very image of hatred and malignity. Outside the fire-engine shed he gave a final flourish, and found himself wishing that his Mali had been there to enjoy the scene.

But as he turned the corner of the last house—it was now only fifty paces along the garden fence to his own yard gate—he stopped abruptly. He had seen a rather tall schoolboy half-concealed behind a gate post and a bush, peering into the Schlieker garden and watching Frau Schlieker, who was digging.

Schlieker stood and looked. The boy remained motionless, watching with remarkable patience. Schlieker stepped off the road on to the edge of the grass and walked softly along until he recognized the boy, then stopped again. The boy was the son of Farmer Gau, and Schlieker’s first idea that this young rascal must be after Marie (she had no lack of admirers) was obviously wrong. For he knew that since Marie had lived with the Gaus, she loathed them and everything about them.

However, here was one of the Gau boys hanging around the Schlieker garden at midday dinnertime; that certainly meant something, probably trouble. Although Schlieker was at odds with everybody in the village, the Gaus were his archenemies. The feud dated back to the time when he had got Marie away from them, and shortly afterwards one of the Schlieker cows had died of flatulence from eating clover. To that day Schlieker was convinced that the Gaus had deliberately fed the animal with damp clover—though when he charged them before the magistrate, the case was dismissed with that official’s usual contumely.

Schlieker hurriedly stepped behind a hawthorn bush while the boy glided softly along the fence to the yard door, staring at the woman in the garden. She did not look up, and the only sound was the clink of the spade as it struck a stone.

The boy slipped along the fence, Schlieker slipped along the hedge, the woman went on digging in the garden. At the yard gate the boy stopped and looked cautiously about him. “Aha, my lad,” thought Schlieker. “Now for Bello.”

But Bello did not bark, and Otsche Gau glided on.
His orders had been merely to keep guard, but he had since received a message from the old cowshed to the effect that, if the coast were clear, he was to try to get some clothes and shoes for Rosemarie.

Well, for the last quarter of an hour the woman had been outside, and she seemed to have started on a longish job in the garden. No one could be in the yard, because, or so the youth imagined, Paul Schlieker was safely in the lockup. Otsche therefore thought he might risk a daring coup.

Crossing the yard the boy gently opened the back door and found himself in a kitchen buzzing with flies. He remembered the house from the time when Rosemarie had lived with them and he knew that he had to go through the door beside the cooking stove.

This he did, and found himself in what had been the babies’ room. He looked through the window into the garden. There beneath him, not six paces away, stood Frau Schlieker, still digging. Only a window separated them, and it never occurred to her to look up; in any case from where she stood in the daylight she could not have seen him against his dark background. Nevertheless, his heart began to hammer in his chest. He kept reminding himself that he was doing nothing wrong, that the clothes belonged to Rosemarie, but his heart still throbbed and his whole body poured sweat.