An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (29 page)

He had soon searched the little house, but the father’s room was empty, too. Once more the doctor called to her outside, but he knew it was no use. She had run away, perhaps to the old Professor, perhaps altogether.

“Disobedient, defiant little wretch,” thought the doctor wrathfully. “I shan’t trouble about her any more. Scared—scared of life. Bah! Nothing can be done with a coward. But the woman can’t be left, so I shall have to wait until the husband comes back. Imagine deserting a woman in that state—disgraceful! She ought to be ashamed of herself.”

In which both Professor Kittguss and Rosemarie each on his own account runs away

I
T IS AMAZING
how many inquisitive idlers can assemble in so small a place as Lüttenhagen. In any case, the Professor found it so and, after the first shock was over, he began to take some interest in his situation. The Lüttenhagers, large and small, thronged about him, talked and exchanged comments with the utmost unconcern. And these grew more and more outrageous and fantastic, as the resolute lady on the horse, after her first devastating query, vouchsafed no further information. She curtly ordered a couple of bystanders to fall in and march the prisoner to Kriwitz.

The little Thürke girl—“You know, the fair-haired brat that does the housemaid’s job at Schlieker’s”—had not merely been raped, but lay dead and buried under a heap of leaves in the Lüttenhagen-Tischendorf-Unsadel-Kriwitz forest. “Think of that! The old lecher.”

It was fortunate that the Professor’s Biblical studies had accustomed him to such strong language. He walked
on imperturbably between his two guards: early that morning on a fence in the forest he had grasped the purport of life, and to it he held fast. This incident must be part of his new life, and in some way connected with Rosemarie.

Only the lady, who rode immediately behind him, upset his smiling composure a little. Or, to be more exact, it was not so much the lady as the horse, whose nose almost touched his shoulders and blew its warm breath most unpleasantly down his neck.

They were now outside the village, and the mob of onlookers, except for a few abnormally persistent souls, had departed to their saucepans and their cowsheds. The Professor turned, and said gently to the formidable figure on the horse: “Madam, your horse keeps on blowing down my neck.”

Upon which she blew out a scornful cloud of cigar smoke, and said curtly: “What do you think Magistrate Schulz will have to say to you, eh?”

“Are you taking me to him?” said the Professor politely.

“Ssssst!” said the great lady. “I refuse to converse with you.” But she now rode at his side along the sandy road. The Professor smiled. He was convinced that everything had happened for the best, and that he could do Rosemarie no better service than to appear before the Board of Guardians in such company. It would mean a long and toilsome walk, for which the quadruped set far too quick a pace, but a short interview would set everything to rights. The Widow Müller would see that his belongings were duly sent from Berlin to Unsadel and it would be a real delight to put the Thürke bookcases in
order and fill the ugly gaps with his own venerable tomes.

Frau von Wanzka had now every opportunity to survey her captive. She did so, pulling energetically at her Brazilian cigar, and looked and pondered. Only the day before she had heard about this villainous Berliner who had abducted the Thürke girl, and now the old gentleman had fallen into her hands.

The fact was that he did not look in the least like a villain. It is an article of faith with most of us—in so far as we are not professionally concerned—that a criminal and a potential ravisher and murderer must wear the mark of Cain upon his forehead. But, though Frau von Wanzka eyed him narrowly, she could see no more than a very amiable old gentleman in whose candid countenance she could detect no hint of criminality.

“Now, then, pack off home, you lazy rascals!” she said to the remaining stragglers. “You’re not wanted here.”

The great lady, now left alone with the prisoner and his two guards, remained irresolute. She knew her own weakness far too well: a certain angry impatience led her to make mistakes, rather than hold her hand. Had she been hasty? No, she had acted at the instance of the magistrate; besides, the man had left the inn without paying his bill, and had obviously lied about his arrival in Lüttenhagen.

And yet, and yet. . . . His face and the cheerful way he marched along between his guards—

“Not so fast there,” she said. “Can’t you see he’s all out of breath?”

“I am much obliged,” said the old gentleman. He stopped, pulled out a large yellow silk handkerchief, and wiped his face.

At this the great lady’s heart softened still more. At home in a cupboard was a pile of big yellow handkerchiefs just like this that had belonged to her father. Mentally she traversed the eight miles to Kriwitz, and
mildly reflected that it would be much more comfortable to go to her house at Tischendorf, which was only two miles away, and there get a carriage.

If he was a criminal, she thought—and, of course, he must be—he was an extremely clever one. However, it was Schulz’ job to deal with him, not hers, so she might as well take him in the carriage. “We’ll turn off to the right, Pagel,” she said, “to Tischendorf.”

“Very good, ma’am,” said Pagel and they turned down the road to Tischendorf.

The little procession now marched in this order: first the great lady, then squat red-faced Pagel, then the prisoner, and finally Jansen, tall, thin, and lanky. Frau von Wanzka was consequently the first to catch sight of the forest clearing called the Old Tar-Oven, and what she saw there made her raise a warning finger, and come to a halt. The others stopped softly beside her horse, and on the sunlit clearing, not fifty yards away, saw a buck driving a doe before him. It was a lovely, peaceful picture. They all looked at it in silence, and even Pagel smiled.

“It’s the six-pointer,” whispered Frau von Wanzka. “That fool of a forester kept on telling me it had shifted to Kriwitz. I’ll go this very evening. . . .”

But what she meant to do that very evening remained undisclosed. A shot rang out, the buck bounded into the air and collapsed, while the doe darted into the forest. “Well, I’ll be damned!” roared Frau von Wanzka. “It’s a dirty poacher—he must be somewhere over there. Come on, men!”

She was off at a gallop. The men dashed after her, leaving the Professor alone and forgotten at the end of the clearing.

“Well, that’s that,” exclaimed Frau von Wanzka peevishly half an hour later, as she emerged into the clearing with Pagel and Jansen after a futile hunt for the poacher. “Ah, I might have expected it. He’s gone, and we shan’t catch that amiable old ruffian again in a hurry. Go along to the house, men, and see that the Lüttenhagen folk keep quiet about this business. We haven’t exactly distinguished ourselves today. Yes, that’s right, Pagel, sling the beast across the saddle in front of me: let’s be thankful that’s not gone, anyway. It makes me sick to think of my grand six-pointer shot by that rascal under my very nose. Stop, Jansen. You can tell the landlady that I’ll pay up the old man’s seventy-five pfennigs. She shan’t lose because I’m a fool.”

Whereupon Frau von Wanzka rode away in rather a disconsolate mood with the buck across her saddlebows. It had just dawned upon her that she had had no business to leave an abductor of children and a potential murderer alone in the forest, while she was trying to catch a poacher. In the words of the old saying, it was like killing a louse on an adder.

“You old fathead,” she said to herself, stopping to light another cigar. “Well, when I think of the old villain’s face and his yellow silk handkerchief, I almost hope I shall see him standing on the steps in front of my little home. But that’s just my childlike faith, which has got me into trouble more than once.”

On that point she proved right; the Professor was not standing on the steps, and he had not been seen.

He must have slipped across into Prussia and now nothing could be done but telephone Schulz, who was likely to be a very angry man. But she wouldn’t be
shouted down and for the time being it was not he who shouted, but she: at Sergeant Thode.

“An important case, eh? Rubbish, Thode. A couple of tramps, I dare say. They can wait. You call him at once, Thode, or I’ll—” And fortunately for her, Thode did call him at once.

But she was really out of luck that day. Schulz did not shout, he was very polite and on the spot and much interested. Yes, Rosemarie had come back long ago. She was with the Schliekers again, and the old man was a harmless scholar. Berlin had been questioned and his reputation was found to be excellent.

“My dear Magistrate!” protested the great lady, as she recalled that exodus from Lüttenhagen.

“Yes, such things happen now and then: there was good ground for suspecting the man yesterday, but the charges have proved quite unfounded.”

“Schulz!” said the great lady in an agonized tone, and shuddered to recall how she had addressed the old man before the whole village.

“Of course, I don’t blame you in the least.”

“Really!—”

“You acted with perfect propriety.”

“Indeed?—”

“It is fortunate that the affair more or less settled itself, without serious damage to any of the parties.”

“But what about my six-point buck!” cried Frau von Wanzka, really furious now.

But Schulz had hung up the receiver, for he was in a hurry with half the infuriated population of a village waiting for him in his office, all buzzing like hornets, and a pile of writs for slander on his desk. Before he had been
called to the telephone, he had almost persuaded them, or rather shouted them, into a settlement. But now the rising hum of voices from his office warned him that there would be a fresh and flourishing crop of charges when he returned.

Frau von Wanzka shouted into the telephone—but in vain; Magistrate Schulz did not reply, and no further answer came.

Meanwhile Rosemarie ran lightly through the forest.

When she went out to look for Paul Schlieker, she had not intended to run away from young Doctor Kimmknirsch in this somewhat shabby fashion. But she had gone into the barn where she found the little dogcart, with Hütefritz’ bent and broken bicycle on which she had ridden into Kriwitz with Philip tied behind it. There could have been no more vivid reminder of the Schliekers’ villainy. And the mystery as to how it could have found its way into the Schliekers’ hands and into the Schliekers’ barn only deepened her terror of their dark designs.