you out of house and home,’ he said yesterday; ‘I keep on grumbling about the food, they just can’t cook too well for us!’ ”
There was no time to reply to this denunciation, for dismay suddenly changed the warder’s face. “Halt!” he bawled, tearing the carbine from his shoulder …
Pagel swung round and saw the prisoner Kosegarten running off into the pine trees …
“Out of the way!” roared the warder, hitting Pagel heavily on the breast with the barrel of his carbine.
“Don’t shoot, warder!” shouted voices. “We’ll fetch him.”
The man hesitated a moment, and two, three more figures disappeared among the pines.
“Halt!” he shouted and fired.
The report sounded feeble beside the uproar of the prisoners. There was shooting now at the top also. “Form fours!” roared voices.
Pagel, seeing a fifth man running to the pines, set after him.
“Stand still, fool! How can I shoot?” bellowed the officer.
Pagel hesitated, threw himself down, and the bullets whistled over him. They could be heard pattering on the trees. Five minutes later the men were drawn up ready to march off, numbered, and the names of the missing ascertained. Five men. Their names were: Liebschner, Kosegarten, Matzke, Wendt, Holdrian.
Shrewd Marofke, thought Pagel, ashamed of his own stupidity. How often had the warder told him not to enter into conversation with officers while on duty! How damned idiotic he had been to run after a fugitive when two men had just shown him that such pursuit excellently covered up a flight!
The prisoners were buzzing with excitement or they were very gloomy and silent; the warders agitated, morose and furious.
“You, Herr Pagel, go like hell and tell Marofke the whole stinking mess. My God, what a row he’ll make, how he’ll curse us! And he’ll be right—compared with him we’re idiots. Well, it’s all over with the harvest gang. Back to Meienburg this afternoon! Tell Marofke it’ll be a good two hours before we come along. We shall march round by the open fields; I won’t risk taking the lads through the woods. Now off with you!”
Pagel jumped on his bicycle and sped through the woods.
V
For the next three or four hours, Neulohe was buzzing and humming like a beehive before the queen leaves. Only here the leaving had already taken place—and not by the queen!
“I thought so,” was all that the principal warder said before flinging himself into the office to ring up the prison authorities, followed by a perspiring and breathless Pagel.
“You ought to have been a bit more careful with your people,” said Studmann angrily.
Conceited little Marofke, however, spent no time in justifying or clearing himself. “We must get them today before they’re out of the woods, or we’ll never get them!” he told Pagel. He did not so much as attempt to say, “I told you so.”
While the warder was telephoning, Pagel whispered to Studmann, astonished to find that what he himself had most at heart was to defend little Marofke. Little Marofke, however, thought quite otherwise. He had only two ideas: to lead the remainder of his party back to Meienburg without further loss, and to catch the fugitives as rapidly as possible. Clearly he was getting a frightful dressing down on the phone, but he did not wince, he made no reference to his rejected application. What alone interested him was what was going to happen now.
“There’s a man for you!” said Pagel.
“If he’s such a fine fellow, he shouldn’t have let them get away first,” Studmann muttered.
The principal warder hung up the receiver. “Herr von Studmann,” he reported in a very frigid and military manner, “the harvest gang at Neulohe will be withdrawn today. Warders for the removal of the men are coming at once from Meienburg. I should like to have ready at, say, three o’clock, two teams for the conveyance of effects. I myself will go to meet the gang and bring it to the barracks.”
“You yourself? Oh, really!” said Studmann bitterly. “And what about our potatoes?” He could foresee evil consequences.
Marofke ignored the thrust. “Will you, Herr von Studmann, get into touch with the forester, and perhaps the owner of the forest? In the next half-hour we must ascertain from the forest map where the fellows are likely to be. When exactly did they get away, Herr Pagel?”
“Round about half-past ten.”
“Well, we know the place; a plan must be drawn up—thus, they may have got as far as this, or here they have perhaps hidden themselves. Gendarmes will come, fifty, a hundred, perhaps soldiers, too. By evening it’ll be a real hunt.”
“Charming!” said Studmann.
“I myself will be back as soon as possible. You, Pagel, go at once to the Manor and ring up police headquarters in Frankfurt. They will give you instructions. Afterwards you will have to ring up all gendarme stations in the neighborhood.… The Polish frontier has to be watched and the way to Berlin cut off. The phone here is to be only for incoming calls, no out-going calls here at all; inform the post office of that.”
“My God!” cried Studmann, infected at last by the little man’s energy. “Is it really so dangerous?”
“Four of the men are relatively not dangerous,” said the principal warder.
“Off, Pagel!” cried Studmann. “Send the old gentleman to me!”
Pagel ran through the park. Passing Fraulein Violet, who said something, he called out: “Convicts escaped!” and ran on. Pushing aside old Elias, who let him in, he ran to the phone in the hall. “Hello, hello. Exchange. Police headquarters in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder. Urgent. Urgent. No, at once. I’ll hold on.…” In the doorways appeared frightened and astonished faces. Two housemaids looked at each other. What’s the meaning of that queer look? he thought. Then Violet came into the hall. “What’s up, Herr Pagel? The convicts?”
Noisily the door of the Geheimrat’s room opened. “Who’s bellowing in my house? In my house I do the bellowing!”
“Herr Geheimrat, please go to the office at once. Five convicts have made off.”
Upstairs a servant girl laughed hysterically.
“And because of that you want me to go to your office?” the Geheimrat beamed. “Do you think they’re going to come in order to look at me in your office? I told you at the time—get respectable people! Now I suppose every night I and my wife must look under the bed with a revolver as a torch.”
“This is Neulohe Estate,” said Pagel on the phone. “Neu-lo-he! On behalf of the administration of Meienburg Penitentiary I want to—”
“It’s all right!” came an equable voice at the end of the wire. “We’ve already heard from Meienburg. Who’s speaking? The bailiff? Well, you seem to be up to some fine larks. Couldn’t you have kept your eyes peeled a bit more? Now listen. Ring off, and in the meantime I’ll inform your exchange, and when it rings again it’ll be the exchange giving you all gendarme stations in your district. All you need say to them is: ‘Five convicts escaped; send every man to Neulohe—and jump to it.’ Do this as quickly as you can, all our lines are engaged; the frontier’s not thirteen miles off.…”
The Geheimrat had gone with his granddaughter to the office, nevertheless. Young Pagel went on telephoning; the servants were running about quite brainlessly. Sometimes one stood by him, panting, watching him and reading from his lips a message which was always the same. What crazy faces women can make when they’re frightened, he thought, himself genuinely excited, too. A little upset and a little unhappy. Is the lady upstairs in tears? She must already be fearing for her bit of life. And while he went on repeating the same old warning, he was able to hear in what different ways people reacted to it:
“You don’t say so!”
“Just when I’ve got rheumatism in my leg!”
“But what are convicts doing in Neulohe?”
“Is there a reward offered?”
“Well, well! But there, today’s Friday! It would happen when my wife’s cooked a chicken!”
