entrusting them to an inexperienced assistant warder. Yes, they would put all the blame on him, and in addition there would be the reports from the farm management and the gendarme officer!
Marofke had been long enough in the service to know that he could not be pensioned off because of this affair; but he wouldn’t be promoted. And he had counted on that this coming autumn. Krebs, the head warder, was retiring at Michaelmas, and he had expected to get the post; he ought to. It was not vanity or ambition which made him wish for this advancement; it was something else. At home he had a daughter, a somewhat old-maidish creature of whom he was very fond; and she would have liked passionately to become a teacher. With the salary of head warder he might perhaps have been able to help her—now she would have to become a cook. Life was idiotic. Five men had run away because a young fellow chattered to a warder on duty, and therefore he wouldn’t be able to gratify his daughter’s dearest wish.
He looked up. Young Pagel had joined him on the bench; with a smile he was holding out his cigarette case and saying: “Idiots!”
Marofke would have liked to refuse. Yet he felt obliged to this young fellow for following him from the office, for letting everyone see him sitting beside a disgraced man. He means well, he thought, and took a cigarette. How could the other know what were the consequences of his foolishness? Everyone committed blunders.
“I’ll take care, officer,” said Pagel, “that it’s I who make the report to your administration. And it shall be of a kind to please you.”
“That’s nice of you. But it’s not worth while your spoiling your own position here, since it won’t help me much. But pay attention to what I’m now going to tell you. I won’t speak to anyone else; they wouldn’t listen to me anyway. Did you understand what the gendarme officer was saying?”
“I was only in there a minute, but what he said seemed clear to me, officer.”
“Good. Not for me, though. And why not? Because they’re the sort of things a man thinks of when he doesn’t know convicts. I’d be all right if Wendt and Holdrian only were at large. They’re stupid enough to carry out half a dozen bad burglaries and perhaps hold-ups, just for a little food and clothes on the way. Even if they do reach Berlin they’ll have let themselves in for six to eight years’ penal servitude, only to get there. But they’ll never do it. Every burglary will be a clue.”
“What will they do, then?”
“Well, Matzke, Liebschner and Kosegarten are with them. Bright lads who think a bit more about what they do. Their idea is always: whatever we take’s got to be worth it. They won’t break into any farmhouse at the risk of a year in jug at least, just to find some plowboy’s old corduroy jacket, which they wouldn’t even dream of wearing.”
“But they’ll have to obtain clothes somewhere. They won’t get far in prison dress.”
“Of course,” said Marofke, putting his finger to his nose with that old superiority which looked so conceited. “And since they’re cunning and have thought of that, and because they’re prudent and don’t want to steal clothes, what follows?”
Pagel didn’t know.
“Someone will get clothes for them,” Marofke gently explained. “They have accomplices here in Neulohe, one or several. You can take it from me that hard-boiled lads like Kosegarten and Liebschner don’t take a powder without any preparation. It’s all been arranged, and because I didn’t find out how they arranged it—for it was done here by notes or signs, they couldn’t have done it in Meienburg!—because I’ve been stupid, it’s really quite right in the end for everyone to blame me.”
“But, officer, how could they, here under all our eyes? And who in Neulohe would have lent themselves to such a thing?”
The warder shrugged his shoulders. “If you only knew how cunning someone is who wants to regain his freedom! You yourself spend your time thinking of a hundred different things, but a prisoner is thinking all day and half the night about one thing only: how to get away. You talk about our eyes! We see nothing. When a convict goes out to work and starts to roll himself a cigarette and finds he has no tobacco and chucks the cigarette paper down in the mud, right in front of you, you march on with the gang. And three minutes later along comes another in the know and picks it up and reads what’s scribbled on it.… Perhaps nothing—it’s only folded in such and such a way, which means this and that.”
“It seems a little improbable.”
“Nothing’s improbable with them,” said Marofke, now in his element. “You just think of a prison, Pagel: iron and cement, locks and bolts, and chains too. And walls and doors and threefold supervision and guards outside and inside! Yet you can take my word for it, there isn’t a prison in the whole world which is absolutely shut. On one side an enormous organization, and on the other an individual in the middle of iron and stone! Yet time and again we hear that a letter’s gone out and no one saw it, that money or a steel file has come in, and no knows how. If that can be done in prison with all its organization, isn’t it possible out here in our unguarded work gangs, under our very eyes?”
“It’s always possible,” said Pagel, “that they could manage to write a letter. But there must be someone here also who is in league with them, who wants to read it.”
“And why shouldn’t there be someone, Pagel? What do you know about it? What do I? It’s only necessary for someone to be living here who was in the war with one of my lads. They’ve only to look at each other and the glance of my one says, ‘Help, comrade!’—and the plot is on foot. Someone here may once have been on remand, and my chap was in the next cell on the same business; and every night through the cell window they told one another about their troubles—the damage is done! But it needn’t be that. That would be an accident, and it doesn’t need to be that. Women are not accidents; everywhere and always they come into it.”
“What women?” asked Pagel.
“What women, Pagel? All women. That is, I obviously don’t mean all of them, but there’s a certain type everywhere which is as fond of such fellows as many people are of venison when it’s really high. They think a convict who has had time to rest himself is better than an ordinary man, is more knowing, so to speak—you understand what I mean. Women like that would do anything to get one in their bed all to themselves. Harboring felons and so on, they don’t consider that, they’ve never heard of it.…”
“There may be such women in Berlin, officer,” objected Pagel, “but surely not in the country?”
“How do you know, young man, what things are like here, or the women either?” asked Marofke, immensely superior. “You’re a nice chap, the only one who’s been decent to me here, but you’re a bit hazy. You always think things aren’t so bad after all, and that what’s eaten isn’t as hot as what’s cooked. Young fellow, you ought to have grasped early this morning that sometimes it can be even hotter.”
Pagel looked uncomfortable, with an expression like a cat’s in a thunderstorm. And it really was thundering, and uncomfortably so.
“I explained to you this morning all my ideas about it,” said Marofke, sighing. “I didn’t believe you could help me much, but I did think, The young man’ll keep his eyes open. But that’s not exactly what you’ve done, Lieutenant; you wouldn’t have got the Iron Cross for that in wartime. But there, it’s all right, I know what a young man’s like. But please do this for me now—do keep your eyes open a little the next few days. I don’t think all the gendarmes together, whatever they say, will catch my five chaps. You’re here, though, and it would be very nice if you could write to the administration in a few days’ time: We’ve got the five and Marofke told us how to catch them.… What do you think?”
“Gladly, officer,” said Pagel obligingly. “And what is it you think I ought to do?”
“Man, have you got cotton wool in your ears?” Marofke jumped up. “Haven’t you any brains? I can’t tell you anything more. Keep your eyes open, that’s all. I don’t ask anything else. No need to play the detective or skulk in corners, nor even try to be cunning—only keep your eyes open!”
“All right, then,” said Pagel, rising. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You know what to do,” replied Marofke hurriedly. “I’m convinced that they have accomplices in the village, one or more, probably girls, but not necessarily. And while the police are all over the place here, they’ll keep under cover in the woods, in the village, who knows! It’s you who must use your eyes. In three or four days’ time, when it’s a bit quieter, our old pals will set forth, properly, by train, and well dressed.…”
“I’ll look out,” promised Pagel.
“Do it, too,” Marofke begged. “Looking out is harder than you think. And there’s another thing you ought to know. What they have on their backs.…”
“Yes?”
