“As a matter of fact, I’m a bit boozed, you know. I’ve been celebrating with a friend. Actually he isn’t a friend, but he thinks he is. Well, let the child have its pacifier. So I found myself here, I don’t know what it’s called, it was somewhere near. But I’ll find it all right. I’ve a marvelous memory for places.”
“Surely.”
“Let’s take this path on the left. I’ve forgotten your name for the moment, one gets acquainted with too many people in life, particularly the last few weeks; one’s got to work his way in first. But my memory for names is good, the Colonel’s always saying so.”
“What colonel? You’re not with the Army now, are you?” Pagel encountered a glance which was wary, suspicious, and not in the least drunken. He’s not so tipsy as he seems, he thought. Take care!
But Meier was laughing again. “Well, are you with the Army because you say Rittmeister to your boss?” he asked adroitly. “He’s bought himself a fine car, the old sod. Saw him today in Frankfurt scorching on a trial run—the world’s got to collapse nobly. What’s little Vi doing now?”
“Well, your car doesn’t seem to be here either.”
“Don’t pull a face or I’ll laugh. So I suppose you’ve been dropped, too? Is the Lieutenant still the only one? Lordie, what a girl! Love must be wonderful. Well”—in quite a different, a threatening, tone—“soon the Lieutenant will be dropped; he’s going to feel sick soon. He’d better wash his chest, he’ll be shot.”
“Perhaps you are rather jealous, Herr Meier?” inquired Pagel amiably. “That time you screamed in the night —I suppose that was because of him? Incidentally, I found the copy you made of the letter, inside the
“Oh, that stupid thing! Far as I’m concerned, you can blow your nose on it. Haven’t got any time nowadays for flea bites like that. We’ve got other things on tap. But there, a young chap from the country won’t understand about that. You’ve no idea what I’m earning now.”
“Oh, I can see it, Herr Meier.”
“Isn’t it so? Look at the rings, all real good stones. I have a pal who gets ’em for me at half price. And since I always pay only in foreign money …” Once again he stopped short, with the same intensely suspicious side-glance. But Pagel had not heard the treasonable word; he was following up another clue.
“Isn’t that a little dangerous, Herr Meier? To go walking about here alone in the forest with so much jewelry and money? Something might easily happen to you.”
“Don’t you believe it!” laughed Meier contemptuously. “What could happen then? Nothing’s ever happened to me before. You haven’t the least idea, man, of all I’ve been through—and nothing’s happened to me yet. Here,” he said, stamping with his foot on the earth, “here in this wood someone once walked behind me, for a quarter of an hour, with his revolver all the time on my nut—and was going to shoot me dead. Well, did he shoot me?”
“Funny things happen to you,” laughed Pagel, somewhat uncomfortably. “One would never have thought it. No doubt he was not really in earnest …”
“Him? He meant it all right.… The thing was loaded, and he only let me keep on walking because he wanted to get to a place a bit more secluded. So that they wouldn’t find my body straight away, of course.”
In these words there was something sinister and horrible. Pagel looked at the little man askance. What he said need not be true, but the fellow believed it was.… Threats were forming themselves on his lips.
“I’ll get the swine, though. If I was frightened, he’s going to be a hundred times as frightened. I escaped, but he won’t.…”
“Well, Herr Meier,” said Pagel coldly, “if the Lieutenant is ever found dead somewhere you can be quite certain the police will be told at once by me.”
Meier turned with a vicious stare. Of a sudden, however, his expression changed, his heavy blubber lips curled, his owl-like eyes smiled scornfully. “You think I’m such a fool as to shoot at the fellow? Shoot off the mark, most likely, and be done to death by the swine? That’d be a fine revenge! No, man! Trust old Meier! He’s got to be afraid, the swine. I’ll hound him down, rob him of his honor, everyone shall spit at him—and then, when there’s no way out for him anymore—then he can shoot himself, the swine! That and no other way!”
Triumphantly he stood before Pagel. There was no more intoxication to be seen, except that possibly the alcohol had inflamed his revengefulness and made him blab of things he otherwise carried locked within him. Pagel, watchful, was taking care not to let his disgust for the fellow become visible; he felt certain that behind all the threats much was hidden which it would be good to know. One must be clever and pump him, this Meier! But he could not hold back his youthfulness, the abhorrence of the young for whatever is sick, impure and criminal.
“You’re a fine lump of turd!” he said contemptuously, and turned to go.
“And what about it?” challenged Meier. “What’s that to do with you? Have I made myself? Have you made
“You believe that a good education drives all the swinishness out of one?” asked Pagel. “Some people feel quite happy even in filth.”
Meier looked evilly at him for a minute. Then he laughed. “Look here, why quarrel about that? I always think it’s a short life and a long death, so let’s see that we too have a decent time. And since money’s necessary for that, and a poor devil will never get any by being honest …”
“You get it by being dishonest. Only I don’t understand, Herr Meier, why you have it in for the Lieutenant so much. You won’t get any money, will you, if he’s done for?”
Now, however innocently Pagel had said this, immediately there was that same suspicious glance. But this time Meier didn’t reply. Growling, he turned into a fresh path. “Damn and blast it, where the devil’s the bloody car! I must be quite crazy. Aren’t we going round and round in a circle really?” Again he looked viciously at Pagel and murmured: “You needn’t worry about letting me go on by myself. You’re not a help to me, anyway.”
“I am afraid something might happen to you,” said Pagel politely. “Your fine rings, all that money …”
“I’ve already told you, nothing can happen. Who’s going to pinch rings in a forest?”
“Convicts,” said Pagel calmly, with a sharp eye on his man.
Meier did not turn a hair. “Convicts? What convicts?”
“Ours, from the harvest crew,” replied Pagel, convinced that his suspicion had been unjust. (But what was little Meier doing in the forest?) “In fact, five of them ran away this morning.”
“Damn and blast!” shouted Meier, and his fright was genuine. “They’re hiding here in the forest? You—you’re trying to be funny. Why, you yourself are walking about just the same.”
“Not at all!” said Pagel, half pulling the pistol from his trousers. “Besides that, I’m looking for the gendarmes. There are fifty of them, you know, ransacking the forest.”
“That beats everything,” said Meier, coming to a stop. “Five lags and fifty frogs—and me right in it with my bone-shaker! That can be painful. Lord, man, I must get my car right away. What was it called now? I’ve got it. The Black Dale! Do you know it?”
Pagel felt that the little man had known this name all along, had he wished to come out with it. Meier was looking at him suspiciously, too. Why? It was only a forest name, like any other. “I’ve never been there,” he said. “But I’ve seen it on the map. It’s very near Birnbaum and we’re going the whole time toward Neulohe.”
“Fool that I am.” Meier hit himself on the head with his fist. “Onwards then, man—what do you call yourself?”
“Pagel.”
“Keep your eyes open. In this sand even a worm could find a wheel mark. This way? Good. But is it the right way?”
“Oh, yes,” said Pagel. “But why are you so enormously upset all of a sudden? I thought that nothing could happen to you?”
“Yes, I’d like to see you in my place. Suppose everything’s messed up! Damnation! This is always my luck. That cursed drunk …”
“What’ll be messed up?”
“What’s that to do with you?”
“Well, I’d really like to know.”
“Then write to Aunt Dolly in Advice to the Lovelorn.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s not yet been settled that we’re really going to the Black Dale now.”
Meier, coming to a stop, fixed young Pagel with a look of hatred. He would certainly very much have liked to
