“Yes, I know what we shall find
They quickened their steps, but those in front seemed also to have gone faster, and they were a minute too late; the others were all round him.
There was a murmur, the wind passed overhead. But it was quiet in the Black Dale as the circle of men swayed here and there—the white beam of the doctor’s torch lay intolerably brilliant on that which had once been a face.
“Dug his own grave, too! Quite off his head.”
“But where’s the girl?”
Murmuring. Silence.
Yes, there was no doubt about it, this was the Lieutenant of whom Pagel had so often heard and had once so wished to meet. There he lay, a very quiet, a very dubious figure—to be frank, a pretty bemired heap of rags. It was incomprehensible that this should ever have been the object of hate and love. With an inexplicable feeling of indifference, almost of repulsion, Pagel looked down at the thing. “Were you worth such great things?” he might have asked.
The doctor stood up. “Undoubtedly suicide,” he declared.
“Does any one of the gentlemen from Neulohe know the man?” asked a gendarme.
Pagel and von Studmann looked at one another across the circle.
“Never seen him,” replied Studmann.
“No,” said Pagel, and looked round for the fat detective. But, as he had expected, he was nowhere to be seen.
“This is the place, isn’t it, where …?”
“Yes,” said Pagel. “Yesterday afternoon I had to come here to make a statement. This is the place where the Entente Commission confiscated an arms dump.”
“The dead man unknown, then,” said a voice in the background, decisively.
“But unmistakably suicide,” burst forth the doctor, as if putting something right.
There was a long silence. In the feeble torch light the faces were almost surly.
“Where’s the weapon?” finally asked the man with the bloodhound.
There was a stir.
“No, it’s not here. We scoured the place. It couldn’t fall far away.”
Again that long reluctant silence. It’s like an assembly of ghosts, thought Pagel, extremely unhappy. And he tried to get nearer the dog, so that he could stroke its beautiful head. Had they all forgotten the girl?
But one of them now spoke. “And where is the girl?”
Silence again, but tenser.
“Perhaps—it’s quite simple,” said a gendarme. “He shot himself first, and she picked up the weapon to do the same. But she wasn’t able to, and has taken it with her.”
A thoughtful silence.
“Yes, that would be it. You are right,” said another.
“So we had better quickly carry on the search at once.”
“That can take all night! We’re never lucky at Neulohe.”
“Off! No dawdling now.”
A hand from behind gripped Pagel’s shoulder, a voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t turn your head. I’m not here! Ask the doctor how long the man’s been dead.”
“A moment, please,” called out Pagel. “Can you tell us, doctor, how long the man here has been dead?”
The country doctor, a thick-set man with a peculiarly sparse black beard, looked hesitatingly at the body, then at Wolfgang. His face cleared a little. “I have not the experience of my colleagues attached to the police. May I inquire why you ask?”
“Because I saw Fraulein von Prackwitz asleep in her bed at half-past twelve.”
The doctor looked at his watch. “It’s half-past three now,” he said quickly. “At half-past twelve this man had been dead for hours.”
“Then someone else must have brought Fraulein von Prackwitz here,” concluded Pagel.
The hand, the heavy hand which all this time had rested like a load on his shoulder, was removed and a slight noise in the rear betrayed the fat man’s departure.
“That knocks out your explanation, Albert!” said an irritated gendarme.
“How?” retorted the other. “She could have come here alone and found the dead man. She takes the revolver, goes on …”
“Rubbish!” said the man with the bloodhound. “Are you blind? There were two trails, a man’s and a woman’s, all the way. This is a bad business and it goes far beyond our ability.… We shall have to report a murder.”
“This is suicide,” contradicted the doctor.
“We have to look for the girl,” Pagel reminded them. “Quickly.”
“Young gentleman,” said he with the bloodhound, “you know something or you have a suspicion; otherwise you wouldn’t have asked that question of the doctor. Tell us what you have in mind. Don’t leave us in darkness!”
Everyone looked at Pagel, who was thinking of that time when Violet had kissed him. He would gladly have felt now the firm hand on his shoulder, the voice in his ear. But when we have to make a decision, we’re on our own, and we have to be. The words “I just don’t know” rang desperately in his head. He listened to the words. Then he heard the rough voice again, that evil yet sad sound with which she had spoken: Blood will flow.… Blood will flow. Then he looked from the dead into the faces of the men. “The blood wants to go back to where it comes from.”
“I know nothing,” he said. “But perhaps I have guessed something.… This morning Rittmeister von Prackwitz dismissed his servant after a serious quarrel. The maid there told me this evening that it was about a letter which the Fraulein had written.… The Fraulein was very young and this servant was, according to what I know of him, a very evil person. I could imagine …” He looked questioningly at the men.
“Blackmail then! That sounds a bit different,” cried a gendarme. “None of these damned affairs of traitors, arms dumps, secret tribunals!”
His colleague cleared his throat loudly, almost menacingly. “Let the hound smell the vest. Don’t move, anyone! Take Minka in a circle round the hollow; everything’s stamped down here.”
Within five minutes the hound, tugging at the lead, shot up a little path. The men hurried after it, out of the hollow and up a glade, further and further from Neulohe.
Suddenly the detective was at Pagel’s side again. “You did that very well,” he said approvingly. “Have you guessed it at last, then?”
“Is it really true?” In his shock Pagel stopped. “It can’t be.”
“On, young man! We’re in a hurry now, though I’m convinced we’ll be too late. Of course it’s true—who would it be else?”
“I don’t believe it. That gray, fishlike brute!”
“I must have seen him on the streets of Ostade yesterday,” said the fat detective, “I had a sort of inkling of his face. But one sees too many faces these days which look like the faces of past or future criminals. God help the chap if I find him!”
“If we can only find her.”
“Stop. Perhaps your wish has just been fulfilled.”
There was a delay. At right angles to the glade the bloodhound, tugging, went into a thickly wooded coppice of firs. Battling with the branches and aided by the torch, the men pushed on. No one spoke. It was so quiet that the animal’s impatient panting sounded like the strokes of a steam engine.
“The scent’s quite fresh,” whispered the fat man to Pagel, and forced his way through the undergrowth.
But the little clearing they came to, hardly larger than a boxroom, was empty. The hound with a yelp sprang forward, and its master bent down. “A woman’s shoe,” he cried.
“And another,” exclaimed the fat detective. “Here he … On, gentlemen! We’re just behind him. He won’t be able to go very fast with the girl in stockings. You can praise your dog, man. Onward!”
They ran.
