This way and that went the wild chase, between firs and junipers, the hound yelping, the men knocking in the dark against tree trunks. “I can hear her!” “Be quiet!” “Wasn’t that a woman screaming?”
The forest became more open, they advanced faster, and suddenly, fifty or sixty yards in front, there was a light between the branches, a beam white and brilliant …
“A car. He has a car!” cried someone. And they stormed forward. The engine started up, it roared, the glare flickered, became weaker.… And they were running in darkness.
They came to a halt. In the distance a light traveled away. A gendarme lowered his pistol—impossible to hit the tires.
They must hurry back to Neulohe! They must telephone; the fugitives could be followed in the Rittmeister’s car. All set off.
“Pagel,” called out Studmann impatiently, “aren’t you coming?”
“In a moment.”
The fat man held Pagel by the arm. “Listen, young man,” he whispered. “I won’t come with you, I’ll go back to Ostade. Those chaps are full of optimism because they’re on the track and it’s nothing to do with a traitor. Chasing political murderers is something they don’t like, although they have to. But you, young man, are the only sensible-looking one on the farm. Don’t deceive yourself or the others, especially the mother. Break it to her slowly.”
“What is it I’m to break to her?”
“When we were pushing through the thicket I too thought that he’d done it. But when we found the shoes …”
“We had disturbed him.”
“Perhaps. But he had calculated it to the minute. Pagel, I tell you in your worst dreams you couldn’t dream of a fellow like that. It’s possible, of course, that he will still do it, but I don’t think so. It’s much worse.… There are people like that. Generally, in healthy times, the others don’t let them advance. In a rotten diseased age they flourish like weeds.… You needn’t think, Pagel, that this fellow’s a human being. He’s a monster, a wolf who kills for the sake of killing.”
“But you say he won’t do it?”
“Do you know what that means, to be sexually enslaved? Can you imagine it? Dependent on the breath and the glance of such a monster, able to do nothing without his permission and will? There’s your little girl! And now he’s got away he will do the worst he can; continually he will almost murder her and then let her live a little. What he calls living! Just enough for the spark of life to experience the fear of death!”
There was a gust of wind in the trees.
“Pagel,” said the fat man suddenly, “I’m going now. We’re hardly likely to meet again, but it has been, as they say, a pleasure.”
“Pagel,” he said once again urgently, “pray to God that this mother never finds her daughter—she’d no longer be a daughter.”
He was gone without a sound, leaving Wolfgang Pagel alone in the dark and windy forest.
Chapter Fourteen
I
It was October. Neulohe grew increasingly damper, windier, colder. And more and more difficult did Wolfgang Pagel find it to collect the necessary people for the potato digging. Where in September three wagons packed with laborers had rattled on to the fields from the local town, in October it had come to one, bearing a few sullen women wrapped up in sacks and woolen shawls.
Swearing and complaining, they toiled through the sodden growth over fields which seemed only to grow larger. Already Pagel had had to raise their wages twice, and had this not been in kind, had he not paid them with potatoes—that support of life which can replace even bread itself—none would have come. In those October days the dollar rose from 242,000,000 marks to 73,000,000,000. Hunger crept through the entire country, followed by influenza. Unprecedented despair seized the people; every pound of potatoes was a fence between them and death.
Wolfgang Pagel was now the overlord of Neulohe Manor, the farm and the forest. No time now to stand among the potatoes and give out tokens. Next year’s rye had to be sown and the fields plowed. In the forest the cutting down of firewood had started, and unless one gingered up Kniebusch every day the forester would have taken to his bed and died.
Pagel would come on his bicycle to the potato field where old Kowalewski would meet him ever more and more hollow-eyed. “We can’t do it, young sir,” was his lament. “This way we shall be digging in January in snow and ice.”
Wolfgang would laugh. “We’ll do it, Kowalewski. Because we’ve got to. Because potatoes are bitterly needed in the town.” And because the estate bitterly needs the money for them, he thought.
“But we ought to have more people,” moaned Kowalewski.
“And where shall I get them?” Pagel was a little impatient. “Shall I have another prison gang sent?”
“Oh, Lord, no!” exclaimed old Kowalewski, horrified—much too horrified, thought Pagel, looking at the diggers. “They’re only townsfolk, they’ve no business here,” he said discontentedly. “The work’s too unfamiliar for them. If only we could get the people from Altlohe as well.”
“We’ll never get them!” declared Kowalewski angrily. “They steal their potato supplies from our clamps at night.”
“They certainly do that,” sighed Pagel. “Every day I see the holes and have to have them filled up. I am always intending to go out at night and see if I can catch one, Kowalewski, but I always fall asleep over supper.”
“It’s too much, what the young gentleman has to do. All the estate and the whole forest and all the pen- pushing—no one’s done all that. You need help.”
“Oh, nobody knows what will happen here.”
Both were silent a moment. “But those miserable potato thieves—that’s a matter for the police,” said Kowalewski. “The young gentleman ought to apply to them.”
“The police! Oh, no. We’re not in favor with them anymore, Kowalewski. We’ve made too much work for them in the last six months.” Both were silent. Each new load of potatoes seemed to emerge like a yellowish brown blessing from the darkness into the dawn. Now Pagel could leave again, having established how far the work had proceeded. He had something else to say, and he was no longer too weak to say something which might be unpleasant. It had to be said, and he would say it. “By the way, I saw your Sophie this morning in the village. So she’s still at home?”
The old man grew very embarrassed. “She has to look after her mother—my wife is ill,” he stuttered.
“You told me last time she was taking up a situation on the first of October. Now you say she has to look after her mother. You’re not telling me the truth, Kowalewski. That won’t do. If you occupy one of our cottages, she’s got to work.”
Kowalewski looked very pale. “I have no authority over the lass, young gentleman,” he said in excuse. “She takes no notice of what I say.”
“Kowalewski, old fellow, don’t be so flabby! You know yourself how much we need every hand, and you know too that if the overseer’s daughter is lazy, then those of the laborers will certainly be.”
“I’ll tell her what you say, young gentleman,” said Kowalewski, distressed.
“Yes, do, and tell her that otherwise I’ll put another family into your house as well. Then you’ll only have a parlor, bedroom and kitchen. Good day, Kowalewski, I’m damned hungry.”
Young Pagel got on his bicycle. He was satisfied that he’d finally brought the business with Sophie in order—
