forester is—”
“Stop!” shouted the furious Geheimrat. “Stop! I wish I hadn’t had the other three minutes now. Nothing but bad news … Well, then, at ten—ten o’clock at the station. Good-by.”
“And not an inquiry after his granddaughter!” said Pagel, hanging up the receiver. “Like son, like father—both wretches.”
“Ah, well,” said Amanda, “what do you expect? All he thinks about is getting his farm back again. But how am I to go to the post office now and get the rooms ready in the Manor?”
“Give me back the money,” said Pagel, putting it in his pocketbook. “I have a kind of feeling that I shall be turned out tomorrow, and in that case I can, after all, hand it over to madam personally. Let us save the postage.”
“Good,” said Amanda. “I will get hold of a few women in the village. There will have to be something to eat there as well.”
“Go to it then! I’ll sit down for a little while with my books; it won’t help, of course, I’ll never get them in order, but I can try anyway to arrive at something like a balance in hand.” Pagel’s good temper had evaporated. When he remembered how the old Geheimrat became red with fury and gave no quarter, and how he shouted down every contradiction, and how he spluttered in one’s face when in a rage … Curse it all, tomorrow wasn’t going to be much of a day, with himself as the scapegoat. What was worse, he wasn’t altogether sure of his nerves any longer; and he hated to lose self-control.
But to back out because of that?
Never!
In the meantime the news that the old gentleman was coming back that evening spread through the village like wildfire.… And twenty villagers, male and female, pretended to have some business, and passed by the Manor, and when they saw the old gentleman’s room lit up they nodded their heads in satisfaction, and looked forward very happily to what would take place the next morning. They had all forgotten how warmly they had once greeted the young Pagel, how much they had liked him and called him “Little Junker,” and how happy they had been to have gotten decent Pagel instead of the indecent Black Meier. They strolled by the office window also, and attempted to peep in, and the most curious thought out a request; never before had Pagel been so often and so senselessly disturbed.
And when the spies came out again, the others would ask: “Is he still there?” And on the reply: “He’s sitting and writing,” then they shook their heads and said: “Why, he is utterly shameless! Isn’t he packing at least?” “Why should he pack?” the spies in turn inquired. “You can be certain he’s got his stuff in safety, going to town as often as he’s done the last few days!”
And they could not agree on what they actually ought to wish for now, whether Pagel should remain and be sent to prison after a gigantic row, or whether he should run away and leave the old gentleman to burst with rage. Both were good!
“You watch, he won’t be here in the morning!” said some.
“Rubbish,” declared the others. “He’s so cunning, even the old gentleman won’t get the better of him. He’s the smartest one we’ve ever had on the farm.”
“Of course. And that’s why he won’t be here in the morning.”
Neither was he.
VII
At seven o’clock that evening Pagel closed his books for the last time, sighing: “It’s no good at all!” He cast a glance round the office, at the safe, the clumsy pigeonholes, the law volumes, the local newspaper files. The typewriter was covered over. He’d written many letters to his mother on it—for Petra. I’ll be fired tomorrow, he thought, downcast. Not a glorious end, actually—on the whole I liked the work. It would have been nicer to have had someone standing here tomorrow and saying: “Thank you, Herr Pagel, you did your job well.” Instead of that the Geheimrat will be screaming for the police and justice.
He turned the light out, locked up, put the key in his pocket and went through the pitch-dark night over to the Villa. It was influenza weather. The doctor had told him that people were dying like flies, young and old. Undernourished too long, first the war, then this inflation.… Poor devils. Will it really be any better with the new money?
In the Villa Amanda had food ready and a thousand bits of gossip passed on to her by the women. “Just think, Herr Pagel, what they’ve imagined now! They say you were hand in glove with Sophie—as for the forester dying in your room, you only did that so that he shouldn’t talk.”
“Amanda,” said Pagel bored, “all that is so stupid and dirty. Can’t you think of something nice to tell me, say, from your youth?”
“Something nice? From my youth?” The amazed Amanda was on the point of setting to with a will and telling him what sort of a childhood she had had …
Then the doorbell rang—and over their supper the pair looked at one another like detected criminals.
“That can’t be the Geheimrat yet?” she whispered.
“Rot! It’s not yet half-past seven—it’ll be something in the stables. Open the door.” However, growing impatient, he followed her, and arrived just as the violently protesting Amanda was pushed aside by a man, thick- set, with a bowler hat on a head like a bull’s—his glance, icy and unforgettable, met young Pagel’s. “I have a word to say to you,” said the fat detective. “But send this girl away. Hold your tongue, you clacker!” And Amanda was silent at once.
“Wait in the hall, Amanda,” begged Pagel. “Come along, please.” And, with beating heart, he led the way into the dining room.
The man shot a glance at the table laid for two. “Is that your girl outside?” he asked.
“No. That was Bailiff Meier’s girl. But she is a decent girl.”
“Another swine I’d like to catch,” said the fat man, sitting down at the table. “Don’t waste any time laying a place for me; I’m hungry and have to go on immediately. Tell me what’s up here, why Frau Eva is away, why you are staying in the Villa—all. Clear, brief, and to the point.” He ate as was his nature—ruthlessly, greedily. And Pagel talked.
“So she let you down in the end, your employer; I might have known it. Give me a cigar now. Did you notice that it was me who rang you up this afternoon?”
“I thought so. And?”
“And you yourself are now in a tight place, eh? Show me the two statements Frau von Prackwitz scribbled for you.”
Pagel did so.
The fat man read them. “In order,” he said. “You’ve only forgotten to safeguard yourself about selling after her departure as well.”
“Damnation!”
“Doesn’t matter. You can get that later.”
“But the Geheimrat will be here this evening.”
“You won’t see the Geheimrat any more. This evening you will go to Berlin and get Frau von Prackwitz to set down in writing that she’s in agreement with recent sales. This very night. Promise me that! You are flippant about such things!”
“You have news of Fraulein Violet?” cried Pagel.
“Sitting in the taxi below,” said the fat man.
“What!” Pagel jumped up, trembling. “And you let me sit here and her wait there?”
“Stop!” The fat man laid his hand, like a shackle not to be thrown off, on Pagel’s shoulder. “Stop, young man!” Pagel tried to free himself, furious. “What I just told you is not quite correct. She who is sitting in the car is not the Fraulein Violet you remember. Don’t forget that for two whole months she has been systematically terrified out of her mind. Out of her mind! You understand? I don’t know,” he said darkly, “if I’m doing her mother a service in bringing her back. But I haven’t gone out of my way to seek her—don’t you think that. If you travel round as much as I do, however, you hear a lot; old colleagues still count me in with them, even if the bigwigs have lopped me off. I just ran into her. What am I to do with the girl? As it is, I don’t even know whether you can take her to the mother; you must decide that for yourself. Only she mustn’t remain here with the old people. Get her away in a car
