“Yes, that is well done,” he said, put down the work of poetry, and turned away. Then he saw that the official was still standing up and blinking his eyes with a mixed expression of officiousness and cautious distrust.
“An excellent collection, as I see,” Tonio Kröger said. “I have already gotten a general idea of it. I am much obliged to you. Goodbye.” Then he went out to the door; but it was a questionable exit, and he felt plainly that the official, disturbed over this visit, would stand there blinking for several minutes.
He felt no inclination to penetrate further. He had been home. Above, in the large rooms beyond the pillared hall, strangers were living—he saw that. For the stairs at the top were closed by a glass door which did not use to be there, and there was some kind of nameplate on it. He went away, went down the stairs, across the echoing vestibule, and left his paternal house. In a corner of a restaurant, retiring to himself, he took a rich heavy meal, and then returned to the hotel.
“I have finished here,” he said to the elegant gentleman in black. “I leave this afternoon.” And he asked for his bill, and also for a cab which would bring him to the harbour and the steamer for Copenhagen. Then he went to his room and sat down at the table, sat still and upright, resting his cheek in his hand and looking down at the tabletop with sightless eyes. Later he settled his account and got ready his things. At the appointed time the cab was announced, and Tonio Kröger descended ready for the trip.
Below, at the foot of the stairs, the elegant gentleman in black was waiting for him.
“Pardon me!” he said, and shot his cuffs back into his sleeves with his little fingers. “Pardon me, sir, if we have to trouble you for a moment. Herr Seehaase—the proprietor of the hotel—requests a brief word with you. A formality. … He is in there. Would you be so kind as to come with me? … It is only Herr Seehaase, the proprietor of the hotel.”
And with gestures of encouragement he led Tonio Kröger to the rear of the lobby. There, indeed, Herr Seehaase was standing. Tonio Kröger knew him at a glance from old times. He was short, fat, and bowlegged. His trimmed whiskers had become grey; but he was still wearing a much cutaway dress-coat, and a little knitted green velvet cap to match. Furthermore, he was not alone. Next to him, beside a little writing-shelf fastened to the wall, stood a policeman wearing his helmet. His gloved right hand was resting on a paper with writing in different colours which lay before him on the desk; and he stared back with his noble soldierly face, as though he expected that Tonio Kröger would have to sink through the floor at the sight of him.
Tonio Kröger looked from one to the other, and waited for what might happen.
“You come from Munich?” the policeman finally asked in a well-meaning, lugubrious voice.
Tonio Kröger assented to this.
“You are travelling to Copenhagen?”
“Yes, I am en route to a Danish bathing-resort.”
“Bathing-resort?—Yes, you must produce your papers,” the policeman said, pronouncing the “produce” with peculiar satisfaction.
“Papers …” He had no papers. He drew out his portfolio and looked in; except for some paper money, there was nothing inside but the proofs of a short story which he intended revising when he reached his destination. He did not like to deal with officials, and had never yet gotten a passport.
“I am sorry,” he said, “but I am carrying no papers with me.”
“So?” the policeman said. “None at all? What is your name?”
Tonio Kröger answered him.
“And is that so?” the policeman asked, straightening up and suddenly extending his nostrils as widely as he could.
“Absolutely so,” Tonio Kröger answered.
“What are you, then?”
Tonio Kröger gulped and named his trade with a firm voice. Herr Seehaase raised his head and looked into his face with curiosity.
“Hm!” the policeman said. “And you admit not being identical with an individual by the name of”—he said “individual,” and then from the paper with different-coloured writing he spelled out a thoroughly intricate and romantic name which seemed adventurously compounded from the sounds of various races, and which Tonio Kröger had forgotten again the next moment—“Who,” he went on, “of unknown parents and uncertain status, is wanted by the Munich police for several fraudulent activities and is probably fleeing to Denmark?”
“I don’t merely admit it,” Tonio Kröger said, with a nervous movement of his shoulders.—That made a certain impression.
“How? Ah, of course! Why, certainly!” the policeman said. “But simply since you couldn’t produce anything!”
Also, Herr Seehaase intervened conciliatingly: “The whole thing is a formality,” he said, “nothing more! You must consider that the officer is simply doing his duty. If you could prove your identity somehow … a paper …”
All were silent. Should he end the matter by introducing himself, by disclosing to Herr Seehaase that he was no confidence man of uncertain status, was not by birth a
