“Now then,” Professor Baumeister said, “I understand that the two of you have it all worked out between you.” And Gretchen nodded solemnly, so that her plump chin looked like a soft little pillow pressed against her throat.
“It is quite simple,” said Lame Hans. “Gretchen does not know how to play, but I have worked out the moves for her and drawn them on a sheet of paper, and we have practiced in my room with a board. We will run through it once here when she is in the machine; then there will be nothing more to do.”
“Is it a short game? It won’t do for her to become confused.”
“She will win in fourteen moves,” Lame Hans promised. “But still it is unusual. I don’t think anyone has done it before. You will see in a moment.”
To Gretchen, Professor Baumeister said, “You’re sure you won’t be mixed up? Everything depends on you.”
The girl shook her head, making her blond braids dance. “No, Herr Professor.” She drew a folded piece of paper from her bosom. “I have it all here, and as my Hans told you, we have practiced in his room, where no one could see us.”
“You aren’t afraid?”
“When I am going to marry Hans, and be mistress of a fine shop? Oh, no, Herr Professor—for that I would do much worse things than to hide in this thing that looks like a stove and play a game.”
“We are ready, then,” the professor said. “Hans, you still have not explained how it is that a person can hide in there when the sides can be removed allowing people to look through the machinery. And I confess I still don’t understand how it can be done, or how the pieces are moved.”
“Here,” said Lame Hans, and he pulled out the board as Herr Heitzmann had done in the inn parlor. “Now will you assist me in removing the left side? You should learn the way it comes loose, Professor—someday you may have to do it yourself.” (The truth was that Hans was not strong enough to handle the big brass sheet by himself and did not wish to be humiliated before Gretchen.)
“I had forgotten how much empty space there is inside,” Professor Baumeister said when they had it off. “It looks more impossible than ever.”
“It is simple, like all good tricks,” Lame Hans told him. “And it is the sign of a good trick that it is the thing that makes it appear difficult that makes it easy. Here is where the chessboard is, you see, when it is folded up. But when it is unfolded, the panel under it swings out on a hinge to support it, and there are sides, so that a triangular space is formed.”
The professor nodded and said, “I remember thinking when I played you that it looked like a potato bin, with the chessboard laid over the top.”
“Exactly,” Lame Hans continued. “The space is not noticeable when the machine is open, because this circuit is just in front of it. But see here.” And he released a little catch at the top of the circuit card, and pivoted it up to show the empty space behind it. “I am in the machine when it is carried in, but when Heitzmann pulls out the board, I lift this and fit myself under it; then, when the machine is opened for inspection, I am out of view. I can look up through the dark glass of the black squares, and because the pieces are so tall, I can make out their positions. But because it is bright outside, but dim where I am, I cannot be seen.”
“I understand,” said the professor. “But will Gretchen have enough light in there to read her piece of paper?”
“That was why I wanted to hold the match in the street. With the board in sunshine, she will be able to see her paper clearly.”
Gretchen was on her knees, looking at the space behind the circuit card. “It is very small in there,” she said.
“It is big enough,” said Lame Hans. “Do you have the magnet?” And then to the professor: “The pieces are moved by moving a magnet under them. The white pieces are brass, but the black ones are of iron, and the magnet gives them a sliding motion that is very impressive.”
“I know,” said the professor, remembering that he had felt a twinge of uneasiness whenever the machine had shifted a piece. “Gretchen, see if you can get inside.”
The poor girl did the best she could, but encountered the greatest difficulty in wedging herself into the small space under the board. Work in the kitchen of the inn had provided her with many opportunities to snatch a mouthful of pastry or a choice potato dumpling or a half stein of dark beer, and she had availed herself of most of them—with the result that she possessed a lush and blooming figure of the sort that appeals to men like Lame Hans, who, having been withered before birth by the isotopes of the old wars, are themselves thin and small by nature. But though full breasts like ripe melons, and a rounded comfortable stomach and generous hips, may be pleasant things to look at when the moonlight comes in the bedroom window, they are not really well suited to folding up in a little three-cornered space under a chessboard, and in the end, poor Gretchen was forced to remove her gown, and her shift as well, before she could cram herself, with much gasping and grunting, into it.
An hour later, Willi Schacht the smith’s apprentice and five other men carried the machine out into the street and set it in the space that had been cordoned off for the players, and if they noticed the extra weight, they did not complain of it. And there the good people who had come to see the match looked at the machine, and fanned themselves, and said that they were glad they weren’t in the army on a day like this—because what must it be to serve one of those big guns, which get hot enough to poach an egg after half a dozen shots, even in ordinary weather? And between moppings and fannings they talked about the machine, and the mysterious Herr Zimmer (that was the name Lame Hans had given) who was going to play for two hundred gold kilomarks.
N
ine chimes sounded from the old clock in the steeple of Father Karl’s church, and Herr Zimmer did not appear.
Dr. Eckardt, who had been chosen again to hold the stakes, came forward and whispered for some time with Professor Baumeister. The professor (if the truth were known) was beginning to believe that perhaps Lame Hans had decided it was best to forfeit after all—though in fact, if anyone had looked, he would have seen Lame Hans sitting at the bar of the inn at that very moment, having a pleasant nip of plum brandy and then another, while he allowed the suspense to build up as a good showman should.
At last Dr. Eckardt climbed upon a chair and announced: “It is nearly ten. When the bet was made it was agreed by both parties that if either failed to appear—or, appearing, failed to play—the other should be declared the
