When Professor Baumeister had poked among all these mechanical parts for half a minute, Herr Heitzmann asked, “Are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” answered Professor Baumeister, straightening up. “There is no one in there.”
“But I am not,” said Herr Heitzmann, and he walked with long strides to the other side of the machine. Everyone crowded around him as he released the catches on that side, lifted away the panel, and stood it against the wall. “Now,” he said, “you can see completely through my machine—isn’t that right? Look, do you see Dr. Eckardt? Do you see me? Wave to us.”
“I am satisfied,” Professor Baumeister said. “Let us go on with the game.”
“The machine has already taken its move. You may think about your next one while these gentlemen help me replace the panels.”
Professor Baumeister was beaten in twenty-two moves. Albricht the moneylender then asked if he could play without betting and, when this was refused by Herr Heitzmann, bet a kilomark and was beaten in fourteen moves. Herr Heitzmann asked then if anyone else would play and, when no one replied, requested that the same men who had carried the machine into the inn assist him in putting it away again.
“Wait,” said Professor Baumeister.
Herr Heitzmann smiled. “You mean to play again?”
“No. I want to buy your machine. On behalf of the university.”
Herr Heitzmann sat down and looked serious. “I doubt that I could sell it to you. I had hoped to make a good sum in Dresden before selling it there.”
“Five hundred kilomarks.”
Herr Heitzmann shook his head. “That is a fair proposition,” he said, “and I thank you for making it. But I cannot accept.”
“Seven hundred and fifty,” Professor Baumeister said. “That is my final offer.”
“In gold?”
“In a draft on an account the university maintains in Fürstenwalde—you can present it there for gold the first thing in the morning.”
“You must understand,” said Herr Heitzmann, “that the machine requires a certain amount of care, or it will not perform properly.”
“I am buying it as is,” said Professor Baumeister. “As it stands here before us.”
“Done, then,” said Herr Heitzmann, and he put out his hand.
The board was folded away, and six stout fellows carried the machine into the professor’s room for safekeeping, where he remained with it for an hour or more. When he returned to the inn parlor at last, Dr. Eckardt asked if he had been playing chess again.
Professor Baumeister nodded. “Three games.”
“Did you win?”
“No, I lost them all. Where is the showman?”
“Gone,” said Father Karl, who was sitting near them. “He left as soon as you took the machine to your room.”
Dr. Eckardt said, “I thought he planned to stay the night here.”
“So did I,” said Father Karl. “And I confess I believed the machine would not function without him. I was surprised to hear that our friend the professor had been playing in private.”
Just then a small, twisted man, with a large head crowned with wild black hair, limped into the inn parlor. It was Lame Hans, but no one knew that then. He asked Scheer the innkeeper for a room.
Scheer smiled. “Sitting rooms on the first floor are a hundred marks,” he said. He could see by Lame Hans’s worn clothes that he could not afford a sitting room.
“Something cheaper.”
“My regular rooms are thirty marks. Or I can let you have a garret for ten.”
Hans rented a garret room, and ordered a meal of beer, tripe, and kraut. That was the last time anyone except Gretchen noticed Lame Hans that night.
And now I must leave off recounting what I myself saw and tell many things that rest solely on the testimony of Lame Hans, given to me while he ate his potato soup in his cell. But I believe Lame Hans to be an honest fellow, and as he no longer, as he says, cares much to live, he has no reason to lie.
One thing is certain. Lame Hans and Gretchen the serving girl fell in love that night. Just how it happened I cannot say—I doubt that Lame Hans himself knows. She was sent to prepare the cot in his garret. Doubtless she was tired after drawing beer in the parlor all day and was happy to sit for a few moments and talk with him. Perhaps she smiled—she was always a girl who smiled a great deal—and laughed at some bitter joke he made. And as for Lame Hans, how many blue-eyed girls could ever have smiled at him, with his big head and twisted leg?
In the morning the machine would not play chess.
Professor Baumeister sat before it for a long time, arranging the pieces and making first one opening and then another, and tinkering with the mechanism, but nothing happened.
And then, when the morning was half-gone, Lame Hans came into the professor’s room. “You paid a great deal of money for this machine,” he said, and sat down in the best chair.
“Were you in the inn parlor last night?” asked Professor Baumeister. “Yes, I paid a great deaclass="underline" seven hundred and fifty kilomarks.”
“I was there,” said Lame Hans. “You must be a very rich man to be able to afford such a sum.”
“It was the university’s money,” explained Professor Baumeister.
“Ah,” said Lame Hans. “Then it will be embarrassing for you if the machine does not play.”
“It does play,” said the professor. “I played three games with it last night after it was brought here.”
“You must learn to make better use of your knights,” Lame Hans told him, “and to attack on both sides of the board at once. In the second game you played well until you lost the queen’s rook; then you went to pieces.”
The professor sat down, and for a moment said nothing. And then: “You are the operator of the machine. I was correct in the beginning; I should have known.”
Lame Hans looked out the window.
“How did you move the pieces—by radio? I suppose there must still be radio-control equipment in existence somewhere.”
“I was inside,” Lame Hans said. “I’ll show you sometime; it’s not important. What will you tell the university?”
“That I was swindled, I suppose. I have some money of my own, and I will try to pay back as much as I can out of that—and I own two houses in Fürstenwalde that can be sold.”
“Do you smoke?” asked Lame Hans, and he took out his short pipe, and a bag of tobacco.
“Only after dinner,” said the professor, “and not often then.”
“I find it calms my nerves,” said Lame Hans. “That is why I suggested it to you. I do not have a second pipe, but I can offer you some of my tobacco, which is very good. You might buy a clay from the innkeeper here.”
“No, thank you. I fear I must abandon such little pleasures for a long time to come.”
“Not necessarily,” said Lame Hans. “Go ahead; buy that pipe. This is good Turkish tobacco—would you believe, to look at me, that I know a great deal about tobacco? It has been my only luxury.”
“If you are the one who played chess with me last night,” Professor Baumeister said, “I would be willing to believe that you know a great deal about anything. You play like the devil himself.”
“I know a great deal about more than tobacco. Would you like to get your money back?”
And so it was that that very afternoon (if it can be credited) the mail coach carried away bills printed in large black letters. These said:
IN THE VILLAGE OF ODER SPREE
BEFORE THE INN OF THE GOLDEN APPLES
ON SATURDAY
AT 9:00 O’CLOCK
THE MARVELOUS BRASS CHESSPLAYING AUTOMATON
WILL BE ON DISPLAY
FREE TO EVERYONE
AND WILL PLAY ANY CHALLENGER
AT EVEN ODDS
TO A LIMIT OF DM 2,000,000