“Swindler! Fat pig!” screamed the girl. “Are you going to give me the snow?”
“Let’s shove off,” suggested the driver. “The cops must have heard that. Look, now the windows are being lit up.”
And, indeed, here and there in the dark house-fronts appeared lights. A weak high voice shouted, “Quiet!”
But it was quiet now, for the two by the broken window were whispering to each other. The pale-faced man was no longer cursing, or only softly.
“There you are!” drawled the driver. “Them that starts with such people have got to do what they want. She doesn’t care whether the cops come and shut up his shop so long as she gets her dope. Shall we drive on?”
But Studmann could not make up his mind to do this. Even if the girl had behaved irresponsibly and meanly, he couldn’t drive off and leave her in the street, when the police might come strolling round the corner at any moment. And then there was that other business—that if she got her snow, then he would ring up the police. Once again he saw himself with the receiver in hand: “Gambling division of the criminal police, please.” There was nothing else for it. Prackwitz must be saved. One had one’s obligations.
The girl was back, and von Studmann had no need to ask whether her expedition was successful. The way she suddenly regarded him, the way she addressed him, the way he began to exist for her again, made it easy to guess that she had got her snow and had already sniffed it.
“Well?” she asked challengingly and held his stick out to him. “Who are you? Oh, yes, you’re the pal of the young man who hit me. Nice friends you have, I must say, hitting a lady in the kisser!”
“You are wrong,” said von Studmann politely. “It was not the young man—who, by the way, isn’t my friend—who hit you like that. It was someone else, one of the two men who always stand next to the croupier.”
“Do you mean Curly Willi? No, don’t spring any yarns on me—I wasn’t born yesterday. It was your pal, the one who brought you along. Well, I’ll pay him out!”
“Shall we drive on?” suggested von Studmann. He felt dog-tired, tired of this woman and of her cheeky, quarrelsome tone, tired of this aimless wandering about in the gigantic city, tired of all the disorder, the filth, the wrangling.
“Of course we’ll drive on!” she said at once. “Do you think I’m going to pad the hoof to the West End? Driver, Wittenbergplatz.”
But now the driver rebelled, and since he didn’t find it necessary to speak like a gentleman, and since the gent had declared himself ready to pay the fare, he didn’t mince his words, but told her plainly what he thought of an old doper like her who broke windows. He announced that he wouldn’t drive her a step farther, not to save his life! He declared he would have chucked her out long ago if the gent hadn’t been there …
This abuse made little impression on the lady. She was used to it; in some ways quarreling was her natural element. It enlivened her, and the drug she had just taken lent wings to a fancy which proved vastly superior to that of the rather dense driver. She would report him to his employer. She had a friend—she had noted the number of his car. He needn’t be surprised if he found his tires slit tomorrow morning!
A silly, endless altercation. The exhausted von Studmann wanted to put an end to it, but he lacked animation and was no match for them. When would it end? Windows were being lit up again, voices were again calling for quiet …
“But I say, please …” he protested feebly.
Suddenly the noise was over, the quarrel at an end. It had not even been pointless: the parties had come to a friendly understanding. True, they were not going to drive as far as Wittenbergplatz, but all the same they were going to drive “a step,” namely as far as Alexanderplatz.
“My garage is close by there,” explained the driver, and this explanation prevented von Studmann from reflecting any further on their objective, Alexanderplatz. For otherwise it would undoubtedly have occurred to him that in Alexanderplatz stood the very Police Headquarters whose gambling squad he now had to phone up, seeing that the girl had obtained what she wanted. But he could think of nothing except of getting into the taxi again and being able to settle down comfortably. He was really very tired. It would be good if he could now have forty winks. Sleep is never so good as in a softly rattling car. But it wasn’t worth sleeping between here and Alexanderplatz—it would make him feel even more tired. He lit a cigarette.
“You might offer a lady a cigarette!”
“Help yourself!” said von Studmann, and offered her his case.
“No thanks!” she said sharply. “Do you think I need your rotten cigarettes? I’ve got some myself. You should be polite to a lady.”
She fetched a case out of her bag, brusquely demanded a light, and then said: “How do you think I’m going to pay your friend out?”
“He’s not my friend,” said von Studmann mechanically.
“I’ll give him something to remember me by, that lad! Sauce the chap’s got, hitting a lady. How does he come to have so much cash this evening? He usually hasn’t got any, the little squirt!”
“I really don’t know,” said von Studmann wearily.
“All right! If he doesn’t have his money taken off him in the club, I’ll see that he gets rid of it. You can be sure of that. When I’m through with him he won’t have a penny left.”
“My dear Fräulein!” pleaded von Studmann. “Won’t you let me smoke my cigarette in peace? I’ve already told you the gentleman is not my friend.”
“Yes, you and your friends!” she said angrily. “Hitting a lady! But I’ll peach on him—your friend!”
Von Studmann remained silent.
“Don’t you hear? I’ll peach on your friend!”
Silence.
Scornfully: “Don’t you know what peaching means? I’m going to squeal on your friend.”
Through the open glass partition came the driver’s voice: “Hit her one on the jaw. Right on the jaw. That’s what she deserves. Your friend was quite right; he’s a right ‘un, he knows what to do! Keep hitting it till she shuts up. Here are you running up all this expense with the taxi, and then she comes out with a lot of common talk about squealing!”
The quarrel between the two sprang into life once more. The glass partition was repeatedly wrenched open and again slammed shut, the taxi echoed with the screaming and shouting.
He ought to pay a little more attention to his steering, thought von Studmann. But what does it matter? If we hit something, at least this noise will stop.
However, they arrived safely at Alexanderplatz. Still cursing, the girl clambered out of the taxi, stumbling over von Studmann’s legs. “And a man like that thinks he’s a gentleman,” she shouted back into the car, and dashed off across the square toward a large building where only a few windows were lit up.
“There she goes!” said the driver. “And she’ll do a whole lot of talking if the cop lets her in; she’s really going to do what she said. And she’s done some pretty shady things herself. If they ask her whether she dopes she’ll be in the soup at once. Perhaps they’ll pinch her on the spot. Well, I shan’t be sorry.”
“What’s that?” von Studmann asked pensively, looking at the large building under whose gateway the girl had just whispered.
“Well, I say!” The driver was very astonished. “You must be a stranger here. Why, that’s Police Headquarters! Where she’s going to squeal on your friend.”
“What’s she going to do?” Von Studmann suddenly woke up.
“Squeal on your friend!”
“Why?”
“I think you must have been asleep during the row. Because he socked her! Even I understood that much.”