Pagel, busy with his thoughts, had long passed beyond the potato field into ever stranger and more remote parts of the wood. He had seen nothing of the convicts and nothing of the gendarmes either. Well, he would take a pleasant walk instead of joining in an idiotic hunt; for idiotic it must be, he decided. Woods upon woods, up and down, hour after hour, overgrown thickets, plantations of thousands of small straggling pines, high as a man, half as high again, hundreds and hundreds of acres, glens of fir so gloomy that even on the brightest day one hardly saw a foot in front—and the police were hoping in this wilderness to find five shrewd and desperate men whose intelligence would be concentrated on not letting themselves be found. Absolute nonsense! In the woods one really perceived how impossible the task was. He would go on alone, comfortably, instead of crawling around with the others among thorns and junipers.
But, turning the next corner, he exclaimed “Ah-ha!” and was no longer alone. A little man in a fur jacket was walking toward him, that is, walking was not quite the right word; he had a kind of quavering in his progress, a staccato. He, so to speak, yodeled somewhat with his legs. “Damned roots!” he said far too loudly, though there were none in that spot. And a pace in front of Pagel he stopped with so sudden a start that he almost fell over.
Wolfgang seized him just in time. “Ah-ha! Herr Meier,” he said smiling, “Germans don’t say ‘cognac,’ they say ‘brandy.’ ”
Meier’s small, reddened eyes contemplated his successor on the farm. Suddenly a gleam of recognition shone in them and, with a broad impudent grin, he screeched: “Oh, it’s you. I thought … Doesn’t matter. I’m a bit boozed. Seen my car anywhere?”
“What!” Pagel became suspicious. “Have you got a car, too, Herr Meier? What are you doing in our forest today with a car?”
“So you too say our forest now,” laughed Meier. “That seems to be the fashion here. The forester says my forest, the Rittmeister says my woods, his wife sometimes takes a little walk in her plantations, and the one it really belongs to, the old Geheimrat, he only talks about a few pine trees!”
Out of politeness Pagel laughed also. But the other’s presence here, particularly today, still seemed suspicious. “Where did you leave your car, Herr Meier?” he asked.
“If only I knew, blockhead that I am!” said Meier, thumping himself on the head. “So it’s not up that way, then?” Pagel shook his head. “Well, let’s go up here.” He seemed to take it for granted that Wolfgang would accompany him, and this somewhat removed the suspicion that he might be an associate of the escaped convicts. Cheerful and fairly erect, he sauntered along, apparently glad to have found a listener.
“As a matter of fact, I’m a bit boozed, you know. I’ve been celebrating with a friend. Actually he isn’t a friend, but he thinks he is. Well, let the child have its pacifier. So I found myself here, I don’t know what it’s called, it was somewhere near. But I’ll find it all right. I’ve a marvelous memory for places.”
“Surely.”
“Let’s take this path on the left. I’ve forgotten your name for the moment, one gets acquainted with too many people in life, particularly the last few weeks; one’s got to work his way in first. But my memory for names is good, the Colonel’s always saying so.”
“What colonel? You’re not with the Army now, are you?” Pagel encountered a glance which was wary, suspicious, and not in the least drunken. He’s not so tipsy as he seems, he thought. Take care!
But Meier was laughing again. “Well, are you with the Army because you say Rittmeister to your boss?” he asked adroitly. “He’s bought himself a fine car, the old sod. Saw him today in Frankfurt scorching on a trial run—the world’s got to collapse nobly. What’s little Vi doing now?”
“Well, your car doesn’t seem to be here either.”
“Don’t pull a face or I’ll laugh. So I suppose you’ve been dropped, too? Is the Lieutenant still the only one? Lordie, what a girl! Love must be wonderful. Well”—in quite a different, a threatening, tone—“soon the Lieutenant will be dropped; he’s going to feel sick soon. He’d better wash his chest, he’ll be shot.”
“Perhaps you are rather jealous, Herr Meier?” inquired Pagel amiably. “That time you screamed in the night—I suppose that was because of him? Incidentally, I found the copy you made of the letter, inside the District Gazette.”
“Oh, that stupid thing! Far as I’m concerned, you can blow your nose on it. Haven’t got any time nowadays for flea bites like that. We’ve got other things on tap. But there, a young chap from the country won’t understand about that. You’ve no idea what I’m earning now.”
“Oh, I can see it, Herr Meier.”
“Isn’t it so? Look at the rings, all real good stones. I have a pal who gets ’em for me at half price. And since I always pay only in foreign money …” Once again he stopped short, with the same intensely suspicious side-glance. But Pagel had not heard the treasonable word; he was following up another clue.
“Isn’t that a little dangerous, Herr Meier? To go walking about here alone in the forest with so much jewelry and money? Something might easily happen to you.”
“Don’t you believe it!” laughed Meier contemptuously. “What could happen then? Nothing’s ever happened to me before. You haven’t the least idea, man, of all I’ve been through—and nothing’s happened to me yet. Here,” he said, stamping with his foot on the earth, “here in this wood someone once walked behind me, for a quarter of an hour, with his revolver all the time on my nut—and was going to shoot me dead. Well, did he shoot me?”
“Funny things happen to you,” laughed Pagel, somewhat uncomfortably. “One would never have thought it. No doubt he was not really in earnest …”
“Him? He meant it all right.… The thing was loaded, and he only let me keep on walking because he wanted to get to a place a bit more secluded. So that they wouldn’t find my body straight away, of course.”
In these words there was something sinister and horrible. Pagel looked at the little man askance. What he said need not be true, but the fellow believed it was.… Threats were forming themselves on his lips.
“I’ll get the swine, though. If I was frightened, he’s going to be a hundred times as frightened. I escaped, but he won’t.…”
“Well, Herr Meier,” said Pagel coldly, “if the Lieutenant is ever found dead somewhere you can be quite certain the police will be told at once by me.”
Meier turned with a vicious stare. Of a sudden, however, his expression changed, his heavy blubber lips curled, his owl-like eyes smiled scornfully. “You think I’m such a fool as to shoot at the fellow? Shoot off the mark, most likely, and be done to death by the swine? That’d be a fine revenge! No, man! Trust old Meier! He’s got to be afraid, the swine. I’ll hound him down, rob him of his honor, everyone shall spit at him—and then, when there’s no way out for him anymore—then he can shoot himself, the swine! That and no other way!”
Triumphantly he stood before Pagel. There was no more intoxication to be seen, except that possibly the alcohol had inflamed his revengefulness and made him blab of things he otherwise carried locked within him. Pagel, watchful, was taking care not to let his disgust for the fellow become visible; he felt certain that behind all the threats much was hidden which it would be good to know. One must be clever and pump him, this Meier! But he could not hold back his youthfulness, the abhorrence of the young for whatever is sick, impure and criminal.
“You’re a fine lump of turd!” he said contemptuously, and turned to go.
“And what about it?” challenged Meier. “What’s that to do with you? Have I made myself? Have you made yourself? I should like to know what you’d look like if you’d always been treated as dirt, as I’ve been treated! You’re a precious mother’s pet, anyone can see that; a fine school and everything else that goes with it.…” He quieted down a little.