“You believe that a good education drives all the swinishness out of one?” asked Pagel. “Some people feel quite happy even in filth.”
Meier looked evilly at him for a minute. Then he laughed. “Look here, why quarrel about that? I always think it’s a short life and a long death, so let’s see that we too have a decent time. And since money’s necessary for that, and a poor devil will never get any by being honest …”
“You get it by being dishonest. Only I don’t understand, Herr Meier, why you have it in for the Lieutenant so much. You won’t get any money, will you, if he’s done for?”
Now, however innocently Pagel had said this, immediately there was that same suspicious glance. But this time Meier didn’t reply. Growling, he turned into a fresh path. “Damn and blast it, where the devil’s the bloody car! I must be quite crazy. Aren’t we going round and round in a circle really?” Again he looked viciously at Pagel and murmured: “You needn’t worry about letting me go on by myself. You’re not a help to me, anyway.”
“I am afraid something might happen to you,” said Pagel politely. “Your fine rings, all that money …”
“I’ve already told you, nothing can happen. Who’s going to pinch rings in a forest?”
“Convicts,” said Pagel calmly, with a sharp eye on his man.
Meier did not turn a hair. “Convicts? What convicts?”
“Ours, from the harvest crew,” replied Pagel, convinced that his suspicion had been unjust. (But what was little Meier doing in the forest?) “In fact, five of them ran away this morning.”
“Damn and blast!” shouted Meier, and his fright was genuine. “They’re hiding here in the forest? You—you’re trying to be funny. Why, you yourself are walking about just the same.”
“Not at all!” said Pagel, half pulling the pistol from his trousers. “Besides that, I’m looking for the gendarmes. There are fifty of them, you know, ransacking the forest.”
“That beats everything,” said Meier, coming to a stop. “Five lags and fifty frogs—and me right in it with my bone-shaker! That can be painful. Lord, man, I must get my car right away. What was it called now? I’ve got it. The Black Dale! Do you know it?”
Pagel felt that the little man had known this name all along, had he wished to come out with it. Meier was looking at him suspiciously, too. Why? It was only a forest name, like any other. “I’ve never been there,” he said. “But I’ve seen it on the map. It’s very near Birnbaum and we’re going the whole time toward Neulohe.”
“Fool that I am.” Meier hit himself on the head with his fist. “Onwards then, man—what do you call yourself?”
“Pagel.”
“Keep your eyes open. In this sand even a worm could find a wheel mark. This way? Good. But is it the right way?”
“Oh, yes,” said Pagel. “But why are you so enormously upset all of a sudden? I thought that nothing could happen to you?”
“Yes, I’d like to see you in my place. Suppose everything’s messed up! Damnation! This is always my luck. That cursed drunk …”
“What’ll be messed up?”
“What’s that to do with you?”
“Well, I’d really like to know.”
“Then write to Aunt Dolly in Advice to the Lovelorn.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s not yet been settled that we’re really going to the Black Dale now.”
Meier, coming to a stop, fixed young Pagel with a look of hatred. He would certainly very much have liked to do something to him, but he thought better of it, and snarled: “What do you want to know, then?”
“Why are you in a hurry so suddenly?”
Meier reflected. “I’ve business in Frankfurt,” he said in a surly voice.
“So you had five minutes ago, and you weren’t in any hurry then.”
“Would you let a new car be pinched by convicts? Even if it’s not a tiptop Horch like your Rittmeister’s—only a baby Opel.”
“You were frightened when I talked about the gendarmes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“All right. I haven’t got a driving license. And anyway, I like to steer clear of the police.”
“Because of your business?”
“If you like. I don’t mind—I do a bit of business on the sly.”
Pagel scrutinized the ugly little fellow. It might be the truth, but it was much more likely that he was lying. “And what are you doing here today in our wood?”
Meier, however, was cunning. Cursing his drunken revengeful rigmarole about the Lieutenant, he had seen this question coming a long time. But once he had noticed that Pagel did not move a muscle at the words “Black Dale”—once he was sure he knew nothing—he felt certain of victory. “What am I doing here in your wood? Actually you ought not to know, but you’ll keep your mouth shut. I’ve brought back your forester, your Kniebusch. He’s fast asleep in my car, drunk as a fiddler.”
“Wasn’t the forester in Frankfurt for his case?”
“That’s right. You’ve got it.” Meier had quite recovered. “And now let’s get on—the proper way to the Black Dale. The forester was there for his case about Bäumer, and your Rittmeister, who is a great man, was going to back him up, but cleared off, the great man, so as to buy a car.…”
“And the case?”
“Fallen through! In default of interest in it. Because Bäumer ran away this morning. Everyone seems to be running away today. Me, too. At once. Hurrah! Here’s the tracks of the car. Didn’t I say so? It’s hardly a step now; so come along and take a peep at your Kniebusch, so that you’ll know I’m not fooling you.”
“But why did you motor over here into the wood if you wanted to take Kniebusch home? How did your car come to be lost?”
“You’ve got a funny idea of being drunk, man! I suppose you’ve never been boozed? Well, we couldn’t drive into the village soaked—we weren’t quite soaked enough for that. So we drove about a bit. Well, when we got here in the forest I felt a natural urge and had to get out. Kniebusch was fast asleep. I tumbled out of the car, into the ditch, behind a bush—and I must have dozed off. Well, when I woke up, I didn’t at first know what was what.… I just went off looking aimlessly, and then I met you. Hello, here’s my car!”
It was certainly not so magnificent as the Rittmeister’s. It was a genuine baby Opel, a Tin Lizzie.… But that didn’t interest Pagel much at the moment. It was a very small, low car, with not much space between the ground and its floor. All the same, it was a very uncomfortable position in which the forester was asleep, his head in the wood and his feet in the car.
Pagel actually ought to have put a few more suspicious questions to Herr Meier. But Meier would always have an answer to everything, either true or invented. The very man was a tangled web of truth and lies. What he had said would be approximately true, even if not completely, because the secretive lieutenant was totally missing in the story, and Pagel felt he definitely belonged there. To drag the truth out of that fellow would take too long. The first thing to be done now was to take the forester home and put him to bed. The whole situation could not be good for a nearly-seventy-year-old. His face was purple.
“In with him! In!” ordered Pagel, seeing that Meier wanted to drag the old man away from the car.
“What do you mean—in? I’m clearing! I’m in a hurry. Out with him!”
“In, I say! No doubt you made Kniebusch drunk, and you can drive him home as well.”
“Not likely! I’m in a hurry. I don’t want to be seen in Neulohe, either.”