It was completely quiet in the hall. Only the lamps still glimmered. Pagel stared at the fat pallid face. As if through a veil it seemed to nod to him, that face acquainted with all the baseness, all the naked brutality, all the sins of the human heart, and which lived on, acquiescent. He looked into that face, and did so again. I was on that road, he said. Did he say it out loud? He heard the wind outside; a dog howled; another answered. The fat man took him by the shoulder. “Let’s go, young man. We’ve no more time.”
They went into the forest.…
The wind blew. It whistled in the invisible treetops, it screamed; branches fell with a crash, showers of rain became spray. Without a word the men advanced. The hound was straining at his leash, followed by his master whispering encouragement and praise. Then came Pagel and the detective, then the doctor with Studmann, and the two gendarmes.… The forester was not there. He could not be found; he was said to be out somewhere. “But I’ll get him!” the detective said in a tone Pagel did not like; and after that he walked silently beside the young man. Once he switched on his flashlight, stood still and said calmly: “Please don’t tread here,” and let the others go on. “Look.” He pointed to something on the ground which Pagel could not distinguish. “He’s thought of everything. She’s wearing shoes now, and he’ll also have brought a coat or something for her.”
“Who’s thought of everything?” asked Pagel, wearied. He was terribly tired and his head more painful than ever. He’d afterwards ask the doctor about it.
“Don’t you know even yet? You told me yourself.”
“If it’s not the Lieutenant,” said Pagel annoyed, “I really don’t know who it is. And I shan’t be able to find out tonight, either, unless you tell me.”
“When the blood becomes too thin,” exclaimed the fat man enigmatically, “then it loses its strength. The blood wants to go back to where it comes from. But we must hurry. My colleagues are far enough ahead to enjoy the honor of the discovery.”
“Do you know, then, what we’re going to find?” asked Pagel, with the same weary annoyance.
“Yes, I know what we shall find now. But what we shall find afterwards, no, I don’t know that. I can’t even guess.”
They quickened their steps, but those in front seemed also to have gone faster, and they were a minute too late; the others were all round him.
There was a murmur, the wind passed overhead. But it was quiet in the Black Dale as the circle of men swayed here and there—the white beam of the doctor’s torch lay intolerably brilliant on that which had once been a face.
“Dug his own grave, too! Quite off his head.”
“But where’s the girl?”
Murmuring. Silence.
Yes, there was no doubt about it, this was the Lieutenant of whom Pagel had so often heard and had once so wished to meet. There he lay, a very quiet, a very dubious figure—to be frank, a pretty bemired heap of rags. It was incomprehensible that this should ever have been the object of hate and love. With an inexplicable feeling of indifference, almost of repulsion, Pagel looked down at the thing. “Were you worth such great things?” he might have asked.
The doctor stood up. “Undoubtedly suicide,” he declared.
“Does any one of the gentlemen from Neulohe know the man?” asked a gendarme.
Pagel and von Studmann looked at one another across the circle.
“Never seen him,” replied Studmann.
“No,” said Pagel, and looked round for the fat detective. But, as he had expected, he was nowhere to be seen.
“This is the place, isn’t it, where …?”
“Yes,” said Pagel. “Yesterday afternoon I had to come here to make a statement. This is the place where the Entente Commission confiscated an arms dump.”
“The dead man unknown, then,” said a voice in the background, decisively.
“But unmistakably suicide,” burst forth the doctor, as if putting something right.
There was a long silence. In the feeble torch light the faces were almost surly.
“Where’s the weapon?” finally asked the man with the bloodhound.
There was a stir.
“No, it’s not here. We scoured the place. It couldn’t fall far away.”
Again that long reluctant silence. It’s like an assembly of ghosts, thought Pagel, extremely unhappy. And he tried to get nearer the dog, so that he could stroke its beautiful head. Had they all forgotten the girl?
But one of them now spoke. “And where is the girl?”
Silence again, but tenser.
“Perhaps—it’s quite simple,” said a gendarme. “He shot himself first, and she picked up the weapon to do the same. But she wasn’t able to, and has taken it with her.”
A thoughtful silence.
“Yes, that would be it. You are right,” said another.
“So we had better quickly carry on the search at once.”
“That can take all night! We’re never lucky at Neulohe.”
“Off! No dawdling now.”
A hand from behind gripped Pagel’s shoulder, a voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t turn your head. I’m not here! Ask the doctor how long the man’s been dead.”
“A moment, please,” called out Pagel. “Can you tell us, doctor, how long the man here has been dead?”
The country doctor, a thick-set man with a peculiarly sparse black beard, looked hesitatingly at the body, then at Wolfgang. His face cleared a little. “I have not the experience of my colleagues attached to the police. May I inquire why you ask?”
“Because I saw Fräulein von Prackwitz asleep in her bed at half-past twelve.”
The doctor looked at his watch. “It’s half-past three now,” he said quickly. “At half-past twelve this man had been dead for hours.”
“Then someone else must have brought Fräulein von Prackwitz here,” concluded Pagel.
The hand, the heavy hand which all this time had rested like a load on his shoulder, was removed and a slight noise in the rear betrayed the fat man’s departure.
“That knocks out your explanation, Albert!” said an irritated gendarme.
“How?” retorted the other. “She could have come here alone and found the dead man. She takes the revolver, goes on …”
“Rubbish!” said the man with the bloodhound. “Are you blind? There were two trails, a man’s and a woman’s, all the way. This is a bad business and it goes far beyond our ability.… We shall have to report a murder.”
“This is suicide,” contradicted the doctor.
“We have to look for the girl,” Pagel reminded them. “Quickly.”
“Young gentleman,” said he with the bloodhound, “you know something or you have a suspicion; otherwise you wouldn’t have asked that question of the doctor. Tell us what you have in mind. Don’t leave us in darkness!”
Everyone looked at Pagel, who was thinking of that time when Violet had kissed him. He would gladly have felt now the firm hand on his shoulder, the voice in his ear. But when we have to make a decision, we’re on our own, and we have to be. The words “I just don’t know” rang desperately in his head. He listened to the words. Then he heard the rough voice again, that evil yet sad sound with which she had spoken: Blood will flow.… Blood will flow. Then he looked from the dead into the faces of the men. “The blood wants to go back to where it comes from.”
“I know nothing,” he said. “But perhaps I have guessed something.… This morning Rittmeister von Prackwitz dismissed his servant after a serious quarrel. The maid there told me this evening that it was about a letter which the Fräulein had written.… The Fräulein was very young and this servant was, according to what I know of him, a very evil person. I could imagine …” He looked questioningly at the men.