All this was very long ago, almost a year—or was it more than a year? Petra had experienced so much since then; the gates of another world had opened to her, and yet she looked at her enemy with the same old fear. That enemy had changed, too, but for the worse. Drugs—cocaine and alcohol—had done their work on her; and the removal of her beat from the rich West End to the East End spoke eloquently of her fading charms. The smooth round cheeks had become haggard and wrinkled, the soft red mouth cracked and dry; every movement as jerky as a mad woman’s.
She screamed, spilling her venom, an incessant abuse. Whenever the yellow secretary asked a question she started again, as if the filth within her were continually and mysteriously renewed. At last he made a gesture to the two policemen, and they removed her from the charge-room to the cells, one of them saying quietly: “Come along, little girl, and sleep it off.”
She was just about to start her screaming again when she caught a glimpse of Petra through the bars. She stood still. “Have you got that bitch at last?” she shouted triumphantly. “Thank God! The damned whore! Is she already under supervision? What a sow! Takes all the gentlemen away from a decent girl and infects them, that tart, that dirty tart! She walks the streets, Herr Wachtmeister, day and night, and the filthy bitch is a mass of disease.”
“Come along, girl,” said the policeman quietly and, finger by finger, disengaged the clinging hand from the bars of Petra’s cell. “Have a proper sleep.”
The secretary had risen from his desk to approach them. “Take her away,” he said. “One can hardly hear oneself speak. It’s snow—when it’s worn off she’ll collapse like a wet rag.”
The policemen nodded; between them they supported the girl and took her away. Except for this assistance she was upheld only by a senseless fury which fed on anything. Even when she could no longer see Petra she still shouted abuse over her shoulder.
The secretary cast his sick tired glance (the whites of his eyes were yellow, too) on Petra, and asked in low tones: “Is it a fact? Have you walked the streets?”
Petra nodded. “Yes, a year ago. But not now.”
The secretary also nodded, wearily. He went back to his desk. But he stopped again, turned round. “Have you got a disease?” he asked.
Petra shook her head energetically. “No, never have had.”
The secretary nodded again, sat down at his desk and continued his interrupted writing. Life in the charge-room went on. Some of the arrested might have been afraid, fidgety and worried; perhaps the drunkards were tormented by visions; but outwardly everything went smoothly and well.
Until shortly after six o’clock, when the telephone announced that Oberwachtmeister Leo Gubalke was mortally injured in the stomach and would probably die before midnight. From that moment the aspect of the police station completely changed. Doors were continually banging; officers, in plain clothes or uniform, came and went. One whispered to another, a third joined in, a fourth cursed. And at half-past six Gubalke’s comrades returned, those he had wanted to help in their fight with the two gangs, the fight in which he was wounded by the only shot fired. The whispering continued. The desk was banged; a policeman stood grimly in a corner, swinging his rubber truncheon; the looks cast at the prisoners were no longer indifferent but stern.
Those, however, which were cast at Petra Ledig were of particular intensity. Everybody had been told by the secretary that she was “Leo’s last official act.” Gubalke, because he had arrested this girl, had been twenty minutes late. Had he been punctual and turned out with the others, in closed formation, he might not have been hit by the murderer’s bullet. In fact it was certain.
The man who was in this moment suffering a painful and slow death was thinking, perhaps, of his wife and children. Possibly, in his extreme pain, he was pleased to remember that his girls at least washed themselves as he did, and that he had left behind him a part of his being, a tiny symbol of what he regarded as order. Or he may have thought, in the valley of the shadow of death, that now he would never sit in a tidy office and keep orderly records, or he remembered his allotment garden, or he wondered whether the burial club, at the present rate of devaluation, would pay out enough money for a decent funeral. The dying man might be thinking of a variety of subjects, but the chances that he was thinking of Petra Ledig, his “last official act,” were very scanty.
And yet he, dying, took possession of this case, singled it out from all the others. His colleagues saw in Petra not an ordinary girl but the reason for the dying man’s having been twenty minutes late. Gubalke’s last official act must have been important.
The tall, heavy, melancholy-looking superintendent with the sergeant major’s mustache came into the room, stood beside the secretary’s desk and asked significantly: “Is that the girl?”
“That’s the girl,” confirmed the secretary in a low voice.
“He told me that she had dealings with gamblers. Nothing else.”
“I’ve not yet examined her,” whispered the secretary. “I wanted to wait till—he came back.”
“Examine her,” said the superintendent.
“The drunken woman who made such a row recognized her. She’s walked the streets. She admitted it, but maintained that it was some time ago.”
“Yes, he was very observant. He saw everything which was not in order. I shall miss him very much.”
“We shall all miss him. He was an excellent worker and a good comrade, and not at all pushing.”
“Yes, we shall all miss him. Examine her. Remember that the only reference he made was to gamblers.”
“I’ll remember. How could I forget it? I’ll put her through it.”
Petra was led to his desk. If she had not already noticed the significant glances or realized by the way they stood round her cell that something was amiss, the manner in which the yellow secretary now spoke to her must have revealed that the atmosphere had changed and to her disadvantage. Something must have happened to make them think badly of her—could it have something to do with Wolf? This uncertainty made her timid and embarrassed. Once or twice she referred to the kind Wachtmeister “who lives in our house,” but the blank silence with which this appeal was met by the superintendent and the secretary frightened her the more.
As long as the examination concerned herself alone, and she could stick to the truth, everything went fairly well. But when the question cropped up as to her friend’s means of subsistence, when the word “gambler” fell on her ears, then she felt cornered and confused.
Without hesitation she admitted that she had accosted men several times (“Perhaps eight or ten times, I can’t remember exactly”), had slept with them and received money for it. But she did not want to admit that Wolfgang was a gambler for money, and that this had been their main resource for some time. Since he had never made any secret of it she was not even sure whether gambling was illegal, but she preferred to be on the safe side and prevaricated. Even on this point the dying man had done her a disservice. The word “gambler” had a meaning here in the East End of Berlin quite different from what it had in the West End. A girl of doubtful character who walked the streets and had a permanent friend and also “had dealings with gamblers” could mean only one thing in the East End: she was the companion of a cardsharp, that is to say, a three-card trickster. In the eyes of the two police officers she was a girl who acted as a decoy for her friend and brought in victims to be fleeced.