Wolf Among Wolves

  “I will fetch the forester,” said Pagel.

  “Wait, young man. Herr Pagel, isn’t it? I was wanting to speak to you.”

  The big hall had emptied itself. Only two or three of the bulbs set up for the orgy were still alight; the air was icy and seemed dirty. A half torn-down curtain hung from a window revealing a night blind.

  The fat man took Pagel gently by the arm, obliging him to walk up and down. “It’s damned cold. My very marrow’s ice. How that young girl must be freezing! She’s been practically two hours outside now. Well, tell me all you know about the young lady. You’re in employment on the estate, and young men are interested in young women. So out with it.” His icy gaze penetrated the young man.

  But Pagel had seen and observed a good deal; he was no longer the unsuspecting young man who submitted to every pretension made with authority. He had heard a gendarme exclaim peevishly: “What’s that lump of fat want with us again?” and had noticed how the fat man gave instructions to civilians but never to a gendarme, and how the gendarmes acted as though he were not there, never speaking to him.

  “First I should like to know in the name of what authority you are here,” he replied slowly.

  “You want to see a badge?” cried the other. “I could show you one, only it’s not valid now. I’ve been kicked out. In the newspapers they call it disciplinary punishment on account of nationalist convictions.”

  “You are the only man here,” said Wolfgang more rapidly, “who kept urging the search for Fräulein von Prackwitz. What is your interest in her?”

  “None,” said the man icily. He bent closer to Pagel, seized his jacket and said: “You are lucky, young man. You have a pleasant face, not a bulldog’s mug like mine. People will always have confidence in you—don’t misuse it. Well, I trust you, too, and I’ll disclose something. I have a great interest in whatever is connected with arms dumps that have been carted away.”

  Wolfgang stared in front of him. Then he looked up. “Violet von Prackwitz is fifteen years old. I don’t think that she …”

  “Herr Pagel,” said the detective with a cold look, “in every case of treachery there is a woman behind it, either as instigator or tool. Often an unconscious tool. Always! Tell me what you know.”

  So Pagel told what he knew.

  The fat man walked beside him, snorting, clearing his throat, looking contemptuously at the walls, tugging furiously at the cord of a curtain, spitting. “Idiocy. Miserable idiocy!” he cried. Then, somewhat calmer: “Thank you, Herr Pagel, things are a little clearer now.”

  “Shall we find the girl? The Lieutenant …”

  “Blind!” said the fat man. “Born blind in a world of the blind! You’re thinking of the Lieutenant—well, Herr Pagel,” he whispered, “you will be able to say good morning to this Lieutenant in an hour’s time, but I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

  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.

  “Blackmail then! That sounds a bit different,” cried a gendarme. “None of these damned affairs of traitors, arms dumps, secret tribunals!”

  His colleague cleared his throat loudly, almost menacingly. “Let the hound smell the vest. Don’t move, anyone! Take Minka in a circle round the hollow; everything’s stamped down here.”

  Within five minutes the hound, tugging at the lead, shot up a little path. The men hurried after it, out of the hollow and up a glade, further and further from Neulohe.

  Suddenly the detective was at Pagel’s side again. “You did that very well,” he said approvingly. “Have you guessed it at last, then?”

  “Is it really true?” In his shock Pagel stopped. “It can’t be.”

  “On, young man! We’re in a hurry now, though I’m convinced we’ll be too late. Of course it’s true—who would it be else?”

  “I don’t believe it. That gray, fishlike brute!”

  “I must have seen him on the streets of Ostade yesterday,” said the fat detective, “I had a sort of inkling of his face. But one sees too many faces these days which look like the faces of past or future criminals. God help the chap if I find him!”

  “If we can only find her.”

  “Stop. Perhaps your wish has just been fulfilled.”

  There was a delay. At right angles to the glade the bloodhound, tugging, went into a thickly wooded coppice of firs. Battling with the branches and aided by the torch, the men pushed on. No one spoke. It was so quiet that the animal’s impatient panting sounded like the strokes of a steam engine.

  “The scent’s quite fresh,” whispered the fat man to Pagel, and forced his way through the undergrowth.

  But the little clearing they came to, hardly larger than a boxroom, was empty. The hound with a yelp sprang forward, and its master bent down. “A woman’s shoe,” he cried.

  “And another,” exclaimed the fat detective. “Here he … On, gentlemen! We’re just behind him. He won’t be able to go very fast with the girl in stockings. You can praise your dog, man. Onward!”

  They ran.

  This way and that went the wild chase, between firs and junipers, the hound yelping, the men knocking in the dark against tree trunks. “I can hear her!” “Be quiet!” “Wasn’t that a woman screaming?”

  The forest became more open, they advanced faster, and suddenly, fifty or sixty yards in front, there was a light between the branches, a beam white and brilliant …

  “A car. He has a car!” cried someone. And they stormed forward. The engine started up, it roared, the glare flickered, became weaker.… And they were running in darkness.

  They came to a halt. In the distance a light traveled away. A gendarme lowered his pistol—impossible to hit the tires.

  They must hurry back to Neulohe! They must telephone; the fugitives could be followed in the Rittmeister’s car. All set off.

  “Pagel,” called out Studmann impatiently, “aren’t you coming?”

  “In a moment.”

  The fat man held Pagel by the arm. “Listen, young man,” he whispered. “I won’t come with you, I’ll go back to Ostade. Those chaps are full of optimism because they’re on the track and it’s nothing to do with a traitor. Chasing political murderers is something they don’t like, although they have to. But you, young man, are the only sensible-looking one on the farm. Don’t deceive yourself or the others, especially the mother. Break it to her slowly.”

  “What is it I’m to break to her?”

  “When we were pushing through the thicket I too thought that he’d done it. But when we found the shoes …”

  “We had disturbed him.”

  “Perhaps. But he had calculated it to the minute. Pagel, I tell you in your worst dreams you couldn’t dream of a fellow like that. It’s possible, of course, that he will still do it, but I don’t think so. It’s much worse.… There are people like that. Generally, in healthy times, the others don’t let them advance. In a rotten diseased age they flourish like weeds.… You needn’t think, Pagel, that this fellow’s a human being. He’s a monster, a wolf who kills for the sake of killing.”

  “But you say he won’t do it?”

  “Do you know what that means, to be sexually enslaved? Can you imagine it? Dependent on the breath and the glance of such a monster, able to do nothing without his permission and will? There’s your little girl! And now he’s got away he will do the worst he can; continually he will almost murder her and then let her live a little. What he calls living! Just enough for the spark of life to experience the fear of death!”

  There was a gust of wind in the trees.

  “Pagel,” said the fat man suddenly, “I’m going now. We’re hardly likely to meet again, but it has been, as they say, a pleasure.”

  “Pagel,” he said once again urgently, “pray to God that this mother never finds her daughter—she’d no longer be a daughter.”

  He was gone without a sound, leaving Wolfgang Pagel alone in the dark and windy forest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Life Goes On

  I

  It was October. Neulohe grew increasingly damper, windier, colder. And more and more difficult did Wolfgang Pagel find it to collect the necessary people for the potato digging. Where in September three wagons packed with laborers had rattled on to the fields from the local town, in October it had come to one, bearing
a few sullen women wrapped up in sacks and woolen shawls.

  Swearing and complaining, they toiled through the sodden growth over fields which seemed only to grow larger. Already Pagel had had to raise their wages twice, and had this not been in kind, had he not paid them with potatoes—that support of life which can replace even bread itself—none would have come. In those October days the dollar rose from 242,000,000 marks to 73,000,000,000. Hunger crept through the entire country, followed by influenza. Unprecedented despair seized the people; every pound of potatoes was a fence between them and death.

  Wolfgang Pagel was now the overlord of Neulohe Manor, the farm and the forest. No time now to stand among the potatoes and give out tokens. Next year’s rye had to be sown and the fields plowed. In the forest the cutting down of firewood had started, and unless one gingered up Kniebusch every day the forester would have taken to his bed and died.

  Pagel would come on his bicycle to the potato field where old Kowalewski would meet him ever more and more hollow-eyed. “We can’t do it, young sir,” was his lament. “This way we shall be digging in January in snow and ice.”

  Wolfgang would laugh. “We’ll do it, Kowalewski. Because we’ve got to. Because potatoes are bitterly needed in the town.” And because the estate bitterly needs the money for them, he thought.

  “But we ought to have more people,” moaned Kowalewski.

  “And where shall I get them?” Pagel was a little impatient. “Shall I have another prison gang sent?”

  “Oh, Lord, no!” exclaimed old Kowalewski, horrified—much too horrified, thought Pagel, looking at the diggers. “They’re only townsfolk, they’ve no business here,” he said discontentedly. “The work’s too unfamiliar for them. If only we could get the people from Altlohe as well.”

  “We’ll never get them!” declared Kowalewski angrily. “They steal their potato supplies from our clamps at night.”