The Case Of The Lamp That Went Out Part 10

"Yes, that will be better, about a cupful will do," was Muller's answer.

He knew that this harmless remedy would be likely to do the dog good and at the present moment he wanted to be left alone in the room. As soon as Franz had gone, the detective hastened to the window, placing himself behind the curtain so that he could not be seen from outside. He himself could see first a wide courtyard lying between the two wings of the house, then beyond it the garden, an immense square plot of ground beautifully cultivated. The left wing of the house was about six windows longer than the other, and from the first story of it it would be quite easy to look out over the vacant lot where the old shed stood which had served as a night's lodging for Johann Knoll.

There was not the slightest doubt in Muller's mind that this part of the tramp's story was true, for by a natural process of elimination he knew there was nothing to be gained by inventing any such tale. Besides which the detective himself had been to look at the shed. His well-known pedantic thoroughness would not permit him to take any one's word for anything that he might find out for himself, In his investigations on Tuesday morning he had already seen the half-ruined shed, now he knew that it contained a broken bench.

Thus far, therefore, Knoll's story was proved to be true-but there was something that didn't quite hitch in another way. The tramp had said that he had seen first a woman and then a man come from the main house and go in the direction of the smaller house which he took to be the gardener's dwelling. This Muller discovered now was quite impossible.

A tall hedge, fully seven or eight feet high and very thick, stretched from the courtyard far down into the garden past the gardener's little house. There was a broad path on the right and the left of this green wall. From his position in the shed, Knoll could have seen people pa.s.sing only when they were on the right side of the hedge. But to reach the gardener's house from the main dwelling, the shortest way would be on the left side of the hedge. This much Muller saw, then he heard the butler's steps along the hall and he went back to the corner where the dog lay.

Franz was not alone. There was some one else with him, the housekeeper, Mrs. Bernauer. Just as they opened the door, Muller heard her say: "If the gentleman is a veterinary, then we'd better ask him about the parrot--"

The sentence was never finished. Muller never found out what was the matter with the parrot, for as he looked up with a polite smile of interest, he looked into a pale face, into a pair of eyes that opened wide in terror, and heard trembling lips frame the words: "There he is again!"

A moment later Mrs. Bernauer would have been glad to have recalled her exclamation, but it was too late.

Muller bowed before her and asked: "'There he is again,' you said; have you ever seen me before?"

The woman looked at him as if hypnotised and answered almost in a whisper: "I saw you Tuesday morning for the first time, Tuesday morning when the family were going away. Then I saw you pa.s.s through our street twice again that same day. This morning you went past the garden gate and now I find you here. What-what is it you want of us?"

"I will tell you what I want, Mrs. Bernauer, but first I want to speak to you alone. Mr. Franz doesn't mind leaving us for a while, does he?"

"But why?" said the old man hesitatingly. He didn't understand at all what was going on and he would much rather have remained.

"Because I came here for the special purpose of speaking to Mrs.

Bernauer," replied Muller calmly.

"Then you didn't come on account of the dog?"

"No, I didn't come on account of the dog."

"Then you--you lied to me?"

"Partly."

"And you're no veterinary?"

"No--I can help your dog, but I am not a veterinary and never have been."

"What are you then?"

"I will tell Mrs. Bernauer who and what I am when you are outside--outside in the courtyard there. You can walk about in the garden if you want to, or else go and get some simple purgative for this dog. That is all he needs; he has been over-fed."

Franz was quite bewildered. These new developments promised to be interesting and he was torn between his desire to know more, and his doubts as to the propriety of leaving the housekeeper with this queer stranger. He hesitated until the woman herself motioned to him to go. He went out into the hall, then into the courtyard, watched by the two in the room who stood silently in the window until they saw the butler pa.s.s down into the garden. Then they looked at each other.

"You belong to the police?" asked Adele Bernauer finally with a deep sigh.

"That was a good guess," replied Muller with an ironic smile, adding: "All who have any reason to fear us are very quick in recognising us."

"What do you mean by that?" she exclaimed with a start. "What are you thinking of?"

"I am thinking about the same thing that you are thinking of--that I have proved you are thinking of--the same thing that drove you out into the street yesterday and this morning to buy the papers. These papers print news which is interesting many people just now, and some people a great deal. I am thinking of the same thing that was evidently in your thoughts as you peered out of the garden gate this morning, although you would not come out into the street. I know that you do not read even one newspaper regularly. I know also that yesterday and today you bought a great many papers, apparently to get every possible detail about a certain subject. Do you deny this?"

She did not deny it, she did not answer at all. She sank down on a chair, her wide staring eyes looking straight ahead of her, and trembling so that the old chair cracked underneath her weight. But this condition did not last long. The woman had herself well under control.

Muller's coming, or something else, perhaps, may have overwhelmed her for a moment, but she soon regained her usual self-possession.

"Still you have not told me what you want here," she began coldly, and as he did not answer she continued: "I have a feeling that you are watching us. I had this feeling when I saw you the first time and noticed then--pardon my frankness--that you stared at us sharply while we were saying goodbye to our master and mistress. Then I saw you pa.s.s twice again through the street and look up at our windows. This morning I find you at our garden gate and now--you will pardon me if I tell the exact truth--now you have wormed yourself in here under false pretenses because you have no right whatever to force an entrance into this house.

And I ask you again, what do you want here?"

Muller was embarra.s.sed. That did not happen very often. Also it did not happen very often that he was in the wrong as he was now. The woman was absolutely right. He had wormed himself into the house under false pretenses to follow up the new clue which almost unconsciously as yet was leading him on with a stronger and stronger attraction. He could not have explained it and he certainly was not ready to say anything about it at police headquarters, even at the risk of being obliged to continue to enter this mysterious house under false pretenses and to be told that he was doing so. Of course this sort of thing was necessary in his business, it was the only way in which he could follow up the criminals.

But there was something in this woman's words that cut into a sensitive spot and drove the blood to his cheeks. There was something in the bearing and manner of this one-time nurse that impressed him, although he was not a man to be lightly impressed. He had a feeling that he had made a fool of himself and it bothered him. For a moment he did not know what he should say to this woman who stood before him with so much quiet energy in her bearing. But the something in his brain, the something that made him what he was, whispered to him that he had done right, and that he must follow up the trail he had found. That gave him back his usual calm.

He took up his hat, and standing before the pale-faced woman, looking her firmly in the eyes, he said: "It is true that I have no right as yet to force my way into your house, therefore I have been obliged to enter it as best I could. I have done this often in my work, but I do it for the safety of society. And those who reproach me for doing it are generally those whom I have been obliged to persecute in the name of the law. Mrs. Bernauer, I will confess that there are moments in which I feel ashamed that I have chosen this profession that compels me to hunt down human beings. But I do not believe that this is one of those moments. You have read this morning's papers; you must know, therefore, that a man has been arrested and accused of the murder which interests you so much; you must be able to realise the terror and anxiety which are now filling this man's heart. For to-day's papers--I have read them myself--expressed the public sentiment that the police may succeed in convicting this man of the crime, that the death may be avenged and justice have her due. Several of these papers, the papers I know you have bought and presumably read, do not doubt that Johann Knoll is the murderer of Leopold Winkler.

"Now there are at least two people who do not believe that Knoll is the murderer. I am one of them, and you, Mrs. Bernauer, you are the other.

I am going now and when I come again, as I doubtless will come again, I will come with full right to enter this house. I acknowledge frankly that I have no justification in causing your arrest as yet, but you are quite clever enough to know that if I had the faintest justification I would not leave here alone. And one thing more I have to say. You may not know that I have had the most extraordinary luck in my profession, that in more than a hundred cases there have been but two where the criminal I was hunting escaped me. And now, Mrs. Bernauer, I will bid you good day."

Muller stepped towards the window and motioned to Franz, who was walking up and down outside. The old man ran to the door and met the detective in the hall.

"You'd better go in and look after Mrs. Bernauer," said the latter, "I can find my way out alone."

Franz looked after him, shaking his head in bewilderment and then entered his own room. "Merciful G.o.d!" he exclaimed, bending down in terror over the housekeeper, who lay on the floor. In his shock and bewilderment he imagined that she too had been murdered, until he realised that it was only a swoon from which she recovered in a moment.

He helped her regain her feet and she looked about as if still dazed, stammering: "Has he gone?"

"The strange man? ... Yes, he went some time ago. But what happened to you? Did he give you something to make you faint? Do you think he was a thief?"

Mrs. Bernauer shook her head and murmured: "Oh, no, quite the contrary."

A remark which did not enlighten Franz particularly as to the status of the man who had just left them. There was a note of fear in the housekeepers's voice and she added hastily: "Does any one besides ourselves know that he was here?"

"No, Lizzie and the cook are in the kitchen talking about the murder."

Mrs. Bernauer shivered again and went slowly out of the room and up the stairs.

If Franz believed that the stranger had left the house by the front entrance he was very much mistaken. When Muller found himself alone in the corridor he turned quickly and hurried out into the garden. None of the servants had seen him. Lizzie and the cook were engaged in an earnest conversation in the kitchen and Franz was fully occupied with Mrs. Bernauer. The gardener was away and his wife busy at her wash tubs. No one was aware, therefore, that Muller spent about ten minutes wandering about the garden, and ten minutes were quite sufficient for him to become so well acquainted with the place that he could have drawn a map of it. He left the garden through the rear gate, the latch of which he was obliged to leave open. The gardener's wife found it that way several hours later and was rather surprised thereat. Muller walked down the street rapidly and caught a pa.s.sing tramway. His mood was not of the best, for he could not make up his mind whether or no this morning had been a lost one. His mind sorted and rearranged all that he knew or could imagine concerning Mrs. Bernaner. But there was hardly enough of these facts to rea.s.sure him that he was not on a false trail, that he had not allowed himself to waste precious hours all because he had seen a woman's haggard face appear for a moment at the little gate in the quiet street.

CHAPTER VIII. JOHANN KNOLL REMEMBERS SOMETHING ELSE

Muller's goal was the prison where Johann Knoll was awaiting his fate.

The detective had permission to see the man as often as he wished to.

Knoll had been proven a thief, but the accusation of murder against him had not been strengthened by anything but the most superficial circ.u.mstantial evidence, therefore it was necessary that Muller should talk with him in the hope of discovering something more definite.

Knoll lay asleep on his cot as the detective and the warder entered the cell. Muller motioned the attendant to leave him alone with the prisoner and he stood beside the cot looking down at the man. The face on the hard pillow was not a very pleasant one to look at. The skin was roughened and swollen and had that brown-purple tinge which comes from being constantly in the open air, and from habitual drinking. The weather-beaten look may be seen often in the faces of men whose honest work keeps them out of doors; but this man had not earned his colouring honestly, for he was one of the sort who worked only from time to time when it was absolutely necessary and there was no other way of getting a penny. His hands proved this, for although soiled and grimy they had soft, slender fingers which showed no signs of a life of toil. But even a man who has spent forty years in useless idling need not be all bad.

There must have been some good left in this man or he could not have lain there so quietly, breathing easily, wrapped in a slumber as undisturbed as that of a child. It did not seem possible that any man could lie there like that with the guilt of murder on his conscience, or even with the knowledge in his soul that he had plundered a corpse.

Muller had never believed the first to be the case, but he had thought it possible that Knoll knew perfectly well that it was a lifeless body he was robbing. He had believed it at least until the moment when he stood looking down at the sleeping tramp. Now, with the deep knowledge of the human heart which was his by instinct and which his profession had increased a thousand-fold, Muller knew that this man before him had no heavy crime upon his conscience--that it was really as he had said--that he had taken the watch and purse from one whom he believed to be intoxicated only. Of course it was not a very commendable deed for which the tramp was now in prison, but it was slight in comparison to the crimes of which he was suspected.

Muller bent lower over the unconscious form and was surprised to see a gentle smile spread over the face before him. It brightened and changed the coa.r.s.e rough face and gave it for a moment a look of almost child-like innocence. Somewhere within the coa.r.s.ened soul there must be a spot of brightness from which such a smile could come.