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George hurried and barely an hour later was standing in front of the house, No. 24 Ehrlich Strasse. It was more or less respectable and quite without character. He climbed up the four floors and rang. An old woman opened the door. She was wearing a starched blue skirt and grinned. He felt like glancing down at himself to see if all was not as it should be, but controlled himself and asked: 'Is my brother at home?'

Immediately the woman stopped grinning, stared at him and said: 'Excuse me, there's no brother here!

'My name is Professor George Kien. I want Dr. Peter Kien, the well-known scholar. He certainly lived here eight yean ago. Perhaps you know if there is anyone in the building who would know his address in case he's moved.'

'Better say nothing about that.'

'One moment, please. I've come specially from Paris. You must surely be able to tell me whether he fives here or not.'

'I ask you, you ought to be thankful.'

'Why thankful?'

'Some people aren't fools.'

'Of course not.'

'The stories there are!'

'Perhaps my brother's ill?'

'A fine brother! You ought to be ashamed!'

'Kindly tell me what you know!'

'And what do I get out of it?'

George took a piece of money out of his pocket, gripped her arm and placed the coin with friendly pressure on her hand, which had opened of itself. The woman grinned again.

'You'll tell me what you know about my brother, now, won't you?'

'Anyone can talk.'

'Well?'

'All of a sudden you're dead. More, please!' she tossed her shoulders.

George pulled out another coin, she held out her other hand. Instead of touching it, he tossed the coin down from above.

'I may as well go again!' she said and gave him an ugly look.

'What do you know about my brother?'

'More than eight years ago. It all came out the day before yesterday.'

It was eight years since Peter had written to him. The telegram had come the day before yesterday. The woman must have got hold of something of the truth. 'So what did you do?' George asked in order to spur her into a fuller account.

'We went to the police. A respectable woman goes to the police right away.'

'Of course, of course. Thank you for the assistance you must have rendered to my brother.'

'If you please . . . Knocked flat, the police were.'

'But what had he done?' George imagined his brother, slightly unbalanced, complaining to oafish policemen of his eye trouble.

'Stolen, he did! He's no heart....'

'Stolen?'

'Murdered her, that's what he did! It's not my fault, is it? She was the first wife, I'm the second. He hid the pieces. There was room behind the books. Thief, that's what I always said. Day before yesterday the murderer was found out. I've got the shame of it. Why was I such a fool? I always say, one shouldn't. That's what people are like. I thought, all those books. What's he up to between six and seven? Cutting up corpses. Took the pieces out for his walk. Not a soul noticed. Stole the bank book, he did. I've nothing to hold on to. I might starve. He wanted me to. I'm the second. Then I'll have a divorce. Excuse me, he'll have to pay me first! Eight years ago he ought to have been locked up! Now he's put away downstairs. I've locked him in. I won't be murdered in my bed!' She burst into tears and slammed the door.

Peter a murderer. Quiet, lanky Peter, whom all the other boys at school bullied. The stairs swayed. The roof fell in. And George, a person of the utmost fastidiousness, dropped his hat and did not pick it up. Peter married. Who would have believed it? The second wife, more than fifty years old, ugly, freakish, common, not able to utter a single human sentence, escaped an assault the day before yesterday. He cut the first one into pieces. He loves his books, and uses them as a hiding place. Peter and truth! If only he had lied, all his childhood lied, black and blue! So this was why George had been sent for. The telegram was a forgery, either of his wife or of the police. That legend of Peter's sexlessness. A pretty legend like all legends, made out ofthin air, idiotic. George the brother of a blue-beard. Headlines in all the papers. The greatest living sinologist ! The highest authority on eastern Asia! A double life! His retirement from the direction of the institute. Aberration. Divorce. His assistants to succeed him. The patients, the patients, they will be tormented, they will be ill-used! Eight hundred! They love him, they need him, he cannot leave them. Resignation is impossible. They cling to him on all sides, you mustn't leave us, we'll come too, stay with us, we've no one else, they don't talk our language, you listen to us, you understand us, you laugh with us; his beautiful, rare birds; they are all of them strangers there, each one from a different land, not one understands his neighbour, they accuse each other and do not even know it; he lives for them, he can't forsake them, he
will
stay. Peter's affairs must be seen to. His catastrophe is bearable. He was all for Chinese characters, George for human beings. Peter must be put in a home. He lived alone too long. His senses broke loose with his first wife. How could he control this sudden change? The police will give him up. Possibly he will be allowed to take mm to Paris. It is evident that he is not responsible for his actions. In no circumstances will George retire from the direction of the institute.

On the contrary, he stepped forward, picked up his hat, dusted it, and knocked politely but firmly at the door. Scarcely was his hat back in his hand than he was again the assured man of the world, the doctor. 'My dear lady,' he lied, 'my dear lady!' A youthful admirer, he re-repeated the two words, imploringly and with a fire which seemed ridiculous even to him, as though he were himself the spectator to the play he was acting. He heard her preparations. Maybe she has a pocket mirror, he thought, maybe she's powdering herself and will listen to me. She opened the door and grinned. 'I would like to ask you for some particulars!' He sensed her disappointment. She had expected a further passage of affection, or at the very least a repetition of that 'my dear idy'. Her mouth stayed open, her expression grew sour. 

'I ask you. Murderer, that's all I know.'

'Shut up!' bellowed the voice of a mad bull. Two fists appeared, followed by a thick, red head. 'Don't you believe the bitch! She's a cow! No murders in my house! As long as I've anything to do with it, not on your life! Owed me for four canaries, though; if you're his brother, highly bred little birds, bred them myself. He paid. Paid well. Yesterday night it was. Maybe I'll open my patent peep-hole for him again to-day. He's gone off his head. Do you want to see him? Gets his food all right. Whatever he asks for. I've locked him up. He's frightened of the old woman. Can't stand her. Nobody can stand her. Have a look now! What she's done with him! Knocked him all to bits, she has. She doesn't exist any more for him, he says. He'd sooner be blind. Quite right, he is. She's a sh—of a woman! If he hadn't married her he'd have been right enough, right in the head too, I say!' The woman tried to speak; with a sideways thrust of his arm he knocked her back into the flat.

'Who are you?' asked George.

'You see in me your brother's best friend. Benedikt Pfaff, signature, police constable, retired, once called Ginger the Cat! I look after the house. Though I say it myself! I keep a sharp eye on the law. Who are you? Profession, I mean?'

George asked to see his brother. All the murders, all the anxieties, all the malevolence in the world had vanished: The caretaker pleased him. His head reminded him of the rising sun of early that morning. He was crude, but refreshing, an untamed, stout fellow such as one rarely sees now in the cities and homes of civilization. The stairs groaned. Instead of carrying it, this Atlas smote the wretched earth. His powerful legs oppressed the ground. Feet and shoes seemed made of stone. The walls echoed to his words. How could the tenants endure it, George wondered. He was a little ashamed because he had not immediately seen that the woman was a cretin. The simple structure of her sentences had convinced him that her imbecilities were true. He put the blame on the journey, on the Mozart opera of yesterday, which had for the first time in years dragged him out of the daily course of his thoughts, and on his expectation of finding an invalid brother, but not necessarily a cretinous housekeeper. That the austere Peter should have happened on this absurd old thing was a light in his darkness. He laughed at the blindness and inexperience of his brother, who had certainly telegraphed on her account, and was glad that the damage could be so easily repaired. A question to the caretaker confirmed his assumption: she had kept house for Peter for many years and had made use of this, her original function, to insert herself into a more respectable one. He was filled with tender feelings for his brother, who had spared him the inconvenience of murder. The simple telegram had a simple meaning. Who could tell but to-morrow morning already he might be back in the train, and the day after pacing through his wards;

Below in the entrance hall Atlas came to a stand in front of ? door, pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked it. 'I'll go fust,' he whispered, and put a stumpy finger to his mouth. 'Professor, my friend!' George heard him saying inside the door. 'I've got a visitor for you! What do you give me for that?' George went in, closed the door, and was astounded at the bare little closet within. The window had been boarded up, a little light fell on a bed and a cupboard. Nothing could be seen clearly. A repellent smell of stale food crawled round him, involuntarily he put nis fingers to his nostrils. Where was Peters There was a scraping, such as one hears in the cages of animals. George felt along the wall. It was really there where he had thought; how appalling, this tiny room. 'Open the window,' he said aloud. 'Can't be done!' came the answer, in Atlas' voice. So Peter's eyes were the trouble, not only the wife; that was evident from the darkness in which he lived. Where was he? 'Here he is,' bellowed Atlas, a lion in a rabbit hutch, 'still at my patent!' George took two steps along the wall and collided with a neap. Peter? He bent down and felt the skeleton of a man. He lifted it up. The man trembled, or was it the draught? no, everything was closed, now someone was whispering, flat and toneless like one dying, like one dead, could he speak.

'Who is it?'

'It's George, your brother George, don't you hear me, Peter?'

'George?' Life came into the voice.

'Yes, George. I wanted to see you, I've come to visit you. I come from Paris.'

'Is it really you?'

'Why, do you doubt it?'

'I can't see here. It's so dark.'

'I knew you at once, by your thinness.'

Suddenly someone ordered, stern and harsh —George almost started — 'Leave the room, Pfaff!'

'What's that?'

'Please, would you mind leaving us alone?' George added.

'Immediately!' commanded Peter, the old Peter.

Pfaff went. The new gentleman was too grand for him. He looked like a president or something of the sort. He probably was. He would have plenty of time later to pay the Professor back for his sauce. In part payment he slammed the door, out of respect for the President he did not lock him in.

George laid Peter on the bed; he hardly noticed the difference when he no longer had him in his arms; he went to the window and pulled at the boards. 'I'll cover it up again soon,' he said, 'you need air. If your eyes hurt you, close them for the moment.'

'My eyes don't hurt.'

'Then why do you spare them? I thought you'd been reading too much and were taking a rest in the dark.'

'Those boards have only been there since last night.'

'Did you nail them up so tight? I can hardly get them away, I wouldn't have thought you had so much strength.'

'That was the caretaker, the landsknecht.'

'Landsknecht?'

'A venal brute.'

'I found him sympathetic. In comparison to other people in your entourage.'

'I did once too.'

'What has he done to you, then?'

'He behaves shamelessly. He's growing familiar.'

'Perhaps he does that to show you his friendship. You can't have been long in this little room?'

'Since the day before yesterday, about noon.'

'Do you feel better? Your eyes I mean. I hope you brought no books with you.'

'The books are upstairs. My little hand-library was stolen from me.'

'What a stroke of luck! Otherwise you'd have tried to read here. That would have been poison to your tired eyes. I believe even you are anxious about them now. Once you didn't care about them at all. You've treated them disgracefully always.'

'My eyes are perfectly well.'

'Truly? Haven't you any complaints?'

'No.'

The boards were down. A sharp light flowed into the room. Air streamed through the open window. George breathed in, deeply contented. So far the examination had progressed well. Peter s answers to the well calculated questions were correct, factual, a little curt, as always. The evil was all in this wife, only in the wife; he had purposely disregarded hints in her direction. He had no fear for his eyes; the way in which he reacted to repeated inquiries about their condition argued a genuine indignation. George turned round. Two empty birdcages hung on the wall. The bedclothes had red stains on them. In the corner at the back was a wash-basin. The dirty water in it shimmered red. Peter was even thinner than his hands had already told him. Two sharp creases cut his checks in two. His face looked longer, harsher and narrower than it had done. Four penetrating wrinkles were on the brow as though his eyes were always pulled wide open. Of his lips nothing was visible, a recalcitrant slit betrayed where they would be. His eyes, poor and watery blue, examined his brother, pretending indifference; in their corners twitched curiosity and distrust. His left arm, Peter was hiding behind his back.