Wolf Among Wolves (120 page)

“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.”

“They certainly do that,” sighed Pagel. “Every day I see the holes and have to have them filled up. I am always intending to go out at night and see if I can catch one, Kowalewski, but I always fall asleep over supper.”

“It’s too much, what the young gentleman has to do. All the estate and the whole forest and all the pen-pushing—no one’s done all that. You need help.”

“Oh, nobody knows what will happen here.”

Both were silent a moment. “But those miserable potato thieves—that’s a matter for the police,” said Kowalewski. “The young gentleman ought to apply to them.”

“The police! Oh, no. We’re not in favor with them anymore, Kowalewski. We’ve made too much work for them in the last six months.” Both were silent. Each new load of potatoes seemed to emerge like a yellowish brown blessing from the darkness into the dawn. Now Pagel could leave again, having established how far the work had proceeded. He had something else to say, and he was no longer too weak to say something which might be unpleasant. It had to be said, and he would say it. “By the way, I saw your Sophie this morning in the village. So she’s still at home?”

The old man grew very embarrassed. “She has to look after her mother—my wife is ill,” he stuttered.

“You told me last time she was taking up a situation on the first of October. Now you say she has to look after her mother. You’re not telling me the truth, Kowalewski. That won’t do. If you occupy one of our cottages, she’s got to work.”

Kowalewski looked very pale. “I have no authority over the lass, young gentleman,” he said in excuse. “She takes no notice of what I say.”

“Kowalewski, old fellow, don’t be so flabby! You know yourself how much we need every hand, and you know too that if the overseer’s daughter is lazy, then those of the laborers will certainly be.”

“I’ll tell her what you say, young gentleman,” said Kowalewski, distressed.

“Yes, do, and tell her that otherwise I’ll put another family into your house as well. Then you’ll only have a parlor, bedroom and kitchen. Good day, Kowalewski, I’m damned hungry.”

Young Pagel got on his bicycle. He was satisfied that he’d finally brought the business with Sophie in order—one way or another. He’d rather let her get away with things lately, he had had so much to do. But whenever he saw the
girl in the village it had occurred to him that such an example of laziness was intolerable. It was difficult enough to retain one’s workers at that time—they never considered they were paid enough. However, they didn’t only get their wretched money, they got extras, too. Nobody in the village lived the life of the lilies in the field—the good Lord fed them! On the contrary, my good Sophie, on the contrary, these were not the times to rely on God in heaven. These were times to work yourself until you drop.

He could not deny that he was extremely angry with Sophie. He had liked her in the beginning. He dimly recalled a certain scene at the crab pool. She boldly defended the men’s clothes against the war, like Kniebusch. But either he had been mistaken in his liking or the girl had changed. She had such a confounded slovenly way of lounging about the village. Yes, she had once had the cheek to call after him as he sped by on his bicycle: “Always busy, Herr Pagel?”

When a thing was overdone it was time to stop it. If she wasn’t digging potatoes tomorrow, he would put Black Minna with all her screaming, quarrelsome retinue in Kowalewski’s attic.

He came into the farmyard. In the sheds the head carter spoke to him. It was too wet, he declared, to drill rye—the drills would foul. For Pagel, who understood nothing of farming and stock-raising, and yet had to supervise and decide, this sort of thing was difficult. In general the older people gladly helped him; had he passed himself off as experienced, then they would have taken pleasure in playing him trick after trick. But because he never behaved as though he knew something when he did not, they were helpful. The experience and perceptions of these old people was hardly appreciated. But Pagel liked to listen to them—he always just fell asleep over his thick textbooks.

“What shall we do then?” he asked, and the man suggested that plowing was possible on the lighter outfields. “Good,” said Pagel. “We’ll plow then.”

And went to his lunch.

Lunch he always took in the office, which was his living room, work room, smoke room and study. Although Studmann was no longer in Neulohe, his meals were not solitary. He had a companion, Amanda Backs. “Thank God,” she said, “that you’re punctual for once, Herr Pagel. Put on some dry clothes quickly. I’ll bring in the food at once.”

“Fine.” He went into his bedroom.

It was very likely, indeed it was almost certain, that the village scandalmongers, bearing in mind what was known of the girl’s earlier life, misrepresented this table fellowship of Pagel and Backs as a bed fellowship. Actually it had all come about quite naturally after the arrest of the convicts. The girls at the Manor had, without notice, wage or reference, fled in fear of prosecution for
abetting escaped prisoners, not to mention the dreaded mockery of the villagers—leaving behind the single irreproachable—that Amanda Backs once publicly reproached at evening prayers. And old Elias also, of course. He, however, left next day to report no doubt to his employers, for he had no rent to take them. And did not return.

Pagel, those first days in October, had his mind too much occupied with a multitude of affairs to worry overmuch about the Manor. One day, however, he ran into Amanda Backs, and she inquired very forcibly what he was really thinking about, what did he imagine? Even if she didn’t actually shudder at being the sole occupant of that enormous old dungeon, all the same it wasn’t pleasant. And something would have to be done upstairs before the old people came back; the convicts’ party had left everything in a terrible mess, and two windows had been broken in the drawing room. Now the rain came in, and there had been puddles on the floor for a week.

Pagel, tired out and a little disheartened, not having had ten hours’ sleep in three days, looked at the rosy-cheeked Amanda, rubbed his exceedingly unshaven chin, and asked: “Yes, don’t you want to clear out as well, Amanda?”

“And who’ll look after my poultry?” she indignantly demanded. “Especially now, with winter coming, when the ducks and geese ought to be fattened and one can’t feed them enough! I clear out! Not on your life.”

“In the Villa they’re wringing their hands for a sensible housemaid,” he said. “You’ve no doubt heard that Lotte has also gone off. Wouldn’t you like to go there?”

“No.” Amanda Backs was clear on that point. “I’m used to the stupidity of my poultry, but I’ll never get used to that of my fellow-beings. They always make me boil with rage and then I’m not fit for anything.”

“All right,” Pagel had said hurriedly. “I’ll let you know this evening.”

He had intended to discuss this matter with Frau von Prackwitz; but she was out again in the car, and it was uncertain when she would return. The Rittmeister was withdrawn from all inquiries; he lay in bed, watched over by an attendant. There was no one in all populous Neulohe whom he could ask for advice.