It was striking eight as Muller came out of a cafe in the heart of the
city. He had been in there but a few moments, for his purpose was merely
to look through the Army lists of the current year. The result of his
search proved the correctness of his conclusions.
There was a Lieutenant Theobald Leining in the single infantry regiment
stationed at Marburg.
Muller took a cab and drove to the main telegraph office. He asked for
the original of the telegram which had been sent that afternoon to the
address; “Herbert Thorne, Hotel Danieli, Venice.” This closed the circle
of the chain.
The detective re-entered his waiting cab and drove back to Hietzing. He
told the driver to halt at the corner of the street on which fronted the
Thorne mansion and to wait for him there. He himself walked slowly down
the quiet Street and rang the bell at the iron gate.
“You come to this house again?” asked Franz, starting back in alarm when
he saw who it was that had called him to the door.
“Yes, my good friend; I want to get into this house again. But not on
false pretenses this time. And before you let me in you can go upstairs
and ask Mrs. Bernauer if she will receive me in her own room--in her own
room, mind. But make haste; I am in a hurry.” The detective’s tone was
calm and he strolled slowly up and down in front of the gate when he had
finished speaking.
The old butler hesitated a moment, then walked into the house. When he
returned, rather more quickly, he looked alarmed and his tone was very
humble as he asked Muller to follow him.
When the detective entered Mrs. Bernauer’s room the housekeeper rose
slowly from the large armchair in front of her table. She was very pale
and her eyes were full of terror. She made no move to speak, so Muller
began the conversation. He put down his hat, brought up a chair and
placed it near the window at which the housekeeper had been sitting.
Then he sat down and motioned to her to do the same.
“You are a faithful servant, all too faithful,” he began. “But you are
faithful only to your master. You have no devotion for his wife.”
“You are mistaken,” replied the woman in a low tone.
“Perhaps, but I do not think so. One does not betray the people to whom
one is devoted.”
Mrs. Bernauer looked up in surprise. “What--what do you know?” she
stammered.
Muller did not answer the question directly, but continued: “Mrs.
Thorne had a meeting recently with a strange man. It was not their first
meeting, and somehow you discovered it. But before this last meeting
occurred you spoke to the lady’s husband about it, and it was arranged
between you that you should give him a signal which would mean to him,
‘Your wife is going to the meeting.’ Mrs. Thorne did go to the meeting.
This happened on Monday evening at about quarter past nine. Some one,
who was in the neighbourhood by chance, saw a woman’s figure hurrying
through the garden, down to the other street, and a moment after this,
the light of this lamp in your window was seen to go out. A hand had
turned down the wick--it was your hand.
“This was the signal to Mr. Thorne. The mirrors over his desk reflected
in his eyes the light he could not otherwise have seen as he sat by his
own window. The signal, therefore, told him that the time had come to
act. This same chance watcher, who had seen the woman going through the
garden, had seen the lamp go out, and now saw a man’s figure hurrying
down the path the woman had taken. The man as well as the woman came
from this house and went in the direction of the lower end of the
garden.
“A little while later a shot was heard, and the next morning Leopold
Winkler was found with a bullet in his back. The crime was generally
taken to be a murder for the sake of robbery. But you and I, and Mr.
Herbert Thorne, know very well that it was not.
“You know this since Wednesday noon. Then it was that the idea suddenly
came to you, falling like a heavy weight on your soul, the idea that
Winkler might not have been killed for the sake of robbery, but because
of the hatred that some one bore him. Then it was that you lost your
appetite suddenly, that you drove into the city with the excuse of
errands to do, in order to read the papers without being seen by any
one who knew you. When you came home you searched everywhere in your
master’s room: you made an excuse for this search, but what you wanted
to find out was whether he had left anything that could betray him. Your
fright had already confused your mind. You were searching probably for
the weapon from which he had fired the bullet. You did not realise that
he would naturally have taken it with him and thrown it somewhere into
a ravine or river beside the railway track between here and Venice. How
could you think for a moment that he would leave it behind him, here in
his room, or dropped in the garden? But this was doubtless due to the
confusion owing to your sudden alarm and anxiety--a confusion which
prevented you from realising the danger of the two peculiarly hung
mirrors in Mr. Thorne’s room. These should have been taken away at once.
This morning my sudden appearance at the garden gate prevented you from
making an examination of the place of the murder. Your swoon, after I
had spoken to you in the butler’s room, showed me that you were carrying
a burden too heavy for your strength. Finally, this afternoon, you drove
to the main telegraph office in the city, as you thought that it would
be safer to telegraph Mr. Thorne from there. Your telegram was very
cleverly written. But you might have spared the last sentence, the
request that Mr. Thorne should get the Viennese papers of these last
days. Believe me, he has already read these papers. Who could be more
interested in what they have to tell than he?”
The housekeeper had sat as if frozen to stone during Muller’s long
speech. Her face was ashen and her eyes wild with horror. When the
detective ceased speaking, there was dead silence in the room for some
time. Finally Muller asked: “Is this what happened?” His voice was
cutting and the glance of his eyes keen and sharp.
Mrs. Bernauer trembled. Her head sank on her breast. Muller waited a
moment more and then he said quietly: “Then it is true.”
“Yes, it is true,” came the answer in a low hoarse tone.
Again there was silence for an appreciable interval.
“If you had been faithful to your mistress as well, if you had not
spied upon her and betrayed her to her husband, all this might not have
happened,” continued the detective pitilessly, adding with a bitter
smile: “And it was not even a case of sinful love. Your mistress had
no such relations with this Winkler as you--I say this to excuse
you--seemed to believe.”
Adele Bernauer sprang up. “I do not need this excuse,” she cried,
trembling in excitement. “I do not need any excuse. What I have done
I did after due consideration and in the realisation that it was
absolutely necessary to do it. Never for one moment did I believe that
my mistress was untrue to her husband. Never for one moment could I
believe such an evil thing of her, for I knew her to be an angel of
goodness. A woman who is deceiving her husband is not as unhappy as this
poor lady has been for months. A woman does not write to a successful
lover with so much sorrow, with so many tears. I had long suspected
these meetings before I discovered them, but I knew that these meetings
had nothing whatever to do with love. Because I knew this, and only
because I knew it, did I tell my master about them. I wanted him to
protect his wife, to free her from the wretch who had obtained some
power over her, I knew not how.”
“Ah! then that was it?” exclaimed Muller, and his eyes softened as he
looked at the sobbing woman who had sunk back into her chair. He laid
his hand on her cold fingers and continued gently: “Then you have really
done right, you have done only what was your duty. I pity you deeply
that you--”
“That I have brought suspicion upon my master by my own foolishness?”
she finished the sentence with a pitifully sad smile. “If I could have
controlled myself, could have kept calm, nobody would have had a thought
or a suspicion that he--my pet, my darling--that it was he who was
forced, through some terrible circumstance of which I do not know, to
free his wife, in this manner, from the wretch who persecuted her.”
Mrs. Bernauer wrung her hands and gazed with despairing eyes at the man
who sat before her, himself deeply moved.
Again there was a long silence. Muller could not find a word to comfort
the weeping woman. There was no longer anger in his heart, nothing but
the deepest pity. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the drops
that were dimming his own eyes.
“You know that I will have to go to Venice?” he asked.
Mrs. Bernauer sprang up. “Officially?” she gasped, pale to her lips.
He nodded. “Yes, officially of course. I must make a report at once to
headquarters about what I have learned. You can imagine yourself what
the next steps will be.”
Her deep sigh showed him that she knew as well as he. In the same
second, however, a thought shot through her brain, changing her whole
being. Her pale face glowed, her dulled eyes shot fire, and the fingers
with which she held Muller’s hand tightly clasped, were suddenly
feverishly hot.
“And you--you are still the only person who knows the truth?” she gasped
in his ear.
The detective nodded. “And you thought you might silence me?” he asked
calmly. “That will not be easy--for you can imagine that I did not come
unarmed.”
Adele Bernauer smiled sadly. “I would take even this way to save Herbert
Thorne from disgrace, if I thought that it could be successful, and if
I had not thought of a milder way to silence a man who cannot be a
millionaire. I have served in this house for thirty-two years, I have
been treated with such generosity that I have been able to save almost
every cent of my wages for my old age. With the interest that has rolled
up, my little fortune must amount to nearly eight thousand gulden. I
will gladly give it to you, if you will but keep silence, if you will
not tell what you have discovered.” She spoke gaspingly and sank down on
her knees before she had finished.
“And Mr. Thorne also--” she continued hastily, as she saw no sign of
interest in Muller’s calm face. Then her voice failed her.
The detective looked down kindly on her grey hairs and answered: “No,
no, my good woman; that won’t do. One cannot conceal one crime by
committing another. I myself would naturally not listen to your
suggestion for a moment, but I am also convinced that Mr. Thorne, to
whom you are so devoted, and who, I acknowledge, pleased me the very
first sight I had of him--I am convinced that he would not agree for a
moment to any such solution of the problem.”
“Then I can only hope that you will not find him in Venice,” replied
Mrs. Bernauer, with utter despair in her voice and eyes.
“I am not at all certain that I will find him in Venice when I leave
here to-morrow morning,” said Muller calmly.
“Oh! then you don’t want to find him! Oh God! how good, how
inexpressibly good you are,” stammered the woman, seizing at some vague
hope in her distraught heart.
“No, you are mistaken again, Mrs. Bernauer. I will find Mr. Thorne
wherever he may be. But I may arrive in Venice too late to meet him
there. He may already be on his way home.”
“On his way home?” cried the housekeeper in terror, staggering where she
stood.
Muller led her gently to a chair. “Sit down here and listen to me
calmly. This is what I mean. If Mr. Thorne has seen in the papers that a
man has been arrested and accused of the murder of Leopold Winkler, then
he will take the next train back and give himself up to the authorities.
That he makes no such move as long as he thinks there is no suspicion
on any one else, no possibility that any one else could suffer the
consequences of his deed--is quite comprehensible--it is only natural
and human.”
Adele Bernauer sighed deeply again and heavy tears ran down her cheeks,
in strange contrast to the ghost of a smile that parted her lips and
shone in her dimmed eyes.
“You know him better than I do,” she murmured almost inaudibly, “you
know him better than I do, and I have known him for so long.”
A moment later Muller had parted from the housekeeper with a warm,
sincere pressure of the hand.
“Lieutenant Theobald Leining was here on a visit to his sister last
March, wasn’t he?” the detective asked as Franz led him out of the gate.
“Yes, sir; the Lieutenant was here just about that time,” answered the
old man.
“And he left here on the 16th of March?”
“On the 16th? Why, it may have been--yes, it was the 16th--that is our
lady’s birthday. He went away that day.” Franz bowed a farewell to this
stranger who began to appear uncanny in his eyes, and shutting the gate
carefully he returned to the house.
“What does the man want anyway?” he murmured to himself, shivering
involuntarily. Without knowing why he turned his steps towards Mrs.
Bernauer’s room. He opened the door hesitatingly as if afraid of what he
might see there. He would not have been at all surprised if he had found
the housekeeper fainting on the floor as before.
But she was not fainting this time. She was very much alive, for, to
Franz’s great astonishment, she was busied at the packing of a valise.
“Are you going away too?” asked Franz. Mrs. Bernauer answered in a voice
that was dull with weariness: “Yes, Franz, I am going away. Will you
please look up the time-tables of the Southern railroad and let me know
when the morning express leaves? And please order a cab in time for it.
I will depend upon you to look after the house in my absence. You
can imagine that it must be something very important that takes me to
Venice.”
“To Venice? Why, what are you going to Venice for?”
“Never mind about that, Franz, but help me to pray that I may get there
in time.”
She almost pushed the old man out of the door with these last words and
shut and locked it behind him.
She wanted to be alone with this hideous fear that was clutching at her
heart. For it was not to Franz that she could tell the thoughts that
came to her lips now as she sank down, wringing her hands, before a
picture of the Madonna: “Oh Holy Virgin, Mother of our Lord, plead for
me! let me be with my dear mistress when the terrible time comes
and they take her husband away from her, or, if preferring death to
disgrace, he ends his life by his own hand!”