A further account appeared in the papers:
“The mystery which surrounds the murder of young Ruth Hofmann is
beginning to clear up. The public will be glad to learn that the
efforts of the police have brought about the apprehension of her
probable slayer. The latter is Joachim Heinzen of Czernikauer Street,
twenty years old, of evil reputation and apparently of not altogether
responsible mind. Even before the discovery of the crime his behaviour
attracted attention. Within the last few days the evidence against him
has increased to the extent of justifying his arrest. When the police
frankly accused him of the crime, he first broke down, but immediately
thereafter resisted arrest with the utmost violence. Lodged in jail,
he made a full and comprehensive confession. When asked to sign the
protocol, however, he retracted his entire statement, and denied his
guilt with extreme stubbornness. In his demeanour brutish stupidity
alternated with remorse and terror. There can hardly be any doubt
but that he is the criminal. The first formal examination by the
investigating judge entrusted with the case will take place to-day.
All the inhabitants of the house in Stolpische Street have been
examined, among them a personality whose presence in that locality
throws a curious side-light on a widely discussed affair, in which
one of the most respected families among our captains of industry is
involved.”
V
The hint in the last sentence caused endless talk. The name, which had
considerately been left unmentioned, passed from mouth to mouth, no one
knew how. The rumour reached Wolfgang Wahnschaffe. Colleagues asked
him with cool amazement what his brother had to do with the murder of
a Jewish girl in the slums. Even the chief of his Chancellery in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned him, and questioned him with an
expression that made him blanch with shame.
He wrote to his father: “I am in the position of a peaceful pedestrian
who is in constant danger of a madman attacking him from behind. You
are aware, dear father, that in the career I have chosen an unblemished
repute is the first requisite. If my reputation and my name are to be
constantly at the public mercy of an insane eccentric, who unhappily
bears that name only to stain it, the time has come to use every means,
no matter how drastic, to protect oneself. We have had patience. I was
for far too long a flickering little flame beside the dazzling but, as
is clear now, quite deceptive radiance of Christian. Now that my whole
life’s happiness is at stake, as well as the honour of myself and my
house, it would be the merest weakness on my part if I were to regard
passively all that is happening and still likely to happen. This is
likewise the opinion of my friends and of every right thinking person.
Some energetic action is necessary if I am to sustain myself in the
station which I have achieved, not to mention any other unpleasantness
in which we may become involved. Until I hear from you, I shall try
to get in touch with Judith, and take counsel with her. Although she
ceased from all association with myself, in the most insulting manner
and for reasons still dark to me, I believe that she will realize the
seriousness of the situation.”
The Privy Councillor received this letter immediately on the heels of a
conference with a delegation of strikers. It was some time before the
pained amazement it automatically aroused in him really penetrated his
consciousness. In any other circumstances the letter’s unfilial, almost
impudent tone would have angered him. To-day he gave it no further
thought. Swiftly he wrote a telegram in cipher to Girke and Graurock.
The reply which came by special delivery reached him the next evening
at his house in Würzburg. Willibald Girke wrote:
“My dear Privy Councillor:--Although it is some time since we have had
the pleasure of working under direct orders from you, yet in the hope
of renewed relations between us, we have been forward-looking enough
to continue our investigations, and to keep up to date in all matters
concerning Herr Christian Wahnschaffe at our own risk and expense.
Thanks to this efficient farsightedness which we have made our rule, we
are able to answer your question with the celerity and precision which
the situation calls for.
“We proceed at once to the root of the matter, the murder of the young
Jewess. We can give you the consoling assurance that there is no other
connection between your son and the foul crime in question than through
the warm and much discussed friendship which your son entertained
for the murdered girl. Hence he is implicated as a witness, and as
such will have to appear in court in due time. This painful necessity
is unhappily unavoidable. Who touches pitch is defiled. His close
association with proletarians necessarily involved him in such matters
and in a knowledge of their affairs. It has been proved and admitted
that he once visited the dwelling of the murderer Heinzen. He did so in
the company of Ruth Hofmann, and on that occasion a scandalous scene
is said to have taken place which was provoked by Niels Heinrich, the
brother of Karen Engelschall. This Niels Heinrich is a close friend
of Joachim Heinzen, has been kept under close surveillance by the
police and examined, and his evidence is said to have been very serious
for the accused. It is this connection with Engelschall, casual and
innocent as it may be, that will be held against your son, and its
disagreeable results cannot yet be absolutely estimated.
“Ruth Hofmann was seen almost daily in your son’s society. Her father’s
flat was immediately opposite Karen Engelschall’s, a circumstance
which facilitated their friendship. A new party has already moved in,
a certain Stübbe with his wife and three children. This Stübbe is a
drunkard of the most degraded sort. He is noisy every evening, and
treats his family with such cruelty that your son has already found it
necessary to interfere on several occasions. We touch upon this fact to
illustrate the ease with which, in these dwelling-places, comradeships
are established and annoyances incurred. The former tenant, David
Hofmann, was indeed peaceful and well-behaved. But he must have been
in the utmost difficulties, since he left for America only a few days
before the murder. Although telegrams were sent after him at once, he
has not been heard from. It is supposed that, for reasons of his own,
he emigrated under an assumed name, since the passenger lists of all
ships that have sailed within the past two weeks have been searched for
his own name in vain. It is possible, moreover, that he sailed from a
Dutch or British port. The authorities are investigating.
“Ruth’s young brother had also disappeared for six days, and did not
show up until the very evening on which the murder was discovered, when
he was found in your son’s room. He has remained there ever since.
His state of mind is inexplicable. No urging, neither requests nor
commands, could extract from him the slightest hint as to where he had
passed the crucial days between Sunday and Thursday. As his silence
is prolonged, it assumes a more and more mysterious aspect, and every
effort is made to break it in the belief that it may be connected with
the murder and may conceal important bits of evidence.
“It has not failed to be observed that your son not only gives
no assistance to those who desire to question young Hofmann, but
frustrates their purpose whenever he can. Since he is absent from his
room during the greater part of the day, a certain Fräulein Schöntag
has undertaken to watch over the boy. Recently, however, the necessity
for such constant watchfulness seems to have decreased. In the absence
of Fräulein Schöntag the boy Hofmann is now often left alone for hours,
and only the wife of Gisevius occasionally looks in to see that he is
still safely there. Nevertheless a plain clothes detective is keeping
the house under close and constant observation.
“From all this it is obvious that, in assuming the care of this
enfeebled boy, your son has taken upon himself a new burden, which, in
view of his other responsibilities and restricted pecuniary means, will
be not a little difficult to bear. We take the liberty of making this
observation, in spite of the fact that a real understanding of your
son’s intentions and purposes is still lacking to us as to every one.
“This concludes our report. In the hope that our thoroughness and
exactness corresponds to your hopes and wishes, and in the expectation
of such further directions as you may be pleased to give us, We beg to
remain, Most respectfully yours, Girke and Graurock. Per W. Girke.”
Albrecht Wahnschaffe wandered through the rooms of the old house,
followed by the dog Freya. To avoid the most crushing of his thoughts,
he summoned up the face of the workingman who had been the spokesman
of yesterday’s deputation. He recalled with great exactness the brutal
features--the protruding chin, the thin lips, the black moustache
brushed upward, the cold, sharp glance, the determined expression. And
in this face he saw no longer the visage of this particular man who had
come to him on this particular and accidental errand, but of a whole
world, mysterious, inevitable, terrible, full of menace and coldness
and determination.
The energy and circumspection which he had shown in his conference
with the delegates seemed to him monstrously futile. The power of no
individual would avail in the conflict with that world.
He did not want to think--not of the letter of the private detective
agency, nor of its horrible revelations, which seemed dim and turbid
scenes of an immeasurably alien life, and yet the life of his son whom
he had loved and whom he still loved. Ah, no, he did not want to think
of the innumerable lowly and ugly and horrible events which whirled
past his mind in a ghostly panorama--the rooms, the courts, the houses
full of groaning, wretched bodies. To prevent himself from thinking of
these, he turned the pages of a book, hunted through a drawer filled
with old letters, and wandered tirelessly from room to room, followed
by the dog Freya.
Fleeing from these images, he encountered others that concerned the
realm of his work, in which the hopes of all his life were rooted and
had ripened, in which the very wheels of his existence had been set in
motion. He saw the great shops desolate, the furnaces extinguished,
the trip-hammers still, and from a thousand doors and windows arms in
gestures of command stretched out toward him who had thought himself
the master of them all. It was not the first time that a strike had
interfered with the intricate organization of the works. But it was the
first time that the feeling came to him that struggle was useless and
the end imminent.
And the question rose to his lips: “Why have you done this to me?”
And this question he addressed to Christian, as though Christian were
guilty of the demands of those who had once been willing slaves, of the
empty halls, the extinguished furnaces, the silent hammers--guilty,
somehow, because of his presence in those rooms amid harlots and
murderers, mad and sick men, and in all those haunts of human vermin.
Rage quivered up in him, one of those rare attacks that all but robbed
him of consciousness. His eyes seemed filled with blood; he sought
a sacrifice and a creature to make atonement, and observed the dog
gnawing at a rug. He took a bamboo stick, and beat the animal so that
it whined piteously--beat it for minutes, until his arm fell exhausted.
Calm came, and he felt remorse and shame. But the core of his anger
remained in his heart, and he carried it about with him like a hidden
poison. The gnawing and burning did not cease, and he knew that it
would not cease until he had had a reckoning with Christian, until
Christian had given some accounting of himself as man to man, son to
father, criminal to judge.
The rage corroded his soul. Yet what was the way out? How could he
reach Christian? How summon him to an accounting? No active step but
would betray his dignity. Was he doomed merely to wait? For weeks and
months? The silent rage gnawed at his very life.