During Jason Philip's absence, poorly dressed people frequently came to
the shop and demanded that Theresa give them back the money they had
paid in on their insurance.
Some of them became very much excited when Theresa told them that she
would do nothing of the kind, that the insurance was the affair of her
husband, and that she had nothing whatever to do with it. A locksmith's
apprentice had given a sound thrashing to Zwanziger, the clerk, who had
hastened up to protect the wife of his employer. A gold-beater from
Fuerth had created so much excitement that the police had to be called
in. A cooper's widow, who had managed to pay her premiums for one year,
but had been unable to continue the payment for the quite sufficient
reason that she had been in the hospital, fell headlong to the floor in
epileptic convulsions when she heard how matters stood.
It finally reached the point where Theresa was frightened every time she
saw a strange face. She breathed more easily when a day had passed
without some disagreeable scene, but trembled at the thought of what
might happen on the day to come.
What disturbed her more than anything else was the inexplicable
disappearance of small sums of money; this had been going on for some
time. A man came into the office once and laid his monthly premium, one
taler in all, on the counter. When he left, Theresa closed the door
behind him in order that she might be able to watch the snow storm from
the window. When she returned to the desk the taler had disappeared. She
asked where it was. Jason Philip, who was just then handing some books
up the ladder to Zwanziger, became so gruff that one might have thought
she had accused him of the theft. She counted the money over in the
till, but in vain; the taler had vanished.
She had forgotten, or had not noticed, that Philippina had been in the
office. She had brought her father his evening sandwiches, and then gone
out again without making the slightest noise; she wore felt shoes.
On another occasion she missed a number of groschen from her purse. On
still another, a spice merchant came in and demanded that she pay a bill
of three marks. She was certain she had already paid it; she was certain
she had given Philippina the money to pay it. Philippina was called in.
She, however, denied having anything to do with it, and acted with such
self-assurance that Theresa, completely puzzled, reached down in her
pocket and handed over the three marks in perfect silence.
She had suspected the maid, she had suspected the clerk. She even
suspected Jason Philip himself; she thought that he was appropriating
money to pay his drinking expenses. And she suspected Philippina. But in
no case could she produce the evidence; her spying and investigating
were in vain. Then the thieving stopped again.
For Philippina, who had been doing all the stealing, feared she might be
discovered, and adopted a less hazardous method of making herself a rich
woman: she stole books, and sold them to the second-hand dealer. She was
sly enough to take books that had been on the shelves for a long while,
and not to do all her business with one dealer: she would go first to
one and then to another.
The money which she scraped together in this way, as secretly and
greedily as a jack-daw, she hid in the attic. There was a loose brick in
the wall near the chimney. This she removed; and in time she removed
other bricks. And once her treasures were safely stored in the hole, she
would replace the bricks and set a board up against them.
When everything had become perfectly quiet and she felt wholly at ease,
she would sit down, fold her hands, and give herself up to speechless
meditation, an evil and fanatic dream playing over her features as she
did.