The police had at last separated Daniel and the American in Frau
Hadebusch's house. Daniel fell on a chair, and gazed stupidly into
space. Frau Hadebusch brought him some water. The American put on his
clothes, while the spectators looked on and laughed.
The two men were then taken to the police station, where the lieutenant
in charge took such depositions as were necessary for court action.
Daniel saw a gas lamp, a quill pen, several grinning faces, his own
bloody hand, and nothing more. The American was held in order to protect
him from further attacks; Daniel was released. He heard the young man
tell his story in a mangled German and with a voice that was nearly
choked with rage, but did not absorb anything he said.
He heard a dog bark, a wagon rattle, a bell strike; he heard people
talking, murmuring, crying; he heard the scraping of feet. But it all
sounded to him like noises that were reaching his ears through the walls
of a prison. He went on his way; his gait was unsteady.
As he reached the Church of Our Lady, Daniel turned to the right toward
the Market Place, and saw the Goose Man standing before him.
"Go home," the Goose Man seemed to say with a sad voice. "Go home!"
"Who are you? what do you wish of me?" A voice within him asked. But
then it seemed that the figure had become invisible, and that it could
not be seen again until it was far off in the distance, where it was
being shone upon by a bright light.
People were running across AEgydius Place; some of them were crying
"Fire!" Daniel turned the corner; he could see his house. Flames were
leaping up behind his window. He pressed his hands to his temples, and,
with eyes wide open and filled with terror, he forced his way through
the crowd up to his house. "For God's sake, for Heaven's sake!" he
cried, "save my trunk!"
Many looked at him. A figure appeared at the window; many arms were
pointed at it. "The woman! Look, look, the woman!" came a cry from the
crowd. And then again: "She has set the house on fire! She has swung the
torch and started the fire!"
Daniel rushed into his house. Firemen overtook him. There he saw in the
hall, lighted by the lanterns being carried back and forth so swiftly,
and placed in the corner with no more care or consideration than was
possible under such circumstances, the dead body of old Jordan. His
body, and close beside it, as if in supernatural mockery of all things
human, the doll, the Swiss maid with the machine in her stomach. Sighing
and sobbing, he fell down; his forehead touched the dead hand of the old
man.
As if in a dream he heard the hissing of the hoses, the commands, the
hurried running back and forth of the firemen. Then he felt as if a
shadow, a figure from the lower world, suddenly rose before him. A
clenched fist, he thought, opened and hurled shreds of paper into his
face. When he looked up he could see nothing but the firemen rushing
around him. The shadow, the figure, had pushed its way in among them,
and in the confusion no one had paid any attention to it.
With an absent-minded gesture, Daniel reached out and picked up the
paper that was lying nearest him. It had fallen on the face of the doll.
He unfolded it and saw, written in his own hand, the music to the
"Harzreise im Winter." Under the notes were the words:
But aside, who is it?
His path in the bushes is lost,
Behind him rustle
The thickets together,
The grass rises again,
The desert conceals him.
The melody and rhythm that interpreted the words were of a grandiose
gloominess, like a song of shades pursued in the night, across the sea.
Daniel recalled the hour he had written this music; he recalled the
expression on Gertrude's face the time he played it for her. Eleanore
was there, too, wearing a white dress, with a myrtle wreath in her hair.
The tones dissolved the web of infinite time. "But aside, who is it?"
came forth like a great, deep dirge. In the question there was something
prophetically great. He covered his face and wept; he felt as if his
heart would break.
The dead man and the doll were lying there, motionless, lifeless.
In half an hour the fire was under control. The two attic rooms had been
burned out completely. Further than this no damage had been done.
Philippina had vanished without a trace. Since no one had seen her leave
the house, the first theory was that she had been burned to death. But
investigation proved this assumption to be incorrect. The police looked
for her everywhere, but in vain; she was not to be found. A few people
who had known her rather intimately insisted that she had been burned up
so completely that there was nothing left of her but a little pile of
black ashes.
However this may be, and whatever the truth may be, Philippina never
again entered the house. No one ever again saw or heard a thing of her.