Directly he arrived at Prague he made for Thomas’s rooms. Outside the
Museum he pulled himself up ... curse, where exactly did Thomas live? He
walked, yes, he walked, shaking with fever, along the road by the Museum;
but from where? From which street? Swearing, Prokop wandered round the
Museum looking for the most probable direction; he found nothing and
went to the Inquiry Office of the police. George Thomas; the dusty
official looked through a number of books. Engineer Thomas, George, that,
please, is Smichov, such and such a street. Evidently an old address.
Nevertheless Prokop flew into Smichov to such and such a street. The
caretaker shook his head when he asked for George Thomas. He certainly
used to live here, but more than a year ago; where he lived now nobody
knew; incidentally he had left all sorts of debts behind him——
Crestfallen, Prokop wandered into a coffee-house. “KRAKATIT” hit him
in the eyes from the back of a paper. “Will Eng. P. give his address?
Carson, Poste Restante.” Well, this Carson will certainly know about
Thomas ... there must be some connection between them. All right then....
“Carson, Poste Restante. Be at such and such coffee-house to-morrow at
mid-day.—Eng. Prokop.” Directly he had written this a new idea came
into his head ... the debts. He rushed off to the courts, the Inquiry
Department. Yes, they knew Mr. Thomas’s address very well ... a whole
pile of undelivered circulars, official reminders, etc.; but it appeared
that this Thomas, George, had disappeared without leaving a trace, and,
especially, had furnished no one with his new address. All the same
Prokop dashed off to the new address. The caretaker’s wife, encouraged
by an adequate tip, at once recognized Prokop, who on one occasion had
spent the night there. She informed him quite voluntarily that Mr.
Engineer Thomas was a crook and a good-for-nothing. Further, that on that
occasion he had gone off in the night and left him, the gentleman, in her
care; that she had come upstairs three times to ask whether he needed
anything, but that he, the gentleman, remained asleep and kept on talking
to himself, and finally disappeared. And where on earth was Mr. Thomas?
That night he had gone off and left everything lying about and had still
not returned. All he had done was to send her some money from somewhere
abroad, but he was still in debt for the new quarter. She had heard that
they were going to sell his effects in the State Lottery if he didn’t
report by the end of the month. He was nearly a quarter of a million in
debt, so they said, and had made off. Prokop subjected the worthy woman
to a cross-examination ... did she know anything about a certain young
lady who was supposed to have relations with Mr. Thomas, who came to his
rooms and so on? The caretaker’s wife could not tell him anything; as far
as women went, as many as twenty came to the place, some with veils over
their faces and others “made up,” and all sorts. It was a scandal for
the whole street. Prokop paid for the new quarter himself and in return
obtained the key of the flat.
Inside there was the musty smell of rooms which have long been unoccupied
and from which almost all life has departed. Only now did Prokop realize
that he had wrestled with his fever amidst the most extraordinary luxury.
Everywhere Bokhara or Persian carpets, on the walls tapestries and nude
studies, a divan, arm-chairs, the dressing-table of a _soubrette_, the
bathroom of a high-class prostitute, a mixture of luxury and vulgarity,
lewdness and dissoluteness. And here, in the middle of all these
abominations, she had stood pressing the package to her bosom, her clear,
woeful eyes cast on the ground. And now, my God! she raised them in brave
devotion.... What on earth could she have thought of him when she found
him in this den? He must find her at least ... at least to return her her
money; even if it was for nothing else, for nothing more important ... it
was absolutely necessary to find her!
That is easy enough to say, but how? Prokop bit his lips in obstinate
reflection. If he only knew where to look for George, he said to himself;
finally he came upon a pile of correspondence which was waiting there
for Thomas. Most of it consisted, naturally, of commercial letters,
obviously chiefly bills. Then a few private letters which he turned
over and sniffed with some hesitation. Perhaps in one of them there
was a clue to his whereabouts, an address or something of the sort,
which would enable him to find him ... or to find her! He heroically
repressed the inclination to open at least one letter; but he was
alone there behind dirty windows, and everything seemed to exhale an
atmosphere of base and secret corruption. And then, quickly overcoming
all his scruples, he began to tear open the envelopes and read one letter
after the other. A bill for Persian carpets, for flowers, for three
typewriters; urgent reminders regarding goods given on commission; some
mysterious transaction relating to a horse, foreign currency and twenty
wagons of wood somewhere near Kremnice. Prokop could not believe his
eyes; according to these documents Thomas was either a smuggler on a
large scale, or an agent dealing in Persian carpets, or a speculator on
the Exchange, very probably all three. In addition he did business in
motor-cars, export certificates, office furniture and, obviously, all
sorts of things. In one letter there was something about two million
crowns, while in another, soiled and written in pencil, there was a
threat of a complaint regarding some antique or other which he had
wheedled from somebody. Everything together pointed to a long succession
of deceptions, embezzlements, falsifications of export documents, as far
as Prokop was able to understand; it was simply amazing that it had not
all come out. One solicitor intimated briefly that such and such a firm
had brought an action against Mr. Thomas for embezzling forty thousand
crowns; it was in Mr. Thomas’s own interest to appear at his office,
etc. Prokop was horrified; if it were all once found out what would not
be the ramifications of this unutterable turpitude? He thought of the
quiet house in Tynice and of the girl who had stood in the very room,
desperately determined to protect that third person. He took up all
Thomas’s commercial correspondence and ran to burn it in the stove, which
he found full of charred papers. It was evident that Thomas himself had
simplified conditions in this way before he left.
Good; that dealt with the commercial papers; there remained a few
purely private letters, tender or dreadfully scrawled, and over these
again Prokop hesitated in burning shame. But what on earth else was he
to do? He was suffocating with embarrassment but he boldly opened the
remaining envelopes. “Darling, I remember,” “a further meeting,”—and so
on. A certain Anna Chvalova stated with the most touching orthographical
mistakes that Jenicek had died “of an erruption.” Somebody else intimated
that “he knew something that might interest the police but that he would
be willing to discuss the question,” and that Mr. Thomas “certainly knew
the price of his discretion”; there followed an allusion to “that house
in Bret Street where Mr. Thomas knew whom to speak to if the affair was
to be kept secret.” Then something about some business or other, the
sale of some bills, signed “your Rosie.” The same Rosie stated that her
husband had gone away. The same handwriting as in No. 1, a letter from a
watering-place, nothing but bovine sentimentality, the unbridled passion
of a fat and mature blonde, sweetened all over with ahs! reproofs,
and lofty sentiments, apart from “sweetheart” and “ducky” and other
abominations. Prokop positively felt bilious. A German letter, signed
“G,” a deal in foreign currency, “sell these papers, I await your reply,
P.S. Achtung, K. aus Hambourg eingetroffen.” The same “G”; a hasty and
offended letter, the frigid use of the second person plural. “Send back
that ten thousand, sonst wird K. dahinter kommen.” H’m. Prokop was deeply
ashamed at having to penetrate into the malodorous obscurity of these
disreputable affairs, but it was no good stopping now. Finally four
letters signed M.; tearful, bitter and miserable, from which emerged
the passionate history of some blind, airless, servile love. There were
passionate demands, crawlings in the dust, desperate incriminations,
frightful offerings of the writer’s self and more terrible self-torture;
references to the children, the husband, the offer of a further loan,
obscure allusions and the all too clear wretchedness of a woman at
the mercy of passion. So this was her sister! To Prokop it was as if
he saw before him the cruel and mocking lips, the taunting eyes, the
aristocratic, proud, self-confident head of Thomas; he would have liked
to smash it with his fist. But it was of no use; the miserable love of
this woman told him nothing about ... about this other one, who was for
him so far without a name and whom he must seek out.
Nothing was left but to find Thomas.