The Master of the Day of Judgment (13 page)

He pointed to the pale young man with horn-rimmed spectacles as he left the shop, waited for a moment, and then turned to me and said
sotto voce:

"That gentleman who has just gone out — he's a very interesting case, he's a haemophiliac, commonly known as a bleeder. He has been to all the doctors and professors and specialists, but they can't help him. A bleeder, there's only one in a thousand."

"Herr Stiberny? Oh dear, that's news to me," said the old woman with the shopping bag.

I asked for some sleeping pills, and was given a number of small white tablets in a little cardboard box.

"Isn't the young lady who generally serves me here today?" I asked.

"Fräulein Poldi?"

"The young lady with reddish fair hair, yes, I think that's her name."

"This was her morning off, as she was on night duty yesterday. She should turn up at any moment, she should have been here an hour ago. Can I give her a message?"

"It's not necessary, I'll drop in again later," I said. "It's not important, I just wanted to pass on greetings from a mutual friend whom I met in Graz. I was passing and just looked in. You might give me her address."

I could see from the chief pharmacist's face that he was not convinced by my story of a mutual friend in Graz. He looked at me searchingly, but wrote down her address on a piece of paper, and said as he handed it to me:

"No. 21 on the second floor, at Court Councillor Karasek's, that's the young lady's grandfather. She comes from a very good family, and she's said to be engaged, at any rate that's what I've been told."

Leopoldine Teichmann's address, according to the note that the chief pharmacist gave me, was Bräuhausgasse 11. As she might have been on her way to the chemist's and I did not want to miss her, I did not go there straight away.

I walked up and down outside the chemist's shop and waited. About six o'clock another heavy downpour made me go up to my flat, where I could keep the chemist's shop door under observation from my bedroom window.

The time passed and she did not appear. It began to get dark, and I could only with difficulty make out the faces of the people who came and went. When I heard the first shutters being lowered in the street down below I left my observation post, for it seemed unlikely that she would be coming now.

So I would have to go and find her. It would take about twenty minutes to get there, I decided, and she would be having supper, which would be inconvenient — not the time for a stranger to call, and she might not even be there, she might be at the theatre or at a girl friend's. Never mind, it couldn't be helped, I had to see her today, I'd go there and wait for her.

I spent a lot of time trying to pick up a taxi, and it was nearly eight o'clock when I at last arrived in the Bräuhausgasse. No. 11 was a desolate four-storey suburban block of rented flats. A cinema, a second-hand clothes shop, a hairdressing saloon and a bar occupied the ground floor. The stairs were badly lit, and the second floor was in complete darkness. I had no matches on me and tried in vain to decipher the numbers on the doors.

I heard footsteps. Two men were coming up the stairs in the dark. I stopped and listened. They reached the second storey. A pocket torch was lit, a small circle of light fell on one of the doors, glided along the wall to the right and back again, and then made a nameplate appear out of the dark.

I heard the voice of Dr Gorski, who was standing next to me.

"Friedrich Karasek, Court Councillor retired," he read aloud.

"Doctor!" I exclaimed, taken aback. "What brings you here?"

Light from the pocket lamp shone on my face.

"So you're here, baron," I heard the engineer say.

"So are you," I exclaimed in dismay, "and you don't seem in the least surprised to see me here."

"Surprised? You're joking, baron. I didn't doubt for a moment that you too read the evening papers," said the engineer and pulled the doorbell.

FOURTEEN

I did not understand what he meant by this, I was still completely taken aback by this unexpected encounter. Only when an old woman opened the door and I saw her tearful face and distraught eyes did I realise that some sort of disaster must have occurred.

The engineer introduced himself.

"My name is Solgrub," he said. "I telephoned an hour ago."

"The young Herr Karasek would like you to wait for him," the old woman whispered. "He'll be back in a quarter of an hour, he just hurried over to the hospital. Come in, gentlemen, but quietly, please, so that the court councillor won't hear, he doesn't know yet, we haven't told him."

"He doesn't know?" the doctor said in surprise.

"No. Half an hour ago he asked where she was, she always reads the newspaper to him in the evening. I told him Fräulein Poldi was still at the chemist's. Now he's sitting there holding the newspaper, and he has dropped off to sleep. So please come in, it's straight ahead, young Herr Karasek will soon be back."

"Biedermeier furniture," the engineer noticed, and exchanged a knowing look with Dr Gorski. Then he turned to the old woman again and said:

"Is young Herr Karasek the court councillor's son?"

"No, he's his grandson, he's Fräulein Poldi's cousin."

"And did it happen here, in this room?"

"No, in the small room over there, where the young lady has her laboratory. This morning I was in the kitchen talking to Marie, I'm the housekeeper, I've been here for thirty-two years, I was in the kitchen when the young gentleman came in. Frau Sedlak,' he said, 'quick, a glass of hot milk.' 'Who wants hot milk?' I said, 'the court councillor?' 'No,' the young gentleman said, 'it's for Poldi, she's lying on the floor and she's having cramps,' and when I heard that I said: 'Cramps? You frighten the life out of me' — the young gentleman was quite calm, nothing seems to upset him, and of course I took the milk from the hearth and hurried in, and there she was, throwing herself about on the floor, and her face was as white as chalk and her lips were blue, and I said 'She's having a fit' and I grabbed her hands, and then I yelled 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she has a bottle in her hand,' and the young gentleman called out 'What is it, why are you shrieking like that?' and then he saw the bottle and took it and smelled it and dashed to the telephone and told the operator to put him through to the First Aid Society, and they arrived a few minutes later, it was lucky they were so quick, and the doctor from the First Aid Society said so too, he said it wasn't a minute too soon, and perhaps there might still be hope. And he said it was inconceivable that she could have made a mistake, she was a trained pharmacist, and must have recognised the smell at once. Excuse me, I must go back to the kitchen, I'm alone in the flat, and if the court councillor wakes up he'll be wanting his creamed rice."

She shut the window, adjusted the yellow silk cover on the piano, cast a critical eye at the room, decided everything was in order, and went out. I rose to look at the pictures on the wall. There were watercolours and pastel paintings, amateur work, a chestnut tree in full bloom, a portrait of a young man playing the fiddle, a not very well composed country marketplace, and also the picture I had once seen at an exhibition, asters and dahlias in a green-shimmering Japanese vase, so it had never found a buyer. But more than by all these I was attracted by a picture hanging half in shadow on the wall next to the piano. It was an oil painting of the beautiful Agathe Teichmann as Desdemona. I recognised her immediately, though it was nearly twenty years since I had seen her.

"Strange to see her again after twenty years," I said to the doctor, pointing to the picture of the great tragedienne. I was overcome with sadness, I felt how remote from me my own youth had become, for a moment I was aware with painful clarity of the passing of the years, the relentless flight of time.

"Agathe Teichmann," the doctor said, adjusting his pince- nez. "I saw her on the stage only once. Agathe Teichmann. How old were you then, baron? You must have been very young, nineteen or twenty at most, I should think. A not entirely untroubled memory, is it? I never had any luck with women, you see. On the other hand, nowadays I can look at an old picture without being at all affected. I saw her that once as Medea, that was all."

I did not answer. The engineer looked at us both uncompre- hendingly, shook his head, gave the picture a fleeting glance, and went across to the small room.

We were left alone and waited. The doctor grew impatient and kept looking at his watch. The time passed slowly for me too. I picked up a book that was lying on the desk and opened it, but it was a dictionary, so I put it down immediately.

After a quarter of an hour the engineer at last came back. He seemed to have been looking for something on the floor, for his hands were dirty.

Dr Gorski sprang to his feet.

"What did you find, Solgrub?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"Really nothing?"

"Not the slightest trace. Not the slightest clue," the engineer repeated and looked absent-mindedly at his hands.

"There's water over there, Solgrub," said the doctor. "You're on a false trail, can't you see that? You've been chasing a phantom all day. Your monster doesn't exist and has never existed, he's the absurd result of false reasoning, a figment of the imagination — how many more times must I repeat that? You've got an absurd idea fixed in your head and are getting nowhere."

"And what would you do, doctor?" the engineer asked from the wash basin.

"We must try to influence Felix."

"That's hopeless."

"Give me time."

"That I can't do. Are you blind, doctor? Don't you see how he sits there saying nothing and lets us talk? He'll never agree to his word of honour being made a subject of discussion with a very uncertain outcome. He has made his decision, he'll do what Felix wants him to do, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps tonight, his finger's on the trigger, and you ask for time."

I wanted to answer, to protest, but the engineer prevented me.

"I'm on the wrong track, of course," he exclaimed. "That's what you told me this morning, doctor, at the taxi rank outside the theatre when I asked for the driver who took Eugen Bischoff to his murderer. Then, when I had found the house and went up the stairs you called out after me that I was on the wrong track, I had a fixed idea in my head ..."

"You were at the moneylender's flat?" I interrupted.

"The moneylender's? What moneylender are you talking about?" the engineer said in surprise.

"Gabriel Albachary, Dominikanerbastei 8."

"Is he a moneylender? You never told me that, doctor."

"He lends money on security, that is true," said the doctor. "He's not an acquaintance to be particularly proud of. On the other hand, he's one of our most important connoisseurs and art collectors. Eugen Bischoff knew him for nearly twenty years, and sometimes used his Shakespeare library and his collection of pictures of costumes."

"Did you talk to him?" I asked the engineer.

"No, he was out, and I used the opportunity to search the flat for the murderer."

"And with a result we'd prefer not to talk about, eh Sol- grub?" the doctor pointed out.

"Keep quiet," the engineer exclaimed loudly, and immediately lowered his voice, remembering he was in someone else's flat. "It's true I haven't found him, but only because I painted a false picture of him in my mind, that's why I haven't found him. There's a false link somewhere in my chain of argument. But the killer's up in his flat and can't leave it, doctor, and I'll find him, you can be sure of that."

And as he said that it roused something in me, it was a kind of pride, and it made me want to deprive him of his certainty, to lead him astray, to plunge him into doubt.

"And supposing I tell you that Felix is right?" I said coldbloodedly and with full awareness of what I was doing. "Suppose I tell you that what happened was exactly as he described it yesterday? Supposing I confessed that I really am Eugen Bischoff's murderer?"

Dr Gorski grabbed my arm and looked at me dumbfounded, and the engineer shook his head.

"Nonsense," he said. "Don't talk nonsense. You don't imagine you can lead me astray, do you? Listen, there's the bell. It's young Karasek. Please let me talk to him."

FIFTEEN

"He thinks we're reporters," Dr Gorski whispered to me. "Let him. That's what Solgrub wants. It's just as well you're in civilian clothes. A captain of dragoons in uniform claiming to be a representative of a local newspaper would have been . . ."

The young man who came into the room at that moment created the impression of being one of those extremely insignificant persons who preside and play the part of
arbiter elegantiarum
at suburban cafés. "My name is Karasek. This is an honour, gentlemen," he said. He drew his hand across his carefully flattened hair and offered us cigarettes from his alpaca cigarette case.

"It's very kind of you to have found time for us after the events of a day such as this," the engineer said. "First of all may I ask you how the young lady is?"

"Certainly, certainly," young Karasek replied. "I am fully aware of the duties and responsibilities of the press — never off duty, night or day. My late father had a great deal to do with you gentlemen, he was Hermann Karasek, chairman of the 18th district, municipal architect, one of you gentlemen may perhaps have . . . yes, my cousin, unfortunately they wouldn't let me see her."

He bent forward and said in a low voice, as if he were betraying an official secret:

"The professor is now trying ethyl chloride."

"Inhalations, presumably," Dr Gorski remarked.

"Ethyl chloride," the young man repeated. "They are leaving nothing untried."

"Did you talk to the doctor?" the engineer asked. "Do you think it's possible that the young lady may be well enough to see visitors tomorrow morning?"

"Tomorrow morning? Hardly, hardly," the young man said, shaking his head. "The doctor thinks — the professor, as you can imagine, was very busy and didn't have time, but I talked to his assistant — he said one must never give up hope, but unless there's a miracle, and the sister also said that probably she won't survive the night."