The Master of the Day of Judgment (7 page)

"There were two shots," the engineer said suddenly, but no-one took any notice.

It seemed to me to be time to end this discussion.

"Is that all?" I asked.

Felix did not answer.

"Have you informed Frau Dina of these conjectures of yours?"

"I have talked to my sister about them."

"First of all you will explain to your sister, and today, if you please, that your assumption is wrong. I have nothing to do with any of this. I did not speak to Eugen Bischoff and did not enter this room."

"You didn't enter this room ... ? No, Dina is no longer here. We took her to my parents half an hour ago. You say you did not enter this room?"

"On my word of honour."

"On your word of honour as an officer?"

"On my word of honour."

"Your word of honour," Felix slowly repeated. He was standing in front of me, bending forward slightly, and he nodded two or three times. Then his attitude changed. He stood erect and stretched, like a man who has successfully completed a hard and troublesome task. For a brief second a smile flitted across his firmly closed lips and vanished again.

"Your word of honour," he said again. "That of course creates a different situation. A word of honour like that greatly simplifies the matter. If you will give me your attention for another moment — an unknown caller left behind something in the room here, something of no particular value which he may perhaps not even have missed yet. Look, here it is."

He had a shiny, reddish-brown object in his bandaged hand. I went nearer, not recognising it at once, and then, horror- stricken, I felt in my jacket pocket for my small English pipe which I always had with me. The pocket was empty.

"It was on the table," Felix went on. "It was there when Dr Gorski and I came in. Look out, doctor!"

Everything started going round and round. Inside me it was dark. It rose in my mind like a long-forgotten memory, as if it had happened years ago. I saw myself walking through the garden, along the gravel path, past the fuchsia beds. Where did the path lead? What did I want in the pavilion? The door creaked when I opened it. How pale Eugen Bischoff went at the first words I whispered, how he looked at the newspaper in dismay and leapt to his feet and then sank back again. And the frightened look that followed me as I left the pavilion and carefully closed the creaking door behind me. There was light on the terrace — that was Dina — I must go up to her — but then — a cry — a shot — down below there was death, and I had summoned it.

"Look out, doctor, he's falling."

No, I was not. I shut my eyes and sat in the armchair.

"It's your pipe, isn't it?"

I nodded. He slowly lowered his white-bandaged hand.

I rose to my feet.

"You want to go, baron?" Felix said. "Well, yes, the matter's settled, and I mustn't take any more of your time. A word of honour, an officer's word of honour, is not one of the things on which we differ and, as we are hardly likely to meet again, I just want to tell you that basically I have never felt hostility to you — never, not even today. I have always had a certain feeling for you, baron. In a strange way I have always felt attracted to you. Liking? No, that would not be the right word. It was more than that — I really am my sister's brother. You are entitled to ask why in spite of such feelings I have put you in a situation in which, as matters stand at present, there is only one way out for you. Well, one can gaze in fascination at a wild cat or a pine-marten, one can be captivated by the grace of the creature's posture and movements and the boldness of its leaps, and yet shoot it down in cold blood because it is a beast of prey. It remains for me to assure you that you are under no obligation whatever to carry out in the next twenty-four hours the decision that you have no doubt already made. I shall in no circumstances inform the court of honour of your regiment of this business, should that step turn out to be necessary, before the end of the week. That is the only thing I still wanted to tell you."

I heard all this, but my mind was on the dark muzzle of the revolver that lay on the table. I saw it with two big round eyes staring into my own, coming closer and closer and getting bigger and bigger and swallowing up the whole room, and I could see nothing else at all.

Suddenly I heard the engineer's voice. "You are doing the baron a grave wrong," he said. "He had as little to do with the murder as you or I had."

EIGHT

I have only an indistinct memory of the moment when my head cleared again. I heard myself sighing deeply; it was the first sound that broke the silence of the room. Then I became aware of a slight gnawing sensation in my head. It was not really painful, and the discomfort soon went away.

The first feeling I can describe was one of amazement. What had I landed myself in? What was it, what madness had seized me and held me in its grip? Then a feeling of depression took over.

How is it possible, I asked myself in astonishment and alarm. I had seen myself walking into this room, heard myself whispering words I never spoke. I myself believed in my own guilt. How can that be possible? A hallucination, a waking dream had led me astray. A strange will had tried to force me to confess a crime I did not commit. No, I had not been here, I did not talk to Eugen Bischoff, I am not a murderer. All that had been dream and illusion that had risen from hell and had now been banished.

I breathed again in liberation and relief. I had not given in, but had fought back. The inexplicable power that had weighed down on me had been broken. Inside me and all round me everything had changed, and I had returned to the world of reality.

I looked up and saw Felix towering over me. The same obstinate hostility was still on his lips. He seemed determined not to be deprived of his victory, and he turned and angrily faced the engineer as if he were a new and dangerous enemy. He glared at him irritably from beneath knitted brows as if ready to assault him, and he raised his bandaged hand in a gesture of furious surprise that failed to intimidate the engineer.

"Calm yourself, Felix," said he. "I know exactly what I'm saying. I have considered it very carefully, and have come to the conclusion that the baron is innocent. You have done him a grave wrong, and all I ask is that you should listen to me, that's all."

The assurance with which he spoke had a calming effect on my nerves. I had, a feeling of liberation, the nightmare that had oppressed me a moment before had been dissipated. The idea that I had been seriously accused of murder now struck me as fantastic and absurd. Now that broad daylight, the light of reality, had begun to illuminate things, what I felt was merely a kind of tension that might be felt by an uninvolved spectator. All I felt was curiosity. How would it all turn out, I wondered. Who drove Eugen Bischoff to his death? Who is the guilty party? And by what strange concatenation of circumstances did that silent witness, my pipe, arrive in the room and end up on the table? At whom did it point the finger of suspicion?

That was what I wanted to know, that was what I had to find out, and I kept my eyes on the engineer, as if he knew the way out of this maze of unsolved riddles.

I don't know what was uppermost in my enemy's mind at that moment. Anger? Impatience? Irritation? Indignation or disappointment? Whatever it was, he managed to hide it. His face and manner expressed the same courtesy and cordiality as before, and the angry movement of his hand turned into a moderate, challenging gesture.

"You intrigue me, Waldemar," he said. "Let us hear what you have to say. But you'll be brief, won't you, because I think I can hear the police commission car."

Sure enough, there was honking outside in the street, but the engineer took no notice, and when he began speaking I remembered for a brief moment that my honour and my life were at stake. But the feeling of calm and confidence and complete non-involvement promptly returned, together with the conviction that the whole thing would turn out to have its natural explanation. It had become inconceivable to me that this dreadful suspicion could stick to me.

"When the shots rang out, Baron von Yosch was up in the house, wasn't he?" the engineer said. "Did you know that? He was on the terrace, talking to your sister. That must be our starting point."

"That may well be," Felix said in the tone in which one discusses trivialities. He was still listening to what was going on outside, but the honking had faded into the distance.

"It is an important point which we must bear in mind," the engineer went on, "for I have reason to believe that Eugen Bischoff's unknown visitor was still in the room here when the two shots were fired."

"Two shots? I heard only one."

"There were two. I haven't examined the revolver yet, but you will find that I am right."

He went over to the wall and pointed to the pale blue flowers and leaves and scrollwork of the pattern of the wallpaper.

"That's where the bullet went in," he said. "He tried to defend himself, Felix. He fired at his adversary and then turned the weapon against himself. That is what happened. At the critical moment the baron was up on the terrace. When we look for the unknown visitor he won't come into it, that's certain."

Dr Gorski bent over to the hole in the wallpaper and sought for the bullet with his pocket knife. I listened to the sound of his knife scratching the plaster. Felix was still listening to what was going on in the street.

"Is that so certain?" Dr Gorski said after a while without turning his head. "How did the unknown visitor get into the garden, can you tell me that? No-one saw him or heard the bell being rung. I know what you're going to say, your mysterious stranger had a spare key to the garden door, didn't he?"

The engineer shook his head.

"No. I rather think he had been waiting for Eugen Bischoff here in the pavilion for a long time, perhaps for hours."

"Oh? Then will you explain to me how he left the room? You say he was here when the first shot was fired. But there was only a second between the two shots, and when we arrived the door was bolted from the inside."

"I've put a great deal of thought to that," the engineer said with no trace of embarrassment. "The windows were shut too. I gladly admit that this is a weak point in my argument, so far the only one that might incriminate the baron."

"The only one?" exclaimed Felix. "What about his pipe? Who brought that English pipe here? Your mysterious visitor, or perhaps even Eugen himself?"

"At all events I would not exclude the second possibility," the engineer said.

Felix had an expletive ready on his lips, but Dr Gorski, who had been listening in silence, spoke first.

"I'm not sure, I might be mistaken," he said, "but I think I really saw the pipe for a moment in Eugen Bischoff's hand. As I said, I might be mistaken ..."

"Really, doctor?" Felix interrupted. "Do you remember having ever seen my brother-in-law smoking? No, doctor, he didn't smoke, he hated it . . ."

"I'm not saying he intended to smoke it," Dr Gorski interrupted. "He may merely have taken the pipe with him because he was holding it in his hand. Look, I myself once absent- mindedly walked out into the street with a big pair of scissors in my hand, and if I hadn't met some friends ..."

"No, doctor, you should take the trouble to look for plausible hypotheses. The pipe was still glowing when I came in. Look, there are still half-a-dozen burnt matchsticks on the floor. Someone had been smoking that pipe."

Dr Gorski had no answer to that, but the effect of those words on the engineer is hard to describe.

He jumped to his feet. Suddenly he was white as chalk. He stared at us one after the other and then cried:

"So the pipe was still smouldering. That's it, then. Don't you remember, Felix? There was a cigarette still alight on the desk."

Not one of us suspected where his train of thought had led him. What struck me most was that in his excitement he had spoken with a marked Slavonic accent. We looked at each other with surprise at the way he stood there, quite pale and beside himself, unable to speak clearly or explain but only to stammer, and at the same time having to fight a fit of anger, so that at first we were unable to grasp what he was trying to say.

Felix shook his head.

"You must be clearer, Waldemar," he said, "I haven't understood a word."

"And I was the first in the room," the engineer exclaimed. "Where the devil were my eyes? Be clearer? As if it weren't clear enough. He shut himself up in the room and bolted the door and when the landlady went in there was a burning cigarette on his desk. Do you understand now, or don't you want to understand?"

At last I realised what he was talking about. I had thought no more about the mysterious suicide of the naval officer who had been a friend of Eugen Bischoff's. With a slight shudder I realised the resemblance of the two cases, and the dark and alarming suspicion of a connection between them rose in me for the first time.

"The same external circumstances and the same course of events," the engineer said, drawing his hand across his furrowed brow. "Practically the same course of events, besides the total absence of any discernible motive in all three cases."

"And what conclusions do you draw from that?" asked Felix, disconcerted and not quite so sure of his case.

"Above all, that Baron von Yosch is completely innocent. Isn't that clear to you at last?"

"And whom do you suspect, Waldemar?"

The engineer took a long look at the body that lay covered on the floor, and for some strange reason he dropped his voice. Softly, almost in a whisper, he said:

"When he told us about his friend's fate he may have been only a step away from the solution of the mystery. He suspected it when he left the room, that's why he was so agitated, he was quite beside himself, don't you remember?"

"Well? Go on."

"That young naval officer went to his death after he hit on the reason for his brother's suicide. Eugen guessed the reason too. Perhaps that was why he too had to die ..."

The quiet was broken by the ringing of the garden doorbell. Dr Gorski opened the door and looked out. We heard voices.