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Page 67
The papers were those of Julius Zimmermann all right.
We were having supper at one of the tables in the front room--there were
only a couple of customers, as it was so early--when a man, a regular
visitor of ours, came down the stairs hurriedly. He went straight over
to Haase and spoke into his ear.
"Mind yourself, Haase," I heard him say. "Do you know who had Kore
arrested and shot? It was Clubfoot. There is more in this than we know.
Mind yourself and get out! In an hour or so it may be too late."
Then he scurried away, leaving me dazed.
"By God!" said the landlord, bringing a great fist down on the table so
that the glasses rang, "they won't touch me. Not the devil himself will
make me leave this house before they come, if coming they are!"
The woman burst into tears, while Otto blinked his watery eyes in
terror. I sat and looked at my plate, my heart too full for words. It
was bitter to have dared so much to get this far and then find the path
blocked, as it seemed, by an insuperable barrier. They were after me all
right: the mention of Clubfoot's name, the swift, stern retribution that
had befallen Kore, made that certain--and I could do nothing. That
cellar was a cul-de-sac, a regular trap, and I knew that if I stirred a
foot from the house I should fall into the hands of those men keeping
their silent vigil in the street.
Therefore, I must wait, as calmly as I might, and see what the evening
would bring forth. Gradually the cellar filled up as people drifted in,
but many familiar faces, I noticed, were missing. Evidently the ill
tidings had spread. Once a man looked in for a glass of beer and drifted
out again, leaving the door open. As I was closing it, I heard a muffled
exclamation and the sound of a scuffle at the head of the stairs. It was
so quietly done that nobody below, save myself, knew what had happened.
The incident showed me that the watch was well kept.
The evening wore on--interminably, as it seemed to me. I darted to and
fro from the bar, laden with mugs of beer and glasses of schnaps,
incessantly, up and down. But I never failed, whenever there came a
pause in the orders, to see that my journey finished somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the door. A faint hope was glimmering in my brain.
Until the end of my life, that interminable evening in the beer-cellar
will remain stamped in my memory. I can still see the scene in its every
detail, and I know I shall carry the picture with me to the grave; the
long, low room with its blackened ceiling, the garish yellow gaslight,
the smoke haze, the crowded tables, Otto, shuffling hither and hither
with his mean and sulky air, Frau Hedwig, preoccupied at her desk,
red-eyed, a graven image of woe, and Haase, presiding over the
beer-engine, silent, defiant, calm, but watchful every time the door
opened.
When at last the blow fell, it came suddenly. A trampling of feet on the
stairs, a great blowing of whistles ... then the door was burst open
just as everybody in the cellar sprang to their feet amid exclamations
and oaths from the men and shrill screams from the women. Outlined in
the doorway stood Clubfoot, majestic, authoritative, wearing some kind
of little skull-cap, such as duelling students wear, over a black silk
handkerchief bound about his head. At the sight of the man the hubbub
ceased on the instant. All were still save Haase, whose bull-like voice
roaring for silence broke on the quiet of the room with the force of an
explosion.
I was in my corner by the door, pressed back against the coats and hats
hanging on the wall. In front of me a frieze of frightened faces
screened me from observation. Quickly, I slipped off my apron.
Clubfoot, after casting a cursory glance round the room, strode its
length towards the bar where Haase stood, a crowd of plain-clothes men
and policemen at his heels. Then quite suddenly the light went out,
plunging the place into darkness. Instantly the room was in confusion;
women screamed; a voice, which I recognized as Clubfoot's, bawled
stentorianly for lights ... the moment had come to act.
I grabbed a hat and coat from the hall, got into them somehow, and
darted to the door. In the dim light shining down the stairs from a
street lamp outside, I saw a man at the door. Apparently he was guarding
it.
"Back!" he cried, as I stepped up to him.
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