CHAPTER XVII.
Albert Timm had stopped, after his violent altercation with Oswald, looking after his faithless friend and laughing so loud and so bitterly that the passers-by had looked at him in surprise. Then he had hurried away in another direction, murmuring violent words, gnashing his teeth, and shaking his hands at imaginary enemies. Albert Timm was savage, and from his point of view he had reason to be furious. He was in a desperate position. The debts he had left behind him in Grunwald and elsewhere were not particularly pressing--he was great in bearing such burdens!--but the small sum he had brought with him to town was at an end; and even if that could be borne, all his bright prospects for a brilliant future had been suddenly blown to the winds and burst like a many-colored soap bubble.
Cursing the world and himself, he had thus walked through several streets before he reached that part of town where the rising was general. He delighted in it not because he had any sympathy with the cause of the people or liberty, but because he felt instinctively that in such times, where all is turned upside down, he--the man without a home, the adventurer--could lose nothing, and possibly gain much. This thought restored to him his full elasticity. He hurrahed merrily with the crowd, he chimed in with the cry: To arms! to arms! and had real pleasure in finding the excitement growing apace as he came nearer the place of his destination, the Dismal Hole. Thus he reached Broad street just at the moment when Oswald and Berger approached it from the other side. He noticed both, also Mr. Schmenckel, who had come by appointment to have an interview with Berger. By no means desirous to be seen by his enemies he slipped aside, and was about to creep into Gertrude street when some one seized hold of his coat. When he looked around he found himself face to face with his friend and patron, Jeremy Goodheart.
"Well, how did matters go?" asked the detective, who had in the meantime become Timm's friend, and was fully initiated in his intrigues.
"All up!" sighed Timm, angrily. "Lost my labor and my trouble! All up! I could roast the two rascals!" He pointed at Oswald and Schmenckel.
"Hem, hem!" said the policeman. "You must tell me that at leisure. Come to Rose; but let us first hear what the mad professor has to say."
"Do you know him?" asked Timm.
"Hush! We know him. Deceived people!--all right! To arms!--excellent! Just wait!--we'll catch you! And there comes the tall baron, who makes such revolutionary speeches at the election meetings! Why, there is the whole nest of them!--build barricades!--hurrah! Bravo!--hurrah! All men to the barricades! Hurrah!" cried the detective, and waved his hat with admirably feigned enthusiasm. Then he seized Timm by the arm and said: "Now we must get away quickly or the fellows will shut us up here with their barricade."
The two companions crept down Gertrude street and disappeared in the Dismal Hole.
Mrs. Rose Pape received them with unusual cordiality.
"Well, darlings, do you come with full purses? Have you got it, eh?
"Hush!" said the detective, "and bring us beer; we can't stop."
"Without telling me how the----?" said the worthy matron indignantly, and made with her thumb and her forefinger the motion of counting money.
Mr. Timm shrugged his shoulders in reply, and pulled out the empty pockets of his trousers.
Mrs. Pape was of choleric nature, and the failure of such magnificent expectations filled her with just indignation, to which she gave vent in a flood of oaths and vile invectives, some of which were aimed at the detective. "But I will pay Schmenckel, with his big paunch," she said. "Let him come here again and have no money to pay for his beer; I'll show him home, the old rascal!"
At that moment the firing was heard as the troops charged the barricade in Broad street; and almost immediately afterwards a great noise was heard at the windows. They began building the barricade which was to close up Gertrude street. The detective and Timm, who looked stealthily out at the window, saw Oswald, Berger, Schmenckel, and other men, hard at work. They withdrew, following their landlady to the remoter depths of the basement.
"That is a charming trap," said the detective. "We are hemmed in on all sides, and if they find us here the rascals will kill us."
"It is not quite so bad as that," said the woman. "I can get you out safely. Come along."
She led the two men through the last room and a hidden door down a few steps into a deep cellar, which was used as a store-room. On the wall a thin little gas-flame was burning. The woman screwed it up.
"Now," she said, "you go through that door!"--she pointed out an iron door on the opposite side; "then you get into a narrow court-yard; keep to the left, and thus you can get through my brewer's house into Brother street. Good-by!"
"Is it always open? asked Timm, when he found the iron door was not locked.
"Only to-day," replied Rose; "we expect more beer that way. The fellows are like sponges to-day."
When the two gentlemen had safely passed through the door, the little court-yard, and the brewery, into the space above the barricade in Brother street, they stopped and looked at each other. The same thought was uppermost in the mind of both.
"What a mousetrap this would be!" said Timm.
"If you will lend a hand," said the detective, "you can make sure of the president. We want people like you. I have already spoken about you to the old man."
"And that would avenge us, too, on the rascals."
"The thing is not free from danger, though," said the policeman.
"Faint heart never won fair lady," said Timm. "I confess I like the idea of catching my good friends in this funny way. If you do not choose to undertake it I'll do it alone."
"Well, then, come!" said the detective. "We'll see if the military are disposed to look at it as we do."
And the two men advanced boldly upon the colonel, who was waiting on horseback at some little distance surrounded by his officers, and furious at the obstinate resistance of the two barricades in Broad street and Gertrude street, which he had been ordered to take by storm.
* * * * *
When Mrs. Rose had helped her friends out and returned to the public rooms she found there Mr. Schmenckel, with ten or twelve other men from the barricades, who wished to refresh themselves after their fatigue. They were mostly old customers of the locality, the same men with long beards and dishevelled locks who had been in the habit of meeting here to condemn the "rotten condition of the state," the "hateful police," and the "brutalized soldiery." Mr. Schmenckel had always been highly respected by these people, and now, when they had seen that he could not only speak boldly but also act courageously, he became the hero of the day.
Under these circumstances Mrs. Rose deemed it more prudent not to carry out her resolution, and to leave the waiting upon the barricade men to pretty Lisbeth while she herself took her accustomed seat at the bar.
Pretty Lisbeth was very fond of Mr. Schmenckel, whose gallantry was universal. She had overheard part of the conversation between her mistress, Timm, and Goodheart, and their leaving through the back-door had roused her suspicions. She thought she ought to tell her admirer what she had seen, especially as she liked to show him what a false pussy-cat Mrs. Rose was--a fact of which she had often tried to convince him in vain. Schmenckel at once appreciated the importance of her communications. If there was a door in the basement which led into Brother street, and if Timm and Goodheart, whom Schmenckel by no means trusted, knew this door, then it was most assuredly very expedient to see if that door was carefully locked.
Schmenckel let Lisbeth go, and told the men at his table what he had heard. They all were of opinion that a reconnoissance ought to be made at once. But at the very moment when the men took up their arms and turned to the door which led into the store-room in question, the door was opened from the other side and a troop of soldiers rushed in, Albert Timm and the detective in their midst.
The sudden appearance of the shining helmets and guns, and the firing which began instantly, though fortunately quite at random, filled some of the barricade men with such terror that they rushed helter skelter up the steps and fled into the street. Here they were met by Oswald and Berger, who had been attracted by the firing, and now came to Schmenckel's assistance, who had until now alone contended with the soldiers.
Schmenckel had seized one of the guns which had just been fruitlessly discharged, and attacked the invaders, first with the butt end, and when this was broken with the iron barrel, so powerfully that two or three were lying disabled on the floor, and the others were retiring panic-struck through the back door. There, however, they met their advancing comrades, and this caused a fearful confusion, especially as Oswald, Berger, Schmenckel, and the other men, who had recovered from their surprise, now also pressed down into the half-lighted rooms and engaged in a terrible conflict.
The attacking party was perhaps half as strong again as their enemies, and better armed; but these advantages were offset by Berger's and Oswald's impetuous valor, and the gigantic strength of Schmenckel. The powerful man wielded his terrible weapon indefatigably, and not a blow fell in vain upon the heads of the unfortunate soldiers. Thus he cut his way to the door which led into the court-yard, at which he met several escaping soldiers, while others were eagerly crowding after them. And now he had attained his end. Seizing with his irresistible arms a few of the men hemmed in between the door and the door-frame, and pulling them down into the store-room, he closed the heavy iron door, pushed the strong iron bar across, leaned his broad back against it, and cried, whirling his gun-barrel in a circle around him.
"Now we have gotten our sheep together, professor! No one can get out or in any more. Caspar Schmenckel will see to that."
The horror had reached its crisis. In the narrow badly-lighted room, under-ground and reeking with mould and blood, men fought like wild beasts. The soldiers defended themselves desperately; but as their friends could only thunder at the inner door without coming to their assistance, the result was not long doubtful. The butchery, however, might have continued for some time if Oldenburg had not come down with part of his men from the barricade. He threatened to shoot down instantly every man who should not at once lay down his arms. The soldiers, deprived of all hope of succor, surrendered, and entered one by one from the lower room into the drinking saloon, where they were disarmed. The poor fellows presented a piteous sight There was not one of them who was not seriously wounded. Their bright uniforms in rags, out of breath, pale with fright and exhaustion, stained with blood and dust and dirt--thus they stood there surrounded by the barricade men, who likewise bore the marks of a severe conflict. But the low cellar contained greater horrors than these. When lights were brought two bodies were seen lying lifeless in their blood, a soldier and a civilian. The soldier had in his wild flight thrown himself upon his own bayonet, which pierced him through and through, and no doubt had killed him instantly. The civilian had received a terrible cut across the head. He was still groaning as they carried him up stairs, but he also died in a few minutes. At first they thought it was one of the barricade men, but no one knew him. Oswald also approached the table on which he had been laid, and after having examined the distorted countenance for a moment, he saw to his indescribable horror that the stiff bleeding corpse was all that remained of the Merry Andrew, the inexhaustible clown and punster, his boon companion of so many a wild night, the same man from whom he had parted in anger and hatred a few hours ago--Albert Timm.