The Lonely House

by Adolf Streckfuss

"I do not know what I ought to do," he said, turning to the Clerk. "You command me to arrest Herr Foligno; he commands me to arrest you. After all, he is the District Judge."

The Clerk hastily approached the old, dingy bureau, took a key from his pocket and opened the upper drawer.

"I command you to arrest a murderer," he said. "He, and not Franz Schorn, committed the murder in the Lonely House. Here are the proofs--his bloodstained clothing and the banknotes which he stole. The responsibility is yours if the murderer escapes and you disobey my commands."

One look into the drawer, and the captain hesitated no longer. An hour afterwards, between two gendarmes, the murderer was driven to Laibach. Half the entire population of Luttach crowded about the court house to see him driven away. The report had circulated throughout the little town with incredible swiftness that not Franz Schorn, but the District Judge was the criminal. When the prisoner was led from the court house to the carriage a fierce shout of rage greeted him. The gendarmes were obliged with their weapons to keep off the indignant populace in order to shield the prisoner from their violence. He, on his part, was now pale and trembling with cowardly fear; curses and execrations followed him as the carriage drove through the crowd.

But at that moment the lovely little Anna was seated on my sofa, thanking me over and over again, her eyes shining with joy--and what, after all, had I done to deserve her thanks?

CHAPTER XIV.

[THE END OF THE PROFESSOR'S HOLIDAY].

The doctor, the Burgomaster and the Captain had driven to Laibach to require personally the instant liberation of Franz Schorn, whose innocence no one longer doubted. The doctor had promised to inform me by letter of the result of his efforts, and he kept his word. On the second day I received a long letter from him. There had been a tremendous commotion in Laibach when the District Judge of Luttach, manacled like a common criminal, had been received at the prison. The ultra Slavonic newspapers had hitherto triumphed in the announcement that the only German agitator in Luttach was nothing more or less than a miserable, ordinary criminal, and now they suffered a terrible blow in that the German agitator was no murderer; the criminal was a man who, although of Italian descent, had always laboured in the Slavonic cause. The Slav party, on the other hand, were half-inclined to swear to the innocence of the Judge and to stake all on the guilt of the hated German. But the doctor took good care that every scrap of evidence against the true murderer should be well known; he was himself a zealous Slav, but so conscientious and honest a man, and so well known as prizing justice far above national prejudice, that he forced the newspapers of his party, by his truthful declarations, to advocate the cause of Franz Schorn, which they reluctantly did, although not very enthusiastically. They, as well as the doctor, found consolation, however, in the fact that District Judge Foligno was no true Slav, but in fact an Italian. Of course all national prejudices were powerless to influence the court at Laibach. The doctor wrote with real enthusiasm in regard to his reception by the investigating Judge, who had frankly informed him that suspicion of the District Judge had arisen in his mind while he was investigating the matter in Luttach, suspicion which was now substantiated by the admirable report of the Clerk, and that the evidence had created conviction. A most disagreeable task lay before him in having to investigate the actions of his superior in office, but he would unflinchingly follow his duty. The Attorney General, who had hitherto been firmly convinced of Schorn's guilt, could not but admit the evidence of his innocence and the proof of the Judge's criminality, and the honourable liberation of Schorn from imprisonment must take place immediately. It depended only upon certain formalities. If the Judge could be brought to confess, Schorn's freedom would be on the instant.

This hope, however, of bringing the criminal to an open confession was not destined to be fulfilled. He maintained his innocence with brazen effrontery until his hearing before the court, asserting that he was the victim of shameful intrigue. All the evidence which I, the German Professor, had brought against him was founded, he declared, partly on lies, partly on prejudice. It was not true that I had found his bloodstained handkerchief in the neighbourhood of the Lonely House, for the handkerchief found in the drawer he had never lost. The blood on his handkerchief, his waistcoat, and his trousers came from the wound in his hand due to a fall among the rocks on the morning of the day of the murder, and of which he had innocently informed the Professor. He declared that I had found him changing his dress when I came to inform him of the discovery of the murdered man in the Lonely House. He had locked up the bloody clothing in the upper drawer of the chest in his sleeping apartment in my presence, and, of course, I knew where it was. How the money and banknotes came in the drawer he did not know, but he suspected that during his absence I had placed them there myself, or had bribed Frau Franzka to put them into the chest in order that the farce might be played of the removal of the chest to my room and the discovery of the bloody articles, which would clear Franz Schorn of the guilt of the murder and throw it upon himself, the District Judge. He would not venture to assert that I was Schorn's accomplice in the crime, although it was possible, but I was certainly his accomplice in the theft of the money. Either to be rid of this accomplice, or to ensure his silence by saving his life, Schorn had cut the rope in the cave.

When the investigating Judge pointed out to him the improbability, nay the evident falsehood of this clumsy invention, the prisoner stoutly maintained its truth, and even asserted that I had come to Luttach, on the pretense of pursuing natural history researches in Ukraine, in the interest of the German clique there, and to this end I had entered into close relations with Schorn, having as their result this scheme to ruin him. The Judge displayed an eloquence and keenness of intellect in proving the truth of his statements which the investigating Judge could not but admire; but, upon perceiving that he failed entirely in making any impression upon the impartial official, who was himself a Slav, he lost courage, and, declaring that he was too exhausted to endure further questioning, begged to be again conducted to prison.