Muller was embarrassed. That did not happen very often. Also it did not happen very often that he was in the wrong as he was now. The woman was absolutely right. He had wormed himself into the house under false pretenses to follow up the new clue which almost unconsciously as yet was leading him on with a stronger and stronger attraction. He could not have explained it and he certainly was not ready to say anything about it at police headquarters, even at the risk of being obliged to continue to enter this mysterious house under false pretenses and to be told that he was doing so. Of course this sort of thing was necessary in his business, it was the only way in which he could follow up the criminals.
But there was something in this woman’s words that cut into a sensitive spot and drove the blood to his cheeks. There was something in the bearing and manner of this one-time nurse that impressed him, although he was not a man to be lightly impressed. He had a feeling that he had made a fool of himself and it bothered him. For a moment he did not know what he should say to this woman who stood before him with so much quiet energy in her bearing. But the something in his brain, the something that made him what he was, whispered to him that he had done right, and that he must follow up the trail he had found. That gave him back his usual calm.
He took up his hat, and standing before the pale-faced woman, looking her firmly in the eyes, he said: “It is true that I have no right as yet to force my way into your house, therefore I have been obliged to enter it as best I could. I have done this often in my work, but I do it for the safety of society. And those who reproach me for doing it are generally those whom I have been obliged to persecute in the name of the law. Mrs. Bernauer, I will confess that there are moments in which I feel ashamed that I have chosen this profession that compels me to hunt down human beings. But I do not believe that this is one of those moments. You have read this morning’s papers; you must know, therefore, that a man has been arrested and accused of the murder which interests you so much; you must be able to realise the terror and anxiety which are now filling this man’s heart. For to-day’s papers—I have read them myself—expressed the public sentiment that the police may succeed in convicting this man of the crime, that the death may be avenged and justice have her due. Several of these papers, the papers I know you have bought and presumably read, do not doubt that Johann Knoll is the murderer of Leopold Winkler.
“Now there are at least two people who do not believe that Knoll is the murderer. I am one of them, and you, Mrs. Bernauer, you are the other. I am going now and when I come again, as I doubtless will come again, I will come with full right to enter this house. I acknowledge frankly that I have no justification in causing your arrest as yet, but you are quite clever enough to know that if I had the faintest justification I would not leave here alone. And one thing more I have to say. You may not know that I have had the most extraordinary luck in my profession, that in more than a hundred cases there have been but two where the criminal I was hunting escaped me. And now, Mrs. Bernauer, I will bid you good day.”
Muller stepped towards the window and motioned to Franz, who was walking up and down outside. The old man ran to the door and met the detective in the hall.
“You’d better go in and look after Mrs. Bernauer,” said the latter, “I can find my way out alone.”
Franz looked after him, shaking his head in bewilderment and then entered his own room. “Merciful God!” he exclaimed, bending down in terror over the housekeeper, who lay on the floor. In his shock and bewilderment he imagined that she too had been murdered, until he realised that it was only a swoon from which she recovered in a moment. He helped her regain her feet and she looked about as if still dazed, stammering: “Has he gone?”
“The strange man? ... Yes, he went some time ago. But what happened to you? Did he give you something to make you faint? Do you think he was a thief?”
Mrs. Bernauer shook her head and murmured: “Oh, no, quite the contrary.” A remark which did not enlighten Franz particularly as to the status of the man who had just left them. There was a note of fear in the housekeepers’s voice and she added hastily: “Does any one besides ourselves know that he was here?”
“No, Lizzie and the cook are in the kitchen talking about the murder.”