The commissioner sat down at his desk and wrote out the necessary credentials for the detective. A few moments later Muller was in the street. He left the notebook with the commissioner. It was snowing heavily, and an icy north wind was howling through the streets. Muller turned up the collar of his coat and walked on quickly. It was just striking a quarter to twelve when he reached Cathedral Lane. As he walked slowly along the moonlit side of the pavement, a man stepped out of the shadow to meet him. It was the policeman who had been sent to watch the house. Like Muller, he wore plain clothes.
“Well?” the latter asked.
“Nothing new. Mr. Fellner has been ill in bed several days, quite seriously ill, they tell me. The janitor seems very fond of him.”
“Hm—we’ll see what sort of a man he is. You can go back to the station now, you must be nearly frozen standing here.”
Muller looked carefully at the house which bore the number 14. It was a handsome, old-fashioned building, a true patrician mansion which looked worthy of all confidence. But Muller knew that the outside of a house has very little to do with the honesty of the people who live in it. He rang the bell carefully, as he wished no one but the janitor to hear him.
The latter did not seem at all surprised to find a stranger asking for the owner of the house at so late an hour. “You come with a telegram, I suppose? Come right up stairs then, I have orders to let you in.”
These were the words with which the old janitor greeted Muller. The detective could see from this that Mr. Theodore Fellner’s conscience must be perfectly clear. The expected telegram probably had something to do with the non-appearance of Asta Langen, of whose terrible fate her guardian evidently as yet knew nothing. The janitor knocked on one of the doors, which was opened in a few moments by an old woman.
“Is it the telegram?” she asked sleepily.
“Yes,” said the janitor.
“No,” said Muller, “but I want to speak to Mr. Fellner.”