The manner of the hostess showed that the gend'arme's question had set her thinking. Could it have been the crazy woman who was with the travelers? There had been so much running hither and thither and carrying of bundles of clothes, and she had such a queer look about her.
"Do you know anything about it?" said the gend'arme, looking her straight in the face, "speak out!"
"I don't know a thing," said the hostess. "Did I say a word? What do you want of me?"
There is nothing which the country people dread so much as being called into court in order to bear witness, and so the hostess was careful not to utter a single word that might lead to such a result.
Baum saw that he had made a mistake in taking the gend'arme with him, for his presence alarmed those who might really have something to tell. He, therefore, sent him off, so that he might make further inquiries on his own account.
Baum stood before a looking-glass, combing and brushing his dyed hair which, that day, was unusually refractory. For the first time in his life he was perfectly modest. He admitted to himself that, after all, he was not the right man to follow up such an affair, and that he had wasted too much time already. Others would be before him in profiting by whatever advantage was to be gained from Irma's death. He felt that he had better hurry back to the palace, and that there were others there, enough of them, too, who could work up such a case far better than he.
He endeavored to sound the hostess, who, he still thought, knew something of the affair. But he was unsuccessful, for she had not forgotten his comrade, the gend'arme, nor did it help, in the least, when he pointed to his buttons and informed her that he was the king's lackey.
It suddenly occurred to him that Walpurga lived in the neighborhood. It was scarcely a year since he had been here with Doctor Sixtus. Irma had always been a friend of Walpurga's, and perhaps was now hiding with her--such high-flown people were capable of anything.
The large boat still lay before the inn. Baum, taking his horse with him, went on board and ordered them to put off at once. He permitted a laborer who arrived with a great barrow-load of hay, which he had gathered on the most dangerous crags, to cross in the same boat with him. They put off. Baum lay down on the wild hay, feeling completely worn out.
He asked the boatman whether they had seen anything of a drowned person. They answered that, in the morning, a human head with long hair had been seen rising to the surface, and that, in all likelihood, it was a woman.