“Silence!” shouted Oberzohn, and pointed to the chair. “You shall wait till I come,” he said.
When he came back to his room, he found Gurther standing stiffly to attention.
“Now, Gurther,” he said—he was almost benevolent as he patted the man on the shoulder—“this matter of Gonsalez must end. Can I have my Gurther hiding like a worm in the ground? No, that cannot be. To-night I will send you to this man, and you are so clever that you cannot fail. He whipped you, Gurther—tied you up and cruelly beat you. Always remember that, my brave fellow—he beat you till you bled. Now you shall see the man again. You will go in a dress for-every-occasion,” he said. “The city-clerk manner. You will watch him in your so clever way, and you shall strike—it is permitted.”
“Ja, Herr Doktor.”
He turned on his heels and disappeared through the door. The doctor waited till he heard him going up the stairs, and then he rang for Pfeiffer. The man came in sullenly. He lacked all the precision of the military Gurther; yet, as Oberzohn knew, of the two he was the more alert, the more cunning.
“Pfeiffer, it has come to me that you are in some danger. The police wish to take you back to Warsaw, where certain unpleasant things happened, as you well know. And I am told”—he lowered his voice—“that a friend of ours would be glad to see you go, hein?”
The man did not raise his sulky eyes from the floor, did not answer, or by any gesture or movement of body suggest that he had heard what the older man had said.
“Gurther goes to-morrow, perhaps on our good work, perhaps to speak secretly to his friends in the police—who knows? He has work to do: let him do it, Pfeiffer. All my men will be there—at a place called Brightlingsea. You also shall go. Gurther would rob a blind man? Good! You shall rob one also. As for Gurther, I do not wish him back. I am tired of him: he is a madman. All men are mad who sniff that white snuff up their foolish noses—eh, Pfeiffer?”
Still the awkward-looking man made no reply.
“Let him do his work: you shall not interfere, until—it is done.”