The bailiff laughed. “Indeed I have,” he said. “He declares that the signing took place in the café at the Grand.”
“That’s not true,” thought Norby; “it was at the Hotel Carl Johan.”
The bailiff emptied his liqueur-glass and continued: “But it’s awkward for him that his witness is dead, and that there’s no one who saw you write your name. And it gives a bad impression, too, to hear that a number of people are now getting bills from his general store, which they have paid long ago. He’s a shady character.”
When the sound of the last sledge-bells passed from the yard a little over midnight, Norby began to walk about the empty rooms, rubbing his hands, for he knew now for certain that people esteemed him as the old Knut Norby.
“But in the Grand café? That’s a downright lie. I’ve never in my life put my name to any paper there. What a confounded liar he is!”
The consciousness that at any rate a fraction of this matter was a lie, now felt like a relief. No one in the world could prove that he had ever signed anything at the Grand.
“But I shall win the whole thing. I can be quite easy about that.” And then a little later: “But shall I win?”
He sank down at a table in the little room leading off one of the drawing-rooms, on which stood a bottle of liqueur. When Marit came to get him to go to bed she was very much astonished to find him intoxicated, and she could not get him to move. An hour later she went with a candle in her hand through the dark rooms where the tobacco-smoke still hung in light clouds. There was a light behind the curtains in the doorway. She peeped cautiously in, and saw that the old man had sunk back on to the sofa, and was asleep with his glass in his hand.