“Who are you? What do you want?”
Hardly mumbling with his parched tongue, my brave Toppi narrated the story of the catastrophe and our escape. He spoke at length and then came the click of a lock and the door was opened. Following behind our austere and silent stranger we entered the house, passed through several dark and silent rooms, walked up a flight of creaking stairs into a brightly lighted room, apparently the stranger’s workroom. There was much light, many books, with one open beneath a low lamp shaded by a simple, green globe. We had not noticed this light in the field. But what astonished me was the silence of the house. Despite the rather early hour not a move, not a sound, not a voice was to be heard.
“Have a seat.”
We sat down and Toppi, now almost in pain, began again to narrate his story. But the strange host interrupted him:
“Yes, a catastrophe. They often occur on our roads. Were there many victims?”
Toppi continued his prattle and the host, while listening to him, took a revolver out of his pocket and hid it in a table drawer, adding carelessly:
“This is not—a particularly quiet neighborhood. Well, please, remain here.”
For the first time he raised his dark eyebrows and his large dim eyes and studied us intently as if he were gazing upon something savage in a museum. It was an impolite and brazen stare. I arose and said:
“I fear that we are not welcome here, Signor, and——”
He stopped Me with an impatient and slightly sarcastic gesture.