"Well," said Ludwig.
"I remember a scar upon the right wrist that he showed me the night I put up at his house," said the Englishman; "and which he told me had been inflicted on him by a piece of broken plate hurled at him by his Poltergeist. I remember that he said he should carry that mark with him to the grave. If this is the corpse of Franz Wenzel we shall not fail to discover the mark."
So saying, he bared the right arm of the corpse and examined it carefully. No such mark was to be found. The arm was free from scar or brand, and was delicate in form, almost like that of a maiden's. Moreover, there was a scanty covering of dark hair upon it, while the hair on the arms of the executioner, if you remember rightly, was red and profuse. Even Engstein remarked this, and was now convinced beyond a doubt that the murdered man was not Franz Wenzel.
"Is any search being made now for the head of the corpse?" demanded Engstein of his host, who had withdrawn some paces from the two friends, and consequently had not heard the doubt that had been suddenly cast upon the public opinion.
"No active search, I believe, sir," was the reply.
"We will make the search ourselves, my friend," whispered Engstein to Fritz; then added to his host, "My friend and I will take a stroll together. It is uncertain when we shall return to the inn, but get something savoury for us against we come back," and he waved his hand towards his host, who doffed his cap and walked towards his inn, while our two friends set off together in the direction of the Henker's house, which they reached in about an hour.
"Yes," said Fritz, "this is the place. I remember it well. What did our host tell us? That the murder took place only a few paces from the headsman's door. Let us look well round the spot. How solitary it is! Just the place where a murder would be committed. What do you say to yon hollow flanked with brushwood, Ludwig? Is it not a likely place for a murderer to await his victim?"
"You are right, Fritz, let us make a strict search, but if the head has been carried far distant——"
"Let us, nevertheless, search well here first," said my ancestor, and the two friends set to work at once, lifting up every bush and bramble, following every track, until finally they came upon some blood stains.
An old dried well they discovered not far from this spot. Common sense would have suggested this as a likely place for the concealment of the missing head, and there is no doubt that the same idea struck the inhabitants of ——dorf, for there was evident traces of a great number of feet in the sand round about it; besides which there was a chip recently made in the brickwork, which appeared caused by the letting down of a rope or chain.