By all means; I trust him fully. Come with me, Claus; I’ll give the necessary orders. (Exit with Claus.)
The Burgomaster
(Taking out his watch and looking at the clock.) Three o’clock. There’s not much time to lose. (Enter Otto.) Well, what have you learnt on your side?
Otto
I am feeling a little less uneasy; but everything depends on you. To begin with, Dr. van Cassel, of this town, has made a hurried post-mortem examination. It appears that the bullet entered by the back of the neck, passed through the brain and came out at the forehead. The bullet has not been found. The wound shows that it was of military calibre.
The Burgomaster
That’s something, at any rate, for it proves that there is no question of a sporting-gun.
Otto
Yes, but it may have been a revolver-bullet. Also, I don’t believe it is possible that one of our men committed the crime. At the time when the shot was fired, we had only a hundred and fifty men here, in addition to a dozen Uhlans. The soldiers stacked their rifles in the square and never left the square. Six men, with their arms, were posted in the little yard behind the stables and they never left the yard. These are the men who ran up after the shot was fired. As for the Uhlans, with the exception of two who were on sentry duty outside the house, they were grooming their horses in the stable of the Unicorn Hotel. I have personally examined the arms of those six men. They did not look as if they had been used this morning at all; the barrels were oiled and shiny, they might have just come from the gunsmith’s.
The Burgomaster