A few moments later he was certain that this last decision had been a wise one, for he saw a man come from the main building and walk along the path the woman had taken. "No, nothing doing there,"thought Knoll, and concluded he had better go to sleep. He could not remember just how long he may have dozed but it seemed to him that during that time he had heard a shot. It did not interest him much. He supposed some one was shooting at a thieving cat or at some small night animal. He did not even remember whether he had been really sound asleep, before he was aroused by the breaking down of the bench on which he lay. The noise of it more than the shock of the short fall, awoke him and he sprang tip in alarm and listened intently to hear whether any one had been attracted by it.
His first glance was towards the building behind the garden. There was no sound nor no light in the garden house but there was a light in the main building. While the tramp was wondering what hour it might be, the church clock answered him by ten loud strokes.
His head was already aching from the wine and he did not feel comfortable in the drafty old building. He came out from it, crept along to the spot where he had climbed the fence before, and after listening carefully and hearing nothing on either side, he climbed back to the road. The Street lay silent and empty, which was just what he was hoping for. He held carefully to the shadow thrown by the high board fence over which he had climbed until he came to its end. Then he remembered that he hadn't done anything wrong and stepped out boldly into the moonlight. The moon was well up now and the street was almost as light as day. Knoll was attracted by the queer shadows thrown by a big elder tree, waving its long branches in the wind. As he came nearer he saw that part of the shadow was no shadow at all but was the body of a man lying in the street near the bush. "I thought sure he was drunk" was the way Knoll described it. "I've been like that myself often until somebody came along and found me."When he came to this spot in his story, he halted and drew a long breath. Commissioner von Riedau had begun to make some figures on the paper in front of him, then changed the lines until the head of a pretty woman in a fur hat took shape under his fingers.
"Well, go on," he said, looking with interest at his drawing and improving it with several quick strokes.
Johann Knoll continued:
"Then the devil came over me and I thought I better take this good opportunity - well - I did. The man was lying on his back and Isaw a watch chain on his dark vest. I bent over him and took his watch and chain. Then I felt around in his pocket and found his purse. And then - well then I felt sorry for him lying out in the open road like that, and I thought I'd lift him up and put him somewhere where he could sleep it off more convenient. But I didn't see there was a little ditch there and I stumbled over it and dropped him. 'It's a good thing he's so drunk that even this don't wake him up,' I thought, and ran off. Then I thought I heard something moving and I was scared stiff, but there was nothing in the street at all. I thought I had better take to the fields though and I crossed through some corn and then out onto another street.
Finally I walked into the city, stayed there till this morning, sold the watch, then went to Pressburg.""So that was the way it was," said the commissioner, pushing his drawing away from him and motioning to the policemen at the door.
"You may take this man away now," he added in a voice of cool indifference, without looking at the prisoner.
Knoll's head drooped and he walked out quietly between his two guards. The clock on the office wall struck eleven.
"Dear me! what a lot of time the man wasted," said the commissioner, putting the report of the proceedings, the watch and the purse in a drawer of his desk. "When anybody has been almost convicted of a crime, it's really quite unnecessary to invent such a long story.
A few minutes later, the room was empty and Muller, as the last of the group, walked slowly down the stairs. He was in such a brown study that he scarcely heard the commissioner's friendly "goodnight,"nor did he notice that he was walking down the quiet street under a star-gilded sky. "Almost convicted - almost. Almost?" Muller's lips murmured while his head was full of a chaotic rush of thought, dim pictures that came and went, something that seemed to be on the point of bringing light into the darkness, then vanishing again.
"Almost - but not quite. There is something here I must find out first. What is it? I must know -"
