The Judge and His Hangman Read online

  Now Tschanz lost his patience. He gripped the old man’s shoulders.

  “For years I’ve stood in the shadow, Inspector,” he gasped. “I’ve always been left out, ignored, treated like dirt, like some kind of glorified mailman!”

  “I won’t deny it, Tschanz,” Barlach said, still staring fixedly into the young man’s desperate eyes. “For years you stood in the shadow of the man who has now been murdered.”

  “Just because he went to better schools! Just because he knew Latin.”

  “You’re not being fair to him,” Barlach replied. “Schmied was the best criminologist I have ever known.”

  “And now,” Tschanz shouted, “now that I finally have an opportunity, I’m expected to let it go down the drain, my one chance to get a promotion—all because of some stupid diplomatic maneuver! Only you can change this, Inspector, talk to Lutz, only you can get him to let me go to Gastmann.”

  “No, Tschanz,” Barlach said, “I can’t do that.” His subordinate shook him, as if trying to shake sense into a naughty boy, and then he screamed:

  “Talk to Lutz, talk to him!”

  But the old man would not be swayed. “I can’t, Tschanz,” he said. “I’m not up for this sort of thing any more. I’m old and sick. I need some rest. You’ll have to help yourself.”

  “Very well,” Tschanz said, abruptly taking his hands off Barlach and putting them on the wheel again. He was quivering and deathly pale. “Then don’t. You can’t help me.”

  They drove on downhill toward Ligerz.

  “You spent your vacation in Grindelwald, didn’t you?” the old man asked. “Pension Eiger?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Quiet and not too expensive?”

  “Just as you say, sir.”

  “Very well, Tschanz, I’ll be driving there tomorrow morning for a rest. I need the altitude. I have a week’s sick leave.”

  Tschanz did not answer immediately. Only after they had turned onto the Neuenburg–Biel highway, he said, and his voice sounded normal again:

  “Altitude isn’t always the best thing, Inspector.”

  15

  That same evening Barlach went to the Bärenplatz to see his internist, Dr. Samuel Hungertobel. The streetlights were already lit, night was closing in, the darkness deepening by the minute. Barlach looked down on the old square from the doctor’s window, watched the surging flood of people while Hungertobel packed up his instruments. Barlach and Hungertobel’s acquaintance went back to their boyhood; they had gone to school together.

  “Your heart’s in good shape,” Hungertobel said. “Thank God.”

  “Have you kept notes on my case?” Barlach asked him.

  “A whole briefcase full,” the doctor replied, pointing to a stack of papers on his desk. “That’s all about your illness.”

  “You haven’t told anyone about my illness, have you, Hungertobel?” Barlach asked.

  “But Hans?!” said the other old man, “that’s confidential, you know that!”

  Down on the square, a Mercedes appeared. Its bright blue color lit up as it rolled under a light. Then it stopped among several parked cars. Barlach narrowed his eyes to see more clearly. Tschanz stepped out, followed by a young woman with a white raincoat and long blond flowing hair.

  “Did anyone ever break in here, Samuel?” the inspector asked.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “There was a day when my desk was messed up,” Hungertobel said. “And your case history was lying on top of the desk. No money had been taken, even though there was plenty inside the desk.”

  “And why didn’t you report it?”

  The doctor scratched his head. “As I said, no money had been taken. Actually I wanted to report it anyway. But then I forgot about it.”

  “I see,” Barlach said. “You forgot. I guess burglars can count on you.” And he thought: “So that’s how Gastmann knows.” He looked down at the square again. Tschanz was entering the Italian restaurant with the young woman. “On the day of his funeral,” Barlach thought, and turned away from the window. He looked at Hungertobel, who was sitting at his desk, writing.

  “So how am I doing?”

  “Are you having any pains?”

  The old man told him about his attack.

  “That’s bad news, Hans,” Hungertobel said. “We’ll have to operate within the next three days. There’s no other way.”

  “I feel better than ever.”

  “In four days you’ll have another attack, Hans,” said the doctor, “and that one you won’t survive.”

  “So I’ve got two days left. Two days. And on the morning of the third day, you’ll perform the operation. Tuesday morning.”

  “Tuesday morning,” Hungertobel said.

  “And after that I’ll have another year to live, right, Samuel?” Barlach said, fixing an impenetrable gaze on his old friend. Hungertobel jumped up and paced through the room.

  “Where did you get this nonsense!”

  “From the person who read my case history.”

  “Are you the burglar?” the doctor exclaimed in great agitation.

  Barlach shook his head. “No, it wasn’t me. But it’s a fact nonetheless, Samuel: just one more year.”

  “Just one more year,” Hungertobel replied, sat down on a chair that stood against the wall of his office, and looked helplessly at Barlach, who was standing in the middle of the room, looking cold and remote in his isolation, stolid and humble, and with such a forlorn expression on his face that the doctor lowered his eyes.

  16

  Barlach woke with a start at two o’clock in the morning. At first he attributed his abrupt awakening to the effects of Hungertobel’s unaccustomed prescription: he had gone to bed early and, for the first time, taken a sleeping pill. But then it seemed to him that he had been roused by some kind of noise. He was preternaturally alert and clearheaded, as often happens when we wake with a start; nevertheless it took a few moments—each one of which seemed an eternity—before he found his bearings. He was not in the room where he usually slept, but in the library; for he had anticipated a difficult night and had intended to read; but he must have suddenly fallen into a deep sleep. He passed his hands over his body. He was still dressed, and had merely covered himself with a woolen blanket. He listened. Something fell to the floor; it was the book he had been reading. The darkness in the windowless room was profound, but not complete; a weak light came in through the open door of the bedroom, the flickering glow of the stormy night. He heard the wind howling from afar. Gradually he made out the forms of a bookcase and a chair, and the edge of the table, and on top of it his revolver. Then he suddenly felt a draft, a window banged in the bedroom, and the door closed with a violent bang. Immediately afterward the old man heard a slight clicking noise in the hallway. He understood. Someone had opened the front door and had entered the hall without considering the possibility of a draft. Barlach stood up and turned on the floor lamp.

  He took the revolver and released the safety catch. At that moment the intruder turned on the light in the hallway. Barlach, who could see the shining lamp through the half open door, was surprised, for he could see no meaning in this action. By the time he understood, it was too late. He saw the silhouette of an arm and a hand reaching into the lamp; then the flare of a blue light, and darkness: the stranger had torn the lamp out of the ceiling and blown the fuse. Barlach stood in complete darkness. The intruder had taken up the challenge and set the conditions: Barlach would have to fight in the dark. The old man gripped his weapon and cautiously opened the door to the bedroom. He entered the room. A vague light fell through the windows, hardly discernible at first, but stronger as the eyes became accustomed to it. Barlach leaned against the wall between the bed and the window facing the river; the other window, facing the neighbor’s house, was on his right. Thus he stood in impenetrable shadow. The disadvantage of his position was that he could not retreat, but he hoped his invisibility would m
ake up for that. The door to the library stood in the dim light of the windows. He would see the outline of the stranger’s body if he came in. Now the narrow beam of a flashlight flared in the library, glided searchingly along the books, across the floor, the armchair, and finally reached the desk, revealing the snake-knife. Again Barlach saw the hand through the open door. It was sheathed in a brown leather glove. It groped along the table and grasped the handle of the snake-knife. Barlach raised the gun, aimed. The flashlight went out. Foiled, the old man lowered his weapon and waited. Looking out the window from where he stood, he sensed the black volumes of ceaselessly roiling water, the towering structures of the city on the other side of the river, the cathedral stabbing the sky like an arrow, and above it the drifting clouds. He stood immobile, waiting for the enemy who had come to kill him. His eyes bored through the vague opening of the door. He waited. Everything was quiet, lifeless. Then the clock struck in the hallway: three. He listened. Faintly he heard the distant ticking of the clock. Somewhere a car honked, then it drove by. People leaving a bar. Once he thought he heard breathing, but he must have been mistaken. And so he stood there, and somewhere in his house was the other man, and engulfing them both, the black cloak of night, with the snake concealed beneath it, the dagger in search of his heart. The old man scarcely breathed. He stood clutching his gun, scarcely aware of the cold sweat running down his neck. He thought of nothing—not of Gastmann, not of Lutz, nor of the sickness gnawing at his body hour after hour and about to destroy the life he was now defending for no other reason than that he desperately wanted to live, and only to live. His whole being was reduced to a single eye searching the night, a single ear testing the minutest sound, a single hand firmly locked around the cool metal of the gun. When the murderer’s presence betrayed itself to him, it wasn’t as he had expected; he sensed a vague coldness touching his cheek, a slight change in the air. For a long time he could not explain it to himself, until he guessed that the door leading from the bedroom to the dining room had opened. The stranger had outwitted the old man again, he had penetrated the bedroom by a roundabout route, invisible, inaudible, inexorable, with the snake-knife in his hand. Barlach knew now that he had to be the first to act. Old and mortally sick as he was, he would have to begin the battle, the fight for a life that might last one more year, provided that Hungertobel applied his knife wisely and accurately. Barlach aimed his revolver at the window facing the Aare River. Then he fired, and again, three times in rapid succession through the splintering glass out into the river, and lowered himself to the floor. He heard a hissing sound above him. It was the knife that now stuck in the wall, quivering. But already the old man had achieved what he wanted: light appeared in the other window, it came from the house next door, the neighbors were leaning out of their opened windows; bewildered and terrified, they were staring into the night. Barlach rose to his feet. The neighbors’ lights lit up the bedroom. A shadowy form slipped away from the dining room door. Then the front door slammed shut, and after that, pulled by the draft, the door to the library slammed, and following that the dining room door, one crash after the other, and finally the window knocked against its frame. The people next door were still staring into the night. The old man by the wall did not move. He stood there, immobile, still holding the weapon, as if he had lost all consciousness of time. The neighbors withdrew, and turned off their lights. Barlach stood by the wall, steeped in darkness again, at one with it, alone in the house.

  17

  Half an hour passed before he went to the hallway and looked for his flashlight. He called up Tschanz and asked him to come. Then he replaced the blown fuse, and the lights went on again. Barlach sat down in his armchair and listened into the night. A car drove up in the front of the house, braked sharply. Again the front door opened, again he heard a step. Tschanz came into the room.

  “Someone tried to kill me,” the inspector said. Tschanz was pale. He was hatless, his hair was disheveled, his pajama pants showed at the bottom of his winter coat. Together they went into the bedroom. With an effort, Tschanz pulled the knife out of the wall. It was deeply embedded in the wood.

  “With this?”

  “With that, Tschanz.”

  The young policeman examined the shattered windowpane.

  “You shot through the window, Inspector?” he asked, surprised.

  Barlach told him everything. “That was the best thing you could do,” Tschanz murmured.

  They went into the hallway, and Tschanz picked up the lamp from the floor.

  “Clever,” he said, not without admiration, and put it aside. Then they went back to the library. The old man stretched out on the couch, covered himself with the blanket, and lay there, helpless, feeling suddenly terribly old, almost shriveled. Tschanz was still holding the snake knife in his hand.

  “Didn’t you get a glimpse of him?” he asked.

  “No. He was careful and withdrew quickly. All I saw for a moment was a brown leather glove.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “It’s nothing. But even though I didn’t see him, even though I could hardly hear him breathe, I know who it was. I know it; I know it.”

  The old man said all this almost inaudibly. Tschanz weighed the knife in his hand, looking down at the gray, prostrate figure before him, this tired old man, these hands that lay next to the frail old body like withered flowers next to a corpse. Then he saw Barlach’s gaze. It was focused on him, calm, clear, and inscrutable. Tschanz laid the knife on the desk.

  “You must go to Grindelwald this morning, you’re sick. Or would you rather not go? It might not be the right thing, the altitude. It’s really winter up there.”

  “No, no, I’m going.”

  “Then you should get some sleep. Do you want me to stay here and keep watch?”

  “No, Tschanz, you can go,” the inspector said.

  “Good night,” Tschanz said and slowly walked out. The old man said nothing; he seemed to have fallen asleep. Tschanz opened the front door, stepped out, closed the door. Slowly he walked the few steps to the street, closed the garden door, which had stood open. Then he turned toward the house again. It was still pitch dark. All things seemed lost in the night, even the houses next door. A single street light burned far above, a lost star in the gloom of a night filled with sorrow, filled with the dark steady surge of the river. Tschanz stood there, and suddenly he cursed softly under his breath. He kicked open the garden gate and strode resolutely up the path to the front door, the same way he had come. He grasped the door handle and pushed it down. But now the door was locked.

  Barlach got up at six without having slept. It was Sunday. The old man washed, changed his clothes. Then he called for a taxi, intending to eat in the dining car. He put on his warm winter coat and left the house, stepping out into the cold winter morning, but without a valise. The sky was clear. A drunken student staggered by, stinking of beer, and greeted him. “Poor Blaser,” Barlach thought. “He just failed his exam for the second time. No wonder he’s drinking.” The taxi drove up, stopped. It was one of those large American cars. The driver had turned up his collar; Barlach could hardly see his eyes. The driver opened the door for him.

  “To the station,” Barlach said, getting in. The car started.

  “Well,” said a voice next to him, “how are you? Did you sleep well?”

  Barlach turned his head. In the other corner sat Gastmann. He was wearing a gray raincoat and his arms were folded. He was wearing brown leather gloves. The way he sat there, he looked like a mocking old peasant. The driver in front turned his head and looked back at Barlach, grinning. He was one of the servants. Barlach realized he had stepped into a trap.

  “What do you want from me now?” he asked.

  “You’re still after me. You talked to that writer,” said the one in the corner, and his voice sounded threatening.

  “It’s my job.”

  The other kept his eyes on him. “There isn’t a single one who took up my case, Barlach, who’s
still alive.”

  The man in front drove up the Aargauerstalden at a furious speed.

  “I’m still alive. And I’ve always been on your case,” the inspector said calmly.

  They were both silent.

  Still racing, the driver headed for Viktoriaplatz. An old man limping across the street got out of the way in the nick of time.

  “Why don’t you watch what you’re doing!” Barlach said angrily.

  “Drive faster,” Gastmann said with a cutting voice. His eyes looked mocking as he scrutinized the old man. “I love the speed of machines.”

  The inspector shuddered. He did not like being enclosed in an airless space. They flew across the bridge, passing a streetcar, over the silver ribbon of water far below them into the welcoming streets of the city, which were still vacant and deserted, under a glassy sky.

  “I would advise you to give up,” Barlach said, stuffing his pipe. “You’ve lost the game, it’s time to concede.”

  The old man looked at the dark arcades gliding past them, and he noticed the shadowy figures of two policemen in front of Lang’s book store.

  “Geissbühler and Zumsteg,” he thought, and then: “I really should pay for that Fontane novel.”

  “Our game,” he finally replied, “—we can’t give it up. You became guilty on that night in Turkey because you proposed a bet, Gastmann, and I became guilty because I accepted it.”

  They drove past the House of Parliament.

  “You still think I killed Schmied?” Gastmann asked.

  “I didn’t believe that for a moment,” the old man replied. He watched indifferently as the other man lit his pipe, and continued:

  “I haven’t succeeded in proving your guilt of the crimes you’ve committed. So this time I’ll prove you guilty of something you didn’t do.”