Villa Rubein, and other stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 374 pages of information about Villa Rubein, and other stories.

Villa Rubein, and other stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 374 pages of information about Villa Rubein, and other stories.
bars, looking on a courtyard.  Long policemen’s coats and caps were hanging from some pegs.  The Inspector told me to take off my cap.  I took it off, wig and all.  He asked me who I was, but I refused to answer.  Just then there was a loud sound of voices in the room we had come from.  The Inspector told the policeman to look after me, and went to see what it was.  I could hear him talking.  He called out:  ‘Come here, Becker!’ I stood very quiet, and Becker went towards the door.  I heard the Inspector say:  ’Go and find Schwartz, I will see after this fellow.’  The policeman went, and the Inspector stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began again to talk to the man in the other room.  Once or twice he looked round at me, but I stood quiet all the time.  They began to disagree, and their voices got angry.  The Inspector moved a little into the other room.  ‘Now!’ I thought, and slipped off my cloak.  I hooked off a policeman’s coat and cap, and put them on.  My heart beat till I felt sick.  I went on tiptoe to the window.  There was no one outside, but at the entrance a man was holding some horses.  I opened the window a little and held my breath.  I heard the Inspector say:  ’I will report you for impertinence!’ and slipped through the window.  The coat came down nearly to my heels, and the cap over my eyes.  I walked up to the man with the horses, and said:  ‘Good-evening.’  One of the horses had begun to kick, and he only grunted at me.  I got into a passing tram; it was five minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there.  There was a train starting; they were shouting ‘Einsteigen!’ I ran.  The collector tried to stop me.  I shouted:  ‘Business—­important!’ He let me by.  I jumped into a carriage.  The train started.”

He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.

Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands:  “There was another man in the carriage reading a paper.  Presently I said to him, ’Where do we stop first?’ ‘St. Polten.’  Then I knew it was the Munich express—­St. Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg—­four stops before the frontier.  The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a big fair moustache and rather shabby clothes.  His looking at me disturbed me, for I thought every minute he would say:  ‘You’re no policeman!’ And suddenly it came into my mind that if they looked for me in this train, it would be as a policeman!—­they would know, of course, at the station that a policeman had run past at the last minute.  I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap, but the man was there, and I didn’t like to move out of the carriage for other people to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last.  The man in my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the seat.  We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took the cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought:  ’I shall get across the frontier now.’  I took my

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Villa Rubein, and other stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.