Part 14

The Councillor rose suddenly from his chair. “Who are you? What news is it you bring?” he asked with a voice that began to tremble.

Muller raised his head sharply as if his decision had been made, and his kind intelligent eyes grew soft as they rested on the pale face of the stately man before him. “I belong to the Secret Police and I am compelled to find out the secrets of others--not because of my profession--no, because my own nature compels me--I must do it. I have just come from Vienna and I bring the last of the proofs necessary to turn you over to the courts. And yet you are a thousand times better than the coward who stole the honour of your wife and who hid behind the shelter of the law--and therefore, therefore, therefore--” Muller’s voice grew hoarse, then died away altogether.

Kniepp listened with pallid cheeks but without a quiver. Now he spoke, completing the other’s words: “And therefore you wish to save me from the prison or from the gallows? I thank you. What is your name?” The unhappy man spoke as calmly as if the matter scarcely concerned him at all.

The detective told him his name.

“Muller, Muller,” repeated the Councillor, as if he were particularly anxious to remember the name. He held out his hand to the detective. “I thank you, indeed, thank you,” he said with the first sign of emotion he had shown, and then added low: “Do not fear that you will have trouble on my account. They can find me in my home.” With these words he turned away and sat down in his chair again. When Bauer entered the room a few moments later, Kniepp was smoking calmly.

“Now, Muller, I’m ready. Horn will be in in a moment, friend Kniepp; I know you will enjoy his chatter.” The chief led the way out of the room through another door. He could not see the ghastly pale face of the guest he left behind him, for it was almost hidden in a cloud of thick smoke, but Muller turned back once more at the threshold and caught a last grateful glance from eyes shadowed by deep sadness, as the Councillor raised his hand in a friendly gesture.

“Dear Muller, you take so long to get at the point of the story! Don’t you see you are torturing me?” This outburst came from the Chief about an hour later. But the detective would not permit himself to be interrupted in spinning out his story in his own way, and it was nearly another hour before Bauer knew that the man for whose name he had been waiting so long was Leo Kniepp.

The knowledge came as a terrible surprise to him. He was dazed almost. “And I,--I’ve got to arrest him in my own house?” he exclaimed as if horrified. And Muller answered calmly: “I doubt if you will have the opportunity, sir.”

“Muller! Did you, again--”

“Yes, I did! I have again warned an unfortunate. It’s my nature, I can’t seem to help it. But you will find the Councillor in his house. He promised me that.”

“And you believe it?”

“That man will keep his promise,” said Muller quietly.

Councillor Kniepp did keep his promise. When the police arrived at the hunting castle shortly after midnight, they found the terrified servants standing by the body of their master.

“Well, Muller, you had better luck than you deserved this time,” Bauer said a few days later. “This last trick has made you quite impossible for the service. But you needn’t worry about that, because the legacy Kniepp left you will put you out of reach of want.”

The detective was as much surprised as anybody. He was as if dazed by his unexpected good fortune. The day before he was a poor man bowed under the weight of sordid cares, and now he was the possessor of twenty thousand gulden. And it was not his clever brain but his warm heart that had won this fortune for him. His breast swelled with gratitude as he thought of the unhappy man whose life had been ruined by the careless cruelty of others and his own passions. Again and again he read the letter which had been found on Kniepp’s desk, addressed to him and which had been handed out to him after the inquest.

My friend:--

You have saved me from the shame of an open trial. I thank you for this from the very depth of my heart. I have left you a part of my own private fortune, that you may be a free man, free as a poor man never can be. You can accept this present for it comes from the hand of an honest man in spite of all. Yes, I compelled my wife to go to her death after I had compelled her to confess her shame to me, and I entered her lover’s house with the knowledge I had forced from her. When I looked through the keyhole and saw his false face before me, I murdered him in cold blood. Then, that the truth might not be suspected, I continued to play the sorrowing husband. I wore on my watch chain the ring I had had made in imitation of the one my wife had worn. This original ring of hers, her wedding ring which she had defiled, I sent in the form of a bullet straight to her lover’s heart. Yes, I have committed a crime, but I feel that I am less criminal than those two whom I judged and condemned, and whose sentence I carried out as I now shall carry out my own sentence with a hand which will not tremble. That I can do this myself, I have you to thank for, you who can look into the souls of men and recognise the most hidden motives, you who have not only a wonderful brain but a heart that can feel. You, I hope, will sometimes think kindly of your grateful

LEO KNIEPP.

Muller kept this letter as one of his most sacred treasures.

The “Kniepp Case” was really, as Bauer had predicted, the last in Muller’s public career. Even the friendliness of the kind old chief could not keep him in his position after this new display of the unreliability of his heart. But his quiet tastes allowed him to live in humble comfort from the income of his little fortune.

Every now and then letters or telegrams will come for him and he will disappear for several days. His few friends believe that the police authorities, who refused to employ him publicly owing to his strange weakness, cannot resist a private appeal to his talent whenever a particularly difficult case arises.