Vampire Chapter VIII: Hyacinths
translated by Fritz Sallagar
"If any one is bewitched by phantoms or by magical spells, so that he has lost his wits take a hot loaf of pure wheaten bread and cut the upper crust in the form of a cross,— not, however, cutting it quite through, — and then pass the stone along the cutting, reciting these words: 'May God, who cast away all precious stones from the devil,, _ cast away from thee, [the betwitched person's name], all phantoms and all magic spells, and free thee from the pain of this madness.'"
St. Hildegard, the Abbess of Bingen (d. 1179)
in Physica - Liber IV De Lapidibus Cap. VIII - De Hyacintho / Jacinth[01]
He was glad that he had to stay home this week. He spent hours lying on the sofa, thinking about his constant fatigue, about the emptiness that had again taken hold of him. He wondered what he could do about it, what had caused it. But his thoughts always wandered back to the anonymous letter; perhaps he was really poisoned. And he felt certain now that his sickness had something to do with women.
—His butler announced Mrs. van Ness. She was not alone— she had brought Dr. Samuel Cohn with her. Dr. Cohn was a man after Lotte's heart: German and Jewish at the same time. There was a bit of the Phoenician about him—a wealthy ship owner in Carthage might have looked like that—with black, wavy hair and large round eyes that were a little near sighted. His thick, fleshy lips disclosed two rows of gleaming white teeth, but his complexion was pale and unhealthy—he needed sun and air. He was quite stout—obviously from lack of exercise. A badly groomed bachelor in his forties who needed a woman to take care of him. He was New York born, but he was German by education and thought—and in his culture German rather than Jewish. He was in great demand as a physician and as a speaker. A clever and well educated man—and a kind one.
"Don't get up!" he said. "How are you?"
"Very well, thank you ! It is very kind of you, Doctor, to take the trouble to come here, but it really wasn't necessary. I should rest, I know—"
Mrs. van Ness interrupted him. "I asked Dr. Cohn to come to see you. He is going to examine you."
Frank Braun looked at her, shaking his head. "This is the ninth one, now, with all due respect to Dr. Cohn's knowledge. Do you think he will find any more than the others have?" He dropped back on his cushions with a sigh. "Please go ahead and examine me, if it must be."
The physician examined him thoroughly, asking only the most pertinent questions. "One thing is certain," he said finally, "your body is perfectly all right, inside and out! There is your chronic laryngitis, of course, from smoking too many cigarettes "
"I should smoke less," Frank Braun affirmed, "I know!"
"You can do as you please about that," the physician replied. "With your smoker's cough you could live three times three hundred years. I should like to ask you a few questions, how ever."
"Go ahead, please!"
Had he ever had malaria? When? Where?
Yes, he had had malaria, in Singapore and Colombo, but he had never had an attack since then, neither in the tropics nor in the temperate zone. Had the attack been severe? Yes, quite. How had he treated himself? With quinine, of course, with large doses of quinine. Did he know where he had contracted the disease?
Frank Braun tried to remember. It had broken out on the Lloyd steamer—but he had probably contracted it in the South Seas.
Where? In New Guinea.
"Oh, so you were in the South Seas, too?" Dr. Cohn asked casually. "You must tell me about that sometime. Are there any real cannibals left there? I mean, natives who actually eat human meat? Did you ever see any?"
Frank Braun laughed. "If there are cannibals there? I should say there are—everywhere in that part of the world, in New Guinea, New Mecklenburg, New Pommerania, Bugainville and Buka. Of course, all the Kanakas and Papuans will swear that their particular tribe has never tasted Kai-Kai—human meat— but that the neighboring tribe regards it as the choicest delicacy! All the natives there are cannibals if they can get human meat without being caught."
"All?" Dr. Cohn said quizzically. "So you really think the natives there all eat human meat when they can get it?"
"Not all of them. The missionaries claim that there are only a few individuals in each tribe who swear by this delicacy, while others would not touch it. It seems that tastes differ even among cannibals."
"Hm," the physician continued. "I read a very interesting article the other day in the Journal for Tropical Diseases. The author claims that the cannibals with an unquenchable appetite for human meat surfer from a disease—a disease whose symptoms are somewhat similar to malaria. Oddly enough, the symptoms resemble those of your own ailment."
Frank Braun laughed aloud. "You are priceless, Doctor! That is truly New York—truly America! But unfortunately, I never had the slightest appetite for human meat. Tell me, is the author of your article an American, too?"
"No, he is a German—a professor at the Institute for Tropical Diseases in Hamburg. He spent many years doing research work in the South Seas. In fact I would advise you to go to Hamburg yourself—it is the only place in the world where they know something about these exotic diseases."
Frank Braun smiled. "Thank you for the prescription, I will have it filled as soon as the English clear the way to the phar macy. By the way, what insect is it whose bite causes your can nibal malaria?"
"It is no insect. The Hamburg physician describes it as a kind of bat, some species of flying dog that attacks its victims while they are asleep, biting them and sucking the blood through the tiny wound.[02] I know, it sounds fantastic that this bite should not only have a similar effect as the bite of the anopheles, but that it should also create thirst for human blood and hunger for human meat. But it does not sound so impossible if you remem ber what effect the bite of the tsetse fly has, or that of a snake or a rabid dog. Their victims commonly suffer from fixed ideas and abnormal, fantastic hallucinations."
Frank Braun became attentive. He looked at Lotte van Ness a long time before asking her casually:
"What do you think, Lotte?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know."
That confirmed his suspicion. "Haven't you yourself been in New Guinea once, with your husband?"
"No," she said. "We came up from New Zealand on an English steamer and stayed for a while on the Solomon Islands; from there we went on to Yokohama without stopping."
"Oh—but then you were in the South Seas! Did you too have malaria?"
She looked at him oddly, her lips curling in an inscrutable smile. "No, I never did."
"You are lying!" he thought. He turned again to Dr. Cohn.
"Do you believe this strange disease is contagious?"
The physician shrugged his shoulders. "Possibly—possibly not; I really don't know. No one in this country knows anything about it—you have to go to Hamburg for information."
Frank Braun nodded. "Yes, I am sure they know all about it over there. Doesn't it seem to you, Doctor, that all of Europe is afflicted with this disease, in fact, almost half the world? It seems so to me. Couldn't you make the people all over the world acquainted with your theory—perhaps in a letter to the Times! Tell the Germans and English, the Russians, French and Turks and all the rest of them that their war is a regrettable error, the effect of a contagious South Seas disease that creates cannibal instincts in human beings, and forces them to kill each other?— If people were to realize the truth of this, their war would be over tomorrow and the regiments would march in formation to the Institute for Tropical Diseases in Hamburg to be inoculated. While to you and your illustrious Hamburg colleague Mrs. van Ness would build a monument in front of the German piers in Hoboken—wouldn't you, Lotte?"
"Don't be silly, please!" she said. "Can't you be serious?"
He stood before her, looking her straight in the eye. "You have known me a long time, Lotte Levi. You should know that I am never more serious than when I am joking like this."
She evaded his eyes and shrugged her shoulders. "As you like." He went over to the window, drummed on the pane. "My suspicion is right," he thought.
But how, how? The more he thought about it, the more confused he became. There were no clues, no cause or effect—nothing definite on which to base his conclusions. He was sick—yes, that was true. He felt tired, empty, drained. Therefore there must be something that caused it, something that drained him of his vitality and of his blood.
But could it be Lotte? Lotte Levi? Who had loved him all these years, who loved him more than any other woman ? It was ridiculous, absurd!
And yet a firm conviction grew in him : his sickness had some thing to do with her. Somehow she was involved in it—and not only she, but other women as well.
He turned abruptly and joined the others who were talking quietly.
"I am sorry, Doctor," he apologized, "I did not mean to offend you."
Dr. Cohn shook hands with him. "Perhaps a new symptom will appear that might give us a clue. Let me know then!" After he had gone Lotte quickly turned to Frank Braun.
"You suspect me of something?"
"And what if I do?"
Her laugh sounded shrill. "Suspicions against me—you?" She took his hand and continued in a calm voice: "Tell me, what kind of suspicions have you?"
He gave himself up to the soft touch of her fingers. "What kind? But I don't know, Lotte."
"Don't go home yet!" Lotte van Ness said one evening. "Professor Kachele is coming tonight."
Frank Braun sat down again. "Professor Kachele? How far did he get with your horoscope?"
Lotte smiled. "He is very thorough, it seems. I probably won't get it for quite a while. He had to lay the work aside temporarily; do you remember what he was trying to tell you that time you could not stay? He told me all about it afterwards and I asked him to write it out for me. He finished yesterday—that's why he is coming tonight."
"You bought that, Lotte? But what are you going to do with it?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "Perhaps I'll give it to a scientific journal, perhaps I will make you a present of it—I don't know. Why should I buy only jewelry and books, why not a manuscript for a change?"
The Professor arrived breathless, anxious to begin his lecture at once. He ate heartily but rapidly, continually attempting to speak about the matters that were uppermost in his mind. "Later, my dear Professor," Mrs. van Ness kept telling him, "later! You must eat your dinner first !"
After dinner they repaired to the library. Lotte made Dr. Kachele sit in a comfortable armchair, while she buried herself in the cushions on the sofa.
"Now let us hear it!" she said.
He began instantly and spoke very fast, interrupting himself now and then to look at his manuscript for an erudite quotation. His voice was loud and had a harsh rasping sound.
Frank Braun sat in a huge armchair in a corner of the room between the book shelves, his long legs stretched out before him, his arms on the soft arms of the chair. He smoked a cigarette and listened carefully, trying to accustom his ear to Dr. Kachele's sharp voice.
But he heard only sounds—words without meaning, sentences his tired brain failed to grasp.
It had come over him again, suddenly, this tired emptiness, this sensation of being drained and hollow. It came over him every day now, for an hour or two, without any apparent cause. Suddenly it was there: a dense fog that clouded his brain. He did not sleep and he did not dream—he heard only sounds, scraping, grating sounds strung together into an ugly unmusical tone pattern, seemingly coming from far away. He attempted to get up and escape from the room but he could not move. So he stayed where he was in the big armchair, suffering patiendy the nerve-racking torture.
Then Lotte spoke and her soft cello voice broke the spell. He could move now. He jumped to his feet, walked over to the Professor's chair and took the manuscript from him.
"It was very interesting, Baron," he cried. "May I have it, please, I want to look up something in it." Without waiting for an answer, he went into Lotte's bed room. There he flung himself down on the sofa and closed his eyes.
But he was wide-awake now; the tiredness was completely gone, just as suddenly as it had come. He took up the manuscript and began to read—
It held his attention from the first page. Such thorough work! There were quotations from Egyptian texts, from Coptic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek sources. And there was Assyrian and Babylonian material, as well as excerpts in Geez, the old Ethiopian Church language.[03] Through Byzantine words in the Albanian, Central Slav and Magyar languages, the author followed the trail from the Southeast northward into Europe, and traced it from Abyssinia through Amharic, Arabic and the Negro dialects across Africa as far as Dahomey.[04] Everything was made clear: the trail started in the stars many thousands of years ago and could be followed clear down into the bloody sacrifice dens of New York—the trail of an Astral myth that had become real.[05]
Very real, indeed—Frank Braun remembered the slim, darkskinned Negro priestess whose nightly sacrifices he had attended several years ago in Haiti, in the Honfou temple at Petit-Goave.[06] With her own hands she had slaughtered her child and had presented its blood to the faithful, mixed with rum!
The Professor proved it to be purely a myth that had eventually become stark, bloody reality. The dream of a shepherd astrologer in the desert, of a poet—but a dream whose mighty consequences were felt all over the world for thousands of years.
The sun set and the sun rose—all the creatures on earth saw the phenomenon. But the poet in the desert saw more. To him, the sun, the young, beautiful sun, only a day old, had been killed by a cruel god. And the new sun that rose again the next morning, more beautiful, more scintillant still, must be the dead sun's beautiful daughter. She was her child—and yet the old sun herself, resurrected from her night of death. That was the story which the dreaming shepherd in the desert read in the stars, the age-old myth of the dismembered child.
Labartu was the Babylonian name for the star-goddess who stole the sun child, tore her into pieces and ate her; Labartu, the wife of Baal.[07] And she was none other than the Indian Kali, Durga, the Killer, the wife of Shiva, the Destroyer.[08] She was his sati, his emanation, the fruit of his thought—and the bloody hand of his brain.
And she not only destroyed the heavenly child, the young sun, but also persecuted the children of man, killing them in their mothers' wombs or slaying them shortly after birth. And therefore one had to offer sacrifices to her to invoke her mercy and to make her pass by the young mother's house. That was the toll that Labartu demanded for herself and for Baal. And as she ruled in Babylon, she also ruled in Sidon and Tyre and Carthage where her name was Astarte,[09] and where, as the mate of Moloch,[10] her reign of terror extended all over Phoenicia.[11]
Every firstborn child was hers. The terrible Durga demanded only girl children who were drowned in milk to the glory of the goddess, as is done even now in the remote corners of India.[08] But Astarte demanded all—she claimed every firstborn child that a mother bore. It was her cruel right all over the Orient, and humbly she was given her due by the people of the East, including Israel. Why does every firstborn child in the oldest part of the Bible story disappear mysteriously?[12] Ishmael and Esau, and Abel, David's first son by Bathsheba. And Jephtha's merry little daughter, and many others, many, many more.
Was not Isaac to be sacrificed to the same thought?[13] But the great God of the Jews showed mercy, and with the sacrifice of two white doves Israel later bought off the cruel right of the gods upon their firstborn. And yet Solomon and many other Jewish kings and nobles continued to sacrifice their children to the terrible goddess. With their own hands they cut their children's throats, let the blood flow over the altar and dismembered the little bodies as Baaltis commanded.[14]
The cult of the child-killing goddess was brought to Rome—Pliny tells about it.[15] And from Greece it spread over the whole Balkans as far as the Danube Valley, and westward from there.[16] It reached its wildest peak in the seventeenth century when Elisabeth Báthory, the Bloody Countess,[17] filled her spacious rooms with the dying groans of the Hungarian girls whom she whipped to death.
The cult persisted throughout the Middle Ages until the present day, flaring up or dying down, but ever present in one form or another all over Europe. It took root as the Black Mass,[18] which the Church vainly tried to stamp out with fire and sword. Did not Monsieur Gilles de Rais[19] slay more than eight hundred children with his own hands? He, Maréchal de France, famous warrior, banner bearer to the Maid of Orléans! And the Marquise de Montespan,[20] the mistress of Louis XIV, and by him the mother of French princes, did she not offer more than once her own body as a precious altar on which the Abbé Guibourg dismembered newborn children in the chapel of the Castle at Saint-Denis?[20]
Both she and the Baron de Rais invoked the devil Astaroth;[21] he was to help her keep the King's love as he was to help the Maréchal make gold. Yet Astaroth was only another name for Astarte.
From Carthage the murderous cult found its way into Central Africa. Moloch's wife Astarte was called by the Greeks Basileia, the Queen. The Semites changed it to Bersilia and the Copts made it into Berzelya, meaning the goddess who kills children with iron hands. And even now the Abyssinians speak of Werzelya who steals and murders suckling infants, and who slays the unborn in the mother's womb.[22]
From the banks of the Congo the black slaves brought the cult with them to America.[23] And in the Voodoo cult the name of the goddess-priestess is the same that the Greeks had given her: Queen! mamaloi—because the Negroes cannot pronounce "R." Actually, her title is Mama-Roi: mother and queen![24]
And she is still drinking blood, she, Durga—Astarte—mamaloi, the Killer. Even today—in the heart of New York![25]
Frank Braun went back to the library where the Professor was still talking to Lotte. They spoke about horoscopes now, about the strange prophecy of Alexander....
Frank Braun interrupted him, returning the manuscript. "Despite your excellent treatise, Professor, I still don't understand how your astral myth can suddenly come to life again somewhere else in a different form. You traced the whole development of the myth, you followed it through the centuries and explained the connections. But you don't believe, Baron, that perhaps my mamaloi in Petit-Goave had any knowledge of this myth? You don't really believe that Marechal Gilles de Rais, that the Hungarian Cuntess or the French Marquise were in any way aware of the fact that their dismembered children were actually victims of the age-old rite?! How do you explain, Professor, that spontaneously, centuries afterward, the old idea can be reborn in a different form in a human brain?"
The Professor did not answer for a minute, edging back and forth on his chair, but finally he said : "I realize that this is a gap in my work. I may be able to fill it in—perhaps! But you know, I don't like to think about it—much less talk about it."
Rubbing his nose vehemently, he continued. "It is absurd to believe in a god and not in a devil, you cannot imagine one without the other. The devil is as strong as the Lord! He appears when he wishes and where he pleases. In me " His voice sank to a faint, awestruck whisper—"in me he did not trouble to ask whether I liked it or not. Old women, ugly, stinking old women —that pleases him, the great Lord, when it happens to be his whim. Goethe also knew that—he writes about it in the second part of Faust! And as for myself—well, you know Doctor, what happened to me!"
He blew his nose in an enormous handkerchief, making a noise like a trumpet. Then he took off his glasses and cleaned them carefully, blinking at Frank Braun out of his half-blind eyes.
"Do I look like a faun?" he broke out again. "Would any one guess that in me lives Satan-Phallus, Pan the Ram-God, who has no brain and thinks with his brush? And yet it pleased him to erect his temple in these poor miserable bones of mine. This marvel, Doctor, is sitting before you now, very much alive and real—running free through the streets of New York, pleased that he can at last do some decent work again and does not have to make urine analyses. I know exactly what I did, I know all the details—but why I did it, how this absurd idea suddenly took hold of me—of me, a quiet scholar, the soberest professor in Germany—that I don't know. It simply was there, digging its claws into my brain, holding me in iron shackles. Since then I know what it means to be possessed. After my experience, noth ing surprises me any more, no dream, no whim, no wildest thought. Everything, absolutely everything is possible in a human brain."
Frank Braun asked: So you believe, Professor, that-
"Yes, yes, and again yes!" Dr. Kachele cried. "I believe—and I have paid dearly for this belief—that no human being can be sure of himself for as much as a quarter of an hour. I believe that every human brain is an empty room in which any moment something—a god, a devil, or whatever you want to call it—may perform the craziest dances. Very pious and saintly dances, perhaps—or very ugly and cruel ones, if fate will have it. And if this kind and beautiful lady here, if Mrs. van Ness should suddenly reveal herself as the maddest priestess of Baaltis, if she should dismember young boys and drink their blood, I would regret it, but as a scientist I would include the interesting case in my treatise, simply as another example of the age-old Labartu cult.[26]
He placed his glasses back on his nose, rose from his chair and put the manuscript on the table.
A cigar on the way, Baron? Frank Braun asked.
"No, thank you," the Professor said, I still don't smoke, I still don't drink and I am still the soberest, the most uninteresting man in the world. But if what I said tonight sounds fantastic to you, just remember what brought me to America.!"
The Professor had been gone for an hour, but the two were still sitting in the library, smoking and sipping their wine. They did not look at each other and did not speak.
"Do you want the car," she finally asked, "to go home?" "I want to stay here tonight!" he said, looking her full in the face.
She rose quickly from her chair. "Oh, just as you like. Here is the wine, help yourself. I'll send the maid for you when I am ready."
At the door she turned and smiled back at him: "Wouldn't you like to find out tonight whether I might not be the blooddrinking Astarte after all? You used to call me the Phoenician, didn't you?"
Frank Braun let her go without answering, but he thought:
"Everything is possible in a human brain."
He tried to fathom it—
Fathom what?—What was possible?
But she was right; he wanted to stay with her tonight to watch her, to spy on her. But what was it he expected to find? Did he expect to find that Lotte was the blood-dripping priestess —and himself her victim, the dismembered child?
It was ridiculous, absurd, like Dr. Cohn's silly hypothesis of the South Sea disease.
And yet the suspicion was planted firmly in his mind and he could not rid himself of it.
He drank a last glass of wine and followed the maid. He un dressed, took a cold shower and put on his pajamas.
When he came in, she was sitting on the wide bed, her red hair falling loosely over her lace nightgown. She was playing with some glittering objects which she dropped on the night table as soon as she heard his light footstep. But Frank Braun had seen what she had in her hands: little scissors and tiny open knives.
She now took a ring from the table and put it on her finger.
"A new ring? Another charm?" he asked as he walked over to the bed.
She held out her hand to him. "Perhaps. But it is not new." It was an ugly old silver ring_with a crest cut on a greenish stone and set in a cheap mounting.
"I found it yesterday in a junk shop on Second Avenue. The horrid man made me pay a hundred dollars for it when he saw that I was bound to have it. I just can't bargain—it is a pity." "The thing isn't worth fifty cents!" he cried.
"Yes, it is! It is worth more to me. Look—a pelican pricking open her breast to feed her young with her own blood."[27] He looked at her sharply—again this idea! "Why does it interest you?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, it just does! It is the crest of Magdeburg—my mother's family came from there."
She took from the table a tumbler filled to the brim with a milky liquid and offered it to him. "Drink, my friend!"
"What is it?"
"Just a sleeping draught. I asked Dr. Cohn to mix it for me."
He shook his head. "No! Why should I need a sleeping draught?"
"Then I will drink it," she said.
She raised the glass to her lips and drained it. "One of us needs this—for tonight. You—if . And I—if "
She set the glass down, put her hands on his shoulders and smiled at him.
"You see—that is the way it is."
"What do you mean: 'If '?" he cried impatiently. "Lotte, tell me!"
She put her head against his so that her soft red curls played around his neck and chin. "Don't ask me, pleasel You know that I won't say anything when I don't want to."
She lifted her head, looked at him and grew somber.
There was a great kindness in the deep cello-like tones of her voice. "It is very difficult, what I am doing, Beloved—very diffi cult. But I do it gladly."
"Just like my mother's voice," he thought.
She pulled him over to the bed. "Come—come—seize the short minutes. We have only half an hour—and then I will be fast asleep. I am yours when I am awake, Beloved—and still more when I am asleep. If you only knew how much --"
He rode in Central Park with Ivy Jefferson, the next evening.
"Why don't you say something?" she cried. "What are you thinking about?"
He did not answer. "I know what you are thinking about!"
She continued. "You are thinking of Mrs. van Nessl—I am right, am I not?"
"Yes," he nodded. "How did you guess?"
Ivy laughed. "How did I guess?—The whole town knows!"
And slowly, in a pensive voice: "I saw her this summer in New port. She is proud and interesting—and very wealthy. Perhaps she is beautiful, too. I can understand that men like her—you, too!"
"Are you jealous?"
Again she laughed. "Of course, I am jealous. But that makes it nice; it is a game, a fight between her and me, and I like that! We are both equally strong—she is cleverer perhaps, but I am much younger. We will see who wins!"
She rode her horse close against his so that their flanks touched. Her lips were tightly shut, but her nostrils quivered—she seemed
to be inhaling a strong scent.
"Tell me," she murmured, "were you with her last night?"
He looked her firmly in the eye, and quickly, almost brutally, he cried—right into her face—: "Yes, I slept with her!"
She dealt her horse a stinging blow with her riding crop and spurred him to a furious gallop.
He did not follow her, rode on slowly, trotting his horse. "It is you who will telephone—and not I!" he thought haughtily. And he took up his thoughts again, his dreams that Ivy had interrupted—his thoughts about last night.
Kisses, kisses and embraces. At first he had been cool and reserved, but her dear warmth soon melted the snow. She kissed the rich soil of his heart and made flowers grow there—beautiful multihued blooms. They dripped from his lips, raining down on her, covering her and wrapping her in a cloak of flamboyant beauty.
Yes, he had loved her—loved her until she fell asleep in his kisses. She kept her eyes open as long as she could. "Thank you," she whispered as her lids drooped.
Exactly half an hour—just as she had said.
He had switched on the light and sat up beside her, looking at her quietly.
And all the happiness was gone—and there was again that sneaking fever of terrible emptiness in his body. And in his brain there was again the suspicion—the gnawing suspicion Had she taken the draught to deceive him? Was she only wait ing until he was asleep—in order to
In order to—what? What?
He did not take his eyes off her, watching her in graven silence. He turned the light off and lay down, pretending to sleep—fight ing his sleepiness with all his will-power.
He listened and waited—for hours.
But nothing happened. He could barely hear her breathing.
Then—at a late hour—he fell asleep.
He awoke very late, feeling fresh—and well! And stronger than he had been for months.
Lotte still lay as she had lain all night, covered up to her chin, sleeping soundly.
He got out of bed, took a bath, dressed, had breakfast and came back to her room. She was still sleeping.
He had driven home and called her up a few hours later. Her maid answered and told him that Mrs. van Ness was still sleep ing. And Madame had given orders last night not to be disturbed until she should wake.
He spurred his horse into a canter—then into a gallop. He felt so strong and well, he could have stayed in the saddle for hours.
And he felt that he had done Lotte an injustice, a grave in justice. He would go and see her tonight, he would kneel before her, kiss her hands and tell her how much he loved her Suddenly he remembered something. The little scissors, the shiny sharp knives that she had put down on the table when he came into the room. He had planned to keep an eye on them— but later he forgot and did not look at them when he awoke in the morning.
What had they been for? What did she want with them?
What had happened to them last night?
Had she, nevertheless—while he was asleep ?
But what—what could she have done?
He could not find an answer.
But the suspicion was there again, a definite, strong suspicion, clawing at his brain—holding him fast--[28]
