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 I saw 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
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