scarcely heard the commissioner’s friendly “goodnight,” nor did he notice that he was walking down the quiet street under a star-gilded sky. “Almost convicted—almost. Almost?” Muller’s lips murmured while his head was full of a chaotic rush of thought, dim pictures that came and went, something that seemed to be on the point of bringing light into the darkness, then vanishing again. “Almost—but not quite. There is something here I must find out first. What is it? I must know—”      

  

       CHAPTER VII. THE FACE AT THE GATE     

       The second examination of the prisoner brought nothing new. Johann Knoll refused to speak at all, or else simply repeated what he had said before. This second examination took place early the next morning, but Muller was not present. He was taking a walk in Hietzing.     

       When they took Johann Knoll in the police wagon to the City Prison, Muller was just sauntering slowly through the street where the murder had been committed. And as the door of the cell shut clangingly behind the man whose face was distorted in impotent rage and despair, Joseph Muller was standing in deep thought before the broken willow twig, which now hung brown and dry across the planks of the fence. He looked at it for a long time. That is, he seemed to be looking at it, but in reality his eyes were looking out and beyond the willow twig, out into the unknown, where the unknown murderer was still at large. Leopold Winkler’s body had already been committed to the earth. How long will it be before his death is avenged? Or perhaps how long may it even be before it is discovered from what motive this murder was committed. Was it a murder for robbery, or a murder for personal revenge perhaps? Were the two crimes committed here by one and the same person, or were there two people concerned? And if two, did they work as accomplices? Or is it possible that Knoll’s story was true? Did he really only rob the body, not realising that it was a dead man and not merely an intoxicated sleeper as he had supposed? These and many more thoughts rushed tumultuously through Muller’s brain until he sighed despairingly under the pressure. Then he smiled in amusement at the wish that had crossed his brain, the wish that this case might seem as simple to him as it apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. 

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