some joke about it—and then in the evening to our surprise she suddenly began a great rummaging in the first story.”
“Is that where she lives?”
“Oh, no; her room is in the wing out towards the garden. The rooms on the first floor all belong to the master and mistress. This morning we found out that Mrs. Bernauer’s cleaning up of the evening before had been done because she remembered that the master wanted to take some papers with him but couldn’t find them and had asked her to look for them and send them right on.”
“Well, I shouldn’t call that a sign of any particular nervousness, but rather an evidence of Mrs. Bernauer’s devotion to her duty.”
“Oh, yes, sir—but it certainly is queer that she should go into the garden at four o’clock this morning and appear to be looking for something along the paths and under the bushes. Even if a few of the papers blew out of the window, or blew away from the summer house, where the master writes sometimes, they couldn’t have scattered all over the garden like that.”
Muller didn’t follow up this subject any longer. There might come a time when he would be interested in finding out the reason for the housekeeper’s search in the garden, but just at present he wanted something else. He remembered some remark of the old man’s about the “poor little dog,” and on this he built his plan.
“Oh, well,” he said carelessly, “almost everybody is nervous and impatient now-a-days. I suppose Mrs. Bernauer felt uneasy because she couldn’t find the paper right away. There’s nothing particularly interesting or noticeable about that. Anyway, I’ve been occupying myself much more these last years with sick animals rather than with sick people. I’ve had some very successful cures there.”
“No, really, have you? Then you could do us a great favour,” exclaimed Franz in apparent eagerness. Muller’s heart rejoiced. He had apparently hit it right this time. He knew that in a house like that “a poor dog” could only mean a “sick dog.” But his voice was quite calm as he asked: “How can I do you a favour?”
“Why, you see, sir, we’ve got a little terrier,” explained the old man, who had quite forgotten the fact that he had mentioned the dog before.
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