“I forced myself to rise, and then found I was not so badly wounded
after all, though I couldn’t open my eyes. They had thrown pepper at
them. I groped my way round the corner, but I could not see anything.
It was the noise that guided me to the spot. I heard someone speaking,
and a woman’s voice answering. ‘What is the matter?’ I said, and a
voice answered, ‘He said we were to take the female into custody.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked the woman, and she answered, ‘I am an actress,
the friend of Herr Hull. What do you want with me?’ I said, ‘If the
gentleman said so, arrest her!’ She protested, and said she wanted to
speak to Dr. Wenk, the State agent, at once, but the constable said she
could do that later. Then she tried to run away, and there was a good
deal of confusion and bother, and finally the constable had to handcuff
her, she was so defiant, and I heard her call out ‘George.’ So I told
them to arrest her, and I don’t know what happened after that, for I
fainted, and when I came to again I was in the ambulance. I am badly
wounded. Will your honour please tell me the truth: am I going to die?”
Then the doctor laughed in his face.
“No, please, I want his honour to tell me. It’s the doctor’s job to
tell people they are not going to die.”
“But, my good Voss, how can you imagine you are going to die? You have
some flesh-wounds and some nasty bumps, but a man like you doesn’t die
of those things!”
“Indeed, your honour, I have done my duty!” said the injured man. His
voice began to falter; then the tension relaxed and he began to weep
quietly and unrestrainedly. “I know ... no more.... I have ... done ...
my duty!” he stammered.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” said Wenk reassuringly. “He who
stakes his life upon it certainly does his duty, for no one can offer
anything he values more! But now, Voss, I want you to promise me
something, and shake hands upon it. You won’t tell anyone else what you
have seen or gone through this night ... and I beg the same thing of
you, doctor. A great deal depends upon it, for the public at large. I
beg you to lay this very much to heart. It is not the pursuit of one
crime, but of a generation of crime.”
From the constable who had been first on the spot Wenk learnt that
he had seen several figures near the wall of the park, but darkness
prevented his counting their number, nor could he describe them. He
was stopped by one of the gentlemen, who tried to stand up and then
clutched hold of him, saying two or three times over, “Arrest the
woman--arrest the woman.”
“Then at last he fell back and let me go,” went on the man. “Then I
could run a few steps and I saw those figures close to the wall going
round the park, but when I reached it, there was no one there. They
must have had accomplices on the other side of the wall. I wanted to go
after them, but I couldn’t manage it; it was far too high to climb, so
I came back to the spot.”
“And the woman?” asked Wenk. “What about her?”
“I had the impression....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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