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After an hour's careful tidying and reading, she was sure, to her indignation, that there was no will. He had made no preparations. Up to his very last minute he had been the same, a man without a care for anyone but himself and not a thought for his wife. Sighing, she decided to go through the interior of the desk as well, taking each drawer in turn, until she lighted on the will. But her first attempt brought bitter disappointment. The desk was locked. He carried his keys in his trouser pocket. A nice mess she'd got herself into now. She couldn't well take anything out of his pockets. If she were to get blood on her by accident, there was no saying what the police might think. She came close up to the body, bent down, and could make nothing of the geography of his pockets. She was afraid of simply kneeling down. At critical times such as these she was in the habit of taking off her skirt first. She faithfully folded it up and entrusted it to a remote corner of the carpet. Then she knelt down a step away from the corpse, pressed her head for better support on to the ladder and drilled the index finger of her left hand slowly into his right pocket. She could not make much headway. He lay so inconveniently. Deep in the recesses of his pocket she thought she could feel something hard. Then to her horror it occurred to her that there might be blood on the ladder. Quickly she stood up and put her hand to her forehead, where it had lain against the ladder. She found no blood. But the vain quest for the will and the key had disheartened her. 'Something's got to be done,' she said aloud, he can't be left lying about here!' She put on her skirt again and fetched the caretaker.

'What is it?' he asked threateningly. He did not lightly allow himself to be disturbed at his work by a common person. Moreover he had not rightly understood her, because she spoke very low, as was seemly with a corpse about.

'Excuse me, please, he's dead.'

Now he understood. Old memories stirred within him. He had been on the retired list too long to yield to them at once. Only by degrees did his doubts give place to belief in so wonderful a crime. In the same measure, his behaviour altered. He became innocuous and mild, as in his mighty days of action, when he had had a wily bird to ensnare. He seemed almost thin. His bellowing stuck in his throat. His eyes, usually fixed straight enough to outstare his opponent, seemed to withdraw timidly into the corner as if laying an ambush. His mouth attempted to smile. But his stiff, waxed, close-thatched moustache prevented him from completing this. Two faithful stumpy fingers came to his help, and pushed up the corners of his mouth into a smile.

The murderess has been knocked out and has no fight left; in full uniform he stands out before the judge and explains how such things can be done. He is the witness for the crown in a sensational trial. The public prosecutor would have been lost without him. As soon as the murderess falls into other hands she'll deny everything.

'Gentlemen!' he cries in a ringing voice, while reporters take down every word he says. 'People need handling. Criminals are only people. I have been a long time on the retired list. In my leisure I study the goings and comings, the soul, as one might say, of the suspect. Handle her properly, and a murderess will confess her guilt. But I warn you, gentlemen, mismanage a person of this class, and your murderess will impudently deny everything and the prosecution can whistle for its evidence. In this sensational murder trial you can rely on me. Gentlemen I am witness for the prosecution. I ask you, gentlemen, how many witnesses like me will you find? I'm the only one! Now take careful note. These things are not as easy as you imagine. First, you have your suspicions. Next you say nothing but closely observe the culprit. Only half way up the stairs you begin to talk:

'A brute of a man?'

Ever since the caretaker had begun to look at her with such kindliness, Thérèse felt an indescribable terror. She could not explain this change. She would have done anything to start him bellowing again. He did not pound up the stairs in front of her as usual, he walked up submissively by her side, and when he asked for a second time 'A brute of a man?' she had still not understood whom he meant. At other times he was easy to understand. In order to put him back in the humour which she trusted, she said: 'Yes.'

He nudged her and while he kept his eyes humbly and slyly fixed upon her, he challenged her with his whole body to defend herself against the brutality of her husband. 'You've got to defend yourself

'Yes.'

'Accidents may happen.'

'Yes.'

'A man can be done in in no time.'

'Done in, yes.'

'Some extenuating circumstances.'

'Circumstances.'

'The fault was on his side.'

'His.'

'He forgot to make a will. '

'Impossible.'

'One needs a little something to live on.'

'To live on.'

'Why poison him?'

Thérèse had thought the same thing at the same minute. Not another word would she say. She wanted to tell him that the superior young man had tried to talk her into it, but she had refused. That's the sort ofthing that gets you into hot water with the police. But she suddenly remembered that the caretaker had once been a policeman. He would know everything. He would say at once: Poisoning is against the law. Why did you do it? She wasn't going to put up with that. The superior young man was to blame. His name was Mr. Brute and he was nothing but an employee at the firm of Gross and Mother. First of all he wanted to be let into the house on the stroke of 12.15 to disturb her night's rest. Then he said he would take an axe and hit him on the head while he was asleep. She didn't agree to any of it, not even to the poisoning, and now she was in hot water just the same. What had it got to do with her, if her husband went and died.? She had a right to the will. Everything belonged to her. Day and night she kept house for him and worked her fingers to the bone like a servant. He couldn't be trusted alone for a minute. She went out just one day to choose him a bedroom suite — he knew nothing about furniture. He went climbing up his ladder and got his death of a fall. Excuse me please, it made you almost feel sorry for him, perhaps it wasn't moral for a wife to inherit anything?

Floor by floor, she began to regain her courage. She convinced herself that she was innocent. The police could come as often as they liked. As the mistress of all within, she unlocked the door of the flat. The caretaker closely observed the light-hearted manner which she had now assumed. As far as he was concerned it did her no good. She had already confessed. He rejoiced at the coming confrontation of murderess and victim. She made way for him to go first. He thanked her with a sly wink and did not let her out of his sight.

The situation was clear to him at the first glance, he was still standing on the threshold of the study. She had put the ladder on top of the body as an afterthought. You couldn't catch him with a trick like that. He knew his way about.

'Gentlemen, I go immediately to the site of the crime. I turn to the murderess and I say: "Help me to lift this ladder!" Don't imagine, gentlemen, that I can't lift a ladder by myself — he shows his biceps —

I wanted to take note of the defendant's face. The face is the key to everything. You can read it all there. Men make faces.'

In the very midst of his discourse he noticed that die ladder was moving. He started. For one moment he was sorry the Professor was still alive. His dying words threatened to deprive the witness for the prosecution of a great part of his glory. With official strides he gained the ladder and lifted it with one hand.

Kien was just coming to himself, writhing with pain. He tried to stand up but could not.

'He's nothing like dead!' bellowed the caretaker, quite himself again, and helped him to his feet.

Thérèse could not believe her eyes. Only when Kien, strangely shrunken but still overtopping his supporter, was actually standing in front of her, saying in a weak voice 'That wretched ladder!' did she grasp that he was alive.

'Now that's the limit!' she shrieked. "Who ever heard of such goings on! A respectable man, indeed! I ask you! What will people think of us!'

'Shut up, sh—house!' the caretaker interrupted her frenzied lament. 'Fetch the doctor! I'll put him to bed!'

He slung the lean Professor over his shoulder and carried him into the hall, where, among all the other furniture, the bed was standing. While he was being undressed Kien was persistently asserting: 'I was never unconscious, I was never unconscious.' He would not accept the fact that he had lost his senses for a short time. 'Where are the muscles to this clothes prop;' the caretaker was asking himself and shaking his head. Pity for the miserable skeleton made him forget the glorious trial scene or his dream.

Thérèse meanwhile had gone for the doctor. In the street she gradually calmed down. Three rooms belonged to her, she had that in writing. Only now and again she sobbed softly to herself:

'What next, being alive when you're dead, whatever next?'

CHAPTER IX

THE BED OF SICKNESS

For a full six weeks after his serious fall Kien lay in bed. After one of his visits, the doctor drew his wife aside and explained:

'It all depends on your nursing, whether your husband lives or dies. I can say nothing definite yet. I am still in the dark as to the true constitution of this strange case. Why did you not send for me sooner? Health is not a joking matter!'

'My husband always looked like that,' countered Thérèse. 'Nothing s ever gone wrong with him. I've known him for more than eight years. Where would doctors be if nobody was ever ill!'

This statement satisfied the doctor. He knew his patient was in the best of hands.

Kien did not feel at all comfortable in bed. Contrary to his will, the doors had been closed again, and only the one into the neighbouring room, in which Thérèse now slept, remained open. He wanted to know what was going on in the rest of the library. At first he was too weak to lift himself up. Later, despite violent shooting pains, he managed to bend the upper part of his body so far forward that he could see a part of the opposite wall in the adjoining room. Not very much seemed to have altered in that direction. Once he dragged himself out of bed and tottered to the threshold. Full of joyful anticipation, he hit his head against the edge of the door frame even before he had looked through it. He collapsed and fainted away. Thérèse found him soon after and to punish him for his disobedience let him lie there for another two hours. Then she shoved him back towards the bed, lifted him on to it and tied his legs firmly together with a strong cord.

She was on the whole perfectly satisfied with the life she was now leading. The new bedroom suite looked well. In remembrance of the superior young man she had a certain tenderness for it and was happy to sit among it. She had locked up the two other rooms and carried the keys in a secret pocket which she had sewed into her skirt for this purpose. In this way she always had at least a part of her property with her. She went in to her husband whenever she wanted; she had to nurse him, it was her right. She did in fact nurse him, day in day out she nursed him, following the instructions of the intelligent and trustful doctor. In the meantime she had looked through the interior 
of the writing desk and found no will. From her husband's delirium she learnt of a brother. Since he had been concealed until this moment, she believed all the more readily in his fraudulent existence. This brother simply lived to do her down, when it was a matter of her own hard-earned inheritance. Her husband had betrayed himself in his fever. She would not forgive him for being alive when he was dead, but she was ready to overlook it, since he still had his will to make. Wherever she was, she always seemed to be with him. For she talked all day long so loudly that he could hear her everywhere. He was weak, and must, as the doctor had advised him, not open his mouth. He could not interrupt her when she had something to say. During a few weeks she perfected her method of speech; everything which came into her head she spoke out at once. She enriched her vocabulary with expressions which she had thought often enough in the past but which had never actually crossed her lips. She was only silent on subjects connected with lus death. She hinted at his crime in general terms:

'A man doesn't deserve so many sacrifices from a woman. A woman does everything for her husband, what docs her husband do for her; A man seems to think he's the only person in the world. A woman has to stand up for herself and show him his plain duty. A mistake can be put right. Where there's a will there's a way. It would be much better if each party had to make a will at the registry office, so that one party wouldn t starve if the other party were to die. We've all got to die some day, that's life. Everything in its right place, that's what I say. I don't hold with children, that's what I'm here for. I'm human too. Love doesn't pay the bills. When all's said and done man and wife belong together. Not that a wife bears a grudge. Work, work, work, morning, noon and night. I have to keep an eye on him all day long. He may have another of his attacks, and all the trouble falls on me.'

When she had reached the end, she began at the beginning. Several dozen times every day, she said the same thing. He knew her speech, word for word, by heart. At each pause between her sentences he knew which variant she was about to select. The litany drove all thoughts out of his head. His ears, which he had at first sought to accustom to some movement of defence, became inured to a series of useless convulsions in rhythm. Flaccid and inert as he lay there, his fingers could not find their way to the ears which they should have stopped. One night he grew lids to his ears, he opened and closed them as he pleased, just as with his eyes. He tried them out a hundred times and laughed. They fitted exactly, they were soundproof, they grew as if they had been ordered and were complete at once. Out of sheer joy he pinched them. Then he woke up, his earlids had become ordinary bedclothes and he had dreamed. How unfair, he thought; I can close my mouth whenever I like, as tight as I like, and what has a mouth to say? It is there for taking in nourishment, yet it is well defended, but ears — ears are a prey to every onslaught.