The Good Soldier Svejk (34 page)

But no one had anything to say. The police sergeant was following up a train of thought, and at last he turned to his right-hand man and said :

"If you ask me, I don't think they ought to hang spies. A man who sacrifices his life for his duty, for his country, as you might

say, is entitled to a more honourable end with powder and shot. What do you think?"

"Yes, that's the ticket. Shoot 'em, don't hang 'em," agreed the right-hand man. "Supposing we was told to go and find out how many machine guns the Russians have got in their machine-gun corps, we'd change our togs and go. And then if I got nabbed, would it be fair to hang me, as if I'd done someone in and robbed him?"

The right-hand man got so excited that he stood up and shouted :

"I say he's got to be shot and buried with military honours."

"Yes, that's all right," Schweik chimed in. "The only trouble is that if a chap's smart enough, they can never prove anything against him."

"Oh, can't they !" declared the police sergeant with emphasis. "They can, if they're as smart as he is, and if they've got a method of their own. You'll have a chance of seeing that for yourself.

"Oh, yes, you'll see it for yourself," he repeated in a mild tone, and with an affable smile he added :

"Nobody's ever managed to bamboozle us, have they?"

And he turned to his right-hand man.

The right-hand man nodded assent and remarked that people who did that sort of thing were playing a losing game and that it wasn't any use for a man to pretend he didn't care a damn, because the more he tried that dodge on, the more he gave himself away.

"Oh, you've got the hang of my method, that you have," declared the police sergeant proudly. "Yes, it's all very well to keep a cool head, but it's nothing more than a bubble, as you might say. And when it's only a bit of sham, it's a
corpus delicti."

Whereupon, breaking off this disquisition on his theory, the police sergeant turned to his right-hand man and asked :

"Well, what have we got for supper to-night?"

"Ain't you going out to The Tom Cat for a meal, sir?"

This question confronted the police sergeant with another difficult problem which called for immediate settlement. Suppose this man were to take advantage of his temporary absence

to escape? His right-hand man was reliable and cautious enough, although he had once let two tramps slip through his ringers.

"We'll send the old woman out to fetch our supper, and she can take a jug with her for the beer," was how the police sergeant handled the difficult problem. "It'll do the old girl good to stretch her legs a bit."

And the old girl who waited on them did, in fact, stretch her legs a bit. After supper there was a continual going and coming on the road between the police station and The Tom Cat Inn. The extremely numerous traces of the old woman's very large boots on this line of communication bore witness to the fact that the police sergeant had consoled himself in full measure for his absence from The Tom Cat. And when at last the old woman arrived at the taproom with the message that the police sergeant sent his best respects and would they please send him a bottle of brandy, the landlord's curiosity knew no bounds.

"Who've they got there?" replied the old woman. "Some suspicious man. Just before I left 'em, they was both holding their arms round his neck and the police sergeant, he was stroking his head and calling him his dear old pal and what-not."

Later on, well after midnight, the police sergeant's right-hand man was reclining in full uniform on his truckle-bed, sound asleep and snoring loudly. The police sergeant himself, on the other hand, with the remainder of the brandy at the bottom of the bottle, was holding his arms round Schweik's neck. Tears were flowing over his florid face, his beard was sticky with brandy and he mumbled unsteadily :

"You've got to admit the brandy in Russia ain't as good as this stuff. Then I can toddle off to bed with an easy mind. You got to admit that like a man."

"No, that it ain't."

The police sergeant rolled on top of Schweik.

"It's a fair treat to hear you admit it. That's how a cross-examination ought to be. If I'm guilty, what's the good of denying it?"

He rose and staggered off with the empty bottle into his own room, muttering :

"If I'd made only a sin-single sl-slip, it might have s-spoiled everything."

He then took his report out of his desk and endeavoured to supplement it with the following material :

I must add that on the basis of paragraph 56 Russian brandy . . .

He made a blot, licked it up, and with a fatuous smile he flopped in full uniform on to his bed and slept like a log.

Towards morning the sergeant's right-hand man, who was lying on the bed by the opposite wall, started such a salvo of snoring, accompanied by a nasal buzzing, that it woke Schweik up. He left his bed, shook the right-hand man and lay down again. The cocks then began to crow, and when the sun rose shortly afterward, the old woman, who had also overslept herself as a result of so much running to and fro on the previous night, arrived to light the fire. She found the door wide open and everyone plunged into profound slumber. The oil lamp in the guard room was still smoking. The old woman raised an alarm, dragging Schweik and the right-hand man from their beds. To the latter she said : "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you did, going to sleep with all your clothes on, as if you was so much cattle," and finally she ordered him in emphatic terms to go and wake up the sergeant, adding that they were a lot of lazy varmints to sleep the clock round like that.

"You're in nice company and no mistake," she muttered to Schweik, when the right-hand man had gone to wake the sergeant up. "A fine pair of boozers. They'd drink their shirts off their backs. They owes me my wages for the last three years, and if I says anything to 'em about it, the sergeant he answers me back: You'd better keep quiet,' he says, 'or I'll have you run in. We know your son's a poacher and sneaks wood from the private estates.' And for four blessed years they've been worrying the life out of me." The old woman heaved a sigh and went on grumbling. "You be careful with that there sergeant. He's an artful devil, he is, and a bigger rascal you never set eyes on. He bullies and locks up everybody he can."

It was a hard job to wake the police sergeant up. His right-hand man had all his work cut out to persuade him that it was

morning. At last he stared about him, rubbed his eyes and began to remember what had happened the previous day. Suddenly a horrible idea struck him and with an unsteady glance at his right-hand man, he expressed it thus :

"Has he slung his hook?"

"Not him. He's a regular sport."

The right-hand man began to walk to and fro. He looked out of the window, came back, tore a piece from a newspaper on the table and crumpled it into a pellet between his fingers. It was evident that he wanted to say something.

The police sergeant looked at him uneasily, and presently, anxious to make quite sure of what he could only guess at, he said:

"Don't be afraid to get it off your chest. I suppose I must have carried on pretty badly again last night, eh?"

The right-hand man gazed reproachfully at his superior officer.

"If you only knew, sir, the things you said to him yesterday. You did let yourself go and no mistake."

He bent down toward the police sergeant's ear and whispered :

"You told him that the Czechs and the Russians was brothers, that the Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevitch would get to Bohemia by next week, that Austria wouldn't hold out, and that when he came up for trial he was to deny everything and just get them muddled up with some cock-and-bull story so as to keep things going until the Cossacks came and set him free. And then you said the Emperor was a knock-kneed old buffer who was going to peg out before very long and that the Kaiser was a skunk and that you'd send him some money so as he could have an easier time in prison, and a lot more things like that."

The right-hand man moved away from the police sergeant and continued :

"I can remember all that because at first I wasn't very tight. Afterward I got a bit squiffy myself, so the Lord alone knows what you said then."

The police sergeant looked at his right-hand man.

"And I can remember," he declared, "that you said we was no match for Russia, and then, right in front of the old woman, you yelled : 'Three cheers for Russia !' "

The right-hand man began to pace to and fro nervously.

"You yelled it at the top of your voice," said the police sergeant. "Then you just flopped across the bed and began to snore."

The right-hand man came to a standstill by the window, and drumming on the pane, he remarked :

"You didn't mince your words either, in front of the old woman, and I remember you saying to her : 'Don't you forget that every emperor and king only thinks of their pockets and that's why they have wars.' And then you cleared off into the yard to spew."

''You do come out with some choice language, I must say," demurred the police sergeant. "And where did you get the fat-headed idea from that Nikolay Nikolayevitch was going to be King of the Czechs?"

"I don't remember that," murmured the right-hand man uneasily.

"I shouldn't think you would, considering you was blind to the wide, and when you wanted to go out, you crawled on to the stove instead of going through the door."

There was a lengthy silence. At last the police sergeant said :

"I've always told you that booze is ruin. You can't stand it and yet you will drink it. Supposing that chap had done a bunk? A fine mess we'd have been in then. Holy Moses, my head don't half feel dizzy."

"I'll tell you what," continued the police sergeant, "if he hasn't done a bunk that only shows how dangerous and artful he is. The thing's as plain as a pikestaff. Of course, when they come to cross-examine him, he'll swear blind that the place was open all night, that we was boozed and that he could have cleared off if he'd been guilty. It's a good thing nobody'll believe a man with his record, and when we give our evidence under oath, we can say that it's a pack of lies from beginning to end, and that'll be another point against him. Not that one more or less makes any difference in his case. I only wish I hadn't got such a damned headache."

There was a pause. Then the police sergeant said :

"Fetch the old woman here."

"Now just you listen to me," said the police sergeant to the old

woman when she was brought in. He gave her a very stern look right between the eyes, and continued :

"Go and get a crucifix that'll stand up, and bring it here."

From his desk he took two candles containing traces of the sealing wax with which he sealed up official documents, and when the old woman came scurrying in with the crucifix, he placed it between the two candles on the edge of the table, lit the candles and said solemnly :

"Sit down."

The terrified old woman sank down on a sofa and stared with frightened eyes at the police sergeant, the candles and the crucifix. She was startled out of her wits, and beneath her apron her hands and knees could be seen trembling.

The police sergeant walked gravely twice round her, and then, coming to a standstill in front of her, he declared in a solemn voice :

"Yesterday night you witnessed some very important things that happened here. I don't expect you've got enough intelligence to understand what it was all about. That soldier was a spy."

"My goodness gracious me !" exclaimed the old woman. "The Holy Virgin and -"

"Stop that row, will you? Now we had to say all sorts of things to
egg
him on and get him to say something, too. Did you hear the funny things we said?"

"Yes, sir, if you please, sir, I did," said the old woman in a shaky voice.

"Now the only reason we said all those funny things was to get him to own up. And we did, too. We made him tell us everything. We nabbed him fair and square."

The police sergeant interrupted his speech for a moment to adjust the wicks of the candles, and then he continued in solemn tones, and gazing sternly at the old woman:

"You was there and so we let you into our secret. But it's an official secret. You mustn't breathe a word about it to a living soul. Not even on your deathbed, or there'll be no Christian burial for you."

"Holy Virgin !" moaned the old woman. "I wish I'd never set foot here. I'm that worried, I -"

"Hold your row, will you? Get up and stand in front of the crucifix. Now raise two fingers of your right hand. You're going to take an oath. Say it after me."

The old woman staggered to the table and kept on moaning : "Holy Virgin, I wish I'd never set foot here."

And from the cross the tortured countenance of Christ gazed down upon her, the candles became smoky, and everything seemed to her uncannily supernatural. She felt quite stunned, her knees quaked, her hands trembled. She raised her fingers and the police sergeant recited for her benefit in a solemn and emphatic voice :

"I swear to God Almighty and to you, Sergeant, that right up to the day of my death I will never breathe a word to anyone about what I have heard and seen here, even if anyone asks me. So help me God !"