Kate did not believe that Frida Lamke would come home. It was getting on for two o'clock. Her mother had lied, perhaps she was acting in concert with the girl all the time.

But now Kate gave a start, a step was heard on the cellar steps, and on hearing it her mother said, delighted: "That's Frida."

Someone hummed a tune outside--then the door opened.

Frida Lamke was wearing a dark fur toque on her fair hair now, instead of the little sailor hat; it was imitation fur, but two pigeon wings were stuck in on one side, and the hat suited her pert little face well.

Kate was standing in the greatest agitation; she had jumped up and was looking at the girl with burning eyes. So she had really come. She was there but Wolfgang, where was he? She quite shouted at the girl as she said: "Do you know where my son is--Wolfgang--Wolfgang Schlieben?"

Frida's rosy face turned white in her surprise. She wanted to say something, stammered, hesitated, bit her lips and got scarlet. "How should I know? I don't know."

"You know very well. Don't tell a lie." Kate seized hold of Frida violently by both her slender arms. She would have liked to catch hold of her fair hair and scream aloud whilst tearing it out: "My boy! Give me back my boy!" But she had not the strength to go on shaking her until she had forced her to confess.

Frida's blue eyes looked at her quite openly, quite frankly, even if there seemed to be a slight anxiety in her glance. "I've not seen him for a long time, ma'am," she said honestly. And then her voice grew softer and there was a certain anxiety in it: "He used to come here formerly, but he never does now--does he, mother?"

Frau Lamke shook her head: "No, never." She did not feel at all at her ease, everything seemed so strange to her: Frau Schlieben in their cellar, and what did she want with Frida? Something had happened, there was something wrong. But whatever it was her Frida was innocent, Frau Schlieben must know that. And so she took courage: "If you think that my Frida has anything to do with it, ma'am, you're very much mistaken.

My Frida has walked out a long time with Flebbe--Hans Flebbe, the coachman's son, he's a grocer--and besides, Frida is a respectable girl. What are you thinking about my daughter? But it's always like that, a girl of our cla.s.s cannot be respectable, oh no!" The insulted mother got quite aggressive now. "My Frida was a very good friend of your Wolfgang, and I am also quite fond of him when I felt so wretched last summer he sent me fifty marks that I might go to Fangschleuse for three weeks and get better--but let him try to come here again now, I'll turn him out, the rascal!" Her pale face grew hot and red in her vague fear that something might be said against her Frida.

Frida rushed up to her and threw her arm round her shoulders: "Oh, don't get angry, mother. You're not to excite yourself, or you'll get that pain in your stomach again."

Frida became quite energetic now. With her arm still round her mother's shoulders she turned her fair head to Kate: "You'll have to go somewhere else, ma'am, I can't tell you anything about your son. Mother and I were speaking quite lately about his never coming here now. And I wrote him a note the other day, telling him to come and see us--because I had not seen him for ever so long, and--and--well, because he always liked to be with me. But he hasn't answered it. I've certainly not done anything to him. But he has changed greatly." She put on a knowing look: "I think it would be better if he still lived at home, ma'am."

Kate stared at her. What did she suspect? What did she know? Did she really know anything? Doubts rose in her mind, and then came the certainty: this girl was innocent, otherwise she would not have been able to speak like that. Even the most artful person could not look so ingenuous. And she had also confessed quite of her own accord that she had lately written to Wolfgang--no, this girl was not so bad, it must be another one with fair hair. But where was she to look for her?--where find Wolfgang?

And holding out both her hands to the girl as though she were begging her pardon, she said in a voice full of misery: "But don't you know anything? Have you no idea whatever where he might be? It was two days yesterday since he went away--since he disappeared--disappeared entirely, his landlady does not know where."

"Disappeared entirely--two days ago?" Frida opened her eyes wide.

"Yes, I've just told you so. That's why I am asking you. He has disappeared, quite disappeared."

A furious impatience took possession of his mother and at the same time the full understanding of her painful position. She put her hands before her face and groaned aloud.

Frau Lamke and her daughter exchanged glances full of compa.s.sion.

Frida turned pale, then red, it seemed as if she were about to say something, but she kept silent nevertheless.

"But he's not bad, no, he's not bad," whispered Frau Lamke.

"Who says that he's bad?" Kate started up, letting her hands fall from before her face. All the misery she had endured during those long years and the hopelessness of it all lay in her voice as she added: "He's been led astray, he has gone astray--he's lost, lost!"

Frida wept aloud. "Oh, don't say that," she cried. "He'll come back again, he's sure to come back. If only I--" she hesitated and frowned as she pondered--"knew for certain."

"Help me! Oh, can't you help me?"

Frau Lamke clasped her hands when she heard the poor woman's cry of "Help me!" and trembled with excitement: how terrible if a mother has to live to see her child do such things, the child she has brought into the world with such pain. Forgetting the respect with which she always regarded Kate she tottered up to her and grasped her cold hand as it hung at her side: "Oh dear, oh dear, I am so grieved, so terribly grieved. But calm yourself. You know a mother has still such power, quite special power, her child never forgets her quite." And she smiled with a certain security.

"But he isn't my son--not my own son--I'm not his real mother." Kate confessed now what she had never confessed before. Her fear dragged it out of her and the hope that the woman would say: "He won't forget such a mother either, certainly not."

But Frau Lamke did not say it. There was doubt written on her face and she shook her head. She had not thought of her not being Wolfgang's real mother at that moment.

There was a troubled silence in the room. All that could be heard was a sound of heavy breathing, until at last Frida broke the paralysing stillness in her clear voice. "Have you been to see the landlady to-day?" she asked. Kate shook her head in silence. "Well then, ma'am, you say it was two days ago yesterday, then he may have come back to-day. We shall have to make inquiries. Shall I run there quickly?"

And she was already at the door, and did not hear her mother call after her: "Frida, Frida, you must eat a mouthful first, you haven't eaten any dinner yet," but ran up the cellar steps in her good-natured haste and compa.s.sionate sympathy.

Kate ran after her.

But they got no further news in Friedrichstra.s.se. There were fires in the rooms, they had been dusted, the breakfast table had even been laid as if the young gentleman was expected to come any moment--the landlady hoped to receive special praise for her thoughtfulness--but the young gentleman had not returned.

Kate Schlieben was ill in bed. The doctor shrugged his shoulders: there was not much to be done, it was a question of complete apathy. If only something would happen that would rouse her, something for which it would repay her to make an effort, she would be all right again. At present he prescribed strengthening food--her pulse was so bad--every hour a spoonful of puro, essence of beef, eggs, milk, oysters and such like.

Paul Schlieben was sitting near his wife's bed; he had just come home from town. He was sitting there with bent head and knit brows.

"Still nothing about him? What did the woman say--nothing at all about him?" Kate had just whispered in a feeble voice.

His only answer was: "We shall have to communicate with the police after all now."

"No, no, not with the police. Should we have him sought as though he were a criminal? You're terrible, Paul. Be quiet, Paul." Her voice that had been so feeble at first had almost become a scream.

He shrugged his shoulders. "There's nothing left for us to do but that," and he looked at her anxiously and then lowered his head.

It seemed to him as though he could not realise the calamity that had overtaken him, as though it were too great. It was now a week since Wolfgang had gone away--the misery that fellow had brought on them was terrible, terrible. But his wife's condition made him still more uneasy. How would it end? Her increased nervousness was dangerous; and then there was her complete loss of strength. Kate had never been a robust woman, but now she was getting so thin, so very thin; the hand that lay so languidly on the coverlet had become quite transparent during the last week. Oh, and her hair so grey.

The man sought for the traces of former beauty in his wife's face with sad eyes: too many wrinkles, too many lines graven on it, furrows that the plough of grief had made there. He had to weep; it seemed too hard to see her like that. Turning his head aside he shaded his eyes with his hand.

He sat thus in silence without moving, and she did not move either, but lay as though asleep.

Then somebody knocked. The man glanced at his wife in dismay: had it disturbed her? But she did not raise her eyelids.

He went to the door on tip-toe and opened it. Friedrich brought the post, all sorts of letters and papers. Paul only held out his hand to take them from habit, he took so little interest in anything now.

During the first days after Wolfgang's disappearance Kate had always trembled for fear there should be something about him in the newspaper, she had been tortured by the most terrible fears; now she no longer asked. But it was the man's turn to tremble, although he tried to harden himself: what would they still have to bear? He never took up a paper without a certain dread.

"Don't rustle the paper so horribly, I can't bear it," said the feeble woman irritably. Then he got up to creep out of the room--it was better he went, she did not like him near her. But his glance fell on one of the letters. Whose unformed, copy-book handwriting was that?

Probably a begging letter. It was addressed to his wife, but she did not open any letters at present; and he positively longed to open just that letter. It was not curiosity, he felt as if he must do it.

He opened the letter more quickly than he was in the habit of doing.

A woman had written it, no doubt a girl the letters were carefully formed, with no character in them. And the person had evidently endeavoured to disguise her writing.

"If you wish to find out anything about your son, you must go to 140, Puttkammerstra.s.se, and watch the third storey in the back building, left side wing, where 'Knappe' is written above the bell.

There she lives."

No name had been signed underneath it; "A Good Friend" was all that was written below.

Paul Schlieben had a feeling as if the paper were burning his fingers--common paper, but pink and smelling of cheap perfumed soap--an anonymous letter, faugh! What had this trash to do with them? He was about to crumple it up when Kate's voice called to him from the bed: "What have you got there, Paul? A letter? Show me it."

And as he approached her, but only slowly, hesitatingly, she raised herself up and tore the letter out of his hand. She read it and cried out in a loud voice: "Frida Lamke has written that. I'm sure it's from her. She was going to look for him--and her brother and the man she's engaged to--they will have found him. Puttkammerstra.s.se--where is that?

140, we shall have to go there. Immediately, without delay. Ring for the maid. My shoes, my things--oh, I can't find anything. For goodness'

sake do ring. She must do my hair--oh, never mind, I can do it all myself."