The Master of the Day of Judgment Read Online Free PDF

interest in his theories, and he turned to me.
    "The two things are mutually exclusive, don't you agree?" he said. "Don't let me forget to ask Eugen Bischoff about it before we go."
    "Where has my sister vanished to?" Felix suddenly asked.
    "She was quite right to leave, there's much too much smoke in the room," Solgrub said, stubbing out his cigarette. " Magna pars fui, it's largely my fault, I admit. We should have opened the window, but forgot."
    No-one noticed when I got up and left the room, noiselessly shutting the door behind me. I hoped I would find Dina in the garden. I walked round the path that surrounded the lawn until I reached the wooden fence of the next-door garden, but she was not in any of her usual places. There was an open book on the garden table under the slope, and the leaves felt damp from the rain of the past few days or from the evening dew. Once I thought I could see someone in a recess in the wall and thought it must be Dina, but when I drew near it turned out to be some gardening tools, two empty watering cans, a basket, a rake propped up against the wall and a torn hammock moving in the wind.
    I don't know how long I stayed in the garden. It may have been a long time. I may have been leaning against a tree and dreaming.
    Suddenly I heard the sound of voices and loud laughter from the room, and someone's hand swept high-spiritedly up the keys of the piano from the lowest octaves to the shrill highest notes. Felix's figure appeared like a big, dark shadow at the open window.
    "Hi, is that you, Eugen?" he called down into the garden. "No, it isn't, it's you, baron. Where have you been all this time?"
    There was suddenly an anxious note in his voice.
    Dr Gorski appeared behind him, he recognised me, and began declaiming.
    "Here, in the moon's pale light, we meet ..."
    He broke off, because one of the two others dragged him away from the window, and I heard him call out: "How dare you, traitor?"
    Then all was quiet again. Light suddenly appeared on the first floor over their heads. Dina appeared on the veranda and started laying the table for supper in the milky glow of the standard lamp.
    I went back towards the house and up the wooden steps to the veranda. Dina heard my footsteps, turned and shaded her eyes with her hand.
    "Is that you, Gottfried?" she said.
     
    I sat silently facing her and watched as she arranged the plates and glasses on the white tablecloth. I listened to her deep and steady breathing, she breathed like a dreamlessly sleeping child. The wind bent and shook the branches of the chestnut trees and swept small cavalcades of withered autumn leaves before it down the gravel path. Down in the garden the old gardener was still at work. He had lit his lantern, which was next to him on the lawn, and its melancholy glow mingled with the broad band of steady bright light coming from the windows of the pavilion.
    Suddenly I started.
    Someone had called out my name — "Yosch!" — just my name, nothing else, but in the sound of that voice there was something that startled me — anger, reproach, horror and surprise . . .
    Dina stopped laying the table and listened. Then she looked at me inquiringly and with surprise in her voice.
    "That was Eugen," she said. "What can he be wanting?"
    Then Eugen cried out a second time. "Dina! Dina!" he cried, but his voice was completely changed, there was no more anger or surprise in it, but anguish, grief and infinite despair.
    "I'm here, Eugen, I'm here," she cried, leaning out over the garden.
    For two or three seconds there was no reply. Then a shot rang out, followed immediately by another.
     
    I saw Dina start back, she stood there unable to speak or move. I couldn't stay with her, I had to go down and find out what had happened. I think I remember that at the first moment I had a distinct impression of two intruders who had climbed over the garden fence to steal fruit. I don't know how it happened, but I found myself in a dark, unfamiliar room on