CHAPTER XV
Directly he arrived at Prague he made for Thomas’s rooms. Outside the Museum he pulled himself up . . . curse, where exactly did Thomas live? He walked, yes, he walked, shaking with fever, along the road by the Museum; but from where? From which street? Swearing, Prokop wandered round the Museum looking for the most probable direction; he found nothing and went to the Inquiry Office of the police. George Thomas; the dusty official looked through a number of books. Engineer Thomas, George, that, please, is Smichov, such and such a street. Evidently an old address. Nevertheless Prokop flew into Smichov to such and such a street. The caretaker shook his head when he asked for George Thomas. He certainly used to live here, but more than a year ago; where he lived now nobody knew; incidentally he had left all sorts of debts behind him
Crestfallen, Prokop wandered into a coffee-house. “KRAKATIT” hit him in the eyes from the back of a paper. “Will Eng. P. give his address? Carson, Poste Restante.” Well, this Carson will certainly know about Thomas . . . there must be some connection between them. All right then . . . “Carson, Poste Restante. Be at such and such coffee-house to-morrow at mid-day—Eng. Prokop.” Directly he had written this a new idea came into his head . . . the debts. He rushed off to the courts, the Inquiry Department. Yes, they knew Mr. Thomas’s address very well . . . a whole pile of undelivered circulars, official reminders, etc.; but it appeared that this Thomas, George, had disappeared without leaving a trace, and, especially, had furnished no one with his new address. All the same Prokop dashed off to the new address. The caretaker’s wife, encouraged by an adequate tip, at once recognized Prokop, who on one occasion had spent the night there. She informed him quite voluntarily that Mr. Engineer Thomas was a crook and a good-for-nothing. Further, that on that occasion he had gone off in the night and left him, the gentleman, in her care; that she had come upstairs three times to ask whether he needed anything, but that he, the gentleman, remained asleep and kept on talking to himself, and finally disappeared. And where on earth was Mr. Thomas? That night he had gone off and left everything lying about and had still not returned. All he had done was to send her some money from somewhere abroad, but he was still in debt for the new quarter. She had heard that they were going to sell his effects in the State Lottery if he didn’t report by the end of the month. He was nearly a quarter of a million in debt, so they said, and had made off. Prokop subjected the worthy woman to a cross-examination . . . did she knew anything about a certain young lady who was supposed to have relations with Mr. Thomas, who—came to his rooms and so on? The caretaker’s wife could not tell him anything; as far as women went, as many as twenty came to the place, some with veils over their faces and others “made up,” and all sorts. It was a scandal for the whole street. Prokop paid for the new quarter himself and in return obtained the key of the flat.
Inside there was the musty smell of rooms which have long been unoccupied and from which almost all life has departed. Only now did Prokop realize that he had wrestled with his fever amidst the most extraordinary luxury. Everywhere Bokhara or Persian carpets, on the walls tapestries and nude studies, a divan, arm-chairs, the dressing-table of a soubrette, the bathroom of a high-class prostitute, a mixture of luxury and vulgarity, lewdness and dissoluteness. And here, in the middle of all these abominations, she had stood pressing the package to her bosom, her clear, woeful eyes cast on the ground. And now, my God! she raised them in brave devotion. . . . What on earth could she have thought of him when she found him in this den? He must find her at least . . . at least to return her her money; even if it was for nothing else, for nothing more important . . . it was absolutely necessary to find her!
That is easy enough to say, but how? Prokop bit his lips in obstinate reflection. If he only knew where to look for George, he said to himself; finally he came upon a pile of correspondence which was waiting there for Thomas. Most of it consisted, naturally, of commercial letters, obviously chiefly bills. Then a few private letters which he turned over and sniffed with some hesitation. Perhaps in one of them there was a clue to his whereabouts, an address or something of the sort, which would enable him to find him . . . or to find her! He heroically repressed the inclination to open at least one letter; but he was alone there behind dirty windows, and everything seemed to exhale an atmosphere of base and secret corruption. And then, quickly overcoming all his scruples, he began to tear open the envelopes and read one letter after the other. A bill for Persian carpets, for flowers, for three typewriters; urgent reminders regarding goods given on commission; some mysterious transaction relating to a horse, foreign currency and twenty wagons of wood somewhere near Kremnice. Prokop could not believe his eyes; according to these documents Thomas was either a smuggler on a large scale, or an agent dealing in Persian carpets, or a speculator on the Exchange, very probably all three. In addition he did business in motor-cars, export certificates, office furniture and, obviously, all sorts of things. In one letter there was something about two million crowns, while in another, soiled and written in pencil, there was a threat of a complaint regarding some antique or other which he had wheedled from somebody. Everything together pointed to a long succession of deceptions, embezzlements, falsifications of export documents, as far as Prokop was able to understand; it was simply amazing that it had not all come out. One solicitor intimated briefly that such and such a firm had brought an action against Mr. Thomas for embezzling forty thousand crowns; it was in Mr. Thomas’s own interest to appear at his office, etc. Prokop was horrified; if it were all once found out what would not be the ramifications of this unutterable turpitude? He thought of the quiet house in Tynice and of the girl who had stood in the very room, desperately determined to protect that third person. He took up all Thomas’s commercial correspondence and ran to burn it in the stove, which he found full of charred papers. It was evident that Thomas himself had simplified conditions in this way before he left.
Good; that dealt with the commercial papers; there remained a few purely private letters, tender or dreadfully scrawled, and over these again Prokop hesitated in burning shame. But what on earth else was he to do? He was suffocating with embarrassment but he boldly opened the remaining envelopes. “Darling, I remember,” “a further meeting,”—and so on. A certain Anna Chvalova stated with the most touching orthographical mistakes that Jenicek had died “of an erruption.” Somebody else intimated that “he knew something that might interest the police but that he would be willing to discuss the question,” and that Mr. Thomas “certainly knew the price of his discretion”; there followed an allusion to “that house in Bret Street where Mr. Thomas knew whom to speak to if the affair was to be kept secret.” Then something about some business or other, the sale of some bills, signed “your Rosie.” The same Rosie stated that her husband had gone away. The same handwriting as in No. 1, a letter from a watering-place, nothing but bovine sentimentality, the unbridled passion of a fat and mature blonde, sweetened all over with ahs! reproofs, and lofty sentiments, apart from “sweetheart” and “ducky” and other abominations. Prokop positively felt bilious. A German letter, signed “G,” a deal in foreign currency, “‘sell these papers, I await your reply, P.S. Achtung, K. aus Hambourg eingetroffen.” The same “G”; a hasty and offended letter, the frigid use of the second person plural. “Send back that ten thousand, sonst wird K. dahinter kommen.” H’m. Prokop was deeply ashamed at having to penetrate into the malodorous obscurity of these disreputable affairs, but it was no good stopping now. Finally four letters signed M.; tearful, bitter and miserable, from which emerged the passionate history of some blind, airless, servile love. There were passionate demands, crawlings in the dust, desperate incriminations, frightful offerings of the writer’s self and more terrible self-torture; references to the children, the husband, the offer of a further loan, obscure allusions and the all too clear wretchedness of a woman at the mercy of passion. So this was her sister! To Prokop it was as if he saw before him the cruel and mocking lips, the taunting eyes, the aristocratic, proud, self-confident head of Thomas; he would have liked to smash it with his fist. But it was of no use; the miserable love of this woman told him nothing about . . . about this other one, who was for him so far without a name and whom he must seek out.
Nothing was left but to find Thomas.