Free The Master of the Day of Judgment by Leo Perutz Page B

leave it? The worst of it is that it isn't mine, it's my caretaker's. Here's my rheumatism again. I should have gone to Pistyan for the waters a long time ago. It's a brown stick with a thick horn handle, have you seen it anywhere?"
    This alarmed me, because a brown stick with a horn handle was leaning against the wall next to the fireplace.
    I had been hoping that the two of them would go away without noticing me, but there was no hope of that now, for the doctor was bound to come and look for his stick here. So I had to anticipate him.
    I rose and casually dropped the music sheets on the table. Then I went to the piano and noisily shut the lid of the violin case. Let the two of them realise that I was there and had heard every word of their careless talk.
    Dr Gorski's angry muttering stopped immediately, and all I could hear was the ticking of the clock; no doubt the two were looking aghast at each other. I imagined their dismayed and embarrassed faces, and for a moment I vividly pictured the doctor, a gnome turned into a Biblical pillar of salt in his caped cloak and galoshes.
    Eventually they seemed to regain the power of speech.
    Excited whispering began, and then I heard the engineer's firm and energetic footsteps.
    I went to meet him very casually indeed, for the situation was far more embarrassing for him than for me. I was just about to open the door when the telephone rang next to me.
    Quite automatically I picked up the receiver. It did not occur to me until later that the call could not possibly have been for me.
    "Hallo," I said.
    "Who's there?" said the voice at the other end of the line. It was a voice that I knew; I immediately had the impression that I was talking to a quite young girl, and that idea was associated with the memory of a strange perfume, the odour of ether or ethereal oils. For a second I wondered where I had heard that voice before.
    The lady on the line became impatient.
    "To whom am I speaking?" she said irritably, and I became confused, because the door had been pushed open and the engineer was standing in the doorway in his overcoat and with his hat in his hand. He looked at me inquiringly.
    "This is the Bischoff villa," I said eventually.
    "There's my stick," Dr Gorski exclaimed with great satisfaction. He had forced his way past the engineer in the doorway and was standing in the room rubbing his leg.
    "Is the professor there?" asked the lady on the telephone.
    "The professor?" I could not think whom she meant. My first thought was that it was a wrong number, and I remembered that Dina had once complained that her number was always being confused with that of the senior registrar at the eye hospital.
    "Here it goes again," the doctor complained. "What I need is a couple of weeks of sulphur baths but, believe it or not, this summer I couldn't manage that even once."
    "Whom do you want?" I asked.
    "Professor Bischoff, Eugen Bischoff."
    I now remembered that Eugen Bischoff taught drama at the Academy of Interpretive Arts. It was extraordinary that I had not thought of that before. Presumably this was one of his pupils, but I could not explain why her voice reminded me of the smell of ether.
    "The professor is not available," I said to her.
    "For heaven's sake hurry up," Dr Gorski said to the engineer. "How much longer am I to wait in this draught with my rheumatism?"
    "Oh, stop it, the clothes rack fell on your shin, that's what your rheumatism is," the engineer whispered to him.
    "Nonsense," Dr Gorski exclaimed angrily. "What nonsense you talk. I ought to know what muscle pains are."
    "Not available? Not even for me?" the lady said in a very self-assured manner — she seemed to think it quite unnecessary to mention her name. "Not even for me? But he's expecting me to call."
    This nonplussed me, and Dr Gorski's continual interruptions increased my confusion. What was I to say to her?
    "I'm afraid the professor is not available to anyone," I replied, and suddenly remembered the tartan rug