Stuff is leaning against the stall door, apparently giving advice to the slim young fellow, who is reaching up into the cistern: ‘It must be the float.’

At last the gentlemen are finished. One tries to start a conversation with Stuff, but he cuts him off: ‘Leave me alone. I want to puke in peace!’ And the gentleman vanishes.

The door is not yet closed when Stuff undertakes a lightning attack against one of the youth’s legs, grabs it, and with a roar pulls him off the loo seat. His head in the process hits the wall not once but several times. He’s left lying in a corner, pale and bloodied, while Stuff tries to force open the hand that is still holding the bunch of papers in its grip.

‘You won’t do it. It’s held the odd grenade neck in its time, Stuff—’

‘I thought you knew me—’ Stuff lets him go, and looks at him appraisingly. Kalübbe, silent, still deathly pale, peers over his shoulder.

The youth stands up and bows. ‘At your service, Henning. Georg Henning. And please excuse my little joke. I’m still a little childish at times.’

‘Probably right,’ says Stuff. And turning to Kalübbe: ‘Don’t worry. He won’t blab.’

‘See, here’s my shorthand. And now I’ll consign it to the waves. We pull the flush. Never to be seen again.’

‘What do you want now?’ asks Stuff. ‘I don’t imagine you forfeited that quite without—?’

‘No, no. Of course not. But some other way. Not the way you might imagine. At least not just that. There’s a photograph of the straw fire and the panicking oxen.’

‘Surely not!’

‘There may even be two.’

‘Now how could I not know that!?’ exclaims Stuff in indignation.

‘Wait!’ interjects Kalübbe. ‘Wait a minute. He’s right. How could I have forgotten about that? There was someone from a newspaper, he wanted to take pictures at the auction. Later I saw him again, behind a tree, at the straw fire over towards Haselhorst. And then a third time, just when we were going through the flames . . . A farmer, a fellow with a black beard, was knocking the box out of his hands.’

‘And that young man,’ says Georg Henning, ‘that young man is on the staff of your newspaper, Herr Stuff, and rejoices in the name of Tredup.’

Stuff stares at Henning, before turning to Kalübbe, who nods in affirmation.