Me and Anna. The two of us. Anyway, perhaps it’s the Gestapo conducting a search of the place. And I walk in! No, I’ll just go to bed…

But with his scrupulousness, almost his sense of justice, sharpened by the “You and your Führer” gibe, he found this decision rather unsatisfactory. He stood outside the door of his apartment, key in hand, head cocked. The door must be ajar there, there was a little light filtering down, and he could hear a sharp voice giving orders. An old woman, all alone, he thought suddenly, to his own surprise. Without protection. Without mercy…

At that moment, a small but forceful male hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed him by the scruff and faced him toward the stairs. A cultured voice said: “Why don’t you go on ahead, Herr Quangel. I will follow and appear at the correct moment.”

Without hesitating now, Quangel went up the stairs, such persuasive force had been vested in that hand and voice. That can only have been old Judge Fromm, he thought. What a secretive so-and-so. I think in all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen him maybe a score of times by day, and now here he is creeping around the stairs in the middle of the night!

So thinking, he mounted the stairs unhesitatingly and reached the Rosenthal apartment. He just caught sight of a squat figure—certainly old Persicke—retreating hurriedly into the kitchen, and he caught Baldur’s last words about the thing they had done, and that it was wrong to be afraid all the time… And now the two of them, Baldur Persicke and Otto Quangel, stood silently confronting one another, eye to eye.

For an instant, Baldur Persicke thought the game was up. But then he remembered one of his maxims, Shamelessness wins out, and he said a little provocatively, “I can imagine your surprise. But you got here a bit late, Herr Quangel, we’ve caught the burglars.” He left a pause, but Quangel didn’t say anything. A little less brightly, Baldur added, “One of the two villains appears to be Borkhausen, who lives off immoral earnings at the back of the house.”

Quangel’s eyes followed Baldur’s pointing finger. “Yes,” he said curtly, “that’s Borkhausen.”

“As for you,” broke in Adolf Persicke of the SS, “what are you doing, standing there staring? Why don’t you go to the police station and report the crime, so that the police can arrest the culprits? We’ll keep them pinned down in the meantime!”

“Will you keep out of it, Adolf!” hissed Baldur. “You can’t issue orders to Herr Quangel. Herr Quangel knows what he has to do.”

But that was just what Quangel at that moment did not know. If he had been alone, he would have decided spontaneously. But there was that hand grabbing at his shirt, and that cultured voice, and he had no idea what the old judge had in mind, or what he wanted from him. But whatever it was, he didn’t want to spoil his plan. If only he knew what it was…

And that was when the old gentleman appeared on the scene, though not, as Quangel had expected, at his side, but from the interior of the apartment. Suddenly he stood in their midst, like an apparition, and gave the Persickes a further, deeper shock.

He did look rather singular, the old gentleman. Of frail build and average height or less, he was swathed in a lustrous black silk dressing gown trimmed with red and secured with large red toggles. The old gentleman wore a gray imperial and a white mustache. The very fine, still brown hair on his head was brushed carefully across the pale scalp, but was unable to hide its bareness. Behind the delicate gold-rimmed spectacles lurked two amused, sardonic eyes.

“No, no, gentlemen,” he said smoothly, seeming to continue a conversation begun long ago to the edification of all.