Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/153

 "Dear Budi, dear Budi! What a fine place the world is! What luck!" And overflowing, so to speak, with sweetness, he turned to his food again, gazing with enraptured eyes at our volunteer.

"Did you hear, he called me dear Budi" whispered Budi to me with satisfaction.

"What have the authorities against him?"

"He kept out of the way when he was called up. He was in America,—but I will ask him."

"Dear Budi" lisped Mr. Mlacker afresh, when he had disposed of everything which had been put on the table for him.

Budi sat down with him, and they started talking.

"A very decent man" he reported to me afterwards, "he knows all our family. As I said, he did not appear when he was called up, but a mistake has been made,—he is not to blame for it."

In the evening Budi invited Mr. Mlacker to our table. Mr. Mlacker ate excellently, and again extolled the beauty of the world, the agreeable sojourn there, the kind people and Budi.

"Dear Budi."

Papa Declich did not utter a word, he only watched our guest and scowled. From time to time Hedrich recalled Dušek. After supper Budi offered cigarettes to Mr. Mlacker.—Mr. Mlacker took them, smoked them and extolled afresh.

On the next day our warder Schmied gave me and Hedrich a cutting to read from the evening edition of the previous day's "Tagblatt". The heading was: "After fifteen years". It said that a week previously the police had arrested and on that day had taken to the military prison Janko Mlacker, an accountant who fifteen years before had absconded to America with 45.000 crowns which he had embezzled. There he had squandered the money, had returned, had knocked about in Austria and Hungary under assum-