Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/34

 "that the search has been very incomplete; here are several thousand books, and there might be a treasonable document in every one of them."

"You haven't got the Tsar's manifesto?"

"No."

"We are ready. Tomorrow you will kindly appear at No. 126, room 89. for cross-examination. A few trifles. At 9 o'clock please."

"I shall certainly come."

They gave me their hands, clicked their heels, Mr. Kolbe and the little volunteer officer carried out the bundles and the trunk, the car began to make a fuss, they took their seats, saluted once more from their seats and drove off.

The next day at 9 o'clock in room 89 on the Hernalser Gürtel. An uninviting, bare room, only three writing tables, a few chairs, cupboards, on the wall a map of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, on one of the tables a Remington. The Captain of the day before was sitting there and typing something. I was asked to sit down. Preminger would arrive immediately.

He arrived. Yesterday he had been jovial and talkative, today he was somehow stern and restrained. He took a file from a drawer, turned over a few leaves, took out a paper, handed it to me to translate. And he followed my impromptu version with a translation which he held in his hands, I went on reading, suddenly I stopped short. Sixteen years ago, on October 19th 1899, on the day when the language regulations were suspended, I had written a furious letter to Dr. Kramář in the Crimea. Bilge-water, fire, sulphur, petroleum, dynamite,—whatever could be said in words I had written, and flung everything at his head, of which I "but must I read that?" I asked Preminger.