Eleventh Chapter A Spy Slips into the Hotel

Time passed slowly.

Emil visited the three outposts and wanted to relieve one of them. But Krummbiegel and the two Mittenzweys announced that they were staying. Whereupon Emil ventured very cautiously to the Hôtel Kreid, picked up the latest bulletins, and returned to the courtyard in great excitement.

“I have the feeling,” he said, “that something must be done. We can’t leave the hotel all night without anyone to watch. To be sure, Krummbiegel is standing at the corner of Kleist Street. But he only has to turn his head, and Grundeis can go flying off in the other direction.”

“That is all very well,” returned Gustav. “But we can’t just run to the porter and say, ‘Listen, we’re just going to sit here on these steps.’ And you yourself certainly can’t go into the building. If the guy should poke his head out of his door and recognize you, the whole performance so far would be no good.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” answered Emil.

“What then?”

“Well, there’s a boy in the hotel. The one who runs the elevator and such. If one of us should go to him and tell him what’s up—he knows the hotel like his own vest pocket. He’ll surely have a good idea.”

“Good,” said the Professor, “that’s fine.” He had a comical habit of acting as though he were giving out marks to the others. That was why he was called the Professor.

“This Emil—another hunch like that and we’ll make him the mayor. As smart as a Berliner,” cried Gustav.

“Don’t imagine that you’re the only smart ones!” Emil was emphatic. He felt his pride in Neustadt wounded.

“Anyway, we still have a fight to finish.”

“What for?” asked the Professor.

“Well, he made fun of my best suit.”

“The fight can come off to-morrow,” the Professor decided, “to-morrow or not at all.”

“Oh, the suit isn’t so bad. I’m getting used to it,” Gustav declared good-naturedly. “But we can fight, anyway. Only you might as well take notice that I am the champion of the gang. So watch out!”

“And in school I am the best of any weight,” boasted Emil.

“It’s terrible the way you brag of your muscles,” said the Professor. “I’d really like to go over into the hotel myself. But I can’t leave you two alone a minute, because you always start a fight.”

“Then I’ll go!” broke in Gustav.

“Right,” said the Professor, “you go! And talk to the boy. But be careful! Perhaps something can be done. Find out for sure what room the fellow is in. In an hour come back and bring the information.”

Gustav vanished.

The Professor and Emil paced back and forth before the door and talked to each other about their teachers. Then the Professor picked out the differences between the German and foreign license plates that went by until Emil understood a little about them. And then they thoughtfully ate a sandwich together.

By this time it was dark. Electric ads flamed everywhere. The elevated thundered overhead. The subway rumbled beneath. Street cars and motor busses, private cars and motor cycles, made a crazy concert. Dance music came from the Woerz Café. The movie theater on Nollendorf Place began its last show. And many people crowded in.

“Such a big tree as that over by the station looks like a freak here,” mused Emil. “It looks as if it had lost its way.” The boy was enchanted and thrilled. And he almost forgot why he was there and that he had lost a hundred and forty marks.

“Of course, Berlin is wonderful. You’d think you were sitting in a movie. But I’m not sure whether I’d want to live here always. In Neustadt we have an Upper Market and a Lower Market and a Station Square! And the playgrounds by the river and in Amsel Park. That is all. But still, Professor, I believe it is enough for me. Always such a holiday racket, always a hundred thousand streets and squares? I’d be lost all the time. Imagine if I didn’t have you with me and were standing here all alone! It gives me the creeps to think of it.”

“You get used to it,” answered the Professor. “Probably I couldn’t stand it in Neustadt, with its three squares and its Amsel Park.”

“You get used to it,” said Emil, “but Berlin is a great sight. No doubt of it, Professor. Wonderful.”

“Is your mother really very strict?” asked the Berlin boy.

“My mother?” asked Emil. “Not a bit of it. She lets me do everything. But I don’t. You understand?”

“No,” the Professor said frankly, “I don’t understand.”

“No? Well, then, I’ll tell you. Have your people much money?”

“I don’t know about that. We don’t talk much about it at home.”

“I guess, when people don’t talk much about it, it means they have plenty of it.”

The Professor considered a moment and then admitted, “That is quite likely.”

“You see. We often talk about it, my mother and I. We have very little. And she has to keep on earning, and still there’s hardly ever enough to make both ends meet. But when we have a class excursion my mother gives me just as much money as any of the other boys get. Sometimes even more.”

“How can she, though?”

“That I don’t know. But she can. And then I bring half of it back.”

“Does she want you to?”

“Silly! I want to!”

“Uhuh!” said the Professor. “That’s the way it is.”

“Yes, just like that. And if she lets me go out into the country with Prötzsch, who lives upstairs, and stay until nine o’clock, I come back by seven because I don’t want her to sit in the kitchen and eat her supper alone. Of course, she wanted me to stay with the others. And I tried it, too. But it wasn’t any fun. Anyway inside she is glad that I come home early.”

“Uhm,” said the Professor, “it’s entirely different at our house. If I really come home on time I can bet that they’ll be at the theater or invited out somewhere. We like each other all right. I must say that. But we don’t make any fuss about it.”

“That is the only thing we can afford. But that doesn’t make me a mamma’s baby, not by a long shot. And if anybody doesn’t believe that, I’ll smash him against the wall. That’s very simple to understand.”

“I do understand.”

The two boys stood for a while in the gateway without speaking. Night came. And the moon peeped with one eye over the elevated.

The Professor cleared his throat and asked without looking at the other, “You’re pretty fond of each other, aren’t you?”

“Frightfully,” answered Emil.