Fifth Chapter Emil Gets Off at the Wrong Station

As Emil awoke the train was just getting under way again. He had fallen off the seat in his sleep and was lying on the floor, frightened almost out of his wits without knowing why. His heart was beating like a trip hammer. There he squatted in the train and had almost forgotten where he was. Bit by bit it all came back to him. Right—he was going to Berlin. And he had fallen asleep. Just like the man in the stiff hat....

Emil sat bolt upright with a jerk and whispered, “Why, he’s gone off.” His knees trembled. Very slowly he got up and mechanically brushed the dust off his suit. Then the next question was, “Is the money still there?” And at that question he felt an indescribable terror.

For a long time he stood leaning against the door, not daring to move. Just over there that man Grundeis had sat and slept and snored. And now he was gone. Of course, everything might be all right. It was absurd to be suspicious right away. Just because Emil was going to Friedrich Strasse Station in Berlin was no reason why everyone else had to go there too. And the money, of course, was safe in its proper place. First, it was in his pocket. Second, it was in the envelope. And third, it was fastened to the lining with a pin. And then he reached slowly into his right inside pocket.

The pocket was empty! The money was gone!

Emil burrowed around in his pocket with his left hand while he pushed and poked at it from the outside with his right hand. There was no doubt about it—the pocket was empty and the money was gone.

“Ouch!” Emil pulled his hand out of his pocket. And not only his hand, but in it the pin with which he had pinned the notes. Nothing but the pin was left. And that was pricking his left forefinger so that it bled.

He wound his handkerchief around the finger and began to cry. Naturally, not for that tiny bit of blood. Two weeks before he had run into a lamp pest so hard that it was almost broken off, and Emil still had the bump on his forehead from it. And he hadn’t cried one second.

He wept now about the money. And he wept because of his mother. Anyone who can’t understand that, no matter how brave he may be, is beyond help. Emil knew how his mother had economized for months to save the hundred and forty marks for his grandmother and for his trip to Berlin. And hardly was her young Mr. Son in the train before he settled himself back in the corner, dreamed a crazy dream, and allowed himself to be robbed by that pig of a man. Wasn’t it enough to make him cry? What was he to do now? Get off in Berlin and say to his grandmother, “Here I am, but you might as well know you’ll get no money? Instead you had better give me my train fare back to Neustadt. Otherwise I’ll have to walk.”

That was splendid! His mother had economized for nothing. His grandmother would not get a penny. He couldn’t stay in Berlin. He dared not go back home. And all because of a rascal who gave chocolate to children and pretended to be asleep. And then he robbed them. Boy, oh, boy! what a swell world it was!

Emil dried his tears and looked around.

If he pulled the bell cord the train would stop at once. And then a brakeman would come, and another, and still another. And they would all ask, “What’s the matter?”

“My money is stolen,” he would say.

“Another time take better care of it,” they would answer. “Please get on again. Who are you? Where do you live? To pull the bell once costs a hundred marks. The bill will be sent.”

In the express trains there are corridors so that you can run through the whole thing from one end to the other, even to the caboose, and report a burglary. But not in the third class! In such a stupid train! Here you must wait till the next station because you have to step off one car and walk along outside to get to the next car. And meantime the man with the stiff hat could be miles and miles away. Emil did not even know at what station he had got off. How late was it, anyway? When would they reach Berlin? Great houses and villas with gay gardens and then high dirty red chimneys ambled past the windows. Apparently this was Berlin already. At the next station he would have to call the guard and tell him all about it. And he would promptly notify the police.

Now, to top it all, he had to get mixed up with the police, and naturally Officer Jeschke could keep silent no longer but would have to admit officially, “I don’t know why, but that schoolboy, Emil Tischbein of Neustadt, doesn’t quite please me. First he daubs up noble monuments. And then he allows himself to be robbed of a hundred and forty marks. Perhaps they weren’t stolen at all?

“A boy who daubs up monuments will tell lies. I have had experience with that. Probably he has buried the money in the woods or has swallowed it and plans to go to America with it? There’s no sense trying to capture the thief, not the slightest. The boy Tischbein himself is the thief. Please, Mr. Chief of Police arrest him.”

Horrible! He could not even confide in the police!

He took his bag out of the rack, put on his cap, stuck the pin back in his coat lapel, and got ready to go. He had not the slightest idea what he would do. But stay another five minutes in this compartment he would not. That was certain.

Meanwhile the train was slowing down. Emil saw rows of tracks shining outside. Then they came into a station.

Some porters ran along by the car to get the baggage.

The train stopped!

Emil looked out of the window and saw a sign high up over the tracks. It said “Zoölogical Gardens.” The doors flew open. People climbed out of the compartments. Other people were waiting for them with outstretched arms.

Emil leaned ’way out of the window looking for the conductor. Some distance off and almost hidden in a crowd of people, he saw a stiff black hat. If that were the thief? Perhaps after he stole Emil’s money he did not get off the train but just went into another car?

In the next second Emil was standing on the platform. He put down his bag, climbed back into the train, because he had forgotten his bunch of flowers in the baggage rack, got out again, picked up his bag in a hurry, and ran as fast as he could to the exit.

Where was the stiff hat? The boy stumbled over people’s legs, banged into someone with his suitcase, and ran on. The crowd was getting thicker and harder to press through.

There! There was the stiff hat! Good heavens, over there was another! Emil could hardly carry his bag. He wished he could leave it right there. But if he did probably that too would be stolen.

Finally he got up close to the stiff hat.

That must be the one. Was it?

No.

There was the next one.

No. That man was too small.

Emil wound himself in and out of the crowd like an Indian.

There, there!

That was the fellow. Thank goodness! That was the Grundeis. He was just pushing through the gate and seemed to be in a hurry.

“Just wait, you beast,” growled Emil, “we’ll get you!” Then he gave up his ticket, took his bag in the other hand, clamped his flowers under his right arm, and ran downstairs behind the man.

Now it’s do or die!