emen at the door. "You may take
this man away now," he added in a voice of cool indifference, without
looking at the prisoner.

Knoll's head drooped and he walked out quietly between his two guards.
The clock on the office wall struck eleven.

"Dear me! what a lot of time the man wasted," said the commissioner,
putting the report of the proceedings, the watch and the purse in a
drawer of his desk. "When anybody has been almost convicted of a crime,
it's really quite unnecessary to invent such a long story."

A few minutes later, the room was empty and Muller, as the last of the
group, walked slowly down the stairs. He was in such a brown study that
he scarcely heard the commissioner's friendly "goodnight," nor did he
notice that he was walking down the quiet street under a star-gilded
sky. "Almost convicted--almost. Almost?" Muller's lips murmured while
his head was full of a chaotic rush of thought, dim pictures that came
and went, something that seemed to be on the point of bringing light
into the darkness, then vanishing again. "Almost--but not quite. There
is something here I must find out first. What is it? I must know--"

CHAPTER VII. THE FACE AT THE GATE

The second examination of the prisoner brought nothing new. Johann
Knoll refused to speak at all, or else simply repeated what he had said
before. This second examination took place early the next morning, but
Muller was not present. He was taking a walk in Hietzing.

When they took Johann Knoll in the police wagon to the City Prison,
Muller was just sauntering slowly through the street where the murder
had been committed. And as the door of the cell shut clangingly behind
the man whose face was distorted in impotent rage and despair, Joseph
Muller was standing in deep thought before the broken willow twig, which
now hung brown and dry across the planks of the fence. He looked at it
for a long time. That is, he seemed to be looking at it, but in reality
his eyes were looking out and beyond the willow twig, out into the
unknown, where the unknown murderer was still at large. Leopold
Winkler's body had already been committed to the earth. How long will
it be before his death is avenged? Or perhaps how long may it even be
before it is discovered from what motive this murder was committed. Was
it a murder for robbery, or a murder for personal revenge perhaps? Were
the two crimes committed here by one and the same person, or were there
two people concer