And of course they lost each other's enclosures} (The papers on Svejk were not found until after the war. They were in the archives of the Army Legal Department and were minuted:
'Planned to throw off his hypocritical mask and come out publicly against our ruler and our state.'
The papers had been stuck into files dealing with a certain Josef Koudela.
On the file cover was a cross and underneath it
'Action completed' with the date.)
'So I've lost Svejk,' said Bemis.
'I'll have him sent for, and if he doesn't confess to anything, I'll let him go and have him drafted to you and you can settle it with his regiment.'
After the chaplain had gone Bemis had Svejk brought before him but left him standing at the door, because he had just received a telephone message from police headquarters that the material which was required for prosecution document no. 7267 about infantryman Maixner, had arrived in office no. r and been signed for by Captain Linhart.
Meanwhile Svejk inspected the judge advocate's office.
One could not say that it made a very favourable impression, especially the photographs on the walls. They were photographs of various executions carried out by the army in Galicia and Serbia.
They were artistic photographs of charred cottages and trees with branches sagging under the weight of bodies strung up on them.
Particularly fine was a photograph from Serbia of a whole family strung up - a small boy and his father and mother.
Two soldiers with bayonets were guarding the tree, and an officer stood victoriously in the foreground smoking a cigarette.
On the other side in the background a field kitchen could be seen in full operation.
'Well, what's the trouble with you, Svejk?' asked Bemis, when he had filed away the telephone message.
'What have you been up to?
Are you going to confess or wait until a charge is brought against you?
It can't go on like this.
Don't imagine that you're before a court where you'll be tried by lunatic civilians.
Ours are courts-martial - the Imperial and Royal Military Court.
The only way you can save yourself from a severe and just punishment is to confess.'
Bemis had a special method when he had lost the material against the accused.
As you can see, there was nothing special about it and so we need not be surprised if the results of such an examination and cross-questioning always amounted to nix.
And Bemis felt he was always so clairvoyant that, without having any material against the accused and without knowing what he was accused of or why he was imprisoned in the garrison gaol but simply by observing the behaviour and physiognomy of the man who had been brought before him for interrogation, he could deduce why they had imprisoned him.
His clairvoyance and knowledge of human nature was so great that a gipsy who was sent by his regiment to the garrison gaol for stealing a few dozen shirts (he was helping the storekeeper in a store) was accused by him of political crimes; allegedly he had spoken in a pub somewhere with some soldiers about the setting up of an independent national state made up of the lands of the Bohemian crown and Slovakia and ruled by a Slav king.
'We have material evidence,' he said to the unfortunate gipsy.
'There's nothing left for you but to confess in which pub you said it, which regiment those soldiers came from, who listened to you and when it took place.'
The unfortunate gipsy invented not only the date but the pub and the regiment which his alleged listeners came from, and when he left the interrogation he ran away from the garrison altogether.
'So you won't confess to anything,' said Bernis, when Svejk remained deathly silent.
'You won't say why you're here and why they've put you in gaol?
You could at least have told me, before I tell you it myself.
I warn you once more that you'd better confess.
It will be easier for you because it helps the investigation and alleviates the punishment.
In that respect it's just the same here as in a civil court.'
'Humbly report, sir,' Svejk piped up good-naturedly, 'I am here in garrison gaol because I'm a foundling.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Humbly report, sir, I can explain it quite simply. In our street there's a coal merchant and he had an entirely innocent two-year-old little boy.
This laddie once walked all the way from Vinohrady to Liben, where a policeman found him sitting on the pavement.
So he took him to the police station and locked him up there -a two-yearold child.
The little boy was, as you see, quite innocent and yet he was locked up.
And if he'd been able to speak and anyone had asked him why he was locked up there, he wouldn't have known either.
And it's rather like that with me.
I'm a foundling too.'
The keen gaze of the judge advocate passed swiftly over Svejk's figure and face and foundered on them.
Such unconcern and innocence radiated from the whole of the being which stood before him that Bernis began to pace nervously up and down his office and, if he had not given his word to the chaplain, God knows what might have happened to Svejk.
Finally he came to a standstill again by his table.
'Listen,' he said to Svejk, who was gazing unconcernedly in front of him. 'If ever I meet you again, you'll never forget it. Take him away!'
When they took Svejk back to no. 16 Bemis had Staff Warder Slavik called before him.
'Until further orders,' he said laconically, ' Svejk is sent to Chaplain Katz for his disposal.
Prepare his discharge papers and have him escorted to the chaplain by two men!'