The auctioneer came.
"Are you going out, Otto?" I asked.
"What for?
It's all out there, and he knows his business."
Koster looked tired.
You could not easily tell with him, but if you knew him well, you could see. His face looked even more tense and hard than usual.
Night after night he had been out, always in the same neighbourhood.
He had long since found out the name of the fellow who had shot Gottfried. But he couldn't find him, because the other, for fear of the police, had changed his quarters and was in hiding somewhere.
Alfons had dug all that out.
He was waiting likewise.
It was quite possible that the other chap was not in the city any longer.
That Koster and Alfons were after him he did not know.
They were waiting for him to come back when he would think himself safe.
"I think I'll go out and watch, Otto," said I.
"All right."
I went into the yard.
Our workbenches and the rest of the stuff were piled up in the middle.
On the right by the wall stood the taxi.
We had washed it clean.
I examined the upholstery and the tyres.
"Our jolly old milch cow," Gottfried had always called it.
It wasn't so easy to part with.
Some one clapped me on the shoulder.
I turned round in surprise.
An unpleasantly flashy young man in a belted overcoat confronted me.
He blinked his eyes and twirled a bamboo cane in the air.
"Hello!
We know one another."
An inkling rose in my memory.
"Guido Thiess of the Augeka."
"Good for you!" declared the fellow smugly. "Met over this self-same bus.
A nasty piece of work you had with you then, I must say.
All I could do not to land him a couple."
Involuntarily my face contracted at the thought of him landing Koster a couple.
Thiess interpreted it as a smile and on his side disclosed a rather lamentable set of teeth.
"Still, bygones are bygones, Guido bears no grudges.
You did pay an enormous price for the old grandfather, though.
Was there anything left in it for yourselves?"
"Yes," said I. "The car is good."
Theiss gave a deprecating smirk.
"If you'd taken my advice you would have had more.
And me too.
However, bygones are bygones.
Forgive and forget.
But to-day we can do the trick.
We'll take it up to five hundred marks, eh?
There's not a soul else to bid.
Agreeable?"
It dawned on me.
He imagined we had passed the car on again then, and he did not realise that the workshop was ours.