"Yes?" he asked quite softly.
"Yes," I replied.
"Where?"
I looked in the direction.
Slowly Koster rose.
It was like a snake preparing to strike.
"Careful," I whispered. "Not here, Otto."
He made a quick movement with his hand and went slowly forward.
I held myself in readiness to start after him.
A woman clapped a green-red paper cap on his head and hooked on to him.
She fell back without his having touched her and stared after him.
He walked in a slow curve through the room and came back.
"Not there now," said he.
I stood up and surveyed the room.
Koster was right.
"Do you suppose he recognised me?" I asked.
Koster gave a shrug.
He now noticed for the first time the cap on his head and wiped it off.
"I don't understand it," said I. "I was only a minute or two at the most in the lavatory."
"You were away over a quarter of an hour." "What?" I looked across once more at the table. "The others have gone too.
There was a girl with them, she's not there either.
If he had recognised me surely he would have disappeared alone."
Koster beckoned the waiter.
"Is there a second exit?"
"Yes, over there, on the other side, on Hardenbergstrasse."
Koster took a coin from his pocket and gave it to the waiter.
"Come on," said he.
"Shame," said the fair girl at the next table, smiling. "Such solemn cavaliers."
The wind outside struck at us.
It seemed icy after the hot fog of the Cafe.
"You go home," said Koster.
"There were several," I replied, getting in with him.
The car shot off.
We combed all the streets around the cafe, wider and wider, but saw nothing.
At last Koster stopped.
"Vanished," said he. "But that's nothing.
We'll get him sooner or later now."
"Otto," said I, "we ought to drop it."
He looked at me.
"Gottfried's dead," said I and marvelled myself at what I was saying. "It won't bring him to life again."
Koster still looked at me.
"Bob," he replied slowly, "I don't even know how many men I've killed.
But I remember shooting down- a young Englishman.
He had a stoppage and couldn't do a thing more.
I was a few yards away from him in my machine and saw his terrified, baby face with the fear in his eyes quite distinctly—it was his first flight, so I learned after, and he was barely eighteen—and into that terrified, helpless, pretty baby face at point-blank range I pumped a burst with my machine-gun, so that his skull smashed like a hen's egg.
I didn't know the lad and he hadn't done me any harm.
It took me longer than usual to get over that, and to quiet my conscience with the bloody recipe 'war is war.'
But if I don't murder the chap who murdered Gottfried—shot him down without cause like a dog—then, I tell you, that affair with the Englishman was an abominable crime.
Don't you agree?" "Yes," said I.
"And now you go home.