Gurdweill led him down the passage and waited for him. For a moment he had the crazy idea of locking him in from the outside, so that he would have to stay there all night … Unconsciously he slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and fingered a hard object, which he did not at first recognise. It was a long object. Not his pipe, or a pencil; its thickness and shape meant it could be neither of those — and it was important to know exactly what it was. Suddenly he remembered that it was the folding penknife with the rough brown handle made of horn, which he had purchased a number of weeks before — and his fingers tightened around it convulsively. A connection between this knife and something unclear flashed through his mind, but a kind of screen immediately descended, leaving him with a feeling of regret for something important that he had been on the point of discovering when it slipped away. When they returned to the room, Thea had already finished washing, and she was pacing about the room in her green petticoat, a cigarette between her lips.

‘You can put your clothes here, on the chair,’ she said to Heidelberger.

The latter undressed slowly and got into bed, a crooked, drunken smile fixed on his puffy face.

Gurdweill sat on the couch.

‘Aren’t you going to bed?’ enquired his wife. But she received no reply.