I shouldn’t take it so tragically, he then thought, because really all I’ve lost is the last piece of my past, which no longer properly belongs to me anyway. After all, did the money guarantee my safety? He tried to console himself for his loss. No! It only provided the illusion of security.

Ach, nonsense, it was more, much more! It was my entire future. I’ve lost twenty years of my existence, twenty years! How ungrateful I’ve been. My wealth has shielded me from poverty for an entire lifetime. And for a few days it’s no longer been able to help—at least not to the extent it had. But now I’ve lost my very existence! Now I’ve let my entire life get stolen! I am a dead man—utterly and absolutely dead.

He left the station, went to a waiting taxi, and gave the driver the address to his apartment, since he had decided to sleep in his bed one last time before going through with his suicide, which is what he considered filing the report on the theft to be.

When the car passed a telephone booth, Silbermann had a new idea and tapped his finger on the pane separating him from the driver. “Stop,” he said. The driver stopped the car some hundred meters past the telephone, and Silbermann climbed out. He paid and walked back to the booth. He stepped inside, opened the phone book, and searched through names beginning with A. When he came to Angelhof, attorney, he underlined the number with blue pencil, as was his habit, and dialed.

He had to wait some time before a sleepy voice finally answered: “Hello, who’s calling?”

“Herr Angelhof?” Silbermann asked as calmly as he could.

“Yes, that’s me, but…”

“May I speak with your wife?”

“My wife? At this hour? Who are you? What do you mean calling like this?”

“It’s imperative that I speak with your wife,” Silbermann explained emphatically. “It’s very, very important!”

“Fine, but will you first tell me who this is and why you’re bothering me in the middle of the night—that’s never happened to me before in all my life.”

“Your wife left her purse in the train,” Silbermann lied, passing over the first question, since he would have been hard-pressed to invent a name. Where did I come up with a lost purse? he asked himself. Ah, my briefcase, of course. “I found her purse,” he continued slowly. “And I would like to return it to her.”

“Then come and give it to me tomorrow,” the attorney suggested, his tone slightly more gentle.

“Unfortunately I’m just passing through, it’s a very short layover.”

“But tonight? It’s already very late. Couldn’t you have called earlier?”

“Unfortunately not, besides I have my own business to attend to,” Silbermann said brazenly.