Friday March the eighteenth, that’s when I last saw Danner.
I was planning to go over to Einhausen that day.
Had to fetch something from the hardware store there. I’m going to rebuild my barn this year, that’s why I took the cart and drove.
On foot it takes you a good hour, I’d say.
When I’m just past Danner’s property—the road there runs by the farm—the old man waves to me. He was some way off.
Since that business with Barbara, I’ve always tended to avoid Danner. We haven’t talked to each other much since. But I stopped the cart all the same. Reluctantly.
“Hold on a minute there! I want to ask you something,” the old man called.
First he just hemmed and hawed. I was starting to wish I hadn’t stopped at all. Suddenly he asks me if I’d seen anything, if I’d noticed anything.
“What was there to notice? I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.” I was getting really annoyed with myself for stopping by now.
If he was going on at me like that, it meant he had something or other in mind. A sly fox, old Danner was. You had to watch your step with him. So I was surprised when all he asked was had anyone met me, had I seen anyone?
“Why?” I asked back.
“There was someone tried to break in to our house last night. Nothing stolen, but the lock’s been wrenched off the machinery shed.”
“Better call the police,” I told him.
But he wouldn’t have the police in the house, he told me.
“Don’t want nothing to do with the cops.”
He’d searched the whole place, he said. Went up to the loft, too, took a lamp and shone it in all the corners, but he didn’t find anything.
All the same, he said, all last night he thought he heard someone in the loft. So he went up there first thing in the morning. But he didn’t find anything, and nothing was missing.
I asked him if he’d like me to help him search. Pig-headed like he was, all he said was the fellow would have made off by now. Only he didn’t know how, because all the footprints you could see just led to the house and not away.
Fresh snow had fallen overnight. Not much, just a thin covering. But he’d been able to make out some of the footprints well enough.
“Want me to bring my revolver?” I asked. I still have one at home, left over from the war.
But Danner wouldn’t have that.
“No need. I’ve got a gun myself and a good stout stick. I’ll soon send the fellow packing.”
I offered again to look in at his place on my way home, help him search the farmyard again.
But the stubborn old goat said no.
Then, just as I’m about to leave, the old man turns around again and says, “And the stupid thing is I misplaced the front-door key yesterday. If you find a key on the road, a key that long”—and he showed me the length of the key with his hands—“then it’s mine.”
That was the end of the conversation, and I continued on. I really did mean to look in on Danner again on my way back.
But the weather got worse, it was raining, there was even a bit of snow, so I went straight home.
There was a frost that night too. Spring just didn’t want to come this year.
I noticed none of the Danners were at church on Sunday, but I thought nothing much of that.
Then on Monday I was out in the fields near the woods. My fields there march side by side with Danner’s land. I was plowing. Didn’t see any of the Danners the whole time, though.
But Tuesday, my sister-in-law Anna sent young Hansl up to their farm to take a look around. It wasn’t till then I remembered all that about the break-in and the missing front-door key. And you know the rest of it.