Yet it did not escape him that this attractive girl—a certain Elfrida Rademacher—had eyes for no one but Lieutenant Krafft. She smiled at him with such direct intimacy that he and she might have been the only two people in the world. Kater looked away.
“A cup of coffee?" asked Elfrida. She said this in the direction of Captain Kater, but winked at the Lieutenant or she did so. Krafft winked back. Slowly the icy cold of the cemetery began to thaw from his limbs.
“Yes, fine, make some coffee," said Kater generously. “Put some cognac in mine, please."
In this way Captain Kater demonstrated his individuality of taste. He never let slip an opportunity of reminding his associates of his individualism—at least in respect of his choice of drinks.
“I’m badly in need of a cognac," he continued, collapsing noisily into the chair at his desk. He motioned Lieutenant Krafft to a chair beside him. “After that farce at the cemetery I need something to fortify me. Though I say so with the utmost respect, the General's becoming a bit of a nightmare. What is it he wants? If we were to make as much of a fuss as this over everyone who got killed we'd hardly be able to get on with the war. And without cognac, life would be utterly impossible."
“Yes," said Elfrida brightly, " the war gets harder and harder every day." She spread a cloth out on top of the desk and brought in two cups of coffee. “The best thing will be if I just put the bottle of brandy down as it is."
“What do you mean by that, exactly?" asked Kater, suspicious as ever. The eagerness with which Elfrida made the suggestion led him to fear the worst. “Has something else gone wrong?"
“Trebly wrong, you might say," said Elfrida frankly, arranging the glasses and beaming across at the Lieutenant.
The Captain managed to overlook this. His seat creaked beneath him. The air reeked of old cigarette smoke, and the foul smell of soap and water and rotten floor-boards was all about him. Somewhat nervously he adjusted his stomach and folded his fat little fingers over it. Then for the first time he looked straight at Elfrida Rademacher, his excellent, multi-purpose secretary, with an expression of weary exasperation.
This girl Elfrida Rademacher was certainly not uninteresting to look at, though she was a little full in the figure and her dress bulged prominently in a number of places. She was a little like a horse, though perhaps with a rather cow like temperament. In any case there was a full-blooded rustic quality about her, suggestive of haystacks and rustling woods —all things, admittedly, to which Captain Kater attached little importance, for he was a pretty cold fish. He was, alas, no longer in his first youth, though this sometimes lent him a spurious air of virtue.
“Out with it, then, Fräulein Rademacher," he said, lighting a cigar—an especially mild Havana. “You know I'm a very understanding sort of person."
“Well, you'll need to be, this time," Elfrida assured him, winking at Krafft again, and running her tongue quickly over her lips.
“Come on, Fräulein Rademacher," said Captain Kater impatiently, “fire away."
And quite casually, if she were talking about the most natural thing in the world, she said: “Someone was raped last night."
Captain Kater winced. Even Lieutenant Krafft pricked up his ears, though he had long ago resolved never to be surprised by anything that this war for the glory of Greater Germany might have in store for him.
“It’s disgraceful!" cried Captain Kater. “Utterly disgraceful the way these cadets behave!"
“It wasn't one of the cadets," Elfrida Rademacher informed him amiably.
“Not someone from Headquarters Company, I hope?" asked the Captain, even more perturbed. Rape committed by one of the cadets would have been just tolerable, inasmuch as these were not directly under his command. Presumably the girl would concern him, for all civilian employees were his responsibility.
But if the incident should turn out to involve a member of the headquarters company, it would be disastrous. In fact it might seal his fate altogether. Coning on top of the events at the cemetery it might even get him a posting to the front.
Kater therefore glanced straight at Krafft, automatically preparing to implicate him in his troubles. The situation was grave indeed. First a man of God who sprained his ankle at the crucial moment; then a defender of the Fatherland who was foolish enough to be caught in the act of rape!
“What’s the name of the fellow who's done this to me?" he demanded.
“Corporal Krottenkopf. He's the one who was raped," announced Elfrida Rademacher, smiling with genuine pleasure.
“I’m always hearing about this Corporal Krottenkopf!" cried Kater desperately. “But really it's absurd! It's just not possible."
“It’s the truth," said Elfrida. She was obviously thoroughly enjoying herself. “The rape of Corporal Krottenkopf took place sometime in the early hours of this morning between one and three a.m. In the basement of the headquarters building too, in the communications center, by three of the signal girls on duty there."
“But it simply can't be true!" cried Captain Kater. “What do you say, Lieutenant Krafft?"
“I’m trying to envisage it from a practical point of view, Sir," declared Krafft, shaking his large bucolic head in amazement. “But I'm afraid my imagination doesn't seem to run to it."
“Disgusting!" cried Kater, meaning not so much the incident itself as its possible consequences. “What was this Krottenkopf fellow doing at night in the communications center anyway, even though he is the signals corporal? And how is it that three of these women were all in the communications center at the same time? There are never more than two on duty at once at night. And why did they have to pick on Krottenkopf? Aren't there enough cadets in the barracks who would be only too glad to satisfy their demands? Quite apart from which, why did it have to happen in duty hours!"
Captain Kater refilled his glass to the brim, and his hands were trembling so much that the cognac spilled on to a document on his desk, forming a tiny aromatic lake there. But Kater couldn't have cared less about the document or the lake of cognac. All he could think of was this appalling affair of the rape and the complications it was likely to lead to. He knocked back his glass, but its contents might have been water. There was nothing he would have liked better than to get drunk on the spot. But he had to take a decision first, and it had to be the best possible one in the circumstances. In other words it had to be a decision which would save him work and worry, and enable him to shift the responsibility from himself on to someone else's shoulders.
“Krafft," he said, “I hand the investigation of this affair over to you. The whole thing seems to me utterly incredible, but we've got to try and get to the bottom of it. I hope you follow me. I simply cannot believe that anything like this could possibly take place in my headquarters company. Biologically speaking its improbable enough, but militarily it's unthinkable. It must be a mistake."
Having said which, Kater prepared to leave, confident that officially he hadn't put a foot wrong so far. He had taken the requisite steps for an occasion of this sort, handing the matter on to someone else and seeing that it was properly investigated. If mistakes were made now, the responsibility would no longer be his. And if Krafft were by any chance to come a cropper in the process, so much the better.
Yet before Kater finally left he turned to Krafft and said: “There’s one point you oughtn't to overlook, my dear fellow—and that's this: why does Krottenkopf wait until this afternoon, before reporting this filthy business? Regulations say he should have done so first thing this morning at the latest. What does the fellow think he's doing? Who does he think he's dealing with? See that he's severely reprimanded! A man who breaks regulations like this is always a suspect."
Krafft