This remark went home all right, and the Captain rose to his feet. “What an irrepressible fellow you are, Feders!" he said condescendingly in an attempt to laugh, but it didn't sound very convincing. Kater left, saying that he wanted to go and inspect some stores that were arriving.
No sooner had Captain Kater arrived in the officers'-mess kitchen and taken a shot of something to boost his morale with, than Judge-Advocate Wirrmann appeared on the scene.
"Anything worrying you, my dear Herr Kater?" he asked sympathetically.
"Nothing important," Kater assured him.
"Then," said Wirrmann, “you should find it all the easier to confide in someone who is well disposed towards you. You can rest assured, my dear fellow, that if it's justice you're after you've come to the right address."
“Now, ladies," said Lieutenant Krafft, beginning his interrogation, " I'd like you to try and forget both that I'm a man and that I'm an officer."
“That won't be easy," said one of the three girls.
“Do your best, all the same," Krafft advised them. “Imagine I'm a sort of neuter, a personification of the law, if you like. You can talk to me freely, without any false modesty."
“We don't have such a thing anyway," said another of the girls.
Lieutenant Krafft now found himself at what might be called the scene of the crime, that's to say in the communications center in the basement of the H.Q. building. Chairs stood in front of a row of switchboards, above which were circuit diagrams with the inevitable poster, “Beware! The enemy is listening!" There was a table in one corner on which stood coffee cups, a jug and an electric kettle. The latter was officially forbidden throughout the barracks, but since it was Captain Kater and not General Modersohn who was responsible for the ban, no one paid any attention to it. In another corner stood a camp bed—the corpus delicate, so to speak—a shabby, battered, rusty iron bedstead, with a mattress and some blankets on it.
Krafft confronted the three girls behind the switchboards. Their figures were well-developed and their faces pretty and innocent-looking. Their honest, friendly eyes regarded him with curiosity. Though the eldest of these girls was barely more than twenty, they were neither particularly embarrassed nor excited, seeming to have no sense of guilt at all.
“What can you have been thinking of, ladies?" asked Lieutenant Krafft warily.
“Absolutely nothing," said one of the girls, which sounded convincing enough.
“Right," said Krafft. “I admit the business demands no particularly strenuous intellectual effort, but some sort of thought-process is unavoidable. For example: why exactly did you have to pick on Corporal Krottenkopf?"
“Oh, anyone would have done," said one of the girls, managing to smile at Krafft, ”and this Krottenkopf just happened to be handy."
Lieutenant Krafft found he had to sit down. The whole affair seemed to him either fearfully complex or else amazingly simple, which sometimes amounted to the same thing.
“At any rate," said Krafft finally, “you did lay hands on him, didn't you?"
The girls looked at each other. They seemed to have come to a pretty careful agreement about what they were to say. Krafft couldn't really take objection to this. He had no particular wish to start a major judicial process. So he simply smiled encouragement at the astonishing creatures.
" It's true," said one of them, a pretty little thing, with a wide baby smile and frank honest eyes, and a sort of roguishness about her reminiscent of her grandmother's era in the First World War, " it's true we took his clothes off, but we then meant simply to throw him out as a sort of demonstration. The trouble was he wouldn't budge."
“You mean," said Krafft in amazement, “this was simply a sort of demonstration!"
“Exactly!" said the unbelievably innocent-looking girl. “Because it's time something was done about the situation in these barracks. There are nearly a thousand cadets and fifty girls here, and no one's allowed to take any notice of us at all. Wherever you go there's supervision and closed doors and we're surrounded by sentries. All we're asking for is a certain amount of social life. We just don't want to vegetate! But human beings mean nothing to this General, he doesn't take the slightest notice of us. And all this had to be said! That was why we picked on Krottenkopf—not because we wanted to start anything with him but because we wanted to draw attention to the situation. Now do you understand?"
Lieutenant Krafft was beginning to see the funny side of all this, though he was determined to tread warily.
“Listen a moment," he said, “I want to tell you a story. When I was a boy and still lived in the country, some of our geese one day waddled across some relatively clean washing put out to dry by our neighbor, who immediately lodged a complaint. Now there were a number of possibilities. First, the geese themselves were wicked. Secondly, they had been deliberately driven over the washing. Or thirdly, they had simply strayed there. The last explanation was the simplest and the best and it wasn't difficult to make it sound plausible. After all, wicked geese or geese that had been maliciously inspired could lead to all sorts of trouble. Trouble of the sort that geese don't usually survive. Now is the moral clear? Or do I have to make myself still clearer?"
The girls eyed Krafft carefully, and then exchanged glances among themselves. Finally the innocent-looking one, who was probably the sharpest of the three, said: " You mean we should simply say it was some sort of mistake?"
" Well, not a mistake exactly," advised Krafft, " but you might perhaps have been playing a trivial if daring practical joke, an innocent sort of tease to get your own back on your tyrant Krottenkopf. Only unfortunately the tease rather got out of hand in a way you couldn't have foreseen. In this way you shift the blame from yourselves without actually putting it on to anyone else. If it was a sort of joke, well, perhaps a few long faces will be pulled about it, but no one's going to lose his head. If, however, it were a serious matter, if there were any question of assault, or something as perverted as rape—then good night, sweet ladies! That could end in jail. Which in certain circumstances can be even more unpleasant than life in barracks."
“How nice you are," said one of the girls gratefully, while the others nodded vigorously. They realized at once that they were lucky to have been allowed to jump back from the fire into the frying pan. “One could really get along with someone like you."
“Maybe," said Lieutenant Krafft. “But don't get it into your heads to pursue the matter further next time you find yourselves bored with night duty and in search of a little diversion."
When Lieutenant Krafft got back to his desk in the headquarters company he found someone waiting for him. This was a slight little figure of a man with the quick agile movements of a squirrel, a pointed nose and the darting eyes of some bird of prey.
“Allow me to introduce myself," the little man said. “My name's Wirrmann—Judge-Advocate. I am interested in the Krottenkopf case."
“Who told you about that?" asked Krafft cautiously.
“Your superior officer Captain Kater," explained the little man quietly but firmly. “Besides, it's all over the mess by now, and being discussed in a rather unsavory manner, which is hardly surprising. All the more reason for getting it dealt with and out of the way as quickly as possible. Your superior officer at any rate sought my advice and I was prepared to give him my fullest support. The case interests me, from both the legal and the human point of view. Perhaps you will let me know how