Little Apple by Leo Perutz

inquiry which found that these charges were wholly unjustified. Herr Vit¬torin was urged to take early retirement, but insisted that he had no grounds for so doing. "I shall fight to the bitter end. What's right is right and nothing can change it."
    Accordingly, he was suspended from duty and the final decision on his case referred to a disciplinary tribunal. At home he strove to maintain the pretence that nothing untoward had happened. He continued to leave home at nine each morning, complete with briefcase, and returned on the stroke of half-past three. The intervening hours he spent in small, secluded coffee houses, where he read the newspapers and adorned any passages that aroused his displeasure with exclamation and interrogation marks in blue pencil. Having read the papers from end to end, he engaged in muttered soliloquies or drafted interminable pleas for submission to the disciplinary tribunal.
    "Pension Father off?" said Vit¬torin. "Ridiculous, Lola, you're always looking on the dark side. How old is he? Only fifty-four last summer, right? Anyway, what was this row about?"
    "Oh, Ebenseder, as usual. Father shouted at me, didn't you hear? 'It's outrageous, the way you treat that man - I don't know what you think you're playing at! It's a miracle he still sets foot in this house. A decent, dependable, respectable man like that, and you don't appreciate him! That's the way you've always been: silly and inconsiderate and vain and irresponsible. You just can't go on like this!' I burst into tears and ran out of the room - my eyes are all puffy, can't you see? I do feel so sorry for Father all the same. When you came home, Georg, I thought at least you would back me up . . ."
    "You'll have to be patient, Lola," Vit¬torin said, looking harassed. "Of course you can count on me. Herr Ebenseder isn't my cup of tea either, but you know I've got to go. I won't be so preoccupied when I get back, which will probably be in four or five weeks' time. I'll go to Father and have it out with him. 'Lola wants nothing to do with Herr Ebenseder,' I'll say. 'Either he stops coming here or we both move out, Lola and I.' And if he refuses to give way ..."
    Lola smiled. "You mean well, Georg, I know, but the situation isn't as simple as you think. We can't just walk out on Father, not now. That wasn't what I meant to talk about, though - I don't know how I got on to the subject. I had something quite different to tell you. The night before last, when I was sitting alone in the living-room and thinking of going to bed, someone knocked at the door. It was Herr Bamberger, our lodger. He wondered if I could spare him a minute. Of course, I told him. Well, the long and the short of it is, he's heard that you're fluent in French and Italian, and that you know all about customs regulations and the freight business, and he thinks you may be just the man he's looking for."
    "Who told him I speak French and Italian? It strikes me as odd that he should be so well-informed about me — I've hardly exchanged a word with the man. Do you know him well?"
    "I see him now and again, of course, because I clean his room. Herr Bamberger is a nice, quiet, retiring person. He seems to have taken a great shine to Vally - she chats to him sometimes. Perhaps it was she who told him about you."
    "All right, go on. Where do I come in?"
    "He has a lot of commercial dealings with foreigners -Italians and people from the Balkans. Up to now he's had to transact all his business in coffee-houses, but he'll have his own office from the first of next month. He's very keen to have a private word with you. He'd get plenty of applicants, of course, but in your case he knows who you are. He couldn't pay you much to start with, he says, because his own resources are very modest, but he's sure he'll make a success of things, and later on he'll offer you a partnership."
    "Ah, I knew there'd be a catch! He wants me to work my fingers to the bone but he doesn't want to pay me