The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow | Page 4

he will track down his victim when the entire
machinery of a great police department seems helpless to discover
anything. The high chiefs and commissioners grant a condescending
permission when Muller asks, "May I do this? ... or may I handle this
case this way?" both parties knowing all the while that it is a farce, and
that the department waits helpless until this humble little man saves its
honour by solving some problem before which its intricate machinery
has stood dazed and puzzled.
This call of the trail is something that is stronger than anything else in
Muller's mentality, and now and then it brings him into conflict with
the department, ... or with his own better nature. Sometimes his
unerring instinct discovers secrets in high places, secrets which the
Police Department is bidden to hush up and leave untouched. Muller is
then taken off the case, and left idle for a while if he persists in his
opinion as to the true facts. And at other times, Muller's own warm
heart gets him into trouble. He will track down his victim, driven by the

power in his soul which is stronger than all volition; but when he has
this victim in the net, he will sometimes discover him to be a much
finer, better man than the other individual, whose wrong at this
particular criminal's hand set in motion the machinery of justice.
Several times that has happened to Muller, and each time his heart got
the better of his professional instincts, of his practical common-sense,
too, perhaps, ... at least as far as his own advancement was concerned,
and he warned the victim, defeating his own work. This peculiarity of
Muller's character caused his undoing at last, his official undoing that is,
and compelled his retirement from the force. But his advice is often
sought unofficially by the Department, and to those who know,
Muller's hand can be seen in the unravelling of many a famous case.
The following stories are but a few of the many interesting cases that
have come within the experience of this great detective. But they give a
fair portrayal of Muller's peculiar method of working, his looking on
himself as merely an humble member of the Department, and the
comedy of his acting under "official orders" when the Department is in
reality following out his directions.

THE CASE OF THE POCKET DIARY FOUND IN THE SNOW
by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
CHAPTER I
THE DISCOVERY IN THE SNOW
A quiet winter evening had sunk down upon the great city. The clock in
the old clumsy church steeple of the factory district had not yet struck
eight, when the side door of one of the large buildings opened and a
man came out into the silent street.
It was Ludwig Amster, one of the working-men in the factory, starting
on his homeward way. It was not a pleasant road, this street along the
edge of the city. The town showed itself from its most disagreeable side

here, with malodorous factories, rickety tenements, untidy open
stretches and dumping grounds offensive both to eye and nostril.
Even by day the street that Amster took was empty; by night it was
absolutely quiet and dark, as dark as were the thoughts of the solitary
man. He walked along, brooding over his troubles. Scarcely an hour
before he had been discharged from the factory because of his refusal
to submit to the injustice of his foreman.
The yellow light of the few lanterns show nothing but high board walls
and snow drifts, stone heaps, and now and then the remains of a
neglected garden. Here and there a stunted tree or a wild shrub bent
their twigs under the white burden which the winter had laid upon them.
Ludwig Amster, who had walked this street for several years, knew his
path so well that he could take it blindfolded. The darkness did not
worry him, but he walked somewhat more slowly than usual, for he
knew that under the thin covering of fresh-fallen snow there lay the ice
of the night before. He walked carefully, watching for the slippery
places.
He had been walking about half an hour, perhaps, when he came to a
cross street. Here he noticed the tracks of a wagon, the trace still quite
fresh, as the slowly falling flakes did not yet cover it. The tracks led out
towards the north, out on to the hilly, open fields.
Amster was somewhat astonished. It was very seldom that a carriage
came into this neighbourhood, and yet these narrow wheel-tracks could
have been made only by an equipage of that character. The heavy
trucks which passed these roads occasionally had much wider wheels.
But Amster was to find still more to astonish