The Case of the Golden Bullet [19]
cruelty of others and his own passions. Again and again he read the letter which had been found on Kniepp's desk, addressed to him and which had been handed out to him after the inquest.
My friend:-
You have saved me from the shame of an open trial. I thank you for this from the very depth of my heart. I have left you a part of my own private fortune, that you may be a free man, free as a poor man never can be. You can accept this present for it comes from the hand of an honest man in spite of all. Yes, I compelled my wife to go to her death after I had compelled her to confess her shame to me, and I entered her lover's house with the knowledge I had forced from her. When I looked through the keyhole and saw his false face before me, I murdered him in cold blood. Then, that the truth might not be suspected, I continued to play the sorrowing husband. I wore on my watch chain the ring I had had made in imitation of the one my wife had worn. This original ring of hers, her wedding ring which she had defiled, I sent in the form of a bullet straight to her lover's heart. Yes, I have committed a crime, but I feel that I am less criminal than those two whom I judged and condemned, and whose sentence I carried out as I now shall carry out my own sentence with a hand which will not tremble. That I can do this myself, I have you to thank for, you who can look into the souls of men and recognise the most hidden motives, you who have not only a wonderful brain but a heart that can feel. You, I hope, will sometimes think kindly of your grateful LEO KNIEPP.
Muller kept this letter as one of his most sacred treasures.
The "Kniepp Case" was really, as Bauer had predicted, the last in Muller's public career. Even the friendliness of the kind old chief could not keep him in his position after this new display of the unreliability of his heart. But his quiet tastes allowed him to live in humble comfort from the income of his little fortune.
Every now and then letters or telegrams will come for him and he will disappear for several days. His few friends believe that the police authorities, who refused to employ him publicly owing to his strange weakness, cannot resist a private appeal to his talent whenever a particularly difficult case arises.
End
My friend:-
You have saved me from the shame of an open trial. I thank you for this from the very depth of my heart. I have left you a part of my own private fortune, that you may be a free man, free as a poor man never can be. You can accept this present for it comes from the hand of an honest man in spite of all. Yes, I compelled my wife to go to her death after I had compelled her to confess her shame to me, and I entered her lover's house with the knowledge I had forced from her. When I looked through the keyhole and saw his false face before me, I murdered him in cold blood. Then, that the truth might not be suspected, I continued to play the sorrowing husband. I wore on my watch chain the ring I had had made in imitation of the one my wife had worn. This original ring of hers, her wedding ring which she had defiled, I sent in the form of a bullet straight to her lover's heart. Yes, I have committed a crime, but I feel that I am less criminal than those two whom I judged and condemned, and whose sentence I carried out as I now shall carry out my own sentence with a hand which will not tremble. That I can do this myself, I have you to thank for, you who can look into the souls of men and recognise the most hidden motives, you who have not only a wonderful brain but a heart that can feel. You, I hope, will sometimes think kindly of your grateful LEO KNIEPP.
Muller kept this letter as one of his most sacred treasures.
The "Kniepp Case" was really, as Bauer had predicted, the last in Muller's public career. Even the friendliness of the kind old chief could not keep him in his position after this new display of the unreliability of his heart. But his quiet tastes allowed him to live in humble comfort from the income of his little fortune.
Every now and then letters or telegrams will come for him and he will disappear for several days. His few friends believe that the police authorities, who refused to employ him publicly owing to his strange weakness, cannot resist a private appeal to his talent whenever a particularly difficult case arises.
End