Читать книгу Modern Swedish Masterpieces: Short Stories онлайн

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It was empty. The blue envelope was gone—the envelope with the money and the prison director’s recommendations.

He felt a choking in his throat and a difficulty in breathing.

A sudden gust of wind shot through the leafage of the poplars like a lightning flash, and a raging squall of rain whipped him in the face.

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IT was a cold winter that year. People shrank up in the chill and grew smaller, all except those who had furs. Judge Richardt had a big fur coat. It almost belonged, moreover, to his official position, for he was managing director of a brand-new company. His old friend Dr. Henck, on the contrary, had no fur coat: he had instead a pretty wife and three children. Dr. Henck was thin and pale. Some people grow fat with marriage, others grow thin. Dr. Henck had grown thin, and remained so on this particular Christmas Eve.

I’ve had a bad year this year, said Dr. Henck to himself, as he was on his way to his old friend John Richardt to borrow money. It was three o’clock of Christmas Eve, just the hour of the mid-day twilight.—I’ve had a very bad year. My health is fragile, not to say broken. My patients, on the contrary, have picked up, almost the whole lot of them, I see them so seldom nowadays. Presumably I’m going to die soon. My wife thinks so, too; I’ve seen it in her looks. In such a case it would be desirable that the event should happen before the end of January, when the cursed life insurance premium has to be paid.