LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1488, 22 November 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM. Byxue Auutiioroe “ A Strange Witness,” “ Hands and Hearts,” &o. ( Continued .) Eraser was not again seen alive, His dead body was found n<>xt morning in the room occupied by him in the Auerbachs Hof. He was lying on his face, with the temporal hone on the righr, side smashed in. He was fully dressed No robbery from his person had been attempted. In his trunks were found eight thousand thalers in notes and silver. There seemed positively nothing missing, except his cash book, which hid mystedously disappeaied, but suddenly turnol up again almost as mysteriously, having been found eaily on Friday morning by Eliezer Ischanderle, a Polish Jew of Lemberg, in Galicia. The last page had been cut out. This time the excitement and terror of the I ei >zigers reached the highest pitch. Indeed, the who'o of Germany was profoundly stirred by this third most inexp i cable hammer murler, as Professor Tauber approtriately designated the fearful crime. Who could bo this demon who seemed to roam ab mt killing and slaying, as it were simply for j.thc love or the fun <-f the thing. Poor Tauber got a mad notiop in hia head that his theory of painless kil ing bad somehow been laid hold of by a ghoul in human shape, and he grew m ’rose, and would no longer go into the outer world, hut persisted in shut'ing himself up in his library’, where he would pass days without food. The police strained eve-y nerve to get on thmysterious murderer’s track The mos" astute detectives that Vienna, Berlin, and Pads could boast of wc v e induced to come to Leipzig. It was all of no avail The murderer continued to remain a mere impalpable shadow. 1 here stands an old house in the Hain Strasse, in Leipzig, No, 31, which has a ce’tain celebrity, as the poet Schiller lived in it for several years in 1781, and again in 1789. In 1824 an apartment of three rooms on the second fl or of this house was rented by one Abraham Goldberg, a in n ney-broker, as he liked to hear himself called, but in truth simply a rapacious money lender and usurer, and a miserable miser to boot It was in the first week, technicaPy termed the < Coopers’ week,’ of Michaelmas Pair. Abraham Goldberg sat in his inner room, engaged in eager conversation with Eliezer Ischanderle of Lemberg, who had come up again to the fair ‘lt is a safe affair, Eliezer,’ he said, ‘ quite safe, and most promising 5 else w< uld I not have proposed to you. lam glad you brought tho money with you to Leipzig, so there will be no delay. lam down f >r ten thousand to your ten thousand, Y"U need not app-ar in the matter. You bring you share here to-night at nine. Silbennann, who conducts the operation, will call to morrow morning at ter,. You had better go. Ischanderle. Mind, 1 expect you without fail at nine to-niuht,’ During the last words Professor Tauber had erte ed. ‘ At nine then,’ said Ischanderle, and took his leave. * What procures me the honour and pleasure of tho presence of the most learned man of the University of Leipzig in ray humble dwelling?’ inquired Abraham Goldberg, in his habitual cringing, crawling way. ‘ Drop your nonsense, Mr Goldberg; I hate it. I do not mean it as an honour to you, nor is it a pleasure to me to seek you out in your robber’s cave, was the professor’s most ungracious reply. ‘ I call simply to repay the two hundred thalers you lent me last month on my note of hand ; I do not want to run the ri°k of another month’s usurrous interest, 80 there is the money. Two hundred and ten thalers. You will find it all right. Hand me back my note of hand. ‘ Just as you please, sir professor,’ said Abraham Goldberg quietly, counting the money pushed t > him by Tauber. ‘lt is all right, sir professor. Two huudred triers Lut, and five per cent interest ’ ‘ Five per cent interest!’ shouted the professor ang-ily ; ‘ I vqonder you can have the c ol confidence to utter that gross falsehood so brazenly to my face. Five per cent! Sixty per cent you mean ; for twelve Hines five will just make sixty.’ ‘ Five per cent fo" the month, 1 mean, of course, sir professor, it is not finely that T would risk my money at such a rate per annum by lending it to people who make ducus and drakes of every farthing they can lay hold of, by investing it in tho purchase < f musty printed rags. ’ ‘Hand me my note of hand, Mr Goldberg,’ exclaimed the professor fiercely, with an angry glare at the usurer; ‘ your insolence is out of place, sir!’ Then contemptuously, ‘Ah, hah ! i do nit wish to bandy words with «uuh as you.’ ‘ Have it as you wish, sir professor/ replied Abraham Goldberg, with the name imperturbable calm ‘ I know you will come to me again, perhaps this very day, if it should chance to fall out that a tempting purchase is offered to you, and you have to raise the cash at a pinch. Well well; there is no need to quarrel—no need to quarrel. Here is your note of hand, sir p •ofessor.’ And the usurer turned r ud to opt a a large cash-box, from which he lifted a small case filled with gulden coin, and pla cd it on the table, while ho was looking for the portfolio which contained the o,ote of hand. The professor’s face suddenly underwent a strange tranefounavon. His features were painfully contracted, and flaihos of liquid lira (Uit-d from his eyes. His hands were spasmodically' opening and shutHng. ‘Vile usurer !’ he shouted, with incredible fury, to the amazed d<nv, who could not for the fife of him account for this fierce oat, hurst —‘vile usurer; I say, how daze,you display your wretched yellow ilro 3 to me—to mo of all men! Think you that every man v/ii.l rick soul and body for it as. yea do ! Take it away 1 shut it out ci sight! My note of hand ! my note of hand ! —quick ! ! And snatching the little document out of the alarmed usurer’s hand, he wildly rushed off, cursing the mar. and his gold all the way as ho went along ‘Fool, fool! triple fool!’ M murmurfd as ho m eat cl ’ng. My poor head! My poor head! Miserable wretch with his vile dross !'

* t-'roken on the wheel, broken on the wheel, from the lower extremities upwards I That s what ought to be done to him ; and even that is 100 merciful by half. Ho ought to be to-n limb from limb !’ exclaimed towncouncillor Bartels, trying hard, but failing miserably, to force a t uculeut expression into his good-natured jolly face. * I have no patience with your tender hearted nonsense, professor,’ he continued. ‘What! hero we have caught this diabolical murderer at last, this h rnbie Jew demur, and you prate about fate, and predestination, and human frailty, and such trash, and talk in pitying accents of the “ poor unhappy fellow” forsooth ! Poor unhappy fellow —at his fourth murder! Drop it professor ; flesh aud bio: d cannot stand it.’ ‘ Right you are, Bartels. You have Tauber there on the hip. It is more than llesh and b'ood can stand to find him thus the unvarying champion of even the moat hideous monsters and monstrosities,’ cried Dr Reicheubach, the eminent surgeon and anatomist, who was one of the main props and pillars of the upper table in the old Rathswage Cellar, where, in the evening of the day after Professor Tauber’s visit to Abraham G ‘robber cave,’ as the profe-sor had ignomimously dubbed the money lender’s office, an excited crowd of citiz -ns of all classes, with a large sprinkling among them of university men, doctor’s officers, bankers, merchants, and government aud city officials, had gathered in conclave ext a ordinary, to discuss no end of chopins of the fa -famed good and cheap vintages always on tap in that hoary drinking hall—which had then ten generations of topers, and is now seeing the twelfth generation—and to interchange opinions upon the horrible murder of Abraham Goldberg, the money-lender of the Hain Atrasse, whose dead body had been found that morning in his office, with the temporal bone on the right side of the head smashed in. This was now the fourth murder committed in the course of the last four years in and about Leipzig iu exactly the same manner. However, this time the monsstrous assassin had been less cautious or less lucky than in his three formsr ‘ventures.’ He had been tracked to his lair, and ho was now safe y lodged in prison. He was a Galioan Jew, one Hiezsr Ischanderle of Lemberg. In bis detection and apprehension the finger of Providence had been conspicuously manifest, it appeared. On the day before, in the morning, Eliezer Ischanderle had called upon Abraham Goldberg. Professor Tauber, who had had occasion to see Goldberg about the same time, to repay him an advance of two hundred thalers, had seen the Galician Jew there, and had heard him say something about returning some time iu the evening It will bo remembered that this Kliezer Ischanderle was the person who had found Mr Besser’s cask book in the Auerbachs-Hof murder case. When he had on that occasion brought the book to the police offi e a certain Commissary Wei ley t hat been the officer on duty. Somehow this worthy official had not been favorably impressed by Ischanderle, but as there really seemed to be no tangible ground of suspicion against the man, he had kept his impression to himself at the time. On the evening of Goldberg’s murder, Wcile-t was pa-sing through the Hain Strasse, when In observed Ischanderle lurking about, apparently seeming to shun observation, 'Phis struck Weilert, aud he watched the Jew from the earner of the street. He saw him walk up several times to the door of .No. 31, but always turn back agaiu, until at last, about nine o’clock, he came forth agaiu a quarter of an hour after and walked away briskly over the Markt Plat/, and along the Peters Strasse to the Prcusser Gassoheo, where ho went into Gumpcr Levi’s Jew lodging house, followed and watched all the way by Weilert, who was acting in this matter simply uuder some indefinable impulse, without a precise motive or o'-ji’ct. Weiler c was on duty in the morning, when information of the murder was brought to the office. The event became at once con. : uected in his mind with the Jew whom, he had watched home the evening before. v ' ithout an instant delay he went, with three constables, to Gum per Levi’s house, where he found Eiiczcr Ixohanderle just on the point of leav ng. He arrested him on the spot, and instituted a minute search of his trunks and effects. In one of the trunks a sum of six thousand thalers in gold was found, besides some five thousand thalers in Austrian papers. Gumper Levi, who was present at the search, expressed his unfeigned astonishment at the sight of the money, as Eliezer had, as be s'aDd, only the afternoon before borrowed twenty-five thalers of him, which he had not yet repaid. But a more damaging piece of evidence turned up. A heavy broad-faced hammer was found among the Jew’s effects, which it was soon discovered he had bought the afternoon before, for the alleged purpose of nailing down a trunk, of which the lock had got out of order. Once fairly started on the track, the police performed marvels within the shortest space of time, By three o clock two most momentous facts had been established : 1. A careful examination of the hooks of deceased and of the cash in the box showed a deficit of six thousand thalers gold, the exact sum (found iu Ischanderlo’s trunk, 2. i *r, Reicheubach, after close and minute inspection and measurement ot the hammer found among thosuspeoted murJerei’s effects, expressed bis deliberate opinion that the deathblow had been given with some snob weapon, wielded by a powerful arm. Now Edezer Ischanderle was a big framed man, of strong muscular development—which settled that point. But the police made further discoveries of almost e ;ual importance. The host of the Waldschlosschoa, a famous place of public r soit*nd amusement nea- Ro enau La k came up expressly to Leipzig to identify the prisoner as the ‘ big boned Jew’ whom he now suddenly remembered to have seen in his garden qii the morning of the Baron von Hohenoek’a murder. Ischandeile’s earnest denial of the imputation availed him naught, of course The neighbours of the murdered widow Hartmann remembered also rather suddenly that they had seen Eliezer very often at the Tetzcl house. This the accused was compelled to admit; he protested, however, that his visits there had not been to admit; he protected, however, that his visits there had not teen to Mis Har mann, whom he swore ho had never known, but to a Heb.ew f Send of his, now deceased. Hia fatal connection with the Auerbachs-Hof murder was deaily fixed in the public mind and conscience. Had ho not pretended to find the murdered man’s cash-book ? And had be not been taken now almost redhanded ? The hardened criminal persisted, however, in the vehement asseveration of his perfect innocence of all or either of the murders, imputed to him. Galled upon to explain bis evening visit to Abraham Goldberg and the peculiar hesitation be had betrayed to. go into the house, as reported by Commissary Weilert, he made the fo lowing rather extraordinary statement • (To he continued.')