would enable him to find him . . . or to find her! He heroically repressed the inclination to open at least one letter; but he was alone there behind dirty windows, and everything seemed to exhale an atmosphere of base and secret corruption. And then, quickly overcoming all his scruples, he began to tear open the envelopes and read one letter after the other. A bill for Persian carpets, for flowers, for three typewriters; urgent reminders regarding goods given on commission; some mysterious transaction relating to a horse, foreign currency and twenty wagons of wood somewhere near Kremnice. Prokop could not believe his eyes; according to these documents Thomas was either a smuggler on a large scale, or an agent dealing in Persian carpets, or a speculator on the Exchange, very probably all three. In addition he did business in motor-cars, export certificates, office furniture and, obviously, all sorts of things. In one letter there was something about two million crowns, while in another, soiled and written in pencil, there was a threat of a complaint regarding some antique or other which he had wheedled from somebody. Everything together pointed to a long succession of deceptions, embezzlements, falsifications of export documents, as far as Prokop was able to understand; it was simply amazing that it had not all come out. One solicitor intimated briefly that such and such a firm had brought an action against Mr. Thomas for embezzling forty thousand crowns; it was in Mr. Thomas’s own interest to appear at his office, etc. Prokop was horrified; if it were all once found out what would not be the ramifications of this unutterable turpitude?
