enberg.

ALVA. What can I do for you?

HUGENBERG. I've come from Muensterburg. I ran away this morning.

ALVA. My eyes are bad. I am forced to keep the blinds closed.

HUGENBERG. I need your help. You will not refuse me. I've got a plan
ready. Can anyone hear us?

ALVA. What do you mean? What sort of a plan?

HUGENBERG. Are you alone?

ALVA. Yes. What do you want to impart to me?

HUGENBERG. I've had two plans already that I let drop. What I shall
tell you now has been worked out to the last possible chance. If I
had money I should not confide it to you; I thought about that a long
time before coming.... Will you not permit me to set forth to you my
design?

ALVA. Will you kindly tell me just what you are talking about?

HUGENBERG. She cannot possibly be so indifferent to you that I must
tell you that. The evidence *you* gave the coroner helped her more
than everything the defending counsel said.

ALVA. I beg to decline the supposition.

HUGENBERG. You would say that; I understand that, of course. But all
the same you were her best witness.

ALVA. *You* were! You said my father was about to force her to shoot
herself.

HUGENBERG. He was, too. But they didn't believe me. I wasn't put on
my oath.

ALVA. Where have you come from now?

HUGENBERG. From a reform-school I broke out of this morning.

ALVA. And what do you have in view?

HUGENBERG. I'm trying to get into the confidence of a turnkey.

ALVA. What do you mean to live on?

HUGENBERG. I'm living with a girl who's had a child by my father.

ALVA. Who is your father?

HUGENBERG. He's a police captain. I know the prison without ever
having been inside it; and nobody in it will recognize me as I am
now. But I don't count on that at all. I know an iron ladder by which
one can get from the first court to the roof and thru an opening
there into the attic. There's no way up to it from inside. But in all
five wings boards and laths and great heaps of shavings are lying
under the roofs, and I'll drag them all together in the middle and
set fire to them. My pockets are full of matches and all the things
used to make fires.

ALVA. But then you'll burn up there!

HUGENBERG. Of course, if I'm not rescued. But to get into the first
court I must have the turnkey in my power, and for that I need money.
Not that I mean to bribe him; that wouldn't go. I must lend him money
to send his three children to the country, and then at four o'clock
in the mornin