The "Dismal Hole" was one of those suspicious places to which
respectable people never resort, even after a long and dusty walk, when
some refreshment seems to be needed. Young men, perhaps, who have less
virtue than desire to enjoy life, and whom the spirit of mischief has
led far from their accustomed haunts, occasionally drift into its
sombre halls, and find next morning their heads aching furiously, and
their minds filled with confused but by no means pleasant reminiscences
of the night. Nevertheless the "Dismal Hole" was found in a by-street
of a very fashionable quarter of the city, and very modest in the day.
It shone forth at night by means of a blood-red lamp, which looked up
and down the street invitingly until the sun came and extinguished it.
During all these hours it seemed to be irresistibly attractive to many
people; at least it was almost always crowded with customers. Thus it
was on this evening also. There was scarcely a vacant chair in the four
or five large rooms which formed the "Dismal Hole." Eliza, Bertha, and
Pauline, the three pretty waiters, had their hands full in bringing the
beer to each thirsty guest, and in giving him time to pinch their
cheeks, or at least to say a civil word. These confidential interviews,
short as they were, no doubt interfered somewhat with business, but
what could be done? Thirsty gentlemen, belonging to a certain class of
society, insist upon holding the pretty hand that brings them the mug
of beer, though it may be slightly moistened with foam, a little while
in their own; and in this case such a desire was all the more
justifiable, as the three girls were really very pretty, and did all
honor to the good taste of the landlady of the "Dismal Hole."
Mrs. Rosalie Pape was a lady of fifty or more, who struck you at first
sight by her enormous size. It was only after more careful examination
that you noticed the coarseness of the features, which were half hid in
fat, and the short and square fingers of the plump white hands; and
only the experienced observer could discover that the brown hair which
adorned abundantly the head of the matron could not possibly be her
own, and that the small, bright blue eyes, in spite of the apparent
kindliness of the broad mouth, had a sharp and at times even a
downright wicked and dangerous expression.
The guests at the "Dismal Hole," however, were not the men to make such
observations. In their eyes Rosalie was a charming, splendid woman,
under whose management the fame of the place was spreading far and
near, and they were delighted when the good lady left her place behind
the bar and made a tour through the whole basement. Here she would
familiarly clap an acquaintance on the shoulder, or welcome a newcomer;
there she would graciously accept the praise of her beer, or try to
disarm a critic by putting his glass to her own lips and taking a pull
of which a sergeant need not have been ashamed.
Thus she had just now approached two men who were sitting alone in a
corner, and putting their heads close together whispered so eagerly
that it was evident the topic of their conversation must have been of
the greatest importance.
"Well, little Schmenckel, how do?" said Mrs. Rosalie, putting her fat
hand upon the broad shoulders of the strong gentleman in the velvet
coat; "it seems to me you look rather warm. Do not drink too much, or
you will not be able to show off well afterwards. You have a large
audience to-night."
"I fear I wont be able to do much to-night," said the director, with
stammering tongue, his face flushed and almost painfully.
"But, Schmenckel, you promised!" replied Mrs. Rose, and her eyes did
not look very kindly at him. "One good turn deserves another, you
know."
"My friend Schmenckel will consider it," said the other gentleman, a
man with light hair, and wearing spectacles over his sharp blue eyes;
"he happens just now to be somewhat excited by an encounter he had an
hour ago Under the Lindens. However, I am particularly delighted,
madame, to have found out your new address through Mr. Schmenckel. I
had been looking for you all over town for two days, and all in vain."
Mrs. Rose Pape cast a glance at the speaker. There was something in his
whole appearance, and in his way of speaking, which attracted her.
"With whom have I the honor?" she said.
"All on my side! Will you favor us with your company for a few
moments?" said the young man, offering Mrs. Rosalie the third yet
vacant chair near the little table. "My name is Albert Timm, from
Grunwald. I have a letter of introduction to you from an old friend,
who sends his kindest regards. May I be permitted to place the document
in those beautiful hands?" And Mr. Timm handed the lady an unsealed
letter, which he had drawn from a very shabby pocket-book.
Mrs. Rosalie seemed to be a little embarrassed by this communication.
She cast one more searching glance at the stranger, looked all around
the room to see that she was unobserved, opened the note, turned
ralf-round to get the benefit of the gas-light, and read:
"Dear Rose: The bearer is a very good friend of mine, whom you can
trust _unconditionally_. He will tell you something about that matter
at Grenwitz that will make you open your eyes wide. If you and Jeremiah
will help him, we can, I am sure, help a certain gentleman to his
inheritance, and make a prodigious profit out of it ourselves. Good-by!
I hope you are well; and I hope the same of your still warmly attached
T. G."
"You know the hand-writing?" asked Mr. Timm of the good lady, who,
after reading the letter twice, and folding it up carefully to put it
in her pocket, had been looking at him for some time with suspicious
glances.
"It seems to me the hand-writing is familiar," she said.
"Well, for the present that is the main point. As for the rest, I will
tell you more at the proper time. I hope you will grant me, to-night,
the favor and the honor of a confidential talk. I am sure we shall be
the best friends in the world by to-morrow."
There was a confidence and self-assurance in the manner of the young
man which decidedly imposed on Mrs. Rosalie, however nicer people might
have been shocked by the air of vulgar impertinence with which it was
flavored. She returned the familiar pressure of Timm's hand and rose,
as just at that moment one of the three Hebes came to say that she was
wanted at the bar.
Mr. Timm turned once more to Director Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna,
who was so drunk or so absorbed in his thoughts that he had paid little
or no attention to the conversation between his friend and Mrs.
Rosalie, and then he said:
"I don't see how you can be doubtful a moment. I tell you, as you were
thus facing each other I was struck by the likeness, although I had
little leisure at that time to make observations. I grant the accident
is marvellous which has brought you together once more after so many
years, at an hour and at a place where you perhaps least expected ever
to meet. But what does that amount to? I have a great respect for
Master Accident, for he has helped me over and over again out of many a
predicament when all cleverness and wisdom were at fault. And this
accident is too famous not to be something more than a mere accident.
And what is the great wonder, after all? You court, twenty-two years
ago, a frivolous lady, and you succeed. When the husband returns, and
finds you under suspicious circumstances, you pitch him out of the
window. The lady never has had but one child, and the age of that child
agrees to the day. You were in St. Petersburg, you tell me, in
September, eighteen hundred and twenty-five, and the prince was born in
May, twenty-six ----"
"How do you know all that?" asked Mr. Schmenckel, and shook his head
incredulously.
"I tell you, my man, I know it! That is enough for you. And suppose the
fellow is not your son, then----"
"But why shouldn't he be my son?" cried Mr. Schmenckel, striking the
table with his gigantic hand "Do I look as if I was not up to having
children?"
Mr. Timm took off his spectacles, wiped the glasses carefully, put them
on again, looked laughingly at Director Caspar Schmenckel's flushed
face, and said good-naturedly:
"Look here, old man, you are a funny old creature. First, I talk till I
lose my breath to prove to you that you are the father of this hopeful
youth; and then, when I merely assume it might not be so, you become
disagreeable, and look as if you were going to beat me. I only meant to
say this: Suppose the man is not your son, then, that also does not
matter much. We can only try. We can ask if the princess remembers a
certain evening at St. Petersburg, and so forth, and so forth. I'll
wager my head against an empty pumpkin we frighten her out of her wits,
and the roubles come tumbling down into our lap."
"But wont they hand us over to the police?" asked Mr. Schmenckel,
shaking his head thoughtfully.
"Pshaw! They will be glad if no one else hears of it. There is no
better ally for people like us than a bad conscience. I tell you I have
some experience in that department."
Mr. Schmenckel reflected so deeply on the grave matter that, what with
the mental effort, and perhaps also with too much beer, his head began
to glow. Suddenly a thought occurred to him which might throw some
light, if not upon the matter itself, at least upon the character of
his new friend.
"But," he said, "what, after all, is the whole story to you?"
"Fie, director," replied Timm, with great indignation "I should not
have expected such a question from you. Did you not save me from the
paws of the soldiers! Does not one hand wash the other? Is there no
such thing in the world as gratitude? If you insist absolutely upon
being a poor devil for the rest of your life instead of living in your
own house with an annuity of a few thousand roubles, and of driving
your own carriage, I have nothing to say to it! I beg your pardon for
having troubled you with all these things. Come, let us talk of
something else!"
"Now, come, don't fly off at such a pace!" cried Mr. Schmenckel,
anxiously. "I don't dream of taking anything amiss, especially if you
want to make me the father of a live prince. But that I should have
such a grand son, and that I should have whipped him so unmercifully
the very first time I ever set eyes on him, that is surely amazing
enough. If Caspar Schmenckel were to tell anybody else so he would not
be believed."
"I do not see," said Timm, "why that is any more amazing than that I
must be the only one of the thousands in the park to run right into the
arms of the prince; that I alone happen to know him from former times;
that I remember his name, mention it to you, and thus call up in your
mind a remembrance which helps us to make this important discovery. I
can assure you I was at first quite as much amazed as you are; but such
things, thank God, do not last long with me."
Mr. Timm threw himself back in his chair and picked his teeth. Mr.
Schmenckel looked with infinite astonishment, not unmixed with fear, at
the man whom even such an extraordinary event could not move from
habitual coolness. Mr. Schmenckel was not the man to reflect deeply on
the relations in which he stood to this man; but still, he had an
indistinct feeling about it. As he was looking at him thus, he felt a
decided inclination to give the young man a hearty drubbing, or to
punish him in some other way for his superiority, as an elephant
sometimes may dream of the pleasure he would enjoy if he could hurl his
Carnac on the ground and trample upon him with his feet for a few
minutes.
It was a few hours later. Only a few guests had remained in the "Dismal
Hole," where they had had very lively times--the excitement was intense
everywhere; beer was drunk by the cask, and speeches were made without
number and without end. They sat scattered about, in groups of three
and four persons, mostly people of rather peculiar appearance, such as
are only seen in large cities, and there also rarely or never in the
day-time and on the streets. Men in shabby, often fantastic costumes,
with dissipated and yet attractive features, and with eyes which now
blazed up in wild passion, and now gloated stolidly on vacancy--strange
figures, who tell the knowing eye without opening their lips long
stories of proud plans and childish deeds, of great talents and still
greater recklessness, of lofty pride and low disgrace, of senseless
dissipation and gnawing hunger, of incredible efforts condemned to end
like the labors of Sisyphus, and of an ambition leading only to the
sufferings of Tantalus, until efforts and ambition and every virtue,
nay, every good instinct, is drowned in the morass of apathetic
indifference.
But these groups also gradually disappeared; one light after another
was put out by the poor girls, who had for the last hour been nodding
here and there in the corners, their pretty faces buried in their round
arms; and at last there was nobody left but Mr. Schmenckel, who was
asleep, drunk, on one of the sofas, and two other gentlemen who were
sitting with the landlady around one of the small tables over a bottle
of champagne. One of these men was Albert Timm, from Grunwald; the
other was a man of middle age, who had only come about an hour ago, and
whom Mrs. Rose had introduced to Mr. Timm as the brother of his
landlord in Grunwald, Mr. Jeremiah Goodheart. From his clothes and his
whole general appearance he might have been taken for a modest citizen
in tolerably good circumstances; a grocer, perhaps, or a tobacco
dealer; but in his small eyes, overshadowed by heavy eyebrows, there
was something that seemed to indicate that the occupation of the man
was not quite so harmless, or at least had not always been quite so
harmless.
The three persons had been conversing very eagerly, and Mr. Timm now
summed up what had been said.
"Then there are two questions," he said. "First we must get a peep at
the baptismal register at St. Mary's; or, better still, obtain a
certified copy of the entry; and, secondly, we must find the principal
personage in this comedy--I mean Mr. Oswald Stein."
"But how do you know he is to be here?" asked the man with the odd
eyes.
"I do not know it; I only presume so. He wrote me a week ago from Paris
that he could not support himself any longer there, and that he must
try to reach home before his money was at an end. It seems to me,
beyond all doubt, that he must have come here, where he had had
literary engagements when he was a student here, and where he has
therefore the best prospect of finding some means of support for
himself and his sweet one. Only I think he will not appear under his
true name, so as not to expose himself to disagreeable encounters with
the relations of the Baroness Cloten, who, I know, are still after him,
and would very soon find him out here. This might therefore be the more
difficult task of the two, unless accident, my faithful old ally,
should again come to my assistance."
"That item you may quietly leave in the hands of my friend here," said
Mrs. Rosalie, familiarly placing her hand on the head of the man with
the odd eyes; "and now, gentlemen, I believe it is time we should part.
Tomorrow is another day. Yes; but what shall we do with the big fellow
there on the sofa, who has been drinking for twelve to-day?"
"We shall have to carry him home, if you, fair lady, have not perhaps a
snug little place for him somewhere," replied Mr. Timm, with a look
full of meaning.
"You scamp!" said the lady, pinching Mr. Timm's cheeks. "I will have to
stop you."
"I hope so--with a kiss."
"You scamp, you!" said the lady, evidently not unwilling to try the
experiment.
Mr. Timm seemed to be afraid of it, for he suddenly turned to Mr.
Schmenckel and began to shake him, first gently, then more vigorously,
and at last as hard as he could.
"Uff!" groaned the giant, half asleep yet; "let me go, I'll manage the
boy."
"What will he do?" asked the man with the odd eyes.
"Oh, he is talking in his sleep," said Mr. Timm, "give me a glass of
water, Lizzie; I believe that will wake him up."
At last the colossus stood upright, but not without swaying to and fro
like a beacon in a storm. Still he could stand on his feet now, and, as
Mr. Goodheart happened to know where he lived, the task of carrying him
home seemed feasible. Mr. Timm seized him by one arm, the man with the
odd eyes by the other, and thus they managed to lift him up to the
cellar door and into the street.
The night was as dark as a night can be when there are no stars
visible. The wind was sweeping mournfully through the deserted streets
and threatened to extinguish the few gas-lights that were still
burning. Mr. Schmenckel recovered in the fresh air somewhat, and
embraced his companions tenderly; then he vowed them eternal
friendship, and promised each of them a hundred thousand roubles as
soon as it should be fully established that Prince Waldenberg, whom he
had whipped that day under the Lindens, was really his own son. Thus
they reached the street, then the house, and at last even the little
bed-room in which Director Caspar Schmenckel, from Vienna, was residing
for the present. Mr. Schmenckel sank down upon his modest couch, and
his two companions left him, but not until Mr. Jeremiah had pulled out
a dark-lantern from his pocket and gone about, to Mr. Timm's great
astonishment, examining every corner of the room. What he found was not
much: iron balls, brass balls, sticks and staves of all kinds, drums
and trumpets, odds and ends, all in fearful disorder.
"Now you must fill the measure of your kindness," said Timm, when they
were in the street again, "and tell me my way home. I live----"
"White Horse, Falcon street, No. 43, back room," interrupted Mr.
Jeremiah Goodheart, closing his lantern and putting it back into his
pocket.
"Are you the devil?" cried Mr. Timm, nervously retreating a step. "How
can you know where I live; I have told nobody."
"Do you think so eloquent a speaker at the great meeting at the Booths
can long remain unknown to us?" said Mr. Goodheart.
"To us? To whom?" asked Timm.
"Never mind that. Anyhow, I would advise you to deliver your speaking
exercises rather within the four walls of your house, especially for
the sake of our little affair, which might be sadly interfered with if,
for instance, you should go to jail."
"Pshaw!" said Timm; "do you think I covet the glory of a political
martyr? I have given the good people a speech because I like to talk;
and secondly, because I was angry at the fools."
"All the better," said the other, dryly.
As they were passing under a gas-light Timm cast a glance at his
companion, and all of a sudden he understood the enigmatical appearance
of the man, and the "us" which he had used.
"Excuse me, Mr. Goodheart," he said. "I think I have heard your brother
say that you are a highly-valued member of the Secret Police. Is that
so?"
The man with the odd eyes smiled.
"You are a cunning fox," he said, "and have a keen scent. My brother,
to be sure, did not tell you any such thing, for he knows nothing about
it; nor did Rosalie tell you, for she knows it, but she has her reasons
not to speak of it; consequently----"
"The evil one must have told me," interrupted Timm, quite restored to
his former sense of security by this proof of his ingenuity. "I think I
might have made a good detective."
"That might depend on yourself alone."
"How so?"
The man with the odd eyes did not answer his question, but said, as
they had reached a corner of the street:
"That is your way. I shall call at eleven o'clock. Then we will talk
the matter over more fully."
The two men parted. Their footsteps were heard for a while down the
lonely streets, while the gray twilight was slowly rising over the
house-tops.