II

About a fortnight later the circles to whom the life of the day is

only a wearisome burden till the hour of play arrives, when the

nerve-tension is once more excited, were all agog with the stories of

a stranger who simply loaded himself with money wherever he chanced to

play. The tales varied constantly. At one time the stranger was a young

sportsman, at another a worthy provincial; now he was a fair-bearded

man looking like an artist, and again a robber and murderer who had

escaped from justice. Some said he was a dethroned prince, others that

he was a Frenchman. Another time they declared him to be a citizen of

Leipzig, who was smuggling pit-coal from the Saar into Bavaria by way

of Switzerland, or profiteering on the money exchange with New York and

Rio de Janeiro. There was endless variety in the descriptions, but the

imagination put the various forms together and made one personality out

of them.

Circles that were exclusive had ceased to exist. Money was a key that

opened all doors, the wearing of a fur coat could conceal any calling,

and a diamond scarf-pin shed lustre on any character. A man could go

into whatsoever company he desired.

There was no longer any sense of security, and the mysterious gambler

might turn up in any place, at any time. He might be anybody’s

neighbour. The authorities were constantly notified of swindling

players, and though in no case could their swindles be proved, their

luck was so continuous that it did not seem possible for it to be due

to ordinary play.

Through the Bonbonnière lady Hull frequently spent his evenings in

places where gambling was indulged in. He heard much about this

swindler at play, and from many different quarters, for theatrical

folk are always particularly interested in anything out of the common,

especially where masquerading is concerned. But Hull’s brain was of a

matter-of-fact and ordinary kind. He did, indeed, still think about

the twenty thousand marks, but mostly with the comfortable reflection

that they had been used in a very different way from that for which

they were destined. Now that the story of his forgetfulness had ceased

to haunt him he had become quite convinced that his friends had played

an elaborate trick upon him, that his I O U and the twenty thousand

marks had been discharged, and the only disreputable part in the affair

had been played by Balling, who, on account of Emil’s watch upon him,

had not felt himself secure. His astonishment was all the greater,

therefore, when a certain Herr von Wenk was announced and the story of

that night’s escapade was brought up once more.

Hull refused to discuss the matter, but the visitor told him he was

a State Attorney and showed his credentials. In the most polite way

possible he continued to question him, saying that his official status

obliged him to pursue the inquiry. Had Hull been able to communicate

with Cara Carozza, his _chère amie_ from the Bonbonnière, instead of

having to face this man by himself, he would have known what to say and

how much to conceal. He was greatly enamoured of Cara Carozza, and by

no means inclined to go into this matter and rake up bygones for the

sake of the country’s morals.

“You will pardon my introducing a personal note, but I understand that

you are very intimate with Mdlle. Cara Carozza, of the Bonbonnière?”

“Good Lord! He knows that, does he?” ejaculated Hull to himself.

“Can you make me acquainted with this lady? It would further the task

which the State has laid upon me, but I would ask you to introduce

me to her as a private individual. It is unnecessary to assure you

that I take you for a man of irreproachable character and quite above

suspicion. Nothing is known to the detriment of the lady, either.

You will be able to render a service to the country and perhaps to

yourself as well. Henceforward you are under the direct protection

of the police. Do not be uneasy; it is possibly quite an unnecessary

precaution. You can rest assured that you will not suffer in any way

through the services you may be able to render to the general public

and the State.”

“What am I to gather from all this, sir?” said Hull hesitatingly.

“You must have come to some conclusion about your extraordinarily lucky

opponent?”

“To be quite candid, I did feel uneasy for a time, Herr von Wenk.

There seemed to be something very mysterious about the affair. Finally,

I imagined that my forgetting that I had brought the stranger to the

club was a feeble joke on the part of my friends.”

“But the Herr Balling in the hotel, who was quite different from the

Balling at the club?”

“That certainly is a mystery to me still, but a false address is often

given for the purpose of evading payment. In this case, however, it

occurred in order to avoid receiving twenty thousand marks.”

“May it not be explained,” continued the State Attorney, “by the fact

that this elderly gentleman had been cheating in some way? He was set

on his guard by some fact unknown to you, and contented himself with

the money he had already won. He gave a name which occurred to him, and

of which he had some knowledge. Unless, of course, the Balling in the

‘Excelsior’ was the Balling from your club, disguised. But you say that

the one was short and stout and the other of rather imposing presence.

Do you still play, Herr von Hull?”

“A little, now and again.”

“With Mdlle. Carozza, perhaps? I am on friendly terms with one of your

intimates, with Karstens. He will introduce me to you, and we shall be

able to renew our acquaintance socially. You must not be prejudiced by

the fact that it has had an official beginning. I hope to be able to

count you on my side.”

The barrister took his leave, and returned to his official chambers.

A month previous to this occurrence, in a lawsuit in which he was

professionally engaged, Wenk had first noted the extent to which

the gambling fever possessed the city. He himself liked the nervous

excitement and the appeal to the imagination afforded by the relations

between judge, counsel and accused in the course of his calling.

In earlier years he had been a regular card-player. He was not a

passionate lover of games of chance, but he enjoyed the opportunity of

testing the effect of play upon his own self-control, of observing his

fellows and noting the enticement afforded by the devious course of

luck.

During the lawsuit above mentioned he realized what a danger to the

people lay in gambling. The change from war conditions to a state of

affairs which afforded the nation little relief from tension had not

sobered its imagination, but rather excited it yet more strongly.

Perhaps, in the first instance, the war news was largely responsible

for extravagant phantasies. For a week, sometimes a month, at a time

the reports were like a lottery for the whole nation. Then a fateful

movement was set on foot by which whole districts of people were seized

with a passion for gambling, a movement designed by the military

authorities to induce them to replete the army coffers. Increased wages

were offered to the war workers and money was flung into manufacturing

concerns. Commerce of all kinds was affected ere long, and everywhere

the flood-gates were opened. When goods grew more and more scarce,

money overflowed all its channels. Wenk saw clearly that the folks

in high places who had believed they could purchase the soul of a

nation for money were to blame for the tragic outcome of the war as

far as Germany was concerned, and so, too, were they responsible for

the political development. Instead of the ideal of an immortal soul

prepared for any and every renunciation as long as it fulfilled its

duty to the community, they had set up an idol--money--and the whole

nation was worshipping it.

Then the war came to an end. Money decreased in value and the idea

of it played a yet more dominant part in the life of a nation now

deprived of its success and brilliance in the world outside. Hundreds

of thousands had become accustomed to a life of inaction, and for many

years now it had been nothing but pure chance whether they lived or

died. Their only preoccupation had been to exercise authority over

others and to live entirely on their nerves. They brought with them

to the more stable conditions of life the gambling spirit born of

their war experience. They had grown accustomed to taking risks, and

they continued to rely on luck. They resumed their former mode of

life, but brought to it the atmosphere of their recent experiences,

transferring the nerve-racking and hazardous existence of those days to

the conditions which now obtained. To some extent this was inevitable,

but those who looked beyond the present and wanted to see a new era

of prosperity dawn must strain every nerve and exercise the strictest

self-denial. Thus only could there be hope of recovery.

The great lawsuit had afforded Wenk one example after another of the

development of this spirit of gambling, and in its course had taken

him frequently into the company of those who lived but for, and by,

games of chance. His convictions were well grounded and his recognition

of the national danger constantly confirmed to an alarming extent. In

the attics and basements folks were gambling for five-mark pieces,

and on the first floors for five-thousand. They laid their wagers

in the streets and the lanes, at home and abroad. They gambled with

cards, with goods, with ideas and with enjoyments, with power and with

weakness, with themselves and with their nearest and dearest.

At this period, too, people who were not naturally given to hazardous

risks, who were habitually calm and self-reliant, were wont to be

guided by chance conditions and circumstances, instead of combating

them where necessary.

Wenk was an official who had reached his thirty-eighth year in a

peaceful and well-ordered career. During the war he had volunteered

for the Flying Corps, because he had a love of sport and remembered

the fascination which the element of danger had held for him in early

youth. The experience had fired his imagination, and he returned to

his career with more impetuous feelings than had been his when he

quitted it. The lawsuit against the gamblers, and all he had learned

in the course of it, had excited him considerably. He had gone at once

to the head of the Police Department, had described what he had seen

and experienced, and represented to him that this new disease must be

combated if the whole body were not to be destroyed. As money lost

its value and the necessities of life increased, the nation could do

nothing but seek to augment its mass of paper currency by trying first

one speculation and then another. The connection between supply and

demand required both time and work before it could become normal again,

and so by degrees it had come about that the pulsations of commercial

life were regulated merely by chance.

The Minister smiled; he was new to his office. He said, “The nation is

sound enough; you are a pessimist!”

But Wenk replied, “It is diseased and rotten! How can it be healthy,

after such years and such a life?”

Then the Minister, who felt his position somewhat insecure and was

willing to try anything that might lead to stability, yielded the

point, and created a new post, which Wenk at once took over.

The erstwhile State Attorney and official was at once caught up in

the vortex of his new office. He devoted all his time and energies

to it. He did not establish himself in an arm-chair in a comfortable

well-furnished room, but began to build up his position from the very

bottom, became a police-spy and a detective, unwearied in his efforts

to collect all the evidence he could lay his hands on. He did it all

himself, and when he realized, as he soon did, the slight extent of

his own powers when pitted against the widespread national vice, he

conceived the idea of recruiting a guard and rallying force from the

ranks of the victims.

Accordingly, he began with men whose wealth was not displayed in their

houses, but who, through their connection with the social order which

had come to grief, had been forced into the opposition, both as human

beings and as politicians. He knew that none were more responsible for

the existing state of affairs than these men, because, at a time when

resistance was a necessity, they had been cowardly and kept out of the

way. But he knew, too, that in them a new force of decision had come to

birth, that they longed to make good where they had failed.

Above all, there were the rich young men without any profession. In the

disorganization brought about in the country by the depreciation and

disorder of the currency, they were unable to carry on life as before.

Their society was permeated by the “new rich,” who made use of them

because they allowed themselves to be made use of.

The State Attorney von Wenk had turned to his whilom comrades, from

whom the divers duties of his office had long separated him, and

the man whom he had first encountered and won over to his side was

Karstens. It was from him that he had learned all the circumstances of

Hull’s strange and suspicious gambling adventure. He compared Hull’s

story with the other material which he had hastily collected. Fresh

complaints were constantly being made about swindlers who worked so

cleverly that no taint of suspicion could attach to them, yet who won

so consistently that it was not conceivable that this could be merely

luck. From some similarities in detail in the various stories Wenk was

inclined to refer all these cases to a band of swindlers operating in

concert, and he even had the idea that it might all be the work of one

man. But this was hardly more than an impression. Hull’s experience

was the strangest and most mysterious of all these cases, and it was

fraught with the greatest danger, but Wenk had a notion that therein

lay the solution to all the rest.

* * * * *

After Wenk’s departure, Hull held a long argument with himself. The

uncompromising yet thoroughly courteous way in which Wenk had effected

an entrance had made an impression upon him. He guessed what the

official desired, for he himself was often dissatisfied with his way of

living, although his love of ease usually made him drive such thoughts

away.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have pursued his usual search for

enjoyment without restraint or reflection, either until considerations

of health had set a limit to his dissipations or until a marriage,

either arranged or entered into voluntarily, had caused him to “range

himself.”

Hull by no means approved of the course of affairs in Germany which had

led to the Treaty of Versailles. He at once asked himself, “Where were

you in 1918, when the retreat began? and earlier still, when it first

began to be planned? Are not you, Hull, and all your kind, responsible

for it?”... That was what Herr von Wenk’s words had implied.

But Hull found in himself no trace of such individuality as might have

saved the situation, and he dismissed these ideas from his mind. He

drove to see Cara Carozza and told her of Wenk’s visit.

“For God’s sake, don’t get us mixed up with your State Attorney, dear

Eddie,” said she.

“But ... but ... do we cheat? Are we dishonest? Are we profiteers, or

climbers? We merely keep ourselves going. What are you thinking about,

darling?”

“Eddie, a game of cards in full swing--someone holding the bank--closed

doors, and a State official looking on! That might prove a hanging

matter!”

“But I promised him I would bring you!”

“More fool you!” she exclaimed. “You ought to have got out of it

somehow. Elsie is bringing her friend to-day, and we are going to

Schramm’s. Karstens has already telephoned that he will be there.”

“Then Wenk would be coming anyhow, so _that’s_ all right, as it

happens!”

The head-waiter of Schramm’s little restaurant, recently opened in one

of the residential streets and decorated throughout in most eccentric

style by a modern professional, led Karstens and Wenk from the

dinner-table to a box at the rear. Thence a winding stair led to a room

which had no other exit and seemed to have no windows of any kind.

In the middle of the room stood a fairly large table of an oval shape,

but so arranged that every occupant of an arm-chair was sitting in

a hollowed-out niche of his own, with the leaves of the table under

his elbows on both sides. The table was formed of quaint, curiously

veined Kiefersfeld marble. In the middle only was there a perfectly

white oval left. Around the table, behind the players’ chairs, the

floor was raised and the walls furnished with full-length reclining

lounges, upon which rested crushed-strawberry-coloured cushions with

black designs. A large shade of polished glass attached to a brass

electrolier hung low over the table and reflected the electric light

bulbs which gleamed forth from silver brackets. The walls above the

strawberry-coloured cushions were inlaid with the same warm marble as

that on the table.

Wenk was introduced to Cara Carozza.

“I could not keep the secret, Herr von Wenk. I was obliged to tell my

lady friend here. Please don’t be vexed with me!”

Wenk gave a slight bow, in which there was a trace of annoyance.

Baccarat was being played. Karstens turned to Wenk: “The young man

with the fair beard is the only stranger. All the others play here

regularly.”

Wenk glanced at the stranger and met his eyes. He noticed that they

were fastened on him, and he immediately looked beyond and above them,

but he felt that the stranger had noticed they were speaking of him.

Whenever he looked at him again he found that his eyes were fixed on

the table.

The stranger played a quiet, restrained game. He frequently lost. Then

Wenk ceased to pay attention to him and turned to the others, whom

he watched in turns. They all had their eyes fastened on the white

oval, whereon the cards were being dealt. They seldom looked in any

other direction. There were gentlemen in evening dress, ladies in

_décolletée_, expensively and fashionably attired. The passion for

gambling had seized and carried them all away.

“It is none of these,” said Wenk to himself, “so it can only be that

young man with the sandy beard.”

He began to study him afresh, but only to find that the latter returned

his gaze. Wenk then turned his attention to Cara Carozza. He saw her

wholly given over to her game, sitting next to Hull, to whose money

she helped herself when she lost. If she won, however, she added the

winnings to her own heap. In the player on her other side Wenk thought

he recognized a well-known tenor from the State Theatre, whose picture

often appeared in shop-windows.

“Is that Marker?” he asked Karstens, who nodded in reply.

Wenk won a trifling sum. He played only till he had persuaded himself

that there was no work for him here. Then he gave up his place to an

elderly gentleman who had already been sitting behind him for some

time, boring him by remarks upon his method of play. He seated himself

on one of the lounges and watched the play for a short time longer.

Then he took his departure, Karstens accompanying him. Hull remained

with the Carozza girl.

When Wenk had descended a few steps he looked back at the table. It

seemed as if the fair-bearded man with large mouse-grey eyes followed

his departure eagerly, and then directed an urgent and threatening look

towards Carozza, but it might have been only an illusion.

When Wenk reached the foot of the stairs, he unexpectedly found

himself for a moment face to face with a lady who had already laid her

hand on the balustrade to ascend. He looked right into her eyes and

started back in amazement, while he inclined his head, as if doing

homage, before he passed on. He wanted to say to Karstens, “I have

never seen so beautiful a woman!” but that seemed to him like betraying

a secret, and, consumed with desire, he bore her image with him as he

made his way silently through the deserted streets. When at home, he

soon fell asleep, but the two mouse-grey eyes, which were far older

than the carefully arranged sandy beard, seemed to fasten on his breast

as he slept. They appeared to be trying to colour the ace of hearts

with his own life-blood.

When he awoke next morning he was conscious of nothing but an intense

longing to meet once more the lady he had encountered on the stairs.