Andreas to Nikolai.
"On board the 'White Star.'
"Quiet days in the archipelago, but I cannot linger in this pleasant
warmth. My whole being has to adapt itself to equatorial conditions,
if you can grasp the meaning of such a daft kind of expression.
"For be it known to you, my friend, I am off to Zanzibar, not the
isle of dreams peopled with cloves and palm trees, but to our
consulate as attaché, where I shall have to apply myself to practical
work. Is it really that the post 'happened to fall vacant' so that
I, doctor of laws, could so conveniently slip into it? Or was it
not, rather, that they wanted to get rid as quickly as possible of
the man who had murdered the ambassador of a foreign power? I gather
that I, whose poems no one in the home country has ever taken the
slightest notice of, have suddenly become celebrated, and that people
are interested enough in me to put themselves about in order to save
me from detention in a fortress. The truth is that I am impatient to
take up my job, that I am in love with my work, although the cause of
my going and the place I am going to smack a little too much of the
romantic.
"Meanwhile I am doing my best to keep a new work that has gripped me
lately from intruding itself upon my conscious life. But it won't
stay in the background all the time. It is taking shape in the form
of a kind of rhapsodic trilogy, vaguely resembling certain things of
Hector Berlioz's. I could give you an idea of it if you were here....
"It is horrible that my poems should have appeared just before the
catastrophe; they have made a sensation and already run into several
editions. Olivia has gone to the ancestral castle in Dalmatia; there
was a picture of it in all the papers. Diana has disappeared without
leaving a trace, spirited away from us all, and the cloak of mystery
has once more fallen upon her strong young shoulders.
"The world which had always seemed to me a complicated but logical
phenomenon, has become simpler, more understandable--because it is
unlogical. Anyway, so far as I am concerned I cannot grasp how it
happened that I should have slain that fine, able, and talented man,
made Olivia a widow and Clemens an orphan, I who had no conception of
bringing about all these disasters at the time I wooed and won....
"Othello has become very quiet these days. It is as if he knew all.
I am a little anxious as to how he will stand the tropics. He will
have to be my only muse now; no more women; no more poetry writing;
only work.
"ANDREAS."
Linnartz to the Foreign Secretary.
"Sir,
"I beg to enclose a formal report on recent events. You will gather
from its perusal that the catastrophe came as the logical consequence
of the advent of that adventuress whose shameless flight has made it
impossible for us, by delivering her over unconditionally to the
local authorities, to counteract Sir Henry's and Le Chat's calumnious
insinuations at the ministry here.
"Indeed, the Minister for Foreign Affairs is more incensed than ever
against us because he firmly believes that we were instrumental in
effecting her escape. You will see, Sir, from the report, that I did
everything in my power to prevent her departure. Who is responsible
for assisting this female spy to escape, neither I nor the local
authorities have as yet been able to discover. The day it fell to my
happy lot temporarily to take over control of affairs at the embassy,
the most exemplary good order reigned in the house in spite of the
very natural excitement caused by recent events. The gentlemen of
the embassy were all at their posts, energetically dealing with the
more pressing business, and making preparations, etc. I have treated
as idle gossip the rumour that His Highness Prince Eduard ... went to
see the spy at her villa early that morning; but at the same time I
held it to be my duty to mention the rumour in my enclosed report.
"Putting things together, I would like to repeat, what you, Sir, will
gather for yourself from my report, that Count von Münsterberg was
the victim of a spy who used the so-called poet as her stalking-horse
to get into the confidence of the countess (the strange behaviour of
the Great Dane betrayed her machinations); that this same spy used
her seductions to keep the count away from home, thereby isolating
the countess and precipitating the catastrophe; and all this with a
view to getting rid of the count and replacing him by a protégé of
the newspaper magnate and financier Herr Scherer, whose interests
make him wish to see Baron von Winterthur take over the ambassadorial
post.
"Believe me, Sir, to be
"Your obedient servant,
"LINNARTZ."