Part 2

“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.

III

The next night Wenk was invited to a _soirée musicale_ in the neighbourhood of Schramm’s restaurant. A young pianist was performing modern phantasies. Wenk was bored, became fidgety and was the prey to wandering thoughts. It seemed to him as if he were neglecting some special opportunity elsewhere. He grew so uneasy that he finally slipped away, merely leaving a card of apology for his hostess.

He reached Schramm’s and was about to pass quickly by. Then it occurred to him to look up at the first floor of the villa where the new restaurant and gaming-house was established, and try to see the windows of the little room in which he had played the previous night. The ground-floor windows were large, and through their old-gold curtains a faint light gleamed, but the four windows on the first floor showed no signs of occupation. Yet he said to himself, “Behind those unlighted windows there gleams light ... _her_ light,” and he went in, full of hope that he might encounter the mysterious lady who had so bewitched him.

The head-waiter approached him at once, took hat and coat, whispering, “The marble table?” and looking closely at the visitor as he did so. Wenk gave a nod of assent, and the head-waiter rapidly preceded him to the back, Wenk following more leisurely. Then he was led up the winding stair.

The first person he saw at the gaming-table was the sandy-bearded man. He sat in his niche, his broad shoulders bent forward, with his eyes fixed in a steady gaze upon a player opposite. His attitude was that of a beast of prey who has already played his victim and is only waiting to pounce upon him. He seemed to be all sinews--at least, that was the impression he made upon Wenk, who started back at his aspect.

There was one empty seat. Wenk took it and drew out his pocket-book. An idea crossed his mind, that something special had occurred at the table. He saw all the players cowering over the little heaps of money in front of them, and yet there was in them all a distinct, even if unintentional, glance given to one among their number.

The sandy-bearded stranger was holding the bank, and now he looked up. Wenk noticed how, at first, annoyed at the disturbance, he raised his eyes towards him, and then it was clearly noticeable that his face quivered. At the same moment, however, he closed his jaws so firmly that his beard stood out round them. The rest was a mere impression, but this Wenk saw clearly. A shudder went through him as if at some sudden and dangerous encounter. At this moment the “banker” displayed the cards he held. Someone said, “Basch has lost again!” All turned to look openly at the pale thin man whom they had been furtively regarding when Wenk entered.

With a quiet and drowsy movement Basch pushed the notes lying on the oval in front of him over to the stranger. He grabbed at them like a bird of prey. The loser sank back in his seat, and in the same slow and dreamy way he brought out a fresh thousand-mark note and laid it in front of him.

“How much are you losing now?” said a lady from the divan behind Basch. “You will have a lucky life. When one loses to _that_ extent! I regard you as a champion. You must establish a record.... In losing, you know! Then you will be so lucky in life that I shall want to....” She broke off in embarrassment. Then Wenk, with a delicious tremor in his veins, recognized the speaker as the lady whom he had so abruptly encountered on the stairs on the previous evening.

“Get ready to stake,” said the sandy-bearded man in a harsh voice, drowning the speaker’s concluding words.

Basch had not answered her. As the banker called out, he merely made a movement of his hand over his thousand-mark note, a movement as if he were secretly conjuring it to do his bidding.

He looked at his cards; it was his turn, and no one else was punting.

“Do you take one?” said the banker sharply.

Basch shook his head dreamily. Wenk noticed Cara Carozza’s auburn-tressed head behind one the spectators, but his glance always returned to the other woman.

The banker bought a Court card and disclosed his own hand. He had only a total of four. Basch, too, with a feverish movement, laid his on the table. His points were but three.

“He plays as if he were drugged!” whispered Wenk’s neighbour. “To hold three, and yet not take a card! What folly!”

As he raked in his gains the sandy-bearded stranger gave a hasty glance at Wenk. The latter felt himself pitted against the winner. He increased his stakes, won, then lost for several rounds, and won again.

Basch continued to lose every time. By degrees Wenk ranged himself more and more on his side. He staked his money as if it were a weapon for Basch against the stranger, a weapon with which to strike him down.

Wenk noticed that the latter looked at no one but himself and Basch. He therefore accepted the challenge, and threw himself eagerly and wholeheartedly into the struggle, impelled by some mysterious power that incited him against the banker. He forgot himself altogether, and no longer played for the purpose of observing and discovering. He abandoned himself to the game and played like all those whom he had come to rescue from the gaming-table. He even forgot the lovely lady. When he first realized this, he was ashamed, and for the first time during the evening he glanced round the room to see whether Hull were there.

But it was not Hull who now sat behind Cara Carozza. Wenk’s search was vain; Hull was not present. Cara sat with a stranger behind a player with whom she was sharing the stakes. Then Wenk came to himself. He stopped playing and at once left the hall, sorely vexed with himself. When he was on the winding stair he turned and saw that the stranger with the fair sandy beard was also rising from the table.

Wenk had ordered his car to call for him at the house where the musical party was held, and did not remember this till he had walked some distance. Then he retraced his steps and drove home. He went to bed at once, but he could get no sleep, for the thought continually recurred that he had made a mistake to come away, that he ought to have stayed and talked to Basch.

He got out of bed again and went through a bundle of depositions in order to quiet his conscience. In going through these documents, written by men who were strangers to him, he got the impression that all of them, losing so much that they could not but ascribe it to foul play, must have sat at the gaming-table very much as Basch did. Had he remained and behaved in a sensible fashion, he would have had an opportunity of seeing for himself at first hand what had hitherto reached him through the testimony of others.