Part 3

Then Wenk became thoroughly discouraged. “I must set to work in quite another way,” he said to himself. “Goodwill and industry are not sufficient. Self-denial and inexorable self-discipline and a little more cunning are necessary! I must make use of every ruse that my opponent displays.... I must make use of disguise and secret spying. I must be prepared to stake myself on the game ... must be myself the snare, if I do not want to be caught in it like a silly pigeon.... A State official with a false beard ... a Browning concealed in his fist ... a jockey-cap, a tall hat, a wig, and so on, like the cinema stage....”

In the looking-glass he contemplated his clean-shaven face, finding that when he made grimaces, drew down the corners of his mouth, stretched his jaws, and tried the effect of a beard made out of paper shavings, his features lent themselves very well to disguise.

The next day he procured a complete outfit from the Criminal Investigation Department. With the help of a Secret Service expert, he tried all the necessary arts, learned to plaster on a beard, to alter his complexion, make himself look younger or older, change his appearance by scars, and so on. He could now make up as a country cousin, a dispatch-bearing cyclist, a taxicab driver, a porter, waiter, steward, window-cleaner, an “unemployed,” and other characters. In the morning he made an exhaustive examination of the criminal museum which the police had collected, studied the photographs he found there, returned to his various make-ups, and worked with the zeal of a fanatic.

Thus the day passed, and by evening he felt he had become a stronger man. He was at once more discreet and yet more daring. He would have liked to make a tour at once of all the gaming-houses in the city.

He went only to Schramm’s, however. He had long been considering whether he should not appear there in some sort of disguise, more for the purpose of making a trial of it and learning to feel at home in it than for actually starting upon his work. He was still more anxious to go in the hope of meeting the sandy-bearded man again and seeing him play, for he was desirous of atoning for his shortcomings of the previous evening, which had left a painful impression upon his mind. He would have liked to meet Basch again and talk to him about the evils of gambling, from which he had suffered so much. He went, therefore, just as he was.

It was already late when he got there. Hull was present, but he saw neither the fair-bearded stranger nor Basch. He only heard that the former had left immediately after him, a fact which all had noticed. After he left, Basch had remained sitting as if utterly prostrate. He had not played again, and suddenly he vanished. No one knew him well. He had never been to Schramm’s before.

The lady who sat behind him estimated that his losses must have been thirty to thirty-five thousand marks. The blond stranger had won it all, but he did not win until he began to hold the bank. Everything had been absolutely in order. The attendant who furnished the cards was thoroughly reliable.

While talking about the previous night’s play they stopped their game. Then Cara said:

“There are people who are born players, and if they take only one card in their hands it is sure to be an ace. They can do what they like; the power is stronger than they are; it is their guiding spirit, their God.”

But Elsie did not agree with her. She thought that every player once in his life came upon a series of lucky days. They lay stretched out before him, handed to him by his good fairy, for every man had a good fairy. One must not give up expecting to meet with those times of good fortune, for one day one could gather in the winnings as quickly as ripe apples in the autumn....

No one knew the man with the sandy beard. Basch had brought him to Schramm’s, and the first evening they had gone away together. He might be a dethroned prince, he was so imperious and abrupt in his speech. A dethroned prince in want of money, no doubt.

“I have a strange feeling,” said Hull, “as if I had already played against him once....”

“Nonsense!” said Cara.

In his mind the fancy grew stronger. “It is not so much that I have played with him, but as if he had done me some very serious internal injury, affecting my very blood; but how, and when, and where, I have no idea. It must have been in a dream.”

“He has evil eyes,” said a woman’s voice, which Wenk seemed to recognize. He looked in that direction, but with the bright light on the table the corner seemed as dark as a cave and he could descry no one.

Cara answered the voice in the darkness in a tone that seemed to have anger in it: “Evil eyes! What do you mean by that? Surely at the gaming-table no one looks like a saint!”

From the corner there came the words, “He seemed to look at Basch like a beast of prey eyeing his victim!”

“That was exactly the impression he gave me!” exclaimed Wenk.

He at once rose hastily and went to the corner, entered the dark niche and started back, for the speaker was the beautiful unknown! A glow suffused Wenk’s features and his heart began to beat violently, as if its strokes must be heard. Then he pulled himself together, saying, “I really must be mad! I am searching for a criminal and am about to fall in love with someone whom I may have to send to prison to-morrow. This is really idiotic!” He recovered his presence of mind, bowed to the stranger and said:

“I should be greatly interested, madam, to hear how you reached a conclusion which so exactly resembles my own?”

“It cannot be anything else,” said the lady, smiling, “than an unusual evidence of secret sympathy between me and a State official!”

“She knows me, then!” said Wenk to himself in astonishment. “But how could that come about, except through Cara Carozza? A State official, guardian and representative of the law, and avenger of any breach of it, himself violating its rules! It was absolutely fantastic. Yes, it must have been the Carozza girl.” From the niche he looked into the brilliantly lighted room, where the dyed tresses of the dancer gleamed forth between the heads. “So it was you!” he said to himself; “you want to bring my plans to nought, you good-for-nothing!...”

Then he remembered the glance the blond had given her that first evening, and he ended, “You are his decoy!” Now he realized the connection between them. It was the dancer who brought the blond his victims. He breathed a threat: “Just you wait; I am taking it all in!”

“Our agreement seems to have struck you forcibly,” said the lady, interrupting his thoughts.

“As a matter of fact, my thoughts were wandering, and I beg your pardon, madam,” said Wenk; “it is incomprehensible that any strange influence should be able to intervene in _your_ neighbourhood, but it can be explained, nevertheless....”

He did not continue. Two ideas suddenly obtruded themselves. This lady was undoubtedly an excellent observer. If only he could procure her help! But the other thought stirred his pulses. Why not abandon all this searching and spying and following after criminals, and strive to win the love of a woman such as this, beautiful as a queen and stately as a goddess! Then he felt her touching his arm hastily.

“Don’t speak,” she whispered, “I beg of you!”

At the same moment Wenk saw three gentlemen entering the circle of light in the room. The first was a young man whom he knew by sight, for a few days previously he had noticed him at an exhibition of Futurist paintings, as the buyer of the most unusual and bizarre of these. He had asked the name of the purchaser, and the attendant had replied, “Graf Told bought them. There he is,” pointing to the young man, who had just now entered the room.

“Herr von Wenk,” said the lady in a whisper, “will you do me a great favour?”

“With pleasure, madam. I am at your command.”

“I am anxious to leave this room within the next few minutes without being seen. Can you help me to do this?”

“Certainly,” said Wenk.

“How can I accomplish my purpose?”

“That is quite simple. You see the entrance to that staircase; it is only a few steps to it. You must look at it well, to be able to find it in the dark. I am certain that I know where the electric light switch is. It is just over the first section of the stairs. I will go there and turn it out, and you can make use of the darkness to gain the staircase. When you have passed me I will stand directly in the way of anyone who tries to follow you or to reach the switch.”

“Splendid! Thank you very much.”

Her escape was safely made. When Wenk saw the lady had reached the bottom, he turned the light on again and entered the room with a light laugh, saying, “Please forgive me; I did it for a joke, and I did not realize you would be in total darkness.”

They all laughed, but the dancer was standing, pale and disturbed, at the head of the winding stair, which she had reached at one bound. She recovered herself quickly and returned to Hull, begging him to drive her home. Wenk accompanied them.

As they were about to leave the gaming-hall, Wenk saw the head-waiter hand Hull an envelope. He went to an empty table beneath a lamp, opened it, and drew out a little note. It seemed as if an invisible thrust had sent him staggering. Cara went up to him, but he crumpled up the note, stuffing it into his pocket, and rose and followed the others out.

When they had reached the street they parted, but Hull turned and came back to Wenk, saying, in a voice trembling with excitement, “I _must_ speak to you. This very night! Can you see me at your rooms in an hour’s time? It is something horrible; I am being shadowed!”

* * * * *

“Look at this!” said Hull, as he entered Wenk’s rooms an hour later. With a despairing gesture he flung an envelope on Wenk’s table. The latter opened it and drew a small card from it. On it there stood:

HERR BALLING, I O U 20,000 (twenty thousand) marks payable November 21st, 4 p.m. EDGAR HULL.

“My I O U,” said Hull in a toneless voice, and after a pause, “Look at the other side!”

On the reverse side Wenk read: “You are warned. The reason I did not take your twenty thousand marks is my affair alone. The transaction lies between you and me. Play is play, and no State Attorney has anything to do with it.”

Wenk was staggered. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, and found no other words to express the storm which raged within him. Then after a while, as he collected himself, he said:

“We sat near him, you and I! We could have seized him by the arm, one on each side, you ... and I! Do you understand?”

“I am shadowed!” whispered Hull, who seemed to have no thought of anything except his immediate danger.

“Do you understand? Do you know who Balling is? Your Balling? your distinguished old gentleman? It is the man with the fair beard who was at Schramm’s. He is your Herr Balling! Good heavens!... We could have put our hands on his shoulder!”

Hull merely gasped. Now he knew why the sandy-bearded man had seemed familiar to him; his were the large, fierce grey eyes!

“Yes,” he said, “it _is_ the same man!”

“He has disappeared,” exclaimed Wenk; “he no longer comes to Schramm’s. And as for you, Herr Hull, we shall henceforth have you under our special care, but you must endeavour to meet our wishes and be constantly on your guard.”

IV

Hull departed, and Wenk, alone with the impressions which the evening’s experiences had left on his mind, asked himself, “Why did the fair unknown try to get away so secretly? Have I made another mistake? Has my helping her in her flight placed a weapon in the hand which would strike at me and my work?”

His agitation increased, but he dismissed his doubts of the lady. No, he felt he could rely upon her. And now the realization of the connection between Hull and the gambler, and all the other stories about the latter, set his mind working in a fresh direction, and other ideas began to develop. He seemed to hear the beating of the wings of some new and mighty force that was invading his life. Conflicts were going on in his physical nature, his phantasy, his nervous energy and endurance. His knowledge of men and his dominion over them were being put to the test. Thinking fiercely, he smoked cigar after cigar, and clouds of smoke surrounded him. It was spring-time, storm, sunshine, and again storm, in his blood. His muscles were engaged in an imaginary and heroic conflict with mysterious and mighty giants who were seeking to strangle his fellow-men. He had seized one of them by the false reddish beard which he had assumed, in semblance of humanity.

From the town, lapped in slumber, it seemed as if the spirit of the age rushed into his room--an age fraught with dangers, demands, and tension of all kinds. It demanded men--demanded of all men all their ambition, self-discipline, intelligence, selflessness ... selflessness. It should take him! There he was, free alike from arrogance and from indolence! Might there not be, he asked himself in his ecstatic monologue, a new democracy which should redeem the past? Was that the goal towards which the present gloom was leading mankind? Was he rising on the stormy wave? He would no longer drift along, striving to help his country as a mere idealist. No, he would stand firm on his feet; struggle, contest, but not submit! Freed from thoughts of self, he would expend the last drop of his blood to become what he had learned to be; he would yield all he had to give, to the very last red drop.

It was not his career that was at stake, but that which all men have in common, both in conflict with each other and in helping one another. It was the surge of humanity in which mortals, for good or ill, were engulfed in a gloom which none could dominate and subdue. In that night of reflection the lawyer saw the criminal no longer as a being of an inferior order. He envisaged him as a man whose pulses raced madly along, his senses stirred by the powers of hell; a man whose lusts and appetites, demon-fed, should overreach themselves and be brought to nought, and he, Wenk, should save and deliver him. The fighter should gain the ascendancy over his adversary.

In imagination Wenk was now struggling with the blond stranger, and in him he had a powerful opponent. He suspected even more than he already knew. If he could relieve mankind of him, he would have accomplished something by which he could advance further.

The song which Wenk’s heart had been singing for the last two hours suddenly seemed to be familiar to him, and in astonishment he realized that the state to which he had now come had been foreshadowed in his boyhood’s days, even before his university career, his military training, and his entry into law, when as yet no idea of the justification of humanity had fired his blood. Thinking over his lonely bachelor existence, without any womanly influence, he felt a strange, sad yearning for the father who had died long before.

The next day Wenk asked Hull to procure for him a list of all the secret gambling-dens, the addresses of which might be obtained with the help of Cara, who was _au courant_ of such matters. He made Hull promise, however, that he would not speak to the girl of himself in this connection.

Wenk visited these places evening by evening. He went disguised as a rich old gentleman from the provinces. He had chosen this disguise, first of all, because he had an excellent example of it in an elderly uncle whom he merely had to copy. The old gentleman gave the impression that he was thoroughly enjoying all his experiences of the great city.

Wenk had some accomplices among Karstens’ acquaintances. He begged them to make it widely known that he, the “country cousin,” was a man of fabulous wealth, which when once settled down, he intended to use to the full. He thought that thus he might entice the gambler from Schramm’s and others bent on plunder, that his wealth would be the candle to these night moths. At times he played carelessly for half an hour, adapting himself to the character of the game; then he would win considerable sums, only to lose them again next time. With all this he never lost sight of his own affairs or his neighbours’, and during the game his brain was working busily with a keenness which brought its own satisfaction.

One evening during the second week in which he was pursuing this course, he came to a gaming-house in the centre of the city which, from the style of its habitués, who appeared more downright than in some of the other places, seemed to promise him something out of the common. There he saw an old gentleman sitting at the card-table, his attention being drawn to him on account of his horn spectacles. These were of unusual size. The old gentleman was addressed as Professor. When he took his cards in his hand, he removed his horn spectacles, exchanging them for eyeglasses of an uncommon shape.

Then Wenk noticed that the spectacles now lying on the table were not the usual type of modern horn spectacles, but were of tortoiseshell, very artistically designed. The old gentleman slipped them into a large shagreen case, dotted over with green points. All his movements were very leisurely, so that Wenk had ample time for his observations. “Those are Chinese spectacles,” he thought to himself, recalling his own journey to China, which he had made before the war. The recollection surged up so powerfully that he uttered aloud what he had really only intended to say to himself.

The Professor, who sat opposite him, nodded to him and said in a firm voice, which he had not expected to hear from so aged a mouth, “They are from Tsi-nan-fu!”

He repeated the name, stressing it and separating the syllables, “Tsi-nan-fu.” It was as if the name had a rhythm and recollection behind it which affected him strongly, and which he enjoyed in the mere repetition of the syllables. He looked across at Wenk, as if his eyes in their large glasses were sending him a challenge. Wenk at once felt some strange connection with the old Professor.

“Tsi-nan-fu,” said the harsh voice again, as if with special meaning; indeed, as if he wanted to hurl the three syllables at something, some invisible goal behind Wenk--to reach, three times over, an invisible point in the obscurity straight above his head beyond the circle of electric light.

Wenk involuntarily raised his hand to the back of his head and turned round. Was he seeking the spot towards which the three syllables were projected, and had they reached their goal? When he looked round he observed that behind his neighbour at the gaming-table sat the lady whose mysterious flight from Schramm’s he had assisted. It seemed as if she were regarding him mockingly, and he did not know what course to pursue with regard to her, but at that moment he felt that cards were being dealt to him, and he turned again to the table to take them up. As he did so he began to feel sleepy, and felt dimly that the staring eyes of the Professor were somehow responsible for this. He forgot the beautiful unknown, and strove to banish his lassitude, sitting bolt upright and gazing at the green shagreen cover of the Chinese spectacle-case. It seemed as if the eyes of the old Professor, larger than ever behind his glasses, were fixed vaguely upon him, and some dim recollection of past days of travel flitted into his mind. One morning on his journey to China, through the porthole of his cabin he had seen a narrow strip of coast-line between sky and sea, and knew it for the delta of the Yang-tse-kiang. Yes, it was the Yang-tse-kiang.

Pursuing this recollection, Wenk named his stake, won it, and left his money lying. A comfortable sense of drowsiness pervaded him, and he stretched himself out, enjoying it. Then he became wide awake once more, played his game, and continued his watch. The players were holding the bank in turns, and it seemed to Wenk as if he were only awaiting the moment when the old gentleman should take it over. “Why am I waiting for that?” he asked himself. “How strange it is that I should be. There are feelings that one cannot trace to their source.”

He finally decided that he was awaiting that moment because the Professor with the Chinese spectacles was the most interesting person present, and that this waiting sprang from a feeling of _rapport_ and sympathy with him.

As the evening proceeded, this secret bond between him and the unknown Professor grew stronger still. “It is childish and sentimental,” he told himself; “what is it going to lead to?”

Then the old gentleman took the bank, and Wenk seemed to be released--released from a ridiculous and unnatural tension. “Now things will be all right,” he thought. He staked a small sum, trying to indicate thereby that he was no opponent of the banker, and that it was only for form’s sake he played against him.... He won, for he held eight points, and then he ascertained that he had staked a much bigger note than he had intended to. Therefore he put his stake and his winnings together and ventured both. He drew a king and a five. When he held a five he never bought another card, and this rule was so firmly established in his mind that when asked to say Yes or No, he did not even answer.

“You are taking a card?” were the words he heard in his fit of abstraction. They were uttered by a deep, compelling voice, and seemed almost threatening in tone. Strangely, too, they seemed to him to proceed from the spot behind and above him which had been the goal of the sounds “Tsi-nan-fu.”

Then he whispered hesitatingly, “Please!” and at the same instant he seemed to dissociate himself inwardly from this decision, but it was too late. He had drawn a five, and that, added to the cards he held, totalled more than twenty-one and made his hand worthless.

The banker’s hand showed a queen and a four, and as he had taken no other card, he had won the round.

“The country cousin is losing!” said a woman’s voice.