Part 7

“I understood you aright,” answered the Countess. “I will confess to you that at first I thought you were on the search for an intrigue, and the idea amused me considerably, for God knows I seek something very different in the gaming-houses.”

“You will find what you are seeking in my work, Countess,” rejoined Wenk quickly.

Suddenly the butler, in his black livery, with its blue lappets and silver buttons, appeared noiselessly, and bent down whispering something to his mistress.

“My husband!” said the Countess to Wenk, fixing a steady and lingering glance on him, and as the Count came forward she introduced the two men.

Count Told was an extremely thin man, and gave an impression of excessive sprightliness. He was surprisingly young and very fashionably dressed. He gesticulated a good deal, and the movement of his hands gave prominence to a ring he wore, set with an unusual gem, such as Wenk had never before seen.

It might have been a flame topaz, with streaks of blood-red across it, trailing off into milky whiteness at the edges and emphasizing the clear honey colour of the transparent stone. In the middle of it, just where its lightning rays were most dazzling, was a tiny pearl, an islet, hardly larger than a freckle, but of a blue that put the sapphire into the shade, and....

Thus Wenk was thinking to himself, unable to keep his eyes from the jewel.

“It is a trifle too big for my hand,” said the Count, answering his visitor’s unspoken thoughts, “but the stone is so ... how shall I describe its originality? Well, I can only say that it is like a recital by Endivian, whom you doubtless know, and it was he who gave it to me. He brought it back from Penderappimur.”

“Is he the fashionable jeweller nowadays?” asked Wenk, who seemed somewhat at sea.

“Herr von Wenk,” said the Countess gravely, “Endivian is the fashionable young Goethe of this season.” Then she laughed. “No! Endivian the poet received the jewel at the Court of Artimerxes II, instead of the goblet, from the poem of his spiritual father ... you know it, ‘Give me no golden chain’ ... and when he returned, he announced in Germany, much as the Pope announces the Golden Rose, that his greatest admirer should have it. The choice fell upon my husband. It would have been better if he had given it me.”

“Why don’t you enthuse about him as I do?” asked the Count, with a pleasant smile, looking at her very tenderly as he spoke.

“Peter Resch dedicated his rubbish to him, and that was enough for me,” was the Countess’s laughing retort.

“Pooh, Peter Resch, indeed!” said the Count. “He is one of the Impressionists who has arrived. By the way, dearest, I have got something new.”

“From the Jennifer gallery?”

“Can one get a real picture anywhere else? There is nothing left.... And one has a clear and incontestable and direct impression. If the artistic temperament would only renounce colour ... it would be the beginning of really abstract thought, of the detachment from everything which needs the help of another consciousness to interpret its vision.”

The Countess replied, with apparent earnestness: “Thank Heaven, we do get a little further. If in the realm of music, too, genius had any prospect of renouncing the crash of sound when it desires to express itself, the world would soon be attaining its aim.”

The Count went on enthusiastically: “A sublime atmosphere of space ... in two blues ... which project into the cosmogony and play upon each other between storm and lightning....

“Whereupon the Almighty leaves His seat, dear Herr von Wenk, saying, ‘My creation has surpassed Me; I take My leave!’”

The conversation continued in this tone for awhile, and an hour later Wenk took his leave. He felt depressed as he drove home, but he had hardly sat down to dinner when a note was brought him, and he read:

DEAR HERR VON WENK,

I am sorry that our meeting to-day fell out differently from the one we had planned. That is not why I am writing to you, however, for we can continue our conversation in another place and at another time. But you may have left our house under the impression that my husband was “nothing but a fool,” and in his wife’s eyes too, and that would have been my fault, so I want to entreat you not to allow yourself to take up a depreciatory attitude. It is true that the Count buys Futurist pictures, but that must be understood more or less symbolically. I have always found that the more “foolish” a man appeared at one’s first encounter with him, the more approachable he became when one met him in his more serious moments.

Au revoir ... but when, and where?

Yours sincerely, LUCY TOLD.

“So Lucy is her name? And indeed she is rightly called Light. If she were _my_ light of life!... Oh, what a fool I am,” said he, as he felt an unaccustomed warmth steal over him--a warmth for which he always yearned.... Then he stood up, shaking off these delicious tremors, and saying sternly to himself, “This is a pretty way to reach a criminal ... through falling in love with a beautiful woman.”

The telephone rang: “Hull speaking!”

Hull told him that a new gaming-house had been opened, and he really must visit it. The saloon was not only arranged to accommodate a large number of people, at least a hundred, but it had certain mechanical contrivances which could turn it into a music-hall if the police were to appear. He did not know how it was done, but Cara had written to him about it and she was always _au courant_ of any new sensation of this kind. They were going there, and taking Karstens with them, but Hull did not know the address of this place, and they would trust to Cara’s guidance. Of course, she knew nothing about his writing to Wenk.

A rendezvous was arranged, and at ten o’clock Wenk drove to the Café Bastin, whence they were to set out.

VII

The house they entered lay on the border of the inner city, in one of the mean, sordid streets leading to Schwabing. Its outward appearance, like its neighbours’, showed an unimposing façade. It was one of those shops having lodgings above, and the sliding shutters over the shop were drawn to the ground. It was too dark to read the name, but Wenk noticed the number, that of his birth-year--’76.

They entered a dirty stairway in which hung a dusty globe, which gave an indifferent light to the changing population who inhabited such houses as these, and then ascended two flights of stairs. A heavy door opened before them, and in a corridor at the side a light shone out over the miserable staircase. The corridor ran alongside the staircase; it was completely empty: a cheap and shabby black and white drugget ran throughout its length, and its walls were covered with faded paper-hangings.

“This is lively,” said Cara, “but just wait a moment!”

Then a small door opened from the corridor and a light streamed forth into the gloomy darkness. They looked upon a swelter of luxury. There was a little _foyer_ with cushions and curtains, cloakroom accommodation, little restaurant tables, etc. There was the odour of prepared foods and the popping of champagne corks. People they did not know were sitting there. The visitors laid aside hats and coats and went through into the restaurant.

Yes, there things looked different. On entry, the place recalled the promenade of a well-known Théâtre de Variétés in Paris. Through little peep-holes or from the boxes one could see a smooth surface gleaming with light. This was the gaming-table, and it was of immense size. In the middle there was a circular opening in which was placed a large revolving chair. It was the seat for the croupier. Around the table the places for the players were arranged like boxes. Every box--there were some single ones, some for two and some for four persons--lay shut off from the rest and in darkness, and all were furnished with comfortable seats. People could be entirely separated from each other by a curtain, and a grating, like those of the Parisian theatres, could be drawn at will. The players might gamble there as securely as if masked, and, without being recognized or even seen, could indulge their passion for the tables.

Two miniature rails led from each seat to the croupier, and upon these stood a little truck. This was to carry the stakes down and later bring the winnings back. The sum was made known by sliding numbers displayed on a board. The pressure of a button sent each vehicle to its destined spot.

On the dome above the table, in the circle formed by the boxes, were the _petits chevaux_ in varied colours. The little brass horses had been carved by a Cubist, and painted in their various colours with highly glazed enamel. They were set in motion by a crank turned by the croupier. In the middle, beneath the horses, there hung a little searchlight which, lighted from below, reflected light upon the dome, and in this light they ran with the dome as a background. This was painted in the colours of the spectrum arranged alternately, so that there was always a dark horse against a light colour and a light one against a dark colour, followed by their shadows. This gave the effect of promiscuity which was intensified the faster they ran. The goal was formed by a thin strip of tiny electric lights let into the dome, and every box had an arrangement of mirrors by which its occupants could clearly recognize the winner.

Wenk and his companions took their places in a box for four, which seemed to have been reserved for them. Cara and Karstens sat in front, the two other men behind.

When the boxes were all filled, the croupier gathered his elegant evening dress about him, and slowly began to revolve in his seat, as if on a mechanical rotating disk, while he delivered the following oration:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the ‘Go-ahead’ Institute. The ‘Go-ahead’ has in itself the roots of vigour and success. We live in times of change, and our undertaking is designed to suit all comers. Here you can play alone, or as a pair, or in company. You can play alone, because you can have a box for one person only, like the charming lady of whom I can see no more than the red heron’s feathers in her coiffure. If you think that for good luck two heads are better than one, you can seclude yourself from your fellows like yonder elegant cavalier and his lady; and if you choose to play in company you are equally invisible from my point of view. In the dome, ladies and gentlemen, you will find our game, the game of the house, I may venture to call it, although every other game is equally at your service. There you see the _petits chevaux_ of the ‘Go-ahead’ Institute. One of the first artists of our day, whose work you are constantly encountering in exhibitions and periodicals, has designed them for the ‘Go-ahead,’ and placed them here, and we have united art with technique, the strongest product of the age. The reflecting apparatus allows everyone from any place whatsoever to see at once and quite distinctly whether his horse is in at the finish. Allow me to demonstrate to you, by a mere turn of the handle, the very artistic and effective play and counterplay which is developing in the dome. There was once a man who had no shadow, but that cannot be said of our _petits chevaux_. Notice, I beseech you, the extremely artistic effect produced when substance and shadow thus unite in a piece of work which in its resourcefulness and originality does the greatest credit to the artist of our house....”

He turned the crank, and horses and shadows chased each other with kaleidoscopic effect. It formed a pretty and a fanciful picture. Slowly the horses came to a standstill.

“I had staked on that one,” exclaimed a woman’s voice as the cream-coloured bay stopped beneath the goal, and in its head the eyes gleamed forth like stars. They were formed of small electric lamps.

The croupier said: “I will not detain you much longer from trying your luck, dear madam. I have only now to introduce to you the epoch-making novelty of the ‘Go-ahead’ Institute. What would you do, ladies and gentlemen” (here he raised his voice), “if the police were suddenly to intrude upon you and rob you of your money and your freedom on account of your forbidden game? You need have no anxiety on that score. We have hit upon an arrangement which might be called a _garde-police_. The ‘Go-ahead’ Institute may await the police quite calmly. They may be surrounded and inundated by the police. With a pressure of my little finger I can turn the whole police force of the city away from you and let them go ahead elsewhere. Look here!”

He raised his hand, then lowered it with affected impressiveness, pressing his forefinger down upon the black knob near him. A moment later the surface of the table was set in motion, and it began to sink. It moved rapidly and noiselessly, and the speaker sank down with it. The boxes remained stationary, but from the dome the little horses and the coloured circles descended--came past the boxes; the dome followed, and a few minutes later a quartette of nude twelve-year-old children were to be seen dancing, upon a new stage, to the strains of fiddles and harps, which began to resound from some invisible quarter. A body of men, dressed in the uniform of the city police, trooped into the boxes, exclaiming, “We were told they were gambling here! Where are the gamblers?”

Everybody in the boxes roared with laughter. The girls continued dancing, and the uniformed police threw off their disguise and appeared in evening dress, laughing. The floor began to move again, the girls still dancing, one of them making a gesture to a gentleman sitting alone, who sprang towards her, but failed to reach his vanishing charmer. The floor once more became the ceiling, the _petits chevaux_ reappeared, and in the centre of the gaming-table sat the croupier once again.

“You see, ladies and gentlemen, we do give the police something for their pains--the nude girls! And if the case were really serious, they would soon have a scrap of clothing on. I have to announce that there is a change of programme every week....” He continued for some time further in this way.

“This is only an ordinary cinema,” said Wenk, turning to Karstens, and whispering, “the most ordinary kind of cinema. If the police were to come, they would discover the whole trick in ten minutes.”

Karstens merely shrugged his shoulders.

Wenk wondered what the aim of such an establishment could be, for it was bound to be discovered and closed within a week’s time, and the outlay must have been considerable.

Hull was much struck, having nothing with which to compare what he saw and heard there.

“Ravishing! enchanting!” said Cara from time to time. “We live in ingenious times, don’t we? We must come here often, mustn’t we, Eddie? Which are you going to stake on? I am choosing the black Arab. Black for me, please Eddie, because you are so fair!”

Karstens cast an amused glance at Wenk. A supper of the most varied and recherché dainties was provided. Things which seemed to have vanished in the depreciation of the German currency were seen--_pâté de foie gras_, fresh truffles, caviare, fieldfares.... In front of a pile of truffles and _foie gras_, inhaling its pleasant odour, Karstens said suddenly:

“Our mark to-day stands at seven in Switzerland, but it is seven centimes, and here things which we have forgotten we ever ordered are provided for us.”

“Here a mark is worth less than seven centimes,” said Wenk, downcast and depressed. Whither was it all tending? His heart yearned for help in his enterprise, and he had no appetite for dainties.

Cara trilled a popular ditty, and Hull, in spite of the influence which she exercised over him, and his enjoyment of unwonted dainties, began secretly to be somewhat ashamed. He resolved to send her a parting present on the morrow, and it should be the parure of Australian opals she so ardently desired, which a Russian princess, anxious to get on the stage by Cara’s help, was willing to sell. “This should end it all,” said Hull to himself. He was disenchanted, and yet at the same time melancholy. What would become of her? For himself, he almost thought he would prefer the cloister to....

Just then he savoured a delicious mouthful of truffle, and as he smacked his lips over it, Hull thought, “Well, there’s something to be said for this sort of thing, after all. I should not get any more aspic ... and I’ve not broken with her yet, anyhow!...”

Suddenly Wenk got up to go.

“Where are you off to?” cried Cara, excited in a moment.

Karstens turned to her at this instant, separating her from Wenk, who left the hall undisturbed. He took his overcoat quickly from the vestibule and was conducted downstairs. The concierge opened the door for him, looking first through the peep-hole into the street. Then he exclaimed in great excitement: “Sir, there is a policeman standing there!” He opened the door, however, and Wenk went out. The policeman saluted. Wenk saw the uniformed official smiling, and looking back, found the concierge smiling too. The “policeman” belonged to the “Go-ahead” Institute. If a real policeman were to enter the street, as the concierge hastily informed the departing guest, he would see that there was already someone on guard and move off.

Wenk soon reached the spot where he had ordered his chauffeur to wait. He was resolved to have this place closed, but he did not want the affair to get into the papers, and on his drive homeward he was considering how best to formulate the charge. If possible the place should not be described, but the cause should be given as that of disturbance of the peace, misleading of the public, swindling performances, or something of that kind. He worked the matter out fully, engaged in his conflict with the “Go-ahead” Institute, and while still in his car, in his character of prosecuting counsel, he conducted an indictment which through his skill and stratagem should eliminate this plague-spot from public life without folks perceiving what it actually was.

Before he slept, his thoughts, without any apparent connection to guide them, reverted to Hull, who stood suddenly revealed to him as typical of the young men of the age. Bound by a liaison with a vulgar, good-for-nothing girl, whose only talent was to exhibit herself on the stage; elegantly dressed, without being elegant; spending his restless evenings between gaming-houses, night-clubs, and the arms of a courtesan--this was Hull’s life. Yet if he had taken the right turn he might have put his intelligence and all his available energies into administering an estate or pursuing a well-ordered peaceful life as an official of some kind; he might have been the head of a happy household and the father of legitimate children.

Many such men there were, strong in body and mind, living merely on their nerves, dedicating to a life of the senses powers which would have made them successful in the walk of life for which they were destined. Hull and his kind, feeble and enervated, represented the spirit of the age. What would the dawn of such a midnight yield?

Wenk went to the telephone and gave the address of the new gaming-house. The official whose duty it was to watch over Herr Hull was to get in touch with him at once, but do no more than keep him in sight when he left the house.

* * * * *

In the middle of a deep sleep the telephone at Wenk’s bedside began ringing. It was just two hours since he had returned home, and he was wide awake at once. “Wenk speaking!” said he, and he felt certain in some subconscious region of his mind, which was in tune with his last waking thoughts, that the news awaiting him on the telephone was in some dread, mysterious fashion concerned with Hull.

“Wenk speaking!” he called again, and his whole body was trembling with excitement.

“Here, sir; the police sergeant on duty.”

“Be quick!” said Wenk, his imagination running riot. What was there to report?

The voice at the other end spoke hastily: “The gentleman named Edgar Hull, who was under police protection ... has been murdered this night. In the open street, too, about 2 a.m. Another gentleman, name of Karstens, has been seriously wounded. The constable who was detailed to watch over him is also wounded, and both have been taken to the hospital. A lady who was with these gentlemen was arrested at the order of the wounded man. I have ordered the body to be left lying exactly as it was found until you have seen it yourself. The Service car is on its way to your honour. Please ring off!”

“Ring off!” echoed Wenk’s voice agitatedly.

He hastened to dress, for the car was already to be heard throbbing outside. He went down the dark staircase, forgetting to turn a light on. Then, when he perceived the car in the street, his profile revealed the jaws drawn firmly together, in the necessity of meeting calmly the tragic circumstances in which he was involved, and entering into every detail of this deed of blood perpetrated in the darkness of the night, so that he might be enabled to act to the best advantage.

During the drive, something within him compelled him to take himself to task. “I had no business to tremble,” he thought, “when this news reached me. I must be prepared to face even my own death unflinchingly. I must school myself further. I must develop all my tastes and interests and use them in the service of my life’s goal; then only shall I be equal to my task....”

Hull’s body lay in the darkness. Four men in sombre clothing were silhouetted around him, and they stepped back as their chief descended from the car. Wenk ordered them--they were constables--to watch the entrances to the street and allow no one to approach the scene of the murder, which was in a gloomy street-turning behind the Wittelsbach Palace. Not a soul was to be seen in any of the houses.

One of the constables said that none of the public had been near the place since the occurrence.