Chapter 2

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.