Part 8

“But, sir, that would be a very difficult matter. I am alone here, and I must complete the Press matter.”

“What is your name?”

“Grube.”

“Well, Herr Grube, there’s no difficulty in the matter, when I tell you very decidedly that your coming here is of the utmost importance, far and away more important than that to-morrow morning every Tom, Dick and Harry should be able to discuss such a piece of news while he eats his breakfast.”

“But my duty is ...” he began, but Wenk interrupted him.

“Don’t take it ill that my time won’t permit of my saying any more now, save that the police car is on its way to bring you here. The constable is furnished with the necessary authority. Arrange your Press matter so that the sheet can be printed without the information you have just given me about a murder. Au revoir, Herr Grube. Ring off, please.”

Wenk sent off the car immediately.

“Well, now, Wasserschmidt, to continue. The lady offered resistance. How did she do that?”

“She ran a few paces from me towards the wall of the Wittelsbach Palace, to which the criminals had hurried, and then called out, ‘George.’”

“You heard that yourself?”

“Yes, quite distinctly, and she pronounced the name ‘Georsh.’ And as she began to run towards the wall too, I did not wait any longer, but I tied her hands together.”

“And what did she do then?”

“Then she became quieter, and let us take her away. As we were going, she said again, ‘I shall certainly be able to speak to Herr von Wenk, shall I not?’ ‘Well, you will have to wait till after he has had his breakfast,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I could telephone to him?’ but I said that wasn’t very likely.”

“And then later? Where is the lady now?”

“Still at the guard-room. She spoke quite calmly and said, ‘You have made a very serious mistake, my good man; but I hope to be able to set you right with Herr Wenk, for, after all, you are only doing what you conceive to be your duty. I was with the gentleman who has been attacked, and the State Attorney was there too, but he went home a little earlier, or else he would have been in it as well.’ ‘Let us wait and see!’ was all I said to that.”

“Did you happen to tell her _why_ you had arrested her?”

“No, not a word.”

“That’s right. Wait in the next room.”

Wenk interviewed others, and finally the assistant-editor arrived. He protested loudly against this high-handed action of the authorities, and said that his newspaper....

“If it is the duty of your newspaper to serve its readers up the latest scandal, whether it be a murder or the unlucky ending of a love-affair, merely because it is a scandal, in as hasty and disconnected a fashion as it was reported to you ... you would be right to protest. But you have no right to hinder the authorities whose duty it is to deal with infinitely more important matters so that you may satisfy fools with a thirst for gossip.”

“But,” stammered the editor, in an excited tone, “but you are trying to stifle the Press. We are not living under the old system, you know. The Republic will....”

“I have no time to bother about what the Republic will do. Be so good as to give me the letter you telephoned me about!”

“I am sorry,” said the editor, with a confident and self-satisfied air. “These are Press secrets.”

“Pardon my saying so, editor, but you really are very foolish. I respect any Press secrets which protect the interests of the community, but your refusal to give me this letter only injures them. Before I take it from you by force (an action which would lay you open to a penalty for resisting the law), I will tell you that this letter is the only piece of evidence we have at present of an unusually serious crime. Perhaps then you will become more reasonable, and not entrench yourself behind the plea of your professional duty, which, as I have already stated, I do recognize, though I place it far below the interests which I represent.”

Grube felt uncertain how to act. Finally he brought out the document, saying, “I deliver it under protest, and....”

“Did you see anything of the man who brought it? Could you recognize him?”

“There was very little light on the street from my window. I could only see that he was well dressed, and he certainly wore an opera hat. A little while after he had disappeared from sight, I heard a car drive off in the direction he took on leaving our office, and I imagine it was his.”

“Herr Grube, you will be so kind as to leave this letter in my hands. You will be an important witness in one of the most notable criminal prosecutions of recent years. I beg you, upon your honour, to preserve absolute silence about this letter and everything connected with it.”

Grube, under the spell of the horror which had seized upon him, now became more pliable, and grew as eager about the affair as he had previously been obdurate. He handed over the document, exclaiming, “There it is then! I am quite at your service. That is a very different matter!”

“My car will take you back to your office again. Please leave word that I am anxious to see the editor-in-chief as soon as he is able to attend upon me.”

The assistant-editor withdrew.

VIII

Wenk remained alone, inwardly cool. He had been able to suppress the horror and dread which the crime had excited in his sensitive and sympathetic soul. He knew the reason underlying this murder. It was not revenge, but something far more dangerous and deadly. It was terrorization! That was revealed to him by the letter to the news agency, designed to give information about the murder other than the police reports. It was the terrorizing of all who felt themselves victims of that fair-bearded stranger who had appeared among them. How much this gambler must have at stake, he thought, that he could thus personally announce his crime, to give the affair the turn he wanted it to have! How many people were in his pay that he was able to carry out his criminal deeds in this fashion? What sort of people were they, and what was the example such conduct would afford to those who were still hovering undecidedly between good and evil? How many adherents might not the announcement of this deed yet secure for him?

Hull had met his fate because he had revealed to the authorities, in the person of Wenk, the history of the I O U, and because the pseudo Herr Balling desired thus to give an example of what would occur to those who stood in his way. Possibly, even probably, the attack had also been directed at himself, and he had only escaped because his indignation had driven him from the place.

Now perhaps it would be impossible, for strategical reasons, to close down the “Go-ahead” Institute.... Like so many similar places, it might serve as a trap.

“And what about Cara Carozza?” he said to himself. “Shall I be able to get her to confess for whom she was acting as a decoy? What can she confess, and whose name would she reveal? Even if a name and possibly an address be furnished me, do I know the man’s secrets, and what precautions he has taken against me? No, I will not go to see this girl. I will leave her in custody and let her wait.... Then she will realize that there’s trouble ahead of her. She is weak and vicious; perhaps she will give in of her own accord.”

Finally, however, Wenk decided otherwise. He would take the exactly opposite course. He would lull her suspicions by a friendly and sympathetic bearing. She was crafty, but she belonged to the theatrical world, and by his assumed friendliness and sympathy with her in the circumstances leading to her arrest he might make her more ready to confide in him. He therefore went at once to the guard-room, where he found her seated in a small compartment. Wenk hastened towards her.

“But, my dear young lady,” he exclaimed, “how came you here? What have they been doing to you? They have just rung up to tell me what has happened. What a good thing you thought of me!”

“Oh, Herr Wenk, you come as an angel of light to me in my dungeon. Let us get away from this place at once! Don’t lose an instant! I am stifling here. I can’t breathe in these horrible surroundings.” She hastened towards the door.

“Ah, but now I must prepare you for a disappointment, which is unavoidable. You see, my dear young lady, we live under the State, and every State has supreme power. It appoints officials, each of whom carries on his own peculiar office, and they cannot encroach upon the domains of others. The State has appointed me one of its Attorneys, but I am only there to prosecute offenders, not to set innocent people free.”

“Then what’s to happen to me?” said Cara, suddenly hardening her attitude.

Her tone warned Wenk, and he came at once to the point:

“Your case does not come under my jurisdiction first of all, but that of the court of inquiry, and you are bound to undergo an examination there. It is troublesome, no doubt, but you must blame the circumstances for that.”

“And what about your part in it?” asked the girl.

“Mine? I can do nothing but tell the examining counsel that we are old acquaintances, and that I do not think you capable of taking any part in such a crime.”

“Then why did you come here? You are not the examining counsel.”

Wenk realized then that she had seen through his ruse, and he knew, too, that she had escaped the snare, but at the same time he was convinced that she was guilty.

“I came here on account of a minor circumstance in which I can help you,” he said quickly. “I understand that you resisted the constables?”

“What woman would allow herself to be attacked by coarse brutes of constables without resisting?”

“Yes, of course; it was the circumstances which were to blame for your behaving unreflectingly and forcing them to do their duty.”

“I am well known as an artiste. My name ought to have been enough for them!”

“Did you give the constables your name?”

“Certainly I did, straight away!”

“It is strange that they should not have told me that. They mentioned another name that you had called out!”

Then Wenk observed that Cara threw a hasty and searching glance, full of hate, upon him. She looked away again at once, and drummed with her fingers on her knee.

“They said another name, did they? That’s curious, for my own name is well enough known, and thought enough of. What might this other strange name have been?”

“The constable said it was George.”

Her face showed no change when Wenk said that.

“He couldn’t have heard properly, for my name, as you know, isn’t George,” she said, with an air of indifference.

“But a second constable says he heard you give the same name. It really _was_ George!”

“How strange!” said Cara, after a pause for reflection. “My husband’s name was George. Could I, in my excitement, have called....”

“Ah, now everything is perfectly clear. That is quite comprehensible, but, of course, nobody knew you had been married?”

“I _am_ married!”

“You still are; oh, that’s something different. Shall I send word to your husband? But perhaps you no longer hold any intercourse with him?”

“Indeed I do! His address is 234, Eschenheimerstrasse, Frankfurt-am-Main.... His name is George Strümpfli.”

“This will be painful news for him. Are you not afraid that there may be some difficulty when he hears your name connected with the circumstance of Hull’s murder?”

Then Cara spoke at last, falling back on her chair. “Hull murdered!...” she exclaimed, and she sank fainting from the chair to the ground.

For the moment Wenk was taken aback; then he decided that this fainting-fit was assumed. He raised her on to the couch, then went away without attending to her further. Going out, he ordered the constables to keep a sharp eye on the lady, and not let anyone at all go into the ante-room. They were to keep their weapons fixed.

He drove back to the central police-station and informed the divisional surgeon, requesting him to drive to the guard-room, and to search the girl’s clothing without exciting suspicion. He then wrote out the order for her arrest, and handed it over. He gave orders at the Police Information Bureau that any journalist who came seeking for news was to be sent to him direct.

By this time it was daylight. Wenk had a bath and then drove to the office of the Central News Agency, the editor-in-chief of which had rung him up on the telephone.

When Wenk had told him all that had occurred, he said: “The reason that emboldened me to lay claim to some of your time, was this. If it were an isolated murder I would, although unwillingly, let the reporting of it proceed in the usual manner. But behind this assault we are confronted by a gang having at their head a man of apparently enormous and comprehensive powers. He must have secured to himself an organized set of followers whose only aim is to guard him while he carries out his crimes. The letter, which he himself may have handed into your office, discloses the fact that he desires the affair to be made known in the way that suits his ends. He means it as a warning. The victim himself told me not long ago that he had come across him in very peculiar circumstances, and this he knew. It is his aim to surround his dark deeds by a wall of dread; folks are to realize that no one who makes any attempt against _him_ can escape with his life. You can readily see how great a danger such a man is; at a time when the war has left folks weak and emotional on the one hand and more readily incited to evil on the other. We cannot altogether suppress such an occurrence as this, but I desire that it should be announced apart from the connecting circumstances known to me, so that the imagination may not make popular heroes out of murderers. In this I am counting on the assistance of yourself and your colleagues. May I beg you most earnestly not to make known _anything_ concerning the Hull affair which has not first been seen by me? We are living in an age of mental and spiritual epidemics, and those who would help to bring healing must be prepared to sacrifice themselves.”

“I will certainly act as you desire,” said the editor-in-chief.

“At the same time,” Wenk went on, “I wouldn’t on any account allow the impression to get about that such a course is due to more complete knowledge of the circumstances, or the exercise of authority on the part of the law, you understand.”

“I quite follow you there,” said the sympathetic editor.

“Then I am grateful to you, and can only hope for good results from our combined efforts. Our nation is in evil case.”

When he got home Wenk was anxious to go to bed and enjoy a few hours of much-needed rest. It was already ten o’clock, but just then his chauffeur, who acted as his personal attendant, brought him a visiting-card bearing the name of Countess Told.

“I am quite disengaged,” said Wenk immediately, and the Countess was ushered in.

“Is there any possibility of our being interrupted here by an anxious wife who is not _au courant_ of the matter which is engaging our attention?” she asked, as she gave Wenk her slender hand cordially.

“The happiness of possessing a partner for life has never been mine!” answered Wenk, feeling a delicious sweetness in the proximity of this woman. And yet she stood before him as something dreamlike, connected with a life which he seemed to have led not long before. Between this hour and that lay the mysterious occurrences of the night, and he was unable to conceive that these feelings of love and longing could be actually real.

She stood before him, and he found no word to say to her, while she herself, insensibly influenced by the man’s force of character and lofty aims, felt embarrassed by this silence, because it seemed to be a confirmation of her own sensations. “Yes,” she confessed to herself, “the feeling I have for him is ...,” but she would not utter the word “love.” She blushed at the thought, a blush which Wenk saw. A tremor passed through him, and he struggled with himself as he bent low over her hand.

Then suddenly the vision of the murdered man rose before him, and he no longer felt bold enough to betray by word or gesture the infatuation which possessed him. He offered the Countess a chair, and while he fetched another for himself his imagination was fired by an idea which afforded a solution of the conflict waging within him. This woman, whom he loved and to whom he was evidently not wholly indifferent, should be associated with him in his undertaking, and their common endeavour might bring about their own harvest. Then he said to her seriously:

“During this last night an acquaintance known to both of us, Edgar von Hull, has been murdered. His friend Karstens is severely wounded, and I only escaped because I had happened to leave, two hours earlier, the locality into which we had been enticed. I believe I know the instigator of this crime. It is once more the sandy-bearded man and the old Professor. Its actual perpetrators have escaped, but we have made one arrest, of a person who is also known to you. I mean Cara Carozza, the dancer, whose liaison with Hull you are aware of. At present I have hardly more than a profound conviction that she has had some share in the crime, but I have thought of a way by which we might loosen her tongue. If you, Countess, would undertake the unpleasant enterprise of allowing yourself to be arrested, I would take care to arrange for your being put into the same cell as Carozza. She does not know you as Countess Told, but as a lady who frequents her own circles. Represent your offence as a very trifling one, and say that you will soon be set free, even if you are found guilty of taking part in an illicit game.... Promise to help her, perhaps by flight ... and you must previously have informed her that her situation is a very serious one, and one never can tell what may happen to persons arrested in such circumstances as hers.... She will then probably tell you who would be able to arrange for her escape, and you understand the rest, Countess. Are you willing to play the part?”

“I will carry out your wishes,” said the Countess, without stopping an instant for reflection, and her voice sounded eager.

Wenk was sensibly touched by the haste, the ready zeal with which this gracious and beautiful woman accepted his suggestion.

“Up to now,” she said lightly, “there has never been a chance for me to do anything really useful, to engage in a bold enterprise with life at stake, to study life at first hand.”

“And that is what you have been seeking in the gambling-dens?” he asked.

“I do not rightly know. I felt at home in those places, because there seemed to be no barriers. In my own circle I could perceive the horizon everywhere, and I could not endure that. I feel I owe you much....”

There was a smarting in Wenk’s eyes. He was overcome with a sensation of longing; it took possession of him and tormented him, and he asked, almost roughly, “And your husband?”

She answered calmly, “In every marriage, although you cannot know it by experience, there is something of what the heart has sought left unfulfilled. I rob my husband of nothing, if I try to find what I am seeking without him.”

“I honour and esteem you,” cried Wenk, his voice trembling slightly.

“It is nothing but the natural law,” she countered; “and now tell me what I am to do.”

“On a certain day, which you shall appoint, I will take you in my car to the governor of the prison and we will arrange everything with him. When would it suit you?”

“Next Saturday at this time.” She rose.

“The grey prison walls will begin to shine!” said Wenk.

“Because of such odd proceedings,” laughed she.

“No, Countess, your beauty will light them up,” and Wenk suddenly felt as if he loved her with a passion which must be shining in his eyes. He bent so low over her hand in adieu that he concealed his face from her, and she yielded it to him in a gracious gesture that was almost like the confession of a mutual understanding between them, then hastened away.

Out in the street the blood mounted to her cheeks, and half unconsciously she murmured the word she had suppressed, “love ... love,” while in Wenk’s room there remained a scent of her which he eagerly inhaled. Then pressing both hands to his face, and indulging his secret and mysterious presentiments, he whispered ardently into the darkness that concealed his vision, “Death and love ... death and love!”

* * * * *

In the course of the day the report of the murder ran through the city. It arose from the dark quarter where Hull had yielded up his useless and trivial existence. A dark patch remained there, and the pavement was coloured with the blood that had been shed. The thaw had made the gutters moist and muddy, and they had sucked in the dark evidences of the crime, till from a mere patch it became a monster, reaching from its own narrow corner to spread throughout the town. Folks came to seek its source, drinking in on the spot the full horrors of the deed. They saw the monster rear its head, rush towards them and through them, leaving disorder, abuse and dread in its wake. Like a dragon it wound itself through the alleys to the broad Ludwigstrasse, crept through the squares to the very heart of the city, and began to overflow all quarters, to escape from the streets to the houses. Like an underground drain it ran all day long, its gloomy current and dismal stench striking terror into men’s hearts or drawing thence a force which could but find its outlet in evil.

Three days later a woman of the streets was murdered in the night, and the assassin was caught the very next day. He was an “out-of-work,” one of those relics of war-time, who had fallen into a state approaching savagery. He confessed that he did not know what he was doing when he pressed his fingers deep into the girl’s throat. Something seemed to seize upon him in the dark when he came round that corner by the Jägerstrasse, and drove him to do it.

The town was enveloped as in a misty fog, impressionable and passionate as the human heart, and the spring beyond it was obscured. The lights thrown on life became glaring, its shadows of a wild and overwhelming blackness. Men’s hearts were torn in two, and everywhere there was internal conflict.

IX

At four o’clock there was a telephone call from Frankfurt. “George Strümpfli, artist, was born in Basle in 1885, and lived at the address indicated from January 1st to December 10th last year. He has now gone abroad, his whereabouts being unknown. In the records he is entered as of Swiss nationality, and he is a married man.”

From the register of the town inhabitants Wenk learnt that Cara Carozza was described as follows: “Maria Strümpfli, formerly Essert, known as Cara Carozza, dancer, born in Brunn, May 1, 1892, arrived in Munich from Copenhagen.”

Wenk wondered how the pronunciation of “Georsh” instead of George could have arisen, for both these people were South Germans by speech, and “Georsh” was only heard in North Germany.

He went again to see the dancer, who was now in a prison cell.

“I don’t want anything to do with you,” she said in a harsh voice to Wenk. “You say you are going to help me, and yet you put me in prison.”

“It was not I: that is a mistake on your part. It is the examining counsel, as I told you at once. I am only here to clear up one difficulty in the case, and that is the name you called out. That is the point at issue.”

“Indeed! you seem rather concerned about the verdict.”

“Yes, of course we are. If you were prepared to help us we might get over the difficulty. Let me see, you said your husband’s name was Carl ... Carl Strümpfli, wasn’t it?”

“In case you forget it again, his name is George.”

“He is a Swiss?”

“You have evidently been inquiring about him.”

“Certainly,” said Wenk. “And so he is called George. Now tell me, although you may think it a foolish question, had you any special name for him?”

“No.”

“You never called him anything but....”

“George. No, only George. When can I get away from here?”