three-card trick. “But you’re not to gamble,” he said wearily and gave Pagel back the purchase note. “Games of chance are prohibited by law.”
“Certainly,” said Pagel politely. “I shan’t gamble any more. May I stand bail for Fraulein Ledig?”
“She’s no longer here,” said the secretary, and for him she no longer existed, indeed. “She’s already at Alexanderplatz.”
“But why?” shouted Pagel. “Tell me why?”
“Because she indulges in lewd practices without being under police supervision,” said the secretary, tired out. “Moreover, she is said to have a venereal disease.”
It was just as well that there was a chair near—Pagel gripped it so hard, he thought it would break. “That’s impossible,” he managed to say at last.
“She’s been recognized,” explained the secretary and made to get on with his work. “By another girl of the same profession. Besides, she admitted it.”
“She admitted it?”
“She admitted it.”
“Thanks,” said Pagel. He let go the chair and went toward the door.
“Your money, your papers,” called the secretary impatiently.
Pagel made a renunciatory gesture, then thought better of it and pushed the lot back into his pockets.
“You’ll lose your money,” said the secretary indifferently.
Pagel repeated his gesture and marched out.
Only five minutes later, in the midst of his scribbling, did it occur to the secretary that he had given Herr Pagel false, or at least misleading, information. Petra had admitted to having practiced lewdness a few times about a year ago. She had not admitted to having a venereal disease.
The secretary deliberated a moment. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all. Perhaps he wouldn’t marry her now. One shouldn’t marry such girls. Never!
And he returned to his writing. The case Ledig, the last official act of Oberwachtmeister Leo Gubalke, was wiped out as far as he was concerned.
Chapter Six
I
After the first assault of junior and senior hotel staff, peace reigned round the friends von Prackwitz and Studmann. The reception manager lay sleeping on a rather dilapidated sofa in a basement room of the hotel. His was the leaden and ugly sleep of the drunken, with dropped jaw and wet mouth, a puffy face and a skin which looked suddenly stubby, as if he had not shaved for some time. Across his forehead was a red scratch received while falling down the stairs.
Von Prackwitz looked at his friend, then at the room into which he had been carried. It was not an inviting place. A big electric mangle took up most of the room, empty laundry baskets were piled up in one corner, against the wall leaned two ironing boards.
A waiter peered in—everybody seemed to think that he was entitled to do so without a word of apology, to make frivolous remarks, even to laugh. “Surely Herr von Studmann has a room of his own in the hotel?” Rittmeister von Prackwitz inquired angrily. “Why hasn’t he been taken to it?”
The waiter shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know? I didn’t bring him here,” he said with an inquisitive glance at the sleeper.
Von Prackwitz restrained himself. “Please send me someone from the management.”
The waiter vanished. Prackwitz waited.
And nobody came. The Rittmeister waited a long time. He leaned back in the kitchen chair, crossed his legs and yawned. He was tired out. He felt that he had gone through a good deal since his train, coming from Ostade, had entered Schlesische Bahnhof that morning; too much, in fact, for a simple countryman unfamiliar with cosmopolitan excitements.
In the hope that it would cheer him up he lit a cigarette. No one came. Surely the management must have learned that the reception manager and assistant director, after some incoherent remarks, had fallen downstairs in full view of the crowded entrance hall. Nevertheless none of the gentlemen of the management troubled himself about it. The Rittmeister frowned, wondering what lay behind this matter. Von Studmann had not fallen downstairs through an accident which might happen, by some cruel trick of fate, to the most noble. The intrusion of the junior staff, the absence of the senior, the breath of the sleeper, all gave the game away—Oberleutnant von Studmann was drunk, dead drunk. Was still drunk. Von Prackwitz wondered if Studmann had become a drunkard.
Had Studmann become a drunkard? It was possible. Everything was possible in these accursed times. But the Rittmeister immediately rejected this idea. Firstly, no confirmed drunkard ever fell downstairs—that happened only to the amateur; secondly, no big hotel would employ a drinker.
No—and Rittmeister von Prackwitz paced up and down the ironing room—there was more to it than that. Something unexpected must have happened, which he would hear about in time, and it was quite useless to rack his brains at present. The important question was, how would it affect Studmann? From the behavior of the staff Prackwitz concluded that the results would be unpleasant. Well, he would defend his friend with tooth and nail as long as Studmann was in no fit state to defend himself.
With tooth and nail! The Rittmeister was pleased with this warlike phrase. But should this turn out to be useless (and one knew these unfeeling moneymakers), perhaps it was as well. He might be able to persuade him …
He thought of his lonely walk through Langestrasse to the Harvesters’ Agency. He thought of the many solitary walks he had taken since he had left the army, always toward that imaginary point in his mind’s eye. He remembered how often he had felt the need of a comrade. At the military college, in the army, during the war, there had always been friends with whom he could chat, fellows with similar sentiments, similar interests, the same sense of honor. Since the war all this had vanished, however—everyone was for himself alone; there was no concord, no community of feeling any longer.
He won’t like to come as my guest, reflected the Rittmeister, going on to think of other things. Why should he fool himself. He had made a blunder that morning at the Harvesters’ Agency; and he had made another blunder in giving the dollars to the foreman at Schlesische Bahnhof. And his behavior at police headquarters was possibly not altogether wise; moreover, after endless chasing about and talking, he had allowed an agent, an hour ago, to palm off on him sixty people whom he would not have a chance of inspecting before the following morning—all because he had wanted to bring this nauseating business to a conclusion. That, too, was perhaps not very wise.
Well, he was hot-headed and impulsive, rushing at things tooth and nail, although afterwards he always became bored with them. Besides, some matters he did not entirely grasp; perhaps his father-in-law, old Geheimrat von Teschow, was right—he would never become a real businessman.
The Rittmeister threw the stub of his cigarette into a corner and lit another. Yes, he mortified himself, he smoked this rubbish instead of his favorite brand. If his wife bought herself a couple of pairs of silk stockings he quarreled with her. But when the cattle dealer came and haggled with him over fat oxen, talked for one hour and bargained the next, allowed himself to be sent away and then came back again, wouldn’t go and was humble when he was barked at—yes, then Herr von Prackwitz gave way. He became bored, and sold the fine oxen at a price which made the old Geheimrat, when he heard about it, exult. Who thereupon said, of course: “Excuse me, Joachim, I mustn’t interfere with your business. Only I’ve never had money enough to be able to chuck it out of the window.”
No, he could easily convince Studmann that at Neulohe he would be a very necessary and very useful assistant, who could not be too highly paid, friendship apart. Meier wouldn’t be there much longer. What Violet had said on the telephone a little while ago (when he rang up about the carriages for the following morning) was
