approaching when he would have to stand up and surrender this pleasure which he had but scarcely tasted. The more stakes, the more his prospects of winning, he thought, and with increasing haste he distributed counters over the whole table.
“That’s not the way to play!” said a disapproving voice near him.
“What?” burst forth the Rittmeister, and looked indignantly at young Pagel, who had returned to the neighboring chair. But here young Pagel was neither uncertain nor embarrassed. “No, that’s not the way to play!” he said again. “You’re playing against yourself.”
“What am I doing?” asked the Rittmeister, trying to be angry and wanting to snub the fellow just as thoroughly as he had snubbed Studmann. But to his surprise his anger, which usually was ever ready, failed him and he was seized with embarrassment, as if he had been behaving like a foolish child.
“If you stake on red and black simultaneously then you can’t win,” said Pagel reprovingly. “Either red wins or black—never both!”
“Where have I …?” the Rittmeister asked in confusion and looked at the table, just as the croupier’s rake intervened and the counters rattled.
“Go on, take them,” whispered Pagel sternly. “You’ve had luck. That over there is yours! And that! Madam, if you don’t mind, that is our stake!”
A woman’s voice said something very heatedly, but Pagel paid no attention. He continued giving orders, and the Rittmeister followed his instructions like a child.
“That’s right. And this time we won’t bet at all. We shall first see how the game runs. How many counters have you left? That won’t be enough for a big coup. Wait, I’ll buy some more.”
“You wanted to go, Pagel!” Studmann’s unbearable nursery-governess voice made itself heard.
“One moment, Herr von Studmann,” said Pagel, smiling pleasantly. “I just want to show the Rittmeister quickly how to play in a correct way. Please, fifty counters of five hundred thousand and twenty of a million.”
Studmann made a gesture of despair.…
“Only one moment, really,” said Pagel. “You can take it from me the game doesn’t amuse me at all. I’m no gambler. It’s just for the Rittmeister’s sake.”
But von Studmann was listening no longer. He had turned round angrily and was gone.
“Just watch, Rittmeister,” said Pagel. “Now red will turn up.”
They waited anxiously.
There came—red.
“If we had only staked then!” mourned the Rittmeister.
“Just be patient!” said Pagel comfortingly. “First we must see how the land lies. One can’t yet say anything definite—anyway, it’s very probable that black will turn up.”
But it was red.
“You see!” said Pagel triumphantly. “What a good thing we didn’t. We’ll soon start, though, and you’ll see, in a quarter of an hour …”
The croupier smiled imperceptibly. In a corner von Studmann was cursing the moment that he had spoken to young Pagel in Lutter and Wegner’s.
Chapter Eight
I
In the bushes in front of the staff-house Violet von Prackwitz stood on guard; inside the office another girl, Amanda Backs, came out of her hiding place. She did not understand by a long way everything that these two, the Lieutenant and Fraulein Violet, were doing together. But much could be guessed. She had already heard of the Lieutenant who traveled the countryside gathering the people for some revolt; and at that time there was a saying current throughout Germany, darkly threatening: “Traitors will be punished by the secret tribunal, the Vehme!”
It is not pleasant to have to think of one’s lover as a traitor; and though Amanda Backs might be as sturdy a piece of vulgarity as one could imagine, she would never be a traitress. She loved and she hated without restraint, with all her powerful and unbreakable nature; but she could never betray. Therefore she continued to stand by her Hans, despite everything she knew about him. He too was just a man, and one cannot make much show, God knows, of any man—a girl has to take them just as they are.
She stole quickly into the room, knelt down by the bed and shook the sleeper vigorously. But he was not so easily to be shaken from his drunkenness. Amanda had to adopt strong measures, and when the wet face-cloth also failed to work she simply decided to tug at his hair with one hand while cautiously placing the other over his mouth so that he couldn’t make a noise.
And this succeeded—the furious pain woke up little Meier, for she pulled and tugged his hair with all her by no means insignificant strength. Like all men, and especially like Black Meier, he instinctively defended himself, biting the hand over his mouth.
She suppressed a cry and whispered in his ear: “Wake up! Wake up, Hans. It’s me—Amanda!”
“I can feel that,” he grunted angrily. “If you only knew how fed up I am with you women! You can never leave a chap in peace.” Feeling unwell, his head aching abominally, he would have continued his grumbling but she was afraid of the girl spying outside, and again laid her hand firmly over his mouth. Immediately he bit it again.
And now her patience was gone. She tore her hand away from his teeth and struck out blindly in the darkness, not caring where. Her senses, however, guided her well; she found her mark beautifully, thick and fast the blows fell on him, left, right—there, that must have been his nose! And now the mouth.…
And all the time she moaned softly, breathless, carried away by this hitting in the darkness at something which groaned. “Will you be sensible? Will you shut up? Otherwise they’ll kill you!” (She herself was well on the way to achieving this.)
Breathless, almost completely sober, frightened, unable to defend himself, Meier now begged: “But, Mandy! My little Mandy! I’ll do everything you want. But stop it now. Oh, be a bit careful.…”
Her breast heaving, she stopped. “Will you listen to me, you fathead?” she gasped with angry tenderness. “The Lieutenant was here!”
“Where—here?” he asked stupidly.
“Here in your room! He was looking for something—he took a letter out of your jacket.”
“A letter?” He still didn’t understand. But then his memory gradually if incompletely returned. “Oh, that!” he said scornfully. “He can keep that rubbish.”
“But, Hans, do be sensible! Think!” she begged. “You must have been up to something—he was so mad with you! He’s coming again. Tonight.”
“Let him,” he bragged, although an unpleasant feeling crept over him. “I’ve got the monkey where I want him, him and his fine Fraulein von Prackwitz.”
“But, Hans, she was here as well. She looked for the letter with him.”
“Who? Fraulein Vi—the boss’s daughter? In my room? With me lying drunk and naked in bed? Oh, dear, oh, dear.”
“Yes, and now she’s keeping watch outside your window so that you shan’t run away!”
“Me, run away!” he sneered boastfully. He involuntarily lowered his voice, however. “That’s what they’d like, for me to run away. That would please them both! But no fear, I’m staying; I’m going to the Rittmeister tomorrow morning, and I’ll show her up, with her fine Lieutenant.”
“Hans, stop this nonsense! He’s coming again, tonight. He won’t let you go to the Rittmeister tomorrow morning.”
“What can he do? He can’t tie me up!”
“No, he can’t tie you up.…”
“Supposing I tell the Rittmeister about the letter.”
