“Yes,” he said, “it is the same man!”
“He has disappeared,” exclaimed Wenk; “he no longer comes to Schramm’s. And as for you, Herr Hull, we shall henceforth have you under our special care, but you must endeavour to meet our wishes and be constantly on your guard.”
IV
Hull departed, and Wenk, alone with the impressions which the evening’s experiences had left on his mind, asked himself, “Why did the fair unknown try to get away so secretly? Have I made another mistake? Has my helping her in her flight placed a weapon in the hand which would strike at me and my work?”
His agitation increased, but he dismissed his doubts of the lady. No, he felt he could rely upon her. And now the realization of the connection between Hull and the gambler, and all the other stories about the latter, set his mind working in a fresh direction, and other ideas began to develop. He seemed to hear the beating of the wings of some new and mighty force that was invading his life. Conflicts were going on in his physical nature, his fantasy, his nervous energy and endurance. His knowledge of men and his dominion over them were being put to the test. Thinking fiercely, he smoked cigar after cigar, and clouds of smoke surrounded him. It was springtime, storm, sunshine, and again storm, in his blood. His muscles were engaged in an imaginary and heroic conflict with mysterious and mighty giants who were seeking to strangle his fellow-men. He had seized one of them by the false reddish beard which he had assumed, in semblance of humanity.
From the town, lapped in slumber, it seemed as if the spirit of the age rushed into his room—an age fraught with dangers, demands, and tension of all kinds. It demanded men—demanded of all men all their ambition, self-discipline, intelligence, selflessness … selflessness. It should take him! There he was, free alike from arrogance and from indolence! Might there not be, he asked himself in his ecstatic monologue, a new democracy which should redeem the past? Was that the goal towards which the present gloom was leading mankind? Was he rising on the stormy wave? He would no longer drift along, striving to help his country as a mere idealist. No, he would stand firm on his feet; struggle, contest, but not submit! Freed from thoughts of self, he would expend the last drop of his blood to become what he had learned to be; he would yield all he had to give, to the very last red drop.
It was not his career that was at stake, but that which all men have in common, both in conflict with each other and in helping one another. It was the surge of humanity in which mortals, for good or ill, were engulfed in a gloom which none could dominate and subdue. In that night of reflection the lawyer saw the criminal no longer as a being of an inferior order. He envisaged him as a man whose pulses raced madly along, his senses stirred by the powers of hell; a man whose lusts and appetites, demon-fed, should overreach themselves and be brought to nought, and he, Wenk, should save and deliver him. The fighter should gain the ascendancy over his adversary.
In imagination Wenk was now struggling with the blond stranger, and in him he had a powerful opponent. He suspected even more than he already knew. If he could relieve mankind of him, he would have accomplished something by which he could advance further.
The song which Wenk’s heart had been singing for the last two hours suddenly seemed to be familiar to him, and in astonishment he realized that the state to which he had now come had been foreshadowed in his boyhood’s days, even before his university career, his military training, and his entry into law, when as yet no idea of the justification of humanity had fired his blood. Thinking over his lonely bachelor existence, without any womanly influence, he felt a strange, sad yearning for the father who had died long before.
The next day Wenk asked Hull to procure for him a list of all the secret gambling-dens, the addresses of which might be obtained with the help of Cara, who was au courant of such matters. He made Hull promise, however, that he would not speak to the girl of himself in this connection.
Wenk visited these places evening by evening. He went disguised as a rich old gentleman from the provinces. He had chosen this disguise, first of all, because he had an excellent example of it in an elderly uncle whom he merely had to copy. The old gentleman gave the impression that he was thoroughly enjoying all his experiences of the great city.
Wenk had some accomplices among Karstens’ acquaintances. He begged them to make it widely known that he, the “country cousin,” was a man of fabulous wealth, which when once settled down, he intended to use to the full. He thought that thus he might entice the gambler from Schramm’s and others bent on plunder, that his wealth would be the candle to these night moths. At times he played carelessly for half an hour, adapting himself to the character of the game; then he would win considerable sums, only to lose them again next time. With all this he never lost sight of his own affairs or his neighbours’, and during the game his brain was working busily with a keenness which brought its own satisfaction.
One evening during the second week in which he was pursuing this course, he came to a gaming-house in the centre of the city which, from the style of its habitués, who appeared more downright than in some of the other places, seemed to promise him something out of the common. There he saw an old gentleman sitting at the card-table, his attention being drawn to him on
