“At any rate, I need not have taken a circuitous route to Schramm’s!” she said laughingly.
At the gaming-table nothing sensational was going on. She decided to feint with him, and said sarcastically:
“You try to disguise your compliments as well as you do yourself, Herr von Wenk. I am obliged to accept them, since they take me unawares.”
“I merely mean,” persisted Wenk, “that the removal of the coronet from your monogram cannot remove the stamp of nobility from your brow.”
“I hope you are still masquerading!”
“As an enraptured reader of sentimental romances, you mean? In any case, dear lady. … But is this quite the place to carry on a conversation which aims at a more serious turn?”
She answered, looking him up and down haughtily and deliberately: “Does that mean that you are inviting me to sup with you?”
“I would certainly not venture to do that,” said Wenk hastily, recognizing her meaning. He saw that she suspected him of desiring to establish an intrigue, and that he would begin it in the ordinary way of a champagne supper. “Now,” said he to himself, “if I am to win her over, I must act in such a way as not to deceive her and yet not fulfil her expectations, and since she thinks she has guessed me aright, I must not allow her a feeling of superiority over me. I do not want her to think me a blockhead. The coronet on the handkerchief seems genuine enough, and she does not come here for money, for she never plays. Therefore someone present, or an adventure of some sort, must account for her being here, and if I am to win her to my side I must prove myself stronger than the unknown attraction here,” he argued.
“What have you to offer me?” she asked in a frivolous tone; but Wenk seemed to find something real behind the thoughtless manner, and he answered intuitively, fearing defeat as soon as the words had left his lips:
“I can offer you a great adventure, a really great adventure!”
“With you?” she rejoined, equally without pausing for reflection. “As a lover or as an agent of the State?”
“With me—as a detective!”
“Can you?” she asked disdainfully.
“Shall I give you proofs? Last night I was decoyed into a car and left in the freezing cold lying on a bench in the Schleissheim Park, stupefied by gas. Today, but twenty-four hours later, I am aware that the man who did this, or ordered it to be done, is the same whom you saw playing recently as the old Professor, and that this same learned old fellow is also the sandy-bearded man to whom you saw Basch lose his money here.”
“Is that true?” she asked in a serious tone.
“Absolutely.”
“The man … with the reddish beard … who … sat … there?”
“The man who sat opposite Basch like a beast of prey!”
“And what am I … what have I to do with it?”
“To help me find this man, from whom others must be rescued.”
“I can’t help admiring him!”
“I do not minimize his powers, but there are powers which are evil in their influence.”
“And yet more really human and greater than those that are called good!” she cried; and her bosom, slender and youthful as a girl’s, swelled as she confronted Wenk.
“Ah, now I understand you, dear lady. Listen. Not more really human or greater, for power is power. One display of it cannot be measured by another; it is only its essence we can judge. Everything is human, the good as well as the bad. Evil forces only reap their advantage through the destruction of good ones, and this advantage is for the destroyer alone. The forces of good benefit all without yielding their possessor that gross material gain which he who practises evil strives to attain. Which is the nobler? That is what you must ask yourself, and if there is an exuberance of energy in your temperament which you cannot make use of in the class of society to which you belong, and yet do not desire to keep inactive. … However, these people are beginning to notice our talk. I expect the blond has his spies everywhere. Allow me to take leave of you and request an opportunity of continuing this conversation.”
“Come and see me tomorrow; come at teatime please. Ask for Countess Told, at Tutzing.”
She gave him her hand. Wenk, to whom her name supplied the clue to that mysterious flight when Count Told had entered the room, kissed her slender fingers, yielding himself momentarily to her charm and beauty, and toying with the foolish notion of abandoning his chase of criminals and yielding to the pursuit of this woman. With these thoughts in his mind, he said farewell.
Left to herself, the Countess reflected: “We women have no imagination. I was looking for an adventure among these gamblers absorbed in their play, and when it presented itself I imagined it was but an intrigue. But this is a man, indeed! He devotes his life to his task, and no man can give more than his life, and there is nothing greater or more beautiful than life. If only I had the chance of doing likewise!” She resolved to follow Wenk’s leading and do all that she could to help him.
Among his letters next morning Wenk noticed a small registered parcel. He opened it, to find his watch and his purse with the money intact. The notebook alone was missing, and on a card these words were typed:
“I am no ghoul. The things my subordinate took from you in error are returned herewith. I am keeping the notebook because its contents concern me.—Balling.”
Wenk was scarcely surprised. This man had thousands at stake; what were a few beggarly
