“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 guardroom, 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
