“What am I to gather from all this, sir?” said Hull hesitatingly.
“You must have come to some conclusion about your extraordinarily lucky opponent?”
“To be quite candid, I did feel uneasy for a time, Herr von Wenk. There seemed to be something very mysterious about the affair. Finally, I imagined that my forgetting that I had brought the stranger to the club was a feeble joke on the part of my friends.”
“But the Herr Balling in the hotel, who was quite different from the Balling at the club?”
“That certainly is a mystery to me still, but a false address is often given for the purpose of evading payment. In this case, however, it occurred in order to avoid receiving twenty thousand marks.”
“May it not be explained,” continued the State Attorney, “by the fact that this elderly gentleman had been cheating in some way? He was set on his guard by some fact unknown to you, and contented himself with the money he had already won. He gave a name which occurred to him, and of which he had some knowledge. Unless, of course, the Balling in the Excelsior was the Balling from your club, disguised. But you say that the one was short and stout and the other of rather imposing presence. Do you still play, Herr von Hull?”
“A little, now and again.”
“With Mdlle. Carozza, perhaps? I am on friendly terms with one of your intimates, with Karstens. He will introduce me to you, and we shall be able to renew our acquaintance socially. You must not be prejudiced by the fact that it has had an official beginning. I hope to be able to count you on my side.”
The barrister took his leave, and returned to his official chambers.
A month previous to this occurrence, in a lawsuit in which he was professionally engaged, Wenk had first noted the extent to which the gambling fever possessed the city. He himself liked the nervous excitement and the appeal to the imagination afforded by the relations between judge, counsel and accused in the course of his calling. In earlier years he had been a regular cardplayer. He was not a passionate lover of games of chance, but he enjoyed the opportunity of testing the effect of play upon his own self-control, of observing his fellows and noting the enticement afforded by the devious course of luck.
During the lawsuit above mentioned he realized what a danger to the people lay in gambling. The change from war conditions to a state of affairs which afforded the nation little relief from tension had not sobered its imagination, but rather excited it yet more strongly. Perhaps, in the first instance, the war news was largely responsible for extravagant fantasies. For a week, sometimes a month, at a time the reports were like a lottery for the whole nation. Then a fateful movement was set on foot by which whole districts of people were seized with a passion for gambling, a movement designed by the military authorities to induce them to replete the army coffers. Increased wages were offered to the war workers and money was flung into manufacturing concerns. Commerce of all kinds was affected ere long, and everywhere the floodgates were opened. When goods grew more and more scarce, money overflowed all its channels. Wenk saw clearly that the folks in high places who had believed they could purchase the soul of a nation for money were to blame for the tragic outcome of the war as far as Germany was concerned, and so, too, were they responsible for the political development. Instead of the ideal of an immortal soul prepared for any and every renunciation as long as it fulfilled its duty to the community, they had set up an idol—money—and the whole nation was worshipping it.
Then the war came to an end. Money decreased in value and the idea of it played a yet more dominant part in the life of a nation now deprived of its success and brilliance in the world outside. Hundreds of thousands had become accustomed to a life of inaction, and for many years now it had been nothing but pure chance whether they lived or died. Their only preoccupation had been to exercise authority over others and to live entirely on their nerves. They brought with them to the more stable conditions of life the gambling spirit born of their war experience. They had grown accustomed to taking risks, and they continued to rely on luck. They resumed their former mode of life, but brought to it the atmosphere of their recent experiences, transferring the nerve-racking and hazardous existence of those days to the conditions which now obtained. To some extent this was inevitable, but those who looked beyond the present and wanted to see a new era of prosperity dawn must strain every nerve and exercise the strictest self-denial. Thus only could there be hope of recovery.
The great lawsuit had afforded Wenk one example after another of the development of this spirit of gambling, and in its course had taken him frequently into the company of those who lived but for, and by, games of chance. His convictions were well grounded and his recognition of the national danger constantly confirmed to an alarming extent. In the attics and basements folks were gambling for five-mark pieces, and on the first floors for five thousand. They laid their wagers in the streets and the lanes, at home and abroad. They gambled with cards, with goods, with ideas and with enjoyments, with power and with weakness, with themselves and with their nearest and dearest.
At this period, too, people who were not naturally given to hazardous risks, who were habitually calm and self-reliant, were wont to be guided by chance conditions and circumstances, instead of combating them where
