“It appears not,” said Giraldi. “Every other man and every fourth lady is talking about it upstairs. Fortunately it does not concern me.”
“Not directly,” said the Councillor eagerly, “but indirectly. How clever you have been again. The only man who would not hear of a postponement of the date of payment of the second half of the purchase-money. You were only too right. The Count is ruined. He will never pay the second half.”
“One must reconcile oneself to the inevitable.”
“Very philosophical! But indeed with your genius for finance, you will soon make up for it. I only heard today that you—I presume on the part of the Baroness, but it is the same thing—had lent the Count the half million with which he—”
Giraldi’s brows met together like a thundercloud.
“Had the Count been talking—against his word of honour?”
“The Count! the Count!” cried the Councillor. “As if he troubled himself about anything. He throws his shares into the market, depreciates their value, and in short amuses himself. I regret, by every hair on my head, that we ever had anything to do with a fine gentleman! Lübbener—”
“Ah!” said Giraldi.
“Of course, Lübbener,” continued the Councillor, “he no doubt only acted in the interests of the railway, when he paid you this afternoon the half million of the mortgage, after you had declared your fixed resolution in any other case to move for an immediate public sale. I cannot blame you either for wishing to get back at once money which seemed in such danger; but it is hard when friends and foes alike work for our ruin—”
“I do not consider Lübbener’s finances by any means exhausted.”
“Because—pardon me, my dear sir—this supposition suits you; I can assure you I was with him a quarter of an hour after you had finished your business with him. He was furious. He said it had done for him, and for our whole enterprise. Lasker’s speech this morning—shares went down twenty percent; half a million to pay this afternoon, for which he was not in the least prepared—it was the beginning of the end—”
“Just what Herr von Wallbach said,” said Giraldi. “But pardon me, Councillor, it is rather warm here—”
“You will not come up again!”
“On no account.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said the Councillor. “I would go with you if it were not for Lübbener, who is sure to be up there—”
“I did not see him.”
“You must have overlooked our little friend. I wanted to tell him something that I have just heard from the Minister who sent for me, and has only just set me free, and which I hope may be useful to him in tomorrow’s battle.”
“Then I will take leave of you. I am really tired to death.”
The Councillor had not yet let go the button of Giraldi’s coat. Through the comparative silence of these downstairs rooms sounded from above the wild strains of a furious waltz, and the dumb rush and sweep of the dancers, whose whirling steps made the magnificent building tremble as if with ague.
“They are dancing over a volcano,” said the Councillor in a low voice. “Believe me, he cannot hold out; it is impossible. We have been obliged to pay him with shares, of course, like all the world. How he is to meet his engagements now that our shares have fallen to twenty—heaven only knows. I calculate that the man will be ruined in three weeks at the latest, and we with him.”
“I regret it extremely, but if the world were coming to an end in half an hour, I should go to bed now.”
The Councillor let go the button almost terrified. Such a wicked look had shot out of Giraldi’s great black eyes, although he had spoken with the tired smile of a completely worn-out man.
“One would think he might play an active part in the downfall of the world,” murmured the Councillor, as he brushed up his short, dry hair before the big looking-glass. “Strange what odd ideas come into my head when I am with that man! Such calmness at such a moment! He does business to the extent of half a million, of which no human soul is aware, loses another half million, and—goes to bed! Mysterious man!”
The Councillor put his brush in his pocket, pulled out once more his white tie, seized his crush-hat, and was on the point of leaving the cloakroom, when another guest stepped hastily in, and throwing his fur coat on the table, called to the servant, in a voice apparently trembling with haste, “Be good enough to keep them separate, I shall only be here a short time. Ah, Councillor!”
“Good gracious, Lübbener, what is the matter with you?”
Lübbener signed to him to be silent, and laid his finger on his lips at the same time, then drew the horrified Councillor into the farthest corner of the cloakroom, and said, as he stood on the tips of his toes, and stretched his short neck as far as possible out of his white tie, “Is he still upstairs?”
“Giraldi?” asked the Councillor, whose mind was still full of the Italian’s image. “You must have met him at the door.”
“He! Philip—Schmidt?”
Utterly absurd as the question seemed, the Councillor could not smile; his friend’s face, always grey, was now ashy-white; the little black eyes, which generally twinkled so merrily, were now fixed; each one of the short hairs, so thickly covering the low forehead, seemed to stand up of itself.
“Do not stare at me so,” exclaimed Lübbener. “I am quite in my right senses; I only hope that other people see as clearly into their affairs as I do with mine. I was with Haselow just before closing-time, to see if he could not help me with a hundred thousand or so tomorrow, as I had had a somewhat heavy payment to make, for which I was not prepared. ‘It is just the same with me,’ said Haselow. ‘Signor Giraldi took away the last fifty thousand of the Warnow money
