Part 20

“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. To-day, 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 to-morrow; come at tea-time 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 hundreds and a gold watch to him? He did not need this to convince him that it was really himself, and more particularly his notebook, that was concerned. He put away both watch and purse and let his thoughts linger on the alluring Countess.

In the afternoon he was received at her house, a mansion sumptuously arranged, but in a style that offended Wenk, for since yesterday his ideas of the Countess had made considerable advance, and it would have been pleasant to find himself more in sympathy with her tastes than this home of hers evidenced.

In the very entrance-hall the walls had been painted all over in Cubist forms and conventional designs tortured into weird shapes in endless succession, with splashes of colour here and there, as if to create an impression of the ardent temperament of the designer. “You are cold and passionless,” said he to himself; “of so calculating and cold a nature that if one among you disappears, the others have not enough red blood in their veins to notice his absence?”

The butler, the dark severity of whose livery was lightened by small silver buttons and blue lappets, took his hat and coat from him and announced him to the Countess, who was sitting at the tea-table.

“We shall not be alone long,” she said; “my husband will be home at five o’clock.”

But the decorations of the house had made Wenk feel unsympathetic, and before he answered he cast a hasty glance at the walls of the room. The Countess noticed it.

“That is all my husband’s doing,” she said. “To me it appears simply hideous. What are you to make out of it, if one paints a peasant, indicates some freshly painted barns, and then tells the beholder that it is a symphony of Beethoven’s? However, every one to his taste--or are you perhaps a ‘Futurist’ also?”

“I cannot say that,” said Wenk, “but you seem to imply that they are the only moderns. Yet all men in secret speak the same language. Our freedom to express ourselves comes only from individuality!”

“You want to be free?” said the lady. “Are you not your own salvation? Does not your calling, your expenditure of energy, give you your inner freedom? There is no salvation from without!”

“That is quite true,” said Wenk simply; and the womanly image which had haunted him since yesterday, and which seemed to be lost on entering this house, once more returned to his mind. “It is really what we were talking of yesterday, this balance of the forces of good and evil, and I wanted to talk to you about that again to-day.”

“I understood you aright,” answered the Countess. “I will confess to you that at first I thought you were on the search for an intrigue, and the idea amused me considerably, for God knows I seek something very different in the gaming-houses.”