Wolf Among Wolves (60 page)

Glory of heaven! Red? Of course red, and once more red. And red again. But now we’ll take black—otherwise life has no savor. Without a slight mingling of black, life has no savor. Still more bank notes. Where shall I put them all? I should have brought a suitcase with me—but who could anticipate a thing like this?

What does Studmann want again? What’s the shouting? Police? What does he mean by police—what does he want police for? Where are they all running to? Stop, let the ball finish rolling! I win once more, I win again, always again! I am the eternal winner …

Here are the police! Now all the players are standing as silent as their own ghosts. What does the funny man with the bowler hat want? He is saying something to me. All gambling money is confiscated. All money? But, of course, it’s all gambling money—money for gambling—otherwise it would have no sense. What else is it for?

We are to get ready and come along? Of course we are coming along; if there’s to be no more playing we might as well come. Why is the Rittmeister arguing with the man in blue? There’s no sense in that. If we can’t play, nothing matters!

“Come along, Herr Rittmeister, be calm. Look, Studmann is also going along, and he hasn’t played once. So let’s go.”

How deathly pale the croupier looks! Yes, for him it is bad. He was losing—I, however, I won as I’ve never won in my life! It was wonderful beyond words. Good night!

At last I can sleep peacefully, I have achieved what I longed for; as far as I’m concerned, I can sleep forever. Good night!

X

In a little courtroom in Police Headquarters at Alexanderplatz a wretched old incandescent lamp cast its reddish light on the faces of those arrested in the
gambling club, some scowling, some silent and depressed, others sleepy or eagerly chatting. Only the croupier and his two assistants had been led off separately—all the rest had been driven into this room as they got out of the police wagon, and the doors had been locked on the outside in order to dispense with a guard. Now wait until your turn comes!

At long intervals the door to an adjoining room opened, a weary-looking, wrinkled clerk motioned to the man standing nearest him, and that man vanished and did not return. Then after an interminable period, the next was summoned.

Headquarters were extremely busy. The murder of Oberwachtmeister Leo Gubalke had led to a series of raids, and there was no lack of objectives for these raids, unfortunately. Gangs were rounded up, receivers’ dens visited, night clubs inspected, naked-dancing resorts combed out, accommodation and assignation hotels were searched, station waiting rooms and down-and-out shelters scanned.…

Incessantly was heard from the square the exciting, nervous trilling of the patrol wagons setting out or returning with fresh hordes of arrested. Every room, every hall was packed full. Exhausted secretaries, clerks half asleep; gray-looking typists kept inserting fresh sheets of paper in their typewriters; in hoarse voices officials asked questions so quietly that they could hardly be understood.

Assault.

Immorality.

Unnatural vice.

Petty larceny.

Pocket-picking.

Housebreaking.

Robbing drunks.

Begging.

Street robbery.

Illegal possession of firearms.

Cheating.

Illegal gambling.

Receiving.

Passing of counterfeit money.

Drug-trafficking.

Procuring, trivial and serious cases of.

Blackmail.

Living on immoral earnings.

An endless list, the wearisome deathly menu of crimes, vices, misdemeanors, trespasses … Over their charge-sheets the officials almost nodded
to sleep.… Then suddenly they started shouting, until their voices once more gave way.… An ever-rising flood of lies, evasions, distortions, denunciations. (And in the Government printing works, in a hundred auxiliary ones, they were preparing for the coming day its new abundance of money, poured out in overwhelming superfluity upon a starving, brutalized people who from day to day increasingly lost all feeling of self-respect and propriety.)

“It’s enough to drive one mad,” cried Rittmeister von Prackwitz, jumping up for the tenth time to pace the room. The fact that, in doing so, he had to avoid half a dozen men likewise engaged by no means improved his temper. Snorting, he stopped in front of his old comrade. “How much longer do you think we’ll have to stay here? Until the gentlemen condescend, eh? It’s monstrous, arresting me.”

“Now, just keep calm,” pleaded von Studmann. “Anyway, I don’t believe we’re arrested.”

“Of course we’re arrested,” cried the Rittmeister still more angrily. “The windows are barred and the doors locked. Don’t you call that arrested? Ridiculous. I’d just like to know what you think an arrest looks like, then.”

“Be calm, Prackwitz. Getting excited won’t do any good.”

“Be calm, of course, be calm! It’s all very well for you to talk—you haven’t got a family, you haven’t got a father-in-law. I’d just like to see how calm you would be if you had Geheimrat Horst-Heinz von Teschow as your father-in-law.”

“He won’t find out. I tell you, we only have to show our identification papers and then they’ll let us go. Nothing will happen.”

“Then why don’t they let me go? Here are my papers—I have them in my hand. I must get away, my train’s going, I have to take my harvesters to the country—I say, you—listen, Herr what’s-your-name?” He rushed upon the clerk who had just appeared. “I demand to be released at once. First they take all my money from me—”

“Later, later,” said the clerk indifferently. “First calm yourself a little.
You
are to come along now,” and he motioned to a fat man.

“First calm myself!” said von Prackwitz to Studmann. “That’s simply ridiculous. How can I calm myself when I’m treated in this way?”

“No, really, Prackwitz, pull yourself together. If you go on fuming like this, they’ll keep us to the last. And then I ask one more thing of you: don’t shout at the officials.”

“Why shouldn’t I shout at them? I’ll blow them up properly. Keeping me here for hours!”

“For half an hour.”

“Anyway, they’re used to being shouted at. They’re all old noncoms and sergeants—you can see it.”

“But you’re not here as their superior, Prackwitz. It’s not their fault that you were caught gambling.”

“No. But just look at young Pagel, the roué. Sits there as if the business didn’t trouble him at all, smirking and grinning like some Buddha. What are you grinning like that for, Pagel?”

“I was just thinking,” said Pagel, smiling, “how crazily everything happened today. Over a year I’ve been struggling for a little money and today I get it, piles and piles. Snap! It’s confiscated.”

“And that makes you laugh? Well, you’ve got a funny sense of humor.”

“And then another thing,” Pagel went on, unheeding. “This afternoon I wanted to get married …”

“You see, Pagel,” said Rittmeister triumphantly, suddenly in a good temper. “I guessed at once in Lutter and Wegner’s that you were worried about a woman.”

“Yes. And this evening I heard that my dear intended had been arrested for something and taken to Police Headquarters.… And now I’m sitting here, too.”

“Why was she arrested?” asked the Rittmeister curiously, for the consideration of events did not interest him so much as the events themselves.

Von Studmann shook his head, and Pagel remained silent.

The Rittmeister recollected himself. “I’m sorry, Pagel; of course, it’s no concern of mine. But it beats me why you sit there pleased and grinning just because of that, I must say. After all, it’s an extremely sad business.”

“Yes,” said Pagel. “It is. It’s funny. Very funny. If I had won the money only twenty-four hours earlier, she wouldn’t have been arrested and we would now have been married. Really very funny.”

“I wouldn’t think about it any more, Pagel,” suggested von Studmann. “That’s all finished and done with now, thank God. In a few hours we’ll all be sitting together in the train.”

There was a silence. Then Prackwitz cleared his throat. “Give me a cigarette, Pagel. No, you’d better not. I owe you so much already.”

Pagel waved his hand. “That’s all gone.”

“But, man, don’t talk such nonsense! You lent me money. Do you remember how much you gave me?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Pagel. “I wasn’t meant to have any of it; that’s been proved.”

“Gambling debts are debts of honor, Herr Pagel,” declared the Rittmeister sternly. “You shall get your money back, you can depend on that. Of course, it
won’t be possible at once. First we must have the harvest in and begin threshing.… Are you coming with me?”

“What, just in order to wait for the money?” said Pagel sullenly. “I’d like to start doing something worth while at last … if I only knew what. But if you have some proper work for me, Herr Rittmeister—”

“Of course I’ve got work for you, man,” said the Rittmeister excitedly. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve been wanting a couple of reliable men. To give out fodder, pay wages, distribute allowances, make a tour of inspection through the fields every now and again at night—you can’t imagine the things that are stolen from me.”

“And forests and fields,” added von Studmann. “Trees, animals—no brick houses with falling façades, no cocaine, no gambling clubs.”

“No, of course not,” said the Rittmeister eagerly. “You would have to promise me, Pagel, that you won’t gamble as long as you’re with me. That’s quite out of the question.” He turned red. “It doesn’t really matter if you don’t promise,” he said a little blusteringly. “I can’t really insist on that. Well, what do you say?”

“I’ll come to the station tomorrow morning in any case and tell you then,” said Pagel hesitatingly. “Eight o’clock at Schlesische Bahnhof—that was it, wasn’t it?”

Prackwitz and Studmann looked at each other. The Rittmeister made an almost angry gesture. “Hasn’t Fate answered your question yet?” said Studmann. Pagel kept silent. “For the game was your question, wasn’t it, Pagel?”

“But I won,” said Wolfgang obstinately.

“And sit here without anything!” laughed the Rittmeister scornfully. “Be a man, Pagel! I find your indecision horrible. Pull yourself together. Give up gambling.”

“Are you worried about the girl?” asked Studmann.

“A little,” admitted Pagel. “It’s really so strange for me to be sitting here, too.”

“Well, do what you must do,” cried the Rittmeister angrily. “I’m not going to beg you to come to Neulohe.”

“In any case, we shall be seeing each other at the station,” added von Studmann hastily, for someone was calling out. From the adjoining room came a thick-set man who ran to doors and windows, inspected them, shook his head. “Thieves! What a nerve, robbing the police!” he shouted.

He hammered against the door. Officer, open up! Hey, Tiede, see that no one escapes—!

Confusion, yells, laughter.

Policemen entered. The fat Criminal Commissar stormed up and down. “Get into line, all of you. We’re going to search you. Will you be quiet over there? Look under the tables and chairs as well.”

It appeared that one or two of these arrested had not known how to employ the time more usefully than by screwing off the bronze door- and window-fittings. There were no more door-handles, no more window-handles, no more lock-fittings. Even the policemen laughed. The Commissar himself could not but smile.

“What a nerve! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Of course the fellow’s already gone, or the fellows, for there must have been a few of them—one man couldn’t have hidden it all. I questioned them and noticed nothing! Well, I shall have to look through the identity lists at once.”

“A moment, Herr Commissar!” called Studmann.

“What do you want? You heard, didn’t you? I haven’t any time now. Oh, it’s you, man. I’m very sorry, Oberleutnant von Studmann. The light’s so bad. What are you doing in our shop, my old friend of the Baltic Corps? Well, come along, then; of course it’s your turn next. Only a few formalities, but you’ll get a fine. Still, you needn’t turn gray because of that; the currency devaluation will settle that. Your friends? How do you do, Rittmeister? How do you do, Lieutenant? I’m Commissar Künnecke, formerly quartermaster-sergeant in the Rathenower Hussars.… Yes, this is how we meet again. Wretched times, aren’t they? So you’re the young man who made that enormous pile? Incredible. And just then the wicked police had to come in! Yes, the money has gone bye-bye; we don’t give it back again. What we have we keep. Ha, ha! But you shouldn’t let it worry you. Money of that sort never yet brought any luck—thank your Creator you are rid of it! The doorknobs? Our colleagues will enjoy pulling our legs tomorrow. I still can’t help laughing. It was good bronze—they’ll get a sack of money from the old-iron merchant. All right, and now the personal details. Herr von Studmann—occupation?”

“Reception manager.”

“You? Lordy, lordy, lordy! What have we come down to? You—reception manager! Excuse me, Herr Oberleutnant …”

“Certainly, certainly—and at that I am an ex-reception manager, now agricultural apprentice.”

“Agricultural apprentice? That’s better. Even very good. Land is the only real thing today. When were you born?”

XI

Outside a door lined with sheet-metal stood a table, an ordinary deal table, on which lay a packet of sandwiches and a thermos flask. At the table sat an old
man in police uniform, reading a newspaper by the very weak illumination of a fanlight. Hearing footsteps coming along the passage, he lowered the paper and glanced up over his pince-nez.

The young man came slowly nearer. At first it seemed as if he was about to walk past the table. “Excuse me,” he said, “does this lead to the police prison?”

“It does,” said the official, folding his paper carefully and laying it on the table. “But it is only a door for those on duty,” he added.

The young man hesitated. “Well, what’s on your mind? Do you want to give yourself up?” the old man asked.

“What do you mean—give myself up?” asked Pagel.

“Well,” said the old man slowly, “it’s getting on for four. Sometimes about this hour someone who is troubled because he’s been up to something comes and gives himself up. But then you must go to the Night Division. I’m only on duty at the door.”