And Giraldi slipped back into the room from which he had come, and, pa.s.sing through some side-rooms and down the brilliantly-lighted marble staircase, gained the vestibule and cloak-room.

Some guests were still arriving--a few ladies who to judge from their remarks, had been kept late in the ballet, and an elderly gentleman, who took off his fur coat whilst the servant was helping Giraldi on with his. The Italian hastily turned up his collar, but the other had already recognised him, and stopped him as he was going.

"What, Signor Giraldi! Are you going already?"

"I am tired to death. Councillor, and the heat and noise upstairs are amazing."

"I have already been three times to-day to your house in vain. I must talk to you at least for a moment. What do you think of it, my dear friend--what do you think of it?"

"Of what?"

The Councillor almost let his crush-hat fall. "Of what? Good heavens!

Is it possible to talk about anything to-day except this abominable speech?"

"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 to-day 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! Lubbener----"

"Ah!" said Giraldi.

"Of course, Lubbener," 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 Lubbener's finances by any means exhausted."

"Because--pardon me, my dear sir,--this supposition suits you; I can a.s.sure 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 per cent.; 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 Lubbener, 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.ton 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-gla.s.s. "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 cloak-room, 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, Lubbener, what is the matter with you?"

Lubbener 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 cloak-room, 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 Lubbener. "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 to-morrow, 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 an hour ago--the whole half million in three days.'"

"Extraordinary! most extraordinary!" said the Councillor; "as the agent of the Baroness, to whom the half belongs, we certainly allowed him to invest the whole, but still--"

"Beware! beware!" gasped the other. "There is something wrong--very wrong. Yesterday Golm throws half a million into the market; I keep up the price notwithstanding to thirty; this morning that abominable speech of Lasker's--down they go to twenty; this afternoon I have to pay Giraldi every farthing of the Golm mortgage. I have struggled, I am struggling still desperately, but there are limits to everything."

"It is very hard," said the Councillor, sighing. "Our splendid, splendid enterprise! The Minister, too, was quite in despair to-day; but--shall we not go upstairs? We can go on with our conversation there. I have several things of importance to communicate to you."

"Hush!" said Lubbener.

He stood listening intently, then walked quickly to the big window from which he could see out of the cloak-room into the vestibule, shook his head and came back to the Councillor, muttering unintelligibly between his pale lips.

"What is the matter now?" said the Councillor anxiously.

The banker's little black eyes glanced towards the servants in the cloak-room. They could hear nothing, and were moreover occupied in arranging their numbers; then he made the Councillor a sign to stoop his tall figure to him.

"I ought to have consulted you properly, but the danger that he"--the banker pointed with his finger in the direction from which the noise of the ball came--"was too great. Our four millions preference shares which would have to be issued now--"

"Good heavens!" said the Councillor.

"It was a mere vague suspicion, but it left me no peace. He and I, you know, have the keys, and when after the office was shut, I told the clerk I had some business still to do--true enough"--the Councillor had bent his head so low that the banker was whispering into his ear. Then they looked fixedly into each other's eyes. The Councillor's long face had turned as grey as the other's.

"But this is a matter for the police," he said.