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And all other impulses have expired in me. So I will take the package. We will start to-morrow early. And as for the rest ... I will spare you the tedium of martyrdom." He moved toward the door. "Come, we'll go downstairs. Von Stinnes will be getting impatient." Mathilde came to him swiftly. He caught a glimpse of her face lighted, and her arms circled his neck.
Sleep if you can. Oh, I am shameless." She had moved against him. He thought with a smile, "What an original way of nursing a broken head!" Later, tired with a renewed effort to straighten out words about the fool and Rachel and himself, he closed his eyes. Mathilde was still awake. "I'll see von Stinnes in the morning," he murmured drowsily. "Von Stinnes ... a gallant friend...."
In any case there was nothing to hinder polite investigation, mark time with kisses until von Stinnes brought on his promised revolution. He thought carefully. Pessimism was the proper note. Dramatize with an epigram the emptiness of life. His forte emptiness. Not love but a hunger to live. "Matty, I regret sadly that you are not a prostitute." Startling!
"I know the baron, Dorn. Rather old friends, what? Have a drink, damn it!" "Later, if you please," von Stinnes bowed stiffly. Reading beckoned Dorn aside with an air of secrecy. Walking him to another part of the lobby he began whispering: "I'd let that blighter alone if I were you, Dorn. I'm just telling you because you're rather new to these bloody swine." Dorn nodded.
The other, the fool with the gun.... Good God, he was a murderer! He smiled. Von Stinnes, a melancholy Pierrot doffing his hat with a gallant snicker to the moon. Hazlitt, a pantaloon. Yet tragic. Yes, there was something in the café that night two men hurling themselves drunkenly against the taunting emptiness of life. The rage had come because he had remembered Rachel.
For me, I would have preferred beds with more pleasant associations. And when Bode tried to be dictator in his father's chamber in the Reichstag yes," von Stinnes closed his eyes and laughed softly, "he seized the Reichstag with a company of marines. And he sat for two days and two nights signing warrants, confiscation orders.
Dorn, with the aid of a handful of communist credentials that seemed to flow endlessly from the pockets of the Baron, passed the Palais guard a hundred silent men squatting behind a hastily erected barricade of sandbags. Within he stumbled upon von Stinnes. The Baron drew him into a large empty chamber. "We must be careful," he whispered. His voice buzzed with an elation.
"We will go to the hotel." They started down the corridor. A group of soldiers emerged from a chamber, blocking their way. "Baron von Stinnes," one of them called. The Baron saluted. "You are under arrest by order of the Council of Ten." Von Stinnes bowed. "Go to the hotel with Matty, Dorn. I will be on soon." To the soldiers he added, "Very well, comrades. Take me to comrade Levine."
"You will find Levine in the Gambrinus Keller," von Stinnes spoke without turning around. "I advise you to go at once, Matty, before the streets crowd up." He wheeled and held an envelope toward the girl. "Take this. It will make it easier for you to get in. They are very careful right now. It's a letter of credentials from Dr. Kasnilov."
The Baron turned toward her and frowned. In return her face, almost asleep, became vivid with a sneer. The Baron's love-making had gone astray. "Matty is going to try to carry a million marks into Munich for the Communists," he announced. The girl stared von Stinnes into silence. "How do you know that?" she asked slowly.
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