Hull thereupon took his leave. Downstairs he asked whether there were a second Herr Balling in the hotel, but the answer was “No.” Had Room 15 been occupied by any Herr Balling who had just left? “No.” Was the writing in the pocket-book known? Again there was a negative reply. “For the first time in my life,” thought Hull, “I find myself unable to pay a debt of honour.” Gradually he became uneasy. What a mysterious affair this was! Nothing of the kind had ever occurred before. He had won money and lost it again ... sometimes much, and at other times little. He had been in financial straits. He had had some trouble about a girl he cared for. Once, indeed, he had been seriously wounded in a duel. Yet all that was comprehensible and straightforward, so to speak. But this tale of Herr Balling and the twenty thousand marks had some mystery or other behind it. He had forgotten that it was he who introduced the stranger to the club. He had played as if he had lost his head. He had incurred a debt of twenty thousand marks, and his creditor had furnished a name and address which did actually exist but were not his, and, moreover, he would not have the money.... If it had not happened that Hull had no mistress at the moment, he could have talked this affair over. He pondered over it alone while he walked along Lenbach Square and the Promenade, looking everybody in the face in the hope that he might encounter the distinguished stranger among them. He went to the Café Bastin and scanned all the faces there. He sat down at a table and waited to see whether the _genius loci_ would be favourable to him and recall the vanished recollections; but nothing came of it, and he stood up again, a prey to increasing uneasiness. It seemed as if in the invisible depths behind him another power, extraneous to himself, was pursuing him, pressing down upon him, trying to jump on his back as a monkey might do, and lead him into unlucky adventures of some kind or another. Hull forced himself to return to his lonely bachelor chambers. There he met Karstens, and greeted him with relief. But Karstens at once asked: “Well, has your memory returned?” “My dear fellow, there’s something wrong with me!” “With the twenty thousand marks?” “No, there they are!” and he tapped his breast-pocket. “Nobody wants them, it appears. There is a Herr Balling in Room 15 at the ‘Excelsior,’ but he isn’t my man, and we’ve never met before. He has never played vingt-et-un, and nobody owes _him_ twenty thousand marks. I can’t get rid of the money, and it makes me feel creepy! Something is going to happen to me. Who _is_ there near me whom I cannot see? There’s certainly something wrong with me!” “Come to the club! Perhaps your Herr Balling will go there to fetch the money himself.” “Yes, but what about the real Balling in No. 15?” “Well, that’s certainly odd, I grant you. Come along.” “All right. Perhaps he’ll be there.”