"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-glass. "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, Lübbener, what is the matter with you?" Lübbener 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 Lübbener. "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."