“A moment, Thomas—it’s very pressing; there’s no time to waste.”
He opened the baize door of his private office, closed it behind him when they were both inside, and looked at his sister inquiringly.
“Tom,” she said, her voice quavering, wringing her hands inside her muff, “you must give it to us—lay it out for us—you will, won’t you?—the money for the bond, I mean. We haven’t it—where should we get twenty-five thousand marks from, I should like to know? You will get them back—you’ll get them back all too soon, I’m afraid. You understand—the thing is this: in short, they have reached a point where Hagenström demands immediate arrest or else a bond of twenty-five thousand marks. And Weinschenk will give you his word not to stir from the spot—”
“Has it really come to that?” the Senator said, shaking his head.
“Yes, they have succeeded in getting that far, the villains!” Frau Permaneder sank upon the sofa with an impotent sob. “And they will go on; they will go on to the end, Tom.”
“Tony,” he said, and sat down sidewise by his mahogany desk, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his head on his hand, “tell me straight out, do you still have faith in his innocence?”
She sobbed once or twice before she answered, hopelessly: “Oh, no, Tom. How could I? I’ve seen so much evil in the world. I haven’t believed in it from the beginning, even, though I tried my very best. Life makes it so very hard, you know, to believe in any one’s innocence. Oh, no—I’ve had doubts of his good conscience for a long time, and Erica has not known what to make of him—she confessed it to me, with tears—on account of his behaviour at home. We haven’t talked about it, of course. He got ruder and ruder, and kept demanding all the time that Erica should be lively and divert his mind and make him forget his troubles. And he broke the dishes when she wasn’t. You can’t imagine what it was like, when he shut himself up evenings with his papers: when anybody knocked, you could hear him jump up and shout ‘Who’s there?’”
They were silent.
“But suppose he is guilty, Tom. Suppose he did do it,” began Frau Permaneder afresh, and her voice gathered strength. “He wasn’t working for his own pocket, but for the company—and then—good Heavens, in this life, people have to realize—there are other things to be taken into consideration. He married into our family—he is one of us, now. They can’t just go and stick him into prison like that!”
He shrugged his shoulders.