must serve thru a honeymoon with her. Anyway, it can't hurt her if she gets a little fresh air beforehand.

ALVA. (A pocketbook in his hand, to Geschwitz who is leaning on a chair-back by the centre table.) This holds 10,000 marks.

GESCHWITZ. Thank you, no.

ALVA. Please take it.

GESCHWITZ. (To Schigolch.) Come along, at last!

SCHIGOLCH. Patience, Fräulein. It's only a stone's throw across Hospital Street. I'll be here with her in five minutes.

ALVA. You're bringing her here?

SCHIGOLCH. I'm bringing her here. Or do you fear for your health?

ALVA. You see that I fear nothing.

RODRIGO. According to the latest wire, the doctor is on his way to Constantinople to have his “Earth-spirit” produced before the Sultan by harem-ladies and eunuchs.

ALVA. (Opening the centre door under the gallery.) It's shorter for you thru here. (Exeunt Schigolch and Countess Geschwitz. Alva locks the door.)

RODRIGO. You were going to give more money to the crazy sky-rocket!

ALVA. What has that to do with you?

RODRIGO. I get paid like a lamp-lighter, tho I had to demoralize all the Sisters in the hospital. Then came the assistants' and the doctors' turn, and then—

ALVA. Will you seriously inform me that the medical professors let themselves be influenced by you?

RODRIGO. With the money those gentlemen cost me I could become President of the United States!

ALVA. But Fräulein von Geschwitz has reimbursed you for every penny that you spent. So far as I know you're getting a monthly salary of five hundred marks from her besides. It is often pretty hard to believe in your love for the unhappy murderess. When I asked Fräulein von Geschwitz just now to accept my help, it certainly was not to incite your insatiable avarice. The admiration which I have learnt to have for Fräulein von Geschwitz in this affair, I am far from feeling towards you. It is not at all clear to me what claims of any kind you can make upon me. That you chanced to be present at the murder of my father has not yet created the slightest bond of relationship between you and me. On the contrary, I am firmly convinced that if the heroic undertaking of Countess Geschwitz had not come your way you would be lying somewhere to-day without a penny, drunken in the gutter.

RODRIGO. And do you know what would have become of you if you hadn't sold for two millions the tuppeny paper your father ran? You'd have hitched up with the stringiest sort of ballet-girl and been to-day a stable-boy in the Humpelmeier Circus. What work do you do? You've written a drama of horrors in which my bride's calves are the two chief figures and which no high-class theater will produce. You walking pajamas! You fresh rag-bag you! Two years ago I balanced two saddled cavalry-horses on this chest. How that'll go now, after this (clasping his bald head), is a question sure enough. The foreign girls will get a fine idea of German art when they see the sweat come beading thru my tights at every fresh kilo-weight! I shall make the whole auditorium stink with my exhalations!

ALVA. You're weak as a dish-clout!

RODRIGO. Would to God you were right! or did you perhaps intend to insult me? If so, I'll set the tip of my toe to your jaw so that your tongue'll crawl along the carpet over there!

ALVA. Try it! (Steps and voices outside.) Who is that...?

RODRIGO. You can thank God that I have no public here before me!

ALVA. Who can that be!

RODRIGO. That is my beloved. It's a full year now since we've seen each other.

ALVA. But how should they be back already! Who can be coming there? I expect no one.

RODRIGO. Oh the devil, unlock it!

ALVA. Hide yourself!

RODRIGO. I'll get behind the portières. I've stood there once before, a year ago. (Disappears, right. Alva opens the rear door, whereupon Alfred Hugenberg enters, hat in hand.)

ALVA. With whom have I—.... You? Aren't you—?

HUGENBERG. Alfred Hugenberg.

ALVA. What can I do for you?

HUGENBERG. I've come from Münsterburg. I ran away this morning.

ALVA. My eyes are bad. I am forced to keep the blinds closed.

HUGENBERG. I need your help. You will not refuse me. I've got a plan ready. Can anyone hear us?

ALVA. What do you mean? What sort of a plan?

HUGENBERG. Are you alone?

ALVA. Yes. What do you want to impart to me?

HUGENBERG. I've had two plans already that I let drop. What I shall tell you now has been worked out to the last possible chance. If I had money I should not confide it to you; I thought about that a long time before coming.... Will you not permit me to set forth to you my design?

ALVA. Will you kindly tell me just what you are talking about?

HUGENBERG. She cannot possibly be so indifferent to you that I must tell you that. The evidence you gave the coroner helped her more than everything the defending counsel said.

ALVA. I beg to decline the supposition.

HUGENBERG. You would say that; I understand that, of course. But all the same you were her best witness.

ALVA. You were! You said my father was about to force her to shoot herself.

HUGENBERG. He was, too. But they didn't believe me. I wasn't put on my oath.

ALVA. Where have you come from now?

HUGENBERG. From a reform-school I broke out of this morning.

ALVA. And what do you have in view?

HUGENBERG. I'm trying to get into the confidence of a turnkey.

ALVA. What do you mean to live on?

HUGENBERG. I'm living with a girl who's had a child by my father.

ALVA. Who is your father?

HUGENBERG. He's a police captain. I know the prison without ever having been inside it; and nobody in it will recognize me as I am now. But I don't count on that at all. I know an iron ladder by which one can get from the first court to the roof and thru an opening there into the attic. There's no way up to it from inside. But in all five wings boards and laths and great heaps of shavings are lying under the roofs, and I'll drag them