The music struck up. Old Geibel put the current in motion, and Annette and her strange partner began to dance.
For a while everyone stood watching them. The figure performed its purpose admirably. Keeping perfect time and step, and holding its little partner tight clasped in an unyielding embrace, it revolved steadily, pouring forth at the same time a constant flow of squeaky conversation, broken by brief intervals of grinding silence. “‘How charming you are looking tonight,’ it remarked in its thin, far-away voice. ‘What a lovely day it has been. Do you like dancing? How well our steps agree. You will give me another, won’t you? Oh, don’t be so cruel. What a charming gown you have on. Isn’t waltzing delightful? I could go on dancing for ever — with you. Have you had supper?’
“As she grew more familiar with the uncanny creature, the girl’s nervousness wore off, and she entered into the fun of the thing.
‘Oh, he’s just lovely,’ she cried, laughing; ‘I could go on dancing with him all my life.’
Couple after couple now joined them, and soon all the dancers in the room were whirling round behind them. Nicholaus Geibel stood looking on, beaming with childish delight at his success.
Old Wenzel approached him, and whispered something in his ear. Geibel laughed and nodded, and the two worked their way quietly towards the door.
‘This is the young people’s house tonight,’ said Wenzel, as soon as they were outside; ‘you and I will have a quiet pipe and glass of hock, over in the counting-house.’
Meanwhile the dancing grew more fast and furious. Little Annette loosened the screw regulating her partner’s rate of progress, and the figure flew round with her swifter and swifter. Couple after couple dropped out exhausted, but they only went the faster, till at length they remained dancing alone.
Madder and madder became the waltz. The music lagged behind: the musicians, unable to keep pace, ceased, and sat staring. The younger guests applauded, but the older faces began to grow anxious.
‘Hadn’t you better stop, dear,’ said one of the women, ‘you’ll make yourself so tired.’
But Annette did not answer.
‘I believe she’s fainted,’ cried out a girl who had caught sight of her face as it was swept by.
One of the men sprang forward and clutched at the figure, but its impetus threw him down on to the floor, where its steel-cased feet laid bare his cheek. The thing evidently did not intend to part with its prize so easily.
Had any one retained a cool head, the figure, one cannot help thinking, might easily have been stopped. Two or three men acting in concert might have lifted it bodily off the floor, or have jammed it into a corner. But few human heads are capable of remaining cool under excitement. Those who are not present think how stupid must have been those wh were; those who are reflect afterwards how simple it would have been to do this, that, or the other, if only they had thought of it at the time.
The women grew hysterical. The men shouted contradictory directions to one another. Tow of them made a bungling rush at the figure, which had the end result of forcing it out of its orbit at the centre of the room, and sending it crashing against the walls and furniture. A stream of blood showed itself down the girl’s white frock, and followed her along the floor. The affair was becoming horrible. The women rushed screaming from the room. The men followed them.
One sensible suggestion was made: ‘Find Geibel — fetch Geibel.’
No one had noticed him leave the room, no one knew where he was. A party went in search of him. The others, too unnerved to go back into the ballroom, crowded outside the door and listened. They could hear the steady whir of the wheels upon the polished floor as the thing spun round and round; the dull thud as every now and again it dashed itself and its burden against some opposing object and ricocheted off in a new direction.
And everlastingly it talked in that thin ghostly voice, repeating over and over the same formula: ‘How charming you look to-night. What a lovely day it has been. Oh, don’t be so cruel. I could go on dancing for ever — with you. Have you had supper?’
Of course they sought Geibel everywhere but where he was. They looked in every room in the house, then they rushed off in a body to his own place, and spent precious minutes waking up his deaf old housekeeper. At last it occurred to one of the party that Wenzel was missing also, and then the idea of the counting-house across the yard presented itself to them, and there they found him.
He rose up, very pale, and followed them; and he and old Wenzel forced their way through the crowd of guests gathered outside, and entered the room, and locked the door behind them.
From within there came the muffled sound of low voices and quick steps, followed by a confused scuffling noise, then silence, then the low voices again.
After a time the door opened, and those near it pressed forward to enter, but old Wenzel’s broad head and shoulders barred the way.
‘I want you — and you, Bekler,’ he said, addressing a couple of the elder men. His voice was calm, but his face was deadly white. ‘The rest of you, please go — get the women away as quickly as you can.’
From that day old Nicholaus Geibel confined himself to the making of mechanical rabbits, and cats that mewed and washed their faces.