Doubtless it had been built with the intention of making a small room here to keep tools in, unless perhaps it owed its existence only to a whim on the part of the architect, in whom this dark nook had inspired the medieval notion of walling it up to make a hiding-place.

However that might be, apart from these three boys there was doubtless scarcely anyone in the whole school who knew of its existence, and still less anyone who thought of putting it to any use.

And so they had been free to furnish it entirely according to their own fantastic notions.

The walls were completely draped with some blood-red bunting that Reiting and Beineberg had purloined from one of the store-rooms, and the floor was covered with a double layer of thick woolly horse-blanket, of the kind that was used in the dormitories as an extra blanket in winter. In the front part of the room stood some low boxes, covered with material, which served as seats; at the back, in the acute angle formed by the sloping ceiling and the floor, a sort of bed had been made, large enough for three or four people, and this part could be darkened by the drawing of a curtain, separating it from the rest of the room.

On the wall by the door hung a loaded revolver.

Törless did not like this room. True, the constriction and isolation it afforded appealed to him; it was like being deep inside a mountain, and the smell of the dusty old stage-scenery gave rise to all sorts of vague sensations in him. But the concealment, those trip-ropes to give the alert, and this revolver, which was meant to provide the utmost illusion of defiance and secrecy, struck him as ridiculous. It was as though they were trying to pretend they were leading the life of bandits.

Actually the only reason why Törless joined in was that he did not want to lag behind the other two. Beineberg and Reiting themselves took the whole thing very seriously indeed. Törless knew that. He also knew that Beineberg had skeleton keys that would open the doors of all the cellars and attics in the school building, and that he often slipped away from lessons for several hours in order to sit somewhere-high up in the rafters of the roof, or underground in one of the many semiruinous, labyrinthine vaults-by the light of a little lamp, which he always carried about with him, reading adventure stories or thinking his thoughts about supernatural things.

He knew similar things of Reiting, who also had his hidden retreats, where he kept secret diaries; and these diaries were filled with audacious plans for the future and with exact records of the staging, and course of the numerous intrigues that he instituted among the other boys. For Reiting knew no greater pleasure than to set people against each other, subduing one with the aid of each other and revelling in favours and flatteries obtained by extortion, in which he could still sense the resistance of his victim's hate.

“I'm practising,” was the only excuse he gave, and he gave it with an affable laugh. It was also by way of practising that almost daily he would box in some out-of-the-way place, against a wall, 3 tree, or a table, to strengthen his arms and harden his hands with callouses.

Törless knew about all this, but he could understand it only up to a certain point. He had several times accompanied both Reiting and Beineberg on their singular paths. The fantastic element in it all did in fact appeal to him. And what he also liked was afterwards coming back into the daylight, walking among the other boys, and being back in the midst of their jollity, while he could still feel the excitements of solitude and the hallucinations of darkness trembling his eyes and ears. But when Beineberg or Reiting, for the sake of having someone to talk to about themselves, on such occasions expounded what impelled them to all this, his understanding failed. He even considered Reiting somewhat overstrung. For Reiting was particularly fond of talking about how his father, who had one day disappeared, had been a strangely unsettled person. His name was, as a matter of fact, supposed to be only an incognito, concealing that of a very exalted family. He expected that his mother would make him acquainted with far-reaching claims that be would in due course put forward; he had day-dreams of coups d'etat and high politics, and hence intended to be an officer.

Törless simply could not take such ambitions seriously. The centuries of revolutions seemed to him past and gone once and for all. Nevertheless Reiting was quite capable of putting his ideas into practice, though for the present only on a small scale. He was a tyrant, inexorable in his treatment of anyone who opposed him. His supporters changed from day to day, but he always managed to have the majority on his side. This was his great gift. A couple of years earlier he had waged a great war against Beineberg, which ended in the defeat of the latter. Finally Beineberg had been pretty well isolated, and this although in his judgment of people, his coolness and his capacity for arousing antipathy against those who incurred his disfavour, he was scarcely less formidable than his opponent. But he lacked Reiting's charm and winning ways. His composure and his unctuous philosophic pose filled almost everyone with mistrust. One could not help suspecting something excessive and unsavoury at the bottom of his personality. Nevertheless he had caused Reiting great difficulties, and Reiting's victory had been little more than a matter of luck. Since that time they found it profitable to combine forces.

Törless, by contrast, remained indifferent to these things.