Mabuse hastily carried the insensible woman from the bank of the Rhine
channel to the nearest house. It was that of an osier-binder.
“We have had an accident,” said Mabuse, and then seated himself at the
window to watch the approach.
When an hour had gone by thus, and the Countess opened her eyes again,
Mabuse noticed that she started on recognizing him and turned away,
overcome with dread. He went hastily towards her and, stooping down, he
whispered, “We are saved! We are irrevocably bound together!”
The whispered words impressed her with a certain sense of comfort and
security. She no longer withstood him, and soon sat up, the peasant’s
wife promising to look after her.
Mabuse sought for the nearest village on the map. Then he went thither,
in security, knowing that he was not being followed. George had
remained as the victim of the pursuer’s vengeance, and he was saved.
The other’s fate was due to the little trick of the police uniform.
The village was not more than twenty minutes’ distance, and in an inn
he found a telephone. He ordered coffee, and then rang up Zürich. In
half an hour’s time the call came through, and asking who was there, he
was answered, “Dr. Ebenhügel, Zürich.”
“Has Spoerri arrived?” he inquired.
“Spoerri has just come: he is still here;” and Spoerri rushed to the
telephone.
“Spoerri, I’ve had a misfortune. George is taken, but we have escaped.
Bring the car here at once, and put in a travelling dress and coat for
my wife. I shall expect you at 2 p.m. at the Au railway-station in the
Rhine Valley.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Spoerri.
“I called her my wife, and said it quite coolly and intentionally,”
mused Mabuse, dallying with the thought, which yet seemed to imply
something like a fetter; but he dismissed the idea, saying, “She _is_
my wife, my own property!... It is true, she _is_ mine.”
* * * * *
Spoerri arrived punctually. “I shall drive you through the Engadine
direct to the Italian frontier,” he said, when Mabuse had told him all
that had occurred. But to that proposal Mabuse merely uttered one word:
“No!”
“But, Doctor,” Spoerri pleaded, “you can’t remain in Switzerland. The
Munich police have informed the authorities here of your movements. We
shouldn’t get even as far as Toggeburg. It would be almost better to
return to Germany.”
“And that’s exactly what I mean to do! Spoerri, from this day forward
the State Attorney’s life stands under my protection. You are to revoke
my earlier orders to the Removal Committee at once.”
“You are going in for a remarkable friendship, Doctor,” tittered
Spoerri.
“He is to remain absolutely under my protection!” repeated Mabuse, and
they drove through the flat marsh-land back to the peasant’s hut.
The Countess got into the car, and they were soon hastening to the
Austrian frontier. “What sort of passports have you for us?” asked
Mabuse.
“Swiss ones: please take them,” answered Spoerri, handing over
documents with many visas, calculated to arouse a confidence which was
constantly abused yet remained unconscious of the fact.
Three hours later the car was driving along the highroad leading from
Bregenz to Kempten. It drove past a house from which, the night before,
a message had been flashed through to Munich telling of its passing,
and went towards Würtemberg. The travellers spent the night in a
village south of Stuttgart.
In the evening Mabuse went to Spoerri’s room, and said to him: “There
is just one thing left for me to do in Germany, in Europe ... and that
is to get hold of that lawyer, the State Attorney, Wenk, alive. I
want him _alive_, mark you! as much alive as a fly under a glass. The
Countess and I are staying here to-morrow. You will go to Stuttgart and
buy, whatever the price may be, a two-seater aeroplane. We are quite
safe here. The landlord did not even register us, so if the police
appear he is bound to hold his tongue, or else he will be fined. Have
you any brandy?”
Spoerri shrank back in dismay; his martyrdom was about to begin again.
Nevertheless, he had smuggled three bottles out of Switzerland.
“Of course you have some brandy!” said Mabuse, before he could even
answer.
Mabuse drank from the travelling cup which he always carried in his
pocket, and Spoerri had to fill the toothglass on the washhandstand.
Mabuse was longing for a carouse, a really heavy carouse which should
seize him by the throat and press him under the water, as if he were
being given a millstone for a swimming belt. When he had emptied the
second bottle, he saw that he was not likely to get his wish.
“Haven’t you any more?” he asked.
“That’s all there is. I couldn’t venture to bring any more across the
frontier.”
Mabuse laughed satirically. “That’s fine. Here is Spoerri, who has
brought three railway vans full of salvarsan, two of cocaine, enough
prostitutes to fill three brothels across the frontier, yet he hasn’t
enough courage to bring more than three bottles of brandy! Empty your
glass into mine. Don’t your wages include the getting of brandy?”
When the third bottle had been emptied Mabuse, clear-headed as ever,
but more hot-blooded, went back to the room next his own, occupied by
the Countess. He was out of sorts, and resembled an engine that had
been run too fast, so that the heat had covered the glowing cylinders
with vapour, and they could not be set in motion.
He approached the Countess’s bed. “You and I had come to an
understanding together. You have broken through it: you were ready to
betray me!”
“I was!” said the Countess in a low voice.
Then ungovernable fury seemed to possess the man. He snatched her from
the bed, and as he seized her, lifted her high in the air as if he were
going to dash her in pieces against the wall like rotting timber. At
that moment he hated her; she was the embodiment of all his weaknesses.
For ten long minutes, when the patrol-boat was on their track, the
power of his will over her had ceased, and now, when he wanted to
destroy her and would have dashed against the wall the head that defied
him, he could not do it.
With a low cry the woman found herself held on high, and realized the
strength of arm and indomitable will-power of the being to whom she was
secretly--and yet irrevocably--bound. She longed for death. Softly she
repeated a fragment or two of a prayer learnt in her childhood’s days,
and she knew that if she were to die now she would draw this man also
to his death.
But Mabuse, conscious of his power over the woman he held aloft in his
grasp, suddenly came to himself again. Once more he realized that he
was alive, was safe, and felt a fierce joy in the knowledge and in his
possession of her. Almost gently he laid her down, and the poor woman,
condemned afresh to a life of humiliation and degradation, was at the
mercy of the tyrant who dominated her, and from whose power there was
now no escape. She lay wide-eyed and tearless till the dawn, her only
desire for floods and floods of tears wherein to drown for ever the
misery of her existence.
* * * * *
On the morning of the following day Mabuse flew with her from Stuttgart
to Berlin.
There, caught in the toils of the mighty city, among those whose
instincts he developed and used to his own ends, he lived, bent on one
aim alone. One idea presented itself with ever-increasing intensity,
one vision swam ever before his eyes, intoxicating him with a fury of
desire. His phantasies, his strivings, and the goal before him gained
their force because born of the strongest impulse within him, his lust
for power!
There was one man in the world who had set himself to follow his path,
had discovered him in his own territory, and dislodged him from his
fortress. There was one alone who had dared to disturb his plans, to
oblige him to undertake a flight in which his life had been in danger.
It was due to this man’s efforts that the State had interfered with his
schemes for getting rid of those whom his imperious will desired to
remove from his path.
From the woman who had first moved him to the very depths of his
being he had wrested all the power of will with which her personality
resisted him. It was his pride to know that. He had taken her being,
her beauty, her independence, her exclusiveness, and grappled them to
himself, and this work of his was the very highest spiritual expression
of his powers and capabilities. But between him and her there was a
period of ten minutes in which she had escaped his domination, in
which he had to renounce his claim to this symbol of his superhuman
force. And that period of time, that barren, useless part of his life,
he owed to the power of this one man.
His flight from Germany with this woman and his journey across the
Atlantic had been so minutely prepared in all its details that only
death could intervene. His empire of Citopomar, with its virgin
forests, tigers, rattlesnakes, where death lay in wait at every moment,
its mountains and its waterfalls and its rare exotic growths, was
waiting for him, waiting to set him free from Europe, to offer him a
new life. Any day might see him crowned as emperor.
But he would eat of Dead Sea fruit for the rest of his life, did he
take possession of his realm before he had seized upon this man with
all the full force of his lust for power and his deadly hatred, had
held him within his grasp and annihilated him. Between him and Wenk
it was a struggle for existence, and he could know no peace while the
other lived.
Once, when the thoughts surging within him would no longer be
controlled, he replied to the Countess’s inquiry as to when they would
leave Germany, “I shall catch him alive. I shall catch him like a bird
in the snare. He will flutter helpless into my hands. Not till then do
I go.”
She turned away afraid, guessing the man he meant. Since that moment
of her resistance and hope of escape she seemed to have become more
subdued than ever, falling deeper under his demon spell. She did not
venture to oppose or question more.
Mabuse’s enterprise with regard to Wenk developed slowly. But steadily
and surely the net around him was tightening....
* * * * *
Wenk was in Munich again. George had been imprisoned there, and he
played the rôle of a deaf mute. No one had heard a word from him since
his arrest. He was confronted with the constables and tradespeople from
Schachen who had seen him for many weeks, with the young fellows whom
he had tried to hand over to the Foreign Legion, all of whom instantly
recognized him, but he did not utter a word.
One morning they found he had hanged himself with his braces. He
had written one word on the wall of his cell, the word that one of
Napoleon’s generals had made renowned after he had lost the battle of
Waterloo.
An exhaustive search in the Villa Elise brought little to light. It
merely revealed proofs that Mabuse employed the money obtained by
gambling or theft to carry on smuggling and profiteering on a gigantic
scale. The police worked side by side with the Swiss authorities, for
it was believed that Mabuse must be in Switzerland, or at any rate
that he had passed through. Wenk went once a fortnight to Zürich. Now
and then one of Mabuse’s gang was caught, but all were so thoroughly
schooled that no word of betrayal escaped them.
News reached Wenk from Frankfurt that a gambler was at work there,
whose description so closely resembled Mabuse that Wenk travelled
thither at once, but when he arrived there was no trace of the man to
be found. Three days later there was a report of a similar kind from
Cologne, then from Düsseldorf, and later both from Essen and Hanover.
Wenk went hither and thither, not doubting in his own mind that he was
indeed on the track of Mabuse. The latter must have spies in Munich who
watched and reported Wenk’s movements. Knowing that he was followed,
he took every possible precaution, and employed all the cunning at
his command. On his journeys he made use of trains, cars, aeroplanes
indiscriminately. Since he could not help suspecting that Mabuse
had accomplices among his own subordinates, Wenk watched these very
closely. He changed his chauffeur and his housekeeper, altered his
address and his telephone number, took rooms in a hotel, or lodged with
friends in the suburbs. But as soon as he arrived at the town where
the gambler had been seen, he found he had vanished without trace of
any kind, only to reappear a few days later in some other part. The
whole country already rang with reports of the existence and operations
of the robber-king. Dr. Mabuse, the gambler! It was like a ballad,
expressing the devilry and defiance of all who offered resistance to
existing law and order, and it spread from place to place.
In all the towns the police arrested men in gangs, but when the
criminals were sorted out, this man, whose capture was worth more to
them than all the rest, was never to be found. Suddenly it struck Wenk
that Mabuse must be making his way by a circuitous route to Berlin.
From his superior officers Wenk obtained permission to leave Bavaria,
and got in touch with the Prussian courts of justice, and these
appointed him to Berlin on special duty.
He at once travelled thither and took lodgings in the Central district.
Mabuse saw him arrive at the railway-station, and an hour later he knew
where he was staying. At last he had him within reach, in the place
where he desired to accomplish his scheme of revenge and towards which
he had been working, for Mabuse in reality had never left Berlin. In
all the towns to which Wenk had travelled in search of the gambler,
Mabuse had doubles, persons of his own gang, instructed by him. Munich
was too small for the scheme Mabuse had in hand. The abysses of Berlin
would be a safer hunting-ground, and the hunt began on the very next
day.
* * * * *
That day Wenk had been describing to a junior colleague in the Berlin
police his course of action in “the Mabuse case.” They had talked about
it together, discussing a plan of operation, but the only conclusion
they had come to was that the gambler should be allowed to show his own
hand first. To aim at him in the dark would be likely to reveal to him
prematurely the whereabouts of his pursuers.
In the evening, when Wenk had taken a meal in the “Traube” restaurant,
he visited a café, and then, tired out by his long discussion, he
sought his lodgings. There a man accosted him, standing in a doorway
removed from the light.
“If you please, sir ...” said he.
“What do you want?” asked Wenk reluctantly.
“Would some cocaine be useful to you, sir?”
Wenk went on without vouchsafing a reply, and he noticed that the man
followed him, but when he came to the busy Friedrichstrasse he lost
sight of him.
Wenk soon took himself to task for having let the man escape him thus.
He ought to have got into touch with this pedlar of illicit wares, for
he belonged to the same stock as Mabuse. He was half inclined to go
back, but the feeling of weariness was too strong for him and he went
home.
The next night he took the same way home from the restaurant, but
the man was not there. Wenk lingered here and there, and then, as he
approached his lodgings near the Police Market, a man came out of an
entry towards him, saying in a whisper, “Do you want to see some nude
dances?”
Wenk stopped still, saying, “You have come just at the right time. I
don’t belong to Berlin, and I should like to see the real night-life of
this city just for once. Where are your dancers? Go ahead!”
“Follow me, then. I’ll go in front, and when you see me go in
somewhere, you come quick, guv’nor, ’cos of the peelers!”
Wenk promised to follow his lead. The man went round the corner,
listened to see if he were following, and then went on again. Suddenly
he disappeared. Wenk went a few steps straight on. The man must have
gone into one of the entries near, and he walked slowly, expecting to
find him, and looking round about. Suddenly he heard the man’s voice
behind him, speaking low and reproachfully: “I don’t call that quick,
guv’nor. You’ll have the bobbies after you if you can’t be more spry.
Come on here, then!” and the man pulled him into a house standing far
back. The door opened on to a dark corridor, and silently and unawares
it closed behind him, while the corridor was lighted up in the same
instant. This corridor led into a little living-room, and that again
into a hall crowded with people. Two gentlemen sitting near the door
made room for Wenk beside them. His guide had disappeared.
What Wenk saw was a simple performance, deriving its interest only from
the secrecy with which it was performed.
He heard the conversation of the two men at his table. One of them
said, “The only thing that interests me is how this entertainer manages
to get a hundred or more persons here, year in and year out, without
the police finding it out. Now, as an expert, you just tell me that!”
The other answered in German that sounded unfamiliar, “Well, you
can’t really tell whether it is known to the police or not. There
are such places winked at by the police because they are traps for
criminals--yes, really traps set for them. Now in Budapest....”
Wenk listened eagerly. The gentlemen went on talking, drawing him
naturally into their conversation. They disclosed their calling,
and then gave their names. One of the gentlemen was, as Wenk had
conjectured, a highly placed police official. They frequently met
each other. The Hungarian told of various interesting and complicated
cases occurring during the practice of his profession. He described
the Budapest haunts of crime, touched on the many secret gaming-houses
which had sprung up so quickly everywhere since the war, and waxed
eloquent against the ever-increasing boldness displayed by criminals
and the mob generally.
Wenk, with a certain unconfessed distrust, talked very warily, saying
that he was only on leave in Berlin, for the scene of his activities
lay in Munich. But Berlin, as the hotbed of crime, afforded a good
field of study for a Munich criminal prosecutor. He touched lightly on
the existence of Mabuse, though without naming him, and related some of
his bold and shameless crimes.
“Just lately,” said the man from Budapest, interrupting him, “we took
into custody a similar adventurer, and we did it by curious and not
exactly legal methods, but we got no further in any other way. With us
in Hungary, as it is with you here, the assistance of hypnotism in the
detection of crime is forbidden. We had the man of whom we were almost
certain--but, my dear sir, you won’t betray me, I am sure, for the
professional interest you feel in putting an end to such aberrations
is just as strong in me--well, we were practically certain that he was
the leader of a gang which had several murders to their account. He
was in prison, as I have told you. He made himself out a deaf mute, and
we could glean nothing from his papers. No one knew him, yet we felt
almost sure of our man, and that kind of thing is almost unbearable to
an expert, isn’t it?--for when he appeared before their worships, there
was the risk of his being acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence.
That was a most disagreeable idea to me, for I had spent about six
months in tracking him down, and if he were discharged the mistake
would be due to me. I therefore took a very bold step. A friend of mine
had hypnotic powers. He was a barrister, and had often displayed these
gifts of his in private. I wanted him to go to the jail with me, but
he said, ‘I can operate on him from outside,’ and, indeed, a quarter
of an hour later I knew that we had the leader of the gang at last,
and various disclosures were made which shortly after sent him to the
gallows.”
While the Hungarian was telling this story Wenk experienced an aversion
to him. He had a sensation of profound mental resistance to the man,
although he could not explain what had caused such a reversal of
feeling.
“Are you also interested in persons who possess this gift of
suggestion?” asked the police superintendent.
“Uncommonly so!” answered Wenk.
“Perhaps you would like to meet my friend, and see something of his
gifts?”
“Is he in Berlin, then? Yes, that I certainly should!”
“Yes, he’s here now. He has given up practising law, and now exercises
his gifts openly. He has very quickly become celebrated. You must have
heard the name of Weltmann?”
Wenk did not like to say No, so he answered with a subdued “Certainly!”
“Well, he is the celebrated Weltmann. You know he is noticeable
on account of his having only one hand. He lost the other in the
Carpathians in 1915. Well, we’ll arrange a meeting, then. I will see
him in the morning. Are you on the telephone by any chance?”
Wenk mentioned his telephone number. Both the gentlemen then left, to
go to a house where ether, cocaine and opium were procurable, and other
more obvious vices were pandered to.
On the very next day Wenk was summoned to the telephone. “Police
Superintendent Vörös speaking! Things have fallen out most favourably
for you, my dear sir! In the home of one of our countrymen, about whom
I will tell you a few things in confidence, Weltmann is giving an
entertainment this very evening. It is quite enough for you to have
expressed the wish; you may consider yourself invited, without any
further formality. It is a most hospitable house, and you won’t feel
yourself in any way a stranger. There are between sixty and seventy
people invited. I’ll undertake all the arrangements, and if it suits
you I’ll come in a car for you at nine o’clock. The villa is some
distance out behind Nicholas Lake.”
“Thank you very much. Your kindness overwhelms me,” answered Wenk, “and
I do not know how to requite it.”
“Oh, _that’s_ all right,” answered the other heartily. “We Hungarians
are only too pleased to have such a chance. Then we can regard that as
settled?”
“Quite, thank you!”
“How very amiable the Hungarians are,” thought Wenk, as he hung up the
receiver. He felt quite ashamed of himself for having had a doubt of
the police superintendent’s good faith.
He spent the afternoon among the archives of the Criminal Investigation
Department, where he and the colleague with whom he had talked
concerning the Mabuse crimes looked through the collection of
photographs of criminals. Face after face drew his attention. He would
not give up until he had seen them all, and when he came back to his
lodgings, tired out with his protracted labours, he had only just time
to don his evening clothes in readiness for the function he was to
attend.