XIV
Mabuse’s visit to Count Told duly took place. “Your neurosis is not by any means an unusual one,” said the doctor. “It will be cured when you regain control of yourself, but it will become worse and finally be incurable if you don’t succeed in doing that. It is a precursor of dementia praecox. For professional reasons I shall treat you in your own home, as I do all my patients. I make one condition, however. As long as you are undergoing treatment you must not leave the house or see anyone who recalls your former life.”
Told was stupefied by the power and authority which this doctor assumed towards him. Timid and shrinking by nature, downcast by what had occurred, he did not venture to make any objection, and from the very first moment he stood in absolute awe of him.
When Mabuse left the villa, in which he had seen many things which revealed the life the Count and his wife had led, he said to himself, “He must be got rid of if she even mentions him again.”
The doctor was in a highly excitable and savage state. The meeting with this man, who had so long called her his own, had fired his blood and inflamed him as if he had been a bull in the arena transfixed by a javelin. He unconsciously lowered his head as if for attack, and his imagination ran riot, thirsting to satisfy his hate and revenge. It seemed to him as if a tumour had suddenly burst within him, scattering its evil and offensive discharge everywhere, and he allowed himself to bathe in its stream.
When he reentered his house he went straight to the room in which the Countess was confined. It was in a secluded corner of the villa. The only light there was came from a round window in its arched and richly decorated dome.
The Countess arose as he came in. She was white as the sheets upon her bed. She went towards him, saying, “Something happened to me in the night—something of which I was wholly unconscious. What have you been doing to me?”
“Nothing but what you allowed me to do!”
Then the woman trembled so that she sank down to the ground, raising her glance to his like an animal that has been shot down, and crying in horror, “You devil! oh, you devil!”
“That name pleases me,” said Mabuse. “I consider it flattering. It is, without your realizing it, a caress. Next time you will call me Lucifer, for I shall bring you light!”
The Countess, lying in a heap on the floor, broke into passionate sobs, crying in the midst of her anguish, “Where is my husband?”
Then she saw that at the question Mabuse made a gesture, so indifferent and trivial that she felt her painful anguished appeal was no more than a drop of dew vanishing in the sand, and as hopeless to look for. And her downcast broken heart asked itself whether this man could indeed be so powerful that everything went down before his will—that what she and others before her had been must be brought to nought?
Once again she must yield herself to the twofold stream within. It bore the most secret and hitherto unsuspected currents along with it, and her tortured imagination gave them full play. Must not that which her blood sought to reveal to her be true? She could not separate herself from this new world of feeling. Resist and inveigh against it as she might, she could yet not tear it from her.
The man stood silent before her, and his silence seemed to threaten her. She thought that by a word of her own she could destroy this threatening attitude of his, but she found no power to say anything more than to repeat helplessly, “Where is my husband?” Then Mabuse, silently and roughly, turned away.
When he had left her, leaving behind nothing but the impression of his dominating will, she felt as if she missed something in the room. She would have preferred him to stand there still, and her sense of isolation passed all bounds, overwhelming her. A bottomless abyss opened before her, and phantom figures made appealing gestures. But she could not cast herself down; she hung on to one slender rootlet; she knew it to be the tiny remnant that remained to her of her former life. She wished too, that even this rootlet might be torn adrift, for she would rather have faced death in its entirety than hover over the void.
Mabuse went backwards and forwards in his room. He was like a caged beast, caught between his rage for vengeance and lust of domination on the one hand and the resistance raised to the attainment of his goal on the other. That which baffled him was such a trifle, merely the memories binding a wife to the hours she has passed with her husband, either alone or in company, and because it was so slight an obstacle, the desire to remove and destroy it utterly possessed him with fury such as he had not known till now.
Spoerri entered. He was dressed as a soldier. “What is that for?” asked Mabuse morosely, but he did not wait for an answer, and asked about George’s movements.
“He is at the villa in Schachen. He is very cautious, and does not go out.”
“What is he doing there?”
“At night he helps to bring the store of cocaine under the summerhouse into Switzerland. I have found something fresh which they are ready to take there. Ether.”
“What is the ether for?”
“Folks are beginning to take it.”
“Who? What folks? Where?”
“Our folks, in Switzerland!”
“Your folks; how many have you?”
“We can get it to the others!”
“That reminds me of the girls you were sending to Switzerland, to speed up the smuggling of salvarsan. I don’t want to hear anything about business matters. You understand, nothing.”
“I won’t say any more about it.”
“Perhaps, Spoerri, there’ll be no need for that sort of thing any more!”
Then a hoarse cry was uttered by Spoerri. “Oh, Doctor, Citopomar! Is it to be soon now?”
“We’ll drink to it, Spoerri, we’ll drink to it. I don’t know. Let’s drink to the shepherd boy with eighty-six thousand marks yearly income!”
“Oh, what have I out of it? Do I not always invest it again in one or other of your enterprises, Doctor?”
“Because it brings you in ten percent more there than it would in an insurance society. Shall I have to use force, shepherd? Drink, I say!”
Spoerri was the first to fall from his chair. He lay on the floor, disorder all around him, gazing sadly at his master. He lay there like a dog about to die, knowing that he could no longer protect his master’s life.
Mabuse, tottering so that he was obliged to hold on to the edge of the table to save himself from falling, stuttered: “Spoerri, do you think there is anyone whose will is strong enough for him to kill someone else without even touching him?”
But Spoerri did not understand him. He looked up at his master with glassy eyes, stupid yet faithful, troubled and sick.
“I can! and I shall do it, too! … Sleep,” he said suddenly, and rising, he spurned the other with his foot. He took a few steps forward, having to seek support. Then he pulled himself together, and his willpower was held as it were within an iron vice. Rigidly upright, without a sign of swaying, inflamed with drink and in a state of exaltation, he went into the room the Countess occupied and remained with her without saying a word. And from that hour of humiliation this woman, too, acknowledged his supremacy. She forgot her past, forgot her very self, and submitted willingly to her master.
During the night Mabuse started for Lake Constance. Just as he was approaching the villa at Schachen, having extinguished his lights, he narrowly missed a collision with the engine of the steamroller which was standing in the road a few yards from the garden entrance. It was directly in front of him when he applied his brakes, and he therefore did not drive up to the house, but continued along the road for another kilometre, then left the car standing and went back to the house by the shore-path.
“Why did you not tell me the steamroller was here?” he asked George imperiously. “Even a matchbox lying out in the street might betray us. Go and fetch the car, quickly! It is on the highroad near Wasserburg. Put it away and come straight back here.”
Next morning the telephone bell woke Wenk from his sleep. “News from the steamroller,” he heard, and was at once wide awake.
“Yes, yes; please go on.”
“Last night about two o’clock a car arrived, and pulled up directly in front of our engine, then drove on again. As it was driving without lights, I ordered Schmied to follow on a bicycle. He found it about a kilometre further on, left alone by the roadside, and came back at once to report. I stole into the garden of the villa, but the dog began barking and I went outside round the shore. I saw a man come from the direction of the lake and go into the house. When Schmied and I went back to find the car it had vanished. There is nothing to be noticed this morning!”
“Thanks. You can expect me there today.”
An hour before this conversation took place on the telephone, while still dark, Mabuse left the villa. He was wearing women’s clothes and was rowed across to Nonnenhorn. A motorboat approached, and in it was a fisherman returning from a smuggling expedition. Mabuse accosted him, but the man said he was in a hurry, for he must take his fish home. Then Mabuse at one bound sprang into his boat, overpowered him, threw him down and gagged him, and then transferred him to the rowing-boat. He took off his female garments, beneath which he was dressed as a fisherman, and making a wide detour, he returned to shore and went to the farm where in a barn the car was concealed. George was lying in it asleep.
After a long conversation with George, Mabuse turned and drove back into Würtemberg, while George returned to Schachen.
Mabuse wanted to get to Stuttgart. His agents there had telephoned the previous day that a patient wanted to consult him. That meant that they had got hold of a rich man worth plucking.
While Mabuse was sitting at the gaming-table that evening, he had a sudden vision of the steamroller as it appeared directly in front of him when he applied his brakes. The huge machine was outlined in the darkness, and it seemed as if it were about to fall upon him, and to his fancy it took on a strange shape, finally revealing the features of the State Attorney. As he recalled it, it seemed to stand forth like some antediluvian monster, bearing Wenk’s face, about to fall upon and crush him. Mabuse felt vaguely uneasy, and he suddenly left the gaming-table, where he was losing, and drove back in the night to Munich. On the way this action of his seemed ridiculous, and he felt as if his impulse had been unwarranted. “My desire for that woman will conquer any fear of that accursed lawyer,” he thought, but yet Wenk seemed to stand in his way, more powerful than ever. Why was he still there? Had Mabuse’s order not been distinct enough? If not, he would repeat it!
When once again in his house at Munich he went straight to bed. He controlled his desire to go to the Countess, and fell fast asleep at once.
When the road-menders in Schachen returned to work after their midday rest, a man who had come out of the inn attached himself to their party, saying that he wanted to speak to the overseer. Was it likely he could find a job? he asked them.
“You can have mine this minute, if you’ll pay for it well,” said one jokingly, but the man said that he only wanted the work so that he could get some pay himself. “That’s another matter,” laughed the navvy. “There’s the overseer standing there.”
The man went towards him, speaking in a low tone, and unobtrusively drew him somewhat away from the rest. Yes, he could possibly get a job, said the overseer, who was really a police inspector; let him show his papers.
These the man brought out, saying, “Do not show yourself surprised, inspector. Look as if you were reading the papers through, and take me on to help the stoker on the engine. He is Sergeant Schmied, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir. … Well, all right, I’ll take you on,” said the inspector aloud. “We can give you some work. Come this way. Schmied,” he called out. He explained to Schmied in an undertone that the State Attorney was going to spend the day on the engine as stoker’s assistant.
“What have you noticed now?” asked Wenk of Schmied, as the road-engine moved backwards and forwards.
“While you were on the way, the inspector telephoned to you, but you had already started. Things seem very strange here. We saw the man go to the villa that night, and we thought he must be the one who had left the car standing in the road, but yet it doesn’t seem to tally with the rest, for when we came back to the car it had disappeared. Early this morning there was a woman in a rowing-boat on the lake near the villa, but we could not be sure whether she actually came from there. An hour later, Poldringer, the man we are watching, came from the highroad and went into the house; but we had never seen him leave it, and that is very curious.”
“You have no idea whether the villa has some unknown exit?”
“No, for hitherto our observations of Poldringer all tally. He used to return the same way he went out. He scarcely ever leaves the place, not once in three days.”
“Is there no way of getting into the villa?”
“Not without exciting attention. I see that by the way tramps are turned away. They have a well-trained bloodhound there. … It would not be possible to effect a secret entrance.”
“Is Poldringer still there?”
“Yes; I saw him at a window just now.”
“Had the car a numberplate?”
“Yes, the Constance district; here is the number.”
“That, of course, is a false one. It came from the Lindau direction, I think you said?”
“Yes, sir. I telephoned the number to Friedrichshafen, Ravensburg, Lindau, Wangen and Constance. From Constance they told me that the number I gave belonged to a car in use by the Sanitary Commissioners which never left Constance.”
“Isn’t it possible that the car had been expected at the villa, but did not stop at it, either because they wanted to use it again shortly or because something had made them a bit suspicious—the steamroller, for example? … and therefore Poldringer was told to wait for the car in the street and take it to some place of concealment? During that time the man who had brought it here arrived at the villa. He is either still there with Poldringer or else he was the woman in the rowing-boat, and he has driven to the place where the car is. We must find out where they keep it hidden.”
“We often hear the sound of a motorboat at night not far from the shore, but we are not able to keep an eye on it.”
“I shall sleep in the trolly with you tonight, and we will stop the roller half a kilometre further away from the house. Is there any suitable place to hide in near the house?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll go together. Is that settled? All right, then; now I’m going to learn how to lay out the stones. Hitherto, I’ve only laid out criminals!” laughed Wenk.
“Yes, your honour,” said Schmied cheerily, as he released the throttle and started the engine. “Will your honour please to stoke up!” And Wenk heaped more coal into its glowing maw.
“Up to now your honour has never fired an engine, only criminals!” he continued, carrying on Wenk’s joke.
“Yes, but not enough of those, as you see at the villa, my good Schmied,” answered the lawyer. “However, I hope with your help. …”
“We shall catch them all right,” said Schmied eagerly.
“If we don’t overreach ourselves, for I think we are dealing at the moment with the most dangerous and daring gang in Europe. You know that we have ascertained so far that it is a case of card-sharping, murder, terrorization, and all of it done by the help of a gang.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Schmied.
As they were leaving the trolly that evening Schmied whispered: “I should like to draw your attention to something, sir. Every evening I go by as if I were taking a little rest after the day’s work, and I light up my pipe. Just at the side there, you see, we are getting to a little door. Whenever anyone goes by, the dog begins barking, and I couldn’t help thinking there was some reason for it, but one can’t find it out from the street. You see now, I am just close to it, and while I am going by I fasten … (just listen to the dog now!) a thread across the door. Anybody who opens it would break the thread, but he would not notice it when going through. In this way I can keep watch over the door, even when it is not actually in view. Then I can tell whether anyone has gone through the gate in the dark. In the morning I go and look at it first thing, and take the thread away.”
“Is it there already?”
“I have just fastened it there.”
“Then you did it very smartly, for I did not notice anything,” said Wenk, praising him.
“Let us go back. It really is a side-entrance to the other villa.”
“Do you know who is living there?”
“For the last thirty years an old maid has been living there. There certainly is no connection between the two villas.”
They strolled back along the road.
“If you would like to go to sleep, Schmied, I have no objection. I know what I’ve to look out for now.”
“Well, I really should be glad to, sir, for last night I got no sleep, and I must be out there again before four o’clock.”
“I understand. Well then, good night. …”
Wenk continued his patrol throughout the whole of the spring night, but nothing happened, and he noticed nothing out of the common. Next morning he repaired to the hotel at Lindau, the address of which he had notified before leaving Munich. The director told him he had been rung up from Munich, and his man wanted him to know that Count Told most earnestly desired to speak to him as soon as possible. The call had come from his home at Munich. He seemed to be greatly agitated, and begged the man to telephone the message on.
Wenk returned to Munich and rang up the Count, but an unfamiliar voice informed him that the Count had started on a journey.
“Did he leave no message for me?” said Wenk.
“No.”
“Where has he gone?”
“He left no address. Please ring off.”
Wenk was thoroughly perplexed.