Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery a novel

possessor that gross material gain which he who practises evil strives to attain. Which is the nobler? That is what you must ask yourself, and if there is an exuberance of energy in your temperament which you cannot make use of in the class of society to which you belong, and yet do not desire to keep inactive.... However, these people are beginning to notice our talk. I expect the blond has his spies everywhere. Allow me to take leave of you and request an opportunity of continuing this conversation.” “Come and see me to-morrow; come at tea-time please. Ask for Countess Told, at Tutzing.” She gave him her hand. Wenk, to whom her name supplied the clue to that mysterious flight when Count Told had entered the room, kissed her slender fingers, yielding himself momentarily to her charm and beauty, and toying with the foolish notion of abandoning his chase of criminals and yielding to the pursuit of this woman. With these thoughts in his mind, he said farewell. Left to herself, the Countess reflected: “We women have no imagination. I was looking for an adventure among these gamblers absorbed in their play, and when it presented itself I imagined it was but an intrigue. But _this_ is a man, indeed! He devotes his life to his task, and no man can give more than his life, and there is nothing greater or more beautiful than life. If only I had the chance of doing likewise!” She resolved to follow Wenk’s leading and do all that she could to help him. * * * * * Among his letters next morning Wenk noticed a small registered parcel. He opened it, to find his watch and his purse with the money intact. The notebook alone was missing, and on a card these words were typed: “I am no ghoul. The things my subordinate took from you in error are returned herewith. I am keeping the notebook because its contents concern me.--BALLING.” Wenk was scarcely surprised. This man had thousands at stake; what were a few beggarly hundreds and a gold watch to him? He did not need this to convince him that it was really himself, and more particularly his notebook, that was concerned. He put away both watch and purse and let his thoughts linger on the alluring Countess. In the afternoon he was received at her house, a mansion sumptuously arranged, but in a style that offended Wenk, for since yesterday his ideas of the Countess had made considerable advance, and it would have been pleasant to find himself more in sympathy with her tastes than this home of hers evidenced. In the very entrance-hall the walls had been painted all over in Cubist forms and conventional designs tortured into weird shapes in endless succession, with splashes of colour here and there, as if to create an impression of the ardent temperament of the designer. “You are cold and passionless,” said he to himself; “of so calculating and cold a nature that if one among you disappears, the others have not enough red blood in their veins to notice his absence?” The butler, the dark severity of whose livery was lightened by small silver buttons and blue lappets, took his hat and coat from him and announced him to the Countess, who was sitting at the tea-table. “We shall not be alone long,” she said; “my husband will be home at five o’clock.” But the decorations of the house had made Wenk feel unsympathetic, and before he answered he cast a hasty glance at the walls of the room. The Countess noticed it. “That is all my husband’s doing,” she said. “To me it appears simply hideous. What are you to make out of it, if one paints a peasant, indicates some freshly painted barns, and then tells the beholder that it is a symphony of Beethoven’s? However, every one to his taste--or are you perhaps a ‘Futurist’ also?” “I cannot say that,” said Wenk, “but you seem to imply that they are the only moderns. Yet all men in secret speak the same language. Our freedom to express ourselves comes only from individuality!” “You want to be free?” said the lady. “Are you not your own salvation? Does not your calling, your expenditure of energy, give you your inner freedom? There is no salvation from without!” “That is quite true,” said Wenk simply; and the womanly image which had haunted him since yesterday, and which seemed to be lost on entering this house, once more returned to his mind. “It is really what we were talking of yesterday, this balance of the forces of good and evil, and I wanted to talk to you about that again to-day.” “I understood you aright,” answered the Countess. “I will confess to you that at first I thought you were on the search for an intrigue, and the idea amused me considerably, for God knows I seek something very different in the gaming-houses.” “You will find what you are seeking in my work, Countess,” rejoined Wenk quickly. Suddenly the butler, in his black livery, with its blue lappets and silver buttons, appeared noiselessly, and bent down whispering something to his mistress. “My husband!” said the Countess to Wenk, fixing a steady and lingering glance on him, and as the Count came forward she introduced the two men. Count Told was an extremely thin man, and gave an impression of excessive sprightliness. He was surprisingly young and very fashionably dressed. He gesticulated a good deal, and the movement of his hands gave prominence to a ring he wore, set with an unusual gem, such as Wenk had never before seen. It might have been a flame topaz, with streaks of blood-red across it, trailing off into milky whiteness at the edges and emphasizing the clear honey colour of the transparent stone. In the middle of it, just where its lightning rays were most dazzling, was a tiny pearl, an islet, hardly larger than a freckle, but of a blue that put the sapphire into the shade, and.... Thus Wenk was thinking to himself, unable to keep his eyes from the jewel. “It is a trifle too big for my hand,” said the Count, answering his visitor’s unspoken thoughts, “but the stone is so ... how shall I describe its originality? Well, I can only say that it is like a recital by Endivian, whom you doubtless know, and it was he who gave it to me. He brought it back from Penderappimur.” “Is he the fashionable jeweller nowadays?” asked Wenk, who seemed somewhat at sea. “Herr von Wenk,” said the Countess gravely, “Endivian is the fashionable young Goethe of this season.” Then she laughed. “No! Endivian the poet received the jewel at the Court of Artimerxes II, instead of the goblet, from the poem of his spiritual father ... you know it, ‘Give me no golden chain’ ... and when he returned, he announced in Germany, much as the Pope announces the Golden Rose, that his greatest admirer should have it. The choice fell upon my husband. It would have been better if he had given it me.” “Why don’t you enthuse about him as I do?” asked the Count, with a pleasant smile, looking at her very tenderly as he spoke. “Peter Resch dedicated his rubbish to him, and that was enough for me,” was the Countess’s laughing retort. “Pooh, Peter Resch, indeed!” said the Count. “He is one of the Impressionists who has arrived. By the way, dearest, I have got something new.” “From the Jennifer gallery?” “Can one get a real picture anywhere else? There is nothing left.... And one has a clear and incontestable and direct impression. If the artistic temperament would only renounce colour ... it would be the beginning of really abstract thought, of the detachment from everything which needs the help of another consciousness to interpret its vision.” The Countess replied, with apparent earnestness: “Thank Heaven, we do get a little further. If in the realm of music, too, genius had any prospect of renouncing the crash of sound when it desires to express itself, the world would soon be attaining its aim.” The Count went on enthusiastically: “A sublime atmosphere of space ... in two blues ... which project into the cosmogony and play upon each other between storm and lightning.... “Whereupon the Almighty leaves His seat, dear Herr von Wenk, saying, ‘My creation has surpassed Me; I take My leave!’” The conversation continued in this tone for awhile, and an hour later Wenk took his leave. He felt depressed as he drove home, but he had hardly sat down to dinner when a note was brought him, and he read: DEAR HERR VON WENK, I am sorry that our meeting to-day fell out differently from the one we had planned. That is not why I am writing to you, however, for we can continue our conversation in another place and at another time. But you may have left our house under the impression that my husband was “nothing but a fool,” and in his wife’s eyes too, and that would have been my fault, so I want to entreat you not to allow yourself to take up a depreciatory attitude. It is true that the Count buys Futurist pictures, but that must be understood more or less symbolically. I have always found that the more “foolish” a man appeared at one’s first encounter with him, the more approachable he became when one met him in his more serious moments. Au revoir ... but when, and where? Yours sincerely, LUCY TOLD. “So Lucy is her name? And indeed she is rightly called Light. If she were _my_ light of life!... Oh, what a fool I am,” said he, as he felt an unaccustomed warmth steal over him--a warmth for which he always yearned.... Then he stood up, shaking off these delicious tremors, and saying sternly to himself, “This is a pretty way to reach a criminal ... through falling in love with a beautiful woman.” The telephone rang: “Hull speaking!” Hull told him that a new gaming-house had been opened, and he really must visit it. The saloon was not only arranged to accommodate a large number of people, at least a hundred, but it had certain mechanical contrivances which could turn it into a music-hall if the police were to appear. He did not know how it was done, but Cara had written to him about it and she was always _au courant_ of any new sensation of this kind. They were going there, and taking Karstens with them, but Hull did not know the address of this place, and they would trust to Cara’s guidance. Of course, she knew nothing about his writing to Wenk. A rendezvous was arranged, and at ten o’clock Wenk drove to the Café Bastin, whence they were to set out. VII The house they entered lay on the border of the inner city, in one of the mean, sordid streets leading to Schwabing. Its outward appearance, like its neighbours’, showed an unimposing façade. It was one of those shops having lodgings above, and the sliding shutters over the shop were drawn to the ground. It was too dark to read the name, but Wenk noticed the number, that of his birth-year--’76. They entered a dirty stairway in which hung a dusty globe, which gave an indifferent light to the changing population who inhabited such houses as these, and then ascended two flights of stairs. A heavy door opened before them, and in a corridor at the side a light shone out over the miserable staircase. The corridor ran alongside the staircase; it was completely empty: a cheap and shabby black and white drugget ran throughout its length, and its walls were covered with faded paper-hangings. “This is lively,” said Cara, “but just wait a moment!” Then a small door opened from the corridor and a light streamed forth into the gloomy darkness. They looked upon a swelter of luxury. There was a little _foyer_ with cushions and curtains, cloakroom accommodation, little restaurant tables, etc. There was the odour of prepared foods and the popping of champagne corks. People they did not