Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery a novel
the dim light, looking down upon it. Mabuse saw her smooth white skin
gleaming from the rich dark red dress she wore. His bearing was cold
and gloomy, and scarcely a word escaped his lips. The feelings that
arose within him were sternly suppressed, and his thoughts were busy
with Count Told alone. When anyone addressed him, he answered abruptly.
He seemed to pay great attention to the game, but he played by leaps
and bounds.
Soon the gentlemen who had begun their game with modest stakes began
to imitate his example, and there was no unanimity in the value of the
stakes. Beside a stake of a mark or two there stood a fifty-mark note,
and then one for two hundred. The small stake seemed to feel ashamed;
it rapidly became twenty, and still faster it grew to a hundred, to
two hundred.... Very soon there was no player who ventured less than a
hundred marks. When they began they found time for conversation between
the end of the hand and the fresh deal, but after a time the talk grew
less, and then ceased. The onlookers, too, became silent. The contest
between the players grew more pronounced, the game feverish, and this
excitement spread to the spectators.
The Countess noted the high stakes her husband wagered. “He has never
played before,” she thought. “What is the matter with him?”
The Count was winning. He let his winnings accumulate. It seemed as if
he were a horse, urged and threatened onward by an eager rider. He
threw his money down. It was now his turn to hold the stakes. It seemed
to him as if the moment in which he should deal the cards and undertake
the manifold risks of gain or loss would be a supreme experience for
him, yielding rich secrets of wonderful joy. He grew excited, and his
phantasies played about the room.
The Countess turned aside in the half-light, constrained at her
husband’s incomprehensible actions. Suddenly the full light of the
lamp fell upon her, revealing where her slender breast rose white and
stately from the enclosing circle of her gown.
“North and south!” said Mabuse, as he contemplated her lovely figure,
“north and south, your turn is coming,” and his tone was sinister and
threatening. Then he turned his glance away, and it fell upon Count
Told’s hands as he took over the bank at this moment. He dealt the
cards out, and hesitated a moment as if perplexed at some strange
occurrence. He was relieved when he had distributed the pack. He
won considerable sums, and it was singular that the same feeling of
perplexity recurred. He won a second time, and now this seemed to
happen continually. Players and spectators alike were astonished at the
run of luck the Count’s game exhibited.
“Look at your husband,” said someone, turning to the Countess; “he is
winning every hand.”
They all cast a glance at the Countess and then quickly returned to
their cards. The Count dealt the cards once more. He disclosed his
cards; he had two picture cards and was about to buy another.
“Halt!” cried a voice suddenly, like the voice of a drill sergeant,
and a hand was laid roughly on the table, reaching the white and
delicate hand of the Count, on which the jewelled ring was sparkling,
and turning it over. Then all the company saw that the Count had been
about to take a card from underneath the pack instead of the one that
lay on the top. The card was a nine.
“Aha, a nine! _Now_ I understand your luck, you gudgeon! You are a
common cheat!”
They all sprang up in confusion. Count Told sat still in his chair, in
a state of utter collapse. He seemed absolutely crushed, finding no
word to say.
“Give the money here!” cried the harsh voice again. “All of it!” The
tone was threatening.
The spectators and the players were crowding together, and a cry rang
through the obscurity. Through the hasty movements of the powerful man
who had seized the Count, one man had fallen to the ground, dragging
another down with him. The latter clutched at the tablecloth, and it
was pulled off, money and cards being strewn over the floor, people
flinging themselves upon it. Suddenly the electric lights went out, but
Dr. Mabuse, who had waited for the cry from the dark corner, rushed
to the fainting Countess, lifted her in his arms and with one spring
bore her under the palms and out into the garden under the moonlight,
through the shrubbery and to the wall leading to the street. He lifted
her over, and from the other side someone helped him with his burden.
An instant later a car was stealing swiftly down the street.
“The northern and southern hemispheres,” he shouted aloud furiously
during the drive. “Now I hold you both!”
The Xenienstrasse was empty. The car came to a sudden standstill. He
carried the Countess, still unconscious, into his house.
XII
Scarcely heeding the abuse and scorn heaped upon him by the crowd, out
of the chaos and confusion of the contemptuous glances of others and
his own feeling of perplexity, Count Told stole, as if in a dream,
towards the vestibule. He thought of his wife, but he had not the
courage to look round for or inquire about her. His car stood before
the door, and the chauffeur was about to start the engine when the
Count made a gesture of denial, saying, “Wait for the Countess!”
He went into the town and hired the first taxi he saw to drive him
home. “What has happened to me?” was the question that he perpetually
put to himself. “What was it that overcame me? Who moved my hand?...
What is it that has happened? I know nothing about it. Can it be merely
a bad dream?”
But it was no dream. He reached his house and had to descend. He went
down the length of the garden and into the house. The footman took his
coat, and the Count went to the room where he and his wife, whenever
they had been out together, were wont to spend a short time before
going to bed, in exchanging the experiences the evening had afforded.
He always looked forward eagerly to these moments.
To-night he was alone there. “Where can my wife be?” he asked himself,
astonished and yet unconscious. So many tender memories clung to this
room, and he felt disappointed that in this dreadful hour she was not
by his side. It was the first painful experience of his existence.
But all at once it became clear to him that she must have sundered
herself from him, and he realized that by that inexpressibly strange
occurrence at the gaming-table in the Wendel mansion he had covered
himself with mire. It clung fast to him, and he thought, “Lucy must
leave me. She must remain away until I have purified myself.” But how
was he to accomplish the task?
And suddenly there came over him, like an icy blast in all its pitiless
severity, the full meaning of what he had done. He had done it, he
really had put cards at the bottom of the pack and then drawn them when
he wanted them, and with these he had won money. Yet he had not desired
to win money! What could have happened? Was there no help anywhere?
He had done something against his will. His act had thrust him out
of decent society, and to the end of his days he would be known as a
cheat. Was there no help to be found?
“I know now,” he said to himself, “what it is I have done, but I do
not know how I came to do it, neither the why nor the wherefore. I am
growing crazy, losing my self-confidence, and I shall henceforth be
unable to feel safe, whatever I do. Horrible, monstrous thought! I am
absolutely afraid of myself. How can I ever have reached such a point?
Yonder is a sculpture by Archipenko and the picture hanging there is
one of Kokoschka’s; I am quite certain of that; but what proceeds from
my own brain, and is my own creation, of that I can never more feel
certain again. I retain my sight, hearing and feelings, but my brain is
rotting!... I shall end in a lunatic asylum! My body moves in the light
of day while my mental powers are wrapped in a dim twilight. Is there
no one that can help me?”
He struggled with his tears, but he could not even allow himself to
weep, for he thought, “Perhaps I shall lose all consciousness of what I
am doing. If I weep, may I not possibly destroy a picture that I have
hitherto loved and worshipped, or abuse my man, or act improperly to
Lucy’s maid?”
And suddenly, at the utterance of his wife’s name, he collapsed
entirely. “Ah, Lucy, light of my life, can _you_ not help me?” he
cried. “Will you not come? Have you no longer faith in me? Why am I
left alone?”
He rang, and then, hastening to meet the footman, inquired for the
Countess.
“The Countess has not yet returned,” he was told.
“Nor telephoned? Has she not...”
“No, my lord, but an hour ago Herr Dr. von Wenk rang up, asking if he
might have the honour of waiting on her ladyship to-morrow morning. His
telephone number has been written down.”
“Go!” said the Count. “I will go to Dr. Wenk ... yes, to Dr. Wenk,” he
thought, and then, a prey to a thousand nameless fears, he cried aloud,
“Or else I shall hang myself! I must be able to tell some human being
what I feel....”
He hurried to the telephone, giving the number written down. “Yes,
this is the State Attorney, Dr. Wenk!” answered a strange voice in the
distance, and Told began to tremble. But he rallied all his energy and
self-control, saying, “Can I speak to you at once?”
He was terribly afraid that the fever of his desire might melt the
connecting wire and that he might get no answer. He breathed freely
again when he heard the words, “With pleasure! I shall expect you!”
“Fritz!” he shouted; “get the two-seater ready,” and he drove back to
Munich.
Wenk believed he had come on the Countess’s errand, and that something
had happened in the prison to put an end to the enterprise they had in
hand.
“I think, Count Told, that after all it was too risky an experiment.
The Countess....”
“No, no,” cried Told, interrupting him. “I ... I ... it is on my own
account that I’ve come here,” and then he began his story. He told,
too, what an extraordinary sensation of heat he had felt at the back
of his head, and this must have been the forerunner of misfortune. “Do
not be vexed, Dr. Wenk, that I, a stranger, should come to you thus,
but I should have had to put an end to myself if I had not been able to
confide in someone to-night. May I go on? Well, these powerful rays,
that were like red-hot iron at the back of my head, changed gradually
to a feeling of well-being throughout my whole body. They seemed to
bathe me in pleasant warmth, and I had a feeling that I was somehow
saved from something that lay before me, and in this very moment of
relief ... it happened! In the first half-hour afterwards I denied
that it could have done, but when I reached home I realized that the
dreadful story was true, and this thing had really happened. There is
no getting away from it, either for others or for myself.”
Wenk at once recalled his experience with the old Professor. He was
startled. Could it be possible that here too ... and he thought of the
Countess and of Cara Carozza. He asked Told, “Have you any suspicion at
all?”
The Count did not understand the question.
“Any suspicion? What do you mean? That I have been like this before?
Ill in this way? No, never!”
“No, a suspicion of any special person who was there?”
“The idea never occurred to me. I can’t understand how anybody else
could.... No ... I don’t suspect anyone!”
“Was there nobody in the company who did not seem to belong there, who
was not quite like the other guests?”
“It was a company of the Privy Councillor’s intimate friends. No, there
was nobody!”
Wenk rejected the idea. Besides, how could there be any connection
between the criminal he was seeking and the Count’s act of cheating?
It was apparently a momentary mental aberration, a loss of will-power.