Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery a novel
“They are escaping in sections. The second car is going faster. Mabuse
must be in that one, and his accomplices in the first,” thought Wenk.
From Obergünzburg he had the announcement of both cars in the one
communication, for the second went through just as the official had
informed him about the first. Buchenberg told him the same.
Then Wenk thought it time to call up Schachen. He gave directions to
await the arrival of the two cars and then take action according to the
plan arranged. The man whom it was above all important to secure would
probably be in the uniform of a Munich constable, and they were not to
be misled by this, for it would be Mabuse.
“Now we have him at last,” said Wenk jubilantly, as he received one
communication after another, all of them proving that Schachen was the
destination aimed at.
Place after place stood out on the map to Wenk, and through the night
the villages and tiny towns called to him and ranged themselves on his
side. He bound them together with phantom threads, reaching to the very
limits of the Empire. He wrung the secret of the broad highroad out of
it in the darkness, and the highroad knew nothing of its revelation.
With one small lever he held the long, unending avenue, shrouded in
darkness, in the hollow of his hand. The forces he had disposed were
obedient to him, their general.
“Hergatz” rang on the telephone, and the sound of its bell seemed to
his ears as intimate as if it were his own name being called.
“Yes,” he said, “it is the State Attorney, Wenk, speaking from Munich.
“A little open car has just gone by very rapidly in the Lindau
direction. Two persons were in it, but not clearly recognized.”
“Thank you. Hold on a minute. There will be a second car through.”
Wenk waited, hearing in the suspended lines all the sounds occurring
through the night between Munich and a little place like Hergatz, which
he had never yet visited.
“Are you still connected?” he asked after a while.
“Yes, sir.”
“Hasn’t the second car come through?”
“Not yet, sir.”
After a time he inquired again, and once more he was told No.
A quarter of an hour later he rang up Hergatz again, and the official
said that no second car had been seen.
Wenk opened out the map again and made a feverish search. Yes:
Buchenberg--Isny--Gestratz--Opfenbach ... there was Hergatz! And
behind Isny there was a highroad leading to Wangen and the Würtemberg
district, or on the left another leading to Austria.
He rang up Wangen, but there was no answer. He repeated the call, and
after storming for ten minutes he tried again, but still in vain. He
had left Wangen out of his reckoning and made no plans concerning it,
and in the direction of Austria he could give no orders, for the power
of his lever did not extend so far. A car had disappeared from his
ken; a car had been stolen from him in the night, snatched away in the
darkness from the strange, unfriendly, gloom-surrounded streets.
And then he thought again that the large car might have had a
breakdown. Yes, it must have been so, and that was why the smaller car
had two people in it, when there was only one at the previous stage.
This new circumstance need not worry him. His luck was not going to
desert him: he trusted to it, and it would not fail.
He rang up Schachen. “There will probably be only one car. Let it
arrive, and then wait twenty minutes to see whether the other one
comes, and surround the villa on all sides. Then deliver your blow, as
hard as you can!”
Scarcely had he finished speaking when the telephone rang once more,
and the last stage--the Enisweiler railway-station--was heard speaking.
A small, open car had turned off the Lindau-Friedrichshafen road, and
was rapidly approaching Schachen. Two people were in it.
It was all complete! Wenk himself could do nothing more now. He would
have to wait. Perhaps in a few moments now the fight on the lake-side
which his tactics had prepared might be going on. He ordered them not
to wait for the second car, but to enter the villa immediately after
the arrival of the occupants of the first one, to seize and handcuff
them, extinguish the lights, and wait a full hour for the second one.
He looked at his watch, and laid it on the table before him. It was now
3.18 a.m.
He felt a twitching in the muscles of hands and feet and a throbbing
in his brain. It seemed as if a whirlwind of pain were rising from his
hips to his head, remaining there a while, and then taking the same
direction again and again, times without number.
XVIII
Spoerri had fetched the Countess from the villa in the western suburbs,
which she had occupied but half an hour, and hurried off with her in
the car. Mabuse, in his light little two-seater, had caught up the
heavier car between Kaufbeuren and Günzburg, and both drove on without
stopping. This had all been arranged between them long before. Where
the road to Wangen diverged from the Lindau road, the large car ahead
came to a standstill, and the little car drove close up. The Countess
was transferred; Mabuse drove on, and Spoerri took the road leading to
Austria.
Mabuse had arranged that at this point their roads should separate.
Spoerri should reach Switzerland by way of the Rhine. Each of them must
leave an address in Zürich with Dr. Ebenhügel, who could then exchange
them. Mabuse, with the Countess, would drive to the Villa Elise, where
George, who had been instructed by pigeon-post, would be waiting with
the chest containing the securities and the jewels Mabuse would take
with him on his flight. Then the three of them would immediately cross
the lake to Luxburg, where a motor would be in waiting, and proceed
along the Romanshorn main road to Zürich. There would be a brief stop
at Zürich for the transaction of business.
It was likely that the authorities in Bavaria would ask the Swiss ones
to search for the fugitives, and therefore Mabuse wanted to make his
stay in Switzerland as brief as possible, and to push on to the Italian
frontier. He had had passes for himself and the Countess prepared in
a Portuguese surname. An Italian official had been bribed, and by his
help all difficulties disappeared as chaff before the wind.
The Countess sat at the back of the car, behind its high body. In
front of her Mabuse, sitting at the wheel, seemed like some monumental
image. In the uncertain light the outlines of his powerful figure stood
out with ghostly effect. There was not the slightest movement to be
seen, and from her seat behind he looked like a block of granite, seen
standing alone in a meadow.
They sped by highways, villages, hamlets, and then the waters of the
lake gleamed in the night. A few lights at intervals on its shores,
shapes appearing and disappearing in the darkness, dimly suggesting
human beings, a change in the air one breathed ... two villages
appearing to float like illuminated ships upon the water ... there was
Switzerland already.
Lindau lay to the side, and their car was now racing along roads
bordered by country villas. And then came the last minute. The car
bounded across the track to the Enisweiler station, and rushed forward
to the Villa Elise. At the first glance Mabuse’s sharp eyes saw that
the gates opening on to the drive stood wide open.
The pigeon-post had arrived safely and in good time then. He felt as if
the impetuous haste with which he had driven hither in the darkness
had yielded him a fresh sensation. It was now just before 3.30 a.m.,
and he kept his senses constantly on the alert without slackening his
speed. When he was about to turn into the drive, he pressed the brakes
hard for a moment before allowing the car to run its course; it held up
for an instant, then, veering round, went straight through the gates
and turned towards the garden.
Just then he felt something spring on to the car. On the clutch side,
springing over the door, a form squeezed down on the outer side of
Mabuse. Two hands covered his own, snatched the steering-gear from him,
and a wild, hoarse, impressive voice whispered, “Doctor, I’m here: it’s
George. Give me the wheel. We are surrounded. Straight forward into the
lake....”
Mabuse yielded the wheel and let go the brakes. Under its new guide the
car dashed ahead, thundered round the grey walls of the villa, abruptly
turned a corner, got on to a grass-plot, and raced frantically across
it, along the sloping gravel patch to the wall which divided the lake
from the garden above. Through the gate in the wall it leaped like a
wild horse and then clattered down the inclined wooden footway, the
boards thundering beneath it. A moment later its nose was in the water
and the lake hissing around it.
George leant forward as quick as lightning and gripped levers, Mabuse
helping him. The night re-echoed the Countess’s cry, and then the
vehicle, tottering slightly at first, but slowly righting itself, went
onward over the surface of the water.
“Splendid!” cried George. “It is working like magic!”
This car was an invention of his own. It could be driven straight from
the highroad into the water without stopping, and a couple of levers
turned it at once into a motor-boat.
“It is the pigeons that have done the mischief,” said George, when he
had gained thorough control of his vessel. “After they arrived in the
dark, about an hour ago, I seemed to hear whispering voices behind
a shrubbery. I looked very carefully round, and thought I noticed a
movement going all round the park. In one place, and then twenty paces
further on, and then twenty paces beyond that again, in a circle, the
whole way round, so then I knew we were surrounded. However, I managed
to get to the gate leading to the garden without being seen. It took me
fifty minutes to do the hundred yards. If we had not had this car, we
should now be sitting handcuffed inside the Villa Elise.”
The constables, who had distributed themselves with all possible
precautions about the villa, and had taken four hours to complete the
ring around it, one after another taking up his position, had heard
the car thundering along through the silent night. They lay in tense
expectation at their posts, awaiting the whistle which should summon
them to the house to fall upon the criminals.
Just an hour before there had been a slight interruption. A bird had
suddenly flown through a tree and disappeared beneath the eaves. One
of the constables close to the house had noticed it. He had seen
the bird fluttering about the roof and then suddenly disappearing
without having flown away elsewhere. His conjecture that it was a
carrier-pigeon was soon confirmed by the appearance of a second bird,
which also disappeared in the eaves. The constable stole softly to the
inspector and announced what he had seen and suspected. The latter saw
at once what this might indicate. Poldringer had received warning from
Munich, from the fugitives. He therefore ordered a constable to proceed
with the utmost caution from one outpost to another and relate the
fact, saying that those in the house had probably been warned, and that
they must redouble their precautions and at the same time be prepared
for stronger resistance.
The movements of the constable as he went from post to post had put
George on his guard.... Mabuse’s car reached the grounds, and the
inspector’s quivering fingers were already raising the whistle to his
mouth. At the moment when the occupants of the car should have left it
and be about to close the door of the house behind them, he meant to
give the signal. Two detectives were lying concealed in the shrubs to
the left of the front door, and could reach it before the key was even
turned in the lock, but the inspector gave no sign.
The car rushed round the corner, not stopping at the door. It tore