Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery a novel
Wenk glanced at the stranger and met his eyes. He noticed that they
were fastened on him, and he immediately looked beyond and above them,
but he felt that the stranger had noticed they were speaking of him.
Whenever he looked at him again he found that his eyes were fixed on
the table.
The stranger played a quiet, restrained game. He frequently lost. Then
Wenk ceased to pay attention to him and turned to the others, whom
he watched in turns. They all had their eyes fastened on the white
oval, whereon the cards were being dealt. They seldom looked in any
other direction. There were gentlemen in evening dress, ladies in
_décolletée_, expensively and fashionably attired. The passion for
gambling had seized and carried them all away.
“It is none of these,” said Wenk to himself, “so it can only be that
young man with the sandy beard.”
He began to study him afresh, but only to find that the latter returned
his gaze. Wenk then turned his attention to Cara Carozza. He saw her
wholly given over to her game, sitting next to Hull, to whose money
she helped herself when she lost. If she won, however, she added the
winnings to her own heap. In the player on her other side Wenk thought
he recognized a well-known tenor from the State Theatre, whose picture
often appeared in shop-windows.
“Is that Marker?” he asked Karstens, who nodded in reply.
Wenk won a trifling sum. He played only till he had persuaded himself
that there was no work for him here. Then he gave up his place to an
elderly gentleman who had already been sitting behind him for some
time, boring him by remarks upon his method of play. He seated himself
on one of the lounges and watched the play for a short time longer.
Then he took his departure, Karstens accompanying him. Hull remained
with the Carozza girl.
When Wenk had descended a few steps he looked back at the table. It
seemed as if the fair-bearded man with large mouse-grey eyes followed
his departure eagerly, and then directed an urgent and threatening look
towards Carozza, but it might have been only an illusion.
When Wenk reached the foot of the stairs, he unexpectedly found
himself for a moment face to face with a lady who had already laid her
hand on the balustrade to ascend. He looked right into her eyes and
started back in amazement, while he inclined his head, as if doing
homage, before he passed on. He wanted to say to Karstens, “I have
never seen so beautiful a woman!” but that seemed to him like betraying
a secret, and, consumed with desire, he bore her image with him as he
made his way silently through the deserted streets. When at home, he
soon fell asleep, but the two mouse-grey eyes, which were far older
than the carefully arranged sandy beard, seemed to fasten on his breast
as he slept. They appeared to be trying to colour the ace of hearts
with his own life-blood.
When he awoke next morning he was conscious of nothing but an intense
longing to meet once more the lady he had encountered on the stairs.
III
The next night Wenk was invited to a _soirée musicale_ in the
neighbourhood of Schramm’s restaurant. A young pianist was performing
modern phantasies. Wenk was bored, became fidgety and was the prey to
wandering thoughts. It seemed to him as if he were neglecting some
special opportunity elsewhere. He grew so uneasy that he finally
slipped away, merely leaving a card of apology for his hostess.
He reached Schramm’s and was about to pass quickly by. Then it occurred
to him to look up at the first floor of the villa where the new
restaurant and gaming-house was established, and try to see the windows
of the little room in which he had played the previous night. The
ground-floor windows were large, and through their old-gold curtains a
faint light gleamed, but the four windows on the first floor showed no
signs of occupation. Yet he said to himself, “Behind those unlighted
windows there gleams light ... _her_ light,” and he went in, full of
hope that he might encounter the mysterious lady who had so bewitched
him.
The head-waiter approached him at once, took hat and coat, whispering,
“The marble table?” and looking closely at the visitor as he did so.
Wenk gave a nod of assent, and the head-waiter rapidly preceded him to
the back, Wenk following more leisurely. Then he was led up the winding
stair.
The first person he saw at the gaming-table was the sandy-bearded man.
He sat in his niche, his broad shoulders bent forward, with his eyes
fixed in a steady gaze upon a player opposite. His attitude was that of
a beast of prey who has already played his victim and is only waiting
to pounce upon him. He seemed to be all sinews--at least, that was the
impression he made upon Wenk, who started back at his aspect.
There was one empty seat. Wenk took it and drew out his pocket-book.
An idea crossed his mind, that something special had occurred at the
table. He saw all the players cowering over the little heaps of money
in front of them, and yet there was in them all a distinct, even if
unintentional, glance given to one among their number.
The sandy-bearded stranger was holding the bank, and now he looked up.
Wenk noticed how, at first, annoyed at the disturbance, he raised his
eyes towards him, and then it was clearly noticeable that his face
quivered. At the same moment, however, he closed his jaws so firmly
that his beard stood out round them. The rest was a mere impression,
but this Wenk saw clearly. A shudder went through him as if at some
sudden and dangerous encounter. At this moment the “banker” displayed
the cards he held. Someone said, “Basch has lost again!” All turned to
look openly at the pale thin man whom they had been furtively regarding
when Wenk entered.
With a quiet and drowsy movement Basch pushed the notes lying on the
oval in front of him over to the stranger. He grabbed at them like a
bird of prey. The loser sank back in his seat, and in the same slow and
dreamy way he brought out a fresh thousand-mark note and laid it in
front of him.
“How much are you losing now?” said a lady from the divan behind Basch.
“You will have a lucky life. When one loses to _that_ extent! I regard
you as a champion. You must establish a record.... In losing, you know!
Then you will be so lucky in life that I shall want to....” She broke
off in embarrassment. Then Wenk, with a delicious tremor in his veins,
recognized the speaker as the lady whom he had so abruptly encountered
on the stairs on the previous evening.
“Get ready to stake,” said the sandy-bearded man in a harsh voice,
drowning the speaker’s concluding words.
Basch had not answered her. As the banker called out, he merely made a
movement of his hand over his thousand-mark note, a movement as if he
were secretly conjuring it to do his bidding.
He looked at his cards; it was his turn, and no one else was punting.
“Do you take one?” said the banker sharply.
Basch shook his head dreamily. Wenk noticed Cara Carozza’s
auburn-tressed head behind one the spectators, but his glance always
returned to the other woman.
The banker bought a Court card and disclosed his own hand. He had only
a total of four. Basch, too, with a feverish movement, laid his on the
table. His points were but three.
“He plays as if he were drugged!” whispered Wenk’s neighbour. “To hold
three, and yet not take a card! What folly!”
As he raked in his gains the sandy-bearded stranger gave a hasty
glance at Wenk. The latter felt himself pitted against the winner. He
increased his stakes, won, then lost for several rounds, and won again.
Basch continued to lose every time. By degrees Wenk ranged himself more
and more on his side. He staked his money as if it were a weapon for
Basch against the stranger, a weapon with which to strike him down.
Wenk noticed that the latter looked at no one but himself and Basch.
He therefore accepted the challenge, and threw himself eagerly and
wholeheartedly into the struggle, impelled by some mysterious power
that incited him against the banker. He forgot himself altogether,
and no longer played for the purpose of observing and discovering. He
abandoned himself to the game and played like all those whom he had
come to rescue from the gaming-table. He even forgot the lovely lady.
When he first realized this, he was ashamed, and for the first time
during the evening he glanced round the room to see whether Hull were
there.
But it was not Hull who now sat behind Cara Carozza. Wenk’s search was
vain; Hull was not present. Cara sat with a stranger behind a player
with whom she was sharing the stakes. Then Wenk came to himself. He
stopped playing and at once left the hall, sorely vexed with himself.
When he was on the winding stair he turned and saw that the stranger
with the fair sandy beard was also rising from the table.
Wenk had ordered his car to call for him at the house where the musical
party was held, and did not remember this till he had walked some
distance. Then he retraced his steps and drove home. He went to bed at
once, but he could get no sleep, for the thought continually recurred
that he had made a mistake to come away, that he ought to have stayed
and talked to Basch.
He got out of bed again and went through a bundle of depositions in
order to quiet his conscience. In going through these documents,
written by men who were strangers to him, he got the impression that
all of them, losing so much that they could not but ascribe it to
foul play, must have sat at the gaming-table very much as Basch did.
Had he remained and behaved in a sensible fashion, he would have had
an opportunity of seeing for himself at first hand what had hitherto
reached him through the testimony of others.
Then Wenk became thoroughly discouraged. “I must set to work in quite
another way,” he said to himself. “Goodwill and industry are not
sufficient. Self-denial and inexorable self-discipline and a little
more cunning are necessary! I must make use of every ruse that my
opponent displays.... I must make use of disguise and secret spying.
I must be prepared to stake myself on the game ... must be myself the
snare, if I do not want to be caught in it like a silly pigeon....
A State official with a false beard ... a Browning concealed in his
fist ... a jockey-cap, a tall hat, a wig, and so on, like the cinema
stage....”
In the looking-glass he contemplated his clean-shaven face, finding
that when he made grimaces, drew down the corners of his mouth,
stretched his jaws, and tried the effect of a beard made out of paper
shavings, his features lent themselves very well to disguise.
The next day he procured a complete outfit from the Criminal
Investigation Department. With the help of a Secret Service expert,
he tried all the necessary arts, learned to plaster on a beard, to
alter his complexion, make himself look younger or older, change his
appearance by scars, and so on. He could now make up as a country
cousin, a dispatch-bearing cyclist, a taxicab driver, a porter, waiter,
steward, window-cleaner, an “unemployed,” and other characters. In
the morning he made an exhaustive examination of the criminal museum
which the police had collected, studied the photographs he found there,
returned to his various make-ups, and worked with the zeal of a fanatic.
Thus the day passed, and by evening he felt he had become a stronger
man. He was at once more discreet and yet more daring. He would have
liked to make a tour at once of all the gaming-houses in the city.
He went only to Schramm’s, however. He had long been considering
whether he should not appear there in some sort of disguise, more for
the purpose of making a trial of it and learning to feel at home in
it than for actually starting upon his work. He was still more anxious