Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery 15 – Clare · Library Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery 15Chapter 15
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery 15
Chapter 15
ClareEnglish
That same morning Mabuse had visited Told. “You are not so well, I can see,” said he to him. “Your pupils are very much dilated.”
“Is that a sign...?” said Told hesitatingly.
“Yes. Don’t talk about your state; put it entirely out of your head. Where is your wife?”
The startled Count could not venture on an answer.
“Your wife did not want to live with you any more--never any more!” went on the Doctor harshly. “That is so, isn’t it? You must destroy the past, break off all relation to it. Call your man here!”
Told rang, and the man came. The Count, with a gesture, referred him to the doctor.
“Has anybody telephoned?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Has anyone rung up from here?”
“I did,” answered Told.
“Whom?”
“Dr. von Wenk.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to speak to him.”
“What did you want to say?”
The embarrassed Count answered, “Only ... to speak ... to speak to some human being or other!”
“Is your servant a bullock, then, or am I one?” asked Mabuse harshly. “You can talk to me if you want to. What crazy idea has got into your head?”
The Count turned his head away; he no longer had the courage to face his doctor.... “Is he going to cure me?” he asked himself. Then he looked up at him timidly and irresolutely. “You are no human being: you are a devil!” was the secret cry of his heart, but these fierce thoughts soon left him, and he felt suddenly sleepy. “I am always so tired!” he exclaimed.
“Tell your man now, in my presence, to refuse all visitors or anyone who telephones. He must say, ‘The Count has gone on a journey. He left no address. Please ring off.’”
Slowly and mechanically Told repeated the order, and the man bowed and withdrew.
“I am really not sure whether I shall go on with your case,” said Mabuse. But Told hardly heeded him; he seemed to feel a slow poison stealing into his veins.
“You are thirsty!” said Mabuse, suddenly.
“Yes, I am,” whispered the Count.
“You are to drink a mixture of brandy and Tokay, as much as you like. Take good long draughts--the brandy will do you good. You must forget everything in your past, your wife as well. When you are convinced that you have succeeded in doing that, you are on the road to recovery. You must destroy the past, you understand. The alcohol will help you there.”
“Destroy the past,” stammered the Count, as if sinking into a bog that threatened to engulf him, “destroy ... the ... past....”
“In two years’ time you can think about resuming your ordinary life again. In what time?” he broke off suddenly. “What time did I say?” he thundered.
The Count aroused himself from his lethargy. Horrified at the length of time involved, he answered in a low tone, “Two years.”
“Do you know that your wife wants to put you into a lunatic asylum? She is getting the State Attorney, Wenk, to help her. Was not that the man who rang you up?... I am coming again to-morrow.”
The Count remained alone, dejected and humiliated. It seemed as if elephants were trampling out his brains, that his spirit was a prey to crocodiles and he was covered with mud and slime. “The whole world has forsaken me,” he murmured. The pictures he had collected around him seemed to be celebrating orgies on the walls. He could no longer understand how it was they could ever have pleased him, nor why he had endured them so long. He took a hunting-knife and slit every one of them from top to bottom, hacking at their frames. When he had done it, he sprang back in horror. He held his head in his hands, groaning, “Oh God, am I really mad?”
He began drinking brandy, and he drank it out of a claret tumbler. When he had had three glasses he was intoxicated. Then it seemed as if the doctor had left something behind him and that this lay in front of him. He did not know what it was, but he tried to grasp it, and then suddenly it had jumped to his head. It seemed like a wedge fastened there, fitting tightly between the two halves of the brain. Fear seized upon him and tore his courage to shreds. “Doctor, Doctor,” he shouted, and he heard his voice re-echo in the empty rooms. The world was so wide, yet he was alone. And then he became unconscious.
Karstens succumbed to his wounds, and again the public imagination busied itself with the death of a second victim. Wenk found himself in a difficulty and decided one day to make a final appeal to the dancer. He went to her cell.
“I am not going to speak to you,” said Cara when she perceived him.
Wenk took no notice, and said in a troubled tone, his hopes disappearing: “Do you know that the beautiful lady who was always looking on at the play at Schramm’s has disappeared?”
“Not the one you sent to me in prison?” answered the dancer instantly.
“Yes,” said Wenk, and it was not till he had uttered the word that he perceived the significance of this admission. It was all very mysterious. Had the Countess revealed her errand to Cara, and was she in league with the gamblers? It seemed incredible, but yet how strange it was that Cara, who would not at first speak to him, at once gave him her attention when he mentioned the Countess. Wenk did not want Cara to think that he was astonished at this, and went on talking, while he was trying to consider how he could best arrive at the secret; but he did not stop to reflect upon the ideas that came uppermost. In the course of the conversation he hazarded a conjecture that had often occurred to him when he thought of Cara’s connection with the criminal, but which he had never mentioned till now. He said, “You are sacrificing yourself for this criminal because you could not make up your mind to part from him.”
Then Cara sprang up, staring at Wenk as if convulsed. He looked her right in the eyes, and noticed that an expression of overwhelming horror stood in them, and was clearly written upon her distorted features.
“Well?” he asked, encouraged and hopeful.
But Cara remained as if frozen in her stony attitude.
Then he ventured further. “If we came to some agreement, I could make proposals that would be to your advantage.”
Slowly the dancer recovered from the horror that had seized upon her. For the last three years, ever since Mabuse had repulsed her, her life had been a story of self-sacrificing martyrdom and devoted adherence to the man who had wrought her ruin and driven her to crime. Not for a single instant had she thought of betraying him, of refusing her allegiance. Indelibly stamped upon her whole nature like the brand of a slave was the feeling that mastery and might such as his could never be contested. And now, through Wenk’s words, she beheld this man whom she adored threatened with danger. What did the State Attorney know, and how had he obtained his knowledge? Had the Countess betrayed her after all? Slowly she evolved a plan by which to discover how much the lawyer knew. She might possibly convey a warning to Dr. Mabuse, and at the thought her blood was fired and the delicious sensation of feeling herself his deliverer, and perhaps, too, regaining the ascendancy she had lost, stole over her. No, it could not be, she dared not even conceive of it; to save him from danger would be enough for her, to know him secure would be bliss. Finally she said, “Since you seem to be better informed than I imagined, I will speak, but you must give me two days to think it over.”
The dancer had learnt from the warder that someone had been inquiring about her, and from the description given she believed it to be Spoerri. She would therefore have an opportunity of telling him about her interview with Wenk and warning him of what might occur.
“Very well,” said Wenk, relieved. Then he thought he would clinch the matter, and as his previous supposition seemed to have hit the mark, he imagined it a favourable opportunity to inflame her imagination still further, so he said, “I am trying to get on the track of the Countess; she seems to be in hiding with your friend.”
He was so ashamed of these words, however, that he blushed as he uttered them, recalling with painful intensity his few meetings with the missing lady--meetings which had bound him so closely to her. But the effect of his words on the dancer was wholly unexpected. She fell back on her pallet, sobbed aloud, tried to speak, but could utter no word, and then she clenched her fists and raised them despairingly to her brow.
Wenk went off quickly, thinking it best not to disturb this attitude of mind but to let her yield wholly to its influence. As he opened the door a man stumbled against it, but it was only the warder, who had come, as he said, to look at the prisoner as his duty was just at this time. “All right,” said Wenk, and he made his way out.
Shortly afterwards the following things occurred. Near Hengnau, on the borders of Würtemberg, a man was detained and arrested as he was about to drive cattle to Würtemberg. At first he pretended to be dumb, but afterwards he raged furiously at his capture. The examining counsel, in order to intimidate him, said one day, “You had better confess before the new law is passed. If you are tried before then you may get off lightly, but later on it may cost you your head.”
“What new law is that?” asked the man.
“The crime of endangering the food distribution is punishable with death.”
“What sort of death?”
“Probably hanging!”
“And if I am convicted before that is passed?”
“You won’t get more than a year’s imprisonment at the most.”
Then he suddenly confessed, and his confession opened many doors. He confessed all that he had been doing for years and gave the names of all the profiteers known to him. Many arrests were the result. Every day afforded fresh opportunities, and finally one day the name of the man whom Mabuse had dismissed on the highroad to Lindau--Pesch--was mentioned.
Pesch was arrested, and his first night in prison was spent at Wangen, which was his native place. When the warder entered his cell next morning, the prisoner had disappeared. A few hours later a telephone message came to the Wangen police. In a wood on the highroad to Lindau a man was lying dead. It was undoubtedly a case of murder.
An inquiry took place on the spot. The dead man was Pesch. He had been stabbed, and as they raised his body they saw on the large white stone on which it had rested certain signs which had been written in blood. The very same day experts deciphered these signs. They stood for “Villa Elise.”
The mayors in the neighbouring districts were asked whether they knew a villa bearing this name, and thus it was soon ascertained that at Schachen there was a villa so called, and it was under police surveillance.
Wenk was at once informed, and he drove to Lindau. The two detectives who were in charge of the steam-roller had ascertained that Poldringer had left Schachen on a bicycle the very day that Pesch was imprisoned, and had not returned until three o’clock the next morning.
Then Wenk arranged that two motor-boats should be stationed on the lake. They were made to appear as if they were Customs’ official boats, and were provided with searchlights.
Another human life had been sacrificed, but this fresh murder had revealed something more far-reaching and dangerous than had yet been suspected. It was certain that the gang was taking part in this profiteering movement also, and it became clear that its leader had created an entire yet invisible State to carry on his purposes and give effect to the deeds his will imposed on his fellows.
Pesch left a wife and five children, and since the family breadwinner was gone, they were in absolute danger of starving. Then Wenk sought out Edgar Hull’s father, to obtain help for them, and the idea suddenly occurred to him, “Why not establish an educational institution, a real home-school for the children of criminals, taking them in under an assumed name? Perhaps that would be a good way to lay out your money. The children, who so often inherit the parents’ characteristics, could be watched over and perhaps influenced for good in their early years. If it were not possible to eradicate their vices, at least they could be kept apart from their fellows and removed before they have a chance of harming them. In this way a large proportion of the criminal class might be rendered harmless and many people would be saved....”
“I will do it,” said Hull, “and I am grateful to you for the suggestion.”
The next evening Wenk was walking from the Marstall to the Maximilianstrasse, and as he passed the Four Seasons Hall he thought he saw someone he knew in the crowd in front of him struggling to gain an entrance; but he could not recall who it was, and went straight ahead. As he walked on he strove to remember whose back and shoulders it was that had seemed so familiar, but he could not place the individual. Soon afterwards he came to an advertisement window in which the scheme of a popular lottery was displayed. The large letters could be seen through the dusty pane, and the words “Lucky Chance” stood out. These words at once gave Wenk the clue he had been seeking. The back he had noticed belonged to the sandy-bearded gambler.
He was astounded at the discovery. He had been seeking this man for many days and nights all over Germany, and here he was, and he had passed so close by him that he could have touched him on the shoulder. He turned round at once, went back to the hall and at the entrance he read a notice stating that Dr. Mabuse was giving a lecture, with experiments, there that evening.
He immediately ordered one of the constables standing outside to fetch six plain-clothes men and tell them to close all the exits without exciting any attention, and when the detectives were placed, he entered the hall. It was an easy one to search, and he went from row to row, while the lecturer was engaged in preparing his experiments. Wenk took up a position here and there, and looked at the folks one after another. But nowhere did he find the owner of the back which was so impressed on his mind.
He noticed some of his acquaintance. There was Privy Councillor Wendel sitting in the front row, and a legal colleague of his was there with his wife and grown-up daughter, but he behaved as if he saw nobody and continued his eager search. It was all in vain, however. Then he took a sudden resolve, went outside again, and gave the detectives the following orders. All the exits were to be locked except one. Two detectives were to enter the hall, and one of them was to go on to the platform at once and request the audience to leave the hall quietly, one by one. Both were to see that there was no one left behind. The four others were to stand at the folding doors and let the people pass through singly, only one half of the door being opened.
Wenk himself would stand by the door, and if he gave any order for arrest, two of the detectives would at once take the man aside and handcuff him. The two others would then only have to take care that no one got near the man arrested. All were to have their service revolvers ready for use. There was great excitement in the hall when the announcement was made, and several cries of disapproval of the order were heard. The detective strove to pacify the disappointed audience.
Mabuse’s first thought, when he heard the Secret Service agent’s announcement, was a doubt whether he should have ventured on this public appearance, but he soon dismissed the troublesome idea. Yes, he had been right, for it provided him, in concentrated form, with the nourishment upon which his mind battened. With such hypnotic powers as he possessed he must always be in relation with a larger and unknown public. To feel his power over the narrow circle to which his professional duties bound him, the members of which were known to him, was not enough for his insatiable ambition. His sphere must know no limits, and with these weird and mysterious gifts of his he could exploit the triviality and credulity of his fellows and at the same time give full play to his hatred and his lust for domination.
Upon such a stage as this he felt as if born anew. It was here that he had inaugurated his reign of power, when the war sent him from his South Sea plantations back to his home, a ruined man, and this domination of his he could not renounce. While these thoughts were passing through his mind he went to the detective and asked what had happened. “You must inquire of the State Attorney, sir,” said the man. “Dr. von Wenk is just outside.”
Mabuse turned pale and walked away, going rapidly towards the Privy Councillor, whom he saw still sitting in the front row. As he went, he felt in his pocket to make sure that his revolver was safe, and sensations of hatred and defiance went through his whole body, fastening as it were like a brand upon his mental image of Wenk.
“First of all you, and then ...” he said to himself, but he was already smiling in the Councillor’s face.
“Your hypnotic powers,” said the latter, “seem to be giving the State Attorney some trouble!”
“Is that Dr. Wenk?” said Mabuse, drawing back as if astonished.
“I saw him just now going from seat to seat and fixing an eagle eye on everybody here, as if to pierce through coat, waistcoat and shirt to reach a guilt-burdened conscience. He does not seem to have found his man, however.”
Mabuse’s breast heaved, inflated at the thought of his success. He felt like a horse in sight of its manger after a long and weary road. Although he clearly understood what the words implied, he nevertheless asked the Councillor, “How do you know that?”
“It is quite simple, for if he had found his man, he would have let one of the detectives take him out without disturbing your lecture.”
“That is true,” said Mabuse. “Let us go.”
He pressed towards the door, taking the Councillor with him. He was thoroughly on the alert, looking behind him to see that he did not lose touch with Wendel, and also ahead, where lay the danger he wished to avoid. Whenever any movement threatened to separate him from the elderly savant, he used all the cunning at his command to get near him again. It was above all essential not to leave the hall exposed to Wenk’s gaze as a solitary individual. The Councillor, who was old and well known, must help him to throw the hound off the scent. He was aged, however, and could not hurry; but Mabuse dared not be the last one to leave, closely eyed as he would be by a disappointed man who had not found the quarry he sought. There were still some others behind him, to whose party he might attach himself, so that he need not be the last.
One thing was certain. It was he, and none other, whom the State Attorney was seeking, but Wenk did not know that Mabuse was his quarry, or he would have had him arrested on the platform. How had he got upon the track? Was it a mere guess that had started him off? Was there treachery in it? No; he would never be betrayed. Could Wenk have recognized him, one of those evenings at the gaming-table? No; it was impossible, his disguises were too perfect for that, so....
Then a hand touched his, and Mabuse looked into Spoerri’s inquiring eyes, and saw beside him another man of his bodyguard, and he immediately looked away again unconcernedly. Spoerri and his accomplice were pressing towards the exit in front of him. Mabuse went on thinking, and came to the conclusion that mere chance had put Wenk on this track, some faint resemblance or recollection, some movement or action.... In any case, Wenk must see as little of him as possible, and since his back would be exposed to him longer than any other part, he put his arms through the sleeves of his overcoat and thus altered his appearance.
And now he had reached the exit with the Privy Councillor. He quickly pushed him in front, following closely on his heels. At the moment when Wendel stepped to the door, Wenk was ordering a detective to tell two men who were lingering on the stairs to move on. Mabuse heard the man say, “Shall I arrest them?” Then he looked ahead and saw that the order referred to Spoerri and his subordinate. Mabuse sought to catch his eye; he took his pocket-handkerchief out with a flourish and blew his nose loudly. Spoerri saw it and understood, and at once withdrew with his companion.
Mabuse saw Wenk shaking hands with the Councillor. Then it was his turn to come forward, and Wendel introduced “Dr. Mabuse.” Without taking his eyes off the door, through which the light from the hall was now streaming, Wenk shook hands with Mabuse, saying courteously, “You won’t be annoyed with me for carrying out my duty, I hope, Doctor?”
Mabuse answered with affected friendliness, his hand on the revolver in his pocket, “Certainly not; I must naturally take the second place when it is a question of the good of the community, whom you are endeavouring to rid of a criminal.”
He had already passed on. Wenk nodded to him, but did not look round again, as his gaze was still fastened on the door.
The Privy Councillor took Mabuse’s arm going downstairs. Mabuse accompanied him to the gentlemen’s cloakroom and then took his leave. One of his cars was waiting in the Maximilianstrasse, and right and left of him at the entrance to the foyer his people were standing in readiness for anything that might happen. Spoerri had taken up his position at the main door of the hall, to keep watch upon the stairs; then he went out behind Mabuse, and the others, who were in small detached groups, always ready to close up at a word, followed them. It was not until Mabuse had taken his seat in the car and driven off that they dispersed, each going a separate way.
Driving homeward, Mabuse reflected that he had committed one act of folly. He ought at any rate to have asked when he would be allowed to give his experiments. This fact depressed him, and he felt that he had failed in some way. He would never have done anything so foolish formerly, and the idea occurred to him that perhaps his power was on the decline, and that it was now time for Citopomar.
Then suddenly he shouted aloud, “No! this is due to that woman! Wenk wants to hang me, the woman makes me feel old, and she is delivering me over to the gallows.” Why should this woman, young and beautiful as she was, who had abandoned herself to her lot with despairing fatalism, make him feel old? Her abandonment of herself was like wine to him, and this idea started another train of thought. He was in conflict with himself. There was no enjoyment in the thought that he had escaped a great danger, and in the midst of his uneasy reflections he had a sudden breathless conviction that she made him feel old because he loved her. Then he felt a hatred of himself, gathering into one mighty heap all the fierce and bitter hatred he had cherished for others and pouring it out on himself. So strongly did he suffer from the burden of these chaotic feelings that his brain grew giddy. But now he had reached his house.
All the wrinkles in his face were deepened and intensified, but it was his eyes that looked most dreadful, and the Countess trembled as he entered her room. No longer were they of the steely grey of an agate, but rather seemed shot with rays of copper colour.
“What has happened?” she asked.
Then he told her something quite different from that which he had meant to tell her.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, and his tone was one of frenzied delirium. “I am a werwolf; I suck man’s blood. Every day my hatred burns up all the blood in my veins, and every night I fill them again by sucking the blood of some human being. If men caught me, they would tear me into little bits. I will bite through your white throat, you tormenting witch!”
The Countess started as if stung, and, mad with pain and torture, cried aloud, “Kill me then! What could be better than death?”
“But I love you!” cried the voice of the man beside her, who seemed to be possessed by devils.
The woman hid her face in her hands. It was the first time she had heard such a confession from that imperious mouth, and it stirred her to the depths of her nature. Her free spirit had been snatched from the world and confined in a fortress whence there was no escape. Her life was a dead thing, but the blood within her raged in dread and mysterious tumult, inflamed and excited by the power of this man. Her dead soul was afire, and there was nothing left to consume: whence then came this flame?
Mabuse left the Countess without saying another word. “I have told her enough,” he said to himself. He threw himself down on his bed, but could not sleep. He felt as if something new had come into his life, till then so steady and changeless, as if the danger which he had always been able to grasp and bring to nought had eluded him and were sinking into the icy black gulf in whose depths his life and actions were grounded. For hours he tried to grapple with this new force and subordinate it to his will, but evermore it seemed to evade him.
Then he returned to the Countess, lying fully dressed and sleepless on her bed, and he said, “We must talk matters out. Our fates are entwined, and we must go through life together. From some source or other of my existence my blood has received something which revolts against a peaceful and well-ordered life, and will not permit to others a power above its own. Thus it is that I have become, as it were, the chief of a robber horde. I have known but two states: the desire to dominate and the necessity to hate! But now you have come upon the scene. At first I thought that your spirit would be consumed in the twin flames that inspire mine, but it is not so. Hundreds have been consumed by them, but you seem to feed upon them, and they nourish you. When I am intoxicated, not forgetting my hatred, but putting it on one side for the time being, because there are more beautiful things, I often name to you one name--Citopomar. Citopomar is not the outcome of a disordered fancy, the result of a fit of intoxication. It is a virgin forest in Brazil, far in the interior. It is being cultivated for me. All the money I can wring from this petty community of miserable wretches on this side of the world is being employed there. There is my country, the land in which I shall end my days. First of all, I thought of myself there with my harem. Now I know it is there I shall be with you. It is a forty days’ journey to the nearest human dwelling, and the human beings there could not endure life here, but they cannot be reached, for the Botocudos would not let anyone pass. It is even possible that my agents, who have been carrying out my plans, may have deceived me, and that when we arrive there we may find there is no kingdom of Citopomar. But no one can deceive me about you!
“My professional life here has extended to ever-widening circles, and I could live a good deal longer under the protection of the State and in well-ordered society. To-day, however, I had proof that folks are on my track, and henceforth I must act cautiously. A ship is being built for me in Genoa. I do not travel by strange ships, but sail under my own flag. The ship is to be ready on the 1st of June, and on that night we will embark. Between this and then, however, there is nearly two months to pass. I cannot rest, and until the very night of our departure I shall still be a robber chief.
“We will be wary. You must go to another house. It is quite as well guarded as this one, but if they should discover this one, they will catch you. I am probably about to leave the place, and at midnight to-morrow you will depart. Spoerri will take you to the new home.”
As incapable of resistance as of mental participation in his schemes, consumed in the devouring flames of this man’s all-powerful domination, the Countess endured his conversation and took his orders. Her fate lay in his hands.
