Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery 21 – Clare · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery 21Chapter 21
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Dr. Mabuse, master of mystery 21
Chapter 21
ClareEnglish
Wenk ran full tilt past the servants at the door, who stood with serious faces, laughing behind their hands. He ran through the hall and the open door on to the steps, clattered down them, and flung open the door of the waiting car. It sprang forward, and in a few moments had disappeared in the dark avenue. In the hall Mabuse stopped laughing to say, “He is going to the Hell Café to fetch you some of the devil’s white bread!”
The jerk with which the car started threw Wenk back on to the seat, but scarcely had he touched it than the cushions seemed to open and he sank quickly into a hole in them. Something closed together over him, and it creaked like iron. Then he awoke from his hypnotic state. He lay there in misery, unconscious how he had got into that position, with his head hanging back, apparently in some gap in the back seat. He tried to rise, seeking painfully for ease and consciousness, but he could not raise himself from the depths. Something seemed to press him down again, and hard unyielding fetters were crossed over him many times. The motor went at furious speed, and shook him against an iron grating which he soon discovered to be the fetters that made an upright position impossible. They pressed closely down upon him. He made a furious effort to throw them off, but soon found it was quite impossible. He would only have his trouble for his pains. He was absolutely done for. He was himself the bird which had stepped on to the limed twig!
With angry defiance he turned upon himself saying, “That is as it should be! The stronger one conquers, and you were the weaker!” But why was he the weaker? Because he had undertaken a task that from the very first exceeded his powers. Each one knows his own capabilities. But what had tempted him to undertake something beyond him? Why, in the most forlorn and miserable situation of his whole life--a situation that seemed so incredible that he still had a faint hope it might prove only a dream--why was he able to guide and reason out his thoughts like the solution of an arithmetical problem? What was it that had enticed him? He knew the answer. It was the good in him, the outcome of his feeling of responsibility towards his fellow-countrymen. He wanted to help them, and because his conscience was stronger than his powers, he had come to grief. If this experience were to end in his death, at least he would die in a good cause, and the soul-sparks which at his death would flame up again in some other existence would form a beacon to light others upward.... He would live again in spirit among men....
The sound of the motor echoed through the forest, and Wenk heard it. What was the enemy’s plan regarding him? The car raced on through the night like a ship driven by the typhoon. Where was it going? Whither were they taking him? Was it to Munich? But, if so, why? If they wanted to put him to death for having disturbed the powers of evil and undermined their efforts, why did they not take their revenge at once, instead of delaying it for hours?
He noticed that the windows of the car had no blinds, and he saw stars gleaming fitfully through the panes. They would not arrive in Munich till the morning, and it would be impossible to drive a fettered man by daylight over half Germany in a car with the inside exposed. They were carrying him off somewhere or other, but where? Where could it be?
It must have been midnight when he left the villa, but even that he did not know for certain, for of all that had happened to him since the moment when he had tested his pulse, he had only a dim and hazy idea. They must certainly be taking him to the place of execution now.
He recalled, with an endless yearning which seemed to encompass him like the sea, his long-dead father, and with all his energy he clung to these recollections, melancholy as their associations were. The jolting hither and thither of his body in the car and the mental excitement under which he was labouring made him sick, and in his helpless state he could not even turn his head aside. His brain lost the power of thinking in clear outlines. Spectres arose around him and devils played ball with him. They tossed him backwards and forwards between the Carse of Gowrie and Aconcagua, let him fall, and snatched at him again, just as he was about to be dashed to pieces on the Cape of Good Hope.
Then it seemed as if a gigantic black band had stuffed him down in a cave as if he were a sack. The walls of this cave were so close that he could not lie down, but suddenly, slowly, and yet without ceasing, they began to grow. They did not grow apart, however, but proceeded, always at the same pace, towards him, and the moment was already close at hand when they would crush his bones together and burst his brains. Consciousness forsook him, and he fell into a dreamlike condition, dominated by a dull sense of impending death.
When he awoke he found himself stretched out on a leather seat, the iron fetters no longer binding him. But his arms were tied behind him, and his legs were crossed on each other and fastened together. A large handkerchief had been bound over his face, so tightly as to be painful. It covered his mouth altogether and made breathing difficult.
It was now day, and he heard a rushing sound that rose and fell at intervals. He soon recognized it--it was the sea! A man looked down upon him. The handkerchief covered one eye only, and with the other he saw, over the edge of the bandage, half the objects on his eye-level. He did not know the man, who just then called to another, “Come here! he is awake.” Then the other came to look at him, and he too was a complete stranger to Wenk. He heard them talking, and one said to the other, “It is nearly five o’clock. The Doctor must be here soon!”
The other answered, “If he said soon after five, he will come then. We must be ready for him!”
“Can’t you see anything yet?”
The two men went off. Wenk tried to raise his head, but could not see beyond the frame of the window. The country must be flat--there was nothing but sky discernible.
“Give me the glass! There he is!” Wenk heard suddenly.
“Now comes the decisive moment,” he thought, and summoned all his powers to help him dispel the dread ideas which crowded upon him.
The events that followed occurred in rapid succession. The door of the car was flung open, and hands gripped him by the shoulders, which lay nearest the door. They dragged him out, his feet striking painfully on the step and then on the ground. The second man took his legs, and they carried him a short distance. Then Wenk saw sand-dunes in front of him, and a few steps further the men had climbed with him to the top.
“Faster!” cried the man behind, as he turned round and looked back over the landscape.
Wenk heard a motor-car, and said to himself, “That is Mabuse coming!” Suddenly a light awning appeared above him, and after a time he recognized it for the wing of an aeroplane.
The two men arranged everything with hasty movements. Wenk was laid on the sand, and two cords tied together made a noose under his chest and arms. One man raised his legs and these were fastened by two cords which had been attached somewhere to a pole rather high up. A third leash was then slung round his hips. It was not long before Wenk realized that he was hanging bound to the outer wall of the car of a flying-machine. He lay closely fastened there like a package that was to be taken on a journey. With his uncovered right eye he saw beyond the edge of the bandage that the aeroplane stood on a prepared landing-stage over a course which sloped down to the sea. Beyond it stretched the shore. It was ebb-tide.
“I am going to have a sea voyage,” cried a despairing voice within Wenk sadly. “How long it is since my last voyage. All the years of war lie between, and yet now, for me, comes the war--the bombshell is prepared.”
From the depths of his muscular being there came an answer to this sad voice of despair. He exerted his muscles against his bonds. His body moved and wriggled in the nooses, and the wing of the machine quivered beneath the shock, and swayed above him.
Then a broad face and a high, well-formed head bent over him, and two fiery eyes seemed to pierce him through and through.
“Aha!” said the voice of the man who stood above him.
“Yes, there is the foe, there is Mabuse,” thought Wenk.
“Get in!” he heard him say, and there was the rustling of a woman’s dress, and out of the rustling a voice ... a voice that made his knees tremble in their bonds. He knew that voice! The rustling was louder and closer, and the woman’s voice cried, “What is that?” Wenk heard the horror, trouble and anxiety that spoke in the voice as she put the question.
“Get in!” said Mabuse again. Then the voice, the well-known, low, sweet voice of the Countess Told, said in a tone of anxious entreaty, “What are you doing with this man?”
Wenk said to himself, “She does not know who I am.”
“Get in! He’s going to make the trip with us, and we haven’t a third seat. Come along quickly, now!” cried Mabuse.
Wenk saw Mabuse’s arm seize the woman and lift her into the gondola, then he himself got in, making use of Wenk’s body as a step, and when he was settled in the pilot’s seat, not two fingers’ breadth above Wenk, he bent down to him and said in a harsh tone, “The gentleman is going to accompany us on our journey--but whither? Good luck!--All ready?” he called out to the men.
“All quite ready, sir!”
The propeller hummed and the aeroplane glided along the course so swiftly that the very moment Wenk felt the throbbing of the engine its wheels were already clear of the ground and the earth vanished from his sight. The machine soared upwards steeply, and it seemed to Wenk as if his body were standing upright. No word was spoken in the car. The air beat so heavily upon him that it seemed like flying wood, and he soon began to feel bitterly cold. The cold seemed to cut through the wide opening of his evening suit and strike at his very heart. He felt that it pressed ever deeper and deeper within him, like revolving knives. His hair was stiff and stood on end, and it seemed as if needles were pricking him all over. He had lost all capability of thought, save for one idea. It dimly occurred to him that he was enduring martyrdom, and that this martyrdom was on account of the Countess Told, whom he had once loved, at a time when such love was not lawful.
Then he felt the blow of a fist on his head, and a harsh voice asked, “Is twelve thousand feet high enough for you?” A few moments later he heard, “Or are you already dead--of fright?”
The voice died away and Wenk felt that the aeroplane was being righted. When it was flying level, a hand touched his head, hastily tearing away his bonds. Then Wenk saw the face of Mabuse bending over him. He was silent, but his features were distorted with a malicious joy which aroused horror. His grey eyes had neither shape nor pupils; they were like old weather-beaten stones, and, as Wenk recognized with a shudder, they were glowering death at him. Then the capacious mouth opened like the yawning chasm in a rocky gorge, and the harsh voice said, “You have dared to oppose your will against mine. You are now facing your last moment, and I have taken the gag from your mouth so that my ears may enjoy the shriek with which you fall twelve thousand feet down to your own world!”
Wenk heard his voice, and it sounded like thunder rolling along after the lightning flash. He saw that Mabuse was loosening the bonds that held his legs. He tugged and tore at them. Suddenly his legs were free. For a moment they fell, then the leash that was bound round his hips held them again, and the hands were now busy with this. In a few seconds it was untied.
In his further fall Wenk’s body regained an upright position, held only by the noose which bound his chest to the wall of the car. He suddenly felt that his hands were free, and at this feeling he was fired with a sudden hope. In the midst of his phantasies there surged upwards like a fairy story the recollection of the Countess’s beauty and sympathy. He had never forgotten her, and now in the last moment of his life, when she herself was so close to him, his feeling for her, exalted to an undying and compassionate brotherhood, was wafted as a cloud beyond the savage and brutal murderer, to envelop the frail human being beside him with indomitable pride and courage.
Wenk saw her eyes, fluttering like birds shot down in the clear blue ether, glance for a moment beyond and above Mabuse’s eager bent head.... He saw her hands, tearing off their fur gloves, cling white and trembling to Mabuse’s shoulder as she strove to drag him back from his deadly intent.
But Mabuse shook the woman off, and raised his hands with mad rage to untie the last noose. He tore undone the first of its fastenings, making Wenk’s body sink deeper, and beat away Wenk’s hands, which were seeking to maintain a grip on the edge of the car, with his closed fists.
Then one last defiance of fate, arising from the will to live, lent strength to Wenk’s voice as he shouted in the air, “He is the murderer of Count Told. He made him cheat at cards! He put the razor into his hands that he might cut his throat!”
A fist struck at his mouth, and blood spurted from it, yet at this last moment of his life it seemed as if his very blood were tasting the sweetness of a noble spirit. Then a final effort was made to release him from the bond that held him. A fearful weight pressed on his head, rolled over his body to press him downward. The weight of it was immeasurable, black, imbued with the swiftness of a raging storm. But all at once the iron weight was removed. A part of it became detached from the aeroplane, unrecognizable, and sank. Wenk’s hands held the edge of the car as in a vice. The aeroplane hovered and swayed as if drunken with the high clear air.
This is what had happened:
When Count Told’s name rang through the air, as if thrown from measureless space, it seemed to the Countess as if she were awaking from a dream at the bottom of a swamp. Since the night when she had been torn from her husband and chained to Mabuse’s wicked will, she had never spoken his name, nor even thought of it. The memory had crept into her inmost being and hidden itself away, deep in the welter in which her life was inextricably bound. It had been forced there by the diabolic power of Mabuse’s lust for domination, and the wife had suffered it in a kind of subconscious self-defence. Were it not so, she would have been absolutely and entirely without escape from the werwolf.
There within her the name had lain and waited and watched until now it arose again to provide her with a way of escape.
Wenk’s last words had brought it forth from the subconscious recesses once more. The Countess had received it as a direct weapon against the secret power of this man who had so long taken forcible possession of her will and her entire person. She suddenly came to herself, and all that was frozen within her melted. The gloom and darkness in which she lay bound grew lighter, and it was day within.
Then, too, she regained all the proud youthful force of her disposition. She fell into a God-given fury, and her muscles were endowed with unconquerable strength and vigour. Her hands and her heart were like iron, and she seized the first weapon to hand, the heavy screw-wrench, striking the murderer from behind, and dealing a terrific blow upon his skull.
Mabuse, judged and condemned, lost his balance, and fell over Wenk into the depths below, which instantly swallowed him up.
Wenk reached a thwart with his legs, raised himself up at lightning speed, the knots at his breast breaking of themselves. He fell into the car. The aeroplane was already swaying in space, but Wenk seized the throttle and righted it. It flew on, and after he had found his whereabouts he shut off the engines and allowed it to descend to earth and glide along the shore.
He landed on the sand-dunes of the East Frisian coast. He helped the Countess out of the machine. She was pale, but fully conscious. She fell down before him, pressing her hands to her face.
He raised her, saying, “We have saved each other’s lives. Let us keep silent, and strive to forget. We part here!”
But the Countess answered, “No. I have nothing to conceal and nothing to forget. The blood that I have shed was entirely evil. I have saved him from himself and mankind from him. Who can bear witness against me?”
Wenk looked at her, dumb with astonishment, but slowly he understood. Then he was seized with awe. He wanted to say, “How proud, how courageous she is!” but his heart glowed within him. He spread out his arms in a gesture of self-abandonment and appeal. Life, his regained youth and vigour, came over him like a flood, and at the same moment the love which had been shaken by so many vicissitudes, but had never yet found its fulfilment, regained its sway over him.
Then they ascended the dunes together, to seek the nearest village and return to daily life.
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: italics.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
