“He is at the villa in Schachen. He is very cautious, and does not go out.”
“What is he doing there?”
“At night he helps to bring the store of cocaine under the summerhouse into Switzerland. I have found something fresh which they are ready to take there. Ether.”
“What is the ether for?”
“Folks are beginning to take it.”
“Who? What folks? Where?”
“Our folks, in Switzerland!”
“Your folks; how many have you?”
“We can get it to the others!”
“That reminds me of the girls you were sending to Switzerland, to speed up the smuggling of salvarsan. I don’t want to hear anything about business matters. You understand, nothing.”
“I won’t say any more about it.”
“Perhaps, Spoerri, there’ll be no need for that sort of thing any more!”
Then a hoarse cry was uttered by Spoerri. “Oh, Doctor, Citopomar! Is it to be soon now?”
“We’ll drink to it, Spoerri, we’ll drink to it. I don’t know. Let’s drink to the shepherd boy with eighty-six thousand marks yearly income!”
“Oh, what have I out of it? Do I not always invest it again in one or other of your enterprises, Doctor?”
“Because it brings you in ten percent more there than it would in an insurance society. Shall I have to use force, shepherd? Drink, I say!”
Spoerri was the first to fall from his chair. He lay on the floor, disorder all around him, gazing sadly at his master. He lay there like a dog about to die, knowing that he could no longer protect his master’s life.
Mabuse, tottering so that he was obliged to hold on to the edge of the table to save himself from falling, stuttered: “Spoerri, do you think there is anyone whose will is strong enough for him to kill someone else without even touching him?”
But Spoerri did not understand him. He looked up at his master with glassy eyes, stupid yet faithful, troubled and sick.
“I can! and I shall do it, too! … Sleep,” he said suddenly, and rising, he spurned the other with his foot. He took a few steps forward, having to seek support. Then he pulled himself together, and his willpower was held as it were within an iron vice. Rigidly upright, without a sign of swaying, inflamed with drink and in a state of exaltation, he went into the room the Countess occupied and remained with her without saying a word. And from that hour of humiliation this woman, too, acknowledged his supremacy. She forgot her past, forgot her very self, and submitted willingly to her master.
During the night Mabuse started for Lake Constance. Just as he was approaching the villa at Schachen, having extinguished his lights, he narrowly missed a collision with the engine of the steamroller which was standing in the road a few yards from the garden entrance. It was directly in front of him when he applied his brakes, and he therefore did not drive up to the house, but continued along the road for another kilometre, then left the car standing and went back to the house by the shore-path.
“Why did you not tell me the steamroller was here?” he asked George imperiously. “Even a matchbox lying out in the street might betray us. Go and fetch the car, quickly! It is on the highroad near Wasserburg. Put it away and come straight back here.”
Next morning the telephone bell woke Wenk from his sleep. “News from the steamroller,” he heard, and was at once wide awake.
“Yes, yes; please go on.”
“Last night about two o’clock a car arrived, and pulled up directly in front of our engine, then drove on again. As it was driving without lights, I ordered Schmied to follow on a bicycle. He found it about a kilometre further on, left alone by the roadside, and came back at once to report. I stole into the garden of the villa, but the dog began barking and I went outside round the shore. I saw a man come from the direction of the lake and go into the house. When Schmied and I went back to find the car it had vanished. There is nothing to be noticed this morning!”
“Thanks. You can expect me there today.”
An hour before this conversation took place on the telephone, while still dark, Mabuse left the villa. He was wearing women’s clothes and was rowed across to Nonnenhorn. A motorboat approached, and in it was a fisherman returning from a smuggling expedition. Mabuse accosted him, but the man said he was in a hurry, for he must take his fish home. Then Mabuse at one bound sprang into his boat, overpowered him, threw him down and gagged him, and then transferred him to the rowing-boat. He took off his female garments, beneath which he was dressed as a fisherman, and making a wide detour, he returned to shore and went to the farm where in a barn the car was concealed. George was lying in it asleep.
After a long conversation with George, Mabuse turned and drove back into Würtemberg, while George returned to Schachen.
Mabuse wanted to get to Stuttgart. His agents there had telephoned the previous day that a patient wanted to consult him. That meant that they had got hold of a rich man worth plucking.
While Mabuse was sitting at the gaming-table that evening, he had a sudden vision of the steamroller as it appeared directly in front of him when he applied his brakes. The huge machine was outlined in the darkness, and it seemed as if it were about to fall upon him, and to his fancy it took on a strange shape, finally revealing the features of the State Attorney. As he recalled it, it seemed to stand forth like some antediluvian monster, bearing Wenk’s face, about to fall upon and crush him. Mabuse felt vaguely uneasy, and he suddenly left the gaming-table, where he was losing, and drove back in the night to Munich. On the way this action of his seemed ridiculous, and he felt
