Now came the moment when everything must be risked, and the chances of escape or of death were equal. The little chamber had a second door, and this, concealed like the other by the decoration of the panelling, opened directly on to the stairs. It was here that Mabuse stood to listen.
He subdued all his senses with the supernatural powers at his command, subordinating them to his hearing; rustlings, voices, hackings, cries, abuse, orders, the clicking of electric torches, even the spitting sound of the acetylene searchlights, were inscribed on his eardrum as on a microphone. His powers of hearing must be concentrated on one single moment, and that was the first second, or fraction of a second, in which there should be neither step, nor sound, nor even breathing upon the stairs. If this instant occurred before the systematic search of the house, room by room, had begun, it would give him a favourable opportunity, his only opportunity, for flight. It seemed as if the very blood in his veins stood still, the better to help him discover the fateful moment. All the other senses were in abeyance, and his will concentrated on his hearing alone. He felt as if his ear were as large as the Lake of Constance and his hearing as fine as the vibration of a filament in an electric light. Everything else within him was cold as ice, and anaesthetized, but his ear bore a volcanic life within it, and at last he reached that single heartbeat of time which should prove his salvation.
He pushed open the narrow door on to the stairs. Until he had reconnoitred he ran a risk that his ear might have deceived him, but he saw at once that all was well.
In the corridor below a constable was standing. As he passed him, Mabuse cried, “He has shut himself into the bathroom. …”
Then he saw them all running from the rooms downstairs and pressing to the staircase. Two men stood at the entrance, in the midst of the fragments of the shattered door. “I am going for reinforcements,” said Mabuse as he approached them; “he has entrenched himself in the bathroom. …”
They let him pass, and he ran, using one hand to brush others aside, the other grasping his Browning pistol. Yes, he was getting away now. …
The night was bright with the searchlights, and their rays spoke to him of freedom and good luck. Dazzling, enchanting visions floated before his spirit. He drank in deep draughts of the light outside.
“What’s up?” asked one of the men outside as he rushed out.
“His honour’s orders … reinforcements wanted; he’s entrenched himself in the bathroom,” called Mabuse in reply.
“Take the motorcycle,” shouted the other.
What luck! Mabuse already had it between his legs. He fell upon it, mounted, feeling as if he had fallen from a tower on to a bed of down, and the night, like a friendly monster, swallowed him up, protecting him alike from the searchlights and from the violence with which the search-party would have seized him.
A quarter of an hour later he threw the motorcycle into the canal and rode away on his little racing car as if sailing upon a cloud. The car stretched its nozzle towards the southwest and away it bounded in delight along the boulevard. It was an armoured car. …
“What is the matter?” Wenk asked the police as they rushed past him.
“He is in the bathroom, and has entrenched himself,” one of them called back.
Wenk ran up the stairs. “Where is he?” he cried.
“In the bathroom,” they shouted on all sides.
“All hands to the bathroom,” ordered Wenk.
They ran hither and thither, and their pocket-torches could be seen gleaming on the walls in all directions. Where are they all going? To the bathroom. Fifteen men are hastening to the bathroom. “But where is the bathroom?” Wenk inquired. Nobody knew where the bathroom was. And now everyone was shouting out, “Halloa, what’s up?”
The electric switches were overhead, and a turn of the loosely fastened screws now gave dazzling light to the whole place. The rooms were brilliant in their wealth and luxuriance—pictures, hangings, carpets, bronzes, furniture. The bathroom was found at last, and the bath in it was of Carrara marble, but the whole house was empty and deserted.
Wenk was almost beside himself. He felt like an empty shaft, down which everything good and beautiful and all that was lofty and successful had fallen into a bottomless abyss. They tapped the walls with their hatchets, suspecting some hidden space, and soon the secret nook was discovered and the riddle solved.
Wenk pulled himself together. There was yet another mouse-hole, and it was in Schachen, at the Villa Elise!
The State Attorney made rapid arrangements at the telephone headquarters. All the lines were connected up with him, and everything had been prepared beforehand. The highroads from Munich in all directions were guarded by police. The stretch of country between Munich and Lindau had eight posting-stations, and at every one there was a telephone ready at any moment throughout the night to inform Munich of anything that had happened there.
Wenk raised the alarm in all directions. Mabuse’s stratagem had given him a half-hour’s start. If things had happened as he imagined, and the car of the fugitive were now eighty or ninety kilometres away, there was yet ten minutes before Buchloe could announce its passing through. He had hardly reckoned up the distance, however, when he heard “Buchloe speaking!” and his heart sang for joy.
“A car has just gone through at terrific speed in the direction of Kempten. It is a large covered car.”
It was 2:10 a.m.,
