It was likely that the authorities in Bavaria would ask the Swiss ones to search for the fugitives, and therefore Mabuse wanted to make his stay in Switzerland as brief as possible, and to push on to the Italian frontier. He had had passes for himself and the Countess prepared in a Portuguese surname. An Italian official had been bribed, and by his help all difficulties disappeared as chaff before the wind.
The Countess sat at the back of the car, behind its high body. In front of her Mabuse, sitting at the wheel, seemed like some monumental image. In the uncertain light the outlines of his powerful figure stood out with ghostly effect. There was not the slightest movement to be seen, and from her seat behind he looked like a block of granite, seen standing alone in a meadow.
They sped by highways, villages, hamlets, and then the waters of the lake gleamed in the night. A few lights at intervals on its shores, shapes appearing and disappearing in the darkness, dimly suggesting human beings, a change in the air one breathed … two villages appearing to float like illuminated ships upon the water … there was Switzerland already.
Lindau lay to the side, and their car was now racing along roads bordered by country villas. And then came the last minute. The car bounded across the track to the Enisweiler station, and rushed forward to the Villa Elise. At the first glance Mabuse’s sharp eyes saw that the gates opening on to the drive stood wide open.
The pigeon-post had arrived safely and in good time then. He felt as if the impetuous haste with which he had driven hither in the darkness had yielded him a fresh sensation. It was now just before 3:30 a.m., and he kept his senses constantly on the alert without slackening his speed. When he was about to turn into the drive, he pressed the brakes hard for a moment before allowing the car to run its course; it held up for an instant, then, veering round, went straight through the gates and turned towards the garden.
Just then he felt something spring on to the car. On the clutch side, springing over the door, a form squeezed down on the outer side of Mabuse. Two hands covered his own, snatched the steering-gear from him, and a wild, hoarse, impressive voice whispered, “Doctor, I’m here: it’s George. Give me the wheel. We are surrounded. Straight forward into the lake. …”
Mabuse yielded the wheel and let go the brakes. Under its new guide the car dashed ahead, thundered round the grey walls of the villa, abruptly turned a corner, got on to a grass-plot, and raced frantically across it, along the sloping gravel patch to the wall which divided the lake from the garden above. Through the gate in the wall it leaped like a wild horse and then clattered down the inclined wooden footway, the boards thundering beneath it. A moment later its nose was in the water and the lake hissing around it.
George leant forward as quick as lightning and gripped levers, Mabuse helping him. The night reechoed the Countess’s cry, and then the vehicle, tottering slightly at first, but slowly righting itself, went onward over the surface of the water.
“Splendid!” cried George. “It is working like magic!”
This car was an invention of his own. It could be driven straight from the highroad into the water without stopping, and a couple of levers turned it at once into a motorboat.
“It is the pigeons that have done the mischief,” said George, when he had gained thorough control of his vessel. “After they arrived in the dark, about an hour ago, I seemed to hear whispering voices behind a shrubbery. I looked very carefully round, and thought I noticed a movement going all round the park. In one place, and then twenty paces further on, and then twenty paces beyond that again, in a circle, the whole way round, so then I knew we were surrounded. However, I managed to get to the gate leading to the garden without being seen. It took me fifty minutes to do the hundred yards. If we had not had this car, we should now be sitting handcuffed inside the Villa Elise.”
The constables, who had distributed themselves with all possible precautions about the villa, and had taken four hours to complete the ring around it, one after another taking up his position, had heard the car thundering along through the silent night. They lay in tense expectation at their posts, awaiting the whistle which should summon them to the house to fall upon the criminals.
Just an hour before there had been a slight interruption. A bird had suddenly flown through a tree and disappeared beneath the eaves. One of the constables close to the house had noticed it. He had seen the bird fluttering about the roof and then suddenly disappearing without having flown away elsewhere. His conjecture that it was a carrier-pigeon was soon confirmed by the appearance of a second bird, which also disappeared in the eaves. The constable stole softly to the inspector and announced what he had seen and suspected. The latter saw at once what this might indicate. Poldringer had received warning from Munich, from the fugitives. He therefore ordered a constable to proceed with the utmost caution from one outpost to another and relate the fact, saying that those in the house had probably been warned, and that
