The village was not more than twenty minutes’ distance, and in an inn he found a telephone. He ordered coffee, and then rang up Zürich. In half an hour’s time the call came through, and asking who was there, he was answered, “Dr. Ebenhügel, Zürich.”
“Has Spoerri arrived?” he inquired.
“Spoerri has just come: he is still here;” and Spoerri rushed to the telephone.
“Spoerri, I’ve had a misfortune. George is taken, but we have escaped. Bring the car here at once, and put in a travelling dress and coat for my wife. I shall expect you at 2 p.m. at the Au railway-station in the Rhine Valley.”
“Very good, sir,” replied Spoerri.
“I called her my wife, and said it quite coolly and intentionally,” mused Mabuse, dallying with the thought, which yet seemed to imply something like a fetter; but he dismissed the idea, saying, “She is my wife, my own property! … It is true, she is mine.”
Spoerri arrived punctually. “I shall drive you through the Engadine direct to the Italian frontier,” he said, when Mabuse had told him all that had occurred. But to that proposal Mabuse merely uttered one word: “No!”
“But, Doctor,” Spoerri pleaded, “you can’t remain in Switzerland. The Munich police have informed the authorities here of your movements. We shouldn’t get even as far as Toggeburg. It would be almost better to return to Germany.”
“And that’s exactly what I mean to do! Spoerri, from this day forward the State Attorney’s life stands under my protection. You are to revoke my earlier orders to the Removal Committee at once.”
“You are going in for a remarkable friendship, Doctor,” tittered Spoerri.
“He is to remain absolutely under my protection!” repeated Mabuse, and they drove through the flat marshland back to the peasant’s hut.
The Countess got into the car, and they were soon hastening to the Austrian frontier. “What sort of passports have you for us?” asked Mabuse.
“Swiss ones: please take them,” answered Spoerri, handing over documents with many visas, calculated to arouse a confidence which was constantly abused yet remained unconscious of the fact.
Three hours later the car was driving along the highroad leading from Bregenz to Kempten. It drove past a house from which, the night before, a message had been flashed through to Munich telling of its passing, and went towards Würtemberg. The travellers spent the night in a village south of Stuttgart.
In the evening Mabuse went to Spoerri’s room, and said to him: “There is just one thing left for me to do in Germany, in Europe … and that is to get hold of that lawyer, the State Attorney, Wenk, alive. I want him alive, mark you! as much alive as a fly under a glass. The Countess and I are staying here tomorrow. You will go to Stuttgart and buy, whatever the price may be, a two-seater aeroplane. We are quite safe here. The landlord did not even register us, so if the police appear he is bound to hold his tongue, or else he will be fined. Have you any brandy?”
Spoerri shrank back in dismay; his martyrdom was about to begin again. Nevertheless, he had smuggled three bottles out of Switzerland.
“Of course you have some brandy!” said Mabuse, before he could even answer.
Mabuse drank from the travelling cup which he always carried in his pocket, and Spoerri had to fill the toothglass on the washhandstand.
Mabuse was longing for a carouse, a really heavy carouse which should seize him by the throat and press him under the water, as if he were being given a millstone for a swimming belt. When he had emptied the second bottle, he saw that he was not likely to get his wish.
“Haven’t you any more?” he asked.
“That’s all there is. I couldn’t venture to bring any more across the frontier.”
Mabuse laughed satirically. “That’s fine. Here is Spoerri, who has brought three railway vans full of salvarsan, two of cocaine, enough prostitutes to fill three brothels across the frontier, yet he hasn’t enough courage to bring more than three bottles of brandy! Empty your glass into mine. Don’t your wages include the getting of brandy?”
When the third bottle had been emptied Mabuse, clearheaded as ever, but more hot-blooded, went back to the room next his own, occupied by the Countess. He was out of sorts, and resembled an engine that had been run too fast, so that the heat had covered the glowing cylinders with vapour, and they could not be set in motion.
He approached the Countess’s bed. “You and I had come to an understanding together. You have broken through it: you were ready to betray me!”
“I was!” said the Countess in a low voice.
Then ungovernable fury seemed to possess the man. He snatched her from the bed, and as he seized her, lifted her high in the air as if he were going to dash her in pieces against the wall like rotting timber. At that moment he hated her; she was the embodiment of all his weaknesses. For ten long minutes, when the patrol-boat was on their track, the power of his will over her had ceased, and now, when he wanted to destroy her and would have dashed against the wall the head that defied him, he could not do it.
With a low cry the woman found herself held on high, and realized the strength of arm and indomitable willpower of the being to whom she was secretly—and yet irrevocably—bound. She longed for death. Softly she repeated a fragment or two of a prayer learnt in her childhood’s days, and she knew that if she were to die now she would draw this man also to his death.
But Mabuse, conscious of his power over the woman he held aloft in his grasp, suddenly came to himself again. Once more he realized that he was alive, was safe, and felt a fierce joy in the knowledge and in his possession of her. Almost gently he laid her down, and the poor woman, condemned afresh to a
