Suddenly, without a single word having been spoken, one of the players leaned back, saying in a clear ringing voice, as if speaking aloud in a dream, “What have I just done? I had twenty-one, and then someone spoke with my voice, and said, ‘I have lost again.’ ”
He seized the cards he had thrown aside, and showed an ace, a knave and a ten.
“Too late!” said Weltmann, who was holding the bank. Wenk put his hands to his head. He had already lived through such a scene once before. When was it, where, and to whom did it occur? He cudgelled his brains to remember. The image of it stood out distinctly, but it stood apart from any suggestion of the time and place and person.
From the recesses of his mind a form seemed to emerge simultaneously with his groping efforts to recover the recollections he sought. A form—was it a human being, a lifeless column, a monster? He could not say which … but then the form was bleeding somewhere, and now Wenk saw, through the misty fantasies of these recent occurrences, that it had a mouth, and that this mouth suddenly uttered, in clear staccato tones, the name “Tsi—nan—fu!”
Wenk now distinctly recollected having heard this name from the lips of the old Professor who was none other than the Dr. Mabuse on whose account he had come to Berlin. “Dr. Mab … , Dr. Mab … ,” whispered the secret voices. Wenk tried to call to mind the features of the old Professor, but he could not recollect them clearly. Only the mouth which had uttered the name of the Chinese town with such strange impressiveness was distinct to his vision.
“Now why,” said Wenk to himself in the midst of the images raised in him by these recollections, “why should I think at this moment of the pseudo-Professor? Why do I think of the Professor, and not of Mabuse under another form, his real form, such as I saw him that evening in reality in the Four Seasons Hall? Mabuse as a hypnotist? What audacity! As a hypnotist appearing in public? Had Mabuse the same disconcerting capability as Weltmann, and had Weltmann the same dark background of crime as Mabuse?” he asked himself. His thoughts grew ever more remote, more indistinct and unreal. They were no longer thoughts—they were misty images which had arisen in his fantasy under the compelling power of those eyes yonder. He sought to fix his eyes on Weltmann, striving to picture him with a reddish beard, such as Mabuse had appeared possessed of when he first encountered him.
And then suddenly Wenk realized how it was he felt some unmistakable connection with the player there who threw away his cards although he held twenty-one and must undoubtedly have won the game. These words were familiar to him from the story told by the murdered Hull. They were written upon the first page of the notebook stolen from him by Mabuse’s chauffeur when he left him that night in the Schleissheim Park, and he had copied them down word for word after his first talk with Hull. Yes, the bleeding form was that of Hull, and it drooped like a weeping-willow over Wenk’s spirit. The blood-besprinkled leaves whispered ever “It is I, Hull! It is I, Hull!”
Then it seemed as if in the mists which continued to gather in ever-varying shapes in Wenk’s brain there grew and stood out, as the bone stands out from its tissues in the Röntgen-ray photographs, a dark nucleus, a central, death-endowed essence, something stony … something black … a man.
The Princess handed him Weltmann’s block, and he thrust these ideas away somewhat, though he had to struggle to see the words. Then he read: “The banker wins every game. If one of the players has a better card than he who holds the bank, he is incapable of holding them against him.”
He had hardly read this when Weltmann, speaking from the midst of his game in a voice which seemed to strike Wenk to earth, said, “Read the second page!” Wenk turned the page in affright. He read, “Under the hypnotist’s influence one of the players tries to cheat, by dealing himself an ace. He is caught in the act!”
Then the blood rushed to Wenk’s heart, and like molten lava it coursed along his veins. His eyes were fixed and glassy, and his trembling fingers let fall the block. A horrible certainty burst upon him. That was the secret of Count Told’s fall! Mabuse had subconsciously forced him to cheat, to ruin him in the eyes of the wife whom Mabuse desired to possess! That was why he had seen the Countess leaving Mabuse’s house that night. Mabuse it was who had killed her husband.
What Mabuse had written down occurred on the stage. The lady, who had in the meantime taken over the bank, dealt the cards so as to cheat and was caught in the act. Thereupon Weltmann brought the experiment to an end. He released the four subjects from their hypnotic state, and, disturbed and still dreamy-eyed, they sought their seats once more.
Weltmann looked down at Wenk, and the latter knew without a doubt that he was Mabuse. The suddenness of the discovery paralysed him for the moment, and he struggled to regain calm and self-control. Had he been enticed into a snare? Was the Hungarian police superintendent appointed as a decoy? Was this whole place, so far removed from other dwellings, and this assembly merely an ambush arranged on his account?
Slowly he fought the
