Already some of the muscles in his legs were twitching. … Then Weltmann called out harshly to Prewitz, “Why don’t you pay attention? Cock your revolver! Don’t you see that this criminal is trying to escape?” He pointed at Wenk, and Prewitz cocked the revolver with a dreamy nonchalance, an indifference that excited horror and dread. He raised the revolver to Wenk’s face, and Wenk saw in its little orifice the dark hell of danger before him, for he knew that the weapon was loaded. “The first step that he takes, without my orders, you will shoot,” said Weltmann with an ambiguous smile.
In this dread moment Wenk heard once again the clear sweet musical tones, now in another direction. They sounded soft, sad, and familiar, as if it might have been his father whistling a lullaby beside his cradle. He listened, and in the few heartbeats in which he was lapped in the sound of those wonderful tones, he lost the sense of reality he had had when he felt with one hand for the pulse of the other. The flute became the magic flute, and round this fantasy there rose up an enchanted garden. A high, thick hedge circumscribed the area of his uneasy wanderings, but there was a gap in the hedge, a wide, unguarded gap, and in it he perceived the free light of heaven beckoning and enticing him to tear away and escape.
And then he ran, defying the Baron’s revolver. He sprang with leaps and bounds across the stage … the weapon dropping from the Baron’s hands. … He sprang down its steps at one bound, rushed along the gangway, leaping like a young colt that feels the approach of summer. The entire hall was animated over this crowning stroke of the hypnotist, but Mabuse sent after him a ferocious laugh that resounded from the walls which had witnessed it.
XXI
Wenk ran full tilt past the servants at the door, who stood with serious faces, laughing behind their hands. He ran through the hall and the open door on to the steps, clattered down them, and flung open the door of the waiting car. It sprang forward, and in a few moments had disappeared in the dark avenue. In the hall Mabuse stopped laughing to say, “He is going to the Hell Café to fetch you some of the devil’s white bread!”
The jerk with which the car started threw Wenk back on to the seat, but scarcely had he touched it than the cushions seemed to open and he sank quickly into a hole in them. Something closed together over him, and it creaked like iron. Then he awoke from his hypnotic state. He lay there in misery, unconscious how he had got into that position, with his head hanging back, apparently in some gap in the back seat. He tried to rise, seeking painfully for ease and consciousness, but he could not raise himself from the depths. Something seemed to press him down again, and hard unyielding fetters were crossed over him many times. The motor went at furious speed, and shook him against an iron grating which he soon discovered to be the fetters that made an upright position impossible. They pressed closely down upon him. He made a furious effort to throw them off, but soon found it was quite impossible. He would only have his trouble for his pains. He was absolutely done for. He was himself the bird which had stepped on to the limed twig!
With angry defiance he turned upon himself saying, “That is as it should be! The stronger one conquers, and you were the weaker!” But why was he the weaker? Because he had undertaken a task that from the very first exceeded his powers. Each one knows his own capabilities. But what had tempted him to undertake something beyond him? Why, in the most forlorn and miserable situation of his whole life—a situation that seemed so incredible that he still had a faint hope it might prove only a dream—why was he able to guide and reason out his thoughts like the solution of an arithmetical problem? What was it that had enticed him? He knew the answer. It was the good in him, the outcome of his feeling of responsibility towards his fellow-countrymen. He wanted to help them, and because his conscience was stronger than his powers, he had come to grief. If this experience were to end in his death, at least he would die in a good cause, and the soul-sparks which at his death would flame up again in some other existence would form a beacon to light others upward. … He would live again in spirit among men. …
The sound of the motor echoed through the forest, and Wenk heard it. What was the enemy’s plan regarding him? The car raced on through the night like a ship driven by the typhoon. Where was it going? Whither were they taking him? Was it to Munich? But, if so, why? If they wanted to put him to death for having disturbed the powers of evil and undermined their efforts, why did they not take their revenge at once, instead of delaying it for hours?
He noticed that the windows of the car had no blinds, and he saw stars gleaming fitfully through the panes. They would not arrive in Munich till the morning, and it would be impossible to drive a fettered man by daylight over half Germany in a car with the inside exposed. They were carrying him off somewhere or other, but
