Part 12

And from the heavy body of this girl, sleeping with wide-open eyes, there came a piping, fretful voice: “I have a pain in my stomach.”

“That is only wind. You’ve had too much to drink. Who gave it you?”

“I got it from the breast of a woman,” answered the baby voice.

“Do you love that breast?”

Then the girl grew deathly white, and into the childish voice there crept a piercing and angry note, “No.”

“What did you want to do?”

“I wanted to bite it with my gums!”

“Why?”

Then the girl was seized with trembling, which passed over her whole body, and Mabuse said, “Every minute that prolongs this endangers her life. I must bring the experiment to an end!”

He laid the girl down on a sofa, and with reassuring movements he released her from sleep and bathed her face, and when she came to herself again recommended her being put to bed.

The conversation now turned upon Mabuse’s experiment, and everyone was asking questions, speculating on what she would have said.

“That was a fairy-tale,” said Told; “a fable of the preconscious existence! Doctor, you are a genius. But what did she want to say that made her tremble so?”

A lady came forward with the same question on her lips, but Mabuse’s eyes sought the Countess, and she, too, came forward to ask. Then Mabuse answered, “She wanted to say, ‘Because I hated her so!’”

The Countess shrank back and the others were silent, painfully affected. Then the Countess leaned forward, saying coldly, “A baby cannot hate!”

“How do you know that?” asked Mabuse roughly.

“I know it ... of myself,” she replied.

“Then you can rejoice over yourself, for you are not only a genius at recollection, but also an angel in disposition!” retorted Mabuse sarcastically.

Conversation broke the company up into little groups. Count Told alone remained silent. There was still that unnatural warmth at the back of his head. He looked behind him, and he felt his head; there was nothing there. He went to a mirror, but nothing was to be seen. He sat down again and it seemed as if he were falling asleep, yet he saw them all and heard everything. He wanted to say something, but it seemed as if the words were plucked from his mouth like ripened fruit ready to fall.

After a short time had passed thus, he rose and went to the group wherein Dr. Mabuse was standing, saying, “We were going to play baccarat!”

“So we were!” answered Mabuse. “Shall we be likely to find enough players?”

Then Told grew wide awake and eager. “It will be fine, playing baccarat with you. Herr Wendel, will you join us, eh?”

“I must attend to my social duties among the ladies,” answered the Privy Councillor, “but you will soon be able to find partners!”

Six gentlemen quickly gathered round the card-table which stood in a part of the room leading to the conservatory. The lamp with its enormous shade hung low over the table, leaving the rest of the room in the half-light. In the conservatory, to which a glass door led, the ghostly branches of foreign palms could be seen outlined against the glass, and in the moonlight they looked like stiff forms stretching their dark limbs heavenwards.

They cut the cards to see who should be the first to hold the stakes. The visitors crowded round the card-table and Countess Told stood in the dim light, looking down upon it. Mabuse saw her smooth white skin gleaming from the rich dark red dress she wore. His bearing was cold and gloomy, and scarcely a word escaped his lips. The feelings that arose within him were sternly suppressed, and his thoughts were busy with Count Told alone. When anyone addressed him, he answered abruptly. He seemed to pay great attention to the game, but he played by leaps and bounds.

Soon the gentlemen who had begun their game with modest stakes began to imitate his example, and there was no unanimity in the value of the stakes. Beside a stake of a mark or two there stood a fifty-mark note, and then one for two hundred. The small stake seemed to feel ashamed; it rapidly became twenty, and still faster it grew to a hundred, to two hundred.... Very soon there was no player who ventured less than a hundred marks. When they began they found time for conversation between the end of the hand and the fresh deal, but after a time the talk grew less, and then ceased. The onlookers, too, became silent. The contest between the players grew more pronounced, the game feverish, and this excitement spread to the spectators.

The Countess noted the high stakes her husband wagered. “He has never played before,” she thought. “What is the matter with him?”

The Count was winning. He let his winnings accumulate. It seemed as if he were a horse, urged and threatened onward by an eager rider. He threw his money down. It was now his turn to hold the stakes. It seemed to him as if the moment in which he should deal the cards and undertake the manifold risks of gain or loss would be a supreme experience for him, yielding rich secrets of wonderful joy. He grew excited, and his phantasies played about the room.

The Countess turned aside in the half-light, constrained at her husband’s incomprehensible actions. Suddenly the full light of the lamp fell upon her, revealing where her slender breast rose white and stately from the enclosing circle of her gown.

“North and south!” said Mabuse, as he contemplated her lovely figure, “north and south, your turn is coming,” and his tone was sinister and threatening. Then he turned his glance away, and it fell upon Count Told’s hands as he took over the bank at this moment. He dealt the cards out, and hesitated a moment as if perplexed at some strange occurrence. He was relieved when he had distributed the pack. He won considerable sums, and it was singular that the same feeling of perplexity recurred. He won a second time, and now this seemed to happen continually. Players and spectators alike were astonished at the run of luck the Count’s game exhibited.

“Look at your husband,” said someone, turning to the Countess; “he is winning every hand.”

They all cast a glance at the Countess and then quickly returned to their cards. The Count dealt the cards once more. He disclosed his cards; he had two picture cards and was about to buy another.

“Halt!” cried a voice suddenly, like the voice of a drill sergeant, and a hand was laid roughly on the table, reaching the white and delicate hand of the Count, on which the jewelled ring was sparkling, and turning it over. Then all the company saw that the Count had been about to take a card from underneath the pack instead of the one that lay on the top. The card was a nine.

“Aha, a nine! _Now_ I understand your luck, you gudgeon! You are a common cheat!”

They all sprang up in confusion. Count Told sat still in his chair, in a state of utter collapse. He seemed absolutely crushed, finding no word to say.

“Give the money here!” cried the harsh voice again. “All of it!” The tone was threatening.

The spectators and the players were crowding together, and a cry rang through the obscurity. Through the hasty movements of the powerful man who had seized the Count, one man had fallen to the ground, dragging another down with him. The latter clutched at the tablecloth, and it was pulled off, money and cards being strewn over the floor, people flinging themselves upon it. Suddenly the electric lights went out, but Dr. Mabuse, who had waited for the cry from the dark corner, rushed to the fainting Countess, lifted her in his arms and with one spring bore her under the palms and out into the garden under the moonlight, through the shrubbery and to the wall leading to the street. He lifted her over, and from the other side someone helped him with his burden. An instant later a car was stealing swiftly down the street.

“The northern and southern hemispheres,” he shouted aloud furiously during the drive. “Now I hold you both!”

The Xenienstrasse was empty. The car came to a sudden standstill. He carried the Countess, still unconscious, into his house.

XII

Scarcely heeding the abuse and scorn heaped upon him by the crowd, out of the chaos and confusion of the contemptuous glances of others and his own feeling of perplexity, Count Told stole, as if in a dream, towards the vestibule. He thought of his wife, but he had not the courage to look round for or inquire about her. His car stood before the door, and the chauffeur was about to start the engine when the Count made a gesture of denial, saying, “Wait for the Countess!”

He went into the town and hired the first taxi he saw to drive him home. “What has happened to me?” was the question that he perpetually put to himself. “What was it that overcame me? Who moved my hand?... What is it that has happened? I know nothing about it. Can it be merely a bad dream?”

But it was no dream. He reached his house and had to descend. He went down the length of the garden and into the house. The footman took his coat, and the Count went to the room where he and his wife, whenever they had been out together, were wont to spend a short time before going to bed, in exchanging the experiences the evening had afforded. He always looked forward eagerly to these moments.

To-night he was alone there. “Where can my wife be?” he asked himself, astonished and yet unconscious. So many tender memories clung to this room, and he felt disappointed that in this dreadful hour she was not by his side. It was the first painful experience of his existence.

But all at once it became clear to him that she must have sundered herself from him, and he realized that by that inexpressibly strange occurrence at the gaming-table in the Wendel mansion he had covered himself with mire. It clung fast to him, and he thought, “Lucy must leave me. She must remain away until I have purified myself.” But how was he to accomplish the task?

And suddenly there came over him, like an icy blast in all its pitiless severity, the full meaning of what he had done. He had done it, he really had put cards at the bottom of the pack and then drawn them when he wanted them, and with these he had won money. Yet he had not desired to win money! What could have happened? Was there no help anywhere? He had done something against his will. His act had thrust him out of decent society, and to the end of his days he would be known as a cheat. Was there no help to be found?

“I know now,” he said to himself, “what it is I have done, but I do not know how I came to do it, neither the why nor the wherefore. I am growing crazy, losing my self-confidence, and I shall henceforth be unable to feel safe, whatever I do. Horrible, monstrous thought! I am absolutely afraid of myself. How can I ever have reached such a point? Yonder is a sculpture by Archipenko and the picture hanging there is one of Kokoschka’s; I am quite certain of that; but what proceeds from my own brain, and is my own creation, of that I can never more feel certain again. I retain my sight, hearing and feelings, but my brain is rotting!... I shall end in a lunatic asylum! My body moves in the light of day while my mental powers are wrapped in a dim twilight. Is there no one that can help me?”

He struggled with his tears, but he could not even allow himself to weep, for he thought, “Perhaps I shall lose all consciousness of what I am doing. If I weep, may I not possibly destroy a picture that I have hitherto loved and worshipped, or abuse my man, or act improperly to Lucy’s maid?”

And suddenly, at the utterance of his wife’s name, he collapsed entirely. “Ah, Lucy, light of my life, can _you_ not help me?” he cried. “Will you not come? Have you no longer faith in me? Why am I left alone?”

He rang, and then, hastening to meet the footman, inquired for the Countess.

“The Countess has not yet returned,” he was told.

“Nor telephoned? Has she not...”

“No, my lord, but an hour ago Herr Dr. von Wenk rang up, asking if he might have the honour of waiting on her ladyship to-morrow morning. His telephone number has been written down.”

“Go!” said the Count. “I will go to Dr. Wenk ... yes, to Dr. Wenk,” he thought, and then, a prey to a thousand nameless fears, he cried aloud, “Or else I shall hang myself! I must be able to tell some human being what I feel....”

He hurried to the telephone, giving the number written down. “Yes, this is the State Attorney, Dr. Wenk!” answered a strange voice in the distance, and Told began to tremble. But he rallied all his energy and self-control, saying, “Can I speak to you at once?”

He was terribly afraid that the fever of his desire might melt the connecting wire and that he might get no answer. He breathed freely again when he heard the words, “With pleasure! I shall expect you!”

“Fritz!” he shouted; “get the two-seater ready,” and he drove back to Munich.

Wenk believed he had come on the Countess’s errand, and that something had happened in the prison to put an end to the enterprise they had in hand.

“I think, Count Told, that after all it was too risky an experiment. The Countess....”

“No, no,” cried Told, interrupting him. “I ... I ... it is on my own account that I’ve come here,” and then he began his story. He told, too, what an extraordinary sensation of heat he had felt at the back of his head, and this must have been the forerunner of misfortune. “Do not be vexed, Dr. Wenk, that I, a stranger, should come to you thus, but I should have had to put an end to myself if I had not been able to confide in someone to-night. May I go on? Well, these powerful rays, that were like red-hot iron at the back of my head, changed gradually to a feeling of well-being throughout my whole body. They seemed to bathe me in pleasant warmth, and I had a feeling that I was somehow saved from something that lay before me, and in this very moment of relief ... it happened! In the first half-hour afterwards I denied that it could have done, but when I reached home I realized that the dreadful story was true, and this thing had really happened. There is no getting away from it, either for others or for myself.”

Wenk at once recalled his experience with the old Professor. He was startled. Could it be possible that here too ... and he thought of the Countess and of Cara Carozza. He asked Told, “Have you any suspicion at all?”

The Count did not understand the question.

“Any suspicion? What do you mean? That I have been like this before? Ill in this way? No, never!”

“No, a suspicion of any special person who was there?”

“The idea never occurred to me. I can’t understand how anybody else could.... No ... I don’t suspect anyone!”

“Was there nobody in the company who did not seem to belong there, who was not quite like the other guests?”

“It was a company of the Privy Councillor’s intimate friends. No, there was nobody!”

Wenk rejected the idea. Besides, how could there be any connection between the criminal he was seeking and the Count’s act of cheating? It was apparently a momentary mental aberration, a loss of will-power. A subconscious process in a strange and elusive personality which bordered upon morbidity, which thus strove to register a mental impression upon its fellow-players. The Count ought to consult a psychiatrist. It was extraordinary that he should appeal to him, a criminal prosecutor, but he did not put any question to him on this head.

Told became silent, and the lawyer respected his mood. Then suddenly he seemed to pull himself together and said, “I realize that I am keeping you from your night’s rest; I beg you not to be vexed with me. In misfortune it seems as if the mind sinks into a gulf, and the consciousness grasps at the nearest support. You had rung up, and there was some connection between you and ... my house, and so....” He broke off. “But tell me, am I really saying what I want to, or am I talking nonsense? You see, that is the horror of such an experience as mine. It seems as if I shall always require a neurologist to guide my future life.”

“Reassure yourself, Count; you are speaking quite clearly and saying exactly what you want to express. I beg you to make use of me if you can. My calling in some respects borders upon the sphere of the specialist in nerve-disorders; perhaps it goes even further, and at any rate it is bound up with the most mysterious and most speculative part of man’s being. I am very sorry that the occasion that brings you to me is such an unfortunate one, else I should be only too pleased by your visit.”

While Wenk was speaking, desiring to convey that anything out of the common which was mentally or spiritually of an unusual and critical nature was really his concern, the idea occurred to him to enlist the Count’s sympathy in his own aims. Count Told was a man of the world. He belonged to a sphere through which Wenk hoped to be able to endow the life of the nation with nobler qualities and loftier ideals. In the practical necessities which the last few months had forced upon him he had almost neglected the ideal side of the task before him. The events of this night had brought him into unexpected relations with a human being, and he could best serve him by not leaving him alone. He explained his views to the Count.

“They talk of ours as the ‘upper’ class. This description, which certainly has a substratum of truth, must be made a living reality once more. Our class, free of the struggle to obtain a better social status, is more than ever called upon to foster intellectual development and mental gifts. It must cherish these noble qualities in itself and turn them to account for others. Our sphere of politics must be the spiritual one!”

Count Told’s life hitherto had been irreproachable. Both in sentiment and in the externals of life he had shown himself superior, but for lack of serious pursuits to which he could devote himself he had thrown his energies into following up his hobbies, such as the collection of Futurist works of art, for which there was as yet no standard to judge by. He patronized young poets who were at present but a minority and a novelty. They were brought into the light, and the discovery of their powers engaged the serious attention of himself and his like. The struggle to get possession of something new and striking was carried on in this respect just as it was by the profiteers of ordinary wares.... It was not the uneducated rich who devoted themselves to it, but those who sought for their wealth a channel which should return their gold stamped with the impress of beauty and of intellectual superiority. But these fell victims to the age, and their ideas dissolved in hysteria akin to that of a weeping woman whose whole consciousness can hold but one idea. The value of money declined, and in so doing its power over men became all the greater; it seized upon them with ever-growing force, till at last it was like a disease.

Such was the connection between the hobbies of the Count and his like and the age they lived in. The age made use of what was valuable in them. The propagandists of the “new art” were merely stockjobbers, uniting their intellectual ambitions with their speculations. The celebrated “Blue Horses” were to be had for a couple of hundred marks at first. X. bought them for eight hundred, and now it was impossible to obtain them for two hundred thousand. It was such anecdotes as these that spurred them on.

For a long time Wenk and Count Told discussed these things. The Count opposed Wenk’s view, having learnt some of the terminology of the artists whose pictures he bought.

“Folks even begin to say,” said Wenk to him on one occasion, “that he speaks as well as a Futurist! And this school begins to affiliate itself with another intellectual movement of our day, which stands on much the same foundations--with the so-called theosophy. You will notice that the Futurist _eo ipso_ is also a theosophist or an anthropologist. But it is not because these ideas are really inwardly connected, but because the pursuance of them is united. You will always find nowadays that those who most freely deplore the materialism of our age are those who in private life are most devoted to it. Moreover, in the one case as in the other, it is not always a question of money. Mental and spiritual greed is also an aspect of this age, which exchanges the dominion of one for that of another. Everywhere folks are seeking, seeking eagerly to escape from the misery of the present, and for us mortals there remains but warfare--war against those near us, against those among us, and against ourselves, and it is our class especially which must wage war against ourselves!”

Wenk then asked the Count whether he would not spend the night with him, as it was now so late.

The Count answered involuntarily, “Yes, but my wife....” Then he stopped, looking at Wenk, and his face showed the return of his tormenting thoughts. After a time he began again: “You had caused me to forget my trouble, Dr. Wenk! For this night I have robbed you of, which you have devoted to me so sympathetically, I shall eternally be in your debt. I cannot think how I should have lived through it--alone! Now it seems to be behind me, and I gratefully accept your offer of a bed.”

“How would you like,” said Wenk to Count Told next morning, “for me to see the Privy Councillor and relate your story to him?”

“I should be extremely glad if you would.”

He hesitated as if he wanted to say something more. Wenk noticed it and waited. Then he said, anticipating the other, “I am absolutely at your service. If you have any other wish....”

The Count answered quickly, reddening as he spoke, “Yes, I want to speak to my wife. When I think of her I feel ... so ashamed!”

“You need not be ashamed!”

“My wife has such a strong and forceful idea of life. It always seemed as if she found our life together a somewhat feeble thing.... I wonder whether it will be possible for her to go on living with a husband who henceforth is but an invalid.”

“I will see her, too,” said Wenk.

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