Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler

The distinguished-looking elderly gentleman introduced himself and, as usual, nobody caught the name. He wore a suit of fashionable and well-cut clothes, however, and his scarf-pin was a single white pearl in a somewhat quaint setting, its dazzling purity recalling the whiteness of a lovely blonde’s shoulders, as Karstens remarked. Moreover, he at once placed a sum of twenty thousand marks upon the table in front of him.

He had been brought to the club by young Hull, the heir to an industrial concern worth millions, into which his father allowed him to dip freely. Play was started immediately, and the stranger courteously agreed to the game proposed, which was vingt-et-un. The stakes were unlimited, and the first one to hold the bank was Ritter.

At first there was nothing unusual about the game. Gains and losses alternated, but soon it was noticed that Hull was losing, and this began just at the time when it was the elderly gentleman’s turn to play banker. At the start it was hundred-mark notes that Hull lost, but he played on calmly, resigned to his ill-luck. Notes of smaller value were now mingled with the piles of thousands the visitor had put in front of him.

It was only outwardly, however, that Hull appeared undisturbed. He felt a good deal of excitement within, and a veil seemed to be obscuring his mental vision. His banknotes fluttered across to the stranger without his appearing aware of the fact. His senses seemed to be imprisoned in a delicate, invisible web, pressing ever more and more closely upon him.

It seemed to Hull as if he were falling from an unsteady foothold down into an abyss below. “What have I been doing?” he asked himself in stupefaction and despair. Now at last he began to see everything as clearly as if he had just come into the room: the three glowing electric globes under their protecting dome, the red-covered, lighted table, his friends, the elderly stranger, the scattered cards and the piles of notes.

“Where have I been? What have I been doing?” he stammered.

His brain grew alert again, and the thoughts that had been so confused and obscure now became suddenly clear: it was as if he had drawn aside the curtains and let in the light of day. Then he felt a sudden distrust of himself, which made him uneasy. He held his head in his hands awhile, striving to free it from the weight that seemed to encircle it, and then raising himself erect, he said, “What have I been doing? I held twenty-one in my hand, and then someone called out, in my voice, ‘I have lost again.’ Look there!” He snatched the cards he had thrown away from the heap where they lay, and turned them over. They were an ace, a ten, and a knave⁠—twenty-one!

The elderly stranger’s large grey eyes contracted until the pupils were quite small and seemed to be gazing at a far-distant spot. A shudder went through his body; it was perceptible, though hastily subdued. Then his breast expanded and his breath came slowly and with difficulty, as if he were having to pump the air direct into himself.

“Too late!” said he, briefly and decisively.

A man of massive build, covered by a fur coat, came rapidly out of the house and through the little front garden to the car. “He is lying in the Schleissheim Park,” said the chauffeur. “Here is the notebook you wanted.”

“Did you remove the gas-flask from the car?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Drive on!”

But at this moment a woman, closely muffled up, came out of the darkness and stepped towards the car. She held on to the door, murmuring beseechingly, “Dearest!”

Mabuse turned in annoyance. “What do you want? Are you begging?”

The woman answered him gently and sadly. “Yes, begging⁠—for love!”

“You know my answer.”

“But remember the past. Why should this be?” implored the voice.

Mabuse, in wrath, exclaimed, “The past is past. Your part is to obey. My orders are clear, and there is nothing between Yes and No. You have heard from George what my wishes are. Drive on, George!”

He was already in the car. The woman fell back to the garden railings, covered herself up again, and called after the retreating car, “But if I cannot stop loving you?”

The croupier said: “I will not detain you much longer from trying your luck, dear madam. I have only now to introduce to you the epoch-making novelty of the Go-Ahead Institute. What would you do, ladies and gentlemen” (here he raised his voice), “if the police were suddenly to intrude upon you and rob you of your money and your freedom on account of your forbidden game? You need have no anxiety on that score. We have hit upon an arrangement which might be called a garde-police. The Go-Ahead Institute may await the police quite calmly. They may be surrounded and inundated by the police. With a pressure of my little finger I can turn the whole police force of the city away from you and let them go ahead elsewhere. Look here!”

He raised his hand, then lowered it with affected impressiveness, pressing his forefinger down upon the black knob near him. A moment later the surface of the table was set in motion, and it began to sink. It moved rapidly and noiselessly, and the speaker sank down with it. The boxes remained stationary, but from the dome the little horses and the coloured circles descended⁠—came past the boxes; the dome followed, and a few minutes later a quartet of nude twelve-year-old children were to be seen dancing, upon a new stage, to the strains of fiddles and harps, which began to resound from some invisible quarter. A body of men, dressed in the uniform of the city police, trooped into the boxes, exclaiming, “We were told they were gambling here! Where are the gamblers?”

He subdued all his senses with the supernatural powers at his command, subordinating them to his hearing; rustlings, voices, hackings, cries, abuse, orders, the clicking of electric torches, even the spitting sound of the acetylene searchlights, were inscribed on his eardrum as on a microphone. His powers of hearing must be concentrated on one single moment, and that was the first second, or fraction of a second, in which there should be neither step, nor sound, nor even breathing upon the stairs. If this instant occurred before the systematic search of the house, room by room, had begun, it would give him a favourable opportunity, his only opportunity, for flight. It seemed as if the very blood in his veins stood still, the better to help him discover the fateful moment. All the other senses were in abeyance, and his will concentrated on his hearing alone. He felt as if his ear were as large as the Lake of Constance and his hearing as fine as the vibration of a filament in an electric light. Everything else within him was cold as ice, and anaesthetized, but his ear bore a volcanic life within it, and at last he reached that single heartbeat of time which should prove his salvation.

He pushed open the narrow door on to the stairs. Until he had reconnoitred he ran a risk that his ear might have deceived him, but he saw at once that all was well.

In the corridor below a constable was standing. As he passed him, Mabuse cried, “He has shut himself into the bathroom.⁠ ⁠…”