Part 43

Told was stupefied by the power and authority which this doctor assumed towards him. Timid and shrinking by nature, downcast by what had occurred, he did not venture to make any objection, and from the very first moment he stood in absolute awe of him.

When Mabuse left the villa, in which he had seen many things which revealed the life the Count and his wife had led, he said to himself, “He must be got rid of if she even mentions him again.”

The doctor was in a highly excitable and savage state. The meeting with this man, who had so long called her his own, had fired his blood and inflamed him as if he had been a bull in the arena transfixed by a javelin. He unconsciously lowered his head as if for attack, and his imagination ran riot, thirsting to satisfy his hate and revenge. It seemed to him as if a tumour had suddenly burst within him, scattering its evil and offensive discharge everywhere, and he allowed himself to bathe in its stream.

When he re-entered his house he went straight to the room in which the Countess was confined. It was in a secluded corner of the villa. The only light there was came from a round window in its arched and richly decorated dome.

The Countess arose as he came in. She was white as the sheets upon her bed. She went towards him, saying, “Something happened to me in the night--something of which I was wholly unconscious. What have you been doing to me?”

“Nothing but what you allowed me to do!”

Then the woman trembled so that she sank down to the ground, raising her glance to his like an animal that has been shot down, and crying in horror, “You devil! oh, you devil!”

“That name pleases me,” said Mabuse. “I consider it flattering. It is, without your realizing it, a caress. Next time you will call me Lucifer, for I shall bring you light!”

The Countess, lying in a heap on the floor, broke into passionate sobs, crying in the midst of her anguish, “Where is my husband?”

Then she saw that at the question Mabuse made a gesture, so indifferent and trivial that she felt her painful anguished appeal was no more than a drop of dew vanishing in the sand, and as hopeless to look for. And her downcast broken heart asked itself whether this man could indeed be so powerful that everything went down before his will--that what she and others before her had been must be brought to nought?

Once again she must yield herself to the twofold stream within. It bore the most secret and hitherto unsuspected currents along with it, and her tortured imagination gave them full play. Must not that which her blood sought to reveal to her be true? She could not separate herself from this new world of feeling. Resist and inveigh against it as she might, she could yet not tear it from her.

The man stood silent before her, and his silence seemed to threaten her. She thought that by a word of her own she could destroy this threatening attitude of his, but she found no power to say anything more than to repeat helplessly, “Where is my husband?” Then Mabuse, silently and roughly, turned away.

When he had left her, leaving behind nothing but the impression of his dominating will, she felt as if she missed something in the room. She would have preferred him to stand there still, and her sense of isolation passed all bounds, overwhelming her. A bottomless abyss opened before her, and phantom figures made appealing gestures. But she could not cast herself down; she hung on to one slender rootlet; she knew it to be the tiny remnant that remained to her of her former life. She wished too, that even this rootlet might be torn adrift, for she would rather have faced death in its entirety than hover over the void.

* * * * *

Mabuse went backwards and forwards in his room. He was like a caged beast, caught between his rage for vengeance and lust of domination on the one hand and the resistance raised to the attainment of his goal on the other. That which baffled him was such a trifle, merely the memories binding a wife to the hours she has passed with her husband, either alone or in company, and because it was so slight an obstacle, the desire to remove and destroy it utterly possessed him with fury such as he had not known till now.

Spoerri entered. He was dressed as a soldier. “What is that for?” asked Mabuse morosely, but he did not wait for an answer, and asked about George’s movements.

“He is at the villa in Schachen. He is very cautious, and does not go out.”

“What is he doing there?”

“At night he helps to bring the store of cocaine under the summer-house into Switzerland. I have found something fresh which they are ready to take there. Ether.”

“What is the ether for?”

“Folks are beginning to take it.”

“Who? What folks? Where?”

“Our folks, in Switzerland!”

“Your folks; how many have you?”

“We can get it to the others!”

“That reminds me of the girls you were sending to Switzerland, to speed up the smuggling of salvarsan. I don’t want to hear anything about business matters. You understand, nothing.”

“I won’t say any more about it.”

“Perhaps, Spoerri, there’ll be no need for that sort of thing any more!”