Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler

Translator’s Note

Since there is no actual equivalent of the position of Staatsanwalt it is almost impossible to find an English rendering that conveys its full meaning. In part the duties assimilate those of the Public Prosecutor, but in England we can hardly conceive of an official of high judicial status personally identifying himself with his cases to the extent of disguising himself and playing the part of a detective. Wenk’s position appears to combine some of the offices which would here be delegated to various individuals acting more or less independently as subordinates to a higher and single authority. He was a barrister and an LL.D., and a person of some influence, however, as his threat to the governor of the women’s prison, and his treatment of the night editor prove.

In accordance with modern German usage I have adhered to the original in dropping the “von,” when intimates of the same social class are speaking to or of each other, maintaining it in the more formal intercourse and the reports tendered by social inferiors.

Readers should note that in the currency now prevailing, the amounts staked by Hull and his friends would be tens of thousands, and his total losses would run into many millions.

I

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.

He drank a brandy and soda, and then ordered a bottle of champagne. The only effect of that was to make him open another compartment of his pocketbook and bring out the thousand-mark notes which he had procured from the bank that morning. His bad luck became really fantastic. Even when he held good cards it seemed as if in some obscure region of his mind a mysterious warning sealed his lips, and instead of staking a substantial sum, he wagered a trifling amount merely.

It was now the visitor’s turn to pass on the office of banker, but he volunteered to continue to hold it on account of Hull. He said: “If you gentlemen do not object, I will remain banker for a few more rounds. You see how the money seems to cling to me. I am the guest of your hospitable club, so please consider how difficult my position is with regard to Herr von Hull, and grant my request.” His speech was polite, and carefully enunciated, yet there was a masterful ring about the words, as if the speaker would brook no refusal.

The club attendant eyed the guest suspiciously, but he was using the cards provided by the club and fresh packs were opened every time. The play grew more animated. A good deal had been drunk, and several round the table were slightly intoxicated. The guest did not refrain from drinking, and his behaviour was in no way peculiar. He had a steady and lingering glance for everyone who looked at him, and his large grey eyes seemed to have something dominating about them, hardly in accordance with a mere game. His hands were large and fleshy, and as steady as if carved out of wood, while the fingers of the other men, far younger than he, were already quivering with excitement.

Hull continued playing, though his pocketbook grew lighter and lighter. “What is the matter with me?” he continually asked himself. He wanted to rise from the table and miss a round, so that he could get a mouthful of fresh air at the window and gain a little calm from looking into the silent night. But he sat as if glued to his chair, pressing his elbows down on the crimson cloth, and his thoughts escaped his control, falling into a void like that of deep slumber.

And yet he was not really a reckless player. He was accustomed to reflect and to follow the run of luck, making use of chances that were favourable to him, and reducing his stakes when he saw that the odds were against him.

This evening, however, he seemed to know no bounds. No amount seemed of any value in his eyes, and it appeared as if he were almost glad to lose, and saw his notes change hands with a kind of satisfaction. Something would be sure to happen ere long. The players seemed far too slow in dealing, he thought; they took an endless time in declaring their stakes, and the notes crawled round the table at a snail’s pace.

He drank freely, moreover, and the fancies which he could no longer control were like fiery steeds escaping the driver’s restraining hand and running away into a trackless wilderness. The very air seemed to have been exhausted, and nothing existed for him but the game.

Folks began to discuss his bad luck. He certainly drew unlucky cards, but he was playing his hand badly, and taking unreasonable risks. His friends wanted to restrict the stakes and talk of the final round. At first Hull did not take in what they were saying, and they had to explain their words; then he drew himself up and became furiously angry, shouting in his wrath and beating his fist on the table.

Then the stranger’s big eyes seemed to withdraw a little from him and the rest; their glance appeared to be directed inward and some of their lustre vanished. He laid down his cards and put his money into his pocket, doing it carelessly, however, as if it were merely a handkerchief. There was one more round to finish. Hull called out, “I’ll play the bank,” and the stranger dealt him the cards. He glanced at them quickly. His total was twenty-one. … Then something happened, something strange and inexplicable. He threw his cards face downwards upon the heap, saying, “I have lost again.”

The guest immediately showed his cards. His eyes regained their glitter, he counted his points, named the total, and threw his cards down on the table.

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.

Hull made a slight gesture.

“My remark had nothing to do with you,” he said quietly; “it concerned myself only. How much do I owe you?” he asked in a friendly tone.

“Thirty thousand marks!”

Hull emptied his pocketbook.

“You must content yourself till tomorrow afternoon with ten thousand and, of course, an I.O.U. for the rest. Will you be so good as to write the amount and your address in this notebook?”

When Hull got his little notebook back, he read in it:

Balling,
Room 15, Excelsior Hotel.

He passed over his I.O.U., smiling pleasantly as he did so.

“I am ready to give you your revenge, Herr von Hull,” said Balling, as he rose. “Gentlemen, may I offer you my thanks for the evening’s hospitality? Good night!”

He said this almost abruptly, but in so decisive a tone that it brought the others to their feet. Karstens offered him his car.

“No, thank you; my own is waiting for me.”

He walked away somewhat stiffly, as though tired out, and vouchsafed no further farewell of any sort. The club attendant conducted him to the outer door.

“Hull, you are off your head,” said Karstens, when the stranger had left the room.

“What did really happen?” asked Hull quietly.

“Ask your purse!”

“My pocketbook is empty. Who won all my money?”

“Your friend there,” said Karstens, pointing to the door.

“My friend! I never set eyes on him before! How did he get here?”

“Hull, you certainly are needing the services of a good physician. Emil, bring the telephone directory.” Karstens turned over the leaves. “Here we are: Dr. Schramm, Psychopathological treatment, 35, Ludwigstrasse. …”

“I don’t understand your joke, my dear Karstens.”

“Well, who brought this fine vingt-et-un player here but you?”

“That is not true, Karstens.”

“Go to No. 35, Ludwigstrasse, my dear fellow, and quickly too.”

“Of course it was you who brought him, Hull,” said another.

“I? I brought him? At any rate, I don’t remember a thing about it, but it may be so.”

Hull then withdrew, exhausted and stupefied, brooding over the problem which had so strangely and suddenly opened up before him that evening.

When he awoke, towards morning, he had a dim and fleeting remembrance, and he seemed to recall the stranger sitting at the same table with him in the Café Bastin. He had an idea that they had been talking together, and that it was about the theatre, but what they had said, and which theatre it was about, he had not the slightest idea. In the dim recesses of his mind he recalled merely the sensation of a dazzling reflector that seemed to throw its beams upon him during the conversation. Sleep was no longer possible, but, try as he would to pierce these elusive fragments of memory and penetrate to the reality behind them, he was quite unable to make anything out of them.

The next afternoon brought him no enlightenment either. By four o’clock he had obtained the twenty thousand marks, and he made his way to the Excelsior Hotel. At his request a telephone message was sent to Room 15. Herr Balling was there, he was told, and requested the gentleman to send up his card. This Hull did, following close upon it.

In the middle of Room 15 he found a man whom he had never seen in his life before. He was a short, stout, clean-shaven man, apparently an American. He made a very stiff bow.

“I beg your pardon,” said Hull. “I must have been directed wrongly. I wanted Room 15.”

“This is it,” said the other.

“Then Herr Balling must have given me the wrong number.”

“My name is Balling.”

“This time I am not dreaming, I am in full possession of my senses,” said Hull to himself, and then aloud, he continued: “But the mystery can soon be explained. Did you write this?” and he extended the notebook in which the stranger of the previous night had written his name and address.

“Certainly not,” replied the stout man.

“Then I am not in your debt to the tune of twenty thousand marks?”

“My time is very limited, and I am expecting a friend on business,” said the other, looking at his watch.

“I will make way for your friend, sir, at once, and will only put one more question to you. It is not my fault that I am bothering you; I have been misled in some way.”

The other nodded.

“Possibly you are acquainted,” Hull went on, “with a gentleman of about sixty, with large grey eyes, a big nose and white whiskers. He wears good and well-cut clothes and a tall grey hat, and his name is also Balling.”

“I can only repeat that I know nothing about him,” said the Balling of No. 15.

Hull thereupon took his leave. Downstairs he asked whether there were a second Herr Balling in the hotel, but the answer was “No.” Had Room 15 been occupied by any Herr Balling who had just left? “No.” Was the writing in the pocketbook known? Again there was a negative reply. “For the first time in my life,” thought Hull, “I find myself unable to pay a debt of honour.”

Gradually he became uneasy. What a mysterious affair this was! Nothing of the kind had ever occurred before. He had won money and lost it again … sometimes much, and at other times little. He had been in financial straits. He had had some trouble about a girl he cared for. Once, indeed, he had been seriously wounded in a duel. Yet all that was comprehensible and straightforward, so to speak. But this tale of Herr Balling and the twenty thousand marks had some mystery or other behind it. He had forgotten that it was he who introduced the stranger to the club. He had played as if he had lost his head. He had incurred a debt of twenty thousand marks, and his creditor had furnished a name and address which did actually exist but were not his, and, moreover, he would not have the money. …

If it had not happened that Hull had no mistress at the moment, he could have talked this affair over. He pondered over it alone while he walked along Lenbach Square and the Promenade, looking everybody in the face in the hope that he might encounter the distinguished stranger among them. He went to the Café Bastin and scanned all the faces there. He sat down at a table and waited to see whether the genius loci would be favourable to him and recall the vanished recollections; but nothing came of it, and he stood up again, a prey to increasing uneasiness. It seemed as if in the invisible depths behind him another power, extraneous to himself, was pursuing him, pressing down upon him, trying to jump on his back as a monkey might do, and lead him into unlucky adventures of some kind or another.

Hull forced himself to return to his lonely bachelor chambers. There he met Karstens, and greeted him with relief. But Karstens at once asked:

“Well, has your memory returned?”

“My dear fellow, there’s something wrong with me!”

“With the twenty thousand marks?”

“No, there they are!” and he tapped his breast-pocket. “Nobody wants them, it appears. There is a Herr Balling in Room 15 at the Excelsior, but he isn’t my man, and we’ve never met before. He has never played vingt-et-un, and nobody owes him twenty thousand marks. I can’t get rid of the money, and it makes me feel creepy! Something is going to happen to me. Who is there near me whom I cannot see? There’s certainly something wrong with me!”

“Come to the club! Perhaps your Herr Balling will go there to fetch the money himself.”

“Yes, but what about the real Balling in No. 15?”

“Well, that’s certainly odd, I grant you. Come along.”

“All right. Perhaps he’ll be there.”

In the club that night there was no play. The curious circumstance had so worked upon the members’ imagination that no one felt the need of trying his luck. Hull was overwhelmed with well-meaning or obtuse advice.

“Emil,” said one of them to the attendant, “what did his car look like?”

“An excellent one, Herr Baron, a twenty-horsepower at the least—a closed car with a body like a royal cradle, if one may use such a comparison nowadays … so smooth and well rounded and polished. It started off with a great bound, and soon vanished. It was a first-class car. I kept a close eye on the gentleman, and I saw that he had the devil’s own luck when he played against Herr von Hull. He played quite straight, however.”

They learnt nothing more about the stranger. Nobody came either to the club or to Hull’s rooms to ask for the twenty thousand marks or to offer him his revenge.

A few days afterwards Hull made acquaintance with a girl who was performing jazz dances in the Bonbonnière. She was partly Mexican, she told him. She soon effected a diversion in his thoughts, and in her company he rapidly got rid of the twenty thousand marks which he could not pay over to the stranger.

“It seems as if you were meant to give the money to a woman instead of to a man,” remarked Karstens, when he told him that he was now free of his worries once more.