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 heart-beats 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 phantasy 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!