Written in the years 1927–8, it was published as Король, дама, валет (Korol', dama, valet) in Russian in October 1928 and then translated into German by Siegfried von Vegesack as König, Dame, Bube: ein Spiel mit dem Schicksal.

[1] Franz Bubendorf, a young man from a small provincial town, is sent away from home to work in the Berlin department store of his well-to-do "uncle" (actually, his mother's cousin), Kurt Dreyer.

At the last moment, however, the plot is suspended by penny-pinching Martha when she learns from Dreyer that he is about to close a very profitable business deal, selling the mannequin scheme to his American associate Mr Ritter.

The poster depicts playing card characters in which "the King wore a maroon dressing gown, the Knave a red turtleneck sweater, and the Queen a black bathing suit."

Meanwhile "Goldemar" had been mentioned for a second time as representing the god of chance in his play on the very day that Martha purchases the black bathing suit and Dreyer providentially saves his life by deciding to sell his mannequins to Mr Ritter.

The presentation of his characters as unidimensional playing cards in the Goldemar poster, then as performing store dummies, is already dehumanising enough, but in the revised translation of 1968 this is given a satirical and prophetical twist.

The portrayal of Franz is that of a German who is easily manipulated and surrenders his moral judgment until, in the book's climactic scene, he is described as having "reached a stage at which human speech, unless representing a command, was meaningless".

[4] The author and his wife, though not directly identified, are portrayed near the end of the novel as a happy but "puzzling" couple who are also vacationing in the Baltic resort and speaking in an unidentified foreign tongue.

This authorial presence also extends into a corresponding doppelganger in the form of Mr. Vivian Badlook, a "fellow skier and teacher of English", who photographs Dreyer in Davos and whose shadow falls over the photo.