[VM01] The Empty Mirror

by J Sydney Jones

  “And the mysterious Sergeant Tod?”

  “Alas, I have few connections with the military. But I did contact Krafft-Ebing, who knows a former member of the General Staff.”

  “Professionally?”

  Gross shrugged the ironic question off. “It is important that the man is no longer actively involved in the military. I am sure you understand why.”

  “So that he, in fact, is not part of the cabal.”

  “Ah, it is now a cabal? Yes. Conspiracy, cabal. Give it what name you like, it would appear that members of the state itself are involved in these crimes. Krafft-Ebing assured me absolute secrecy. His man will ask discreet questions regarding the existence or nonexistence of one Sergeant Tod and the Rollo Commandos. Nothing that will raise eyebrows or red flags.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Wait, Werthen. And finish our breakfast.”

  At that moment there came a loud and insistent rapping at the apartment door. Whoever their visitor was, he or she was too impatient even to use the bell. Frau Blatschky had been given strict instructions not to answer the door. Instead, both Werthen and Gross moved to the foyer, where their pistols were kept in the umbrella stand. They drew the guns out; Werthen peered through the fish-eye peephole in the door and saw a large, portly man with a long, gray beard and wearing a brown bowler. He was dressed in an expensive-looking brown suit to match the hat.

  “Do you know him?” Gross whispered.

  Werthen shook his head. “But he looks all right.”

  “Looks?” Gross hissed, as if appalled at such a suggestion.

  “I know,” Werthen whispered back. “Books and covers and all that. But he doesn’t appear to be an enemy.”

  A violent rapping at the door made Gross cock his pistol. “Slowly then,” he said. “With the chain still on.”

  Gross took up position to one side of the door while Werthen cautiously opened it a crack.

  “What have you done with my daughter?” the man outside shouted as soon as he caught sight of Werthen.

  “I am sorry. Who are you, sir?”

  “Damn it all, man, I am Joseph Meisner, father of Berthe.”

  Werthen fell over himself to put his pistol away and get the chain off and invite the gentleman in. Gross likewise uncocked his weapon and stuck it in the outer pocket of his morning jacket.

  Meisner huffed in, burly and worried-looking. He and Werthen had not yet met, though Berthe had of course apprised him of the engagement. Meisner looked him up and down, then shifted his attention to Gross, still standing by the door.

  “Herr Meisner.” Werthen put his hand out. “It is a great pleasure, sir.”

  Meisner did not take the proffered hand. “I only wish I could say the same. Now, what is all this about my daughter?”

  “Well…” Werthen felt for once a lack of words. He was not prepared for such an altercation. “We intend to be married, sir. That is-”

  “I know that, you dunderhead! Where is my daughter?”

  “You have freshly arrived from Linz, sir?” Gross said now.

  “And who would you be?”

  Gross introduced himself, and Meisner squinted at the sound of the name. “As in the criminologist? So you already know.” He turned to Werthen. “You brought him in then, without consulting me first?”

  “Sir,” Werthen said, “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Berthe, you dunce. My daughter. Your betrothed. She’s been abducted. Or don’t you bother to keep track of your fiancées?”

  “Abducted.” Werthen felt the air go out of him. They had been so painstaking about precautions for their own safety, and meanwhile his one love had been left unprotected, shunted aside, in fact.

  “How do you know this, sir?” Gross asked, taking charge.

  “A note. Whoever perpetrated this outrage sent me a note telling me that my daughter would be returned only if I spoke with the Advokat here.”

  “You have the note with you, sir?”

  Meisner groped into several pockets before finally finding it. Gross made no effort to stop him, Werthen noticed. Little good would fingerprints do them with none on file to check against.

  Gross unfolded the note, which looked to be on expensive paper. He read it once, sniffed, then read it again. “The blackguards,” he sputtered, handing the note to Werthen, who now perused it:

  Dear Sir,

  Your daughter will come to no harm if you act promptly. You must convince Advokat Werthen to cease his investigations. That is your duty now. Once it is clear that such investigations have been brought to a close, Berthe Meisner will be returned to her home and life.

  Sincerely, a Friend.

  Werthen’s blood ran cold reading this. My God, what could he have been thinking to put her in harm’s way like this? It was the story of his first love, Mary, all over again: She had lain dying while Werthen busily pursued his studies. Now, given a second chance at love, he had committed the same sin. He had been so wrapped up in the investigation that he had not given proper thought to Berthe’s safety. If he was able to get her back safely, Werthen vowed never again to ignore the person who should be uppermost in his life.

  “Have you checked your daughter’s lodgings?” Gross asked.

  “Of course I have. I took the early train from Linz after receiving this note-”

  “In what manner?” Gross said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He means how did you receive the note,” Werthen said, finally shaking off the initial shock and willing himself into action once again.

  “A street youth simply knocked at my door and said a man paid him a half crown to deliver it.”

  “Did you perhaps inquire after this man?” Werthen asked.

  “Why should I have? I had no idea what was in the note at first. By the time I’d read it, the child had vanished.”

  “Your daughter’s lodgings?” Gross prompted him.

  “Yes. Well, arriving in Vienna, I went straight to her fiat, but there was no answer. The Portier had not seen her since Tuesday. Then I went to the school where she volunteers. They told me she did not come to work yesterday and they had had no word from her. The children at the school missed her, that was what they told me.”

  Werthen and Gross exchanged glances. “We will find her, Werthen,” Gross promised.

  “What is all this about?” Meisner said, his voice no longer full of outrage, but now tinged with fear and grief. “What investigation is this fiend talking of?”

  Another exchange of looks between the two. Gross nodded.

  “We should sit, Herr Meisner,” Werthen said, taking the older man by the arm. “There is much to tell.”

  As Werthen explained the investigation of the Prater murders that had eventually led to the very doors of the Hofburg, Gross used his magnifying glass to minutely examine the paper upon which the note to Herr Meisner had been written. Gross finished his labors first and sat quietly-uncommonly so, Werthen thought-as the lawyer finished his disquisition.

  “So somebody powerful wants to protect himself,” Herr Meisner said. “What a foolish way to go about it, kidnapping my daughter. Why not just kill you two?”

  The blatancy as well as the pure logic of the question took Werthen aback momentarily.

  Gross replied, “Not for lack of trying, Herr Meisner. But an apt question. One that I have just now been giving thought to myself.”

  “And double the fool,” Meisner continued, shaking his head. “For how can they be assured you will not pursue your investigations once Berthe has been returned?”

  “Exactly,” Werthen said.

  “I expect we shall discover that presently,” Gross said, holding up the note. “This piece of paper is, in effect, an invitation.”

  “What are you talking about?” Meisner said, regaining his former belligerent attitude. “It’s an extortionist’s bill of change, nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Is that so?” Gross said. “Then
where are the conditions?”

  “It says clearly enough here that once your infernal investigations have come to a halt, Berthe will be released.”

  “Those are no conditions, Herr Meisner. Those are demands. How, for example, can it be made clear ‘such investigations have been brought to a close,’ as herein demanded? Do we take a full-page advertisement out in the Wiener Zeitung saying Professor Doktor Gross and Advokat Werthen are pleased to announce that their investigations of the Prater murders have now been closed? Do we seek an audience with the emperor and say the same? Pahh.” Gross made a dismissive sound somewhere between a sneeze and a cough. “I tell you, Herr Meisner, this is not an extortionist’s letter, but a clear invitation to a meeting.”

  Werthen watched the two men square off against one another; they were too alike to ever find common ground, that was clear.

  “Now you are a clairvoyant, is that it, Professor Gross?”

  “There are no psychical tricks to my conclusion. It is all here.” He waved the note in the air. “Not in the text, but in the very paper upon which it is printed. I have made an exhaustive study of paper, you see, Herr Meisner.”

  “I suppose you have even written a monograph on the subject,” the man said with heavy irony.

  “Indeed I have. And I can tell you that this piece of paper has a footprint to it every bit as exact as that of a man. Firstly, the paper is of the finest linen content available. That immediately separates the writer from the mass of people. Then the watermark is very distinctive: the letter ‘W inside a circle, Kreis, which is the monogram for ‘Wernerkreis,’ the premier papermaker in Austria, with its main outlet on the Graben in the First District. Moreover, this particular watermark bears what appears to be a personal symbol at the very bottom, hardly legible to the naked eye, but which I could discern with the aid of a magnifying glass.”

  Gross stopped, looking awfully pleased with himself.

  “Well, out with it,” Meisner demanded. “What is it you found?”

  “The letters ‘AEIOU.’”

  Austriae est imperare orbi universo,” Werthen said. “‘It is Austria’s destiny to rule the world.’”

  “Very good, Werthen.”

  “Actually,” Herr Meisner said, “that simple series of vowels commissioned by Friedrich the third for his state carriage and churches and public buildings in Vienna, Graz, and Wiener Neustadt are hardly so simple of interpretation. Others have decoded their meaning as Austria erit in orbe ultima, Austria will exist eternally.’ Or even Alies Erdreich ist Österreich untertan, All the earth is subordinate to Austria.’ But whatever the translation, the higher meaning is the same, a belief in the historical calling of the House of Habsburg.”

  Gross and Werthen both looked at this Herr Meisner with new appreciation.

  “What?” he said. “Because a man manufactures shoes he cannot cultivate his mind? I will have you know I am, in addition to being an amateur historian, one of the foremost Talmudic scholars in Austria.” Then a pause and a shaking of his head. “I must apologize, gentlemen. It is not my usual manner to trumpet my achievements. I am distraught. The matter at hand is Berthe’s freedom and how to effect it.”

  “I appreciate the added information, Herr Meisner,” Gross said, also moderating his tone. “And you are correct, all interpretations of the insignia point to a member of or someone close to the House of Habsburg. We shall discover exactly who after a visit to Wernerkreis on the Graben.”

  They were shown into his office, an opulent space overlooking the newest tract of the Hofburg, the Heldenplatz, with the plane trees on the Ringstrasse beyond now beginning to turn yellow and orange. This was the room of a man who exerted ultimate power. You could feel the self-confidence in the enormous rosewood desk, the six Louis XV chairs gathered in a small conversation circle at one end of the room, in the abundance of Flemish tapestries of hunting scenes hanging from the walls, in the elegantly crafted star-parquet floor, in the Meissen fireplace, in the green brocade curtains framing floor-to-ceiling windows, in the rows of books that filled one wall. Gross examined the books as they waited; Werthen fidgeted with his tiepin.

  They had, with relative ease, discovered the identity of the person who used the AEIOU stationery. Gross had simply ordered a gift box of specialized stationery from the firm of Wernerkreis in the Graben, using those exact initials in the watermark, and when the clerk politely informed him that such an insignia was already in use, Gross feigned vague interest as to the identity of his doppelgänger. The clerk quite proudly announced the name, at which point Gross muttered, “Just as I thought.”

  They had taken what precautions they could. Herr Meisner was sent to stay with Klimt until they returned from their visit. If they did not return, then Meisner and Klimt would be sure to report them missing, and to supply the name of the guilty party to newspapers throughout Europe.

  Gross was certain they would make such a return, but Werthen was sure of nothing anymore. All of his fondest certainties had been turned on their heads by their investigation. But he would do whatever necessary now to see that Berthe was released unharmed. It was his fault she had been placed in danger in the first place. If he had only had the common sense to take her into his confidence as she had demanded, then she, too, would have been on guard. But he had hoped to shield her by simply keeping her in the dark, thinking her ignorance would be her protection, and never realizing that she would be used as a bargaining chip by a ruthless Machiavellian monster.

  Werthen’s ruminations were interrupted by an exclamation from Gross.

  “Ah. As I expected.” He pulled a thin pamphlet out of a section of the bookcase. “My monograph on the identification of paper types and watermarks. This is indeed a formal invitation, Werthen.”

  At that moment the double doors to the office were thrust open, and a tall, white-haired man swept into the room, dressed in the formal red robes and ermine collar of a Knight of the Golden Fleece.

  “Sorry to keep you gentlemen waiting,” Prince Grunenthal said as he crossed to his desk. He also wore the formal chain of the order, whose motto, engraved on the precious metals of the links, was “Not a bad reward for labor.” Werthen had always been mildly amused by the motto, the baseness, the crassness of it, in juxtaposition to the stated purposes of the Order of the Golden Fleece, to defend the Roman Catholic religion and to uphold the chivalric code of honor of knights. Grunenthal sat in a rather regal chair behind his desk, leaving Gross and Werthen to stand. Gross, however, replaced his monograph on paper and was quick to take a seat in one of the Louis XV chairs, distant from the desk. Werthen followed suit.

  “I forget my manners,” Grunenthal said, rising and crossing to join them. “I have been looking forward to this meeting for quite some time, though I do find myself torn in my emotions.”

  “You could have simply invited us, Prince Grunenthal,” Gross said, not bothering with small talk. “It was not necessary to kidnap Fräulein Meisner in order to get our attention.”

  “Hardly kidnap, Professor Gross. Let us say she is a guest of the state.”

  “Let us say that you are desperate, Prince Grunenthal.” Gross looked at him with his piercing eyes as if he could bore a hole through the man. Grunenthal returned the stare with equal intensity.

  “I want my fiancée back, Grunenthal,” Werthen said, purposely dropping the man’s title. He had forfeited any right to it, in Werthen’s opinion.

  “And you shall have her back, Advokat,” the prince said, now turning his stone-cold gaze upon Werthen, “directly we come to an agreement.”

  “Desperate,” Gross repeated. “Otherwise you would simply have had us killed, as you did all the others. But things are getting out of hand, aren’t they? Too many people are involved now. Who knows whom I or Werthen have told about this investigation? Who knows how many copies of our investigation notes I have sent to colleagues throughout Europe? Those questions are our life insurance, no? They are keeping us alive, for our very deaths would pro
ve our investigations were correct.”

  Grunenthal clapped his surprisingly tiny and well-manicured hands together slowly, menacingly. “Bravo, Professor Gross. It is a pleasure to finally confer with a man whose mind is equal to the task at hand. I would, of course, rather you were both … disposed of. But you are correct. That is no longer practicable. Therefore”-the prince shrugged, with palms upraised-“an agreement. A truce, as it were.”

  “Treaties are your forte, are they not, Prince?”

  “I pride myself that I have been of some use to the empire during my decades of service.”

  Werthen wanted simply to throttle the man, but knew that would not help the fate of Berthe. He understood that he had to keep himself under control and let Gross handle these matters.

  “A good diplomat knows about give-and-take,” Gross went on.“You have something we want, that is clear. Berthe Meisner. We, on the other hand, have something you badly need, our silence. I expect you will explain how we can guarantee our silence.”

  “Oh, indeed, I shall, sir. It is quite simple, really. You drop your investigations, tell your colleagues of your mistaken direction, refute any prior claims to knowledge of the identity of the killer and his master, or you shall find yourselves accused of the crimes.”

  The prince smiled with absolutely mirthless eyes. Werthen thought he had never seen a living man’s eyes so completely void of life.

  “I assume you have gathered certain ‘evidence’ that will further such a preposterous claim,” Gross said.

  “Of course. A bit of a hobby of mine, you know, criminology.”

  “I noticed.” Gross nodded toward the section of the bookshelves he had been perusing.

  “Yes. I possess all the basic texts on the subject,” Grunenthal said, “as well as some of the finest fabulists, Poe, Collins, even this new chap Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes. I have made an intensive study, you see. Your motive is quite wonderful, if you don’t mind my saying so. Hubris. Professional pride. You commit the most heinous series of murders so that you can solve them and gain international fame. That is, you and your henchman, Advokat Werthen.”