Grantville Gazette 46 gg-46

by Paula Goodlett

  "What do you want to know, mein Herr?"

  "First you should stop this 'mein Herr' Zeugs. Even if we are talking German now, we're on first names in the Lokschuppen. We're all workers here."

  "But you are the 'boss', mein-Marshall."

  "No matter. Tell me what you think I should know about you. And take your time."

  Wolfgang looked at the table. There was his "form," so Marshall already knew his career. But not his aims. Wolfgang looked up again. While he was gathering his thoughts, his eyes traveled through the room, and then out through the window.

  The steam wagon he had seen before was just passing by. But something was wrong. There was no longer a young man sitting on the chair. And that steering wheel was missing, too.

  Completely forgetting where he was, Wolfgang jumped up to look at the lower part of this wagon. The young man was dangling there upside down, his foot entangled somewhere on the wagon, his head pounding against the cobblestones of the street.

  "Jessas, Maria und Josef!" Wolfgang shouted, falling into his Erzgebirgisch.

  Marshall followed his gaze with his eyes and then jumped up.

  "Come with me," he screamed and ran out of the room.

  Wolfgang followed him. Out in the yard he could just see the wagon disappear into one of the buildings, crashing through a large wooden door, followed by the young men who had been cheering before but now were yelling and crying.

  Then "Thump, thump, thump" a continuous thunder came from the building, where the wagon had disappeared. Wolfgang ran after Marshall. They entered the building, where Wolfgang suddenly felt at home. This was obviously a foundry. A small furnace could be seen on the other side of a large room. Sand, coal and several types of metal were heaped up along one wall.

  And in the middle was that wagon thumping against the furnace.

  "Oh my God!" Wolfgang shouted. The furnace was obviously heavy enough not to be moved by the wagon, but another-older-man was also lying under the thing. Some of the young men tried to approach the wagon, but the heat of the furnace drove them away. The force of the wagon had opened the furnace door, and even some of the melting dripped down to earth.

  Other men were helplessly standing there and looking.

  "Where's the master?" Marshall asked, and several men pointed to under the wagon. "Shit!" The American looked around, apparently as helpless as the others.

  Wolfgang's eyes examined the room. There had to be. .There! On a shelf lay a founder's clothes. A heavy leather apron; gloves and spats from the same material. He ran to the shelf and started to don these things.

  When Marshall recognized what he was doing, he followed Wolfgang and helped him into the heavy garments. "Here," he said and handed Wolfgang something uncommon. It was a kind of hood, but with a window to look through.

  "Do you have water? Can you wet me?" Wolfgang asked, while he was putting on the hood.

  "Sure," Marshall said.

  "But only me! Don't hit the furnace!" A small part of Wolfgang's mind was wondering what would happen afterwards. He was just giving orders to his prospective employer.

  But he wiped the thoughts away. Saving lives was now top priority. Firing before hiring was to come later. Through the hood, he could see-not very well-but hear nothing, so he didn't know if Marshall had heard him.

  He started in the direction of the wagon, when he suddenly noticed Marshall pounding on his shoulder. He lifted the hood again.

  "There's a lever on the locomobile."

  Wolfgang's eyes followed Marshall's finger. "Yes, I can see it."

  "Push it down. That will stop the thing."

  "In Ordnung." He nodded, and then lowered the hood again. When he approached the wagon, he noticed water beginning to pour over him. Continuously. They have a hose. That's good.

  He could sense the heat, but it didn't really bother him. But the lever did. He could barely reach it, and that infernal vehicle was still moving back and forth. There was only one possibility.

  When the wagon hit the furnace again, Wolfgang seized the pole where the steering wheel had been. He leapt onto the vehicle and just got hold of the lever, when the wagon hit the furnace again. In spite of the shudder that threatened to throw him down, he kept his grip and forcefully lowered the lever.

  It worked.

  The wagon ceased moving.

  Wolfgang took a deep breath; then climbed down. He looked at the young man, but he was obviously dead, his head a mass of blood.

  But the master under the wagon-

  "Meister Loffler, is that you?" Wolfgang shouted, but the hood muffled his voice. He had seen that man in Austria; he had been one of the masters in Prettau.

  The master's face was red and burned, but he opened his mouth.

  Then closed it again. He was alive.

  Wolfgang managed to get his hands under the older man's armpits and started dragging. A loud shriek penetrated the hood, but at this moment he couldn't consider this.

  Backwards he moved, until he felt a hand on his shoulder. Marshall was there. Wolfgang removed the hood. Marshall had a tankard in his hand. "Water?"

  "Oh, yes, thank you." Wolfgang seized the tankard and gulped half of its contents, then poured the rest over his head.

  Two young men appeared with a litter and proficiently sped Master Loffler away.

  "What about Peter?" Marshall pointed to the body of the young man who still dangled from the wagon.

  Wolfgang shook his head. "He's dead. Do you have a rope? We must move the wagon away from the furnace. It's too hot there."

  "Can you manage that?"

  "I've managed worse things." And so Wolfgang once more covered his head with the hood, took the end of the rope Marshall handed him, and wrapped it around the wagon's rear axle.

  While the other men were slowly hauling the wagon out of the foundry, Wolfgang supported the body of the young man so the wheels couldn't torture him anymore.

  Outside, a crowd had gathered. Many hands took the young man's body and helped Wolfgang to remove the heavy protective clothing.

  Although all of them were obviously shocked, he received a huge amount of backslapping. It seemed he had introduced himself properly.

  Then he followed Marshall back to the office building.

  "When can you start working here?" Marshall asked.

  Wolfgang was puzzled. "But we have not yet had the interview."

  "Do you think it could tell me something I don't know yet? After this?" He pointed to the foundry.

  Wolfgang shrugged. "Perhaps not. What do you want me to do?"

  "Isn't that obvious? We need a leader for the foundry team. Loffler is definitely out for the next few months. The doctor said he doesn't know if the old man will ever return."

  Wolfgang was stunned. "But I'm no master."

  "We'll change that as soon as possible. But we need you now. You've seen these youngsters. They can build a steam car, but they fail completely if something unexpected happens."

  Marshall rose and extended a hand. "Deal?"

  Wolfgang nodded and his hand. "Deal!"

  Nikki's classroom, Jena Lokschuppen

  The next day

  It had been a horrible school day. The day before that dreadful accident with a steam car had happened, and Peter, one of Nikki's students, had lost his life. Everyone was still in shock, so she had decided to let her students read and translate sentences from a Washington Post article on the Challenger catastrophe in 1986.

  The students were rather astonished that such accidents still happened up-time. It seemed that knowledge helped them.

  While the students were leaving, she saw Marshall outside the classroom, with a middle-sized, mid-twenties, brawny-good-looking, very good-looking-down-timer at his side. Then they both entered the classroom.

  "Nikki," Marshall said, "This is Wolfgang Hilliger, your new student.

  "Wolfgang, das ist Nikki Bourne, deine neue Lehrerin."

  They shook hands. Nikki tried to divert her gaze from the d
own-timer. "Wolfgang, nice to meet you. But, Marshall, you haven't introduced new students to me personally before."

  Marshall closed the classroom door.

  "There are two reasons. Wolfgang, sorry for speaking English now.

  "First: Wolfgang has to speed up in American language very fast. He's taking over the foundry from Master Loffler. He will direct the research on better bronze alloys, so he needs to scan through the Tech Center books on that issue very soon. He also needs a special vocabulary on metallurgy. So you two will have at least two hours of private lessons every workday."

  Nikki looked up. Private lessons. With this very, very good-looking guy. O. .kay. Nikki, stop it. He's too old for you.

  While she was still thinking, Marshall continued.

  "And second: Yesterday's 'accident' was in fact not an accident. Somebody sawed on the steering axle, and so the wheel broke off."

  Nikki's eyes widened. "What? Who did that?"

  Marshall frowned. "'Whodunit.' Yeah, that's exactly the question. The night before yesterday, that steam car was locked up in a metal workshop. But one of the windows was open, so nearly everybody could have come in.

  "But one somebody used a hacksaw. Took it off a toolbox, and put it back; we found no traces of an intensive search. So the person apparently knew where to find the saw in near darkness." He stopped.

  Nikki looked at him then at Wolfgang.

  "Yes," Marshall continued now changing to German. "Wolfgang arrived here yesterday. He's the only one completely free from suspicion. And you."

  "Because I'm American?"

  "No, because you never have been in the metal workshop. And even if you had, have you ever sawed a steel pipe?"

  "What?"

  "That's what I thought. It was done by someone who knew what he did and considerably exceeds your physical strength."

  Nikki frowned. Her "physical strength"-or better the lack thereof-had always been one of her biggest-ha! — flaws. In the meantime, she had discovered that "Puppchen,"which the Four Johns had called her, meant "dolly." Perhaps they meant it to be friendly, nevertheless it was nearly insulting.

  "And you want us," she pointed to Wolfgang and herself, "to play Holmes and Watson? Or better Wolfe and Goodwin? Not that I would call Wolfgang fat."

  Not in the least, with all those bulging muscles. .

  "Entschuldigung," Wolfgang interjected, "what do these names mean? Will they help us?"

  "No," Marshall laughed. "They are 'consulting detectives.'"

  "Yes, what?"

  "Oh, I forgot. There is nothing like 'criminal investigation' in this century, only torture. Okay. Here's an example: Have you heard about Cain and Abel?"

  "Genesis four? Certainly. Who hasn't?"

  "Okay. How do you know what happened there? Who told the author of the Bible? Did he ask Cain? Why should he tell him 'I murdered my brother'? And don't even think about torturing Cain."

  "There were witnesses."

  "Very good. First rule of a detective: find witnesses; ask them. But keep in mind: All witnesses lie, or at best tell what they think is the truth. So find as many witnesses as possible, ask them, compare their testimonies and ask again if you find differences.

  "But if there weren't any witnesses? The world was very sparsely inhabited at that time. What else is there?"

  Wolfgang frowned, and then beamed. "The weapon! 'Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.' Perhaps he used a weapon."

  "Okay. Second rule: find objects related to the deed. Look at the corpse-I won't tell you what they did up-time-perhaps you can see what kind of weapon was used. Then look for appropriate objects. If you can find something at the scene, you have to find evidence about who used it. If you find a weapon in the possession of a suspect, you need to prove that it is the murder weapon.

  "That doesn't apply here, but that's the way a detective ought to think. Do you understand me?"

  Wolfgang nodded slowly, smiling. "I think so. It's the way of thinking like Daniel in the crime stories did."

  Nikki and Marshall looked at each other puzzled.

  Wolfgang continued. "Daniel thirteen, where he solves Susanna's case, by proving that two witnesses lied, and Daniel fourteen, where he convicts the priests of Bel from their footprints."

  Nikki shook her head. "In our Bible, Daniel ends with chapter twelve. But it seems he in fact was an early predecessor of Holmes."

  Then to Marshall: "I've got The Complete Sherlock Holmes at home in Grantville."

  "Very good," Marshall smiled, "send a telegram to your Mom and have her send the books here. The company will pay for it all. Then you can use them for Wolfgang's private lessons."

  Every time he used that term, Nikki flinched a little.

  "But don't get me wrong," Marshall continued. "I don't want any of you to get into danger. Perhaps we have an agent here from a foreign government, or it's a case of greed or hate. Nikki, you'll brief Wolfgang in detective methods, and you can chat with your students about this. Wolfgang, you'll try to investigate."

  The next day

  "They are different!" Wolfgang was astonished. The black stains on the glass looked similar from a distance, but using a magnifying glass, he could see different patterns. "Arches, loops and whorls," that little girl had called them.

  Hmmm. That little girl is not a child; she's eighteen. She has been in school for twelve years. She knows much more about these science things than me. And she's schnuckelig. Wolfgang, stop it. She's too young for you.

  Aloud he said, "And you say that no two of them are alike in the whole world?"

  "Yes, even with the six thousand million people in our world, nobody ever found two fingerprints from different people that were the same. And all of your ten fingers have a different pattern."

  And it was surprisingly easy. He had used some fine iron filings from the metalworking shop, and a very soft brush to distribute them over the glass. The bottle he had held before now showed black stains at each point he previously had his fingers on. And at other places. Perhaps the glassmaker had touched the bottle or somebody who had cleaned it. That led to another thought.

  "But how can I find out whose fingerprints are the others here?"

  Nikki frowned. "That's exactly our problem in this century. It was the same in our own, but the FBI had a big database, where all known criminals were registered with their prints."

  "The what had what?"

  "Never mind. But we've got fingerprints on that hacksaw and on the steering axle and as soon as we have a suspect, we can ask him for his prints."

  "Give him a bottle? Or two bottles at the same time?"

  Nikki laughed. "Did you watch too many episodes of Columbo? No, it's much simpler."

  She opened her desk, fetched a sheet of paper, and an inkpad. "Give me your hand and extend one finger."

  Her hand was petite and soft. She seized his hand, rolled the finger onto the inkpad and then on the paper. There it was. His fingerprint saved for eternity. Or at least until the paper was burned.

  Wolfgang checked with the magnifier. Yes. It had the same pattern as his forefinger's stain on the glass.

  Wolfgang cleared his throat. "So we now only need to find a suspect."

  "'Only' isn't the word I thought appropriate. 'Big task' would be a better term."

  Some days later

  "It's frustrating," Wolfgang said groaning. "There are at least twenty people who are familiar with the metal workshop's arrangements. But I think we can drop the 'foreign agent' idea."

  "Why do you think that?" Marshall wondered.

  "The action did not yield any consequences. If we hadn't locked the steam car up until now, the young machinists would only have needed half an hour to fix it. An agent could have locked the security valve and the whole steam engine would have blown up."

  "It's fascinating," Nikki said thoughtfully, "how fast a seventeenth-century bell founder grasps technical concepts like these."

  "Oh, I only repeat the words I hea
rd from the guys in the workshop." Nevertheless, Wolfgang blushed. "No," he continued. "This deed was especially targeted to the driver. But from all the people I talked with, I found no one who hated Peter."

  "Me too," Nikki continued. "I mentioned him several times in the class, and all I saw and heard was regret and sympathy."

  "And," Wolfgang lifted a finger, "The death was not necessarily intended. Nobody saw exactly what happened when the axle broke, but they all said he could have stopped the engine without the wheel, exactly how I did it in the foundry.

  "Perhaps he was so surprised that he stood up and fell from the car. And even that would not have been mortal, if his foot hadn't become entangled."

  "But it was intentional," Marshall interjected. "Somebody wanted to do him harm or make fun of him."

  "Of him?" Nikki asked. "Or of the driver? Was Peter the only one who drove that infernal thing?"

  Marshall and Wolfgang looked at each other.

  Wolfgang said: "Clever question." Marshall nodded.

  Nikki blushed.

  The next day

  "I think we've got it-more or less," Wolfgang said.

  Nikki nodded. "Julius."

  Marshall frowned. "Julius?"

  "Yes," Wolfgang said. "Julius Hartung was the target. He's an asshole." He grinned.

  "He didn't learn that word from me," Nikki protested.

  "No the term is common knowledge, and the fact, too. 'Julius is an arrogant asshole,' they all say. I only wonder that nobody calls him an 'arrogant Catholic asshole.' Nearly all team members are Lutherans."

  "It's fascinating," Marshall said, "how fast religious disputes disappear, when people work together and build something together. And are too tired afterwards to talk about religion.

  "And you think Julius was the target of that prank?"

  "Certainly," Nikki said confidently. "He boasted 'I can drive that thing without a wheel.' Perhaps he can do it. But he was sick that day."

  "Yes," Wolfgang continued, "and so Peter assumed the driver's role. If I could only remember my first day better. I don't know who of the team members was not running behind him and cheering.

  But-" he stopped. His forehead showed deep furrows.