"The influence of breach-loading weapons and rapid-fire cannon over spears and bows and arrows," Barnett commented.
"Yes, even so. It is always the mighty who rule, it is a law of nature. The handle is to our grasp; if we do not take it, we have only ourselves to blame!" His hand went out convulsively at this image of his, and he grasped firmly at his imaginary handle.
Von Linsz's eyes gleamed, and his face had a queer rigidity for a second. And then this fleeting reaction was replaced by a broad smile. "But we must not speak of politics or other inanities on a beautiful day like this. We must enjoy the surroundings, the weather, the company. Tell me, Mr. Barnett, what is it like, the life of a journalist?"
They chatted for the next hour or so, while the paddle boat churned its way up the lake. It was shortly after one when the boat pulled up to the dock at Rezzonico, a picturesque ancient lakeside resort town.
"Ah!" Graf von Linsz got up and stretched. "Time for lunch. There is a very good inn here, from which one can peer up at three-hundred-year-old castle."
"Have we time?" Barnett asked.
"Officially, an hour and a half. Which, of course, means at least two hours. Come. Please. I will tell the captain to watch for us before he casts off. First-class passengers are valued by the company. Join us for lunch. It will be my pleasure."
"Why not?" Barnett said.
"We would be pleased," Cecily said.
The count led the way up the hill to the Trattoria da Cesare, where they gathered around a table under an ancient oak and settled down to enjoy a memorable lunch.
The more memorable because they had not yet finished when they heard the boat whistle sounding. "The boat's getting ready to pull out," Barnett said, rising. "We'd better head down to the dock."
"There is no need," Graf von Linsz told him, calmly sipping his glass of espresso.
"What do you mean?"
"Because you are not going anywhere just yet. Certainly not back on the boat."
"You may have pull with the captain," Barnett said, "but not enough to have him hold the boat waiting for us."
"Oh, he won't wait," von Linsz said. "Not for a minute." He took a revolver out of his waistband and pointed it at Barnett. "But you will."
"Oh, dear," Cecily said.
Barnett's impulse was to dive at the gun, and he might have done it, stupid as he realized it would be, if Cecily were not there. So he sat still. "What is it that you want?" he asked.
"Your master, if I may call him that, Professor Moriarty, interests us. We would very much like to know what his plans are."
"He isn't my 'master' and I have no idea."
Graf von Linsz smiled. "But how can I take your word for that? No, we must look into this more thoroughly. We await my carriage. Then you and your most lovely wife are going to accompany me to a small property I own nearby. There we shall talk."
Cecily turned to Jenny Vernet, who was sitting at the far side of the table, her hands demurely in her lap, watching the proceedings with interest. "Aren't you going to do anything about this, Miss Vernet?" she demanded.
Jenny Vernet shrugged. "I don't know what you think I can do," she said. "After all, he has the gun."
CHAPTER TWELVE — STONE WALLS
Hell hath no limits nor is circumscrib'd
In one self place; for where we are is Hell,
And where Hell is, there must we ever be:
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be Hell that is not Heaven.
— Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
The Vienna branch of the Austrian criminal police prided itself on being thorough, methodical, and up-to-date. Their criminal investigation department was headed by Dr. Hanns Gross, who had written the book on modern crime investigation (Handbuch für Untertsuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik—A Handbook for the Examining Magistrate Regarding a System of Criminalistics, 1883). Their system for processing not-yet-convicted prisoners and detainees (the distinction between the two was purely bureaucratic) combined the latest methods in identification and recordkeeping with the most modern techniques in criminal psychology.
The morning after his arrest, Paul Donzhof, in handcuffs and shackles, was brought before an examining magistrate. A document containing the charges against him was handed to the magistrate, who silently read it. Paul asked if he could see it or have it read aloud, and was ignored. The magistrate peered at Paul over the tops of his tortoise-shell glasses, shook his head sadly, and signed the order for Paul's indefinite detention while the case against him was being assembled. Paul was then transported to Heinzhof Prison, where he spent the night in a transit cell next to the guard room.
The next morning he was taken to the Prisoner Identification Section, where he had his photograph taken, full-face and profile, against a measured background grid; his head clamped into place so it would be precisely as far from the camera as all the other photographed heads. Then a technician in a white smock used a pair of giant calipers to take his anthropometric measurements; a means of criminal identification that had come into use by police departments all over Europe since it was devised by Alphonse Bertillon of the Paris Prefecture of Police a decade earlier.
The technician measured his height, the length of his outstretched arms, the length of his left foot, the lengths of several fingers on his left hand, the length of the left forearm, and several different measurements of his head. The photograph was affixed to an identification card, with the Bertillon numbers printed below. The information on the card was supposed to allow positive identification of Paul Donzhof from among thousands of others, should the need ever arise. The card was assigned a file number, filed, and cross-indexed by name, race, class of crime, and several of the Bertillon measurements. His modus operandi, peculiarities of dress or speech, and known criminal associates would be added by the records sergeant of the detective division as they were determined.
When the Identification Section was done with him, Paul was divested of all his clothing, which was put in a sack and tagged with his name and prison number. The sack was taken away to the Examination Section where the clothing, and especially the shoes, would be minutely examined under a microscope for traces of blood or other incriminating debris. Paul was then taken to a shower room, instructed to scrub himself well with a cake of dark-brown strong-smelling soap, and issued a prison-gray canvas pullover tunic and drawstring trousers. Then he was shut into a small cell on the first tier. All very businesslike and impersonal.
That was a week ago. Since then he had seen but four people: the guard who took him to the interrogation room on three separate mornings, the man who asked him questions, the barber who shaved him and trimmed his mustache and beard daily, and the trusty who came around to pick up his slop bucket every morning. His food trays were pushed through a slot in the iron door twice a day, and he never glimpsed more than a hand of whoever did the pushing. Once he had been taken to the weekly police line-up, designed to acquaint the local detectives with the current crop of malefactors. But since the light was in his eyes, and all the detectives were masked so the criminals couldn't return the favor and identify them, he didn't really see anyone on that brief excursion.
His interrogator was a stocky man with wire-framed glasses and a stubby black goatee who asked him questions without looking at him and wrote the answers on a thick-lined pad. The questions so far had been routine: name, age, place of residence, previous place of residence, occupation, nationality, parents' names and residence, schools attended, military service record, names of friends, teachers, schoolmates, and the like. He was asked about his relationship with the deceased Giselle Schiff, but the manner of her death or his supposed involvement in it was not discussed. He was also asked about his knowledge of or any supposed relationship with the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz, but the reason for the question was not forthcoming. He had heard on the street that the duke had been assa
ssinated that day, but why the police should link him with the event he had no idea, and at this point they were not telling. Just what crimes he was accused—or at least suspected—of, was a question that his interrogator refused to answer. When he asked on what charges he was being held, the interrogator smiled at him through irregular teeth, with a smile that was devoid of humor, and said, "You will be informed, Herr Donzhof." When he tried pointing out that he had been in a café at the time Giselle must have been murdered, and that surely someone there would remember him, the interrogator looked at him and said, "We'll get to that in due time, Herr Donzhof." When he asked what was known about the murder of Giselle, the interrogator replied, "That is not your concern, Herr Donzhof." He did not ask anything about the defunct duke, and no information on that subject was offered.
Paul knew how the system was supposed to work. Another up-to-date idea of the Austrian police, it had been described to him by several of the anarchists who had been arrested for this or that over the past few years. Based on the ideas of German psychiatrist Richard Krafft-Ebing, it was a reversal of what had been standard procedure. Instead of questioning him for hours endlessly, with occasional physical encouragements added to induce a certain amount of pain and a desire to talk, the new method was to isolate him and let him dwell on the enormity of his crimes until the desire to confess became overwhelming. Some prisoners had been known to confess endlessly and to anything and everything after a few weeks of this, just to have somebody listen to them; and the problem became to sort out the true confession from the made-up stories. Others were more stubborn, and for them the old methods were still available. Still others, an unfortunate few, went completely insane after a few weeks of isolation; a sure sign, the police felt, that they had been guilty of something.
For Paul the isolation was a blessing. The sudden seemingly random act of a baleful universe that had taken Giselle had left him numb. He felt as though every light were too bright and every sound too loud to bear, and the act of moving from place to place and answering simple questions took all his willpower and attention. He didn't have the energy to think of the charges against him, to speculate on what the authorities might know or think they know of his activities, or to worry about whether they knew or suspected his real identity. For the first few days after Giselle's death and his arrest he could not have discussed his activities in any coherent way, nor could he have told them his whereabouts at a given moment or his reasons for going to any particular place at whatever time.
It seemed to him that whatever significance his life might have had was now gone, dissipated with the death of his love. At first the emotion had been more elemental than that: he had felt as though some great invisible being was slowly and continuously punching him in the gut. Then, some days later—he wasn't sure how many— he was once more able to breathe without pain, but he didn't know why he was being allowed that useless privilege when Giselle was dead and the rest of his life was destined to be a pointless void.
There was little outward sign of Paul's inner angst. British public schoolboys are taught a degree of stoicism that would have impressed Zeno, and not even as Paul Donzhof could Charles Dupresque Murray Bredlon Summerdane allow the depth of his grief to show. This had prompted his interrogator to write in his notes, "Shows no emotion over death of woman who is believed to have been his paramour." Of course, had he wept copiously and continuously the interrogator would have written, "Appears overly emotional over death of woman who is believed to have been his paramour."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN — THE CLAIRVOYANT
Si j'avais les mains pleines de vérités, je me garderais de les ouvrir.
(If my hands were filled with truths, I should be careful not to open them.)
— Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
It was on Tuesday, April 14, that the world-renowned mystic Count Alexandre Sandarel, Doctor, Psychic and Clairvoyant, Counselor and Advisor to Royalty on Three Continents, arrived in Vienna with his entourage and took a suite of rooms at the Adler: entrance hall, breakfast room, sitting room, three bedrooms, and a large balcony overlooking the Ringstrasse. There was also a pantry and a small room for his valet. His other three servants were installed in the servants' quarters on the top floor of the hotel.
On Thursday he and his assistant and confidant Madame Madeleine Verlaine went to the office of the Ministry of the Interior to register as resident visitors to His Imperial Majesty's realm, a formality required of any foreigner who planned to stay for longer than three weeks. The wave of assassinations and other outrages which was sweeping Europe had made the authorities of many nations suspicious of the foreigners among them.
Count Sandarel and Madame Verlaine arrived at the offices shortly after noon and filled in brief forms with their names, local addresses, and planned length of stay, which they gave, along with their passports, to the clerk at the counter. After two hours of patiently waiting on a bench that might have originally been constructed as a torture device for the Grand Inquisitor, they were directed past the desks of the examination clerks and to the office of an imperial examiner.
The examiner was a short, stout man with thick glasses and mutton-chop whiskers and a carefully cultivated air of doubting everything you might say minutes before you say it. The walls of his office were decorated with the record of his accomplishments, such as they were. Framed letters from high officials and photographs of him shaking hands with various members of the nobility were behind him; plaques and commendations and graduation certificates on the wall to his left. On the opposite wall were three oil paintings of dubious merit which Sandarel peered at through his monocle with interest before settling into one of the two chairs before the desk. Two were landscapes; one of rather uninteresting pasture land with livestock, and one of a meadow that seemed to slant up at an alarming angle, surrounded by snow-covered Alps; the third was an interior of a more than usually petit bourgeois parlor unnaturally filled with glassware. Madame Verlaine casually looked over the diplomas and certificates while the examiner ostentatiously studied the folder before him. When he looked up and coughed, she slid gracefully into the other chair.
The Imperial Examiner thoughtfully tapped the pair of pristine British passports on his desk with his forefinger and then looked up. "You are Count Alexandre Sandarel?"
"That is so. I choose not to use the title."
"And you are Frau Madeleine Verlaine."
"Even so."
"This is your married name?"
"It is."
"Your husband?"
"Is defunct. He died three years ago while traveling in a balloon."
"A balloon?"
"Yes. Well, actually the basket below the balloon. The ropes parted, you see. The balloon went up, and the basket and my husband came down. It was most unfortunate."
"I see. You and the count are traveling together?"
Madame Verlaine nodded. "I am in his employ."
"We travel together," Sandarel affirmed. "Along with our servants. They will be along to register shortly."
The examiner sniffed. "You have not been abroad before?" he asked.
"On the contrary, our previous passports were so full of stamps and visas that we had to request new ones." Sandarel's voice was deep and sonorous, compelling interest if not instant belief.
The examiner looked up at the tall, bearded man with the piercing eyes who sat before him. "Our records do not show anyone of your name ever entering Austria before."
"My loss," Sandarel said humbly.
"You speak German very well."
"Yes. Also French, Spanish, Italian, English, and Russian."
" 'Count' is not a usual British title," the examiner reflected.
"It is French. It dates back to the ancien régime. My ancestors fled to England during the Revolution and, having no fondness for any of the Napoleons or Louis's who came after, remained there."
"Then it is not an active title?"
"Extremely passive," Sandarel agreed.
<
br /> "Ah-hem." The examiner turned the page. "And the purpose of your visit? Do you intend to work while you reside here?"
Sandarel raised an eyebrow. "Work? My dear man, really. Work?"
The examiner looked at Sandarel severely through his thick-lensed glasses. "We have heard that you intend to give what you call 'readings' while you are here. Is this not so?"
"Quite possibly. I teach, I demonstrate the higher arts, I give readings. It is a gift, this psychic ability that I have, that I share freely. I do not charge."
"You accept offerings?"
"If they are freely given, yes. To further my work. Not to do so would be an insult to those I have helped."
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