The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

  “You’ll have to ask her that. She met him in Greece, away from home, and I imagine when they were married seven years ago he filled her mind with visions of great wealth back here in Romania. Then the government collapsed and she got an unexpected look at al the wealth – a decaying mansion and a garden gone to seed. Perhaps she would have left him then if the message from his father hadn’t come to light, with its promise of buried treasure. So she stayed on, but when Claus phoned you for help with the puzzle last week he neglected to tell her, probably wanting your arrival kept secret until he knew if you could help.”

  “So we walked in on her yesterday unannounced?”

  “Exactly.” Michael watched a nurse helping an old man negotiate the corridor. “In retrospect we have to say she kept her composure very well. You already knew about the statue and the message so she had to show it to us, hoping it wouldn’t lead us to the body. As for the disguise, she may have had it ready in case local officials called. Remember she told us they’d used disguises to slip across the borders. All she really needed were the fringe beard for her chin, the wig to make the hair appear thin in front, and some of his clothes. We saw from that picture that they were about the same height, and her face was like his in a sisterly way. She was big-boned, but still a bit thinner than he appeared in the photo. As for the voice, she spoke slowly, in a measured manner, careful to give it a masculine tone. She felt safe because you’d met them only once and that time at a reception with others present. The rest was easy. We never saw them together and never suspected at first that the wall plaque in plain sight was the buried treasure.

  “What about the Gypsies? They knew the Sibius.”

  “But Esmeralda avoided looking directly at Claus when she came to view her brother’s body. He was dressed right and neither of them had reason to doubt his identity.”

  “You see it all in retrospect,” Segar challenged. “Admit it – you were as surprised as I was when we uncovered Claus Sibiu’s body!”

  “I was surprised,” Michael admitted, “but I shouldn’t have been. Yesterday Claus wore his watch on his right wrist. This morning it was on his left. Why the change overnight?”

  “I didn’t notice that,” Segar admitted. “Why?”

  “Because Ida cut herself while slicing the meat last night – remember? She couldn’t risk our noticing the same cut on Claus’s wrist so she covered it with the watchband.”

  Segar nodded finally, beginning to accept it. “After she killed him and buried the body, why didn’t she just take the moon plaque and leave?”

  “Because Erik the Gypsy was still around, searching for the treasure. Last night, when he started digging with his hands in the garden of Matthias, she stabbed him in the back with his own knife.”

  Michael Vlado had an answer for everything, except why a woman would kill her husband for a golden plaque that didn’t look very much like the moon at all.

  THE GYPSY’S PAW

  It was peaceful that summer in the foothills of the Transylvania Alps, or as peaceful as life ever got for Gypsies in Romania these days. Michael Vlado, king of his small tribe in the village of Gravita, had settled into his work of raising and training horses, and the others went about their summer chores, pleased for the moment that the anti-Gypsy sentiment sweeping through Eastern Europe had passed them by.

  Michael’s wife Rosanna, who earned money by carving wooden animals to be sold at village shops, was the first to tell him of the strange Gypsy woman named Esmeralda who lived in a neighboring village. “I brought some of my wooden animals to the shop in Agula today,” she told him as she cooked a modest dinner of beans, rice and pork. “The shopkeeper thinks they will sell well to travelers.”

  “That is good news, Rosanna. Soon you will be adding helpers for the carving.”

  She knew he teased her about the hobby, though lately the money from it had helped him buy another stallion for breeding. “They say in Agula there is a Rom with magic powers,” Rosanna told him. “Her name is Esmeralda.”

  Michael snorted. “An old woman with a bear’s paw! I have heard the stories.”

  “People pay her to make their wishes come true.”

  “It is women like that who make the Gypsy someone to fear and hate, no better than the cutpurses who ply the streets of Athens and Rome. I should speak with her.”

  “She is not of our tribe,” Rosanna reminded him.

  “All Roms are one tribe,” he replied, voicing words that were more a desire than a fact.

  “Go then! Go and see the woman Esmeralda!”

  His face relaxed into a smile. “What wish should I make for you?”

  “That I sell more of my little animals.”

  Two days later, on the weekend, Michael Vlado drove down the steep road to the neighboring village of Agula. It was a more prosperous area than Gravita, and large, well-built farmhouses dotted the hillsides in sharp contrast to the Gypsy cabins at higher elevations. But some Gypsies lived among the people and were tolerated more than in the cities. An old woman like Esmeralda would take up magic late in life, perhaps when her other charms were no longer profitable.

  Everyone knew where she lived, and Michael found the cabin without difficulty. Esmeralda, who seemed to have no last name, was a wrinkled woman in her seventies. Though stooped like a crone, she could move about with surprising agility when necessary. Michael was amazed when she admitted him and promptly laid out cups and saucers for tea.

  “That’s hardly necessary,” he protested. “I only stopped by for a visit.”

  She nodded and kept setting the table. “I know you, Michael Vlado. You are king of your tribe in the village of Gravita. Do you come to see old Esmeralda for the wishes my magic paw can bestow?”

  “I do not believe in magic paws,” he told her. “But I do believe in Gypsy women who shame us with their small swindles. I have come to ask you to stop this business.”

  She brought a teapot from the stove and filled their cups before she answered. “You are a strong man, still in middle age. I am an old woman who has no other way to make a living. Would you have me beg in the streets as the children do? These days that would get me arrested and perhaps shot.”

  “But this business with the paw is distasteful!”

  “Let me show you,” she said, as if the sight of the thing would win him over to her side. She disappeared into a back bedroom and returned in a moment carrying an intricately carved ebony box.

  “Is that a dragon?” he asked, running his fingers over the carving.

  “It is. This box came from China, a gift from a man who loved me many years ago.”

  She opened the box’s hinged lid and revealed a furry extremity about the size of Michael’s fist, with claws clearly visible at one end. “It is the right front paw of a brown bear. The strength of the brown bear is well known among the Rom. They have been said to kill an adult cow with a single swipe of their forepaw.” She lifted it and playfully swung it in Michael’s direction.

  “You must have been a tigress in your youth,” he told her.

  “Only a bear. Now this paw brings me money. People pay to have their wishes come true.”

  “But do they come true? Ever?”

  “Sometimes. Any wish can come true sometimes.” She returned the paw to its ebony box and closed it. “Come with me and I will show you. This very night I am calling on a wealthy couple with a missing son. They came to me two weeks ago but I would not help them at once. I wanted to be sure the magic of the paw would work. Tonight I will show them, and you.”

  “What time?”

  “I go there at dusk. If you drive me I will not have to hire the local taxi.”

  Michael shook his head and chuckled. “Ah, Esmeralda, you have charmed your way through life and you are still doing it in old age.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Yes, yes! I will go with you. I will even carry your paw. But believe me, I am a skeptical audience.”

  It was six hours till dusk
and Michael drove back up the hill to his village. When he told his wife what he had agreed to do that night, she thought him insane. “But what will you accomplish? Your presence will simply lend credence to that old woman.”

  “I hope to convince these people that all Gypsies are not tricksters and swindlers. It is time for Esmeralda to retire to gardening and knitting.”

  Rosanna snorted and went away.

  After dinner he made the journey down to Agula once more. The old Gypsy woman was waiting by the door, watching for him. A light summer rain was starting to fall and he helped her to the car, sheltering her head with his coat. “I thought you would not come,” she said, safely in the car with her ebony box.

  “My word is good,” he assured her. “Which way shall I go?”

  “To the left. I will guide you.”

  Presently, in the failing light, they came upon a two-story farmhouse set back a bit from the road. It was white with green shutters, and seemed out of place among the rough wooden cabins and larger chalets of the countryside. The rain was falling harder now and in the gathering gloom a spotlight had been turned on above the front door. There was no sidewalk such as city homes had, only a dirt path growing wetter by the minute.

  A man opened the door as they pulled up and called out, “It’s getting muddy here. Drive around the back.”

  Michael did as instructed and they pulled up into a covered carport. He helped Esmeralda into the house, carrying the ebony box as he’d promised. She was puffing with exertion as she entered, but she introduced him immediately. “Michael, this is Olak and Frieda Glasnach.” She squinted into the room beyond them where a young man had just gotten to his feet. “And their son Andre.”

  Michael shook hands all around and accompanied them into the cozy living room of the farmhouse. Olak Glasnach was a roughhewn man of middle age, a farmer whose working life had been spent beneath the brutal sun. Every victory, every defeat, seemed etched into his skin. By contrast, his wife Frieda had flat and pale features unmarked by strong emotion. The son, Andre, hung back from them like a common workman, his bulging biceps clearly visible beneath his sleeveless work shirt. It seemed obvious that he labored on the farm with his father.

  “This is Michael Vlado,” Esmeralda quickly explained. “He is king of the Gypsy tribe in Gravita.”

  “A pleasure to have you here,” Olak Glasnach said. Then, a bit puzzled, he asked the Gypsy woman, “Does he take part in the ceremony?”

  “Only as an observer.” She reached out her wrinkled hands for the ebony box and Michael passed it to her. He was thinking it would be better for all concerned if she stuck to tarot cards. Bear paws were a bit too exotic.

  “Could you tell me a little of the background?” Michael asked. “I understand there is a second son –”

  It was Frieda who spoke as they seated themselves around a low table in the living room. On it she’d placed a plate of rich Romanian delicacies of the sort Michael had rarely tasted. As a boy they’d been treasures he saw through the bakery windows, always just out of reach.

  “My older son Felipe lived here and worked the farm with his father and brother. We were a happy family until a year ago.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He met a woman named Louise,” Andre supplied. “She tempted him away from his family.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In Bucharest, living with her.”

  “The bear’s paw will bring him back,” Esmeralda assured them, “if you wish for it strongly enough.”

  “I don’t believe any of this,” Andre said and started to leave the room.

  “Come back here!” his mother ordered. “We must all wish for it.”

  The sky had grown dark outside with the coming of night and they could hear the rain, harder now, beating on the windows with each shift of the breeze. Old Esmeralda smiled and opened the ebony box. Watching it all, as if in slow motion, Michael wondered why he had come here. If it was to expose the fakery, now was the time to speak. But he said nothing.

  “Place your hands upon the paw,” the Gypsy woman said, and removed it from the box. The father, Olak, seemed reluctant to be first, but his wife did not hesitate. She touched the dead fur, caressed it, and waited for her husband and son to do likewise. After a moment Olak did so, and then Andre. “Now repeat after me – I wish our son and brother Felipe to return home this night.”

  “I wish our son and brother Felipe to return home this night,” they responded, more or less in unison.

  Nothing happened.

  They waited and still nothing happened. There was no sound except the beating of the rain.

  For nearly ten minutes no one spoke. Then it was Esmeralda who broke the silence. “Sometimes it takes a while, but he will arrive. Let us just sit back and wait.”

  “It’s a long way from Bucharest,” Glasnach said. “A drive of three hours or more on a night like this.”

  “The paw knows no distance,” Esmeralda told him.

  They waited an hour, talking of village matters and the summer weather, which had been unusually dry till that evening. They talked of everything but the missing Felipe, and to Michael the desultory conversation was worse than silence. “Do you have any way of reaching your son in Bucharest?” he asked at last.

  Frieda Glasnach was on her feet pacing, full of nervous energy. “He gave us a phone number once, after he’d left the farm for that woman. We never used it. I showed it to you, Esmeralda.”

  “Get it now,” Esmeralda said. “Something has gone wrong with the magic.”

  Michael sighted. “Why prolong this, woman? He is never coming. Put your paw back in its box.”

  But Frieda was already pulling open the drawer of a cabinet. On a piece of paper was a telephone number scrawled beneath the single word, “Felipe.” “Here it is. I tried to call him only once, but that woman answered and I hung up.”

  Though she’d asked for the number, old Esmeralda refused to accept the paper. “I cannot call. One of you must do it.”

  They stared blankly at each other and finally Olak said, “We are paying you to bring our son home by Gypsy magic. The telephone call we could make at any time.”

  The old woman turned to Michael. “Will you call? Simply call and ask for him.”

  Sorry now that he had ever come, feeling himself trapped in this woman’s scheme gone wrong, Michael reluctantly agreed. How had she ever expected to get money out of this family with her withered bear’s paw?

  The telephone lines between the villages and the country’s capital city were not always reliable and it took him some minutes before the connection was made. He heard the ringing of the phone and then the voice of a young woman. “Hello?”

  “I wish to speak with Felipe Glasnach.”

  There was a muffled gasp at the other end. “Hello?” Michael said. “Is Felipe there?”

  “Felipe is dead. He drowned in the Dimbovita River two days ago.”

  The news sent a chill through the Glasnach family when Michael told them. Oddly, it was the father rather than the mother who burst into tears and it was he whom Andre went to comfort. “Dead,” he repeated in a flat tone. “Dead, dead, dead.”

  Only Esmeralda seemed unshaken by the news. “The paw will bring him back,” she told them.

  “What is it?” Andre scoffed. “A monkey’s paw like that story I once read, with the power to bring him back from the grave?”

  “He is in no grave, only a river.”

  Michael had gotten no details of the tragedy before the woman on the other end hung up. “I will go to see her if you wish,” he told the family, trying to make amends for all that Esmeralda had done. “You must know her name.”

  “Louise Stricker,” Frieda said. “She is German, we think.”

  Andre left them, more from disgust than sorrow, and they heard him go up to his room. But still the old Gypsy woman clutched the bear paw to her breast and whispered of things to come. “I will take you home soon,” Michael to
ld her. “We must leave these people alone with their grief.”

  “A little longer,” she begged. If she was waiting for something he could not imagine what it was.

  And then they heard it – a loud knocking on the front door that seemed to resound through the house.

  For a moment they were all frozen in their chairs, unable to move. Even Esmeralda seemed unbelieving, but she was the first to get up. “That’s him,” she spoke with assurance. “He’s come back.”

  They heard the knocking again, much gentler this time, as Andre came running down the stairs. He must have seen that his mother was on the verge of hastening to the door, because he begged her, “Do not open it! Felipe has been summoned by this crone from his watery grave!”

  It was Olak who headed for the door as the gentle tapping came again. “If it is my son he will always be welcome here.”

  “My God, father!” Andre sprang forward and grabbed the bear paw from Esmeralda’s hand. Before anyone could say a word he shouted, “I wish my brother Felipe back in his watery grave!”

  “No!” Frieda screamed. She ran for the door, reaching it just before her husband, slid back the bolt, and yanked it open.

  The light from above shone down on an empty front yard. There was no one in sight. Frieda Glasnach breathed a long sigh of despair.

  “Look here!” her husband said, pointing to the ground.

  Michael and Andre joined them, peering at the dirt path to the front door. All was mud now, and sunken into the mud was a line of recent footprints leading to the door. They came as far as the door and stopped, not going back or to either side.

  Whoever made them had either entered the house through the bolted door or vanished without a trace.