by Pavel Kornev
"Leopold," Bastian Moran sighed, having caught the doubts coming over me. "I'll be as frank as possible: I don't fully understand what happened there. I suspect it may have been self-defense. And if you tell me honestly, this case really doesn’t have to reach formal charges. Perhaps you were bewildered by the circumstances of the arrest, but we acted strictly according to protocol. Nothing personal, after all. You've been in such situations before, isn't that right?" the senior inspector reminded me with a conciliatory smile. "Judge for yourself: the deceased were suspected of membership in the illegal thuggee cult, and clues found at the scene confirm that fully. There isn't a single judge that would sentence you..."
There was a certain rationality to his words, but I knew the inner workings of the Newton-Markt too well to accept the senior inspector's admonitions at face value. When they first tried hard to back someone into a corner, then suddenly opened a path to safety, every door left obligingly ajar could only lead to a more cramped cell.
And so, I preferred to remain secretive and put on a surprised look.
"Thugees? What are you talking about? I don't have anything to do with the Kali Stranglers!"
"Leopold!" Bastian Moran frowned in annoyance. "Let's not play these games! This case is hanging around my neck like a stone." The senior inspector even placed a sleek hand on the collar of my shirt. "And I need to close it no matter what. The inspector general is huffing and puffing! Help me, and I promise there won't be a criminal investigation."
"I'm always glad to help an investigation," I said, still looking past the man at a spot of falling plaster, carefully choosing my words. "But it wouldn't be right for me to take the blame for a crime I didn't commit. I mean, I could do that for you but, if I did, the true killer would avoid punishment, and that goes against my principles. Remember that rule, senior inspector."
"Fingerprints!" Moran reminded me.
"What about fingerprints?"
"Your fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime on the round casings, Leopold. It is senseless to deny that. If you refuse to work with the investigation, this will draw on for months, and you'll have to be under guard that whole time. Do you really want that? I know I am not burning with desire to see your sour countenance every work day for the next year, or maybe even two. I'm sure talking with me won't bring you any particular pleasure either. So, let's help each other out. I won't demand anything supernatural from you. Just tell me what exactly happened!"
The senior inspector's offer to choose the lesser of two evils was definitely not an ad lib; that was exactly what he was hoping for when he ordered me arrested and brought to the Newton-Markt with all the prescribed formalities. The shackles and prison clothes were supposed to show how a refusal to work together would end. But excessive openness had never led me to anything good before.
That was for certain, so I made a suggestion:
"Let's return to the fingerprints. How confident was the expert report?"
"An error would be impossible!"
"Well, of course!" I couldn't hold back a flagrant chuckle. "After all, it's business as usual to find a distinct fingerprint on a spent round casing! And I'm not talking about the effects of powder residue and high temperature, just a casing all on its own... it isn't very large, and the contact area with a finger would be even smaller. An error would be impossible? Come now, Bastian!"
"And nevertheless, it is true," Moran answered calmly. "The dermal ridge patterns all correspond with yours."
"The patterns you managed to find, senior inspector. As far as I remember, criminal scientists refuse to take partial prints into consideration, isn't that so?"
"I insisted on a dactylographic report, and it was undertaken in accordance with all requirements."
I screwed up my face.
"I'm not sure the court will take those results into account."
"There's no need to take this case to court."
"Good!" I relented. "I fully allow that those could be my fingerprints. Around that time, I went looking for a new pistol, and visited several gun stores. I looked over a number of models and, naturally, loaded and unloaded them. Most likely, that explains the fingerprint match... –no! –resemblance."
After finishing my version of events, I moved my gaze off the spot of falling plaster and looked at Moran. He looked like a gourmand who'd just taken a sip of a refined vintage wine with a sour apple flavor.
"Nice try," the senior inspector smiled skeptically "But forgive me if I question your words."
"Doubt them as long as you want. The issue is whether a jury will buy them. When I was arrested, I had a Cerberus confiscated from me. You can check in the sales records from a shop called the Golden Bullet. I bought it there, on one of those days."
"Leopold!" Bastian Moran clapped a palm on the table. "Enough of the lies! The model of pistol the shots were fired from has not been released for public sale! The whole shipment was sent directly to the New World! You simply never could have found such a pistol in a shop!"
"And what about the weapons market on Piazza Archimedes?" I squinted. "I recall that, once, during a raid there, we confiscated a high-caliber Gatling gun stolen during the repair of an army dirigible!"
The senior inspector took a loud sigh and started drumming his fingers on the table. Now, I could read open hatred in his gaze. And that was no small wonder. The weapons bazaar I had just mentioned had long been a headache for the metropolitan police and, if some pistols had disappeared on their way to the New World, that is certainly where they’d have turned up.
"So then, you were at the market..." Bastian Moran said a bit later, drawing out his words. "But naturally, you don’t remember which stall might have shown you the pistol?"
"I don't even know exactly what kind of pistol you're talking about. I spent a few hours wandering around there."
Moran suddenly jumped sharply at me and said:
"Leopold, I know it was you!"
"Juries don't normally treat police intuition with the same level of trust," I answered calmly, even though my heart was still skipping beats, and my back had begun to perspire. "And as for the police having a bias against arrestees, it’s quite the opposite. They believe that extremely easily. You are biased against me, senior inspector. And now that is established in your recording."
"Balderdash!" Bastian Moran shot out shortly and slammed his palm down on the table again. "You killed the Hindoos. I know that for certain. And I have the clues to prove it!"
I sat back in my chair and tried to cross my arms on my chest, but was prevented by the handcuff chain, stretched to its limit.
"Allow me to doubt your words. You’ve forwarded baseless accusations against me before, senior inspector. Isn't that right?"
My words hit square in their target. Bastian Moran went red in rage, but still held back and didn't give me an open-palm slap, which he would have done to a normal arrestee as a matter of course.
"My accusations, Leopold Orso," he said in an official tone, " were not baseless then, and they are not baseless now!"
"Are you serious?" I asked, startled. "You still suspect me in the murder of Levinson?"
The manager of the New Babylon branch of the Witstein Banking House had been torn to shreds by a werebeast, and Bastian Moran had initially suspected it was my handiwork. Even my iron-clad alibi hadn't been enough to convince the senior inspector otherwise. Only a blood test performed by a police doctor had made him refuse to charge me officially.
Back then I was still not a full werebeast, as I also was not now. And no analysis could show otherwise. Even if some things were retained, like an instinctive ability to dodge silver, that noble metal was no longer able to poison my body. My blood would not react to it.
Bastian Moran pursed his lips but still gave a direct answer to the question.
"Yes, Viscount. I still suspect you of involvement in Levinson’s murder!" he declared after a brief pause.
"But I was the one who shot his murderer! Me!"
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"In interrogation, the werebeast may have told us the true motives for his crime, but you killed him. Very convenient, don't you think?"
"His true motives? Did Procrustes ever need a motive?"
"Come off it, Leopold!" Bastian Moran waved it off. "We established the identity of the werebeast you shot and, at the time of several of Procrustes' crimes, he was awaiting the death penalty in Kilmainham gaol. He only managed to escape after!"
"What do you want from me, Senior inspector?" I asked directly.
"The truth!"
"You heard it."
Moran opened the folder and carelessly tossed me one of the photographs laying there. I glanced at the picture and gave an involuntary shudder. The dead black eyes of the Hindoo were staring back at me from the paper. But that wasn't what spooked me. I was beside myself from seeing the dead man's crushed larynx. Crushed by my very hand.
"And who might that unfortunate be?" I asked, suppressing a nervous shudder.
"That is one of the bodies, next to which we discovered the round casings with your fingerprints," Bastian Moran explained.
"Partial fingerprints," I spat out mechanically, but the senior inspector let my remark go in one ear and out the other.
"While this picture," Moran set forth the next photograph, "was taken in Levinson's home. As you can see, the character of the wounds on the deceased Hindoo in June and the banker's guard are very similar. What's more, I took some shots of Procrustes' victims from the archive..."
"Enough!" I couldn't hold back. "What do you want from me? Tell me straight!"
"The truth!"
"I've told you everything."
"I know this was you," Moran declared directly. "It was you, Leopold Orso, who killed the Hindoos and you, without a doubt, were involved in the murder of Levinson. I don't know why or how, but you can be sure, it's just a matter of time. I'll stop you no matter what it costs me!"
"I need a lawyer."
"A lawyer won't help you now!" the senior inspector waved it off. "You'll never be set free, and you can believe that. I'll make sure of it!"
A vile sour taste appeared in my mouth, but I overcame myself and, with the power of my will, drove off the approaching wave of panic.
"You have no clues, and the fingerprint matching was not done by the books. No court will accept this. The tooth imprint of the werebeast I killed lined up with one of the wounds on Levinson's servant girl. And what's more, if you think I am a werebeast, let's take the simplest route and do a blood test. Last time, it didn't show anything!"
"Everything in its time," Bastian Moran frowned. "We'll do tests as well. I'll personally cut you into little pieces, if that's what it takes, but I will get the truth."
"That sounds like a threat."
The senior inspector got up from the table, turned off the phonograph and took the roller from it.
"You don't say?" he turned to me with a foul smirk. "What led you to that conclusion?"
I didn't have time to answer. With a sharp burst, the door flew open and, in an instant, it became cramped and unbearably sultry in the cell, although just one person had joined us.
The inspector general of the metropolitan police, Friedrich von Nalz, was old and his face resembled a pagan idol, carved from the rootstock of an ancient pine. The reflection of his colorless eyes was unmistakable even in the bright light of the electric bulbs, while the ghostly heat emanating from the old man made the air oscillate around him like a red-hot blaze.
However, it just seemed that way. Fear has big eyes, and I was afraid of the inspector general much more than all of Moran's threats taken together. If von Nalz decided to beat the truth out of me, no lawyers would be able to stand in his way, not even the High Imperial Court.
The inspector general's talent could burn a person in a few seconds but, fortunately, the old man wasn't even paying attention to me.
"Bastian!" von Nalz addressed the senior inspector. "What is going on here?!"
"An investigation," he answered with a composed look, raising a brow. "And what of it?"
"I beg your pardon, Leopold," Friedrich von Nalz sighed and called Moran into the corridor. "Just a minute, Bastian..."
I started feeling very apprehensive, because the inspector general was perfectly aware of my blood relationship with the Imperial family. Although my mother was not the legal daughter of the Grand Duke of Arabia, Emperor Clement's brother, blood was thicker than water. Von Nalz considered my status sufficient to intervene in my fate and, the last time, his intervention had ended in me getting my heart cut out.
How it would end now was frightening to even imagine.
3
THE CONVERSATION in the hallway went on for no less than a quarter of an hour, and that was surprising for the simple reason that no one from the metropolitan police could stand up to the inspector general for that long.
As a matter of fact, I thought the police administration had decided to continue the conversation in von Nalz's office, but then the door flew open, and Bastian Moran walked into the cell, his face petrified, yet pale in rage.
If the senior inspector were illustrious, and had a gaze that could kill, my heart would have stopped at that very moment. As it was, I had shivers running down my spine.
But I made it.
"Leopold Orso, you're free to go!" Bastian Moran declared in a voice ringing in agitation, turned around and left the cell, stomping his shoe soles on the stone floor of the cellar unnaturally distinctly.
The constable who came to take his place unlocked my handcuffs and took off the shackles, then the unfamiliar detective sergeant set a whole stack of documents on the table. I was required to sign a box on each of them saying I was familiar with its contents.
Among them was one telling me not to leave town, together with a requirement to inform the police if I changed my residence and to appear at the Newton-Markt if requested, which was the very least they could saddle me with in this situation. I wasn't upset.
Devil! I mean, I was practically in seventh heaven!
I WAS LED OUT of the interrogation cell into a changing room with scratched-up cabinets, damp humid air and faucets that ran with rusty water. I tried to wash the fingerprinting ink off my hands, but I just used up the last of a bar of soap and ruined a handkerchief. The skin on my palms was still bluish-gray.
But that didn’t really bother me. They gave me back my clothing, and I got dressed, throwing the striped prison clothes on a bench. I went out into the hallway, already feeling like a free man but, instead of the exit, the mustached sergeant led me somewhere deeper in the Newton-Markt.
"Excuse me, my good sir..." I said, getting on guard. "The exit is the other way!"
"The inspector general would like to see you," the police-man said and threw open the door to the stairs. "Follow me."
Refusing the order wouldn't have made even the slightest bit of sense so, with a fateful sigh, I started my way up and out of the basement. The sergeant was walking in front. Behind me there wheezed two strong constables.
I was surrounded...
IN THE INSPECTOR GENERAL'S reception room, an adjunct, fairly intrigued with the proceedings, made me sign for my effects, which had been confiscated on my detention, gave me time to distribute them in my pockets and, only after that, informed von Nalz of my arrival.
"Come in, the inspector general is ready to see you now," he declared, setting the telephone receiver back on the hook.
In some situations, "ready to see you now" was in no way different from "needs to speak with you immediately," so I suppressed a fated sigh and decisively threw open the heavy oak door.
The Cerberus in my jacket pocket gave me a certain confidence, but there was more significance in the very fact that I actually had the weapon than any benefit I might gain from actually using it.
Gloom reigned in the office of the head of the metropolitan police. The windows were covered with a thick curtain, concealing what little light the already cloudy September
day had to offer. A dull flame was dancing on the logs in the fireplace, and gas lamps on the wall burned with a muted light. The lamp on the table, which was inundated with newspapers and correspondence, was not turned on and, on the backdrop of the utterly gray space, the only bright light was the luster of the inspector general's eyes.
"You surprise me, Leopold," von Nalz said morosely, without even offering me a seat. "Do you understand that your behavior discredits the memory of your great forbearer?"
"I haven't done anything reprehensible, inspector general."
Friedrich von Nalz winced and asked:
"Why did you get a second passport?"
"I wanted to start a new life," I answered with basically the pure truth. "Is that not allowed? The passport is authentic."
"If it had been forged, I wouldn't have intervened," the old man declared directly. "But the accusations forwarded against you are impossibly..."
"Contrived," I offered.
"Doubtful," the inspector general finished his own thought. "And in that the clues are all of a tangential nature, I don't see any basis to detain you for the duration of the investigation. I hope you won't make me regret that decision."
The fiery gaze of his colorless eyes burned with a fell flame but here, fortunately, the inspector general got distracted by the ringing of his telephone, and I caught my breath with relief.
"Have them wait, I'll be down in a moment," Friedrich von Nalz answered shortly after picking up the phone and threw it back on the hook with annoyance. He spent a few seconds sitting, staring forward in agitation, then decisively got up from the table, walked up to me and slapped my back with his palm, which was thin and hard as a board.
"Leopold! My advice to you: stay out of trouble. After all, you aren't just any old citizen. Your reputation must remain flawless for the sake of the memory of your grandfather, the most important political actor of the epoch of the Empire’s foundation!"
