by Pavel Kornev
"Hello sir, what can I do for you?" the sleepy porter yawned.
"Do you have any vacancies? For the night?"
Somewhere closer to the center of town, my appearance may have been considered improper, but everything was much simpler here.
The hotel employee flung open the door hospitably, letting his late-arriving guests enter the lobby.
"We have plenty of rooms!" he said.
I took a step over the threshold, and Ramon jumped in behind me.
"Police!" The constable hissed out frighteningly, pressing the night porter to the wall. "Not a sound! Got it?"
The well-mannered little shrimp with pomaded hair nodded in silence. Unannounced police raids of hotels in the outskirts were usual occurrences; he must have grown accustomed to them by now.
I checked the vestibule quickly, taking a look into the room where they set tables for guests in the morning on my way and returned to the porter.
"We're looking for a possible guest of yours, he's tall and thin. A few days ago, he would have brought in a link of salami. Have you seen him?" I asked, not lowering my gaze from the stairs to the second story.
"But, stay quiet!" Ramon didn't forget to warn him.
The puny little man nodded, but somehow very falteringly.
"Room twenty-two," he whispered, "but he isn't there now."
"What do you mean?" I was struck. "Has he checked out?"
"He usually goes somewhere at night, and returns after midnight," the hotel employee explained. "He has his own key to the front door."
"What name is he registered under?"
"Smith. Jack Smith."
"Give me the key to his room," Ramon Miro then demanded. "Now!"
"But I can't!" The night porter objected. "That's against the rules!"
"Procrustes, ever heard of him?" The constable got up close to him.
And just then, it reached the little man so abruptly that he almost wet himself.
"Is it him?" the porter rasped out, taking our word at face value.
"It is," I replied, taking out the badge I'd still completely forgotten to hand in. Total coincidence, naturally. "What does this say?"
The porter turned the badge to the light.
"Detective constable Leopold Orso," he said aloud. "Criminal Investigation Department."
I took the badge back and commanded him:
"Keys, now!"
We walked up to the desk. There, the hotel employee took the key to room twenty-two from a hook on the wall and gave it to us.
"How many rooms?" Ramon didn't forget to clarify.
"One. It has a shared bathroom at the end of the hall."
"Sit here and don't move a muscle," the constable ordered; in response, we heard the creaking of a decanter on the edge of a cut-glass cup.
I walked through the vestibule, remembering the position of the entrances and exits just in case, then turned back and asked:
"Do you have an attic?"
The night porter took a few greedy gulps, left an empty glass and said:
"It's all boarded up."
Ramon came up next to me and whispered out quietly:
"Alright, so what should we do? Leaving just one of us is a nonstarter."
"Let's check the room, then you come back."
"Sounds good," the constable nodded and warned the porter: "No funny business. Got it?"
"Yes!" he gave a choking squeak. The fact that one of the guests was a legendary murderer had knocked him completely off his feet.
Ramon and I went up to the second floor; there I put my dark glasses in my breast pocket, took the cap from my cane's handle and switched on the torch.
"You first," I warned my partner, taking out my Cerberus.
"Got it," the constable nodded, taking position in front of the door labeled number "twenty-two."
I stuck the cane under my armpit and turned the key carefully in the lock.
The mechanism was well oiled. It didn't even squeak. Just one turn and done.
Ramon tore into the room aggressively. I jumped in behind and gave the room a pass with my torch. Cabinet, bed, table by the window. There was nowhere to hide, but my partner didn't agree.
"Cabinet," Ramon gasped hoarsely, taking the lopsided colossus in his sights.
I threw open the doors. There was nothing hiding there among the jackets and pants hanging from hangers. Then the constable pointed at the bed.
"Over there!"
Under the bed, we found only a traveling suitcase; I returned the bedspread to its place, stuck my Cerberus in my pocket and commanded my partner:
"Run back down!"
Ramon hurried to the porter, while I pulled on my gloves and set about searching. The lack of order and other procedural subtleties were the least of my worries now.
No one judges the victor.
I didn't light the gas lamps, simply continuing to light my way with the torch in the handle of my cane, trying not to point it too many times at the curtained windows. The trash can was filled with sausage wrappers. Next to the wall, there were a few empty slivovitz bottles. I decided not to touch them, instead pulling the frayed suitcase from under the bed, and quickly checking its contents. Beyond a used ticket for a dirigible from New York to New Babylon, there was nothing interesting inside. Underwear, tooth powder, a razor, other little things.
Then I went to the cabinet and patted down the clothes; I found the very same level of success.
All the jackets and pants were brand new. They had been made to order from expensive black fabric. All of them were the same, like peas in a pod. And they all had their tags ripped out.
One jacket wasn't enough.
Very prudent. Blood on black doesn't catch the eye, and no one is surprised to see someone wear the same jacket as the day before.
I checked the table drawers and even pulled the mattress off the bed. Then I got up on a chair and pointed my light at the top of the cabinet. The only thing there was dust. Standing on my tip toes, I stretched out to the wooden ventilation grate. I could just barely touch it, but it sprang out readily into my hand.
So there's his hiding spot!
It should be said that calling this a hiding spot was rather overstating it. It was just a secret place to hide valuable things from criminally-inclined housekeepers. Nothing more.
I pulled a metal box from the ventilation and, in that I didn't have time to open the lock with a bent paper clip, I broke it by jamming my knife under the latch.
On top, there was a glass syringe, a strap and a little bottle with a morphine solution. It immediately became clear that the first murder hadn't at all been random. Either the werebeast had disagreed with the victim on price, or the deceased had simply decided to rob this out of town drug addict. Probably the second. The wad of colonial dollars, wrapped in a rubber band, caused an envious respect in me.
I stuck the money in my coat pocket, picked up a swollen envelope and removed two passports from it. The first was issued to someone named Gerhard Lanka, a resident of the colonial state of New York, forty-two years from birth; the owner of the second was a forty-year old Jonathan Barlow from Melbourne, Zuid-India. Tellingly, there was no entry stamp in either of them.
That meant there must have been a third one somewhere.
I set the passports aside, made sure there was nothing left in the box, and left the room, not making too much effort to hide the mess I'd made in searching it. I got to the stairway and took a seat on the top step, giving my tired legs a rest.
"Well, how'd it go?" Ramon Miro asked, setting down his lupara.
"It's him," I confirmed, having completely forgotten about the porter.
And he, on hearing these words, practically had a fit; he was just bent over the table transfixed.
The constable frowned peevishly, went up the stairs and held out his hand.
"You shouldn't sit in such a visible place," he grumbled, helping me to my feet.
And then, without a single sound, the entry
door swung open.
We might not have even noticed it if the scared-half-dead night porter hadn't squeaked out:
"Procrustes!"
Ramon let me down and spun in place, drawing his lupara. Barely able to stand on the narrow steps of the steep stairway, he braced the buttstock of the weighty gun on his shoulder and roared at a sickly looking gentleman of forty, who had just made a step over the threshold:
"Don't move, police!"
In the same moment, the hotel guest made an imperceptible jump from his place and burst through the vestibule. His ungainly lanky figure simply dissolved into a blur, but Ramon was already holding the murderer in his sights, so he immediately pushed down on the trigger.
A shot thundered out and the man performed an unbelievably acrobatic somersault, dodging the bullet. He touched a foot on the windowsill and jumped aside in a single motion. And it looked just as dashing when Ramon missed a second time: the silver-coated lead slug broke through a window and flew outside.
The unhittable murderer darted for the stairway. The constable fired at him again, and the fiery tongue of a dual spark licked the outstretched head and shoulders of the werebeast, but the bullet still didn't hit him; it just smelled of burned hair.
The strong oaken banisters saved us. The killer dug into them at a run, and only for that reason failed to reach the recoiling constable. Ramon slammed into me. We went head over heels from the stairwell onto the second floor. We immediately slammed the door to the stairway behind us and even secured it shut with our handcuffs just to make sure.
"In the room!" The constable snapped, walking backward through the corridor with his gun at the ready; three of the lupara's four barrels were giving off a gray gunpowder smoke.
I threw myself at his heels, and slammed into it from outside like a battering ram. A scary cracking rang out. By some miracle, the door held out and didn't come off the hinges.
"Unlock the door!" Ramon hurried me on. "Step to!"
The beast's next, stronger strike broke through the door and the constable slowed his pace, trying to catch the monster in his sights as it crawled into the corridor.
And it really was a monster now, a true werewolf! The former man’s face had turned into a snout with a ghastly set of jaws. Its shoulders had become wider, and its lean torso was now crisscrossed with muscle fibers. Its clothes were now just pitiable shreds hanging off a body that had sprouted a coarse wiry hair.
The werewolf gradually came down the corridor; Ramon continued to walk backward not shooting, afraid to waste his last bullet. He made me some time, while I, arms shaking, stuck the key in the keyhole. Or tried, anyway. They key just wouldn't go in.
I was afraid.
Curses! I was pulsating all over in horror!
But I gave it one more try and turned. That time, the handle gave smoothly, and inside I saw the face of the leprechaun, who slammed the door right in my face with a deafening thunder clap.
At that very moment, the werewolf made a fierce jump, going on the attack; Ramon hurriedly pushed down on the trigger, and though he almost hit his target, he missed again!
The werewolf contorted his body in a totally unbelievable way, making use of all his inertia. He ran over to the wall and changed from a run to a jump at the constable. But he had already stepped aside, and the late strike simply gave him extra momentum. Ramon then rolled down the corridor, leaving me and the werewolf one-on-one.
Fear? All the fear here was in my head. This beast didn't know fear.
He only knew that he wanted to eat. Eat and kill, but first eat.
Hunger drove him on better than any fear, and when he jumped at me, I didn't try to find salvation in my illustrious talent, I simply flung open the hotel-room door, which opened outward! The werewolf slammed into the unexpected obstacle like a cannonball and his sharp claws dug through the paneling, but a moment later, he struck it with all his considerable weight, and the door was simply reduced to dust. The beast gave a kick to the jamb and yelped, breaking out of the door, as I rushed away. I immediately flew toward my partner, who was picking himself up off the floor. I again knocked him off his feet, and myself collapsed next to him.
Curses!
When the werewolf had chucked the broken paneling aside, I got onto my back and held my cane in front of me in a vain attempt to delay the rabid beast, at least for a bit.
I didn't have much hope for that, but then a shot thundered out.
The Webley-Fosbery revolver in Ramon's hand spit fire, at once deafening me and blinding my right eye; the werewolf caught the bullet in its wide chest and stumbled. A moment later, the terrifying wound covered itself over as if the seventy grams of lead and copper had dissolved right into the monster, but the constable didn't stop pulling the trigger of his automatic revolver until he had emptied the whole cylinder.
Six four-hundred-fifty-caliber bullets was no laughing matter. Six four-hundred-fifty-caliber bullets would buy us a few valuable seconds.
That was enough time for me to get up from the floor, place my cane against the wall in the corner, and put all my might into the joint with its lower third. The wood snapped. The crushable metal creaked, and the mechanism broke in two. I then met the werewolf with a poker made of splintery wood. I simply held the cane fragment in front of me and stuck it in his grinning maw.
The monster wouldn't have been able to get away now, and didn't even try. His terrifying teeth simply grabbed the cane and bit through it with ease, simultaneously breaking through the electric battery inside.
A blinding shock issued forth sparks! The werewolf was thrown back and hit the wall. After that, leaving deep scratches in the whitewash, he crawled on all fours and froze, shaking his head in confusion. From his open mouth, there was a mixture of spit and blood pouring out. The electric current hadn't fried his innards, but it had disoriented him and knocked him off course.
I cursed, took out my Roth-Steyr and opened fire.
Clap! Clap! Clap! Streaks of blood flew out after the bullet strikes. When the pistol's magazine was empty, Ramon had already broken down his Webley-Fosbery and changed out the spent rounds for another clip of new ones.
The copper and lead had done no harm to the animal. The wounds, like before, healed over immediately, but the werewolf, who still couldn't come to his senses after the electric shock, started crawling toward the exit, nimbly pounding his paws on the floor. Shooting as he walked, the constable ran out to chase him, but the monster just slouched his shoulders, taking bullet after bullet with his wide back. It just rolled down the stairway. One moment more, and the werewolf was already outside.
"Devil!" Ramon cursed out, running up to the entrance door. "He got away!"
"To hell with him!" I wheezed out, going down after him. "Porter! Ramon, where did that wimp get off to?"
Pushing back the latch, he walked up to the table and frowned:
"He's here. Don't scream."
I had actually already managed to notice the blackened puddle of blood in the corner.
"Is he dead?" I asked Ramon.
"He's dead," my partner confirmed, reloading his revolver with trembling hands. "We messed up, Leo," he gasped. "We messed up bad!"
And I couldn't argue with that.
The murderer got away, the porter was dead, and the hotel guests were now starting to look out of their rooms, terrified by the shooting. Soon, all the local watch would be hurrying here.
"I wonder if there’s a back door?" I chuckled, when the piercing trill of a police whistle came in from the street.
"Leo, this is no time for jokes," Ramon frowned. "We aren't going out the back door, alright?"
I gave a good-natured curse and took a seat on the lowest step, not wanting to dispute my overly principled comrade on running from the scene of a crime. Considering the clues we'd left behind, a dumber idea never could have come to mind.
But I still couldn't resist a jab:
"Just say it. You're afraid to go outside."
"I am,"
Ramon confirmed. "It's almost like you didn't see the way that bastard was able to dodge silver! I was shooting from point-blank! If you want to keep investigating this, it'll have to be without me! Three thousand is a lot of money, but it definitely isn't enough to get my head sewn back on."
"Wimp!" I laughed uncontrollably, though my head was spinning in a vortex. "You'd better think about what you're going to say to your colleagues."
Ramon snorted:
"You lie your own way out of this! You asked me for help. You didn't want to get into the details. That's all I know."
"Sounds good," I nodded, in that my Private Investigator's License and the note from the Witstein Banking House left me with quite a bit of room to maneuver.
But I wasn't going to lie. In fact, I was intending to lay everything out with no reservations.
Honesty was the best line of defense in these matters.
Or at least almost the best...
I took out a lighter and lit the corner of my police identification badge. I watched it get swallowed up by the little flame and warned my friend:
"The porter volunteered to show us the suspect's room. We went in, and it was very messy..."
And then there came a sloppy bang on the door.
"Open up, it's the police!" they wailed from outside.
"There's still time to run out the back door," I joked again, then sighed and waved my hand. "Alright, unlock it..."
3
THEY RELEASED US the next morning.
First me, then Ramon a half hour later. I waited for my friend on a bench in the internal courtyard of the Newton-Markt and, together with him, went outside. There, we exchanged glances and, without a word, hobbled into Archimedes' Screw. We walked in silence; we no longer had the strength for conversation.
We had been forced to talk all night.
First we were interrogated by the detectives who showed up at the crime scene, then the interrogation was continued by two persnickety detective sergeants, and it all ended with a very unpleasant talk with head of the CID Maurice LeBrun.
My having a private investigator's license and a note from the Witstein Banking House drove my former colleagues fairly frantic, but I'm sure that the only reason I got out without being accused of a crime is because no one wanted to puff up another scandal. The murder of Isaac Levinson and his entire family had been far too high-profile.
