by Hayes, Steve
‘I am not likely to mistake the man or his attire,’ Holmes replied acidly. ‘At the moment he is our single link to the woman he has abducted … and the woman one of his accomplices has killed. As such he is burned into my memory.’
‘But if it is the same man, then he’s early. I mean, the note said—’
‘These people, whoever they are, are professionals, Watson. As such, they are unlikely to be so foolish as to provide Houdini with any information he might be able to use against them. They may have said they would collect him at ten, but it is far more likely that they intended to collect him earlier than that all along.’
‘So that’s why we came here early?’
‘Of course.’
Flakes of snow feathered down onto the cab’s windows. The horse in the traces stamped restively, shook its head and snorted.
They had been waiting patiently now for almost an hour. Watson hadn’t seen the point of arriving early, until a Harvey cab had pulled up outside the Royal and its passenger jumped out and hurried inside.
Ten minutes later the man in the alpaca topcoat reappeared on the wet pavement, his collar turned up against the scything wind, his sporting cap tugged low over his brow. This time there could be no doubt as to his identity. Houdini, wearing a slouch hat and his black overcoat, its lapels still ripped in memory of Frances Lane, was at his side.
The man in the alpaca topcoat gestured for Houdini to get into the waiting Harvey firSt Then he climbed in after him and moments later, the cab jerked into motion.
Holmes waited a few seconds then tapped his cane twice against the roof of their own cab. The heavily muffled driver, exposed to the elements on a high seat set above and behind the cab, immediately snapped his reins and the horse broke into a trot.
Holmes had told the fellow they would be following someone that evening, and if he wanted to collect a handsome bonus for his efforts, he would ask no questions but instead take pains to keep a discreet distance behind their quarry. Should their quarry suspect they were being followed, the promised bonus would be forfeit.
Holmes and Watson’s cab followed the vehicle ahead as it turned left and passed between the palatial apartments of the Brandstätte. Another left took them onto the equally grand Vorlaufstrasse. In the darkness of the cab, Watson reached into his pocket and felt the grips of his Webley Mk II. Its touch alone was comforting.
The cab in front turned left again and the horses trotted along the snowy cobbles of the Salztorg.
‘Where in heaven’s name are they going?’
Holmes leaned forward to study their present location. ‘This much I can tell you. We are about to leave the First District behind us.’
A chain suspension bridge loomed out of the snow-speckled darkness ahead. They clattered across it. The waters of the Danube seemed to dip and sway thick and heavy below them, sending reflections of the streetlamps skittering across its waves like spilled gold.
They left the bridge behind them. They followed the Praterstrasse into an increasingly suburban environment. Watson took out his pocket watch and held it to the poor light. They had now been following the cab carrying Houdini for ten minutes.
The Praterstrasse yielded to the Lassallestrasse and they turned left onto Handelskai. Watson recognized the name from his reading of Bradshaw’s. It was, claimed the guide, one of the longest streets in Vienna.
It ran along the right bank of the Danube until the Brigittenauer Brücke took them across the Old Danube, an oxbow lake separated from the river itself by a dam.
The streets around them changed abruptly showing a profile reminiscent of the late Middle Ages: the roads narrowed to cobbled alleys; the pavements shrunk to little more than uneven ribbons of stone. The buildings they passed were ornate and beautiful, as were the signs that hung outside each one, but they were also unmistakably relics of an earlier time.
Houdini’s cab turned left into a narrow alley between two vast warehouses and pulled up. Watson caught sight of the street name and scowled uneasily.
Blutstrasse.
Blood Street, indeed!
Holmes used his cane to push open the little trap through which the passenger could communicate with the driver and hissed in German, ‘Go on for another twenty yards, then stop!’
The driver’s voice came down to them on the biting wind. ‘Ja.’
Once the cab came to a halt, Holmes opened the bow door and leapt out into the street like a man half his age. ‘What is down there, in Blood Street?’ he called up.
The cabbie, mystified by the actions of his two English passengers, shrugged. ‘It is just a thoroughfare like any other. No one uses it much any more. There’s nothing down there, just the church.’
‘The church?’
‘St Romedius, mein Herr. Well, what’s left of it. It burned down about seven or eight years ago. All that remains now is a charred shell.’
Even as he digested that, Holmes heard the renewed clopping of hooves. He looked toward Blood Street just as the Harvey cab reappeared, then turned back the way it had come. Though Holmes only caught a glimpse of it, he saw that it was empty.
‘Wait here,’ he told Watson.
Before Watson could respond, Holmes disappeared into the swirling blizzard.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
What Happened in Blood Street
HOLMES HURRIED BACK toward Blood Street. The area seemed to be devoid of life, the tall warehouses all locked up for the night.
At the corner, he slowed and peered cautiously into the narrow thoroughfare, his astute grey eyes squinting against the sleet. There were no gas lamps here, but the watery moonlight was sufficient to show him the ghostly outline of what had once been a church standing some thirty yards further down the street on the left.
He could see Houdini and the man in the alpaca topcoat standing outside the buckled iron railings that separated the church and its weed-strewn, headstone-littered grounds from the pavement. As he watched, Houdini’s companion pushed him through the drooping gates and on toward the twisted, blackened ruins of the church.
Holmes continued to watch until they had entered the ruins. Then he hurried silently down the alley in pursuit.
The cabbie had been right. All that remained of the church was a shell; four tall, crumbling walls partially covered in thick, spills of ivy that looked more black than green. There was no roof and the tall, arched windows had been shattered, so that all that remained were just ominous, inky gaps.
Holmes stood a moment longer, watching, listening and waiting. Only when he was sure that there was no one in the darkness to observe him did he enter the once-hallowed grounds and follow the faint memory of a path to the remains of the vaulted entrance.
Reaching his destination, he pressed himself to the wall. Behind him the alley was silent. The traffic of the main thoroughfare was faintly audible in the distance, but he could not hear anything from within the church and chanced a look inside.
There was nothing much left of the interior save the vaguest impression of where the aisle had led to the altar. Both sides were flanked by the blackened remains of the pews that had once stretched from nave to chancel. Long grass, uncut weeds and the occasional pile of rubbish or rubble had replaced the original grandeur of a decade earlier.
Holmes entered the building. Sleet pattered gently against his hat and shoulders. He went about a dozen feet, thought he heard the softest sound ahead of him and quickly ducked down behind a stack of rotted wood.
He heard no further sound.
Shortly, he stood up and moved on. Despite a lengthy search, however, he could find no sign of the men he was pursuing. Puzzled, he wondered what had become of them. He refused to believe that they had vanished without trace. No, there was obviously some logical explanation for their apparent disappearance.
Again he paused, this time to review his knowledge of church architecture, and then he made for the spot where the altar had stood, its cement base still roughly visible among all the tangled, sn
owy weeds.
A grim smile tightened his thin lips when he discovered a place where the rubble had been swept aside exposing a trapdoor.
It was just as he had suspected. Houdini and his companion had quite literally gone to ground – or more accurately, into the very earth itself, by way of the crypt. Having reached that conclusion, there was no mystery as to where he would locate the crypt entrance, for tradition dictated that it was never far from the altar.
Holmes reached down and cautiously raised the trap. Slowly, a narrow flight of worn wooden steps came into view. One look verified that they led down to a dusty, stone-flagged floor twenty feet below. As best he could see, the crypt – where the wealthy dead could await Judgement Day in comfort and assurance – had been untouched by fire. But the air was permeated by a stale mustiness that even the biting cold could not disguise.
Lamplight glowed dully from somewhere below. It threw the shadows of long, neoclassical Doric pillars across the wall attached to the steps. Holmes listened intently. At first, he couldn’t hear anything. Then, as if from far off, he heard someone below speaking in very precise English, his words distorted by echoes so that it was little more than a murmur.
Holmes removed his hat, dropped to his knees and leaned forward. Gradually more of the crypt came into sight, albeit upside-down. A series of pillars rose to support the shadowed ceiling. At their bases lay scattered headstones, many of them broken, and dusty equipment – shovels, brooms and such like.
Holmes regained his feet, then began to descend, a step at a time, keeping his weight on the outside of every step so as to make as little noise as he could.
At the bottom of the steps, he paused again. The air was colder here even than outside. Ahead, the rough-hewn walls were pitted and crumbling. Dust tickled his nostrils.
He made his way along the narrow passage until he reached a corner some ten feet away. With every cautious step, the muted voices grew more distinct.
Reaching the corner, Holmes removed his hat and cautiously poked his head around the screening wall.
The passage opened out into a large stone burial vault. At the far end of the crypt, Houdini, accompanied by the man in the alpaca topcoat, stood facing two other people. One was short and portly, dressed in a dark suit and bald but for a fringe of oiled black hair around the pate. Light from a brass carbide lamp balanced on one of the ornate stone shelves showed Holmes a man of perhaps fifty, with a round, jowly, sickly-pale face; the lamplight glinted on his tortoiseshell glasses.
The other figure was that of a girl of twenty-five. Beneath her dark teardrop hat, she wore her raven-black hair pinned up in a glossy spill of ringlets and curls. Her face was oval, pale like that of the portly man, and almost ethereal in the harsh light. Her unblinking eyes glittered like chips of obsidian; her long, narrow nose swooped to a full red mouth that was set in a cool, disdainful pout. She stood beside the portly man, with her hands stuffed into the pockets of an overcoat, and even from this distance Holmes could see the hatred she harboured for their captive.
Holmes studied her with especially close interest for here, almost certainly, was the girl who had killed Frances Lane.
‘… patience, Mr Houdini,’ the portly man had just finished saying.
‘To hell with that!’ replied Houdini, his voice echoing around the vault. ‘I’ve come for my wife, dammit, and I’m not leaving without her!’
The portly man stepped forward and slapped Houdini across the face. The blow rocked the escapologist back on his heels. Before he could react, however, the man in the alpaca topcoat – Holmes saw now that he was perhaps a year or so older than the girl, with a long, melancholy face, blue eyes and short fair hair – drew a pistol from his pocket. A Webley Mk IV, Holmes noted clinically. Seeing the gun, Houdini had no choice but to control his urge to strike back.
‘I have waited quite a considerable time for this moment, Houdini,’ the portly man continued. English was clearly his second language. He spoke it too precisely, as if rehearsed, every word accompanied by a cloud of vapour, for the vault was cold enough to serve as an icehouse. ‘And now that it has arrived, I intend to enjoy it.’ He glanced around their Spartan environment. ‘The location of our meeting, for example, is no mere chance. Are you familiar at all with the legend of St Romedius, in whose hallowed surroundings we find ourselves this night? No? Then please, allow me to enlighten you.
‘St Romedius was a young nobleman from Thaur, near Innsbruck. Though he had all the wealth and privilege he could ever want, he one day decided to closet himself away in a secluded cave and meditate upon life and its possible meanings. He was quite a remarkable man, possessed of every saving grace, qualities in which I myself am sadly lacking.
‘In later years, following the death of his parents, he gave away all his possessions and set out on horseback to visit a childhood friend, St Vigilus, in Trento. On his way there a wild bear attacked him. The bear killed his horse, and it seemed certain that it would also kill St Romedius. But to the amazement of his companion, a disciple named David, St Romedius tamed the bear with but one look. Indeed, the bear grew so tame that David was able to bridle him. And that was how St Romedius made the remainder of his long trek to Trento … upon the back of the bear.’
He paused to let his words sink in before adding: ‘Do you follow my meaning, Houdini?’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
The portly man smiled coolly. ‘The bear was wild and untamed, used to getting its own way and doing whatever it wanted, when it wanted. Then it came upon St Romedius, who broke the bear’s spirit and used the creature to carry him to his destination. That bear is you, Houdini, and I am going to be your St Romedius. I’m going to break you, and then allow you to carry me where I want to go.’
‘Quit talking in riddles,’ said Houdini, flaring. ‘Just tell me how much money you want and I’ll do everything in my power to get it to you, as fast as possible.’
‘You’re not listening, Houdini,’ the portly man said disapprovingly. ‘This isn’t about money. Or rather, I should say that this is not directly about money. This is about your carrying me to where I want to go.’
Houdini sighed and shifted his weight. ‘All right, have it your way. Tell me what it is you want and I’ll do it. All I ask is that you let my wife go.’
‘She will be released when the job is done. You both will. You have my word upon it.’
‘I hope you mean that, mister.’
The portly man turned his glittering, chocolate-coloured eyes on the man in the alpaca topcoat. ‘Did he do as I ordered, Wolf? Tell the desk clerk at the Royal that he would be out of town for a few days?’
‘Ja.’
‘Then we are all ready to go.’
‘Not so fast, Buster,’ broke in Houdini. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘It’s really quite simple, Herr Houdini. Supposedly, you are the world’s greatest escapologist. A celebrity who has travelled across Europe, always demanding to be locked up in the strongest and most impregnable of prisons, yet always somehow managing to escape. Now, correct me if I am wrong … but does it not follow that a man who is so successful at escaping from buildings should also be able to work out a way to break into one?’
He fell silent and waited for Houdini’s response.
Houdini said only, ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Then I shall make it clearer. Wolf, here, needs to enter and leave a certain … building … unobserved. I have the plans of this building, but so far I have not been able to work out exactly how our aims might be achieved. Neither do I have time on my side. The sooner Wolf is able to complete our mission, the sooner we receive a quite exceptional payment from our employer. And so I have decided to enlist your brain, Herr Houdini. And in return for finding a safe way into and out of this building, you and your precious wife will be released.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘I think not. And I would counsel you not to put such a ridiculous theory to the test. Now you are com
ing with us, Houdini. And if you know what is good for you – and your wife, of course – you will give us no trouble.’
Houdini shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said in defeat. ‘Whether I like it or not, there’s one thing I’ll grant you. Right now, you hold all the aces.’
‘Then we shall get along,’ decided the portly man. Without warning, his smile suddenly vanished. ‘We shall just search you first.’
‘What?’
‘I am not in the habit of repeating myself. Now, empty your pockets.’
‘But—’
‘Believe it or not, I know something about your trade, Amerikaner, about all its little tricks. First you will empty your pockets, and then we will search your scalp and the soles of your feet – areas in which you have often secreted needles before now, because they are the two places no one ever thinks to check. Your mouth, too.’ Without warning, he clapped his hands together, awakening fresh echoes in the vault. ‘Open wide!’
The man in the alpaca topcoat, Wolf, made another gesture with the revolver. Grudgingly Houdini opened his mouth, using his fingers to pull his cheeks outward, but the portly man only chuckled.
‘I told you, Houdini, I know all the tricks.’ Then he went closer, and hissed, ‘Pull your lower lip down.’
Slowly Houdini obeyed. The portly man said, ‘Ah,’ and then plucked a packet of razor blades from where they had been tucked between gum and lip. ‘Sehr gut. Now take your shoes off.’
Grimly Houdini raised one foot and quickly untied his shoe, slipping it off from the heel and allowing it to fall with an echoing thump to the crypt floor. The sock came next and he then repeated the procedure with his other foot. When he had finished, the portly man stepped back and snapped the fingers of his right hand.
‘Annalise,’ he said.
The girl came forward. Houdini turned around and lifted each foot in turn. She examined the soles of his feet much as a farrier might examine the feet of a horse he was about to shoe. Eventually she removed some pins from where Houdini had threaded them beneath the calloused skin. She then took more pins from where he’d hidden them in his thick, curly hair.
