Sherlock Holmes and the King of Clubs

by Hayes, Steve

  This time Florian turned to look for himself and saw a blood-red Daimler with white-walled tyres coming down the hill after them.

  ‘Go!’ he yelled. ‘Once we’re across the border they can’t touch us!’

  Annalise pushed the accelerator to the floor and the Waverley lurched onto the bridge with snow flying up from under its spinning wheels. The Slovakian border guard on the other side of the bridge, sensing some sort of threat, immediately brought his Steyr-Mannlicher rifle up to one shoulder, yelling: ‘Zastavi! Zastavi!’

  ‘Uncle…?’ cried Annalise.

  ‘Keep going!’ Florian shouted. ‘Don’t stop for anything!’

  Behind them, the Daimler raced down off the hill and drove onto the bridge just as the guard at its far end fired a warning shot over the oncoming Waverley. The electric car veered wildly. Its rear tyres hit a patch of ice. The car spun around, out of control, and smashed through the wooden palings that lined the left side of the span.

  For one awful moment the car tipped toward the icy waters twenty feet below, then slowly … slowly … righted itself.

  ‘Get out!’ exclaimed Florian. He had hit his head in the collision, his glasses had cracked and blood was streaming down one side of his pasty face. ‘You hear me? Get out!’

  ‘Wait,’ Wolf urged. ‘Don’t move so fast!’

  But Florian, in his hurry to escape the precariously balanced car, had shifted its point of balance so that it began to tilt at an even greater angle toward the river.

  ‘No!’ wailed Annalise. ‘No!’

  It was too late. The car slid forward and – fell.

  It turned end over end and crashed roof-first into the freezing water. There was an enormous explosion of foam. The car bobbed there for a moment, the inside filling sluggishly with ice-laden water.

  Purslane brought the Daimler to a skidding halt on the bridge. Everyone piled out. The Slovakian guard and some of his companions, alerted by the sound of the crash, came running toward them. Purslane immediately raised his hands and started to address them in halting Slovak, telling them not to shoot.

  Holmes, Watson and the Houdinis, meanwhile, raced to the splintered edge of the bridge and peered down at the water. The Waverley bobbed several more times, sinking ominously lower with each successive dip, and then vanished below the surface.

  Watson breathed softly, ‘My God …’

  Holmes glanced at Houdini. ‘It is over,’ he said flatly.

  But even as he spoke, two figures broke the surface, struggling to stay afloat – Wolf and Annalise. Annalise flailed around, screaming for help. But her heavy coat, now saturated, dragged her under even as they watched.

  Horrified, Bess looked away. ‘Oh, dear God … Harry …’

  She buried her face in her husband’s cheSt But Houdini gently pushed her away from him.

  ‘Harry? What –’

  ‘Take this,’ he said, removing his overcoat.

  She stared at him, alarmed. ‘Harry, you can’t do this! It’s madness!’

  ‘Bess, I can’t just stand by. Not when I can do something about it.’ He draped his coat about her shoulders, removed his slouch hat, and hurried to the splintered fence. There, he kicked off his shoes, took several deep breaths and dived into the water.

  By now Annalise’s head had disappeared below the surface. Wolf, struggling against the cold, somehow managed to drag her back up. His sister was still screaming, slapping desperately at the water and at her brother, in fact at anything within her reach. One of her blows struck him in the face, dazing him. Instinctively he let go of her and fought to save himself.

  He sank below the surface. Panicking, he felt his lungs filling with icy water, his vision blurring … darkening …

  Then …

  He felt someone behind him, hands sliding beneath his arms, lifting him back to the surface.

  He and his rescuer broke the surface together. Annalise could no longer be seen. Still struggling, Wolf turned to see who was supporting him. Stunned, he saw it was the very man he and his family had tried to imprison and had intended to kill.

  Houdini’s blank expression gave nothing away. Taking care to keep Wolf’s head above water, he broke into a powerful sidestroke.

  Behind them, Annalise appeared again, screaming. Houdini paused and looked back at her. He knew he could probably save her too, if he’d wanted … but with Frankie’s death so fresh and his emotions so raw …

  He didn’t want to.

  Annalise glared at him; for an instant her hatred of Houdini was greater than her fear of drowning.

  Houdini, seeing that glare of hatred, turned and continued swimming towards the Slovakian bank of the river.

  Annalise’s screams ended, permanently, long before he reached it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  A New Beginning

  FOR SOME TIME afterwards chaos ruled. Houdini and Wolf were hurried away and given the opportunity to dry themselves and change out of their sodden clothes into some coarse hand-me-downs that the Slovakian border guards found in the adjoining barracks. The checkpoint’s commanding officer – a gravel-voiced stotnik, or captain, called Široký – had everyone brought to his office. Here, he tried to question them, but it did not go well for him. There was a major communication problem, for Purslane’s Slovakian was poor and the captain’s Austrian-German not much better.

  At last the captain gave up and mimed the sending of a telegram. It appeared that he was going to summon someone from the nearest headquarters who could speak either German or English. Holmes nodded to show he understood and the captain left.

  Once he’d gone, Wolf joined Houdini and Bess beside the ancient pot-belly stove in the corner of the office. The three of them silently sat there, draped in blankets, each sipping a mug of hot chocolate that they held in their half-frozen cupped hands.

  Finally, Wolf broke the silence. ‘I must thank you, Herr Houdini,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘Without your intervention I would have drowned along with my sister and uncle.’

  Houdini shrugged indifferently, but said nothing.

  ‘No one would have blamed you for not coming to my aid,’ Wolf continued, ‘especially after all the suffering you have endured at our hands. And my apologies to you, Frau Houdini, though I am well aware that I can never fully atone for the misery I’ve caused you these past few days.

  ‘I also owe you a debt of thanks, Herr Holmes, for bringing this abhorrent period of my life to a close. Since my father’s accident … well, certain things have happened that made me uneasy. My father was, as you know, one of my country’s brightest stars, the epitome of a showman, and a hero of sorts. He was paid handsomely for the pleasure he brought to his audiences, and as a consequence neither Annalise nor I ever wanted for anything. We enjoyed a very comfortable existence and, I suppose, you could say we were spoilt. But when the day came that Father was no longer able to perform to the level expected of him, Annalise and I intended to take over and become the new King – and Queen – of Clubs.

  ‘Alas, that will now never happen, but I am inclined to believe you, Herr Houdini, when you say that it was Uncle Eder who encouraged my father to attempt the Underwater Box Escape too soon. He was always ambitious for his brother – perhaps even jealous of him – and believed that if the King of Clubs were to some day become a star on the international stage, he would first have to eclipse his only true rival – you, Herr Houdini.

  ‘And so it became a race to see who could perfect and perform the Underwater Box Trick first – at least, that is what my uncle led us to believe. He played up this non-existent rivalry in the Austrian press and he did so with such success that for a time Father was the talk of our entire country.’

  Houdini nodded, but kept silent.

  ‘As you know, he attempted the escape with considerable misgivings. But Uncle Florian had already announced a date for the first performance, had spent a small fortune – money we could ill afford, as it turned out – on publicity, and my father had no
choice. He would have sooner died than disappoint his public … and ironically, he came close to doing just that.

  ‘Of course, it was a terrible personal tragedy for us. Annalise – I do not expect you to believe this, but she was not always the heartless creature Uncle Florian eventually made of her. She and I worshipped our father and to see what he became after the accident … was… truly heartbreaking.

  ‘On a more practical level, we also lost our main source of income, at the same time finding ourselves having to pay a vast amount for my father’s continued care at the Palliativestation in Engelhartstetten. It further transpired that many of the investments my uncle had made upon my father’s behalf were … unwise, to say the least.

  ‘To that end, I suggested that Annalise and I embark upon our own stage career as soon as possible. Even before we started, though, I think we knew we were nowhere near good enough and were reluctant to tarnish the reputation our father had worked so hard to achieve.

  ‘I will not make excuses for Annalise and me, gentlemen. We could have said no when Uncle Florian first suggested that we use those few skills we had acquired for certain … criminal enterprises. He argued that, since Europe had become a hotbed of intrigue, it followed that one nation would pay handsomely for the secrets of another. In his time he had made numerous friends within the Austrian government, and that was where it started. Under his guidance, Annalise and I were soon travelling throughout Europe – even to your own country, Herr Holmes – to obtain vital papers and documents for one government or another.

  ‘As I have already stated, I was never happy about the direction our lives had taken. But we earned more money than my poor father ever managed to earn as the King of Clubs, and so long as a goodly proportion of it went towards his continued care … well, we decided to continue along that path.’

  ‘You had the potential to become the perfect criminal, Herr Eder,’ muttered Holmes.

  Wolf frowned at him. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘A few days ago an acquaintance of ours, a certain Dr Freud, told us that a man who allows his conscience to dictate his actions, as long as that same conscience also justifies them, has the makings of the perfect criminal.’

  ‘I am far from that,’ said Wolf. ‘I have detested every low thing I have done, not least the unfortunate death of Frau Lane. That was not meant to happen. We had intended only to ask her where she went earlier that evening and then to send her back to the Royal with a message for you, Herr Houdini. But she tried to escape and …’

  Wolf shuddered before continuing. ‘Gentlemen, I fear that something in my sister changed following my father’s accident. To deflect attention from his own part in my father’s downfall, my uncle filled us both with the idea that this had really been engineered by Herr Houdini. Annalise accepted our uncle’s version of events without question and allowed her hatred for Houdini to fester and grow until she became hard and vicious. Did she kill Frau Lane by accident? I believe she did, yes. But did she regret it? I fear not. She showed no remorse, just gathered up the … the body and … and despite all my protestations … disposed of it.’

  Something in him broke then, and he sobbed, once, before recovering himself.

  ‘I am just glad the whole sorry business has come to an end at last.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Holmes. ‘I should still like to know why you wanted to break into the Imperial Palace to begin with.’

  Wolf shrugged. ‘To understand that, Herr Holmes, you must also understand something about the House of Habsburg. For centuries it was able to expand its influence largely through a great number of arranged marriages. Through these the Habsburgs were able to gain significant political and religious influence.

  ‘In the middle of the sixteenth century the Habsburg dynasty split. The so-called “junior” branch became the Austrian Habsburgs. The Spanish Habsburgs retained the status of “senior” branch. They ruled Spain and its colonial empire, as well as the Netherlands, parts of Italy and, for a time, Portugal.

  ‘But the Spanish Habsburgs died out in 1700. They had been able to consolidate their power by their willingness to marry and procreate with blood relatives. Of course, this often incestuous interbreeding resulted in all manner of deformities for those who did not die at birth; of insanity and disease as well. This is what eventually killed off the Spanish Habsbergs and led to the War of Spanish Succession.

  ‘And yet not all members of the senior branch suffered the same unhappy fate. One such family in Spain, the Adalbertos, survived and believe they can prove their claim to the Austrian throne – if only they can obtain the evidence they believe Emperor Franz Joseph keeps locked away in the Palace records.’

  ‘Then your mission was to break into the Palace vaults and obtain that evidence,’ said Watson.

  Wolf sighed. ‘Yes, and the Adalbertos were willing to pay a small fortune to get it. But our biggest stumbling-block was how to enter and leave the Palace without getting caught. We pored over the plans we stole from Christie’s, but could find no way that did not involve too many risks. Then, when Herr Houdini came to our country … well, Uncle Florian said we could use his expertise to our advantage, and at the same time take our revenge upon him for forcing my father to undertake the Underwater Box Escape sooner than he would have liked.’

  Holmes cleared his throat. ‘You do realize, of course, that you have just confessed to spying for and against your own country, of abduction and complicity to murder.’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘And you understand the likely sentence for those crimes?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Holmes,’ Wolf said bleakly. ‘But I will face my fate in the knowledge that I deserve it. It is the one honourable thing I will have done for some considerable time.’

  Houdini sprang up from his chair. ‘Wait a minute,’ he exclaimed. ‘You mean I risked my neck saving this guy just so he can hang?’

  Holmes stared at him, his expression inscrutable. ‘Would you rather he be set free?’

  Houdini glanced down at his wife, who quickly nodded.

  ‘Yes, dammit,’ he said.

  ‘I see. And you, Purslane? As a representative of His Majesty’s Government? What do you think?’

  Purslane shrugged. ‘The choice is not mine to make, Mr Holmes.’

  ‘But you have heard his story. You must have an opinion.’

  ‘Of course I do. Of them all, he was the least culpable, and he has already been punished, not least by his own conscience.’

  ‘Well said.’ He turned to Watson. ‘What is your opinion, old friend?’

  Watson had been thinking about something Holmes had said some days earlier, something Purslane had said, too. Now he broke his long silence. ‘I think for Wolf to stand trial,’ he replied, ‘would only tarnish the good name of Eder, and cast a shadow over every wonderful thing his father ever achieved. I believe that if we were to take the law into our own hands and show him clemency, he would spend the rest of his days caring for his father and making amends.’ He looked directly at Holmes and said meaningfully, ‘There are some people in this life who are evil through and through. And yet there are a great many others who, despite their mistakes, may thrive, if given a second chance.’

  Holmes allowed himself a faint smile. He knew Watson was really referring to the woman he had known as Irene Hastings.

  ‘Then we are agreed,’ he said. ‘The crash, and the subsequent deaths of Florian and Annalise Eder, was a very unfortunate accident – nothing more.’

  Wolf looked at him through the steam rising from his mug. ‘You would let me walk free?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘After every hurtful thing I have done? I mean, can you do this?’

  Holmes hesitated for a moment then said, ‘We can indeed.’

  Once a harried translator arrived at the border post, it took a surprisingly short time to explain matters to everyone’s satisfaction. The translator – a thin, bespectacled lieutenant – and Captain Široký showed great sympathy for Wolf, once they reali
zed that he was the son of the King of Clubs; his father’s name was known and revered even in their own country. Široký assured him that every effort would be made to retrieve the bodies from the river, though it might take several days to do so.

  With the matter thus concluded, Holmes and the others finally donned their coats and hats and took their leave. As Wolf accompanied them he seemed to be in a daze.

  The early-evening weather was dismal with light snow. As the others headed toward Freud’s waiting Daimler, Wolf pulled Holmes to one side and extended his hand. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, his voice lacklustre, his thoughts still dominated by his uncle and his sister and all the events which had led him to this moment. ‘I do not deserve your mercy. I do not deserve any mercy.’

  ‘But you have it,’ Holmes replied. ‘And I believe you will always endeavour to justify it.’

  ‘Then goodbye to you,’ said the younger man.

  Holmes frowned. ‘You are not coming with us, in the car?’

  Wolf shook his head. ‘I shall make my own way home,’ he said.

  ‘In these conditions you may never make it.’

  Wolf smiled sadly. ‘Then let my fate be in the hands of a higher authority.’

  And without another word he turned and started traipsing through the snow, back across the bridge and into Austria, the blanket draped around his slumped shoulders, his head down.

  Purslane, seeing him go, cried, ‘Eder!’

  But Wolf didn’t hear him, or if he did, chose not to respond. He just kept trudging through the snow until at length he was completely swallowed by the blizzard.

  The others stood in a silent line, watching, waiting, hoping that he would have a change of heart and come back. He didn’t.

  After a moment Houdini put his arm around Bess and pulled her close. Watson, watching them, was reminded fleetingly of Grace, the woman he had loved and now realized could never be replaced. And yet he could hardly bring himself to indulge in self-pity. At least he – they – had survived this business, unlike poor Frances Lane.