[Mark Twain Mysteries 05] - The Mysterious Strangler

by Peter J. Heck

  “The police think the painting was taken out there in search of an unscrupulous dealer willing to sell it.” I said.

  “All the dealers are without scruples,” said Garbarini, with some vehemence. ‘They buy a painting for a little price, and sell to the inglesi for a big price. They take the artist's work to make themselves fat, and the artist goes hungry. It is no big step from that to selling stolen paintings, or even to stealing the paintings themselves. The police are right to look there for the stolen painting.”

  “Luigi Battista, at least, was honest enough to tell us that his paintings were copies.” I said.

  “Ahh, Battista is no better than the rest,” said Garbarini. growing more heated. “My friend Hugo dealt with him— never again! He does very good drawings in the style of Leonardo—I know how good, because I see them myself. When he takes them to Battista, that robber tells him the market is very bad. and gives him a few lira for his work, saying he gives him more if it brings a good price. Then an English milord buys it for a hundred times what Hugo gets. One of Hugo's friends is in Battista’s shop when the milord’s servant comes with the money, and so Hugo finds out the drawings are sold. But when he goes to ask for his money. Battista tells him the drawings didn't sell yet. Then Hugo tells him how he knows the drawings are sold, and Battista slaps his hand on his forehead.” (Garbarini demonstrated the gesture as he described it, with a comical expression.) “My memory is so bad—I must be thinking of some other drawings,” says Battista, and he gives Hugo a few more lira so he will go away. Hugo needs the money bad, or he would throw it on the floor and walk out, but instead he takes it and swears he never lets Battista sell his work again. That is no honest man!”

  “If the story is true, I would agree with you,” I said. I realized that I might have stumbled on information that Mr. Clemens and I could use. Perhaps we needed to make another visit to the art dealer’s shop.

  “Of course it is true!” said Garbarini. “Hugo would never lie to me!”

  “Oh, I’m sure your friend is telling the truth,” I said. “It is just that Battista gave the impression that he was honest, perhaps to a fault. But I think he recognized my employer, and was afraid he might be exposed.”

  Garbarini seemed to accept my assertion, although I could see he was still not calm. He took another sip of his wine, emptying the cup, and reached out for the jug to refill it. For my part, my mind was turning over possibilities. Now that I thought of it, Battista had recognized Mr. Clemens—could he have been trying to charm the famous author. hoping to beguile him into buying some of his counterfeit artworks? The meeting with the art dealer now took on shades of meaning I hadn’t suspected.

  “You say there are many other art dealers in that neighborhood.” I said, searching for more information. “Do you know of any that might be willing to find a buyer for a piece they knew to be stolen?”

  “For enough money, most of them would run to Hell to find a buyer for their own mother.” growled Garbarini. He stared at his cup for a moment, then added. “The ones that had mothers.”

  Gonnella laughed. “Now, be charitable, my friend.” he said, reaching to fill his own mug from the bottle. “They all had mothers. It is the fathers that most of them are lacking.” They both laughed, with ferocious grins.

  I tried to turn the talk back to something relevant to my search for clues, but the two men continued to joke until, after a bit, Gonnella excused himself and went down the ladder to the storeroom below. Garbarini set up the chessboard again, and I found myself in another head-to-head struggle on a sixty-four-square battlefield.

  My two guards—for, despite the lack of any overt duress, that is the role that Garbarini and Gonnella were performing—took turns playing chess with me. The one “off duty” would wander off downstairs, presumably to help with whatever the anarchists needed to remove from the premises now that they had decided to abandon this headquarters.

  While I had no real way to keep track of time, it was clear that the hour was getting late. I was anxious to return to Villa Viviani and share what I had learned—as little as it was—with my employer. I didn’t know whether I was going to have to stay here overnight, or to find my way home from a strange quarter of town at some ungodly hour. Neither prospect was attractive, but so far I had elicited no answer from my guards beyond “wait and see”—which was not very helpful. As much as I enjoyed chess, it was beginning to pall. How much longer could it take for them to remove whatever it was they kept in this building?

  I was in the middle of still another losing chess game—I had won a rook for a knight and a pawn, but Gonnella had lured my pieces to one comer of the board and, now that they were entangled, was advancing his extra pawn on the other side. I was trying to decide if I could postpone defeat by giving back the rook, when Garbarini came rushing up the ladder and spoke hastily to Gonnella in Italian. From his harsh whisper and agitated tone, the message was urgent. Although it was his turn to move. Gonnella at once stood up from the board and started toward the ladder.

  “What is it?” I asked, rising to my feet. I decided it was time to insist on learning their plans for me.

  “Somebody watching this place,” said Garbarini. gesturing me back toward the chair. His eyes were wide, and his face flushed, probably from climbing the ladder. “Maybe is police,” he said. “You stay here—is safest for you.”

  “The police don’t worry me.” I said, realizing even as I said so that they might still consider me a suspect in the murder—and that they might take my consorting with political outlaws as confirmation of my guilt.

  “You stay here.” Garbanni repeated, waving me back again. He and Gonnella both dashed down the ladder and I heard their footsteps running off somewhere down below.

  I went over to the trapdoor and leaned down to look through it. The room below had one small light. I could make out bales of paper, and the outline of the door out to the street, but nothing else. Nobody was visible in the shop below, not even the guards I had seen earlier in the day. Should I go down the ladder? Or would the anarchists take that as breaking the promise Mr. Clemens and I had made? Even if they did, was that any great price to pay for a chance at my freedom?

  Before I could decide what to do, I became aware of voices somewhere outside, shouting something incomprehensible. Then I became aware of running footsteps, more frantic shouts, and a pop! pop! sound that I realized must be gunfire.

  All at once, my situation had become much more perilous. The available choices all seemed bad. Descending the ladder would place me in the line of fire; on the other hand, staying where I was might mean being trapped. If the shooters were the police. I might be able to surrender to them and let Mr. Clemens bail me out—assuming they gave me the chance to surrender. If they were not the police—well, that might be very tricky.

  As I tried to think the situation through, the decision was taken out of my hands. Down below, the light suddenly got brighter, and someone ran through the door carrying a torch. Before I could make out his features, he flung the torch into the bales of paper. Bright orange sparks flew in all directions, and the fire caught almost at once, spreading rapidly. Thick smoke billowed up to assault my eyes and nose even as I watched.

  I swung down through the hatchway in an instant, and got to the floor almost without touching the ladder. The smoke was already filling the room, and I strained to find the way to the outside door. I ducked below the smoke, peered to make sure of the direction, and then dashed toward the opening. Ahead of me I heard another pop! pop! sound, but I paid it no heed. Bullets might hit or miss, but to stay in the fire was certain death.

  Coughing, I burst into the open air and tried to clear my vision to see which way to turn. The crescent moon showed me a wooden fence, with a few heavy wooden crates piled at its base, at the rear of the alley I had come out into. At a quick glance, the fence looked low enough to vault. I had no idea what lay behind it, but the shooting seemed to be coming from the other direction. I might regret i
t if there was a watchdog in the neighbor’s yard, but I could better outrun a dog than a bullet. I ducked low and began to run toward the fence.

  Someone behind me shouted something in Italian, but I lengthened my stride and leapt to place my foot atop a crate at the foot of the fence. Here my luck gave out; the crate cracked and toppled, throwing me to the ground. I landed hard, knocking the wind out of myself, and another crate fell on my leg.

  Before I could rise, there was a man standing over me. with a pistol pointed at my face. “No muove” he said, and I did not need my Italian dictionary to know what he meant. I raised my hands alongside my head and lay there panting. For better or worse, I was a prisoner again. But at least I was alive, and in the open air.

  It did not take me long to learn who my captors were. The uniforms of the guardia—the Florentine city police— were easily recognizable in the moonlight. They took me to a station not far from the place where I had been captured. There were no other prisoners from the radicals’ hideout—at least, neither Garharini nor Gonnella, nor (as far as I could tell) the men who had been outside the building when I had come there. Perhaps they had been brought in separately, but if so, they were not put in the large common cell that I was taken to.

  This was a noisome place, in comparison to which the New Orleans lockup I had been in was a veritable bed of roses. The entire floor was covered with filth, and there must have been a dozen prisoners in a space smaller than the garret I had just come from. There was a man lying in one comer, his head covered in bandages, moaning as if he were on his deathbed. Two large men sat on the floor— there was no other place to sit—with their backs to the wall, eyeing me as if they thought I had something worth stealing, if only my clothing and shoes. One poor wretch repeated some phrase over and over again, without the slightest variation, in some language I did not recognize. The others in the cell either stood by the bars, peering out into the corridor, or paced back and forth, brushing past one another in the narrow confines.

  I did not get to sample the pleasures of this cell for more than a few minutes, for not long after the door had closed behind me. it opened again and two officers led me down the corridor to a sort of office, where a thick-bodied man in police uniform sat behind a desk. My guards held me by both arms while he barked a question at me in Italian, to which I responded. “No capisco italiano, signore. I am an American citizen—do you speak English?”

  “Do not think you will escape punishment by being a foreigner.” the interrogator replied, in good (albeit heavily accented) English. “We have many foreigners in our prisons. You will go there yourself if you don't cooperate with us. Where are your accomplices7”

  “I don't know who you're talking about,” I said, trying to keep my face impassive. I had already decided what my story would be. “I was taking a shortcut through the alley, and when I heard the shooting, and saw the fire. I tried to get away.” I hadn't had time to think about that, until now;someone had tried to burn the place down with me in it. I shuddered to think what might have happened had I not seen the fire before it spread.”

  “You could not be so innocent, or you would not have run from the law,” the man said, rubbing his heavy jowls with his hand. He pointed at me. “Perhaps you set the fire yourself, to destroy evidence. Arson is a very serious crime. signore.”

  “I did not set the fire,” I said. “I wish to send a message to my employer, Mr. Samuel Clemens. He is staying in Villa Viviani, in Settignano.”

  “You will send no messages until you tell us the truth.” said the interrogator, standing up behind his desk. “Where are your accomplices?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said again warily. I had heard very unpleasant hints of what could happen to those who fell afoul of the police here. I had thought that if the man didn’t believe me—in fact, I was trying to deceive him—he would simply lock me up again. But while I wanted as little as possible to do with that Italian jail, I began to fear I would get in even worse trouble if I changed my story.

  The interrogator confirmed my apprehension as he reached down to his desk and picked up a riding crop. He flicked it lightly against the desktop, and it gave out a flat crack—not very loud, but it had the effect he undoubtedly desired. My attention was riveted on him as he said, “Perhaps I can help you remember.” He stepped around the desk, and the two policemen took tighter grips on my arms.

  I don’t know for certain what would have happened next, for the door behind me creaked open just then, and a familiar voice said. “Aha, tenente. I see you have found the man we have been searching for.” I turned my head to look. It was Capitano Rosalia.

  The interrogator put the riding crop down on the desktop and turned to face the captain. “Capitano Rosalia. I will remind you that this man is being held for questioning by the guardia. Your carabinieri have no claim on him,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “On the contrary, tenente,” said Capitano Rosalia. “It is a political matter in which he has been meddling, and that is very much our concern. We have been watching him for some time.”

  “He is suspected of arson.” said the tenente, stubbornly. “That is in our jurisdiction, and I will not be cheated of my right to question the prisoner.” He had picked up the riding crop again, and was flicking it against his desktop.

  “You have a right to question him.” said Rosalia, spreading his hands apart. “But I tell you, this fellow is only a dupe of the revolutionaries. He knows nothing of use to anyone. The anarchists have run away and burned the building they were in, and left the poor trusting foreigner behind to be caught and questioned about it. You would do better to rake the ashes for clues than to waste your time with him.”

  “So you say.” said the tenente, sitting on his desktop with a scowl. “I say, give me an hour with him and you will find out that he knows more than you suspect. I have my ways with this sort.”

  “We know your ways, tenente,” said Rosalia, nodding soberly. “They are sometimes useful, I admit. But this man is the servant of a very important American—you will regret it if he comes to any harm. Better to release him to my custody.”

  “The cursed foreigners are ruining this country,” said the interrogator sourly. He stared at me, flicking his crop, then turned to the captain again. “To the devil with them, and with the carabinieri, too. Take him away. But don’t let me catch him loose in my jurisdiction again—it will not go easy with him. I promise. Away with you both!”

  Capitano Rosalia took a gentle grip on my right arm. “Come with me. Signore Cabot.” he said quietly. “The tenente has decided to be reasonable, and we should take advantage of it while it lasts.”

  I felt numb. I had no idea what lay in store for me; I knew what I had just escaped. And that was not even taking into account my escape from the burning building. I nodded my assent, and followed Capitano Rosalia out of the room.

  20

  It is lucky that I learned so quickly that the guardia had captured your secretary,” said Capitano Rosalia. We were sitting in Mr. Clemens’s office; it was close to midnight, but there was still a great deal to discuss before any of us were ready for bed. The captain and my employer were smoking cigars, and all three of us drank coffee and brandy.

  “I agree with you in principle,” said the captain, who occupied an armchair across the desk from my employer. ‘‘But you, Signore Clemens, must be able to put yourself in another man’s place—to see the world through his eyes. Your secretary was fleeing the scene of a crime, a scene in which shots had been fired, and for all the guardia knew, they had caught the man who set the fire. You cannot expect them to treat him with kid gloves in such circumstances.”

  “I expect them to try to verify his story before they start working on him with the truncheons,” growled my employer. He stuffed his cigar back in his mouth, took a puff, then added. “Don’t get me wrong. Captain—I’m grateful you found him and brought him home, and it’ll be a long while before I let him out on
such a damn-fool errand again.”

  Capitano Rosalia leaned forward and cleared his throat. “Speaking of which,” he said, “what errand was Signore Cabot on in that part of the city? It is not a quarter frequented by tourists—for reasons that must be obvious, considering what happened to him today.”

  “I can answer that.” I said. I was getting tired of being spoken of as if I weren’t present. “A friend invited me to his home to play chess. We played right through supper time, into the evening, and then I decided to walk home. I was taking a shortcut through that alley when the fire broke out. and then the police came after me. with their guns drawn. I was frightened, and I ran. I believe you know the rest.” I tried my best to look as if I were being candid. After all, enough of the story was true that it might pass muster.

  The captain looked at me with raised eyebrows. “That is a very interesting story,” he said, tapping the ash off his cigar. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to provide me the name of this chess-playing friend, and the location of his home.”

  “His name is no problem,” I said. “He is Giovanni Garbarini. whom I know from Cafe Diabelli. As to his address, I am afraid I don’t know it. We met by chance on Via Tomabuoni and walked to his home together—I didn’t notice the street name or number where he lived. But if you went to the cafe, perhaps you’d find him. He plays there almost every day, and I’m sure he’d give you his address if you asked.” I was even more sure that Garbarini would avoid Diabelli's—or any other place where the police might look for him—until the hue and cry had abated.

  “Garbarini is known to us,” said Capitano Rosalia dryly. He put the cigar down and picked up his glass, then turned back to me and asked, “Are you aware that he is a notorious advocate of armed rebellion against the kingdom?”