“She says she is from a place near the border of Salzburg,” I repeated.
“I thought so,” Augustus said. “Tell this stout woman that we shall examine the place where they store the orphans and, after I make some preliminary investigations, I will most likely decide to lie in wait and see if I can solve this Saint Nicholas conundrum. I do this not out of any great love for their primitive race, but because in their ignorance I believe that they have brought to our great and peaceful land an infection which could spread, and so I must sterilize this seeping wound in order that its stink and corruption might not contaminate and ruin all that it touches.”
I turned to Miss Goering.
“He says — “
“Ja,” she replied. “I heard.”
Miss von Hitler took us upstairs to see the room in the attic where the orphans slept. It was a long chamber with a jolly fire crackling in the hearth and thirty tiny beds each made up with snowy white sheets, and each bearing a colorful patchwork quilt folded neatly at its foot. Underneath each bed was an identical bedpan stacked on top of an identical footlocker, no bigger than a loaf of bread, containing all the possessions of each orphan child. At the end of the room, a double window looked out over the snow-covered rooftops of the neighborhood where a forest of chimneys gave off puffs of smoke.
Augustus roamed about the room for some time, paying special attention to the chimney.
“Hurm,” he said. And “Erm,” and “Hm,” and finally, “Mm.”
The rafters of the room were carved with tiny hearts and the familiar motto from the front door of “Einigkeit - Macht - Stark” was carved over the door in a charming Gothic script. Over the mantel hung a picture of the Christkindlel, or the Christ Child, as we would call him. A general atmosphere of Old World charm pervaded everything.
“My mind is made up,” Augustus finally said. “Inform these waif dealers that I shall solve their mystery tonight, but that under no circumstances should they allow their friendless and unloved charges to sleep in this room. You and I shall wait here in the dark, William, and we will discover what it is that seems to have an unslakeable appetite for orphans.”
This news was greeted with great relief by Miss von Hitler, Miss Goering, and their cook, Miss Goebbels. They insisted that we come to the kitchen and drink strong coffee and eat spargel and wurzelbrot. I was willing to follow wherever Miss von Hitler led, but Augustus stayed me for a moment with a hand upon my sleeve.
“Word to the wise,” he whispered. “Do not eat their food unless you wish to be poisoned.”
“What?”
“The Germans are notorious poisoners,” he said. “I shall mime eating mine so as not to alert them that I am wise to their ways, but you should not become entangled in their snares.”
I assured him that I would not, then followed Miss von Hitler to the kitchen. There a sight to behold greeted our eyes. It was clearly dinner time and the kitchen was a scene of delightful chaos as thirty small orphans scurried hither and thither like little blond mice. Why, they looked almost like real people! Soon they had the table set and were consuming their bread and milk. Augustus and I observed from a scientific distance.
“Orphans!” Miss Goering said from the head of the table. “I haf un announcement. Tonacht is un special nacht. Do you know vhy?”
The innocent foundlings shook their blameless, unloved heads.
“Tonacht ve haff un special scientist, Augustus Mortimer, und his manservant, Bilbo. Many uf you who haff been viff us for many years because uf your dead parents hoping to vun day turn twelve und go liff honest und useful lives, may haff noticed dat every year several uf your little orphan friends go missink. Many uf you haff been afraid dat it is der time uv year for you to go missink. Vell, Augustus Mortimer is un doktor und he vill discover vhy dis haf been happening und he vill make sure dat no vun goes missink dis year.”
The tiny orphans clapped for us with their precious paws and I felt a great glow in my chest.
“Und now, drink your cocoa und then de tooth vashing followed by prayers und den bed in der front parlor. Ja, for tonight is un special camping night!”
The orphans chattered excitedly at this news, all atwitter that their routine had been disturbed so delightfully. When their meal was finished, they filed out, two by two, looking up at us with great curiosity. One little girl, her hair done up in braids, looking for all the world like a tiny Miss von Hitler, ran up to Augustus. She held out a cunning bracelet woven from a lock of her flaxen hair.
“Please, sir?” she said.
“Gah!” Augustus choked, making shooing motions. “Get it away from me!”
Miss Goebbels pulled the waif back into line and I watched them go, feeling a pang in my bachelor breast.
“Right,” Augustus said, standing up from his chair which was surrounded by morsels of bread which he had cunningly pinched off, pretended to eat, then thrown on the floor. “It is time for us to penetrate this dark Germanic mystery.”
At first I thought he was speaking of Miss von Hitler but then I realized he was talking about our mission here tonight on the eve of the Feast of Saint Nicholas.
“Right!” I said. “Let us penetrate it together!”
We strode out of the kitchen, almost slipping in the puddle of beer that Augustus had pretended to drink. We trooped upstairs to the third floor and made for the orphan’s bedchamber underneath the eaves.
“Are you quite sure you’ll be all right?” Miss von Hitler said, blinking back tears as we neared the door.
“Don’t you worry,” I said. “You may visit us at any time in the night to check on our well-being.”
With that, she pressed a strudel into Augustus’s hand, then fled down the stairs. Augustus pushed open the door and we entered the room.
“Draw up chairs,” Augustus said, and we each pulled rough wooden chairs to opposite ends of the room, then put our feet up and prepared to wait. As the fire burned down the shadows it kept at bay seemed to bloom and blossom, rising up from the corners like untended shrubberies, soon enveloping the room in their gloomy nightshade. I rose to stoke the fire.
“Stop,” Augustus’s voice said from the darkness. I jumped, startled, for I had heard nothing from him but soft clankings and creakings for many hours. “Let it burn lower.”
“But it is so dark,” I protested. “We must have light to see our prey.”
“Perhaps our prey travels by chimney,” Augustus said. “Let it burn down and allow the Teutonic gloom to take hold.”
Reluctantly, I sat back down and tried to keep myself from nodding off. When a gentle knock at the door came sometime later, I leapt up with great relief.
“A knock! I shall investigate,” I said, and I opened the door to find the beautiful Miss von Hitler peering past me.
“What may I do for you?” I asked.
“I haf brought kaffee for Herr Mortimer,” she said.
Closing the door behind me, I stepped out into the hall and took the proffered cup.
“Thank you, good woman,” I said. “Your hospitality is most welcome at this late hour.”
“It is only for der sake of der orphans,” she said. “I vould do anythink for dem.”
“Yes,” I observed. “The orphans. How did a woman as lovely as yourself become involved in the orphan business?”
“I must go,” she said, but I caught her elbow before she could flee.
“Please,” I said. “Tell me.”
Realizing that I had no intention of releasing her arm before she unburdened the secrets of her heart, she spoke with great passion and emotion.
“You may not believe me,” she said. “But I vas un orphan, too.”
“My god,” I said. “I cannot tell. You are so kind, so gentle, so well-groomed, and clean, there is no stain of the orphan upon you.”
“Every orphan is like und snowflake,” she said, reddening. “Each is different in his or her own vay.”
“Yes,” I said, unsure of what exactly she was
talking about. “What are your dreams, Miss von Hitler? May I call you Greta?”
“No,” she said, charmingly. “My dreams are my own.”
“Please,” I said. “I shan’t let you go until you open your bosom and disclose its secrets to me.”
She pulled at her arm again, but I maintained my grip and soon she realized that she was no match for my ardour.
“I dream uv one day having a home uv my own,” she said.
“You want to repair the broken home from which you crawled,” I exclaimed. “Mother, father, baby, an attempt to create the love you lacked as an orphan.”
“Nein,” she said. “I mean, dat I vant to have un home for orphans. To specialize in der relief und moral instruction uf half-orphans, foundlings, und friendless infants. To instruct them and impart in their hearts der moral lessons uv how to become upright und productive members uf — “
There was a gunshot in the other room.
“Vat vas dat?” she cried.
“It was only the wind,” I reassured her. “Now, if you will excuse me, Miss Greta, I must do investigation now. Please go away and forget you heard anything.”
I slipped inside and closed the door.
“Augustus?” I hissed in the darkness. “What happened?”
“It came in the window,” he said from somewhere in front of me. “Like a thief in the night. I heard clattering, then the window swung open and I saw a dark, monstrous shape climbing inside. So I shot it with my knife-pistol-knife. I may have also stabbed it.”
Quickly, I lit a dark lantern and raced to his side. There on the floor lay the unmistakeable shape of Father Christmas. He was quite dead.
“I have slain the beast!” Augustus cried with joy, and he began to dance around the corpse.
Father Christmas’s eyes were wide and staring, and blood had saturated his jolly white beard. There was a large hole in his chest, and two stab wounds beside. Spilled open beside him was a sackful of presents for all the good boys and girls.
“You killed Father Christmas,” I said.
“Bah,” Augustus said. “It is merely a disguise.”
He tried to pull off Santa’s beard, and actually managed to tear off a large piece of it, as well as a piece of Santa’s face which was apparently attached.
“You have murdered Saint Nicholas,” I said, dumbstruck.
“Nonsense,” Augustus said. “I merely defended myself from an attack by a large, bearded fellow with a gut like a bowlful of jelly and a twinkle in his eye who came at me in the dark wielding a sack full of presents.”
“Hello? Is everythink all right in dere?” Miss von Hitler asked through the keyhole.
“We’re fine, thank you!” I shouted. “It was merely a chair exploding.”
As I spoke, I wedged a bed underneath the doorknob.
“At least the mystery is solved,” Augustus said.
“How so?”
“It is quite clear to me, using reason and logic, that this is the mysterious orphan-napper. This creature has been slithering into this orphanage for years and hauling the unwanted children away in his sack. God knows what he does with them.”
“Santa brings presents and goodies in his sack,” I said. “He does not use it for hauling children.”
“Then you give me a logical explanation,” he challenged.
“I have none at the moment — “
“Ah ha!”
“ — except that you have slain a beloved Christmas figure.”
“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Augustus said.
“Except…”
“Except what?” he asked.
“Except eventually those orphans are going to come upstairs and they’re going to want to know what happened to the presents they expected to receive tonight from Saint Nick.”
“I would imagine that finding him dead in a pool of blood might distract them from that question, while offering them an explanation at the same time,” Augustus said.
“There are twenty-four militias and local shooting societies in Kleindeutschland,” I said. “All of them heavily armed and predisposed to err on the side of orphans. You do realize what danger we’re in?”
“Yes,” Augustus mused. “When you put it like that it does sound like rather a tight jam. Here. Don’t you know an actor?”
“Several,” I replied. “In fact, Jim Mahoney whom you met once is appearing in The Mossy Banks of My Hidden Valley over at the Bowery Theater this very night.”
“Not anymore!” Augustus cried. “For tonight he is playing Father Christmas in an orphanage for twice the fee.”
“Actors are immoral,” I said. “And they will do anything for money. Your plan is a sound one, except…”
“Damn that preposition!”
“How do we get word to him, Augustus?”
“I believe we shall take a cue from your Mr. Dickens,” he smiled, then threw open the window at the far end of the room.
It was a large window that looked down four stories into a maze of back alleys and courtyards where shoemakers tanned their leather, shopkeepers stacked their crates, and small boys and stray cats clambered and crawled all night long.
“Ho!” Augustus cried. “You there! Boy!”
But the stray boys merely continued slinking through the dirt and night soil.
“We should throw something to attract their attention,” I suggested.
All we had at hand were Augustus’s various knives and pistols, and so we began to chuck them out the window at the street urchins with great enthusiasm. Eventually we managed to gouge one of their skulls quite badly and thereby earned his notice.
“I’m going to slash your throats!” he shouted.
“Boy, how would you like to earn a penny?” Augustus called.
“Sir, would I?” he beamed, his mood instantly transformed.
“Run to the Bowery Theater and fetch Mr. Jim Mahoney from backstage at The Mossy Banks of My Hidden Valley. Let nothing stop you, for we require him here most urgently.”
“Just that?” the boy said. “For a whole penny? Do I have to kill him, sir? Make it look like an accident, burn his body, and bury his clothes, sir?”
“No, just bring him back here,” Augustus said, sawing a penny in two. He tossed down one half of it. “You shall get one half of this penny now and one half when you return.”
The shabby child picked up the penny, saluted us smartly, and disappeared down an alley.
“How do you know he’ll come back?” I asked. “And not just abscond with your half penny?”
“Oh, I know boys,” Augustus said. “He’ll be back for his penny. Now, we have much to prepare and very little time in which to do it.”
By the time the boy returned with a reeling Jim Mahoney, we were ready. I had to admit that Augustus’s plan was a sound one, but so incredibly complex that one mistake could jeopardize our lives. I was impressed, however, that he had already prepared himself for the eventuality that Mahoney would arrive drunk and be unable to scale the building.
“I have fashioned a rope from the contents of the orphans’s footlockers,” Augustus said, throwing down a long, multi-colored rope made of nightshirts, Sunday hats, letters from dead fathers, and locks of hair from mothers long vanished. “You, Jim Mahoney! Stop that! You are quite drunk enough already!”
“Dutch courage!” Mahoney shouted, swigging down the rest of a small bottle of whiskey he had produced from his pocket then dashing it to pieces on a stray cat. Or it might have been a small boy.
For another half penny the urchin we had enlisted tied the proxy rope around Mahoney’s thick waist, then Augustus and I hauled him up to the fourth floor, bashing him into the wall several times.
“A good bashing will sober him up,” Augustus reassured me.
Finally, Jim Mahoney stood unsteadily before us in the orphans’s chamber. We had piled many beds against the door, and there were only occasional knockings from behind them now.
“Here,” Augustus said. “
Put this on.”
We had stripped Father Christmas of his garb, and scalped his head of its beard and snowy locks. Because his clothes were already red, the blood was barely visible, seen more as wetness than as stains. We draped the heavy coat and baggy red pants around Jim Mahoney, then pulled the leathery scalp and face of Santa Claus over his skull like a hood.
“It stinks!” Mahoney complained.
“Now, up the chimney,” Augustus said.
“What?” Mahoney demanded.
“Clamber up the chimney, and when you hear the orphans retire for the night you can slide down and distribute their presents from this sack. It will be a great joy for all of them. And for you, sir.”
He pressed a five dollar bill into Mahoney’s hand.
“And there is another one of those waiting for you when you present yourself at my home tomorrow afternoon,” Augustus promised. “After you have given these tiny orphans a visit from Saint Nick.”
“Wunnerful, wunnerful,” Mahoney mumbled from inside the flayed face of Santa.
“Now, up you go,” Augustus said.
Mahoney contemplated the fireplace for a moment, but since the fire was now little more than ashes and cinders, and since he desperately needed ten dollars to finance his one man show, The Dogs of Shakespeare, he was soon clambering up it most adroitly.
“Ish warm in here,” he complained.
“Almost there,” Augusts said, encouragingly. “Wonderful! Now wait at least one hour before sliding down.”
“Now,” Augustus said, turning to me. “Let us restore this room to its previous state, then go and inform the hausfraus that all is well, and away we go from this blighted neighborhood.”
Because we had separated Santa’s body into parts and stored the pieces inside the orphans’s footlockers, we were careful to make sure that their little beds were back in place and everything was stowed shipshape, so that they would not have cause to discover the grisly contents before morning.
“Don’t worry so much about it,” Augustus said, slapping me on the back. “They can think of it as an impromptu anatomy lesson. I would have thought myself king for a day to receive such a gift as a boy.”
That was when we heard long, loud screams echoing from downstairs. There was one thought in my mind: Miss von Hitler was in danger!
Dead Leprechauns & Devil Cats Page 9