Victorian Villainy m-1

by Michael Kurland

  I beamed at him as a professor beams at his best pupil. “You’re very astute,” I said, leaning toward him. “And you look like a man who can keep a secret…”

  “Oh, I am,” he assured me, his nose twitching like that of a stout bird dog on the scent of a blutwurst sausage.

  Extracting my very special document from an inner pocket, I unfolded it before him. Crowded with official-looking seals and imperial eagles, the paper identified Otto Stuhl as an officer in the Nachrichtendienst, the Kaiser’s Military Intelligence Service, holding the rank of Oberst, and further declared:

  His Imperial Most-High Excellency Kaiser Wilhelm II requests and demands all loyal German subjects to give the bearer of this document whatever assistance he requires at all times.

  “Ah!” said Burgermeister Pindl, nodding ponderously. “I have heard of such things.”

  Thank God, I thought, that you’ve never seen one before, since I have no idea what a real one looks like.

  “Well, Herr Oberst Stuhl,” Pindl asked, “what can the Burgermeister of Lindau do for you?”

  I took a sip of schnapps. It had a strong, peppery taste. “Word has come,” I said, “of certain unusual activities in this area. I have been sent to investigate.”

  “Unusual?”

  I nodded. “Out of the ordinary.”

  A look of panic came into his eyes. “I assure you, Herr Oberst, that we have done nothing-”

  “No, no,” I assured him, wondering what illicit activity he and his kameraden had been indulging in. Another time it might have been interesting to find out. “We of the Nachrichtendienst, care not what petty offenses local officials may be indulging in-short of treason.” I chuckled. “You don’t indulge in treason, do you?”

  We shared a good laugh together about that, although the worried look did not completely vanish from his eyes.

  “No, it’s strangers I’m concerned with” I told him. “Outsiders.”

  “Outsiders.”

  “Just so. We have received reports from our agents that suspicious activities have been happening in this area.”

  “What sort of suspicious activities?”

  “Ah!” I waggled my finger at him. “That’s what I was hoping you would tell me.”

  He got up and went over to the window. “It must be those verdammter Englanders,” he said, slapping his large hand against his even larger thigh.

  “English?” I asked. “You are, perhaps, infested with Englishmen?”

  “We have people coming from all the world,” he told me. “We are a resort. We are on the Bodensee. But recently a group of Englanders has attracted our attention.”

  “How?”

  “By trying not to attract our attention, if you see what I mean. First, they come separately and pretend not to know each other. But they are seen talking-whispering-together by the twos and threes.”

  “Ah!” I said. “Whispering. That is most interesting.”

  “And then they all go boating,” the Burgermeister said.

  “Boating?”

  “Yes. Separately, by ones and twos, they rent or borrow boats and row, paddle, or sail out onto the Bodensee. Sometimes they come home in the evening, sometimes they don’t.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Pindl said. “We haven’t followed them.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

  “Off and on, for about a year,” he said. “They go away for a while, and then they come back. Which is another reason we noticed them. The same collection of Englanders who don’t know each other appearing at the same time every few months. Really!”

  “How many of them would you say there were?” I asked.

  “Perhaps two dozen,” he said. “Perhaps more.”

  I thought this over for a minute. “Is there anything else you can tell me about them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “All ages, all sizes,” he said. “All men, as far as I know. Some of them speak perfect German. Some, I’ve been told, speak fluent French. They all speak English.”

  I stood up. “Thank you,” I said. “The Nachrichtendienst will not forget the help you have been.”

  I had dinner at a small waterfront restaurant, and watched the shadows grow across the lake as the sun sank behind the mountains. After dinner I returned to my room, where Holmes joined me about an hour later.

  I related my experiences of the day, and he nodded thoughtfully and went “hmmm” twice. “Englanders,” he said. “Interesting. I think the game’s afoot.”

  “What game are we stalking, Holmes?” I asked.

  “I have seen some of your ‘Englanders,’” he told me. “In the Ludwig Hof shortly after lunch. I was enjoying a cassis and being expansively French when three men walked in and sat near me. They tried to engage me in conversation in English and German and, when I effected not to understand, bad French. We exchanged a few pleasantries and they tipped their hats and began speaking among themselves in English, which, incidently, is not as good as their German.”

  “Ah!” I said.

  “They insulted me several times in English, commenting with little imagination on my appearance and my probable parentage, and when I didn’t respond they became convinced that I couldn’t understand and thereafter spoke freely.”

  “Saying?”

  “Well, one thing that will interest you, is that Holmes and Moriarty are dead.”

  “Really? And how did they die?”

  “There was this great fight at Reichenbach Falls, and they both plunged in. Their correspondent saw it happen himself. There could be no mistake.”

  I stared out the window at the snow covering a distant mountain peak. “Oscar Wilde says that people who are said to be dead often turn up later in San Francisco,” I said. “I’ve never been to San Francisco.”

  Holmes stared intently down his long nose at me. “I don’t know what to make of you,” he said. “I never have.”

  “So, now that we’re officially dead,” I said, “what do we do next?”

  “When the faux Englishmen left the room,” Holmes continued. “I followed them. They went to the waterfront.”

  “I trust you were not seen,” I said.

  Holmes fastened a withering glare on the painting of an alpine meadow on the far wall. “When I don’t wish to be seen,” he stated, ‘I am not seen.”

  “Silly of me,” I said. “What did you observe?”

  “They entered a large warehouse next to a pier jutting into the lake. Attached to a short line by the warehouse door-”

  “Three clothespins,” I ventured.

  “Three white clothespins,” he corrected.

  “Well,” I said. “Now we know where.”

  “Not quite,” Holmes said. “I observed several more people entering the warehouse over the next hour. And then a door opened on the water side of the building, and the men boarded a steam launch named the Isolde, which was tied up to the pier next to the building. It then chuffed out onto the lake and away. I investigated and discovered that now there was only one man, an old caretaker, left in the warehouse.”

  “Ah!” I said.

  “The boat returned about an hour ago. Some men got off. A few of them were the same men who had boarded earlier, but not all.” he tapped his long, thin forefinger on the table. “They’re doing something out there somewhere on the lake. But it’s a big lake.”

  “That presents an interesting problem,” I said. “How do we follow them over open water?”

  Holmes stared out the window. “A two-pipe problem,” he said, pulling out his ancient brier and stuffing it with tobacco. “Perhaps three.”

  Having smelled the foul mixture he prefers to smoke, I excused myself and went downstairs, where I indulged in a kaffee mit schlag. Mit, as it happens, extra schlag. About an hour later Holmes came downstairs, gave a slight nod in my direction and went out the front door. After a suitable time I followed. Night had fallen, and the streetlights were sparse and dim. A c
hill wind was blowing in off the lake.

  Holmes was standing in the shadow of an old stable a block away. I smelled the foul tobacco odor emanating from his clothing before I actually saw him.

  “Commandant Vernet,” I said.

  “Herr Stuhl.”

  “Have your three pipes shown the way?”

  “If we had time we could build a large observation balloon and watch them from high aloft,” Holmes said. “But we have no time. I think one of us will have to stow away on that steam launch and see where she goes.”

  “If nominated I shall not run,” I told him firmly, “and if elected I shall not serve.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The American General Sherman. I am taking his excellent advice.”

  Holmes looked at me with distaste. “With all your faults,” he said, “I didn’t picture you as a coward.”

  “And neither am I foolhardy,” I told him. “There is little point in indulging in a foredoomed course of action when it will accomplish nothing and merely succeed in getting one killed. Remember Alphonse Lamphier.”

  Holmes stared glumly into the dark. “I have nothing better to offer,” he said. “In large parts of the ocean ships leave a phosphorescent wake that lasts for some time, I understand, but not in lakes, however large.”

  “What an excellent idea!” I said.

  “A phosphorescent wake?”

  “A wake of some sort. The craft will go wherever it is to go, and we shall follow in its wake.”

  “How?”

  “A moment,” I said, staring into space. “Why not oil? Some light oil dyed red should do it.”

  “Brilliant!” said Holmes. “And who shall we get to sprinkle this oil on the water as the boat progresses?”

  “We, my doubting Sherlock, shall construct a mechanism to do the task,” I said.

  And so we did. The next morning I procured a five gallon drum of fish oil, which seemed appropriate, and took it down to a deserted jetty which Holmes had observed yesterday in his wanderings. I then went back to the main street and returned with a pair of iron exercise dumbbells, purchased from a junk shop. Holmes joined me shortly after, bringing a coil of quarter-inch marine line and a small bottle of red dye; some sort of pastry dye I believe, which we added to the oil. It seemed to mix satisfactorily, so we busied ourselves affixing some handles on the drum with metal screws. The screw holes would leak slightly, but that didn’t matter.

  We changed into recently purchased bathing costumes and rented a two-man rowboat, wrapping our clothing and other items we might need in oilcloth and stowing them on the bottom of the small craft. After about twenty minutes rowing along the shore we came in sight of the pier in question. The steam launch Isolde was tied up alongside.

  There appeared to be no one on watch in the launch, so we came up as quietly as possible to the opposite side of the pier and tied our boat to a convenient hook. Slipping into the chill water, we towed the drum of oil under the pier to the starboard side of the Isolde. We could hear the deep chugging of the steam engine as we approached the boat, which suggested that there would shortly be another journey.

  I screwed two four-inch wood screws into the hull near the stern, and fastened one end of a twelve-foot length of marine line to them. The other end Holmes fastened to the oil drum. My calculations indicated that it would take the weight of both of the iron dumbbells to keep the drum submerged, so the two of them were tied firmly onto the sides of the drum. All that remained was to put a screw into the cork plugging the drum’s bunghole and attach it by a short line to the pier. That way as the steam launch left the pier, the cork would be pulled and the drum would begin leaking colored oil.

  As we were completing this last task we heard footsteps above us on the pier, and the voices of the pseudo Englanders as they began boarding the launch. They all spoke English, those who spoke, and their accents were slight. Yet of all the myriad of home-grown accents which pepper the British Isles, allowing one man to despise another who grew up twenty miles to his north, these were none.

  After about ten minutes the boarding was completed, the chugging of the steam engine grew louder and deeper, and the Isolde puled away from the pier. There was a slight but satisfying pop as the cork was pulled from the oil drum, and it began its journey bobbing out of sight behind the steam launch, spilling red oil as it went.

  “We’d better get out of the water,” said Holmes, “I’ m losing sensation in my hands and feet.”

  “Cold baths are much over-rated,” I agreed, shivering uncontrollably as I threw myself back into the rowboat. I held it steady for Holmes to climb aboard, and then we were both occupied for some time in toweling ourselves off and putting our garments back on.

  “Let’s get going,” Holmes said after a few minutes. “They’re getting further ahead by the moment, and besides the exercise of rowing will warm us up.”

  I took up one pair of oars, and Holmes the other, and we maneuvered our small craft out onto the lake. The sun was overhead, and a slight but clearly visible red stain was slowly widening as it led off in the direction of the departing steam launch, which was already distant enough for its image to be covered by my thumb with my arm extended.

  We rowed energetically after the Isolde, cutting easily through the gentle swells left by her wake. If she was barely visible to us, surely our small craft was no more than a speck to any of her company who should chance to be peering back toward shore. Soon she was out of sight entirely, and we followed by keeping in sight the slight red smear visible under the bright sun.

  It was perhaps half an hour later when the tenuous watery red trail brought us in sight of the steam launch. She was headed back toward us, pulling away from a large black barge which had a curious superstructure, and seemed to have been outfitted with some sort of engine at the rear. At any rate, the barge was moving slowly under its own power even as the Isolde pulled away. The deck of the Isolde was crowded with men and, as it seemed probable that there were even more men inside the cabin, it looked as though the crew of the black barge were going home for the night.

  We altered our course slightly to make it appear that we were headed for the opposite shore, and tried to look like two middle aged gentlemen who were passionate about rowing, perhaps recapturing their youth. As the Isolde approached us we waved in a friendly but disinterested manner, and two of the men on deck replied with similar salutations. Who, I wondered, was fooling whom? I hoped it was us, them, or our story might have quite a different ending than we had intended.

  “What now?” Holmes asked me, when it was clear that the steam launch was not going to turn around and investigate us more closely.

  “The black barge,” I said.

  “Of course,” Holmes told me. “I repeat, what now?”

  “As it’s still under power, although making slight headway, there are still men aboard,” I said. “So just pulling alongside and clambering on deck is probably not a wise option.”

  Holmes lifted his oars out of the water and turned to glare at me. “Astute observation,” he said. “I repeat, what now?”

  “We could swim over to it underwater if the water wasn’t so cold; if we could swim that far under water. We could come alongside and flail about, claiming to be in distress, and see whether those aboard choose to rescue us.”

  “Or just shoot us and toss us overboard,” Holmes commented.

  “Yes, there’s always that possibility,” I agreed.

  Holmes sighed deeply. “I guess there’s nothing for it then,” he said, shipping the oars and laying back in his seat to stare at the cloud-filled sky. “We float about here until dark and spend our time praying for it not to rain.”

  Which is what we did. Our prayers were almost answered, in that a light, but extremely cold drizzle fell for a while, but then went away to be replaced by a chill wind.

  One thing I must say about Holmes is that, barring his periodic fixation on me as the fount of all that is evil, he is a good companion: d
ependable and steadfast in adversity, intelligent and quick-thinking in a fix; a loyal ally and, as I have had occasion to discover in the past, a formidable foe. I found myself thinking about Holmes and our past history as we waited. What Holmes thought about I cannot say.

  Dark fell with admirable speed that evening. By ten past eight I couldn’t read my pocket watch without striking a match-the light well shielded from view, of course. There were no lights visible from the black barge either. If lamps were lit in the cabins, the windows and portholes must have been well shielded. We waited a while longer-how long I cannot say as I didn’t want to strike another match-and then, dipping our oars as silently as possible, headed in the direction of the barge. The moon was a slender crescent, the light was scant, and the barge proved as difficult to find as you might imagine a black barge on an almost moonless night would do. For a while we could hear the painfully slow throb of the barge’s motor, but it was impossible to tell from just what direction it was coming. And the sound carried so well over the water that it did not seem to increase or lessen in whatever direction we rowed. And then it stopped. It wasn’t until a man came on deck carrying a lantern, heading from the aft deckhouse to the forward deckhouse, that we were able to be sure of our heading. In another five minutes we were under the stern overhang of the barge, where we tied the rowboat up to the port side and paused to consider.

  “Up onto the deck, find a blunt object or two to use as weapons, and get below, or at least inside, as quickly as possible,” Holmes said.

  “Forward or aft?” I asked.

  “We are aft,” Holmes said, “so let us not waste time by going forward.”