The Keeper of Hands

by Sydney J Jones

  He now handed over the second photo, this one of a man, also tall in stature, caught mid-stride as he was walking along a city sidewalk, his long legs a blur of motion. Forstl thought he had seen this person before; there was something about the loose smile, the self-assured movement, the eyes that seemed to fix on and bore into whatever he scanned. A pleasant face, he thought. An intelligent one.

  ‘This is the woman’s husband—’

  ‘Advokat Karl Werthen,’ said Schmidt, taking Forstl by surprise.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Schmidt quickly explained that he had seen the Advokat and an older man confront Siegfried Mutzenbacher, and had then followed them to Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s headquarters at the Belvedere.

  ‘You are becoming a costly asset,’ Schmidt muttered, reflecting on how many deaths Forstl had already caused in order to protect his role as a Russian agent.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I think these men are in the employ of the Archduke. Werthen isn’t just a lawyer. He runs a private-inquiries firm that has handled several high-profile cases. I did a bit of homework on him in back issues of Neue Freie Presse. And his colleague is the eminent criminologist Hanns Gross.’

  ‘Never heard of either of them,’ Forstl said.

  ‘That may be so, but my fear is they may soon hear of you.’

  Forstl shook his head, not understanding.

  ‘Triangulation, my friend. Simple triangulation. They already have two leads that could be traced back to your office – the Bower and this absurd action at the Hotel Metropole. One more lead, one more shoe to drop, and they should be able to fix you, as if in the sights of a rifle.’

  Forstl suddenly stood up, straightening the crease in his trousers.

  ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘I assume you know your next assignment. If our friends in St Petersburg want certain documents and care for a mutually beneficial long-term working relationship, then you should proceed quickly and take care of this threat.’

  ‘A large “if ”, Captain Forstl. We shall see.’

  ‘And I need no further mementoes. Is that clear?’

  Forstl did not wait for an answer, but turned and made his way through the throngs of schoolchildren to the exit.

  Schmidt did not follow. He sat on the bench thinking for some minutes, and then got up and went back to the Lepidoptera cabinets. He had paid his one-crown entry fee; he would enjoy the arthropod collection.

  TWENTY-SIX

  They made no progress on the matter for the next several days. Gross, however, was in a fine mood, delighted at the collection of larvae and insects he had gathered from the corpse of Herr Schnitzel.

  Werthen and his family spent the weekend at the farmhouse in Laab im Walde. The weather was fine, and he was now able to see the green fuzz of the tennis lawn. Despite his complete neglect, the seeds had taken root and formed a large rectangle of delicate new pale green amid the profusion of tall grasses and wild flowers.

  Frieda accompanied him and was now busily running her hand over the new grass.

  ‘Sof,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it is nice and soft, isn’t it?’ Werthen leaned over and ran his hand over the new shoots; they tickled his palm.

  ‘Pwetty.’

  He beamed at her. ‘Not as pretty as you, though.’

  She grabbed his leg, her grip surprisingly strong, and buried her little head in the folds of his corduroy breeches.

  ‘Does it embarrass you to be told you’re pretty?’

  She lifted her head, peering up at him.

  ‘Because you are going to spend a lot of time being embarrassed. You’re a beautiful little girl, just like your mother.’

  ‘Just like her mother how?’ Berthe said as she approached them. ‘Look at that! It has sprouted.’

  ‘It certainly has,’ Werthen agreed. ‘Maybe we should continue to ignore it. It seems to like low maintenance.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling we are going to have a grass court?’

  ‘Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all. Exercise would do us all good.’

  They returned late Sunday night to find a telegram from Gross requesting that they meet first thing in the morning at Werthen’s office. The criminalist was his usual pedantic self, even in the abbreviated language of the telegram, demanding that they meet at eight sharp, and that Berthe accompany him.

  ‘Whatever is he up to?’ she said as they climbed into bed that night.

  ‘One of his unveilings. I assume he has discovered some evidence and wants to present it in dramatic form.’

  In the morning they left Frieda with Frau Blatschky and walked to the Habsburgergasse. It was one of those clear, warm mornings that made Werthen happy he lived in the city. Everything seemed alive and vibrant; as they passed through the Volksgarten, they saw a dog slip its leash and run after a family of ducks. The dog’s owner, a well-dressed matron in her fifties, could only stand and clap her hands at her disobedient long-haired dachshund. The ducks escaped unharmed and a constabulary officer was able to regain control of the dog and keep it from further pranks.

  ‘Better to have a child than a dog,’ Werthen said, taking his wife’s hand. ‘No leashes.’

  ‘Wait until suitors start knocking at the door,’ she said, squeezing his hand as they walked.

  By the time they arrived at the Habsburgergasse, the nearby businesses had already opened their shutters. The first gladioli were displayed in buckets on the street in front of Nestor’s; a rack of used books in uniform leather binding stood in front of Waltrum’s.

  ‘There’s Gross,’ Berthe said, drawing his attention away from the shops. Gross stood at the entrance to Habsburgergasse 4, an expectant look on his face.

  He began speaking as they approached.

  ‘Well whatever it is that makes you command my presence first thing in the morning, I hope it is important. I did not even have time to finish my coffee.’

  ‘Good morning to you, too, Gross,’ Werthen said. ‘But you were the one to command our presence.’

  His smile was cut short at the booming sound of an explosion overhead. Shards of glass sprayed the sidewalk. Luckily, they were all wearing hats and the glass fell around them. One splinter lodged in Werthen’s hand, which bled steadily, but he was initially too stunned to pay it any attention. Automatically, he reached pro-tectively for Berthe and held her to him. Her breath came in quick bursts. Gross stood unharmed but with mouth wide open as if in mid-scream.

  The street was suddenly filled with people gaping at the smoke pouring out of the windows two floors up at Habsburgergasse 4.

  Looking up, Berthe cried out, ‘Karl, it’s from your office!’

  Werthen was still partly in shock. He calmly picked the splinter of glass out of his hand and wrapped his handkerchief around the hand to staunch the bleeding. ‘Gas leak?’ he said hopefully, and then dashed up the stairs, the others behind him. The smell of cordite was heavy in the air as he got closer to his floor.

  Not a gas leak, then.

  The outer door to the office had been blown off its hinges. Smoke filled the room, his inner office was a blackened ruin. He rushed to Fräulein Metzinger’s desk, his heart pounding, fearing what he might find. But there she was, cowering on the floor on hands and knees, her hair blown wild as if in a storm.

  She looked up at him, like a frightened child. ‘I dropped a paper-clip,’ she said. ‘Just as Oskar was delivering the paper, earlier than usual. Dropped the clip and then bent down to retrieve it and the world exploded.’

  She passed out in his arms.

  At the door Frau Ignatz stood bewildered, searching the ruins. ‘Oskar, my little brother Oskar. Where are you?’

  ‘There are fragments of electric wire by the door to the inner office,’ Inspector Drechsler said. ‘As well as the remains of what Doktor Gross here informs us is a dry-cell battery.’

  ‘In short,’ Gross interrupted, ‘someone set a primitive bomb to go off when your inner-office door was
opened. It would function rather like a burglar alarm, in that opening the door would close the circuit, sending electric current from the dry-cell battery to this.’

  Gross held a small piece of charred metal in his hand; and Werthen, from his experience in a case involving the composer Gustav Mahler, quickly made the connection.

  ‘Part of a detonator.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Gross confirmed. ‘Which triggered a small explosion, setting off the dynamite it was nestled in.’

  ‘Poor Oskar,’ said Berthe.

  Gross did not respond to this, holding emotion at bay as long as he could. ‘Fortunately, the charge must have been small. A couple of sticks at most. Otherwise, Fräulein Metzinger would be suffering from more than tinnitus.’

  The secretary had, despite her objections, been taken to the hospital for observation. They were gathered around her desk in the damaged outer office. The inner office had been destroyed. Police were still scouring the building, looking for suspects. Frau Ignatz had been taken back to her rooms, under the care of a hospital matron.

  Suddenly, as the shock began to wear off, Werthen felt the impact of Oskar’s death. His fault, in a way, for having the poor man deliver the paper every morning. He vowed he would find whoever had done this.

  ‘All the hallmarks of the Black Hand,’ Drechsler said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Gross spluttered. ‘What have we to do with the Serbs?’

  ‘I’m only rehearsing what Meindl is sure to say. A bombing means anarchists at work, or the Black Hand. That’s how his mind works. You have a better explanation?’

  They had not taken Drechsler into their confidence regarding the new information concerning the Bower killings – that similar types of crime had been recorded in several European cities.

  ‘There is the von Ebersdorf matter,’ Werthen extemporized. ‘Perhaps we were getting too close to the truth there—’

  ‘That case is, need I repeat myself, closed. Unless you have, in spite of my direct request to the opposite, reopened it on your own.’

  ‘But this one is very clearly open,’ Gross thundered. ‘There is a man dead here. Frau Ignatz’s brother. Bits of his body are still to be found in there.’ He pointed a condemning forefinger at Werthen’s office. ‘I picked through his remains retrieving evidence of the bomb. This is homicide, Drechsler, not a warning shot fired across our bows.’

  Drechlser sat quietly through Gross’s tirade.

  ‘Finished, are we?’

  Gross turned his back on the inspector.

  ‘I am not saying I won’t investigate this barbaric act. It shakes me as much as it does you, this act of terror. To set off a blast like this in the heart of our city, it is unthinkable. And I will pursue whoever did it with all the powers at my command. I simply wanted to let you know what I will be up against at the Praesidium. Now if you gentlemen have any further information you are holding back from me . . .’

  ‘Men,’ Berthe suddenly spat out. ‘I don’t know what you are playing at. You treat this like some schoolyard competition.’

  Werthen put out a hand to her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

  ‘We’re all on the same side here,’ she said. ‘Tell him, Karl, or I will.’

  ‘Frau Meisner—’ Gross began.

  But she cut him off. ‘Doktor Gross! Somebody tell the inspector!’

  ‘She’s right,’ Werthen said.

  And so they told Drechsler about the renewed investigation.

  Frau Ignatz was busily sweeping out the foyer as they descended the stairs. The hospital matron simply raised her eyes at them as if to say she could not stop the woman.

  Werthen could understand the need to stay busy, delay the realization of her brother’s death. Compassion was not an emotion he had experienced regarding Frau Ignatz in the past, but that was what was welling up in his chest now. He wanted to reach out to her.

  But Gross beat him to it, though in his own peculiar manner

  ‘Frau Ignatz,’ the criminologist said. ‘You will want to help, of course. There is no good time for such questions, but the sooner we have answers the sooner we will be able to track down the monster who perpetrated this outrage.’

  She looked up at him from her sweeping, suddenly a frail old woman. She peered at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.

  ‘Did you see anyone peculiar in the vicinity this morning or perhaps last night? Anything untoward about building security?’

  Frau Ignatz continued to stare at him, as if he were a zoo exhibit.

  Berthe finally put her arm around the woman’s bony shoulders.

  ‘Let’s go and have a cup of chamomile tea, shall we?’

  The Portier made no protest as Berthe moved her away to her quarters nearby. Gross and Werthen were about to follow, but Berthe gave a curt shake of her head to ward them off.

  Gross sighed as Berthe, Frau Ignatz and the hospital matron removed to the ground-floor Portier apartment.

  ‘Your wife certainly is taking charge lately.’

  ‘And we should both be thankful for it,’ Werthen added.

  ‘Yes, of course. No criticism intended. As I have said before—’

  ‘You like a woman with spirit. Not too much of it, however.’

  Gross was silent a moment. ‘You should have that hand looked after.’

  Werthen glanced at the bloodied handkerchief wrapped around his left hand. He shook his head.

  ‘Like a bad dream.’

  ‘It’s the shock,’ Gross said. ‘Still affecting all of us. We need to concentrate. To think clearly. There was nothing random about this attack. It was planned to kill me, you and your wife. Neatly arranged with matching telegrams to bring us together. Which means that whoever did it has knowledge of our domiciles; has been following us, in fact. And this person also has basic knowledge of bomb construction. Which indicates a military background perhaps.’

  ‘Or mining or land management, or a dozen other occupations that employ dynamite from time to time,’ Werthen said.

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘Clearly to silence us. But regarding what? Von Ebersdorf or the Bower murders?’

  ‘Or perhaps the two are indeed linked.’

  They were silent for a time. Drechsler and his men continued to search the building for any signs of a break-in, but Werthen doubted they would find anything. They were dealing with a professional, of that he was sure. But even professionals might make mistakes, as this one had done about who would be the first person to go into Werthen’s inner office. And yet nobody could have foretold that Oskar would, today of all days, be so eager to prove his worth as to go into the inner office and put the newspaper on the desk himself. Custom had it that he would leave the newspaper with Fräulein Metzinger, who would in turn hand it to Werthen upon his arrival at the office. Thus, Werthen should have been the first to open the inner-office door this morning, in the company of his wife and Gross. But, out of eagerness, Oskar had beaten them to it.

  Gross was observing an officer inspecting the lock on the front door of the building; he obviously felt as Werthen did, for he shook his head in indignation. Then turning to Werthen, he said, ‘One bright spot out of all of this.’

  He paused, but Werthen did not feel like rising to the bait.

  Finally Gross explained. ‘At least we know our instincts about all this are correct. This is not something that has been neatly wrapped up and solved, as Inspector Meindl would like to aver. There is a killer out there. And knowing that he has failed, he will probably try again.’

  Which gave Werthen a sudden idea. ‘But does he know that? I mean, why don’t we broadcast that the three of us were killed, and then we can work behind the scenes . . .’

  But even as he said it, he realized the folly of the idea: whoever set off the explosion most likely witnessed it. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s still the shock working on my analytical skills.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Gross said. ‘But we must be on our guard now. And it is good that your wife convi
nced us to share our information with Drechsler. It provides a kind of insurance to us.’

  At which point Berthe came out of the Portier’s lodge alone.

  ‘She did see someone,’ Berthe said. ‘But was unable to describe him. Medium height, nothing distinguishing about his features. He wore a blue suit. That is all that stood out. He passed her on the stairs last evening and she thought he was visiting someone, that a tenant had let him in. But she had never seen him before.’

  ‘Not much to go on,’ Gross said. ‘And yet, at the same time, much to go on. A nondescript man. One who blends so well he is not noticed. A worthy adversary.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They were given police protection, a constabulary man stationed outside their apartment building on Josefstädterstrasse who took his mid-morning Jause break at a local gasthaus, then lunch at the same establishment from noon to one. For afternoon coffee at three, the man wandered down to the Café Eiles, two blocks away, and for dinner he returned to the gasthaus. He went off duty at seven. It would be fortunate if the villains operated on such a schedule, too, Werthen ruefully thought.

  He therefore hired the two stalwarts Meier and Prokop, and placed them outside the apartment door on Josefstädterstrasse. Prokop had been delighted to see the Advokat enter their office: a wine bar near the Margarethen Gürtel underneath the tracks of the new Stadtbahn. Meier bore further evidence to their violent profession: his left ear was bandaged, and it appeared that the top of it had been misplaced.

  ‘We’re your men,’ chimed Prokop, in his choirboy tenor, and nearly crushed Werthen’s hand in a gentleman’s agreement grip regarding the fee. His time at Schnitzler’s had affected Prokop, it seemed, for when he appeared for work, along with the sullen Meier, he carried a small Samuel Fischer edition of the playwright’s early theatre series, Anatol, about an idle young womanizing bachelor. Werthen felt something akin to shock seeing a book in Prokop’s meaty hands; he had never imagined the man was literate, let alone that he might actually enjoy such light entertainment. From time to time, when he passed the pair of them in the hallway, he would find Prokop reading a particularly piquant scene out loud, with Meier looking at first bored and then increasingly interested.