“I said, mine is getting away, out the back.” She pointed a delicate gloved finger at the open door at the back of the kitchen.
“Oh.”
“Where’s yours?”
“On the floor.”
She closed the kitchen door and locked it as he went back into the sitting just in time to see the other thug scrambling up off the dusty carpet and down the short hall toward Bettina. Arjuna lunged into the hall behind him, yanked out his coilgun, and fired in a single fluid motion.
The thug stumbled in midstride and collapsed to the floor, his greasy hair flopping out toward the tips of Bettina’s shoes. She looked down at the man, who was already snoring and drooling, and saw the bright needle stuck in the back of his neck. Bettina glanced up at her husband. “Not that I don’t appreciate your saving my life, my love, but this does mean that our prisoner will be unconscious for more than six hours, which is six hours more than I’d care to wait before interrogating him about why he and his friend were here in Ranulf Kaiser’s house.”
“You’re welcome.” Arjuna winked at her from the far end of the hall as he slipped his gun back into its holster inside his jacket. “So, we have to catch the other one now, don’t we?”
“Of course. And we’ll want this fellow outside, far away from Kaiser’s secret treasure room, I should think.”
Arjuna nodded, bent down, and heaved up the unconscious man over his shoulder with a great deal of huffing and groaning. He gave Bettina an unhappy look as he shuffled around in the hall and crab-walked out the front door to deposit their prisoner on the sidewalk.
Bettina followed him out, closed the front door behind her, and slipped one of her lock picks into the keyhole, and promptly snapped it off. Then she limped down the stone steps to the sidewalk, pulled a small black pistol from her black bag, and fired it straight up into the air. A little green flare blazed up into the dark night sky, and a moment later their autocarriage huffed around the corner and pulled up in front of the house.
“Time for an old-fashioned chase,” she said as she held out her hand for her husband to take, and she smiled demurely. “Help me in, won’t you?”
Chapter 3. A Mad Dash
Once inside the carriage, Arjuna opened the little window out to the driver’s seat in the front and said, “Oster! Quick, all the way around the block. We’re looking for a man on foot, in a dark suit, possibly clutching his right arm.”
Bettina nodded. “It was a good shot. The tranquilizer should have numbed his whole arm by now. If he doesn’t cradle it in his other hand, it’ll be dangling at his side like a chimpanzee’s.”
“Yes, sir! Yes, ma’am!” young Oster said smartly. There was a sharp grinding of gears, and then the carriage bolted down the street and careened around the corner. Bettina kept watch on the left side while Arjuna watched the right. The dark streets of Eisenstadt roared past and the reflection of the carriage’s headlamps flashed on the windows and doors of the houses as they clattered by.
Keeping her eyes on the sidewalks and garden fences outside, Bettina reached into her bag and took out a pencil and paper, and began to write in her lap. When she finished, she passed the note to the driver, saying, “At the first opportunity, please deliver this to the nearest police station. We need them to pick up the man we left outside Kaiser’s house, to be held without being questioned or charged until we come for him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Oster said, taking the note.
“There he is!” Arjuna pointed out his window. “Oster, turn right!”
The carriage squealed around the corner and roared down the street. Bettina clutched her hat to her head and then leaned over her husband’s shoulder to peer out his window.
Their quarry was running as fast as he could down the dark sidewalk, dashing in and out of the bright pools of light beneath the streetlights. He held both of his arms up in front of his chest, out of view.
“Excellent,” Bettina said. “Do you think you can hit him in the leg from a moving vehicle?”
“Absolutely.” Arjuna pulled out his coilgun.
At that moment, the fleeing man reached over a small garden fence and pulled a bicycle out onto the sidewalk. He leapt onto the seat and pedals, grabbed the handle with his left hand, and tore off across the street and through the next intersection, casting several squint-eyed glances over his shoulder as he raced away, his right arm dangling lifelessly at his side.
“Damn it. Oster!”
“I see him, sir!” The carriage careened across the street, rumbled through the intersection past a pair of dapper lads in top hats on horseback, and roared down the hill after the man on the bicycle.
“You know where he’s going,” said Arjuna with a wry smile.
“Now, now.” Bettina arched an eyebrow. “Let’s give our little lackey the benefit of the doubt. He may not be heading for the train station. He may be heading down to the harbor, and is simply taking a route that passes close by the train station.”
“The harbor? Sweetheart, in all the time we’ve been doing this, how often do they try to escape on a boat?”
“Exactly once,” she conceded. “And he would have made it, too, if he had cleared the jump onto the ferry instead of plunging into the water face first.”
Arjuna looked at her with suspicion. “You wanted him to make that jump, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want him to escape, if that’s what you mean,” she said airily as she inspected her gloved hand. “I just thought his escape plan showed a bit of daring and originality that we rarely—”
“He’s turning into the train station!” Arjuna yelled out the window, pointing down the street.
“I see him, sir!” Oster yelled back over the cycling pumps and pistons of the steam engine.
“Oh, damn.” Bettina pouted. “It’s always the train station.”
Oster drove the carriage straight through the narrow iron gates of the station, forcing a handful of late night travelers to leap out of the way. He pulled the brake and the carriage’s stiff, narrow wheels screeched across the brick walkway, and Arjuna leapt out the door while they were still sliding sideways across the small courtyard in front of the station.
“Ma’am?” Oster’s eyes hovered beyond the little window at the front of the passenger compartment. “Are you…?”
“Dashing across the station to tackle the fleeing criminal to the ground, and batter him with my fists? No, I did that last time. It’s my husband’s turn,” Bettina said. She leaned over and pulled Arjuna’s door closed, and then glanced out the window at the station. “Oster? Does that train appear to be moving to you?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s the midnight run, last train of the night,” he said.
“And can you see Mister Rana from where you’re sitting?”
There was a pause.
“Oh, there he is!” Oster said. “He’s right behind the other fellow, and they’re dodging through the crowd, and… oh no! The rascal’s jumped on the train and… and so has Mister Rana!”
Bettina grimaced. “Then let’s not be idle.”
“Ma’am?”
“Follow that train, Oster!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The engine roared and for a moment the slender wheels spun on the brick walkway, but then they caught the road and the carriage sped back out through the station gates and into the dark city streets. The weary travelers walking home from the station scattered out of their way in a frenzy of tweed caps, silk scarves, leather handbags, and lace kerchiefs. “Missus Rothschild? There’s a little problem.”
“Yes, Oster?”
“The road doesn’t follow the tracks,” he said through the small window. “Should I drive on to the next station down the line?”
“No. This brigand might try to jump from the train, and Arjuna just might jump after him. Stay as close as you can to the train, close enough to see it!”
“Will do!”
Bettina peered out her window at the waves of shadows and light rushing by. She saw the
closed shops, the empty parks, and the dark homes. And then suddenly the midnight train veered into view, clacking along half a block away and running parallel to the autocarriage’s road.
“Closer, Oster! We need to see them!”
“But the road doesn’t go any closer, ma’am!”
“This is a carriage, Mister Oster, not a train,” she said sternly. “It goes where you tell it to go.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The young driver turned hard at the next corner and the carriage bolted down a dead-end lane past a dozen little houses with tiny green lawns. At the end of the road, the pavement simply stopped and a tuft of tall grass waved in the night breeze, and beyond this was a stretch of gravel and the raised bed of the train tracks with a line of passenger cars clacking past.
The autocarriage roared off the street into the grass, slid and skittered wildly on the gravel, and then raced up onto the edge of the rail bed, streaking along beside the train with only inches to spare.
“Well done, Oster!” Bettina scanned the train cars as the carriage rattled and bounced down the line. “There they are!” She pointed up at the next car where she could clearly see two men standing in the center of the aisle trading punches and stumbling back and forth together.
“Stay with them!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The steam carriage growled and scrambled along the gravel slope, slipping and dashing over the loose terrain. The train raced on beside them, slicing smoothly through the night on its polished rails. Bettina clung to the hand-grip on the carriage’s inner wall to hold herself up on the high side of the tilted seat so she could keep an eye on her husband and their troublesome suspect. The brawl was edging toward the front of the passenger car and Bettina found it harder and harder to see the two men over the hats and heads of the frightened travelers in their seats.
“Faster, Oster!”
“Sorry, ma’am! We’re flat out!”
The door at the front of the passenger car banged open and Arjuna fell out of view through the open doorway with the other man on top of him.
“Arry!”
Suddenly the steam carriage began bucking and skidding wildly on the little incline beside the tracks, and then it slid down onto the grass completely, letting the train race away into the darkness.
“Oster, what are you doing?” Bettina slipped off her seat to the floor as the carriage ground to a halt, and she shoved herself back up again using her cane as a lever. She glanced out the window as she straightened her hat, and said, “Oh.”
They had reached the banks of the Dorrein River, and while the railway continued out across the water on an ancient iron bridge, there was no carriageway beside it and the land came to an abrupt end, which Oster had neatly managed to miss overshooting by at least three or four paces.
“I see,” Bettina said. “Very well, then—”
“Missus Rothschild!” Oster jumped from his seat in the front of the carriage and stood at the top of the bank above the river, pointing down at the water. “It’s Mister Rana! Look!”
Bettina swung open the door and emerged onto the little steel step of the carriage and peered down at the rippling shadows and reflected streetlights on the Dorrein, and there among the supports of the railroad bridge she saw something splashing in the darkness.
“Arry?” She grabbed her cane and with Oster at her elbow she carefully descended the steep, gravel slope down to the water’s edge where all manners of floating garbage had collected in the tall reeds amidst a thin film of oil on the surface of the river. “Arry?”
A man was swimming toward them, and grunting with each stroke, and when he emerged from the shadow of the bridge Bettina saw that he was dragging a second man with him.
“Yes,” Arjuna huffed, “It’s me. And our friend.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Oster, help him, please.” Bettina watched as the young driver helped her husband haul their quarry up onto dry land, where the man lay on his side, gasping and spitting out the filthy water of the Dorrein.
Arjuna sat in the grass, catching his breath, and Bettina could see the dark trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth and the thin gash on his forehead over his eye. He managed a smile. “I just couldn’t live another moment apart from you, darling, so I threw the both of us off the train. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” she said. “I’ve told you before, you can do anything you like as long as you always come back to me in one piece. You are, aren’t you? In one piece?”
He nodded and spat into the river.
They stayed there on the grassy bank for a few minutes until Arjuna felt like standing up and taking charge of his prisoner. They all trudged back up the slope together to the waiting carriage where Arjuna shackled the man’s hands and sat him down on the ground where they could see him by the light of a nearby streetlamp.
The half-drowned man was taller and thicker than the detective, and older as well. His sparse graying hair was trimmed close to his skull, and the faded lines of an old tattoo poked up above the collar of his soaked shirt. Arjuna peeled back the collar to reveal a crude drawing of an eagle spreading its wings and clutching an arrow in one claw and a rose in the other.
“So, you’re one of Beringer’s men,” Arjuna said. “But I don’t recognize you, and I’m pretty good with faces. So what? Did you quit the syndicate sometime back?”
The man nodded. “Yeah, about ten years ago. Not getting any younger, you know?”
“Right, right. I can see you’ve really made some wise career moves since then,” Arjuna said. “What’s your name?”
The man glared at him.
“I said, what’s—”
“Darling? His wallet.” Bettina poked the man’s rear end with her cane.
Arjuna pulled the wet leather wallet from the man’s wet wool trousers and started flipping through the man’s little papers and cards. “Jakob Weber. Hello, Jakob.”
The man gave him a sour smile.
“Mister Weber, tell us, why were you in Ranulf Kaiser’s house tonight?” asked Bettina.
He shrugged. “I saw the door was open, so we just went in to see if there was anything worth taking.”
“No, the door was closed,” Bettina said. “I closed it myself when we went inside. So I will ask again, why were you at that address tonight?”
Weber glanced at her and then turned to look at the river.
“Were you following us?” she asked.
He said nothing.
“Did you hire a raven to follow us tonight?”
Weber said nothing.
“What raven?” Arjuna asked.
“I saw a raven tonight, first when I came to get you and then again at Kaiser’s house.”
“Did he say anything?”
She shook her head. “Nothing helpful.”
Arjuna nodded, and then knelt down beside Weber. “Listen, Jakob, I’m going to make this very easy for you. You see, back in the house, you shoved my wife as you ran out the back door, and I don’t like it when strange men assault my beloved bride, so I’m quite inclined right now to roll you back down this little hill into the river, with your hands still cuffed behind you. Which would make swimming pretty tricky, I think.”
“Go ahead. I’m not talking,” Weber said.
Arjuna shrugged and stood up. “As you wish.” And he planted his boot against the man’s shoulder and started to shove.
“Wait, wait!” Weber twisted about and fell over on his side. “Look, yeah, we were there to watch the house. We saw you go in, so we came in to shut you up. That was the job, that’s all I know.”
“Then I’m sure you can guess my next question, Mister Weber,” Bettina said. “Who hired you to do this little job? Was it Ranulf Kaiser?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Weber said. “We got hired with a whole load of other guys, all to watch a bunch of houses and shops tonight. It wasn’t just me.”
“Yes, I know, peer pressure is a hideous problem among today
’s hired ruffians.” Bettina sighed. “Still, we do need to know who hired you. If you didn’t get a name, then describe his face.”
“It was a woman,” Weber said. “I didn’t get any name, just half the money up front and an address. That’s all.”
“What did this woman look like?” Bettina asked. “Height, weight, hair?”
“Shorter than you, with blond hair. Wore too much makeup and looked sort of sick, if you ask me. She probably smokes too much.”
The detectives exchanged an uneasy look.
“And how were you planning to get the other half of your money?” Arjuna asked. “Were you going to meet with this woman again?”
“Yeah.” Weber nodded. “Back at the same dive we met her at. The Tin Crane.”
“The Tin Crane.” Arjuna paced toward Bettina with his back to Weber, and he whispered, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Absolutely,” Bettina said. “These men were hired by Magdalena Strauss.”
“This is bad. If Kaiser’s got Strauss running interference for him, then he’s already moving on… whatever it is he’s planning,” Arjuna said.
“Probably soon, but not quite yet,” she said. “Kaiser went to Strauss, and then Strauss hired the men, presumably to keep an eye on all of Kaiser’s old contacts and haunts to prevent the police from tracking him down.”
“He’s never done anything like that before. He has no history of criminal contacts, only white collar associates,” Arjuna said. “In his file, he comes across mostly as a bureaucrat, not a gang leader. And the way he had those paintings and jewels in the basement? It was all about ego to him. He always played it safe, and he never hired help. So why is he suddenly changing everything about his pattern this time?”
“If he needs to play for extra time, that means he isn’t ready yet to do whatever it is he wants to do,” Bettina said. “He only escaped from prison six hours ago. Remember, he’s a thief, not a killer. And he’s burgled the most secure museums and banks in Eisenstadt. That takes careful preparation and planning, and precision execution. He must need time to get his materials and plans ready.”
The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Page 3