And as her gun’s capacitor whined, her thief dashed around a corner and out of sight.
Arry!
Bettina crawled back into the deep shadows of the storage room and paused to find her cane. She struggled across the uneven floor and rushed into the corridor.
It was empty. But sounds of chaos boomed in the distance.
The stage!
Bettina ran as fast as she could back to the main hall and flew past the dressing rooms, noting that Miss Diederich’s door stood ajar and the room appeared deserted. Just ahead she could see the wings of the stage, the ropes and levers and prop boxes neatly arranged in the darkness, except the order she had noted earlier had been disrupted. One of the prop boxes had overturned, spilling its contents of wooden swords and shields and armor across the floor. Kneeling in the shadows was the young soprano and she looked up with a pale and frightened expression as the detective raced by. Her companion, Mister Ritter, lay unconscious beside her.
But the sounds of battle were only a few paces away now, and she swept around the edge of the rear curtain to discover her Arjuna locked in brutal combat with the blonde thug in the center of the stage. Magdalena held two of the wooden prop swords, one in each hand, and she came at her target with pin-wheeling arms and vicious slashes.
The Dumastran detective gripped his Inselmond bow in his left hand and one of his steel arrows in his right. He had both weapons raised in a defensive posture and he was fending off the sword-blows with heavy square blocks. Every few moments he would lash out with his arrow, stabbing or swiping at the woman’s hands or eyes, but he never managed to strike his opponent.
Bettina dashed out across the stage and fired her gun at point blank range. The bright needle struck Strauss squarely in the upper arm, but the woman fought on oblivious to the tranquilizer. Bettina pulled back, giving her husband room to maneuver as he continued to shield himself and her from the pummeling blows of the wooden swords. Chips and splinters flew from the props, and the steel weapons rang and hummed, and Arjuna held his ground, keeping himself in front of his wife.
Three seconds gone and the coilgun had whined its whine. Bettina fired again, striking Magdalena in the thigh. But again the woman showed no sign of relenting.
“Arry, on your right!” Bettina lunged forward and thrust the butt of her cane at the woman’s throat.
Strauss stumbled in her rhythm to block the cane and Arjuna managed to jab the tip of his bow’s limb into her ribs, making her gasp and stagger back.
“Look out!” The woman’s cry came from the wings and it drew Bettina’s eye, though the other two fighters ignored it.
A loud rustling hum filled the air and everyone looked up at the sandbag plummeting down toward them. Bettina yanked Arjuna aside as Magdalena stepped back and the sandbag smashed down harmlessly into the stage between them.
Bettina yelled back at the wings, “Stop helping!”
Arjuna leapt over the sandbag and swung his heavy metal bow with both hands, smashing the two wooden swords from Strauss’s grip. One fell from the stage, but the other only clattered to her feet and she bent to retrieve it.
Bettina saw how the woman’s tranquilized arm dangled at her side. “She’s weakening!”
Strauss straightened up with a grimace and she thrust her prop sword clumsily at her attackers. Bettina knocked the weapon aside easily using her cane, and Arjuna swept the woman’s foot out from under her with the tip of his bow. Magdalena Strauss crashed to the floor, but threw out a lone grasping hand and caught hold of Arjuna’s shirt. She yanked him down on top of her as she collapsed, and then snaked her one working arm around his neck. Instantly his face was bright red, his veins rising taut against the skin of his throat, and he clawed like a wildcat at the arm choking the life from him.
Bettina stepped over the sandbag and smashed her cane across the back of Strauss’s head, and the woman fell back, unconscious. Arjuna scrambled out of her limp grasp and rose to his feet, clutching his bow and rubbing his neck.
“Thank you, darling,” he said hoarsely.
“My pleasure, dearest.” She touched his neck tenderly, noting the early signs of bruising already blossoming on his skin. “She almost had you there.”
He smiled with a wince. “I wasn’t worried for a moment.”
“Yes, well, you probably didn’t appreciate the gravity of the moment.” Bettina turned to call out, “Miss Diederich? Please come out here. It’s safe now.”
The soprano stepped out gingerly at first, and then more confidently as she saw the detectives standing over their snoring quarry.
“Now, Miss Diederich, I’m afraid we’ll need a bit more help from you. Please go out and fetch the nearest police officers and bring them here to arrest this person. Her name is Magdalena Strauss. She’s a well-known felon. The police will know what to do with her. Tell them everything that transpired here, and that the officers who subdued her had to leave to pursue another criminal. All right?”
The singer nodded. “But, what if she wakes up?”
“I’ve administered two tranquilizers…” Bettina paused, then shot the unconscious Strauss in the buttock. “Three tranquilizers. She’ll sleep the rest of the day and the night, I believe. Nothing to fear from her. Go on. Summon the police. We’ll be gone when you return.”
“All right. Thank you, both of you. I’ll go fetch them right now.” The soprano hurried off the stage and up the aisles through the sea of empty seats toward the doors.
Arjuna groaned and exhaled. “Kaiser?”
“Gone.”
He nodded. “And now?”
She pointed to the wings. “Exit, stage left.”
Chapter 20. A Legal Question
Bettina stood on the white-speckled stones at the top of the river wall and stared down at the banks and docks. Arjuna stood beside her, leaning against the wall of the opera house and taking long, loud breaths as he massaged his neck. Groaning, he reached down to retrieve his arrow from the shattered hinge of the storage room door. The arrow was unbent and unscratched.
“Well, I guess I should start running.” He heaved away from the wall and started walking.
“No.” She caught his sleeve and held him back. “Ranulf Kaiser is alone, unarmed, and exhausted. We locked his house, so if he goes there it profits him nothing. If he tries to meet with any of his hired thugs, they’ll be looking for Strauss and the other half of their money, which he probably can’t pay. No, there’s no reason to panic or race anymore. It’s time to rest and collect our thoughts and marshal our resources.”
Arjuna nodded, but frowned. “I know but… he only has a twenty-minute head start. He’s on foot. He probably can’t cross the river, so he can’t be far. If I hurry—”
“If you hurry, you could make a mistake, perhaps even a deadly mistake,” Bettina said firmly. “We’re exhausted, too. It would be reckless to pretend otherwise.”
He nodded again, looking slightly grateful that she had stopped him from plunging off into the city yet again. “I wouldn’t mind an hour in the autocarriage, but I doubt Oster is back in the city yet. He’s probably still pulling those two gyros out of the mud.”
“Probably.” Bettina set out at a stately pace to the corner where she turned and headed back toward the square in front of the theater. “But we have something else that is almost as good as a ministry car.”
“Which is?”
“The contents of your wallet.” She wove a snaking path through the crowd of morning shoppers and workers and carts until she found the flow of traffic on the next street corner, and she raised her gloved hand.
A moment later, a two-wheeled buggy pulled up before them. The tiny taxi was pulled by a small pony upon which rode a slender woman wearing a traditional Shuchuni dress of gold and red with a wide-brimmed straw hat upon her head. As she climbed into the buggy’s seat, Bettina felt a swell of unease in her breast as she recalled her conversation with her husband in the boat and she wondered what strange maelstrom of anger and
fear and anxiety might be battering at the Shuchuni woman’s soul at that moment, and why, and for how long.
“Where to?” their driver asked.
“No idea.” Arjuna settled into the worn seat. “Do you think those big bugs might be worth anything? Do you think our friend might try to sell it?”
Bettina shook her head slowly. “No. Remember that trophy room of his? He doesn’t do it for money. He does it for ego.”
“Sorry?” their driver smiled awkwardly.
“Just one moment, please,” Bettina said to her with a warm smile. She then turned to her husband. “Where does a thief go when he has nowhere left to go?”
Arjuna raised his empty hands half-heartedly. “I don’t know. I can’t think.”
“Family.”
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “His sister? I can’t see that.”
“No, not the minister. Think back to his file. Does he have anyone else? Maybe from his past, from school, a distant relation, anything?”
Arjuna continued to shake his head. “No one… Well, maybe someone. He had a partner when he first started practicing law. They worked together for a couple years.”
“Do you remember where he lives?”
He nodded and told their driver the address, which was only a mile away, and the buggy bolted out into traffic. Bettina closed her eyes and tried to find her way into the mind of Ranulf Kaiser, to imagine the life of a man who spent his days practicing law and spent his evenings designing the most elaborate and impossible art heists in history, all just so he could enjoy the art for himself and anger his older sister Gisele.
What will he do next…?
“Darling? Darling? We’re here.”
Bettina awoke with a grunt and a wince.
A throb in my foot, a crick in my neck, and saliva on my cheek. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so awful to spend a little more time working at a desk, going home at a reasonable hour, and getting a decent night’s rest. But then, I wouldn’t get the satisfaction…
She climbed down from the buggy and glanced at the house they had arrived at. It was a slender townhome built in the newer style with dramatic arches and soaring columns that drew the eye upward, making the house appear taller than it really was.
Garish.
Arjuna hopped down beside her and began to pay their driver. Bettina reached over his arm and casually plucked a second bill from his open wallet and pressed it into the Shuchuni woman’s hand. “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
The buggy trotted away and the detectives walked up to the house.
“Tell me about this lawyer,” Bettina said softly.
“Bruno Werner,” he said in the monotone he used when reciting facts from memory. “He went to school with Ranulf. After passing the bar, they spent two years on the west side handling minor civil cases and tax paperwork. Werner left the partnership to join a small firm and that was the end of their relationship.”
Bettina rapped sharply on the door and a moment later a portly middle-aged man with a prodigious mustache and a rather small bowler perched precariously on his bald, red scalp appeared before them.
He smiled a bit nervously and tugged on the lapels of his brown suit and fumbled with his silver pocket watch as he looked quickly back and forth from the man to the woman and back again. “Uhm, oh my, yes? I mean, good morning. Can I help you?”
“Good morning, Mister Werner. I hope we haven’t caught you at an inconvenient moment,” Bettina said sweetly. “My name is Elfi Morgenstern and I’d just like a moment of your time, if I could.”
“Oh, my, well.” He smiled and frowned and drummed his fingers on his belt. “Actually, I’m just now on my way to the office.”
“Just one question, truly.” Bettina tried to keep her eyes wide and innocent, hoping there were no signs of her recent nap lurking on her face. “My mother just passed and I’ve been trying to sort out her will and various papers. They were prepared quite some time ago by a gentleman named Ranulf Kaiser. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find Mister Kaiser to assist me. But a fellow at the clerk’s office mentioned that you might be able to help me find him.”
“Oh, ah, Ranulf, yes.” Mister Werner nodded quickly and nearly tossed his bowler into the petunias along his front walk. “Well, Miss Morgenstern, I’m sorry to tell you that Mister Kaiser is no longer practicing law and I haven’t spoken to him in years. In fact, the last I heard, he was serving time in Torghast for, well, professional misconduct.” He flashed an awkward smile, as though he was quite unused to that particular facial expression, and squeezed past them to hurry down the walk to the street.
Bettina swept along gracefully at his heels. “Oh my, that is distressing. But I still need assistance with my mother’s affairs. Did Mister Kaiser have another partner, or a clerk, or someone who assisted with his work?”
“Well, we did have a secretary, back when he and I worked together,” Mister Werner huffed as he turned down the busy street. “And as I recall, he retained that secretary after we dissolved our partnership. Perhaps she can help you.”
“Wonderful!” Bettina clapped her hands. “And where might I find this secretary now?”
“I really, I really can’t say, I’m afraid.” Mister Werner paused at the street corner to glance nervously at the traffic, and then hurried out into the road between the wagons and porters. “I’m sorry, but I really need to be getting to the office now. This Schmidt business has everyone in an uproar. I have to prepare a brief for the Senate this afternoon. I’m sure you understand. Good day to you!”
When he reached the far sidewalk, Bruno Werner plunged into the press of pedestrians and was soon lost amidst a tide of hats and coats. Bettina turned to her husband with a frown. “Well, that was almost useless.”
“Schmidt?” Arjuna frowned. “What Schmidt business was he talking about? What’s going on in the Senate?”
Bettina merely sighed and put the point of one gloved finger against her pressed lips as she studied the people and animals and buildings around them for some new idea, some new bolt of inspiration that would put them back on the trail of the elusive Ranulf Kaiser. She barely noticed her husband jogging across the street to a newsstand, but she did notice and a moment later she followed him, albeit at a more stately pace.
She found him flipping rapidly through the pages of the morning paper while the stand’s owner frowned at him. “Anything?”
He tossed the paper back onto the stand. “Nothing in the first twenty pages about anyone named Schmidt.”
“Is there anyone in the Senate named Schmidt right now?”
“No.” He shook his head and adjusted the steel bow on his shoulder. “But the name does ring a bell. Schmidt. Schmidt. The Schmidt Building? No… The Schmidt Archive? The… The Schmidt Act!” He beamed at her as the memory came back to him.
“Yes dear, all right, and what is that?”
Arjuna rolled his eyes. “Eisenstadt history! I had to learn it all for my citizenship test last year. You really need to study your own history at some point. It’s fascinating reading.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I didn’t have much use for history when I was earning my degree in chemistry,” Bettina said patiently. “Now, what is the Schmidt Act?”
He took her hand and placed it in the crook of his offered arm, and then began escorting her casually down the sidewalk. “About a hundred years ago, a funny little fellow named Clive Suder said that he was going to build a steel tower one mile straight up into the sky, and when the drifting isle drifted near to his tower, little Mister Suder would simply step from the one to the other and thus become the first person to set foot on Inselmond.”
“That sounds vaguely familiar. Go on.”
“Well, when the aging remnants of the old aristocracy heard about it, they got rather upset,” Arjuna explained in an amused and dramatic tone. “They all began petitioning the Senate with ancestral claims to the drifting isle, each one demanding that Inselmond was in fact their private pr
operty. They had never cared before because they couldn’t reach the island, but…”
“But now with Suder’s tower, they wanted to exercise their rights.” Bettina nodded. “That sounds like just another day in politics around here.”
“Yes, well, after several weeks of legal haranguing, the Senate got rather fed up with all the ridiculous claims and infighting and secret alliances and so on. So a Senator named Schmidt, whose first name escapes me at the moment, ran a bill through the Senate that established maritime salvage rights over Inselmond.”
“Maritime?”
“Yes, apparently Senator Schmidt was some sort of would-be sailor.” Arjuna smiled. “At any rate, the new law stated that whoever could report a proper salvage claim over the island would become the legal owner of the land and all its holdings, and that put an end to the blue-blood nonsense, and when Suder never got around to building his tower, the whole matter blew over in just a few weeks.”
“But now that we have Miss Goldstein’s lovely autogyros, people are suddenly interested in making a salvage claim over Inselmond again.” Bettina paused and tightened her grip on her husband’s arm. “You don’t suppose Hildegard Goldstein is pursuing such a claim?”
“I doubt it,” Arjuna said thoughtfully. “She doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would be eager to own a private flying island. And besides, in order to make a proper salvage claim, I believe you would need to present physical evidence of the salvage, and Miss Goldstein didn’t bring anything back from Inselmond, did she?”
Bettina’s mouth drooped, and then snapped shut. “That clever bastard!”
“What?”
“Ranulf Kaiser didn’t go to Inselmond to steal its treasure,” she said coldly. “He went there to steal the island itself!”
Arjuna looked at her sharply. “The angler bug!”
“It’s the perfect salvage evidence,” Bettina said as she stepped off the curb, scanning the traffic for a taxi. “A giant glowing beetle? Where could it have come from except Inselmond? And if they want to verify his claim, anyone with eyes will see the island crawling with those horrid things the moment they arrive.”
The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Page 19