The Great Game

by Michael Kurland

  -

  KARL FRIEDRICH MARIE STASSENKOPP, LITT. D.

  -

  Moriarty rubbed the card between his fingers. "Foreign card stock," he said. "Probably French or Hungarian."

  "Yes, sir, quite possibly. The gentleman said to tell you that it was in regard to one of your agents in Vienna. That he is in danger."

  "Really? How curious." Moriarty looked up at Mr. Maws. "What does the gentleman look like?"

  Mr. Maws flexed his thumbs thoughtfully. "A foreigner. Not a toff. Straight enough, I'd say. He looks as if he doesn't enjoy eating—or much else, if I'm any judge," he appraised.

  "Ah!" Moriarty said. "An aesthete or a worrier? Well, we'll see. Show the gentleman in."

  Mr. Maws nodded and left the room. Seconds later he returned.

  "The gent ain't worrying anymore," he announced in a carefully impassive voice. "He's dead!"

  Moriarty raised an eyebrow. "Well!" he said. He rounded his desk and strode into the hall. Karl Friedrich Marie Stassenkopp, Litt. D. was lying on his back inside the entranceway, his feet bent to one side, his eyes staring sightlessly upward at the gaslight in the hall. He looked surprised. A pool of blood was growing under his shoulders, and a smeared line of blood led out the closed front door.

  "I see you brought him inside," Moriarty said, indicating the bloody trail.

  "I pulled him inside so I could close the door," Mr. Maws explained. "I didn't want people noticing the poor gentleman until you decided what to do. Besides, I didn't think you'd be wanting to stand in the doorway with whoever killed him still out there."

  "Ah! Sound logic." Moriarty felt for a pulse in the man's neck and bent over, his head next to the man's face, to listen for sounds of breathing. After a few seconds he raised his head. "You're right," he said. "Dead. Now, as to what caused his sudden demise—" He gingerly rolled the man over.

  Two inches below Karl Friedrich's shoulder blades, to the left of the spine, a thick, black-feathered shaft could be made out protruding slightly from the bloody hole it had made entering the body. The fabric of the suit jacket had been twisted and pulled into the wound along with the projectile.

  "Well I'm damned!" Mr. Maws exclaimed. "A bleedin' arrow!"

  Moriarty carefully loosened the cloth around the shaft and examined the wound. "Actually it's a crossbow bolt," he told Mr. Maws. "Practically silent, and very deadly. It must have pierced the heart, killing him instantly. Hence the comparatively limited loss of blood." He laid the body down and stood up. "Interesting," he said.

  CHAPTER THREE — THE FAT MAN

  Adventures are to the adventurous

  — Benjamin Disraeli

  The fat man and his three companions boarded the Rete Mediterranea first-class carriage at the Monza station. The train had just braked to a stop with a great letting of steam from the aging engine, when Benjamin Barnett caught a glimpse of them through his compartment window.

  The fat man was perched precariously on an upended black portmanteau from which he gesticulated to the others. He wore a wide-brimmed gray felt hat and a white suit; a red handkerchief flopped with bohemian abandon from his jacket pocket. His companions, who were paying close attention to his every word and gesture, were a small, round-faced clergyman with thick, circular-lensed eyeglasses, carrying a straw suitcase; a dark youth with big feet and dull eyes, wearing a mud-yellow and brown checked suit at least one size too small for his lanky frame; and a woman of indeterminate age and odd, birdlike movements, clothed in black from the top of her veil to the soles of her patent-leather high-button shoes. Her only impediment was a covered birdcage about the size of a breadbox.

  Barnett, a stocky, brown-haired expatriate American in his late thirties, watched the quartet with interest. They seemed to him a strangely assorted group. "Italy once again shows us her diversity," he told his wife, who was sitting across from him. "What do you make of those four?"

  Cecily Barnett looked up from the red-backed Baedeker guidebook of Northern Italy and peered out the window just as the treni diretti came to a shuddering stop. She was a slender, blond, self-contained, gently beautiful woman some five years younger than her husband. Her eyes, the lines of her mouth, and the way she bore herself told of determination and, for those who could read the most subtle indications, of an unresolved sadness that she carried with her.

  "Actually they are quite interesting," she said, after examining the group for a minute as they gathered their baggage and prepared to board the train. "The stout gentleman would seem to be an artist of some sort. One of those gay bohemians currently infesting Paris and Vienna. Or, at least, so he would have the world think. The youth is a sporting type of little intellect. The priest—the clerical raiment hides many possibilities. The woman is something of an enigma. She is dressed like a widow, but has no wedding ring on her finger. She carries a birdcage that is so devoid of independent motion that one suspects that it does not contain a bird."

  "You have a consummate eye for detail," Barnett said. "Why do you say 'He would have us think so?' You have begun to suspect everyone you see of being other than he seems."

  Cecily turned to look at him, and he realized he had said the wrong thing. "Not everyone," she replied sharply. She folded her hands neatly in her lap and stared straight ahead; a look that Barnett knew masked extreme annoyance. "And it's not a question of suspicion. I am merely relating my observations and deductions. If you don't want my opinion, why do you ask me?"

  "I was merely making conversation," Barnett replied, trying not to sound defensive. "And I do value your opinion. I'm so sorry if you feel otherwise. You are an extremely perceptive person. Even Professor Moriarty has said so. But I thought I was pointing out some interesting native fauna, not another mystery. I admit I think you've been overwrought lately." He reached out to pat her hand, but she drew it back sharply into the folds of her green traveling-cloak.

  "I believe, as I told you, that we've been watched since we left London," Cecily said coldly. Whether the studied lack of emotion in her voice masked anger or fear, or both, Barnett couldn't tell. "This is the result of my observations and deductions, which you usually are willing to credit with being fairly accurate. I am no Professor Moriarty, perhaps, but I do seem to have the knack for that sort of thing. The professor himself, you will remember, has valued my opinion on occasion. But just because you can't think of any reason why anyone should be watching us, you give no credence to what I say and think that, because I have not been well of late, I'm either incompetent or insane. That would certainly tend to make one overwrought."

  "I don't think you're insane," Barnett protested. "I merely think that, in this instance, you're mistaken."

  "You wouldn't think so if I were a man," Cecily said, and turned pointedly back to her book.

  That, Barnett thought, was an unfair remark. He repressed the urge to call it "female logic," since he had a feeling that would do more harm than good, and he didn't want to start any more of a fight than they were already in. There is a time for discussion and a time for letting it lie, he thought, leaning back in his seat. He had the virtuous feeling of one who knows he is in the right, but allows another the last word.

  Barnett had tried in various ways to check on the people Cecily believed were watching them, but it's hard to tell whether someone on the same train or staying at the same hotel is really there just to keep watch on you. None of Cecily's objects of suspicion skulked about peering at them from behind lampposts. And it was an unlikely series of people—an old man with piercing blue eyes at the Majestic in Paris; a little, bulldog-faced man on the train to Rome; a handsome, aristocratic-looking woman who struck up a conversation with Barnett at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome—that Cecily suspected of being in league to keep an eye on the Barnett family. Barnett admitted to himself that he would have found it easier to believe if he could think of any reason why anyone would find them interesting enough to want to follow them about.

  The Capostazione, the master of this Italian ra
ilway station, bedecked in a uniform that would not look out of place on the leader of a circus orchestra, appeared on the platform to give the departure signal, and the train heaved itself back into motion. As it gathered speed, the fat man and his companions tramped down the corridor and distributed themselves among the nearly empty first-class compartments. Barnett saw the fat man pass by and peer through the glass in the compartment door at them; he was closely followed by the woman in black. Judging by the sounds, they settled in the next two compartments. The clergyman and the youth passed not at all; they must have chosen earlier compartments.

  That, Barnett reflected, was odd. They had certainly known each other on the platform, and here they were settling in different compartments. He was about to mention it to Cecily, but he decided that, in her present mood, she would think he was humoring her.

  It was now Tuesday the tenth of March, 1891. Benjamin and Cecily Barnett were indulging in an off-season tour of Europe that had already lasted for six weeks and would probably last for as many more. Cecily was recuperating from a late-term miscarriage, her second in two years, which had debilitated her mentally and physically. Their only companion, a midget-of-all-work named "Mummer" Tolliver, was ahead of them with the bulk of their baggage, supervising its installation in the pensione on Lake Como that was their next destination.

  This long overdue vacation was the first either of them had taken that was not combined with a business trip of some sort. Even their two-week honeymoon in Paris had been used to set up a French bureau for the American News Service, Barnett's cable news bureau based in London, which supplied European news to American newspapers. Cecily Barnett had once worked for her husband, but she was now the editor of Hogbine's Illustrated Weekly, one of the most successful magazines of the Hogbine group.

  "I am assured by the conductor," Barnett said after a couple of minutes' silence, "that the train's carrozza ristorante will be opened for dinner after the train leaves Monza. Would you care to join me?" Barnett used the Italian phrase for "dining car" in a self-conscious attempt to end his spat with Cecily; she was always amused by the way he pronounced any foreign words. But sometimes the best-laid plans do not work.

  "If you're not afraid I'll make a scene," Cecily said. "Perhaps waving my arms about and accusing the conductor of spying on us. I wouldn't want to make a scene."

  Barnett sighed. "I'll trust to your discretion," he said.

  They went back to the carrozza ristorante to eat thin slices of pounded veal and green peppers, thick slices of crusty bread, and a massive salad with olives and anchovies, and drink a fruity red wine. The trains of the Rete Mediterranea were in a period of genteel decay, with neglected twenty-year-old cars pulled by patched-together twenty-year-old engines. A trip that might take five hours on a rapid train elsewhere in Europe could take up to twenty hours on the treni diretti. Or thrice that, if it was unfortunate enough to break down. Traveling in Italy, even first class, was an adventure. But the food was good.

  The train was entering that part of northern Italy between Lakes Como and Lecco called the Brianza, and the view out the dining room window was of terraced hillsides covered with naked grapevines ready to begin their summer's growth. In the distance were a scattering of cottages, sporadic freshly plowed plots of brown earth, and patches of somber woods. An occasional walled villa with its complex of outbuildings would suddenly spring into sight and then disappear into the mist.

  The fat man trotted up from the rear of the train and entered the dining car almost immediately after Benjamin and Cecily sat down. He lumbered by them, selecting a table three down and across the aisle. Barnett watched with amusement as he gingerly pushed and prodded at the wooden chair seat before lowering his bulk onto it and intently studying the bill-of-fare. About ten minutes or so later the dark adolescent also appeared from the aft end of the train, and, after a few whispered words with the fat man, crossed the dining car and exited the front.

  "Curious," Cecily said. "Two of your four friends seem to have been holding a convention in the rear of the train."

  "Perhaps they have acquaintances among the third-class passengers," Barnett suggested. "Or perhaps they were seeing to their baggage. The baggage car is at the rear."

  "Perhaps," Cecily agreed, coldly.

  "Listen, Dove, I don't want to fight with you. Honestly I don't," Barnett said, dropping his voice to a whisper. "But you surely wouldn't want me to say I agree with you when I don't. Would you?"

  "If you knew how many times I had done just that for you," Cecily told him, "you would hesitate to ask. It seems that there is one law for the Medes, and another for the Persians." She pushed her plate of veal aside and stood up. "I am no longer hungry. I will meet you back in our compartment."

  Barnett also stood, out of automatic politeness to his angry wife. There are times when anything you can do is wrong, and this, Barnett perceived, was one of them. Whether he exhorted Cecily to stay, returned with her to the compartment, or let her go by herself, she would not be pleased.

  The cursed unreasonableness of women! Here he was, a reasonable man, behaving in a reasonable manner, being put constantly, and unfairly, in the wrong by his wife, who was usually the most rational, sensible of God's creatures. It was infuriating!

  "I must apologize for this interruption." An oily, slightly shrill voice sounded in Barnett's ears as he stood there.

  "You are, perhaps, the Barnetts? Mister and Mrs. Is that so?"

  "Why?" Barnett asked, turning. It was the fat man, risen from his seat and hovering unctuously by Barnett's side. This was too much. Had the man been eavesdropping? Even so, what on earth could he want? Whatever it might be, Barnett was in no mood to deal with it.

  "I do really apologize for this unseemly interruption," the fat man said. For a second his lips formed into a smile, which promptly disappeared. "The conduttore mentioned to me of your presence on this train. I was overjoyed at the coincidence. A fortuitous happening, surely, you will admit."

  "Will I?" Barnett was conscious of the three of them frozen there by the fat man's rudeness; Cecily poised for flight, and he undecided whether or not to follow, and the fat man talking. And talking. And talking.

  "But yes." The fat man paused, one hand on his cheek, and grimaced as though just stricken with a horrible possibility. "You are, are you not, the Barnetts of the American News Service?"

  "That's correct," Barnett said, grudgingly. How could this man possibly know that? And why should he care? Perhaps there was, after all, something to Cecily's apprehension. On the other hand, if the man wanted to do anything besides merely speaking to them, he didn't have to follow them around until they were in the carrozza ristorante to do it.

  "Good. Good," the fat man said. "It is as I thought. You will pardon the intrusion, but, with the most honorable of intentions, I must seize this moment to speak with you. It is a matter of some urgency and some—delicacy." He whipped a hand into his jacket pocket, and it came out again clutching a white pasteboard. "My card, if you would be so good."

  Barnett took the card, glanced at it, and passed it to Cecily. Gottfried Kasper, it said in firm but delicate brown lettering, scrittore e giornalista, Milano.

  "What can we do for you, Signor Kasper?" Cecily asked the fat man sweetly. "Please, sit down."

  Barnett looked at her in amazement. "Yes," he said, choking back a comment, "please do." Cecily surely must have some reason for asking the fat man to sit—unless it was merely to show Barnett that she would prefer anyone's company to his right now. Or perhaps, since she suspected the fat man of some sort of chicanery, she was going to try to prove it. Barnett sincerely hoped that she was not planning to do any such thing.

  "You are most kind," the fat man said, as he lowered himself gingerly into a chair on the aisle while Benjamin and Cecily regained their seats. He looked relieved, but perhaps that was just at being able to sit again. Hauling his bulk around, particularly on a moving train, Barnett thought, must be a constant battle.

&n
bsp; "So you are a journalist, eh?" Barnett said. "Looking for work?"

  "No, no!" Kasper held up one chubby hand in protest, as though to ward off the very suggestion. "Of course, if there were any way in which I could be of service to the great American News Service ... You have, perhaps, read my series on the aesthetic differences among the capitals of the European monarchies? It had a brief European vogue about a year ago, and was translated into many languages."

  "I don't believe so," Barnett said. "What was it called?" Cecily asked.

  " 'An Aesthetic Analysis of the Fin-de-Siècle Styles and Manners of the Capitals of the European Monarchies.' It was well-received, if I may be permitted to say so myself. It evoked quite a bit of comment at the time. But it has not, as of yet, had the honor of receiving an English translation."

  "Catchy title," Barnett commented.

  Kasper turned and looked at him suspiciously for a moment, but decided to ignore whatever he saw there. "Do you think your American public would have any interest in an article of that nature?" he asked. "It is a heavily researched article and finds many similarities of thought among the more important European capitals."