The Great Game

by Michael Kurland

  "I think in this case it is, perhaps, more than that," Moriarty said. "I believe that these people have a horrible purpose that we have yet to discover."

  "This is the landing," Dr. Gross said, putting his briefcase down and pausing to breathe heavily for a few moments. "That," he pointed, "is the door. The door opposite is the apartment of a captain of artillery who has been on maneuvers for the past four months. The cleaning lady who come in once a week to dust says there's no sign that anyone else has been inside."

  Gross went over to the Donzhof door. "This lock," he said, hefting the large padlock that had been fastened to the door at shoulder height, "was affixed to the door the day of the crime by the examining officers. The sign-up sheet for the key, which is kept at police headquarters, shows that only three people have had access to the apartment since that day: the chief investigating officer and the examining magistrate both of whom came three days after the crime, and I myself came two days later."

  "Good," Holmes said. "Perhaps all indications have not been irretrievably destroyed. But first, the rest of the story."

  "Oh, yes." Dr. Gross pulled a large Meerschaum pipe from his jacket pocket and worked at filling it from an oilcloth sack of a rather sweet-smelling tobacco. "Latakia cured in cherry schnapps," he said at their look. "You have perhaps a pipe and you would like to try some? No? Well then: the Rathaus Bureau received a letter sent by messenger shortly after the shooting, it identified Paul Donzhof by name as the assassin, and gave his address. I have the letter here." He unstrapped his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of writing paper sandwiched for safekeeping between two sheets of stiff card stock.

  Holmes took it and examined both sides. "You have the envelope?" he asked.

  "Unfortunately the so-intelligent sergeant at the desk disposed of the envelope before he realized that someone might like to examine it." Gross put a match to the bowl of his pipe and puffed it into life.

  "Brief and to the point," Holmes said, reading the message. "Typewritten on an elderly typewriter with a weak ribbon: 'The man in the green coat who shot at the carriage on the Ringstrasse earlier is Paul Donzhof. He lives in a top floor apartment at No. 62 Reichsratstrasse.' "

  Holmes passed the paper on to Moriarty, who passed it back to Dr. Gross. "Notice the continued emphasis on the green coat," Moriarty commented.

  "Indeed," Holmes agreed.

  Dr. Gross put the letter away in his briefcase. "Someone wanted to be sure we could identify the young man," he said. "Perhaps because he is guilty."

  "Or perhaps, as in a conjurer's trick, Donzhof was dangled in front of you to keep you from looking elsewhere," Moriarty suggested.

  Dr. Gross looked thoughtful. "Perhaps, I'll grant you that. Perhaps." He opened the padlock and stepped aside so that Holmes could enter first. "I want to watch you work unimpeded," he told Holmes. "I'm sure I have much to learn."

  Holmes glanced suspiciously at Dr. Gross, not entirely convinced that such humility from a police official wasn't a subtle form of sarcasm, but then he nodded and whipped out his pocket lens to examine the lock on the door before entering the apartment. "Please stay behind me," he said, "and keep away from the walls. Some of the most suggestive detritus comes from the walls and the area of the floor near the walls at a crime scene."

  Holmes crept forward, hunched over like a bloodhound on the scent, sniffing his way down the hall, peering through the pocket lens, his eyes inches from the threadbare carpet before him. With exaggerated care not to actually touch the wall, Dr. Gross lit the wall mantles as he came to them and turned up the gas to give Holmes as much light as possible on this dull day. Moriarty stayed behind and let Holmes go over the rooms. This was Holmes's field and Holmes was, as Moriarty had occasion to know well, expert at it.

  "I cannot convince the Austrian police of the importance of examining carefully the walls and floor, especially the floor, and assessing every mark and bit of debris with a powerful glass," Gross said. "They regard it as crawling about in the dust, and are reluctant to spoil the crease in their trousers."

  "Provide them with full-length smocks to wear only while they are at the scene of the crime," Moriarty suggested. "This will also prevent them from inadvertently adding anything from their clothing to the scene."

  "Also have them take their shoes off," Holmes added from the corner of the bedroom. "Debris tracked in on the shoes of the investigators cannot readily be distinguished from that brought in by the killer or the victim. This, I assume, is where the poor girl fell?" He indicated an area of the floor by the bed. "And then she was pulled up here, onto the quilt?"

  "So we believe," Gross said.

  Holmes prowled around the room. "You searched the girl's flat?" he asked.

  Gross nodded. "No signs that anyone else had been in it. The door was unlocked, indicating that she expected to return momentarily."

  "So she ran upstairs expecting to meet her boyfriend, and she met—death," Holmes said, gazing at the bloodstained quilt which was still on the bed.

  "Why did she come up here? How did she know anyone was in the apartment?" Moriarty asked.

  "If it was Paul Donzhof, she must have been expecting him," Gross offered.

  "But he never got home until after five," Moriarty said.

  Gross turned to look at him. "Now, how did you know that?" he asked.

  Holmes laughed. "I'll bet Dr. Sandarel knows as much about this crime as you do," he told Dr. Gross. "There are crimes that take place in Britain that he knows more about than Scotland Yard. Much more."

  "Really?" Dr. Gross inspected Moriarty with new interest. "That is indeed a compliment, coming from Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I didn't realize he felt that highly about you."

  Moriarty grimaced. "I think I can fairly say that Mr. Holmes and I have a high respect for each other," he said. "Sometimes I feel that Mr. Holmes's respect for me is entirely too high. He gives me far too much credit."

  "As the girl's flat was directly below this one," Dr. Gross suggested, "perhaps she heard footsteps through her ceiling."

  "This is a well-made building," Moriarty said. "And there are rugs on the floor. It is doubtful whether she could hear anything short of violent activity."

  Holmes was on his hands and knees, peering under the bed. "Come one of you," he said, standing up. "Help me move the bed over."

  "You have found something?" Gross asked. "But our men must have looked under the bed."

  "It may be nothing," Holmes said. "There is an indication that the bed has been moved. See—here on the rug. Also some fresh wood fragments on the floor here, by the side of the bed. I would like to see why."

  The three of them moved the bed aside, carefully stepping around the pool of dried blood on the floor.

  "Hah!" Holmes said. "See here!"

  Four holes has been gouged in the floor under where the bed had been, looking as though something had been ripped roughly out of the wood. They formed a rectangle of about six by eight inches, each hole about half an inch wide. Chips and splinters of freshly disturbed wood lay near the holes.

  "That's what the poor girl must have heard," Holmes said. "There was something—probably a strongbox—fastened to the floor here with four long wood screws. Someone pried it up. It must have made a considerable noise in the flat below."

  "How could we have missed that?" Gross asked, the question directed mostly at himself.

  "When your man peered under the bed, he wasn't looking for holes in the floor," Holmes said. "The girl must have come upstairs when she heard the noise, expecting to surprise her lover—I assume they were lovers—instead she surprised someone else."

  "Can we be sure of that?" Dr. Gross asked.

  "The strongbox must have been secured to the floor by screws inside the box. If Donzhof had wanted to remove it, he would surely have opened the box and unscrewed the screws."

  "Perhaps he lost the key," Dr. Gross suggested.

  "There is your test," Moriarty said. "Search his belongings for a strongbox key. I
f it isn't among them, ask him where it is. If he can produce it, he is innocent; if he can't, he may be guilty."

  "I think we'll need more than that," Gross said.

  "Did you find the knife?" Holmes asked.

  "Yes," Dr. Gross said, carefully putting his briefcase on a bureau and opening it. "The killer cast it aside. I have it here." He untied a piece of rolled-up brown paper and produced a large, wicked-looking knife from within. "It is a Mittelman-Mohl forged steel knife with a fifteen-centimeter blade; the sort of knife that hunters carry with them. They are quite expensive. The edge has been honed until it's razor-sharp, so be careful."

  Holmes picked up the knife by the blade guard and examined it, with Moriarty peering at it by his side. The blade and the leather grip were both coated with blood, except for a blotchy area on the grip where it had been held by the murderer. "It was kept in a sheath," Holmes declared.

  "A leather sheath with a metal mouth," Moriarty agreed.

  "Such a sheath comes with the knife when it is purchased," Dr. Gross agreed. "How did you know?"

  "It's too large and sharp to be carried about in one's pocket, or stuck in the belt without a sheath," Holmes said. "And the small striations on the blade here show where it was slightly scraped by the metal when it was inserted and withdrawn from the sheath."

  "Was such a sheath searched for?" Moriarty asked. "Did your officers make a search of all the dustbins in the area, of all the gratings and hedges and such places where something might have been discarded? It's probable that the killer, realizing that an empty sheath would be as incriminating as a bloody knife, if it was found on his person, would have thrown it aside as soon as possible."

  "I don't believe such a search was made," Dr. Gross said thoughtfully. "I can see that our assumption that Herr Donzhof was the killer has unduly colored our investigation. It is a great lesson, and I will make note of it. I was not involved with the investigation at that time."

  "The killer panicked," Moriarty commented. "He came up here to plant evidence against Donzhof, and the girl was an unexpected complication. If he had planned to kill her, he would have thought to put the sheath in the top drawer of Paul Donzhof's bureau to implicate him in this crime as well as in the assassination." He turned to Dr. Gross. "I assume you did find evidence directly implicating Paul Donzhof in the assassination?"

  Dr. Gross nodded and again went to his briefcase. This time he took out an oilcloth-wrapped revolver and carefully unwrapped it. "Aside from the green overcoat which the young man was wearing when we apprehended him," he said, "there is this revolver, found on top of that wardrobe in the corner. It is a Shugard Seuss model sixteen. Several of the onlookers identified the weapon fired by the assassin as a Shugard Seuss, which, as you can see, with its bulbous grip and exaggerated trigger guard, has a very distinctive appearance. It was designed for army officers to carry, the idea being that if one ran out of bullets, one could club the enemy with the grip. It hasn't been issued for the past twenty years, but any old military man, at least in the Austrian Army, can recognize the Shugard Seuss at a glance."

  Moriarty nodded. "Which might be exactly why it was chosen. A man possessing a green overcoat and a Shugard Seuss revolver assassinated the duke, so arrest a man possessing a green overcoat and a Shugard Seuss revolver. Where was it found?"

  "On the top shelf of that wardrobe," Dr. Gross said, pointing to the massive Renaissance Revival-style rosewood clothes cabinet which loomed over the room from its place facing the foot of the bed. "It was right at the front, not even out of sight."

  While Moriarty examined the revolver, Holmes whipped out his glass and began going over the wardrobe slowly and carefully, from bottom to top. Several times he paused to pick up something with a pair of tweezers and put it in one of the small envelopes he carried with him. After a while he rose and went to the bedroom wall, where he used his glass to examine the bloody markings made by the killer's hand.

  For several minutes while Holmes peered closely at the bloody markings on the wall, Moriarty and Dr. Gross stood mute, watching him. The only sound was the patter of rain hitting the window, and the occasional snapping of the hammer of the Shugard Seuss revolver as Moriarty examined it. There was a barely audible sigh of relief from Dr. Gross when Holmes turned and put his lens away. "My preliminary examination is over," Holmes said. "Of course I would like the time to go over this room, and the whole apartment, in greater detail. But for now I have reached a few elementary conclusions based on certain facts I have observed. Further investigation should enhance my findings, but this gives us a direction in which to go."

  Dr. Gross moved his eyes from the bloody splotches on the wall to the totally innocuous-looking wardrobe and then to Sherlock Holmes. "Yes?" he asked, "and what are your findings?"

  "Your murderer is a short man, no taller than five foot three," Holmes told him, "and an anarchist. He has almost certainly been in trouble with the law before, possibly for burglary or housebreaking, and is a confirmed scoundrel. He has been in this apartment at least once before the murder, probably when Donzhof was away. I believe I can name him now, but that would be speculation, which should not be indulged in during the course of a criminal investigation. At any rate, it is unnecessary, since I can tell you just where to look for him, and we can undoubtedly identify the murderer when he is apprehended."

  "A short man who has been in trouble with the law?"

  "Certainly short," Holmes said. "I cannot be sure about the trouble with the law, but it's probable."

  Gross stared at him. "Then it was not Herr Donzhof who committed this crime?"

  "Oh, no," Holmes said. "Paul Donzhof is innocent of the murder of this poor girl."

  "You are certain?"

  "Yes. Which would seem to indicate that he is also innocent of the assassination of the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz and the wounding of the duchess, since the real murderer went to so much trouble to make us think Donzhof was guilty."

  "That is but an assumption," Dr. Gross said. "Whatever the case with the murder of the girl—and I want you to explain your reasoning on that—Donzhof might still have been the assassin of the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz."

  "Not if this is the weapon you found in the wardrobe," Moriarty interrupted.

  Dr. Gross turned. "Excuse me? What's that you say?"

  "This cannot be the gun which was used to shoot the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz," Moriarty said, holding it in his two hands before Dr. Gross like an offering.

  "And why not?"

  "Because in its present state, it is incapable of firing."

  "What?" Dr. Gross grabbed the gun from Moriarty and looked it over suspiciously. "There are four fired cartridge cases in the cylinder," he said.

  "Indeed," Moriarty agreed. "Put there to make you think the gun had been fired four times. But look—" he opened the cylinder. "The weapon fires when the hammer strikes a firing pin in the breech, which then strikes the back of the cartridge, setting off the primer."

  "Yes," Dr. Gross agreed. "And?"

  "Each of the four expended cartridges has a strike mark—an indentation on the back where the firing pin struck it. Do you see?"

  "Yes, yes, of course. I'm quite familiar with strike marks. We are experimenting with a high-powered microscope to see whether the strike marks from different weapons differ enough to use for identification. This will be more useful with automatic pistols, of course, since they eject their spent cartridges, which are often found at the scene of the crime."

  "Well, let us rotate the cartridges in their holes so the firing pin will strike in a new place." He twisted each of the four cartridges just a bit and closed the revolver.

  "You want to compare the new markings with the old?" Dr. Gross asked. "We'd need a microscope to see the differences— if any."

  Moriarty handed him the gun. "Fire the weapon two or three times," he said, "and let's take a look."

  Dr. Gross took the gun and glared back and forth between Moriarty and Holmes for a mome
nt. He had thought to learn some little investigative tricks from Sherlock Holmes, but had not expected to have the whole case solved while he watched. Particularly not by Holmes merely going over rooms that his investigators had already examined. And now it seemed that this Dr. Sandarel was going to embarrass him further. Then the momentary flash of anger left him and he shrugged. He was here to learn, and it seemed that he was about to learn more than he expected. So be it. He pointed the gun at the ceiling, and clicked the hammer four times. "There," he said, breaking the gun open. "Now let's see if there's any—well I'll be damned!"

  Holmes, who had been an interested if silent observer to the proceedings, peered over Gross's shoulder. "Curious," he said.