The Iron Angel

by Edward D. Hoch

  “It was his own house. He’d been in it only moments before. And what sort of booby trap would leave no traces?”

  Vlado left Segar and went off across the fields toward Arge’s house. Segar went back inside and used the telephone near the front door, trying not to look at the body on the floor. He spoke directly to Inspector Krisana, who promised to have people there from a district substation within thirty minutes. Segar didn’t bother to tell him that the victim had been the would-be representative at the forthcoming state function.

  Michael Vlado returned in twenty minutes, looking frustrated. “Arges isn’t at home and I can’t find Krista. Trey Zuday isn’t in sight either.”

  “It’s still snowing a little. Not exactly the sort of weather for working outside, or taking an autumn stroll.”

  “Did you phone your headquarters?”

  Segar nodded. “They should be here shortly. They’re coming from Racari.” He had another thought. “What about the basement? The door was bolted, but I should check down there anyway. How far does it run?”

  “Under the main part only. It’s more for food storage than anything else.”

  “Stay here. I’ll take a look.”

  He used his flashlight to inspect the dirt covered basement, finding only a thick festoon of spiderwebs that covered the ceiling. No one was hidden there and it seemed unlikely that anyone had ventured into the place in many months.

  By the time he returned upstairs, a state militia car and a government ambulance were pulling up before the house. Captain Segar spoke quickly to the new arrivals and watched while they went about their tasks. The medical intern on the ambulance pronounced Nicolae dead, noting the date and time on his records. Then the technician from the Ricari substation took some pictures and dusted halfheartedly for fingerprints. “Where’s the weapon?” one of them asked.

  “No weapon,” Segar told them.

  “These Gypsies are nothing but trouble. Why do we drive all this distance for a Gypsy killing? Let them cut throats all they want.”

  Michael Vlado was close enough to hear and Segar saw the line of his jaw tighten. Perhaps he was remembering the Gypsies who had died in Hitler’s concentration camps alongside the Jews. “Come outside,” Segar told him quietly, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  “Is that the government position?”

  “Of course not.” They went into the brisk afternoon air, still white with drifting snowflakes.

  The ambulance attendants came out to their vehicle for a large plastic body bag. The technicians, finished with their work, were leaving. “Where are the suspects?” one of them asked Segar. Even the sight of the official vehicles had attracted no curious neighbors. It was as if the village and the countryside were suddenly deserted.

  “There aren’t any,” the captain replied, turning helplessly to Michael Vlado.

  “The sight of government officials keeps villagers away,” Michael explained. “They will mourn Nicolae’s death at the proper time and in the proper Gypsy manner – when outsiders have gone.”

  The intern and ambulance driver were having a cigarette before returning to their task. Segar stood in the snow, staring up at the house and wondering what its secret was. “He’s in there someplace,” he told Michael. “That’s the only possibility. There has to be a secret panel somewhere.”

  But Michael shook his head. “I helped Nicolae build that house. It has no secret panels or hidden rooms.”

  “You agree that the killer was waiting inside?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “He was inside when we returned to the house.”

  Michael nodded. “Or else he slipped around the back and entered through the woodshed while we talked out front, before the snow had accumulated enough to show his tracks.”

  “It could have been Trey Zuday.”

  “Or anyone else.”

  “Someone small enough to hide – where?” He remembered how carefully he’d searched the house. “That big wood stove inside the door?”

  “Surely it is in use on such a cold day.”

  The intern and driver finished their cigarettes and returned to the house, pushing open the front door as they unfolded the body bag. Gallipeau’s head hung down as they lifted his leather jacketed body and half slid, half rolled it into the bag, zipping shut the side opening. The dead man’s right ear seemed to be listening, and in that moment it was as soft and unadorned as a baby’s at birth. Perhaps we all die that way, Segar mused – listening like babies to some distant trumpet. He wondered what his Socialist master would think of such spiritual meditations. Surely in Russia men had been shot for less.

  “The well!” Michael said suddenly, as the body was being slid into the back of the ambulance.

  “What?”

  “The well! When you searched the house, did you look in the well?”

  “No,” Segar admitted. “I looked at it, but not into it.”

  “Come on!” Michael turned to the driver. “You men stay here until we return.”

  Segar repeated the order so it would be obeyed, then followed Michael inside. “How could anyone be hidden in the well? Wouldn’t they drown?”

  “There are iron rungs in the side for climbing up or down. Nicolae was always afraid someone would fall in and drown before they could be pulled out.”

  It was a good idea but the flashlight revealed that the well was empty. The rungs led down to the water, but no one was standing on them. They watched long enough to establish that no one was holding his breath just beneath the water’s surface. “That’s all right,” Segar assured Michael. “We all have our ideas.”

  Michael walked over to the wellhouse door and opened it. “There are footprints by the outhouse.”

  “Those are mine,” Segar told him. “I checked it earlier.” He glanced around for something to prop the door open, finally settling on a block of wood. “I think we should search the house together while the ambulance people watch the front door.”

  Michael agreed, and they quickly went through the place. No one was hidden there, and no one had run out the back door across the snow. The house was empty as on the previous search. Segar reluctantly told the driver to proceed to Ricari with the body.

  “A wire might have been pulled across his throat,” Michael speculated.

  “By whom?” Segar demanded. “Where did it go?”

  “Perhaps a knife was thrown.”

  “Then where is it? Who threw it? The thing is impossible. If Trey Zuday killed him, he was invisible.”

  Michael Vlado watched the ambulance pull away. “Impossible. And yet it happened. Nicolae is certainly dead.”

  Segar could see Gypsies emerging from their homes now that the police and ambulance had departed. Only he remained and they trusted him. Krista was one of the first to reach the house, and she sobbed as Michael told her what had happened. She entered the house and stared bleakly at the floor where blood still marked the place of Nicolae’s death. “Where is the little rug?” she asked.

  “It was bloody,” Michael answered. “Perhaps the ambulance attendants threw it out.”

  “Something else is missing,” Segar said suddenly. “When I searched earlier, there was a small anvil in the wellhouse. Just now I couldn’t find it. I used a block of wood to prop open the door.”

  “Anvil,” Michael repeated. Then, “Quickly! To your car!”

  “What?”

  “We have to go after that ambulance!”

  It was a nightmare ride, speeding over back roads once taking a wrong turn. What did the missing anvil have to do with catching the ambulance? Segar kept asking Michael the question, but the Gypsy was not yet ready to answer. He only urged Segar to drive faster to use his siren.

  Finally they saw the vehicle ahead through the falling snow. Siren pulsating, Segar’s car passed it and forced it to stop. Then Michael was out of the car, running like a madman to the back of the ambulance, opening the door, yanking the plastic body bag onto the snowy road. It was
the final scene of Dracula again, Segar thought. His friend had surely gone mad, coming here to plunge a stake through the heart of a dead man.

  But Michael was more interested in raising the dead than in killing them again. “Come out of there, you murderer! Just as Cain slew Abel, you have killed your brother!”

  And Segar saw that the man inside was not dead, and it was not Nicolae Gallipeau. It was his brother Arges.

  Michael accompanied Segar and the others into the substation at Racari, and while he drank a cup of coffee he answered Segar’s questions about the amazing case. “What did Arges plan to do? Why had he taken his brother’s place in that body bag and how did he accomplish it?”

  The Gypsy leaned back in his chair. They were in a plain, drab office where a large blue, yellow, and red Romanian flag on the wall was the only decoration. It reminded Segar glumly of Inspector Krisana’s office back at headquarters. “Oh, I have no doubt Arges would have cut his way out of the bag and leaped from the ambulance when it arrived here,” Michael Vlado said. “He still had the murder knife with him.”

  “How did he do it?”

  “Simple. He left us in front of his brother’s house, made a wide circle and reentered through the rear wellhouse door just as the snow was beginning to stick to the ground. He planned to kill his brother and exit the same manner, but the time he returned to the back door the snow had accumulated enough to show footprints. He was trapped inside the house.”

  “But where did he hide? I searched the house twice.”

  “The first time he was in the well, clinging to those iron rungs. Later, when the technicians departed and the intern and driver went outside for the body bag, he saw his opportunity. He changed places with his victim. You must have noticed that they look something alike, as brothers would. Hacking off his wispy beard with his knife or a handy scissors, he removed Nicolae’s distinctive jacket and put it on over his own clothes. He smeared blood over his face and neck to cover the stubs of his beard, and lay down in his brother’s place. The body had been examined already, so the ambulance people merely placed it in the body bag without a second thought.”

  But Captain Segar was not satisfied. “What did he do with the real body? We searched the house a second time remember? A dead body would have been as impossible to hide as a living one.”

  “You solved that mystery yourself when you mentioned the missing anvil. Nicolae’s body was dropped down the well, weighted with that anvil. And the rug Krista noticed was missing – that was probably used to pull the body out to the wellhouse so there wouldn’t be more blood spread through the place. The body was probably wrapped in it before he dropped it down the well.”

  “How did you know all this?”

  “It came to me when you mentioned the missing anvil. I also remembered something odd about the body as they placed it in the bag. Perhaps you noticed it too. The right ear was bare, though Nicolae wore an earring in his ear. If Nicolae’s body had gone down that well and the killer was escaping in that ambulance, I knew it must be Arges. No one else looked enough like Nicolae to get away with it.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “I asked him that. His motive was Cain’s motive – jealousy of his brother’s achievement. Choosing Nicolae for that honorary appearance in Bucharest was the last straw. He’d always loved Krista from afar and that played a part too. Nicolae had the better house, the better woman, and now the honor of representing all the Gypsies. Arges could take it no longer.”

  “I only went to him because you turned it down.”

  “Yes,” Michael said. Clearly, he had considered that.

  “What will I do now?”

  “I will go to Bucharest,” Michael Vlado decided. “I owe Nicolae and Arges that much.”

  THE GYPSY TREASURE

  Captain Segar’s usual job was law enforcement in the cities and towns that bordered the Transylvanian Alps in central Romania. He disliked the Communist politicians one encountered all too frequently in Bucharest and for that reason he usually managed to steer clear of his nation’s capital. However, the November conciliation meeting required the presence of a Gypsy leader, along with representatives of other ethnic groups and so Segar accompanied his friend Michael Vlado to the gathering.

  Michael was even more ill at ease than Segar in the streets of the city, longing for the quiet of his little village of Gravita. He wasn’t a nomadic Gypsy by nature but a settled one descended, from a line of cattle drovers who had made Romania their home for more than a century. He had a wife and family back in Gravita and he was anxious to return to them.

  It was on the second day of the two-day meeting that Captain Segar saw a Gypsy woman approach Michael in the hotel lobby and hand him a message. He seemed startled to see her and tried to say something, but she retreated as quickly as she had come.

  “Who was that?” Segar asked as Michael stood reading the message he had been handed.

  “The daughter of an old Gypsy king,” Michael replied. “She brings me news of the death of her uncle.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Michael nodded acknowledgement. “There is a Gypsy festival in Oradea this weekend and tribes from all over Europe will be there. I had hoped to see Greystone at it.” He pondered the message for a moment then folded it into his pocket.

  “You will not be returning to Gravita then?” Segar asked.

  “No, I must go to Oradea for the festival.”

  “That’s almost to the Hungarian border!”

  “It must be,” Michael answered simply.

  He seemed troubled and distant for the remainder of the day. In the late afternoon when the time came to depart, Segar found him alone in the lobby. “How will you get to Oradea?” he asked. They’d made the trip to Bucharest in Segar’s official car.

  “I can go by train,” Michael answered. After a moment he added, “unless you would be able to accompany me.”

  “Me? I must be back to work on Monday.”

  “But your weekend is free?”

  “Well, I suppose so,” Segar admitted.

  “I would appreciate it if you could accompany me. There may be a need for your services.”

  “My official services? Oradea is outside my district.”

  “But as a captain of the security forces you would have authority to act in the absence of the local police.”

  “What is it that troubles you so, Michael?”

  “Greystone, the Gypsy who died, was murdered. It happened just a few miles from the festival site at Oradea. There could be further violence at the festival.”

  “I will accompany you,” Segar decided reluctantly. “But I need more details.”

  “There will be plenty of time to talk on the way,” Michael said.

  The journey was a long one, some three hundred miles by road through the mountains. The border city was in a valley given over to fields of wheat and corn. It was in a meadow south of the city that the Gypsy festival would be held.

  “Oradea is much smaller than Bucharest,” Segar noted at they drove through the night on the last leg of the journey. “There are few of the modern buildings one sees in the capital.”

  “We will not be going to the city itself.”

  “Tell me about the man who died.”

  “Though he was called Greystone his real name was Zuloaga. His brother Konrad Zuloaga is a Gypsy king – it was Konrad’s daughter Livia who brought me the message at the hotel.”

  “How did Greystone die?”

  “Stabbed to death as soon as he arrived in Oradea. It was made to look like a knife fight, but his brother is convinced it was a carefully planned killing.”

  “Why do you believe there may be more violence? Is it a feud between rival Gypsy tribes?”

  “No, not in the way you mean. To explain it, I must tell you about the Second World War and about the treasure of the Gypsies.”

  “Don’t all Gypsies have a hidden treasure?” Segar asked remembering old legends.

  �
��This is treasure of a more modern sort. As you know, many Gypsies died in Nazi concentration camps along with the Jews. In some cases, entire tribes were wiped out. The Gypsies of Hungary and Romania realizing they were doomed banded together to keep their gold and jewelry from falling into the hands of the Nazis. This so-called treasure was hidden somewhere in the area of Oradea and its whereabouts was entrusted to five men, each of whom was given a portion of the secret.

  “But the war has been over for forty years!”

  “What is forty years when measured as part of eternity? The original owners of the treasure died in the camps. Others didn’t know quite what should be done with it. Finally, the cards were consulted and the other oracles that my people rely upon. It was decided that the treasure should be recovered this year on this first November weekend and so the festival was planned.”

  “It’s getting a bit chilly for an outdoor festival. You’ll remember there was snow in Gravita two weeks ago.”

  “Only a flurry. And this area is warmer being in a valley.”

  “What of the five who know the treasure’s location? Are you one of them?”

  “Hardly. I wasn’t even born until after the war had started. As you know I was named for the young King Michael who ruled from 1940 until the Communists forced him to abdicate in nineteen forty-seven.”

  Segar nodded. “A good man even though his father was a Fascist.”

  “No, I wasn’t one of the five,” Michael continued, “but I have known them all. Two are dead now.”

  “Greystone is one of them?”

  “Yes. And whoever killed him may have taken his portion of the secret.”

  “What is it – a map divided into five pieces?”

  “No one knows. Except the five.”

  “What about the other one who died?”

  “A natural death, some years ago. The secret passed to his son.”