by Maia Chance
Franz squinched his eyes. “What did that missing manuscript page say? You saw it. You found that British bovine and saw the page.” He prowled closer.
Prue’s heart thumped.
“We are here,” Hansel said, “because we realized, like you, that the comb in Miss Bright’s possession belonged to Snow White. That it came from this cliff.”
“I do not believe you,” Franz said. “There is more.” He bent and snatched something off the ground.
A sword. Long and thin, like those the students had been dueling with in Heidelberg.
He darted around Hansel, clutched Prue’s elbow, and yanked her to his bony chest. He pressed the sword’s edge to her throat.
“You know something I do not,” Franz said. He dragged Prue, both of them staggering over rocks, to the cliff’s edge. Cold, pine-scented wind gusted up from the abyss. “Tell me what the last page said or I shall slit her throat and toss her over.”
He was trembling, and the sword’s blade bit into Prue’s skin.
Stinging pain blossomed. Blood tickled down Prue’s neck, and tears blurred her vision.
Hansel inched towards them, speaking in lulling tones. “How did you know of the existence of a burial treasure?”
“Herr Ghent told me. He told all of us. All of his workers.”
“Ghent? The owner of the gaming rooms?”
“How did you suppose I went from being a croupier to a student at university? Only gentlemen go to university. Ghent made a gentleman of me.”
“But why?”
“He knew I could be of use to him. The evil little mite only uses people. Fancies the world is his chessboard. He caught me stealing from his casino, and he took an interest in me. Recognized another cunning spirit. He had long wished to learn about the Order of Blood and Ebony, suspecting they might possess knowledge about his ancestors.”
“His ancestors?”
“The mining dwarves.”
Prue squeezed away her tears, because another light had appeared behind Hansel, at the back of the cliff. It was a lantern carried by a bulky form in a skirt.
Gertie.
“In exchange for infiltrating the Order,” Franz said to Hansel, “Ghent paid for my education. And my clothing, and my boardinghouse, and so on. But as the year wore on, it became apparent that the Order of Blood and Ebony was nothing but a sorry excuse for young bucks to drink themselves into stupors and pester pretty black-haired barmaids. Ghent’s patience was wearing thin when Homer T. Coop was killed.”
“Then Ghent had further use for you, after all,” Hansel said.
“Yes. He wished for me to discover more about the house in the wood and Coop’s death. And this one”—Franz brought his lips close to Prue’s cheek—“proved to be a font of knowledge.”
“That is why we encountered you in Baden-Baden two days after Coop was murdered. Ghent summoned you.”
Prue was watching Gertie’s silhouette. Gertie had been bobbing around at the back of the cliff, shoving bushes and boulders. And then suddenly, Gertie and her lantern disappeared into some kind of black hole.
“This grows wearisome,” Franz said. Keeping hold of Prue, he shoved her to the utmost edge of the cliff. One of her feet dangled in nothingness. The other was sliding on loose dirt, about to go over. She screamed. It echoed into the vast wilderness.
Hansel lunged forward. With one hand he reached out and grabbed a fistful of Prue’s ugly brown dress. With his other hand he clobbered Franz square in the nose.
Franz made a noise that sounded like “Urgh.” His fingers released Prue’s wrist. Hansel dragged Prue to the safety of his arms. And Franz sagged like a sack of potatoes and pitched over the edge of the cliff.
“Holy mackerel!” Prue squirmed out from Hansel’s arms and rushed to the cliff’s edge. Franz had landed on a rocky ledge about six feet down. His jacket was hooked in a scraggly bush. His eyes were shut.
Hansel was next to her. “He appears to be breathing.”
“Knocked out, though.”
“That bush will most likely keep him from going over the precipice.”
“He’ll keep.” Prue scrambled to her feet. “Let’s see what Gertie’s doing.”
“Gertie? What about the wound on your neck?”
“Come on!”
Turned out, there was a cave back against the cliff, behind some rubble and bracken. The entrance was as big around as a barrel, glowing with light. Gertie must have rolled away the boulder that stood just to the side of the cave’s entrance.
Inside, Prue was expecting more rubble, dirt, maybe a bear. But it was a chamber. It was paved all around—floor, walls, ceiling—in marble that might’ve been white as milk once. Now black lichen crept across everything.
A marble slab, also covered in lichen, sat in the middle of the chamber. On top of the slab was an oblong box. Gertie, disheveled and breathless, hunched over the box, holding her lantern high.
Prue and Hansel crept in. Pebbles skidded across the marble floor.
Gertie glanced up. Her eyes were round, her mouth slack. “She is here,” she murmured. All her hostility seemed to be forgotten.
Prue and Hansel stole forward. Prue figured this was how visiting a shrine would feel, even though it smelled like earthworms and dirt.
The box was all clouded up with gray and black, made of some kind of glass.
“You going to open it?” Prue whispered. Her voice rebounded against all that marble. Goosebumps sprouted on her arms.
“It hasn’t any hinges,” Gertie said. “It will take several men to move the top.” She set her lantern on the casket and started rubbing at the glass with her gloved hand.
A millipede squiggled past.
After a moment, Gertie had cleared a round patch.
“There she is.” Gertie nudged the lantern closer. “Look.”
Prue looked.
Eek.
A skull grimaced up at her. Strings of long gray hair clung to the skull. Neck bones disappeared beneath the papery remains of a gown.
Prue edged away. “Well. No sign of treasure here. We’d best be going.”
“Wait,” Hansel said. “There is something in there. Yes, see? There is a bracelet about the bones of her wrist.”
Gertie lunged forward. “So it is! And here! Ah! A breach in the casket.”
There was a long crack along one side of the casket, and a small piece of glass had collapsed inward.
Gertie thrust her fist through and yanked the bracelet. It came out in her gloved fist, along with a couple of Snow White’s finger bones. They tinkled to the floor.
Prue stared down at the finger bones. Then she stared up at Gertie, who was polishing the bracelet. It was made of the same tarnished gold as the ruby comb, a thick cuff deeply carved and inlaid with dirty green stones.
“Emeralds,” Gertie said. “Gold.” She rubbed frantically at the rest of the casket. “There ought to be more jewelry in there. Mounds and mounds of jewelry. I cannot wheel around that old battle axe any longer. One more consumptive cough into her hankie and I’ll wring her bloody neck!” She scowled into the casket. “Where in blazing Hades is the rest of the treasure?” She raced around the perimeter of the marble room. There was nothing to be seen but twigs and leaves that critters had carted in.
Gertie let out a roar and gave the wall a ferocious kick with her walking boot. Then she kicked the wall in another place, and another. Suddenly, a big section of marble wall gave way, swinging back on slow hinges. Blackness yawned beyond. Gertie hesitated, but only for a second. She grabbed her lantern and brought it to the door. A tunnel curled steeply down into the earth. The dirt walls were held back by ancient beams.
“Do not go down there,” Hansel called to Gertie. “The walls could collapse.”
“Stuff it,” Gertie said, and crawled through the hole on
all fours.
Prue stared at Gertie’s retreating rump. “We can’t just let her go! She’s crawling down into the belly of the mountain!”
“She is a woman grown,” Hansel said. “We shall send men after her. But first, we must get help for Franz and bring him down to the castle. He must be looked after by a doctor—as should you. Your throat looks a sight. And there is no treasure here.”
* * *
Gabriel rose at seven o’clock. He re-bandaged his shoulder wound, dressed, packed his valise and trunk, and left his chamber.
As he passed Winkler’s door, he slowed. Ought he say good-bye? No. He’d see him soon enough back in Heidelberg.
He drank a cup of coffee in the empty dining room. He arranged for his luggage to be brought down from his chamber and for a carriage to take him to the Baden-Baden railway station at eight.
He made his way along the cobbled village lane, ignoring Schloss Grunewald towering up into the fresh morning sky.
There was no utility in thinking of Miss Flax, of her messy little confidence scheme, of the pained expression in her eyes, of her shoulders in that evening gown. He and Miss Flax came from different worlds. It was better this way.
Gabriel came to a stop before the window of Horkheimer’s shop. Dark. He shaded his eyes and peered through the glass. The shop appeared somewhat . . . depleted. As though half of its stock was gone. Surely Horkheimer wasn’t going out of business?
“Kann Ich Sie helfen?” a man called, somewhere above Gabriel’s head.
Gabriel stepped back from the shop window and looked up. It was Horkheimer, leaning out of an upstairs window, a striped nightcap dangling from his head.
“Ah,” Horkheimer said. “It is you. Enjoying your cuckoo clock?”
“I’m awfully sorry to have woken you,” Gabriel said, “but as a matter of fact, I’d hoped to purchase another. The one I bought seems to have been . . . it was lost, I’m afraid.”
“I would like to fulfill your request, sir, but I am afraid all of those particular clocks have been purchased.”
“All of them? Those carved by Frau Herz, you understand.”
“Ja. All of them are gone. And I would direct you to the shops in Baden-Baden where Frau Herz sometimes sells her clocks, but yesterday a tourist told me that all of her clocks have been purchased in Baden-Baden as well. We seem to have a collector in our midst.”
“Who,” Gabriel said, “purchased them all?”
Horkheimer told him.
“But why?”
“That I could not tell you.”
“Martin?” a woman’s voice said, somewhere behind Horkheimer.
“My wife,” Horkheimer said to Gabriel. “Best of luck finding a clock.” He let the window sash fall.
33
Gabriel returned to the inn.
He pounded on Winkler’s door. When there was no response, he pushed it open.
The chamber was empty.
“Professor Winkler departed yesterday evening,” the innkeeper’s wife said. She’d followed him upstairs.
Gabriel went back to his own chamber. He tore through his trunk and dug up his revolver. He loaded it, rammed it into his breast pocket, and headed up to the castle.
Miss Flax needed to be warned.
* * *
Gabriel arrived, breathless, at the castle, and pounded with both fists on the huge front doors. He was met with silence. Somewhere on the bluff, a lark twittered inanely.
He tried the door, but it was bolted fast. He strode across the forecourt, around the castle’s east side, and found the doors that led into the kitchens. There were people moving about in there, he saw through a window.
He burst in.
“Where is Miss Flax?” he said to no one in particular.
She wasn’t in the kitchen.
The other servants were breakfasting at a long plank table. They stared at him as though he’d appeared from the ether.
“Miss Flax?” the cook said, her porridge spoon poised midair.
The two maidservants glanced at each other.
The footman—Gabriel recalled he was named Wilhelm—said, “Miss Flax has, ah—vanished.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Wilhelm explained—with interjections from the two maids—that Smith, Miss Bright, Hansel, and Miss Flax had all disappeared during the night.
“Disappeared?” Gabriel said. “What do you mean by that?”
Wilhelm’s soft cheeks trembled. “Simply gone.” He described the scene of violence in Smith’s bedchamber and how Miss Flax, searching for Prue, had disappeared as well.
“But there are mad people on the loose. Murderers.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” Wilhelm said.
Gabriel raked a hand through his hair. “Where’s Schubert—is he still here?”
“Yes. He and his men began a thorough search of the schloss at daybreak—”
“At daybreak? Anything could have happened overnight.”
“—and they are now, having failed to find any clues as to the whereabouts of the missing persons, conversing in the library.”
“Conversing,” Gabriel said. “Have they searched the wood?”
There was a screeching sound.
Gabriel noticed for the first time an old crone hunkered on her stool in the chimney corner. She was writing with a stub of chalk on a slate.
Surely the old countess. Matilda.
“What is she writing?” Gabriel said.
No one answered.
He rushed to Matilda’s side, bent to read the slate. She had printed in German, in a shaking hand, The gold mine.
The gold mine!
How could he have been so bloody blind? It had always been about the gold. Every last detail.
Gabriel crouched and held out his palm, and Matilda dropped the chalk into his hand. Where is it? He wrote. He passed her the chalk.
The dwarf’s head.
I know there is a dwarf’s head on the tapestry, he scrawled, but I could not find it in the wood.
Matilda’s eyes twinkled as she took the chalk.
How delightful to see the old dame was enjoying herself.
The dwarf’s face crumbled long ago, she wrote.
Gabriel sucked in a breath.
—and all that remains is the cliff on top of his head, and an outcrop by the stream.
Gabriel kissed the lady’s shrunken cheek and ran out of the kitchen.
* * *
The wood was peaceful. Birds chirruped, squirrels skittered up tree trunks, and sunlight sloped through the treetops in long, luminous shafts.
Gabriel found the path he’d taken twice before. Little had he known that the mouth of the cave he and Miss Flax had hidden in had been, quite literally, the mouth of the giant dwarf’s head outcropping and the marker of the fabled gold mine. Perhaps the miners had carved it, long ago, as some fantastical monument to their industry. Or perhaps it was one of nature’s poetic caprices.
The path began its curving ascent away from the valley. Gabriel was just about to plunge down into the fern-filled ravine, towards the cave, when he stopped in his tracks.
A few paces ahead, there was a large rock—a boulder, really—at the side of the path. It was pale gray and had patches of lichen here and there. But there was something else on it, too.
His belly clenched as he approached the rock. On it, at hip’s height, was a two-fingered smear of blood. The blood had turned brown already.
He rushed further up the trail, scanning the loamy path and the rocks and tree trunks on either side. It was not long before he discovered another finger smear of blood, this time on the grooved bark of a tree.
Someone had left a deliberate trail.
He saw one last flash of Miss Flax’s beautiful dark eyes, and his belly lurched on
e last time. Then he shuttered that part of his mind. It never paid to be sentimental.
He moved quickly and efficiently, scanning the trees and rocks and finding, spaced at varying intervals, smears of blood to mark the way. The blood led him high onto a mountainside, off the path, and deeper into the wood. He was so intent on his task that when he found himself in the clearing of the abandoned hunting lodge he did not, at first, realize where he was.
The lodge was smaller than he remembered. It was built of stone, with pointed gothic windows and crumbling gargoyles in the shape of—he smiled bitterly—dwarves.
He crept towards the lodge and peered through one of the windows. The diamond-shaped panes were so filthy he could make out nothing but a dull glow of light, a blur of motion.
Someone, then, was still alive in there.
He drew his revolver from inside his jacket, checked the cylinders. He mounted the steps of the lodge. He pushed the door open.
* * *
The sight that met his eyes was so strange he could not, for several dragging moments, comprehend it. There was the gaping fireplace, the mounted beasts’ heads, the bronze and antler chandelier. But also, in the center of the chamber, a large cage, made of gnarled sticks tied together with twine.
There was a person inside the cage, curled on his side on the floor, his short, bare arms wrapped around naked knees.
“Smith?” Gabriel said.
Smith opened his eyes. They were as dull as rocks.
Gabriel rushed to the cage. Smith was unclothed, save a pair of drawers. There was a nasty-looking gash on his left arm.
“Are you all right?” Gabriel said. “Who put you in there?”
Smith only stared.
“I’m getting you out,” Gabriel said. He started to circle round the cage. There appeared to be a door of sorts on the other side.
“Ah. Penrose. I was curious if you would turn up.”
Gabriel stopped and turned to face Professor Winkler, who hulked in a doorway that led to another part of the lodge.
“I’m afraid,” Gabriel said, “I must insist that you release this man.”