by Pavel Kornev
"What a crock!" I mumbled, trying to process what I'd heard.
At six twenty-four P.M. No one entered or left the house after.
Twenty-four... No one entered or left...
At dawn...
And suddenly my mind was cracking: such accuracy couldn't have been obtained by typical evidence, but if they had been following me, they would have arrested me yesterday right after I shot the Chinese cutthroat.
"You were staking out Levinson's home?" I asked, and stared expectantly at the senior inspector.
He nodded.
"After such an eyebrow-raising attempted bank robbery, it seemed like a fairly good idea to me," he confirmed.
"And the stake-out established the time I entered the house, when I left it, and the fact that no one but me came in or left?"
"That's right!"
"And at what time did I leave the manor?" I clarified.
Bastian Moran flipped through the papers in the folder that was lying on the table and said:
"You spent twenty-eight minutes in the home," then he smiled understandingly and noted: "You had plenty of time to kill them."
But I waved it off in annoyance.
"The Department Three report states that I left the home of the deceased at six fifty-two P.M.?"
The senior inspector looked at me with unhidden suspicion, but all the same affirmed:
"That is true. I do not understand why that makes you so happy!"
"It doesn't matter," I melted into a careless smile. "Bring on the charges. This conversation is boring me."
I smiled carelessly. I was still frozen in horror on the inside, though. If Isaac Levinson hadn't managed to call his business partners in the New World yesterday, the only thing that could save me from the gallows now was a miracle.
"Is that so?" The senior inspector squinted. "May I ask why you are so confident the trial will end in your favor?"
"It is the middle of the night in New York right now," I answered simply. "Everything will become clear by midday."
"In New York?"
"Mr. Levinson had vast business interests."
"You mean to say..."
I nodded and confirmed.
"When Isaac and I parted ways, he was intending to make a call to the New World. The operator must have registered the time the conversations began and the time they ended, and whoever the banker was talking to will surely say that they spoke to Mr. Levinson precisely."
Bastian Moran stood from the table in silence, took all the documents back into the folder and left the room.
I laughed uncontrollably at his back, stretched out my legs and threw myself back into the chair.
I had plenty of time to wait...
THE SENIOR INSPECTOR returned some time later.
He took a seat opposite me, looked me over in contemplation, then stated with unhidden exasperation:
"You could have left the manor and sneaked back in through the roof."
I asked with a showy lethargy:
"Did they find signs of a break-in? And what was stopping you from looking over the crime scene earlier?"
"You could have easily provided an alibi," Bastian Moran continued as if he hadn't heard me.
"Anyone could have done that!" I objected, beginning to boil over a bit again. "Anyone could have broken in!"
"You are connected with the murdered party and the crime scene. We'll find a motive. Don't you doubt it. But for now, what remains is to prove that you had the ability to commit the crime. To start with, that will be enough."
The senior inspector stood up from the table, flung open the door and let a thin gentleman in a white doctor's robe into the room. The medic, with the exhausted look of a nonstop drunk on his face, placed a galvanized iron box on the table and threw back the lid. He then took out a scalpel and a test tube one-third filled with an oily suspension.
"May I begin?" He clarified.
"Yes, please," Bastian Moran gave his permission.
"Now, in order to avoid misunderstandings, could you restrain the patient's head?"
The senior inspector walked around behind me and, his palm on my forehead, held my head against the high back of the chair.
"What are you doing?" I objected. "Stop this!"
The imperturbable medic wet a piece of cotton with rubbing alcohol, grabbed me by the pointer finger, and carefully disinfected a pustule with it.
"Calm down, we just need a few drops of blood."
"What for?" I roared, but I still didn't pull my arm away.
The scalpel looked devilishly sharp, and I had no desire whatsoever to end up with a severed tendon or a finger cut through to the bone.
The incision was entirely painless; the medic placed the edge of the test tube against it, took a few drops of blood and placed a piece of cotton against the wound.
"Press down," he hinted, shaking up the contents of the tube. He hadn't told me to do it because of any particular sympathy he had for me, or any abstract concept of love for his fellow man, but simply because of his naturally inborn professionalism.
Bastian Moran released my head and wondered:
"Are you sure that was enough?"
"That was plenty," the medic attested.
After agitating the test tube intensely, it acquired a singular grayish-pink shade, then the liquid began to separate.
"Does the reaction take long?"
"No more than three minutes," the doctor answered, sticking his hand under his robe and taking out a pocket watch. "Maybe even less."
"What is going on, devil take you?" I objected, but didn't receive an answer.
I was ignored, simple as that.
The medic was watching the test tube intently, but Bastian Moran took a seat at the table, lit a cigarette, then clarified:
"And how accurate is the test?"
"The test is completely accurate," the medic answered. "Either yes or no."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. Successfully diagnosing the active stage of this hereditary disease is possible in one hundred cases in one hundred!"
But the senior inspector didn't find his assurance convincing.
"The active stage?" He frowned. "What do you mean by active stage, doctor? I wasn't warned about that!"
"The active stage is one month from the day of the last transformation," the medic told him, continuing to study the test tube, this time against the light.
"What the devil?!" I snapped, pounding my hands on the table with all my might. "What is going on? Explain this!"
The medic looked at the senior inspector; Moran stretched out, released a stream of smoke at the ceiling and chuckled unhappily:
"In Levinson's house, we found signs of a werebeast, which would give the murderer a fairly good chance of avoiding the noose." Bastian Moran stretched out again and turned back to the medic: "Doctor, what happens to someone with this, as you put it, hereditary disease, if a lawyer in court is capable of proving their insanity at the time the crime was committed?"
"Electro-shock therapy combined with drug therapy usually has fairly good results, but I would insist on a lobotomy, which guarantees full recovery in one hundred percent of cases. And, naturally, forced sterilization."
"You see, Leopold, if you come clean right now, you could save your life. Just say you did it in your sleep. Perhaps the court will take that into account."
"They would have to," the doctor confirmed.
"To hell with your advice!" I cursed out. "I didn't kill anyone! I am not a werebeast!"
But the seed of doubt had hit fertile soil, and that shook me up.
Say you did it in your sleep...
Could I really be sure this wasn't just another nightmare? Could the tension of the last days have had an effect and pushed my sick imagination in that direction? Had my restless talent turned me into a beast?
Nonsense! Maybe the reagent would show a reaction, but that still wouldn't make me a murderer!
The liquids in the tube continue
d separating; the blood was pooling in a thin layer at the very top.
"Well, how'd it go?" I couldn't resist asking. "What do you say?"
The medic didn't even glance at me. He took the watch from his vest pocket again, pulled back the lid, snorted and set the test tube on the table.
"Nothing," he informed the senior inspector.
"Are you sure?" Bastian Moran jumped.
"Look for yourself," the medic pointed at the test tube. "No reaction to argentous reagent. None at all."
"So, this proves that the suspect is not a werebeast?"
"This proves that he has not undergone any transformations in the last thirty days," the medic clarified his verdict.
I chuckled.
"Well? Are you satisfied? What more evidence do you need?" I then shook my shackles defiantly and demanded: "Let me out of here! This instant!"
"Everything in good time!" Bastian Moran frowned and left the cell together with the doctor.
He didn’t remove my shackles, though.
The bastard! The arrogant, egotistical bastard!
BASTIAN MORAN NEVER returned to the chamber.
Instead of him, sometime later, two constables and the already familiar detective sergeant entered. One of the privates unlocked my handcuffs, and the other undid my legs; then I stood from the hard chair, rubbed my raw wrists and accepted a paper bag of my belongings.
"Sign here," the detective sergeant put the register in front of me, dipped his iron quill in a portable inkwell with a copper lid and pointed at where I was to place my signature. After that, he put one more piece of paper on the table.
"Non-disclosure agreement," he told me, but I had already seen it.
I signed it.
"And you must appear at interrogations as a witness."
I placed yet another signature and frowned.
"I hope this is all?"
"It is," the investigator nodded and extended me a sealed envelope. "Take this."
"What is it?" I grew surprised.
"A notice," the red-mustached detective answered vaguely, then ordered the constables: "Take Mr. Orso to the exit."
With the bag in one hand and the envelope in the other, I went out into the corridor and, accompanied by my vigilant escorts, left Department Three. In a steam lift, we went down to the basement where I was led to one of the many service entries and pushed out the door.
Enjoying the air of freedom, I came down from the porch, then noticed that Newtonstraat smelled of smoke and char and I was instantly struck with a short, nervous cough. The weather hadn't changed a bit in comparison with the previous day. The sky was covered by low clouds as before, and smog was still reigning unchallenged in the city, creeping in a gray film between the buildings and over the ground.
"It'd be nice if it just rained already!" I thought and walked around the police headquarters, but my body felt like not my own. It led me to the side on my exit from the alley. Then I sat down at the nearest bench and carefully touched the tips of my fingers to my head. An aching pain had picked up in the right side. A slight pressure caused sharp waves of pain as if I was touching raw nerves, but the unpleasant sensations soon went on the decline, returning my clarity of thought.
What luck. I was clearly very lucky today.
I mean, the death of Isaac Levinson and everyone else living in his house had turned out badly, but Senior Inspector Moran had made a great mistake when he decided to close this high-profile case with a daring cavalry charge. I could understand him, too. Important people demand results, which is where the temptation to push me against the wall with his supposedly irrefutable evidence came from. But it didn't work.
I opened the bag, distributed my wallet, knife, and lighter between my pants pockets, then checked my weapons. The Roth-Steyr I placed back in the holster, and I slipped my Cerberus in the side pocket of my jacket. I stomped the dirt off my knees, which were still soiled from kneeling and only then opened the envelope I had been handed at my release.
Inside, I found a letter stating that I was being fired from my job as a police constable.
I folded it carefully, stuck it in my inside pocket and started walking the familiar route back to Ohm Square, through which the nearest steam tram line passed. From there, I went directly to the magistrate; I arrived, as it were, as they were opening, walked around the office, spoke with the clerks, filled out a couple declarations and, an hour and a half later, came back out with a fresh private investigator's license in hand.
No, it wasn't that I was hoping for clients to line up around the corner for a failed detective constable, it was all much simpler – I already had a client in mind.
So I went directly to the Judean Quarter.
5
THE JUDEAN QUARTER was all abuzz. The narrow little streets were dark with the attire of Orthodox Judeans. People were ceaselessly walking from one business to another, discussing actively and always hurrying onward. The Orthodox Judeans were, naturally, not the only people doing business there. There were plenty of normal citizens as well. Uniformed constables also flickered by at every intersection.
It should be said that the situation wasn't nearly as hot as I was expecting. No matter how strange it seemed, the paperboys had their role to play in all this, too. People were reading fresh news and getting into screaming matches, but it didn't cause thunder and lightning like at the Newton-Markt and the magistrate. Almost no one looked on the murder of the banker as an attack on their society as a whole. At every corner, you could hear one and the same thing: "Procrustes has returned!"
They were all harping on about Procrustes, and that fact gave the metropolitan police the chance to find the real murderer before the situation got out of control; this time, everyone was playing right into the paperboys’ hands as they tried squeezing yet another sensation from a stone.
THE QUIET LITTLE STREET the banker lived on was the only calm place in the whole Judean Quarter. The police had simply taken over the whole block, capping it off with an armed division at each of the two intersections. Nearby, no matter how unexpected it may seem, there were some strong boys strolling about in normal clothes, dirty and big-nosed. All that was needed was to express excessive curiosity to a local inhabitant or shout out some curse toward these guardians of public order, and they would immediately get involved, explain something quietly to the brawlers and the situation would come to its conclusion.
For some time, I considered the events, then went directly to the police cordon. When a constable came out to greet me, I slowed my pace and took Isaac Levinson's letter on the investigation of the bank robbery.
"No entry," the policeman warned. In the event of possible complications, he had a helmet on his head, and a baton hanging under his arm on his belt.
"I work for the Witstein Banking House," I told him and extended an order signed by the recently deceased banker.
The constable sized me up with his cautious gaze. Perhaps he even recognized me, but he still read through the document.
"That's above my paygrade. Wait here," he said after a bit of hesitation and went away to discuss it with one of the local self-defense squad.
The policeman took my note with him and left me standing in the middle of the street asking myself if I was being an idiot for not having gotten my visit here agreed on in advance with the higher-ups at the Banking House. Perhaps I should have gone through Aaron Malk, the deceased's assistant.
But, it all worked out.
A balding, Roman-nosed Judean of compact build approached me after five minutes. Without leaving the police cordon, he motioned for me to come toward him, and I took a decisive step across the intersection. The constables didn't make any obstacles this time, and my escorts and I hurried to the house of the deceased Mr. Levinson.
Everywhere around, there were horse-drawn carriages and vans; in addition to the investigators, forensics experts, police photographers, coroners' assistants, lawyers and all other kinds of strange people had come to the crime scen
e.
And he led me to a carriage. He flung open the door and took a step back, inviting me to go inside; I stood up on the running board and waited a moment, looking over the elderly gentleman in a black morning suit and striped pants. Then I sat down on the seat opposite him.
The doors immediately closed, separating us from the hustle and bustle outside, and the unfamiliar Judean addressed me:
"Viscount Cruce, I presume?"
"Just Leopold is fine," I answered, carelessly tossing one leg over the other.
"Abraham Witstein," the man introduced himself and smoothed out my retainer on his knee. "Vice-President of the Banking House for continental Europe."
"Do you do business on both sides of the Atlantic?"
"And also in both Indias, the African colonies, and the Celestial Kingdom," the banker added. "Correct me, Leopold, if I'm wrong, but are you not the main suspect in poor Isaac’s murder?"
"Oh, no," I smiled calmly in reply. "Just a witness. After I left, Mr. Levinson managed to have a talk with some partners in the New World."
"Great to hear," Abraham Witstein nodded, mechanically rubbing a huge green gem – perhaps an emerald – in the clasp of his tie. "And what brought you here, could you tell me?"
"As you see," I pointed at the document in the man's hand, "Mr. Levinson and I were, in a way, business partners. I was hired to investigate the attack on the bank. He, in his turn, expressed the desire to do business with me, buying out my debts and helping me come into my inheritance. As a result of this deplorable incident, my losses will come to, at the very least, thirty thousand francs."
"Quite the imposing sum," the banker noted with no hint of mockery, "but the deceased signed a contract with you in the name of the whole company, so I don't see any reason for us not to continue our relationship."
"In full measure?"
"Viscount," Witstein frowned, and I heard annoyance in his voice for the first time, "Let me tell you something directly: I don't see why we should pay for police work beyond what I already give in taxes."