Suddenly his backward progress was blocked by the iron support, and Blauer smiled like an insane person.
“That’s it for you, Herr Advokat.”
He lunged for Werthen, but his head suddenly jerked, and he gaped out of startled eyes. Then he crumpled to the ground.
In the space vacated by Blauer, Werthen now saw Berthe, one of her evening shoes gripped tightly in her right hand, its sharp heel broken from the impact.
“Berthe . . .” He held her in his arms for a moment.
“There’s no time for that now,” she protested, wriggling from his embrace.
“But how did you know about Blauer?” he asked.
“Nor for that,” she said. “Explanations come later. What was he planning?”
Werthen lost no time in securing the unconscious Blauer with the laces from his own boots, hog-tying him securely with the leather laces. Then he made sure the man had no further weapons on him.
Only then did he notice wires leading from a leather bag, one attached with a brad to the underside of the revolving stage, and a second to the immovable stage flooring. The ends of these two wires were joined by a third scrap piece of wiring.
Werthen opened the satchel and discovered ten sticks of dynamite deftly and securely tied around a large dry-cell battery. The battery was connected by two wires to a thin pencil detonator. Wires led from this detonator to one side of a small black box that Werthen immediately recognized from his studies of electricity as a relay. On the other side of the relay the two overhead wires were connected.
Berthe, leaning over him, let out a low sigh.
“Get out of here,” he said, rising and turning to her. “Tell someone above stage that there is a bomb set to go off.”
The overture gave way to singing overhead, and suddenly the gears of the revolving stage churned into action. Both Werthen and Berthe quickly saw what was about to happen, for the piece of scrap wire connecting the two terminals overhead would stretch and ultimately break as the stage began to slowly move. Werthen realized that Blauer had rigged the primitive bomb to be set off by the very movement of the revolving stage, employing the same kind of technology that a burglar alarm used. Once the overhead circuit or loop was broken, the relay would switch on to complete the circuit to the detonator, sending electric current into it and triggering a miniature explosion. This would, in turn, set off the sticks of dynamite. Chillingly, frighteningly logical. And very effective, Werthen knew.
“Run,” he told her. “Now.”
“There’s no time,” she said.
Indeed, there was no longer even time to get to the lever above to shut off the revolving stage. And Blauer was still unconscious, so he could give no assistance.
Werthen saw that he could not simply pull the overhead wires loose, for that would set off the bomb. Nor could he separate the detonator and battery from the dynamite, for they were strapped too tightly together for quick removal. Instead he would have to disarm the bomb at the load, at the charge itself. He had only seconds to act.
From his youthful days on the Werthen estate and helping the gardener, Stein, to dynamite beaver dams on the streams that flowed through their property, Werthen understood that this was a tricky maneuver. Cut the wrong wire first, and there would be the same result as with breaking the overhead loop: the detonator would go off.
Two wires led from the battery to the detonator. Which one was it? He needed to cut the positive feed first, for that would stop the flow of electrical current. But it was too dark in the under-stage to make out any signs of positive or negative poles on the battery.
He searched the ground quickly for the knife Blauer had been wielding, found it, and held it to the wires. Sweat broke out on his forehead, dripped from the back of his hairline into his shirt collar. Which was the positive wire?
The stage moved slowly now, tugging at the overhead connection.
Which wire first?
The left one. It had to be blue. He closed his eyes trying to see the gardener Stein’s gnarled hands as he worked such detonators.
“Hurry,” Berthe urged, glancing upward as the wire connection between the revolving and fixed stage was about to rip apart.
No more time for thought. Werthen crimped a length of the wire and slid the sharp knife up and sliced quickly through it.
My God, what had he done? He had cut the wire on the right. A sudden and instinctual change of mind. No. It was more than that. A rhyme from his boyhood had come back to him: “Links ist nichts, rechts ist am besten.” A jingle taught to him by Stein to recognize negative and positive wires: “The left is nothing, the right is the best.”
He let out his breath in one long, slow exhalation, feeling Berthe’s reassuring hand on his shoulder.
Gross was still talking with the usher when Werthen returned, the leather pouch containing the dynamite in his hand.
The usher now was more solicitous than before, having finally been shown Prince Montenuovo’s letter.
“Is everything in order, sir?” he said to Werthen as he and Berthe came down the stairs.
Werthen handed the pouch to the bewildered man.
“I believe all is in order, yes,” he said.
The usher opened the bag and gasped.
“Don’t want to go dropping that,” Werthen said. “Nasty stuff, dynamite.”
Gross showed no surprise that Werthen should return with not only high explosives in hand, but also his wife.
“Looks as though you two had a near miss,” Gross said, peering into the bag too.
“We all did,” Werthen said. “But let the music play on.”
This time when he embraced Berthe, she made no attempt to resist.
EPILOGUE
Several days later they were seated around the Biedermeier dining table in Werthen and Berthe’s flat. Their afternoon tea consisted of a rather impressive guglhupf and a superbly flaky strudel. Frau Blatschky had outdone herself today, Werthen thought. Gross was regaling them with his interview with Siegfried Blauer earlier in the day at police headquarters.
“The man is clearly delusional,” he said. “Blames Mahler for everything that ever went wrong in his life, starting with the death of his older brother Hans. But, as with many twisted personalities, he also possesses genius. And now that the game is up, he has been most cooperative. In fact, he takes great relish in sharing his devious plans.”
Gross paused for a moment to enjoy a forkful of pastry.
“First and foremost,” Gross announced, “was his disguise as Blauer, a self-educated man from Ottakring who was able to patiently work his way up to stage manager at the Hofoper once Mahler was made the new director. He took his time, did Blauer, relishing his revenge, trying different macabre ways in which to kill Mahler and not draw attention to himself. Then, once you confronted him at the opera, Werthen, he saw you as an adversary. He had to do something, and discovering there was a recent change of personnel in your law office, he went about befriending the hapless Tor. Did you know they had both been in America?”
“Tor told me he had lived there for a time,” Berthe said.
“Yes, well,” Gross continued, “it appears that Blauer, or Wilhelm Karl Rott, also made a trek across the ocean to find his fortune. In Blauer’s case, however, he only found himself a slough of gambling debts and was thrown among the street gangs of New York. To pay off his debts he was forced to become a foot soldier for the East Side Duck Boys, with whom, it seems, he learned his dubious skills with poisons, knife-fighting, and bomb-making. He was only too happy to brag about his career this morning to me. He promises to write his memoirs, in point of fact. I am not sure how much of this is fact and how much fiction, but it does make for an intriguing tale and explains his knowledge of some deadly arts.”
“One hopes for some biblical justice here,” Herr Meisner said. “An eye for an eye. The man does not deserve to live.”
Gross, however, was not to be detoured by a discussion of punishment.
�
��Blauer arranged a ‘chance’ meeting with the lonely Tor at a gasthaus the lawyer frequented. Tor was starving for friendship, companionship, a kind word from another human. It was easy to make him believe that he, Blauer, was really a true friend being persecuted by the opera administration, and especially by Herr Mahler. He convinced the needy Tor that everyone was against him, that they were trying to involve him in a series of accidents; trying to make it appear the he, Siegfried Blauer, was actually trying to kill Mahler. Blauer took a huge chance with the man, even telling him of the ‘coincidence’ of his visit to the violinist, Herr Gunther, the night of the man’s suicide. And now they were trying to hang that death on him, as well, he had complained to Tor. And Tor had eaten it all up, had believed him and kept him informed of events in the ongoing investigation.”
“How could he be so gullible?” asked Berthe. But then she remembered her initial interview with Tor and the self-deprecating manner he presented. Blauer had filled the vacuum Tor felt in himself.
Again, however, Gross was not allowing any digressions. He pushed on with his explanation as if not hearing Berthe.
“Once Blauer had a man on the inside of the investigation, as it were, he could begin to manipulate things. He was particularly elated about what he called his ‘great musicians’ gambit,” Gross said. “As you surmised, Werthen, Tor did see your list of suspects and when he reported this to Blauer, that scoundrel knew it was only a matter of time before an examination of Mahler’s youth would lead to Hans Rott and thence to his brother, as in fact it did. Thus his anonymous letter leading us to the false trail of somebody murdering our great musicians.”
“So Tor had nothing to do with any of it?” Herr Meisner asked, a puff of powdered sugar on his upper lip.
“Only an unwitting accomplice,” Gross said.
“It was fortunate that your Herr Otto remembered the muttonchops,” Berthe said to her husband.
“Yes,” Werthen allowed. “That was a close thing.”
That night before proceeding to the opera, Gross and he had confirmed Tor’s innocence by quickly checking Tor’s hand-written documents at the office against the letters they had from the killer. None of the documents contained the telltale smudge.
Ignoring these comments, Gross blustered on. “Blauer also used Tor’s trips to Altaussee as cover for his own evil doings. During Tor’s first visit to Mahler’s villa, Blauer himself snuck up at night to tamper with the brakes on the bicycle that clearly belonged to the composer. Later, Blauer even talked Tor into placing the poisoned Turkish delights in Mahler’s study without the composer being aware of it. An anonymous gift from a fan, Blauer had told the credulous man. And Tor did not make the connection of Mahler’s sudden illness with the presence of those tainted candies, nor did the newspapers report that such was the case.”
The criminolgist finished his pastry, took a sip of coffee, and then smiled brightly.
“Blauer was most ingenious, I have to admit. He even implored Tor to stop over in Linz on his way to Altaussee on a wild-goose chase to deliver a supposedly urgent message to an imaginary friend of Blauer’s. The stopover cost Tor the better part of Wednesday, and accounted for him arriving on Thursday in Altaussee. And when that was discovered, as Blauer knew it ultimately would be, then suspicion would be planted on Tor as the one who attacked you in the law office, Werthen. The game was up, however, after Tor told Blauer of the conversation between a police inspector and Werthen. Tor subsequently read newspaper reports of the death of the subject of said conversation, Fräulein Paulus, and unwisely confronted Blauer, his confidence and trust shriveled to a raisin of doubt. Blauer immediately knew that he must silence Tor. The man had served his purpose, anyway. All too easy to give him some doctored snuff—Tor’s one bad habit—and then, after watching him die in painful convulsions, to simply leave some more poisoned Turkish delight at the scene and let Werthen and me draw our own conclusions.
“Unfortunate man,” Berthe said. “Herr Tor, I mean.”
“And what of the other loose ends?” Herr Meisner asked. “What, for example, of the alibi you say Blauer had for the day of the death of young Fräulein Kaspar?”
Gross nodded. “Yes, the loose ends. To be certain, his absence was noted in Leitner’s records. However, he was, in fact, there that day, hidden amidst the rigging high overhead. But from his seat in the orchestra Herr Gunther saw Blauer and wanted to blackmail him with such knowledge. With tragic results for Herr Gunther, I might add. The violinist should have stuck to music and left crime to the professionals.”
“And what of the death of Strauss and the injury to Zemlinsky?” Herr Meisner further asked. “Those two incidents seemed to give real credence to Blauer’s false trail about the deaths of Vienna’s great musicians.”
“Perhaps we shall never know about Herr Zemlinsky’s fall, “Werthen said. “I hesitate to repeat the oft-repeated phrase, but accidents do happen, especially in the theater.”
Werthen paused just long enough for Gross to add, “And about the death of Johann Strauss and the mysterious summons from the Hofburg that transformed his chill into pneumonia . . . Well, I have ascertained that Strauss’s second wife was in Vienna during that time, visiting friends.”
“As you suspected,” Werthen said, nodding his head. “The angry ex-wife as culprit?”
“You cannot mean it,” Berthe exclaimed. “She must be brought to justice.”
Gross and Werthen both understood the impossibility of that suggestion, for any incriminating proof had already been destroyed by Strauss’s widow. But neither said anything.
There was silence for a time and then Werthen said, “I feel somehow responsible for Tor. And for the innocent stagehand killed when Blauer mistook him for me.”
“Nonsense, Werthen,” Gross said. “The guilt is all on that villain Blauer, or Herr Habsburg as he now demands everyone address him. No, Werthen, do not put such blame on yourself. We have done our duty by Herr Mahler.”
“And Fräulein Schindler,” Herr Meisner reminded them. “They will make a splendid couple, I believe.”
Herr Meisner was prescient in such a statement. Werthen knew that whatever that young woman sought, she would get.
In the silence which this remark induced Gross suddenly slapped his thigh.
“My apologies, Werthen. In all the tumult, I have forgotten a most important telephone message I took for you early this morning. It seems your parents are coming for a visit.”
Werthen could not have been more surprised if Gross had told them the North Pole was melting. Looking at Berthe, he could see she shared his amazement.
Gross smiled at them somewhat sheepishly. “Thought it might be good if the future grandparents were informed of your wife’s condition, so I sent them a letter not long ago. I do hope you’ve no objection.”
Berthe answered for them. “None at all, Doktor Gross. None at all.”
Requiem in Vienna: A Viennese Mystery (Viennese Mysteries) Page 28