Johannes Cabal the Detective jc-2

by Jonathan L. Howard

  “You were lying as much as any of us. A necromancer!” replied Schten, with a sulkiness unseemly in a man of his stature, both physically and professionally.

  “I lied to save my life. You lied to take the lives of others. If we’re playing moral superiority, Captain, you’ll find even necromancers further up the ladder than you. As it happened, you gave me the single point of data that revealed the whole sordid business to me.”

  Captain Schten’s face dropped. He glanced nervously at Marechal, who was lighting up his eighth cigarette. “I did?”

  “You did, though you didn’t realise it. Nor, to be brutally frank, did I. Not until I saw those marionettes. You probably won’t be very flattered to hear that the puppet masters were remarkably good at mimicking the actions of Mirkarvian soldiers. Actually, it is probably closer to the truth to say that Mirkarvian soldiers are a gift to puppeteers because they behave like marionettes. A great deal of wheeling on the spot, and walking in lines, and — significantly — clicking of heels. Only military people do that, don’t they? It’s considered ill-mannered and slightly dangerous for civilians to do it. Yet, the very first time I laid eyes upon Captain Schten and his senior officers, they thought they were unobserved, and were busily snapping salutes and clicking heels at one another. The salutes are explicable; the heel-clicking from a crew that pretends to contain no military officers, less so.”

  Schten winced, as well he might.

  Cabal continued. “Once I was open to the idea that the conspiracy involved the crew, then everything that had happened more or less became self-explanatory. Zoruk never stood a chance. He was injured by having his wrist ‘accidentally’ caught in a door exactly as he claimed, but the steward then stated that Zoruk had engineered the accident, and that the door had closed on him with no great force. Why would we disbelieve the apparently disinterested and uninvolved steward? Well, because he’s an ass, but otherwise there’s no reason not to accept his account. All the time the real culprit, one of the bridge crew or possibly an engineer, is salted safely away on the top deck, he and his injured hand kept out of public sight while the captain continues the charade of checking everyone else.

  “Once again, however, the ruse was flawed, the military mind turned to expedience rather than elegance to cover the lies, and Zoruk was hanged in an effort to create another suicide. You would have thought that after one dismal failure at staging a suicide, a different strategy would be attempted, but Mirkarvians seem to be great adherents of ‘If at first you don’t succeed, then repeat your failure until nobody’s left alive to comment.’” Cabal smiled with the benevolence of somebody watching an unlovable toddler walk under a table and bang his head painfully. “My main error was believing that the deaths were attributable to a couple of daring and dastardly spies of some hue, when in fact the malefactors were more akin to a third-string comedic music-hall troupe, led by a psychotic in a plaid skirt. There wasn’t a single bit of cleverness in the whole enterprise, just desperation and violence.”

  There was a pause, and Marechal perked up, believing that the talk was over and he could now get on with killing Cabal. Miss Barrow spoke, however, and Marechal slumped back onto his barstool with an impatient grunt.

  “There’s one thing, though, Cabal,” she said. “DeGarre was killed in a locked room with a chair stuck under the handle. How was that done?”

  Cabal looked at her as if she were the slowest child in the class. “Isn’t that simplicity itself? Think, Miss Barrow. Was it truly a locked room? What about the misaligned tile in the corridor, and the missing candelabras on the dining tables?”

  “The candelabras? You’re kidding? Anyway, you said they were irrelevant, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I was wrong. At the time, I thought they couldn’t be involved because it was inconceivable that they could be taken and returned without being observed by one or more stewards. Once you appreciate that it was one or more stewards taking them in the first place, that cavil is removed and the trick to DeGarre’s murder becomes apparent.”

  Miss Barrow frowned, thinking. In her mind’s eye, she disassociated them from their proper purpose and saw them simply as objects. What, she thought, were their most important features? “They were ugly, really ugly. Curved, stylised swans, S-shaped. Made from steel, so they’re strong.”

  “Ugliness,” said Cabal, feeling like a teacher with a brighter than average pupil, “is in the eye of the beholder. Limit your thoughts to the objective factors. Nobody can deny those.”

  Curved and strong, she thought. Like steel hooks. “That’s mad,” she said. Then, “No. No, it isn’t. That would work. I think I see it.”

  “You probably do,” said Cabal, not nearly as condescendingly as he might. “Well, then. Dazzle us with your deductions.”

  Miss Barrow stood and, quite unconsciously, started to mimic Cabal’s pacing up and down. “It’s the first evening after the dinner. The captain is very worried about DeGarre seeing the engineering section. He is sure to realise that the ship is not what it pretends to be. They need some way to — I think the captain would have just wanted to put him off somehow. Killing DeGarre, though — ” She remembered Cacon breathing his last — twice — and how ruthlessly he had been put down. She looked at Fräulein Satunin, who returned her gaze dispassionately. “I think that was your idea, faked suicide and all. You come up with the suicide note, but locking the door won’t be enough. It might even draw attention to the ship’s officers, who I’d guess have passkeys. So, it goes something like this: There’s a discreet little tap at DeGarre’s door in the night. He answers it and there’s a steward there, probably two. They get in under some pretence. Then they kill him — they’re both military and have probably killed before. No blood, so he was strangled or smothered. They lock the door while — No, better still, one goes out while the other locks the door and leaves the key in the lock on the inside. He puts the chair under the door handle. He puts the previously typed suicide note into the typewriter. I think the note was actually typed on DeGarre’s own machine while he was in the salon after dinner in case anybody thought to check the typeface and wear patterns. It didn’t matter if the note didn’t exactly match up with its original position on the platen, since the plan was probably to pull it from the machine as soon as possible to prevent any comparison. But Cabal got there first. Anyway … the man still in the cabin undoes the window, and pushes DeGarre’s body out. How am I doing?”

  “It was a steward and an engineer looking for a ‘pressure leak,’ and they chloroformed him,” said Fräulein Satunin. “But otherwise not bad.”

  Miss Barrow blanched and stepped away from her as if she were contagious.

  “Chloroform?” interrupted Cabal, his professional curiosity piqued. “I wonder why I didn’t smell it. Oh, of course. The open window. It was blowing a gale in there.”

  “Cabal!” cried Miss Barrow. “He was alive when they threw him out!”

  “But unconscious, probably all the way down. You’re quibbling over niceties, Miss Barrow. However he died, it was murder. Anyway, do carry on; the comatose M. DeGarre has just tumbled into darkness, both literal and metaphorical. What happened next?”

  Miss Barrow glared at him, and took a moment to marshal her thoughts. “Then whoever is left locked in the cabin, presumably a small but strong man, feeds a rope out of the window. On the end of it is one of the candelabras. They’re steel — very strong, for what they are — and the arms are curved. Here it’s used as a makeshift grappling hook. Meanwhile, some other member of the crew had lifted the carpet tiles and gone down into the ducting. The tiles are replaced once they’re down there. In fact, they probably got into position before M. DeGarre was even woken. They open the hatch in the ship’s underside and feed out another rope with the other candelabra on it. With enough line and — I’d guess — the ship slowing down a little to reduce the slipstream, it isn’t long before the two lines meet and tangle. The man in the duct pulls up the rope, ties it off, and tugs o
n it. The man locked in DeGarre’s room ties his end of the rope around himself and then … he jumps.”

  “Bravo,” said Fräulein Satunin simply.

  “Then it’s just a case of drawing him up into the ship’s belly by brute strength,” finished Cabal. “I think there were probably at least a couple of men to do that. They clear up their gear and crawl back to the floor hatch to wait. When the corridors are quiet again, the carpet tiles are quickly lifted and the men allowed out. But — in all the haste — the tile is replaced incorrectly and … Well … Here we are.” He was thoughtful for a second. “I think that’s everything,” he said finally. Then, to Miss Barrow, he asked, “How was that?”

  She grimaced. “Long-winded and smug.”

  “Good … good,” he said complacently. As if remembering something, he pulled out his pocket watch and checked it again.

  “Your time’s up, Herr Cabal,” said Count Marechal, stubbing out his latest cigarette and sliding off the barstool. He stretched. “Now, you die.” He reached for his revolver.

  Cabal didn’t look up. “Possibly,” he said distractedly, still looking at his watch and ruminating.

  “There’s no ‘possibly’ about it, you jumped-up conjuror.” Marechal drew his pistol and pointed it. “I’m going to shoot you, certainly once, probably two or three times, and then you’ll be dead and that will be that.”

  “What about us?” said Miss Barrow. “Are you going to kill us?”

  “Oh, Daddy!” said Lady Ninuka petulantly. It is true that people display different personae depending on company; the femme fatale had vanished in Marechal’s presence, to be replaced by a schoolgirl. “Don’t kill Miss Ambersleigh! I like her. She’s funny and drinks tea.”

  Marechal rounded on them both angrily. “Will you all just shut up!” he barked. “I have had a very trying few days, and I just want a little me time to relax and unwind and kill Cabal. Is that so much to ask? Just stop being so bloody self-centred and let somebody else have a bit of fun, will you?”

  “And what of me, sir?” Colonel Konstantin had risen from his chair. “What part have I in this plan?”

  “You?” Marechal was surprised. “You’ll be a soldier about it and maintain secrecy. Believe me, Colonel, you were never considered a potential leak. Your record speaks for itself. I know that you are a true son of Mirkarvia.”

  “I have always tried to be so,” said Konstantin with slow dignity. “By the values of the first empire of the Erzich Dynasty, I have always stood. In its every hour of need back through five hundred years, Mirkarvia has always known it could depend on the Konstantins to fight and bleed and die for her.”

  “Yes, quite so. I think that’s what I just said, except more briefly,” said Marechal impatiently.

  “You, sir,” snapped Konstantin, sticking out his jaw and looking down his nose at Marechal, “are not Mirkarvia. You, sir, are a jumped-up jackanapes who plays politics with the lives of our citizenry, tramples our honour beneath boots that have never seen a battlefield, and whores us out to a cesspit of barbarism like Katamenia as if we were nothing but mercenaries! You, sir, are a disgrace to your uniform and your title, both of which, it gives me no pleasure to remind you, were bought for you by your father.” Konstantin crossed his arms. “And he was a self-serving bastard, too.”

  Marechal stood as if stunned. “I cannot count on you to keep this business secret, Colonel? Even though it is for your own country?”

  “My own country? This is all your doing, Marechal; do not besmirch my country’s name with your dishonourable filth.”

  The shot was very loud, and reverberated against the hard surfaces of the salon — the tables, walls, windows. Konstantin fell back into his chair, and nobody knew if the first bullet killed him outright, because Marechal advanced on him, firing twice more. The shooting was angry and inaccurate; the first bullet caught him square in the ribs just to the left of the sternum, the second was three inches higher, and the third was directly into Konstantin’s face at almost point-blank range.

  “I —!” Marechal made to say something, but was so angry that the words caught in his throat. Finally, “Traitor!” spluttered out, blackened with petulant rage, and he pointed the pistol at the corpse as if to fire again. Miss Ambersleigh, who had cried out at the first shot, but was now somewhere beyond belief, sobbed in horror at the gesture, and Marechal, grimacing like a thwarted schoolyard bully, turned away.

  Cabal was very disappointed by this development; he had been hoping that Marechal would empty the gun in a furious ecstasy, making it much easier for Cabal to murder him quickly and efficiently before he had a chance to reload. No, not murder, he reminded himself. It would be self-defence. Ah, the novelty of it.

  Marechal looked around the room, daring anybody to speak, before returning his full attention to Cabal. He levelled his revolver, but Cabal was studying his watch yet again, this time with some perplexity. “What the hell are you gawping at, Cabal?” spat Marechal. He was already regretting shooting the colonel; he would have had to go, of course, but it could have been done less messily. It also meant that he couldn’t just shoot Cabal immediately, as he so urgently desired, without looking like an utter maniac. He made a conscious attempt to recover some dignity. “I’ve got a gun here, and you can’t drag your eyes off your watch. What is the matter with you?”

  “Me? Well, apart from having a revolver aimed at me, very little. My watch, I fear, is running a little slow.” He finally looked at Marechal. “You know,” he added, taking Marechal into his confidence, “I had a feeling I should have dragged the explanations out for another minute or two.”

  “They were quite long enough.”

  “Well, I would have thought so, but without time to take proper titrations to make sure the concentrations were as advertised — and, of course, this hardly represents standard laboratory conditions with respect to temperature and pressure — my calculations might have been a little off. So frustrating.”

  There was a distant boom, like thunder, but it reverberated throughout the Princess Hortense’s hull like a lump hammer against a tin bath, the deck lurching sharply to starboard for a moment. There were cries in the salon, and swearing from some quarters.

  “Ah,” said Cabal, happily. “There we go.”

  “What was that?” Marechal narrowed his eyes and aimed his revolver directly at Cabal’s head. “What have you done, Cabal?”

  “Blown up No. 1 Etheric Line Guide. That’s the forward port one, isn’t it, Captain?”

  But Captain Schten had already left the salon at a run. Cabal watched the door swing to after him, then confided to Marechal, “He’s probably got a lot on his mind at the moment.”

  “You’ve done what, Cabal?” Marechal, pale and suddenly sweating, looked at Cabal over his revolver. He wanted so very much to fire, but he had an ugly feeling that he had been outmanoeuvred.

  “I’ve outmanoeuvred you,” said Cabal, confirming those fears. “That first one was on a timer. The others — ”

  “Others?”

  “Of course, there are others. Not much of a threat if there’s no chance of escalation, is there? The others, as I was saying, are on long timers, but have a rather cunning anti-tamper device I came up with at short notice. It’s wonderful what you can hash together with the contents of a general grocery store and a pharmaceutical chemist’s shop. I suppose,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “I should really have mentioned that to Captain Schten before he rushed off. The business about the anti-tamper devices, that is; I don’t imagine grocers and chemists are very high on his agenda at present.”

  Marechal was at the door in a few long strides. As he opened it, a steward almost ran into him from the other side. “Find the captain!” snapped Marechal, gripping the man fiercely by the shoulders. “Tell him not to disturb any devices he finds! Tell him Cabal has planted bombs and the slightest interference could set them off!” He released the man, who simply stood there wincing at his freshly bruised biceps.
“Run, you idiot!” roared Marechal in his face. “All our lives depend upon it!” That was sufficient, and the steward bolted back the way he came.

  Marechal wheeled around to face Cabal. “Very well, you whey-faced bastard. What do you hope to gain by this?”

  Cabal, ignoring the slight, considered thoughtfully for a moment, calculated to irritate the count within the limits of his small temper. “I desired to put you in a position where you or — more accurately — the captain and the homicidal Fräulein Satunin would feel restrained from killing me. That’s one. I am also of the strong opinion that this aeroship should turn around and head back to Parila. That’s two. I must admit, I was not expecting you to be here when I arrived, Count, but since you are, I think the Senzans should have a chance to chat with you. That’s three, and final.”

  Marechal stared at him; angrily, yes, but also rather sulkily. He shook his head heavily. “Forlorn hopes all.” He returned to his barstool, picking up an empty ashtray from a table in passing, lit a new cigarette, and regarded Cabal as a headmaster nearing retirement might regard a troublesome schoolboy who defies all attempts at discipline. “I don’t understand you, Cabal. You were free and clear. You don’t give a damn about what happens in this part of the world. Why would you come back? Bombs or no bombs, you’re not leaving this ship alive. I — ” He shook his head again. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I’m aware of that,” said Cabal. “If you did, you would have gift-wrapped the Principia Necromantica for me, given me free passage out of your country right at the beginning of our acquaintance, and counted yourself lucky. I have dealt with greater forces than you, Count.”

  “Don’t give yourself airs, Cabal.”

  “He isn’t.” Leonie Barrow’s voice was quiet but clear. With Marechal’s eyes on her, she said, “Cabal is more dangerous than you can believe, Count. Both the angels and the devils fear him. He’s a monster, but an evenhanded one. I know he is capable of the most appalling acts of evil.” Her glance moved to Cabal, who was listening dispassionately. “I believe he is also capable of great good. But to predict which he will do next isn’t easy or safe.”