by Неизвестный
“They want Mme. Theresa for some other reason.”
“Yeah, we’re going to have to find out why,” he said, resting one hand on her slim shoulder. “That lady who was impersonating Opal Archer the noted acrobat — you implied you knew what she looked like and maybe who she is.”
“Judging from Major Nemo’s description, I’d bet that she’s Perdita Molesworth.”
Harry frowned. “Jonas Molesworth’s daughter.”
“That Perdita Molesworth, yes, Harry. Haven’t you ever seen a picture of the lady?”
“Heard of her, never run across a likeness,” he said. “Her father must be, after Professor Moriarty and Dr Grimshaw, the most notorious criminal mastermind in Europe. What the hell does he want with an automaton that plays the zither?”
“Theresa, obviously, has some other value that we don’t yet know about,” the reporter answered. “And, by the way, Molesworth has slipped some in the rankings. A piece in the London Times last month listed him as fifth most notorious.”
Rising, Harry returned to the window. “I didn’t get off to a very brilliant start on this damn case,” he admitted. “Letting myself be hoodwinked by the opposition and then nearly blown up … that doesn’t make a very good impression on a client.”
“Look on the bright side, Harry,” advised Jennie, smiling. “You did save Major Nemo’s life and Bascom’s sure to appreciate that. After all, the major is a very valuable attraction.”
“True, but still—”
There was an exuberant knocking on the door, followed by the entrance of a large portly man possessed of a great deal of white hair and mutton chop whiskers and a bright russet and gold checkered suit. He was followed by Major Nemo, who was decked out in an immaculate new suit of evening clothes.
Elbows resting comfortably on the crisp white tablecloth, Colonel Bascom studied the large, many-paged menu. “The Café Nirvana is one of my favorite restaurants on the continent, one of my best-loved eating establishments in all of Europe, a gourmet’s haven to which I flock at every—”
“What the old duffer is trying to say is that he likes to eat at this joint,” summed up Major Nemo, who was sitting on top of the first six volumes plus the eighth of the Encyclopedia Britannica as well as a carved wood chair.
“My diminutive Major,” the showman explained to Harry, “has an unfortunate liking for terseness. As I was saying, Challenge, the Nirvana here is noted far and wide, from one corner of this giddy globe to the other, hither and yon as it were, for the exceptional breadth and international quality of its culinary offerings and—”
“I’m going to have a cheese sandwich and a beer.” Nemo slapped his big menu shut, dropping it next to his assortment of gleaming silverware.
Far across the large, crowded restaurant, partially shielded by an assortment of potted palms, a string quartet was playing very subdued waltz music.
“Were you not impressively small, Nemo, were you not the epitome of littleness and an exemplar of midgetude, I’d have tossed you out on your keaster long since.”
Harry asked the Colonel, “Any idea why Jonas Molesworth is after the automaton?”
“He isn’t after it, Sherlock,” put in the Major, “he’s already got the blessed thing. The reason they tried to get rid of me while I was on the way to meet you at that drafty terminal was to prevent us from attempting to get that gadget away from them.”
Shutting his menu, Bascom scowled. “How do you know that, my boy?”
“I heard them talking about it, Molesworth and that gawky offspring of his, while I was spending time in that blooming canvas sack.”
Bascom tugged angrily at his white side whiskers, sighed with exasperation, leaned back in his chair and glared up at the glittering chandelier that hung high above in the domed, stained glass ceiling of the Café Nirvana. “I would have appreciated it, dear Major, if you’d seen fit to confide this information earlier.”
“I’m telling you now.”
Harry asked him, “What else did you hear?”
“Not that much, pal. They seemed to know when I came out of my stupor and they’d conk me again,” replied Major Nemo. “But since your damned train was late, I was able to pick up some tidbits during my spells of wakefulness.”
“Such as?” asked Harry, taking a sip of his white wine.
“Molesworth is absolutely not interested in zither music,” said the Major. “Nope, they swiped Madam Tessie for another reason altogether.”
“And that was?”
The Major gave a forlorn shrug. “If they mentioned the reason, Harry, it must have been during one of my unconscious periods.”
“The automaton has been lost for a half a century,” Harry reflected. “A hell of a lot could’ve happened to it in all those years. Could be Zimmerman hid something inside it or—”
“Flapdoodle,” observed Nemo. “This isn’t a Robert Louis Stevenson yarn, pal. I suppose you think there’s also a treasure map involved in this rigmarole someplace?”
“The point to keep in mind,” said Colonel Bascom, “is that I want very much to display Mme. Theresa in my New York museum. I’ve hired the Challenge International Detective Agency, at considerable expense, to find the automaton for me. Therefore, Major, cease insulting Challenge.”
“Some sleuthhound this guy is,” observed the Major, producing a disdainful noise. “Right after I met him he fell on his arse on the wet pavement, then got knocked silly with a stray hunk of horseless carriage. We are not impressed.”
Harry grinned. “You’re right, Major Nemo,” he said. “I haven’t done much that’s impressive thus far. About my only accomplishment was saving your carcass and the more I think about that, I’m not sure that’s much of an accomplishment.”
“Gentlemen, let us cease squabbling and determine what we’re going to have for dinner,” suggested Bascom. “Thereafter, we can return to the problem of the missing automaton. I am, to be sure, extremely eager to obtain that technological masterpiece for my Manhattan museum. After all, its inventor, Ogden Zimmerman, was a veritable genius. However, a meal here at the Nirvana is equally important to me.”
“So we hear,” muttered Major Nemo.
“It’s a pity Miss Barr was unable to join us, Challenge.”
“She’s probably off hunting for Tessie. The lady wants to find that automaton before our inept gumshoe does,” suggested the Major. “That’ll provide her with a scoop for her trashy newspaper.”
“Tut tut, Nemo. One doesn’t have to be any more perceptive than you to notice that Miss Barr and Challenge are close friends.”
“A dame can be your close friend and still boot you in the fanny.”
Colonel Bascom cleared his throat and said, “I believe I’ll start with écrevisses au sauternes,” he said. “Although I’m equally fond of poisson au rhum Guadeloupe.”
A waiter, wearing a suit of tails that he’d either bought when he was much heavier or borrowed from a larger colleague, came hurrying up to their table. On the silver salver he was holding in his gloved right hand rested a pale blue envelope. “A message for Mr. Challenge.”
“He’s the mope with the goose egg on his noggin,” announced the midget, pointing.
“I’m Harry Challenge.” He took the envelope off the tray.
“How’s the écrevisses au sauternes tonight, Maurice?”
“Excellent as always, Colonel,” replied the gaunt waiter. “I, for myself, would prefer the eels in green sauce to start.” He kissed his finger tips, smacking his lips. “Superb tonight.”
The note, written in a left-slanting script, said: Friend Harry: Once again I’ve succeeded and I can help you find it. I must, regrettably, ask for a fee of 2000 pfennigs. Sincerely yours, The One and Only Tuffanelli.
As he refolded the note and slid it back into the
envelope, Harry asked, “Is a pfennig still worth five cents American?”
“Down to four,” answered Colonel Bascom.
“We can afford that.” He pushed back in his chair. “I’ll be skipping dinner, Colonel Bascom.”
The Zevenburg Arcade stood in a disreputable corner of the city and had added electricity since Harry visited it early in the previous year. A small, somewhat ramshackle imitation of the Crystal Palace in London, it was now brighter, gaudier and noisier than before.
Leaning casually against the metal and glass wall to the left of the entry way was a pale, pudgy man in a checkered suit that outshined Colonel Bascom’s. “You, sir,” he called to Harry, “strike me as a lad in need of female companionship. I am prepared, for an laughably modest fee, to introduce you to any sort of nubile maiden you might desire.”
Harry halted. “Well, I sort of have my heart set on a woman who can play the zither.”
“You wouldn’t settle for a trombone?”
“Afraid not, alas.” Grinning, Harry continued on into the amusement arcade.
Working his way through the modest crowd, he went past a fortuneteller’s booth, a pastry kiosk that smelled strongly of cinnamon and almonds, a ring-toss stand that was doing no business and halted in front of a narrow shooting gallery.
A bearded young man in the uniform of a sailor in the Orlandian Navy was shooting at wooden ducks with a venerable air rifle. Above the stand stretched an oilcloth sign that proclaimed The One and Only Tuffanelli Shooting Gallery.
Tuffanelli himself, a short, bald man of about forty, was sitting on a stool at the left side of the counter. “Have to shut down for fifteen minutes, lad,” he told the sailor. “Take this golliwog for a consolation prize.”
“I had me heart set on the Black Forest beer mug,” complained the young man.
“Try your luck again in fifteen minutes.” Dropping free of the stool, he nodded at Harry. “Around back.”
There were upwards of forty stuffed golliwog dolls lying in a tumbled heap against the lopsided back wall of the small shed that sat behind the shooting gallery. “I got them for a bargain price by buying in quantity,” explained Tuffanelli as he settled onto one of the two bentwood chairs the room contained.
“What about the automaton?” asked Harry from the other chair.
“What about my 2000 pfennigs?”
Harry reached into the breast pocket of his coat for his wallet. “How’s your sideline coming along?”
“This shooting gallery is my sideline, Harry,” answered Tuffanelli. “Being the most trusted and respected informant in Seven-burg — indeed, in all of Orlandia — is my true calling.”
“And are you thriving at your chosen profession?” Harry handed him four bright orange 500 pfennig bills.
“Actually my supplying you with inside information when you were working on a case here last year,” explained the informant, “has helped a good deal, Harry. It’s somewhat like providing wine to the palace. ‘Official informant to the Challenge International Detective Agency.’ Impresses prospective customers.”
“Then I ought to get a discount.”
“You are getting a discount,” the bald man assured him, folding up the bank notes. “The man on the street I’d charge at least 3000 for this information.”
“What exactly is it I’m buying?”
Leaning forward, lowering his voice, Tuffanelli said, “When you sent me that cable about your being on the trail of a zither-playing automaton, I immediately started keeping my ears open.”
“What have you heard?”
“Zither music.”
“Where?”
“Actually I didn’t hear it myself,” the informant continued. “But one of my many contacts, a fellow who imports brandy in an extremely unobtrusive manner, happened to pass the old Zimmerman Mansion that stands twenty miles beyond the city. Two nights ago this was and he saw lights burning when he passed — struck him as unusual for a house that’s been deserted and shut down for many years. Moving carefully closer, he heard zither music from within. Mostly very old music hall tunes, he tells me.”
“Did he notice anything else?”
“No, since he didn’t think it wise to linger.”
Harry asked, “The mansion once belonged to Ogden Zimmerman, the guy who built the automaton, didn’t it?”
“No, actually it was his brother who last resided there. It’s a grim old pile, especially with the Zimmerman family cemetery right smack next to it.”
Harry straightened up. “The Zimmerman Emeralds,” he recalled. “Yeah, they disappeared about the same time the automaton did.”
Tuffanelli nodded. “There were those who believed back then that Ogden helped finance his automaton workshop with the profits he made from selling the jewels that he swiped from his family.”
“If his lab burned down, and him with it, before he had a chance to fence the emeralds…” Harry got to his feet.
“Be careful on this, Harry,” warned the bald informant. “Jonas Molesworth is also interested in the automaton. That nasty daughter of his has already tried to do away with you, hasn’t she?”
“An attempt was made, yeah,” he said. “Can you tell me how to get out to the Zimmerman Mansion?”
“I surely can, Harry. And I won’t charge you a single extra pfennig for the information.”
Having tethered his rented roan mare in the woods that bordered the Zimmerman Mansion, Harry made his way on foot through the misty night toward the long-deserted old house.
The mansion, built of grey stone, was rich in spires, turrets and slanting slate roofs much in need of repair. Off at the mansion’s left, at a distance of about a hundred yards, stretched the old Zimmerman family burying ground.
Light flickered behind three of the shuttered windows on the ground floor of the otherwise dark and shadowy house. Halting at the edge of the woodlands, shielded by high brush, Harry watched the place. He was about thirty feet from the front of the decrepit old house. With the mansion so in disrepair, it ought to be fairly easy to sneak in by way of a rear door.
Loud grating and creaking sounds came drifting to him. When the high, wide and heavy oaken front door came swinging open, a man and a woman emerged into the misty night. The woman looked very much like the spurious acrobat who’d waylaid him at the railroad terminal. She was clad in the same dark cloak, though her hair was now blonde. The man was short and wore a black suit and black beret.
His moustache was thick, waxed and curled up at the ends.
He looked very much like the photos of him that Harry had looked over at the State Police headquarters earlier in the evening.
Perdita Molesworth was carrying a shovel under her arm the way a hunter carries a rifle. Over his shoulder the elder Moles-worth was toting a large canvas sack of the sort Major Nemo had spent part of his morning inside. Whoever was in this sack began to kick, squirm and give out muffled groans of protest.
From his coat pocket Jonas Molesworth yanked out a blackjack. Dropping the sack to the weedy overgrown lawn, he squatted and poked at it. Nodding, he brought down the blackjack on what was apparently the head of the captive within. The sack ceased its struggles.
Molesworth chuckled, hefted up the sack and tossed it over his shoulder.
His daughter, making an impatient gesture, started striding in the direction of the small family cemetery that lay to the left of the mansion.
Harry waited a moment, then, keeping at the edge of the forest, started following the pair of them.
A wrought-iron fence, leaning in a variety of directions and dappled with splotches of rust, surrounded the half acre of weed-infested ground that was the home of a dozen or so time-worn tombstones and a single marble crypt. The rusted gate, which hung half open on a single hinge, produced a harsh keening
noise when Perdita yanked it completely to one side.
The mist was growing thicker as Harry left the protection of the trees and brush to head for the cemetery.
“Yet another example of my efficiency, dear child,” Moles-worth was saying while he and his daughter approached the ivy-encrusted crypt. “We dig up the long lost Zimmerman Emeralds and then deposit this unobtrusive female newshound in the resultant hole.”
“If you were truly efficient, father,” Perdita remarked, “you’d have solved the cipher etched on Mme. Theresa’s backside long before this.”
“Such work requires patience,” he reminded in his tenor voice. “A quality that you and your late mother lack.”
“And you wouldn’t have wasted time getting the damned automaton to perform perfectly again,” added Perdita. “Of all the unpleasant sounds of Earth, zither music is—”
“One of the qualities that lifts me above the pack of run-of-the-mill criminal masterminds is my dedication to perfection,” he told her, dumping the sack in the high weeds to the right of the tomb.
On the roof of the crypt sat two small and very forlorn angels.
Between them hunched a carrion crow. When the sack thumped to the ground, the crow produced an annoyed squawk and took flight, soon swallowed by the surrounding mist.
Molesworth and Perdita continued on their way, circling behind the crypt.
Harry had been crouching behind a large, wide tombstone dedicated to the memory of Baron Egon Zimmerman (1780-1841) and topped by an angry angel brandishing a sword. He emerged now and, swiftly and quietly, made his way to the fallen canvas sack. Genuflecting next to it, he loosened the drawstrings at its mouth.
Inside, as he’d anticipated, was Jennie Barr. Bound and gagged, she was in the process of regaining consciousness.
With his pocket knife he cut the strands of greasy ropes around her wrists and ankles, then extracted the polka dot handkerchief that had been wadded up and thrust in her mouth.
“Your zeal,” he whispered while rubbing her wrists, “has once again got you into—”