In another, whose shades were raised, I saw a lone gentleman of perhaps forty absorbed in a game of patience. He, too, shook his head when I slid open his door and inquired about Sophie Hunter.
“Nope,” was the distinctly American reply. “Can’t say I have, ’cause I haven’t.” With which he resumed his game and I my inventory.
Many of the compartments I passed were as yet unoccupied. Varna, where the train originated, was not the most popular destination. I knew the train would accumulate passengers as we headed west, just as we had shed them during our earlier transit in the opposite direction.
The business car held four typists busily at work, but was otherwise underused at this hour. None of the clacking typists had seen the woman I described.
As I lurched rearward, the train squealed into Bucharest’s palatial Filaret terminus, with the customary wheezing of smoke and steam, as if to demonstrate to all and sundry the enormous effort involved in the task.
The nearest dining car, a cherrywood-paneled affair, was indeed empty when I reached it, unless one counted two Greek Orthodox monks seated side by side, hands on their open missals, eyes closed in either sleep or mute prayer, just as I had marveled at them in St. Basil’s.
“Meditation,” one of the stewards informed me in a confidential tone over my shoulder. “They never speak,” the other added with a shrug.
The stewards were meticulously inserting fresh roses and sprigs of white baby’s breath into the Lalique vase on every table, each table in turn draped in gleaming, starched damask linen with napkins of matching purity.
I was now fully awake and distinctly uneasy. As the train idled, I stepped onto the platform for the benefit of an unobstructed view, but saw nothing to arouse my suspicions. As the left side of the train faced a high wall of brick, I did not worry about disembarkations from that side. Abruptly mindful of Mycroft’s warning regarding Bucharest, I clapped my hands over my pockets even though I saw no sign of the street urchins he had mentioned.
I had no idea what I was looking for, only a vague concern that for whatever reason, and from whatever place of concealment, Mrs. Walling might choose to disembark without my knowing it.
Or had she done so while I was quizzing our dining car? This struck me as improbable. But when I slept? This thought made still less sense. I may have been sound asleep, but had we stopped, I surely would have waked. Merely slackening our speed had served to rouse me.
The fact that I had not found Holmes either set off a disquieting train of thought,* one that I tried to banish as it arose, namely, that the two might be somewhere together. Had both somehow contrived to leave the train? I realized that after our encounter with Rivka Nussbaum and her father in the hovel in Kishinev, Holmes was no longer the man I had known for almost twenty years. The episode with my Webley had shown me I could no longer be confident of his actions.
And then I recalled the thudding I had ignored as I slept. On the heels of that recollection a still more disturbing idea occurred, one that involved a struggle right beneath my berth.
Don’t be overconfident, Mrs. Walling had warned me.
She and Holmes had gone nowhere. Rather, I had slept through her abduction.
It then followed, I told myself, that if Anna Walling had been abducted, surely the next order of business would be to spirit her off the train—and Bucharest was the first plausible opportunity to do so.
In fact I saw no one leaving the train, but several individuals and couples now climbed aboard as friends and relatives clamored their adieux. Behind the second-class carriages were the baggage and mail cars, and it was here that I observed an unnerving sight: two oblong pine boxes were being wheeled up and loaded with some little difficulty onto the train. They were evidently heavy, for the porters were obliged to struggle with them. As I drew nearer I suddenly understood: the boxes were coffins.
I spied the conductor, also unfamiliar to me, about to blow his whistle and caught him by the sleeve.
“What are those coffins doing aboard the train?”
He looked at me, stroking the bottom of his large grey moustache suspiciously with his knuckles. “You are the family?”
“No. What has happened?”
He shook his head. “Tragedy. Hungarian couple. Holiday in Carpathia.” He made a swift downward swipe with his hand. “Avalanche. Now they go home to Pest.”
“Pest?” What irritant was he referring to?
“Two cities as one—Buda and Pest. Since thirty years now. The river separates them.”
I had forgotten or never learned this fact.
Shaking his head once more, the fellow again made to blow his whistle and bellow tidings of our imminent departure.
“One moment, please. How many miles to Budapest?”
“Eight hundred and twenty-five kilometers, monsieur. All aboard!!” He brushed past, blowing his shrill whistle. There was nothing for it but to climb back on the train.
As the engine gathered speed, commencing its corkscrew route through the Transylvanian Alps, I resolved to continue my search to the rear of our dining car, where second-class passengers enjoyed less luxurious accommodations. With some hasty calculations scratched on my shirt cuff, I understood the conductor to say we had roughly four hundred miles before us. Given the speed at which we were moving, I estimated a journey of approximately seven hours that would put us in the Hungarian capital by dawn. This being the case, it was plausible to assume both Holmes and Anna Walling, wherever each of them might be, must both remain on the train ’til Budapest.
Our dining car was now open, and I spoke with Benoit, the maître d’hôtel. He had not seen Miss Hunter, though he claimed to remember her from our journey east. Kissing the tips of his fingers, he said, “One does not soon forget such a woman,” but otherwise could offer no information or guidance.
The car had by now filled with diners, and he pointed them out, one by one. Like any good hotelier, Benoit made it his business to know his passengers.
“That one is Professor Cherniss of Heidelberg, yes, he knows the ancient Greek. Also his wife, italienne, je crois. Across from them by herself, Miss Fram. Elle est mignonne, mais non? Those blue eyes! A governess, I think she goes back to England. Traveling unaccompanied, mon Dieu. That one, Colonel Esterhazy, he calls himself. Prends garde—he is a professional gambler.” He pantomimed gestures with cards dealt from the bottom of the deck and made a comme çi, comme ça gesture typical of his race.
“And the couple by the window?”
“Countess Agneska de Maio and her husband, his name I forget. Then the American, MacDonald, who sells the guns…”
“Yes, I spoke with him. What guns?”
Benoit scowled briefly. “Colt,” he remembered, then gestured, tossing his head behind us. “Mr. and Mrs. Spottiswoode, just married…”
“So I heard.” It seemed tactful not to elaborate. “And that one?”
I indicated a devilishly handsome youth who didn’t care who knew it. Muscular and not yet twenty-five, he looked more a trapeze artiste than anything else—slicked dark hair, flashing Latin eyes, and dusky skin set off by his white twill suit, from whose confines his massive chest threatened to burst.
“You don’t know? Everybody knows. Erik von Hentzau! Argentine. He plays the polo. We have eight of his ponies with the luggage.”
“With the coffins?”
“Coffins?” He shot me a brief look of incomprehension before his countenance cleared. “Ah, les cercueils! Dommage. Si jeune.”
“I see the monks have gone.”
“Les frères? Ah, yes. They never speak.” He raised an eyebrow. “But they eat toujours cordon bleu.”
“Which compartment?”
He scowled again, consulting his encyclopedic memory. “Numero quinze, wagon-lit Ione.”
There being nothing for it, I chose to continue my inspection, beginning with the other two dining cars, then knocking on every compartment door, regardless of whether the green aisle shades were invitin
gly raised or forbiddingly lowered. Our mountainous route had now so many curves I was continually obliged to clutch at walls and bulkheads for balance.
The honeymoon couple was presently engaged in acrimonious argument as furious as their earlier encounter had been amicable. They ignored me entirely. In the bar car, the arms dealer, MacDonald, appeared to be in his cups and had resumed his patience with a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt for company; across the aisle, Colonel Esterhazy invited me to sit in on a game of faro, which included von Hentzau, the Argentine polo player. I politely declined. In compartment fifteen in the car dubbed Ione, the two monks were engaged, as always, in mute recitations, paying no attention either to me or to one another. Countess de Maio and her husband with the forgettable name regarded me with silent condescension, she over the tops of her reading glasses, he in the act of trimming his beard, catching a piece of my reflection in the mirror above twin wood-paneled wash basins.
A score of times my gambit was repeated:
“Forgive the intrusion, but”—stealing a look at their surroundings—“I’m searching for a young lady…”
The business car now boasted only one typist, at work on a German machine. Intent on her task, she shook her head without looking up when I asked yet again if she had seen anyone matching Anna Walling’s description.
Sometimes my search was humoured by folk doing their best to be helpful while at others doors were slid in my face. Passengers smiled or shouted at me. Once I was pushed.
Miss Fram, with wide blue eyes, seemed moved by my dilemma and heard me out, but had seen nothing of the woman I described. “I’m so sorry. I do hope you manage to find her.”
“Fram. Do I have your name right?”
“Yes. Rhymes with jam,” she added, still smiling.
One compartment with its shades lowered refused to respond at all. My calls and knocks were resolutely ignored, and when, desperate, I tried the door, I found it locked.
“What can I do?” the conductor protested when I explained the situation. “I have no authority to authorize the forced entry of one of our première classe passengers, mon colonel.”
“Devil take it!” I expostulated. “A woman has been abducted aboard this train—”
“A woman only you have seen, monsieur,” the cheeky fellow saw fit to remind me.
“Jean-Claude saw her!”
“Jean-Claude left the train in Bucharest. He was feeling unwell.”
“Damn it, man! Take me to the baggage cars! Take me or I shall make a scene! Would your precious passengers care for that? I doubt it!”
With something between a sigh and a shrug, the conductor led me to the rear of the train. In one car were strapped two motorcars—a Mercedes and a Daimler—and several crates of homing pigeons, cooing raucously. The second baggage car proved likewise unexceptional unless one counted Erik von Hentzau’s string of eight polo ponies. The flooring, deliberately slanted so it could be hosed clean, didn’t make matters easy for the poor animals struggling for purchase as the train twisted to and fro. There were several sacks of mail. Though locked at the necks, they appeared to contain nothing but paper that crinkled and crunched when I prodded them. There were various trunks and crates of food and merchandise, one of which I insisted on prying open with a crowbar (kept in the car for use by customs officials), only to find it filled with Biedermeier chairs.
“That is enough!” the conductor commanded, scandalized by my temerity. “Touch one more item and I shall have you removed from the train. I shall deposit you in the middle of nowhere by the locomotive cistern! And”—following my gaze—“do not dream of committing sacrilege!” Meaning the two coffins.
I knew enough of human nature to understand the man had reached his limits. Reclaiming my coat, which I had doffed when working the crowbar, I followed him forward. He deposited me back at my compartment, where I repeated a fruitless inspection of the lower berth, but achieved little except to confirm my impression that a struggle had taken place there. I then realized that in addition to her shawl, all Mrs. Walling’s clothes and her suitcase had also been removed, doubtless while I slept my hideous sleep. With a jolt to my stomach, I realized that, as the conductor had pointed out, there was now no evidence the woman had ever existed.
Pacing within the confined space availed nothing, and staying put was impossible. I returned to our now half-full dining car, where I sat and ordered a cognac neat.
“You might prefer to enjoy it in the parlour car,” Benoit offered. He was, I knew, concealing his impatience to clear the supper detritus so as to set up for breakfast in the morning, but I was in no mood to accommodate him, or indeed anyone else. Other diners were dawdling over their puddings and brandies; why should I not enjoy the same privilege?
“Cognac, neat,” I repeated, and sat sullenly staring at the tablecloth as I sipped the honey-coloured liqueur.
“May I join you?”
Before I could respond, the tall stranger of military bearing had answered his own question and seated himself opposite me. There was something familiar about him that I was for the moment unable to place.
“Colonel Morcar, is it?” His English was embellished by traces of a foreign accent.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the—”
“Or perhaps I should say, Dr. Baskerville?” His slate eyes glittered like ice chips.
With a chill to match their temperature, I now recognized him, but he cut me off.
“Or is it not rather Dr. John H. Watson, M.D., late of the army medical department, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, and chronicler of the doings of Sherlock Holmes?”
“Cedric West!”
The man opposite me offered a smile that manifested neither mirth nor warmth.
“Ah, yes,” he said, like one fondly reminiscing. “Cedric West. I’ll have the same,” he ordered the garçon, jutting a confident forefinger in the direction of my snifter, never taking his eyes from mine.
“But that’s not who you are, is it?” I countered, as the waiter departed, gathering my wits in a lightning flash of comprehension.
“No?” His tone was silkily mocking, like a cat toying at its leisure with a mouse.
“No. You are in fact General Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky—”
“Director General Rachkovsky.”
“Director General Rachkovsky,” I amended, “of the Okhrana.”
“Very good, Doctor.”
He regarded me, motionless as a cobra poised to strike, so very unlike the amiable stockbroker who had offered jovially to share his taxi outside the British Museum. I returned his look with a steadfast regard of my own. In this fashion we passed the better half of a minute, each gauging the measure of the other. I was right to have set him down from the first as erstwhile military; I had merely picked the wrong army.
“Why are you here?” I demanded after I judged we had enjoyed sufficient silent communion.
“Come, come, Doctor.” His head cocked to one side in a gesture I took to be one of impatience. “You have something we want; I have something you want.”
“Your English is excellent,” I noted, in a bid to buy time.
“I read history at Camford,”* he assured me, looking around. “Where is Sherlock Holmes?”
“I have not the slightest idea. Where is Sophie Hunter?”
“Anna Strunsky,” he corrected me, carefully enunciating her Russian maiden name. “Ah yes, that is what you wish to know.”
“Anna Walling,” I persisted, “is an American citizen. She is married to—”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” he bluntly interrupted.
“Then you do have her.”
“Do I?”
“Let us not play games, Director General.”
“She is no longer on the train.”
“The train has not stopped. There have been no stations.”
“The train pauses occasionally to take on coal and water. We did so at Teregova.”
I remembered the irate conducto
r threatening to put me off the train at one such “cistern.” I tried not to let the scoundrel across the table see any change in my expression.
“What do you want with her?”
His meticulously trimmed eyebrows arched in surprise. “With her? Nothing at all. She is merely what you would call a bargaining chip.”
Reaching into his breast pocket, he withdrew a newspaper, spreading it on the table between our snifters. I recognized the language in the typeface as German, as well as words in the headline that caused the blood to stand still in my veins.
“Behold the first German-language edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Doctor.”
“No reputable paper has printed this trash.”
Rachkovsky employed his own silver toothpick with evident satisfaction.
“It makes no difference. The Protocols are now spreading like a virus. And a virus must spread,” he added with what doubtless was intended as clinical detachment, as if conferring with another physician. “Or it dies.”
“The Protocols are fake,” I responded.
He smiled. “Fake is in the eye of the beholder, Doctor.”
“Holmes has the full confession of their creator. Once it is revealed, your hoax collapses.”
The scoundrel slid his toothpick into an ivory scabbard, meditatively swirling the cognac in his snifter with deft wrist movements before swallowing some. His favorable expression informed me he was a connoisseur.
“Ah. So now we come to the nub of the matter. You want what we have; we want what you have.”
It took several seconds for his meaning to sink in.
“Krushenev’s confession.”
“Nothing escapes you, Doctor.”
“Or else?”
“Anna Strunsky’s—”
“Walling—”
He shrugged to indicate a distinction without a difference. “Under any name, her body will never be found. You perceive the transaction is a simple one.”
I stared at the man in amazement. “The confession will do you no good. We have copies.”
The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols Page 17