The Great Game (54 page)

             
In a canvas bag by the water tower two members of the organization known as "Free Serbia" also waited. Each of them had been shot, artistically, several times, in various parts of the body. Whatever they might have wanted in their lifetimes, they would never want anything again.

-

             
The special train sped on through the moonlit countryside. In the rear car forty-three hussars sharpened their sabers; in the next car the kaiser slept fitfully, dreaming of glory; in the wagons-lit deluxe Moriarty was once again leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, whether sleeping or contemplating the future it was impossible to tell. Holmes was staring out the window, watching the fir trees rush past and trying to remember something of importance.
Something that had been overlooked.
Something that had been said by someone in their meeting at the British embassy.

             
"The conductor's uniform!" Holmes suddenly announced. "Albermar's son saw someone in a conductor's uniform!"

             
"I have already contemplated that," Moriarty told him, without opening his eyes. "There are four conductors on this train. They do not know each other, as they were pulled from regular service to attend to the needs of their distinguished passengers and oversee the porters and other railroad menials on board, and have never worked together before."

             
"And," Holmes interrupted, his finger darting about the air for emphasis, "one of them might not be a conductor, but an agent of our adversary."

             
"Just so," Moriarty agreed.

             
"We must discover which
is the imposter
," Holmes declared. Moriarty turned to him with a slight smile on his face. "How?" he asked.

             
"Investigate their documents."

             
"The imposter will have well-forged identity papers. We could not verify which
is the forgery in so short a time
."

             
"Have each of them in here and ask him some special railroad questions. Your brother was a station agent in the north of England, I believe, at one time. Surely you can come up with something!"

             
"Perhaps," Moriarty said.

             
"If not, toss the four of them off the train," Holmes said, making a tossing gesture. "We can survive without conductors for the next few hours."

             
"Unnecessarily cruel," Moriarty said. "I have already determined which
is the imposter
, and I've set the mummer to watching him. If we can discover what he is to do, it might give us some idea of what we are to face."

             
"You have?
How?"

             
"Dirty fingernails," Moriarty told him.

             
"Ah!" Holmes nodded. "I must not have seen him. I'm sure I would have noticed. I pay special attention to the nails, and the elbows and knees."

             
"Even so," Moriarty agreed.

             
They sat in silence for the next half hour, each immersed in his own thoughts, and then Mummer Tolliver opened the door and slid in. "It's coming!" the mummer announced.

             
Moriarty opened his eyes. "How's that, Mummer?"

             
"The conductor what ain't a conductor was sitting in the galley drinking hot chocolate and checking his watch every few minutes— that's a great galley they's got on this train; they can give you four different kinds of coffee, as well as six or seven different kinds of tea and three different hot chocolates. And talk about pastries! Well, they has—"

             
"Mummer!"
Moriarty interrupted. "To the point, please!"

             
"Sorry. Well, this gent gives one last check to his watch and then he ups and traverses to the rear of the train, all sneaky-like, and starts to undo the coupling between the kaiser's car and the last car, what holds all them troopers."

             
"What happened?" Moriarty asked.

             
"I bopped him on the noggin with my little peacemaker," the mummer explained, displaying his sand-filled sock. "And then I tied him up and gave him over to one of the kaiser's chaps."

             
"Excellent!" Moriarty commended the little man.

             
"If he'd succeeded, that would have done it," Holmes said. "Our opponents can't be expecting to face more than a dozen guards at most, but they're taking no chances."

             
"Very commendable on the part of their leader," Moriarty commented. "If I were he, I would have done the same. So—" he pulled out his pocket watch and clicked it open. "It's the watering station at Schladming, which we should reach in another ten minutes, that is to be our battleground. So be it." He closed the watch. "We must alert the troops."

             
"I took the liberty of doing so before I came up here," the mummer said.

             
Moriarty smiled and patted the mummer on the shoulder. "Good man." If he noticed at how the little man beamed at the praise, he said nothing.

             
Colonel-General Duke von Seligsmann pushed the door open and poked his head in the room. "The water tower we are approaching will be on the right side of the train," he announced.

             
"As we approach, the train will slow and my men will depart on the left side and go around. We should catch them by surprise."

             
"Unless, of course, they are awaiting us on the far side of the train," Moriarty said. "But I agree that is unlikely."

             
"If so, the battle will begin a minute or so earlier, that is all," said General Seligsmann, confidently.

             
Five minutes later the train slowed. For the past hour the train had been puffing its way up a fairly steep grade, but here the tracks were level, perhaps even slightly downhill. As they went around a slight bend the ghostly silhouette of the tower and coaling station came into sight ahead, a clear space in the forest of stunted pine trees they were passing through.

             
Holmes shook Watson awake. "Come along, old man," he said. "Make sure your revolver is loaded. The game's afoot!"

             
"Right with you, Holmes," Watson said, sitting up and shrugging on his jacket.

             
Barnett appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. "Action at last?" he asked.

             
"Come along," Moriarty told him,
" 'He
which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made.' "

             
" 'We
few, we happy few,' " Barnett quoted, "could do with a cup of coffee."

             
"After," Moriarty told him.

             
"All right.
Let's go."

             
The four men went to the end of the car and unlatched the door on the side away from the coaling station. The water tower was now in clear sight, perhaps half a mile away. Colonel-General Duke von Seligsmann leaned out of the door in the last car, and his men dropped to the ground, one by one, and paced the train at a leisurely trot. As the last one hit the ground, the general came after him, and gradually made his way to the front of the running line.

             
Moriarty and his three companions lowered themselves from the car and trotted along at the break between the two cars, so they could watch the other side without being conspicuous.

             
Now the train was wheezing to a stop as it reached the water tower, and the band of Hussars double-timed to the front, ready to round the engine and attack from an unexpected direction, but there was still no sign of activity from within the coaling station. Even if they were somehow wrong about the attackers awaiting them here, there should have been a station attendant about, waving them on and making a note of how much coal they took. The hussars waited, gathered at the side of the engine, just barely out of sight.

             
The engineer and the fireman swung themselves off the engine to maneuver the water spout in position to fill the water tank.

             
This was the moment the Knights of Wotan were waiting for. Three men raced out from behind a shed to grapple with the trainmen.

             
With a shout of "Come on my brave boys," a man in a shining silver helmet and a tunic full of medals charged from the front of the engine, waving his sword high over his head. Behind him raced the platoon of hussars, cheering madly and waving their sabers.

             
"My god!" said Moriarty, "it's the kaiser!"

             
"I t-tried convincing hi-him n-not to g-g-go," said a man who had come up behind them in the dark, "b-but he n-never listens t-to m-me."

             
Moriarty turned to look at the stutterer. In the slight light spilling from the railroad car, he could that the man was, perhaps, in his early sixties, wearing the uniform of a colonel-general in the German Cuirassiers. "Well!" Moriarty said. "Your Highness Prince Sigismund, I believe?"

             
"Th-that is c-cor-rect," his highness said. "And you?"

             
"Professor James Moriarty, at your service."

             
"I s-see.
P-perhaps we sh-shall speak later." And, with an abrupt nod, his highness walked stiff-legged away from them into the gloom.

             
"Professor," Barnett whispered. "That stammer—could the crown prince be the man Jenny Vernet overheard speaking to Graf von Linsz?"

             
"Perhaps," Moriarty said. "There are many stammerers in the world, and coincidences abound. But it seems likely. Since the kaiser is childless, Sigismund is next in line for the throne should anything
happen
to his nephew. He may be trying to arrange just that. We shall see."

             
A sudden volley of pistol shots drew their attention to the impending battle. "That can't be the enemy's main force," Barnett said, looking over the developing situation with a critical eye. "The hussars should have waited until the main force showed."

             
"General von Seligsmann would have waited," Holmes said. "The kaiser is impetuous."

             
A group of men emerged from inside the coaling station building and formed a rough line facing the hussars. Several more shots rang out.

             
"Revolvers only," Moriarty commented. "They were not expecting resistance."

             
The hussars immediately dropped to their knees and pulled their long-barreled 9-mm Mauser pistols from the stiff leather holsters. At the first irregular volley of shots from the hussars, their opponents broke and ran for the woods.

             
"They give up rather easily," Holmes said, "I had been expecting a fight."

             
"Should we give chase?" Watson asked.

             
"I think not," Moriarty said. "It was too easy. That may be a diversion. I don't believe the game is done here yet." Unsheathing the blade from inside his sword-cane, he crossed the tracks and stalked forward the coaling station building, Holmes, Watson, and Barnett following. A wave of hussars passed around them, in hot pursuit of the fleeing Wotans.