The Great Game (10 page)

             
"Oh." Cecily sounded disappointed. "I was so hoping for a monster of the deeps." She leaned over the rail and, shading her hazel eyes from the morning sun, peered down at the lake. "It certainly is a trim-looking craft. Is craft the right word? Boat people get so annoyed when you use the wrong word."

             
"Notice how she's being handled," Barnett said. "Yon gentleman in the blue jacket is doing the job of three men and making it
look
simple. I find it hard not to instantly dislike such a man."

             
Cecily slipped her arm through his. "You cannot do everything well," she said. "And those things you do well, you do very well indeed. I never knew you had a secret desire to be a master mariner."

             
"Nor did
I
until I watched the performance of our friend below."

             
A woman in a white dress emerged from the sloop's cabin, unfurled a red-trimmed parasol, and stood watching unconcernedly as the small yacht neared the dock.

             
"A very pretty picture," Cecily said. "I believe I shall ask that German fellow, Herr Lindner to capture it in oil for us. At least we could find out whether the man really can paint or not. Come have breakfast."

             
Barnett put his arm around Cecily's waist. "I see that you're convinced that Lindner is not really an artist," he said. "I shall have Tolliver check him out today."

             
Cecily shook her head. "I never said he wasn't an artist. He may very well be an artist, although I doubt it judging by his checkered jacket. I merely said he didn't come here to paint. I think he's spying on us."

             
"Why do you suppose he's watching us?" Barnett asked.

             
"I don't know," Cecily said. "Why did those men on the train search our baggage?"

             
"You've got me there," Barnett said. It was still as big a mystery as when it had happened. The fat man and his friends had disappeared by the time Barnett got the conductor to search the train, probably by jumping off as it chugged up a hill or slowed for a curve. The Italian police were informed at the next station, but they were no help; the descriptions of the villains fit no known criminals.
"Banditti,"
suggested the captain of police who had taken their statement, shrugging.

             
"But then why was nothing stolen?" Cecily had asked sensibly.

             
The captain of police had merely shrugged again. Who can tell what the
banditti
will do?

             
And now a German painter had arrived at the villa-turned-pensione, and Cecily was convinced that he was a fraud. Barnett was resolved to pay serious attention to his wife's convictions. But if she was right, the questions multiplied. Why would anybody have any reason to watch them? Who could be responsible for this seemingly endless supply of watchers? What was their objective? Did they intend to do anything beyond simply watch? Were they aware that they had been detected? Barnett rather doubted that, since he was barely aware of it himself. And, finally, what should he and Cecily—and the mummer—do about it? Time, Barnett decided, would tell.

             
The blue-blazered gentleman at the wheel of the sloop dropped the sail at the last second and spun the wheel, nosing the craft gently up to the dock. Two men who had been waiting on the dock stepped out of the shadow and helped him tie off the boat fore and aft before he leapt onto the dock and helped the lady step ashore. It was hard to make out details from this distance, but it looked to Barnett as though one of the men was remonstrating with the boatsman. He took
it patiently for a moment, and then spoke sharply to the man, who appeared to step back respectfully. The boatsman held his arm out for the lady, and the two of them strolled ashore.

             
"What do you suppose that was about?" Barnett wondered aloud.

             
"Pirates," Cecily suggested promptly.
"Arguing over the booty."

             
"Ah!" Barnett said.
"And the lady?"

             
"Take your choice," Cecily told him. "She's either the pirate queen, or the booty in question."

             
"Obviously," Barnett agreed.
"How silly of me not to have guessed immediately."

             
"Shall we breakfast?"

             
"Good idea. Let me get out of these flannels and into something decent, and I'll join you in the breakfast room. I shall drown my jealousy in an egg, or possibly an entire omelette."

             
Half an hour later Barnett and Cecily made their way to a corner table in the large parlor that Frau Schimmer, the Swiss concierge of this Italian villa, used as a breakfast room. For her English guests, Frau Schimmer believed in what she called "the English Breakfast," which consisted of slices of every meat or cheese about the kitchen that could be sliced, with platters of fried eggs. It had taken work for Barnett to convince Frau Schimmer that he would, really, prefer one of her delicious omelettes.

             
The only other guests in the breakfast room when they entered were a honeymooning couple in their early twenties from Rome who called themselves Pronzini, and spent most of their time in their room, and Herr Lindner, the German painter. Lindner, a skinny, balding man with heavy, dark eyebrows and a black toothbrush mustache, rose and bowed mechanically to Benjamin and Cecily as they crossed the room, and then went back to reading the Zurich newspaper and eating his
pfannkuchen.
The honeymooners merely looked up, nodded, and giggled, and returned to eating rolls, drinking coffee, and gazing into each other's eyes.

             
Benjamin and Cecily sat and told the serving girl what they wanted, and began going through the mail that "Mummer" Tolliver had passed on to them as they came downstairs. Barnett went through his letters quickly, and then settled down to his omelette and the latest issue of
The Illustrated World News.
Fifteen minutes later he tossed it aside with more than necessary violence. "Really," he said, "this is insufferable!"

             
Cecily put aside a long letter from her employer, and looked up from her buttered egg at her husband. "I particularly love you when you're angry," she told him. "You sound so English when you're angry. One can hardly believe that you grew up in Brooklyn, U.S.A."

             
Barnett looked across the breakfast table at his wife, and felt the anger and the pain dissolve, to be replaced by a feeling of quiet joy. "Married all these years," he observed, "And I still find myself rather fond of you. How do you explain that?"

             
"It passeth understanding," Cecily told him. "Now, what has raised your bile so much that you've lost that trace of American accent that women find so irresistible?"

             
Barnett passed the newspaper to her and tapped one of the columns. "Here," he said. "Read this!"

-

Consulting Detective

Aids Crown

DETAILS REVEALED IN ARTICLE.

             
In an article shortly to be published in the
Strand
M
agazine under the title of "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet," Dr. John H. Watson has revealed the details of another extraordinary case of his friend and companion, the consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street, London.

             
The case involved a matter of great importance to Her Majesty's government concerning a most difficult problem requiring the most delicate handling due to the high social standing of the persons involved. Mr. Holmes succeeded where the police failed in retrieving and preserving a state treasure— the aforementioned beryl coronet—and apprehending those involved in its disappearance.

             
Although the identities of several of the persons involved in the case have been altered to preserve their anonymity, it is clear that the case involved royal personages and persons in high government positions. The beryl coronet is part of the state regalia of a royal duke, and has been a state treasure for more than three centuries.

             
Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes are at present abroad enjoying a no-doubt well-deserved vacation, and could not be reached for comment.

-

             
"Of all the unmitigated—," Barnett began.

             
"Quiet, dear, and let me read it." Cecily perused the item silently, and then pushed the magazine aside and returned to her egg.

             
"Well?" Barnett demanded.

             
"I don't quite see the reason for your irate response," Cecily told him calmly.

             
"Mr. Holmes began his 'investigations' by accusing Professor Moriarty of arranging the theft of the coronet," Barnett told her, punctuating his words by tapping his ring finger on the table. "He hung around outside the professor's house in a puerile disguise, dressed as some sort of common loafer, and accosted everyone who approached the door. The professor was finally forced to find the coronet himself to get Holmes to go away—a fact which I'm sure Dr. Watson's version of the events will not include."

             
Cecily reached over and cupped her husband's hand in hers to stop the table-tapping. "Could it not be that your fondness for Professor Moriarty and your, let us say, cool feelings toward Mr. Holmes have caused you to overstate the case just a bit?" she asked.

             
Barnett's frown slowly dissolved into a smile at the touch of her hand. "Well," he said, "perhaps just a bit."

             
Benjamin and Cecily had met while Benjamin was working for Professor James Moriarty, who was perhaps best described as a scientist who dabbled in crime, and was admittedly one of the most brilliant men in Britain. Barnett had founded the American News Service as an information gathering agency for the professor, and Cecily had answered an advertisement for the position of office manager.

             
A little over four years ago Barnett had quit the professor's service to marry the woman he had come to love, taking Moriarty's blessings and the American News Service with him.

             
Barnett chuckled at his memories. "The professor used to describe himself as the world's first consulting criminal," he told Cecily. "Moriarty planned ingenious crimes, for a fee. He said it was to support his scientific research, but I fancy he enjoyed the challenge. It was his way of tweaking the nose of a society that he found stupid, intolerant, stodgy, and dull. Looking back on my time as his associate, I certainly cannot condone his actions, but they kept life interesting."

             
"Mr. Holmes has called Professor Moriarty the 'Napoleon of crime,' " Cecily said.

             
"I myself have heard Holmes say that," Barnett admitted. "My belief is that, for all of Holmes's genius in solving crimes, he could never catch the professor. And this so upset and unnerved him that he blamed Moriarty for every crime that happened within a hundred miles of London. But he was known to call upon Moriarty himself when he was out of his depth in a problem."

             
Barnett finished his breakfast silently, deep in memories of the years he had spent with Professor Moriarty. Cecily, a truly wise woman, did not disturb him, but read her magazine and
ate her buttered egg. Curiously the article she was reading, an illustrated study of Abdul Hamid, the sultan of Turkey, brought back memories of the time she had first met Benjamin. It was shortly after Moriarty had helped him escape from a Turkish prison, where he was being held for a murder he did not commit. She had thought him awfully proper and straitlaced then, for a newspaperman, and had been mildly shocked as,
gradually,
she came to realize that Barnett was Professor Moriarty's trusted right hand, and that the stern, fatherly professor was probably the most brilliant criminal mind of the nineteenth century.