The Great Game (25 page)

Si j'avais les mains pleines de v
é
rit
é
s, je me garderais de les ouvrir.

(If my hands were filled with truths, I should be careful not to open them.)

— Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

             
It was on Tuesday, April 14, that the world-renowned mystic Count Alexandre Sandarel, Doctor, Psychic and Clairvoyant, Counselor and Advisor to Royalty on Three Continents, arrived in Vienna with his entourage and took a suite of rooms at the Adler: entrance hall, breakfast room, sitting room, three bedrooms, and a large balcony overlooking the Ringstrasse. There was also a pantry and a small room for his valet. His other three servants were installed in the servants' quarters on the top floor of the hotel.

             
On Thursday he and his assistant and confidant Madame Madeleine Verlaine went to the office of the Ministry of the Interior to register as resident visitors to His Imperial Majesty's realm, a formality required of any foreigner who planned to stay for longer than three weeks. The wave of assassinations and other outrages which
was
sweeping Europe had made the authorities of many nations suspicious of the foreigners among them.

             
Count Sandarel and Madame Verlaine arrived at the offices shortly after noon and filled in brief forms with their names, local addresses, and planned length of stay, which they gave, along with their passports, to the clerk at the counter. After two hours of patiently waiting on a bench that might have originally been constructed as a torture device for the Grand Inquisitor, they were directed past the desks of the examination clerks and to the office of an imperial examiner.

             
The examiner was a short, stout man with thick glasses and mutton-chop whiskers and a carefully cultivated air of doubting everything you might say minutes before you say it. The walls of his office were decorated with the record of his accomplishments, such as they were. Framed letters from high officials and photographs of him shaking hands with various members of the nobility were behind him; plaques and commendations and graduation certificates on the wall to his left. On the opposite wall were three oil paintings of dubious merit which Sandarel peered at through his monocle with interest before settling into one of the two chairs before the desk. Two were landscapes; one of rather uninteresting pasture land with livestock, and one of a meadow that seemed to slant up at an alarming angle, surrounded by snow-covered Alps; the third was an interior of a more than usually petit bourgeois parlor unnaturally filled with glassware. Madame Verlaine casually looked over the diplomas and certificates while the examiner ostentatiously studied the folder before him. When he looked up and coughed, she slid gracefully into the other chair.

             
The Imperial Examiner thoughtfully tapped the pair of pristine British passports on his desk with his forefinger and then looked up. "You are Count Alexandre Sandarel?"

             
"That is so. I choose not to use the title."

             
"And you are Frau Madeleine Verlaine."

             
"Even so."

             
"This is your married name?
"

             
"
It is."

             
"Your husband?"

             
"Is defunct.
He died three years ago while traveling in a balloon."

             
"A balloon?"

             
"Yes. Well, actually the basket below the balloon. The ropes parted, you see. The balloon went up, and the basket and my husband came down. It was most unfortunate."

             
"I see. You and the count are traveling together?"

             
Madame Verlaine nodded. "I am in his employ."

             
"We travel together," Sandarel affirmed.
"Along with our servants.
They will be along to register shortly."

             
The examiner sniffed. "You have not been abroad before?" he asked.

             
"On the contrary, our previous passports were so full of stamps and visas that we had to request new ones." Sandarel's voice was deep and sonorous, compelling interest if not instant belief.

             
The examiner looked up at the tall, bearded man with the piercing eyes who sat before him. "Our records do not show anyone of your name ever entering Austria before."

             
"My loss," Sandarel said humbly.

             
"You speak German very well."

             
"Yes.
Also French, Spanish, Italian, English, and Russian."

             
" 'Count'
is not a usual British title," the examiner reflected.

             
"It is French. It dates back to the
ancien r
é
gime.
My ancestors fled to England during the Revolution and, having no fondness for any of the Napoleons or Louis's who came after, remained there."

             
"Then it is not an active title?
"

             
"
Extremely passive," Sandarel agreed.

             
"Ah-hem."
The examiner turned the page.
"And the purpose of your visit?
Do you intend to work while you reside here?"

             
Sandarel raised an eyebrow.
"Work?
My dear man, really.
Work?"

             
The examiner looked at Sandarel severely through his thick-lensed glasses. "We have heard that you intend to give what you call 'readings' while you are here. Is this not so?"

             
"Quite possibly.
I teach, I demonstrate the higher arts, I give readings. It is a gift, this psychic ability that I have, that I share freely. I do not charge."

             
"You accept offerings?"

             
"If they are freely given, yes.
To further my work.
Not to do so would be an insult to those I have helped."

             
The examiner turned to the petite, slender woman sitting beside Sandarel. He didn't know much about women's apparel, but he could tell that the frock she was wearing was fashionable and expensive. The hat that was perched daintily on her head, with the net half-veil covering her eyes—his wife had admired one a lot like that in a shop window last week and it was a hundred and twenty kronen. Over a week's salary! The woman would be quite attractive, he thought
,
if she put on a little weight. To his eyes she looked almost emaciated and positively unhealthy. Like most Viennese, he liked his women pleasingly plump. "And you, Madame Verlaine, do you also accept gifts for your services?"

             
She smiled sweetly at him. "Why Herr Examiner," she said, "what would your wife think?"

             
The examiner stared stolidly at her, but his ears turned red. "Never mind that," he said. "You know what I mean. Do you also give readings, and do you accept gratuities in return?"

             
"I assist Alexandre Sandarel in his activities," Madame Verlaine explained. "And I never accept money for my services—whatever they might be."

             
"Ah-hem," the examiner said. He turned to Sandarel. "You know that fortune-telling is against the law here in Austria?"

             
Sandarel nodded.
"And a good thing, too.
Those people prey on the troubled and the weak-minded."

             
"What you do is not fortune-telling?"

             
"No."

             
Sandarel did not expand on his answer, and the examiner seemed at a loss as to what to ask next. Finally he took a book from his desk and riffled through it. "Here it is," he said. "Imperial statute three-three-seven-point-two-seven, paragraph four, 'Vagabonds on the Public Highway, Gypsies, Sneak-thieves, Fortunetellers, Astrologers, Peddlers, and Persons of Disrepute. These shall be classified as vagrants and caused to move on or be imprisoned for a term to be decided by the examining magistrate, not to exceed two years.' "

             
"Yes?" Sandarel said.

             
"A fortune-teller is defined as one who, eh, 'through the use of cards, dice, crystal balls, or other devices, or the reading of palms or the soles of feet professes to be able to foretell the course of future events."

             
"The soles of feet?"
Madame Verlaine smiled.
"How amusing.
"

             
"
Do you understand what I just read to you?"

             
"And," Sandarel told him, leaning forward, "so much more. Your statute would protect the subjects of His Imperial Majesty from charlatans."

             
"Even so," the examiner agreed, smiling a tight smile.

             
"I am not a charlatan."

             
The Imperial Examiner leaned back in his chair, his hands laced together and placed on the waistcoat covering his ample stomach. "But how are we to know that?"

             
"A fair question."
Sandarel stared across the desk at the examiner. "I will demonstrate for you the higher arts of which I speak. They enable the practitioner to access knowledge not available to those unpracticed in the mantic disciplines. But they are not magical. They can be taught to the willing disciple." Sandarel paused and gestured across the desk. "Let us consider you as a subject. We have not met before, and you will grant that you are not secretly in my employ."

             
"Most assuredly not!"

             
"And I had no way of knowing which examiner would see us.
"

             
"
That is so."

             
Count Sandarel held his left hand to his forehead and probed the empty air before him with his right. "Your name is Alfred Vogelmass."

             
"Come now," Vogelmass said. "One of the clerks must have told you my name."

             
"Nonsense," Count Sandarel said. "It's on that brass plaque on your desk."

             
"Oh," Vogelmass said. "So it is."

             
"And you thought I'd done something remarkable. But have patience, perhaps I shall." He mad a gesture with his right hand as though he were squeezing a juicy peach. Then he flicked the imaginary juice about the room. "You've been in your job for some years—"

             
"That is obvious! You—"

             
"But you do not like your job. You have been passed over for promotion several times, unjustly, you feel—" Sandarel's hand squeezed a few more peaches "—and you are right. You took this job in the civil service originally for the security it offers and at the instigation of others—family perhaps."