The Great Game (29 page)

             
Holmes sat back in his chair and stared steadily at von Seligsmann. "The conditions you have imposed on me make it more difficult than usual, and this sort of investigation is difficult enough to begin with."

             
"What conditions?" asked the duke.

             
"Your man told me that you—or perhaps I should say the council—suspected that someone high up in the government was an agent for a foreign power."

             
"That wasn't a 'condition,'
" von
Seligsmann said, "that was the reason that we chose to hire you—an outsider—in the first place."

             
"Nonetheless, since you didn't know what official or what foreign power, I must conduct my investigation not only without any assistance from the government, but in the difficult position of having to avoid allowing the police, or any authorities, to know what I was doing."

             
"My understanding was that you commonly disdain police assistance in any of your cases," the duke said.

             
"I prefer to avoid the bungling interference of most Scotland Yard detectives," Holmes admitted, "but I work with their tacit acceptance, if not their approval. The Yard men know that I do not seek publicity for myself, but pass the credit on to them."

             
Von Seligsmann put his wide-brimmed kepi on the table in front of him and lined it up carefully with the table edge, as though preparing it for inspection. "And yet, with all the passing of credit, I have heard much of you and your exploits," he commented dryly.

             
"Some of my cases have been chronicled by my friend and colleague Dr. Watson," Holmes acknowledged. "I try to get him to record only those cases which best illustrate the process of deduction which leads to the solution, as this might be of some use to other criminalists—a term I believe was invented by your own Dr. Gross, whose work I have the most respect for—but Dr. Watson claims that the public is interested only in the more sensational or romantic aspects of my cases. In any event, in almost all of my cases I have allowed Scotland Yard or the local police to receive the credit, although in some few of them Dr. Watson may later have revealed my participation in the investigation."

             
"Ah, yes, the Dr. Watson, whom you have brought along as your assistant, although he of German understands not a word."

             
" 'Kind
hearts are more than coronets,' " Holmes offered.

             
"How's that?"

             
"Tennyson," Holmes explained, "an English poet. I find Watson's loyalty and good English grit to be more valuable than any command of language. Besides, he does understand German fairly
well,
he just dislikes speaking it for fear of sounding ridiculous."

             
"It is then, ridiculous, the German language?" the duke drew himself up, but Holmes waved a placating hand.

             
"No, no," he said firmly. "It is just that Watson is aware that his pronunciation of the language is not very, ah, German. His ear hears what his mouth cannot speak."

             
"Ah!" the duke relaxed in his seat. "And you—you have no fear of sounding ridiculous yourself?"

             
"I?" Holmes looked quizzically at the duke. The thought had obviously never entered his mind.

             
"Your German is actually quite good," von Seligsmann assured him. "The accent is Prussian, yes?"

             
"I suppose," Holmes said. "I took lessons from an inspector of the Berlin Police, who was staying in London to study the methods of Scotland Yard. He ended up studying my methods, and I studied his language. It was a fair exchange." Holmes took a cigarette from a silver cigarette case and lit it with a wax match. "I decided it was necessary to learn German if I was to study the history of crime. Such interesting crimes have been committed in Germany.
And Austria too, of course."

             
"I see," the duke said, not sure whether to be pleased or insulted. "Well, what have you discovered regarding this present matter? Outline for me these threads of which you speak. Perhaps I can help you discern the pattern."

             
Holmes stared into the column of blue smoke rising from the tip of his cigarette and considered. "There are many separate groups that meet here in Vienna whose avowed goal is, in one way or another, to 'set Europe ablaze.' That, I think, was the phrase used by that anarchist Brakinsky who was guillotined in France last month for blowing up three policemen."

             
"There is certainly much unrest," the duke agreed.

             
"The Serbian group—'Free Serbia' they call themselves—meets in the back room of a private lending library at thirty-one Stumpergasse in the Mariahilf District."

             
"What do they talk about?"

             
"I don't speak Serbian. Find me someone trustworthy who speaks Serbian and we'll find out."

             
"I know no one trustworthy who speaks Serbian," the duke said. "What else?"

             
"An anarchist group—it calls itself the 'Secret Freedom League'—meets in the box cellar of the Werfel Chocolate factory, which is also in Mariahilf. Your police must know about that
one; they arrested one of the members for the assassination of the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz a few weeks ago."

             
"
Yes,
and ...?" The duke sounded unimpressed.

             
" 'Poland
Must Be Free' meets in various parks around Vienna. They play football and plot assassinations. Then there are the militant socialists, who mingle with their less militant brothers at the
Café
Mozart on Opernstrasse. They drink coffee and eat strudel at the tables in front and plan revolutions in the small rooms in the back."

             
"So?"

             
"I am now a member of the Thule Society," Holmes told him, "which believes, or professes to believe, that the true German is descended from a pre-Christian 'Aryan People,' and that they are a superior race, destined to rule over the inferior peoples. They are not as yet very large, but they number among their members middle-level bureaucrats, police officials, and officers of staff rank in the Austrian Army. Their symbol is the
hakenkreuz
,
which they consider a runic symbol of great power. They are enamored of the runic alphabet and various secret signs."

             
"The
hakenkreuz
'?"

             
"In India they call it the '
swastika,'
and it is a symbol of well-being, probably derived from an early sign for the sun. It is a cross with each of the four ends turned to the right." Holmes sketched it on the table with his finger.

             
The duke shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table. "I do not like to tell you how to do your job," he said, "but it
is
clear to me that you are casting about in too many directions at the same time. How can you hope to discover anything useful if you spend your time running back and forth between these various unrelated groups? And, for that matter, why these groups? There are probably a hundred—a thousand—groups of varying degrees of secrecy and of antagonism to the government of the dual monarchy."

             
"Yes," Holmes agreed. "Groups of men with grievances seem to spring up like mushrooms in the dual monarchy; indeed all over Europe. It has become fashionable to blame the government— whichever government one lives under—for one's own inadequacies. And you employed me to discover why and how some of these people seem to have knowledge of the secret plans of your government."

             
"That is so.
Not only great secrets, but small and seemingly insignificant ones.
A minister leaves his office and goes to visit a church he has not been to for half a year, by a road that his carriage has not taken over before, and there is a bomb-thrower waiting for him a block away from the church. Archduke Ferdinand goes to inspect a new battleship, and the launch he is to take from the pier blows up when he should have been aboard. Had he not stopped to speak to a group of schoolgirls and sign their books, he would have been killed."

             
"It seems as if the contemplated movements of important officials must be regarded as a great secret at this time," Holmes commented.

             
"Yes. That is so."

             
"What of these other 'great secrets'?"

             
The duke was silent for a minute. Then he shrugged. "An example I can tell you," he said, "involves Plan B of the Imperial General Staff."

             
"Plan B?"

             
"It is the plan for general mobilization in case of—certain contingencies—that might lead to war. In an empire of this size a general mobilization is immensely complex. Troops must be called to staging areas, trains must be scheduled or re-routed, ammunition must be taken from depots to advance storage areas, appropriate clothing must be issued, food and supplies must be moved from here to there; thousands of details must be planned for in advance. There are only seven—I believe it's seven—copies of the full plan; a book which is many hundreds of pages thick. They are for the general staff only. Lesser commanders each have the appropriate portion of the plan to allow them to carry out their orders. They are kept in sealed envelopes secured in the safes of the commanders."

             
"And one of them is missing?"

             
"Nothing so simple," the duke said. "One of the master plans, kept in the safe of the office of the chief of the general staff may have been copied."

             
"Really?
Copied?"

             
"Yes. When General Count von Speck removed it from the safe to look at—this would be about a month ago—he noticed that the pages seemed a little loose. It was inspected by the technical branch of the
Kundschafts Stelle,
our military intelligence section, and they discovered that it had been carefully unbound and rebound. They concluded that someone had probably taken it apart to photograph the pages."

             
"How interesting," Sherlock Holmes said. "The book would have to be taken somewhere where a copying-camera could be set up and sufficient light supplied. But it would certainly be faster than copying such a document by hand. Have you determined who had access to the book?"

             
"As far as we can tell, nobody but the general himself could have removed the book from the safe."

             
"Come now, that is most satisfying," Holmes said, rubbing his hands together. "I assume that General count von Speck is himself above reproach?"

             
"You may take it from me that, although nobody but the general could have taken the book, he is not the one who copied it. And he claims—and we believe him—that he has not let the book out of his hands in any occasion when he had it out of the safe."

             
"Yes, of course," Holmes said. "And besides, if the general had done anything to the book himself, he would have hardly drawn attention to it afterward."

             
"So we thought," von Seligsmann said.

             
"I would like to take a look at the book," Holmes said.