The Great Game (49 page)

             
"Was it not Hafiz who said, 'a man who has but one greatcoat will be seen wearing it everywhere
?'
" Moriarty
asked innocently.

             
Dr. Gross paused and looked back at them. "I take your point," he said. "A wise man planning to commit a crime would not inform even his comrades of the color of the coat he will be wearing. But, as we know, criminals are seldom wise, and the inability to plan ahead seems to be one of the hallmarks of the common criminal."

             
"Just so," Moriarty remarked.
"The common criminal.
But this is an uncommon crime, and I think therefore we can postulate an uncommon criminal."

             
Dr. Gross started up the stairs again. "Becoming more and more common, unfortunately," he threw back over his shoulder, "these political assassinations."

             
"True," Moriarty said. "And there is a common thread that connects them; but it is not the thread of ordinary crime."

             
"Anarchists!"
Dr. Gross declared. "Fast-growing evil weeds that sprout from nowhere."

             
"Yes, but financed and organized how?"

             
"Not all insane people are dirt-poor," Dr. Gross said. "Some of the very richest, most high-born spend their lives trying to destroy the very institutions that have placed them where they are. It is, according to our Dr. Freud, a way of striking back at a father who mistreated or ignored them. Dr. Freud says it is all in the unconscious mind. He calls it an 'Oedipus Complex,' after the Greek myth."

             
"I think in this case it is, perhaps, more than that," Moriarty said. "I believe that these people have a horrible purpose that we have yet to discover."

             
"This is the landing," Dr. Gross said, putting his briefcase down and pausing to breathe heavily for a few moments. "That," he pointed, "is the door. The door opposite is the apartment of a captain of artillery who has been on maneuvers for the past four months. The cleaning
lady who come
in once a week to dust says there's no sign that anyone else has been inside."

             
Gross went over to the Donzhof door. "This lock," he said, hefting the large padlock that had been fastened to the door at shoulder height, "was affixed to the door the day of the crime by the examining officers. The sign-up sheet for the key, which is kept at police headquarters, shows that only three people have had access to the apartment since that day: the chief investigating officer and the examining magistrate both of whom came three days after the crime, and I myself came two days later."

             
"Good," Holmes said. "Perhaps all indications have not been irretrievably destroyed.
But first, the rest of the story."

             
"Oh, yes." Dr. Gross pulled a large Meerschaum pipe from his jacket pocket and worked at filling it from an oilcloth sack of a rather sweet-smelling tobacco. "Latakia cured in cherry schnapps," he said at their look. "You have perhaps a pipe and you would like to try some? No? Well then: the Rathaus Bureau received a letter sent by messenger shortly after the
shooting,
it identified Paul Donzhof by name as the assassin, and gave his address. I have the letter here." He unstrapped his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of writing paper sandwiched for safekeeping between two sheets of stiff card stock.

             
Holmes took it and examined both sides. "You have the envelope?" he asked.

             
"Unfortunately the so-intelligent sergeant at the desk disposed of the envelope before he realized that someone might like to examine it." Gross put a match to the bowl of his pipe and puffed it into life.

             
"Brief and to the point," Holmes said, reading the message.
"Typewritten on an elderly typewriter with a weak ribbon: 'The man in the green coat who shot at the carriage on the Ringstrasse earlier is Paul Donzhof.
He lives in a top floor apartment at No. 62 Reichsratstrasse.' "

             
Holmes passed the paper on to Moriarty, who passed it back to Dr. Gross. "Notice the continued emphasis on the green coat," Moriarty commented.

             
"Indeed," Holmes agreed.

             
Dr. Gross put the letter away in his briefcase. "Someone wanted to be sure we could identify the young man," he said.
"Perhaps because he is guilty."

             
"Or perhaps, as in a conjurer's trick, Donzhof was dangled in front of you to keep you from looking elsewhere," Moriarty suggested.

             
Dr. Gross looked thoughtful. "Perhaps, I'll grant you that.
Perhaps."
He opened the padlock and stepped aside so that Holmes could enter first. "I want to watch you work unimpeded," he told Holmes. "I'm sure I have much to learn."

             
Holmes glanced suspiciously at Dr. Gross, not entirely convinced that such humility from a police official wasn't a subtle form of sarcasm, but then he nodded and whipped out his pocket lens to examine the lock on the door before entering the apartment. "Please stay behind me," he said, "and
keep
away from the walls. Some of the most suggestive detritus comes from the walls and the area of the floor near the walls at a crime scene."

             
Holmes crept forward, hunched over like a bloodhound on the scent, sniffing his way down the hall, peering through the pocket lens,
his
eyes inches from the threadbare carpet before him. With exaggerated care not to actually touch the wall, Dr. Gross lit the wall mantles as he came to them and turned up the gas to give Holmes as much light as possible on this dull day. Moriarty stayed behind and let Holmes go over the rooms. This was Holmes's field and Holmes was, as Moriarty had occasion to know well, expert at it.

             
"I cannot convince the Austrian police of the importance of examining carefully the walls and floor, especially the floor, and assessing every mark and bit of debris with a powerful glass," Gross said. "They regard it as crawling about in the dust, and are reluctant to spoil the crease in their trousers."

             
"Provide them with full-length smocks to wear only while they are at the scene of the crime," Moriarty suggested. "This will also prevent them from inadvertently adding anything from their clothing to the scene."

             
"Also have them take their shoes off," Holmes added from the corner of the bedroom. "Debris tracked in on the shoes of the investigators cannot readily be distinguished from that brought in by the killer or the victim. This, I assume, is where the poor girl fell?" He indicated an area of the floor by the bed. "And then she was pulled up here, onto the quilt?"

             
"So we believe," Gross said.

             
Holmes prowled around the room. "You searched the girl's flat?" he asked.

             
Gross nodded. "No signs that anyone else had been in it. The door was unlocked, indicating that she expected to return momentarily."

             
"So she ran upstairs expecting to meet her boyfriend, and she met—death," Holmes said, gazing at the bloodstained quilt which was still on the bed.

             
"Why did she come up here? How did she know anyone was in the apartment?" Moriarty asked.

             
"If it was Paul Donzhof, she must have been expecting him," Gross offered.

             
"But he never got home until after five," Moriarty said.

             
Gross turned to look at him. "Now, how did you know that?" he asked.

             
Holmes laughed. "I'll bet Dr. Sandarel knows as much about this crime as you do," he told Dr. Gross. "There are crimes that take place in Britain that he knows more about than Scotland Yard.
Much more."

             
"Really?"
Dr. Gross inspected Moriarty with new interest. "That is indeed a compliment, coming from Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I didn't realize he felt that highly about you."

             
Moriarty grimaced. "I think I can fairly say that Mr. Holmes and I have a high respect for each other," he said. "Sometimes I feel that Mr. Holmes's respect for me is entirely too high. He gives me far too much credit."

             
"As the girl's flat was directly below this one," Dr. Gross suggested, "perhaps she heard footsteps through her ceiling."

             
"This is a well-made building," Moriarty said. "And there are rugs on the floor. It is doubtful whether she could hear anything short of violent activity."

             
Holmes was on his hands and knees, peering under the bed. "Come one of you," he said, standing up. "Help me move the bed over."

             
"You have found something?" Gross asked. "But our men must have looked under the bed."

             
"It may be nothing," Holmes said. "There is an indication that the bed has been moved. See—here on the rug. Also some fresh wood fragments on the floor here, by the side of the bed. I would like to see why."

             
The three of them moved the bed aside, carefully stepping around the pool of dried blood on the floor.

             
"Hah!" Holmes said. "See here!"

             
Four holes
has
been gouged in the floor under where the bed had been, looking as though something had been ripped roughly out of the wood. They formed a rectangle of about six by eight inches, each hole about half an inch wide. Chips and splinters of freshly disturbed wood lay near the holes.

             
"That's what the poor girl must have heard," Holmes said. "There was something—probably a strongbox—fastened to the floor here with four long wood screws. Someone pried it up. It must have made a considerable noise in the flat below."

             
"How could we have missed that?" Gross asked, the question directed mostly at
himself
.

             
"When your man peered under the bed, he wasn't looking for holes in the floor," Holmes said. "The girl must have come upstairs when she heard the noise, expecting to surprise her lover—I assume they were lovers—instead she surprised someone else."

             
"Can we be sure of that?" Dr. Gross asked.

             
"The strongbox must have been secured to the floor by screws inside the box. If Donzhof had wanted to remove it, he would surely have opened the box and unscrewed the screws."

             
"Perhaps he lost the key," Dr. Gross suggested.

             
"There is your test," Moriarty said. "Search his belongings for a strongbox key. If it isn't among them, ask him where it is. If he can produce it, he is innocent; if he can't, he may be guilty."

             
"I think we'll need more than that," Gross said.

             
"Did you find the knife?" Holmes asked.

             
"Yes," Dr. Gross said, carefully putting his briefcase on a bureau and opening it. "The killer cast it aside. I have it here." He untied a piece of rolled-up brown paper and produced a large, wicked-looking knife from within. "It is a Mittelman-Mohl forged steel knife with a fifteen-centimeter blade; the sort of knife that hunters carry with them. They are quite expensive. The edge has been honed until
it's
razor-sharp, so be careful."