The Great Game (51 page)

             
"Also China and Japan," Moriarty added.
"But not Europe.
The Austrian police have a chance to be the first police force in Europe to apprehend a murderer by his fingerprints."

             
"So be it!" Dr. Gross said. "We will proceed to the central police station and arrange the raid. The beers, and the rest of the explanation, will have to wait. But the explanation, when it comes, had better be a good one, or my superiors are going to bring back the cat-o'-nine-tails for our special benefit."

             
"Have no fear," Holmes said.

             
"You can rely on Mr. Sherlock Holmes," Moriarty said. "At times his insights can be quite uncanny."

When small men make long shadows, the end of the day is near.

— Confucius

             
The massive neo-Gothic building on Prince Eugene Platz that housed the British Embassy in Vienna had been built right before Napoleon was chased off the field at Waterloo, when the ties between Great Britain and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had seemed eternal and imperative. It had been constructed for the ages, and little about it had changed in the intervening eight decades.

             
The second-floor conference room, in which the British ambassador and the duke of Albermar were meeting with Moriarty and his companions, was hung with ancient red velvet drapes trimmed with gold thread, and around its great oak table were massive oak chairs with red plush seats in which the material had worn thin through the years of supporting stern men of importance and weight. The room had the air of a wealthy old dowager who found it difficult to change her habits or her clothing acquired in an earlier age.

             
As soon as the assemblage had finished assembling, the ambassador had retired to his residence, a few words from the duke of Albermar convincing him that there were some things he didn't want to know. The duke sat at the head of the table, with Professor Moriarty facing him at the foot. Gathered around the sides were
Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Jenny Vernet, Madeleine Verlaine, and Benjamin and Cecily Barnett.

             
"I don't have much time," Albermar told Moriarty. "In two hours I must leave for the conference I spoke of. I'm taking you at your word that this is as important as you say it is, but you're going to have to fully convince me if you expect me to convince the others."

             
"I trust that we'll be able to do that, Your Grace," Moriarty told him.

             
"Good. But first, please, about my son. You say Charles is going to be released?

             
Moriarty nodded. "It will take a day or two. The authorities, whether British or Austrian, are always much more eager to incarcerate a man than they are to release him."

             
"I don't know how to thank you," Albermar began.

             
Moriarty shook his head. "If any thanks are due, they should go to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. His reading of the crime scene was magnificent."

             
"Elementary," Holmes said.

             
Moriarty turned and regarded his quondam nemesis thoughtfully. "Surely more than that
. '
A short anarchist who has been in trouble with the law?
Possibly for burglary or housebreaking?'
I am surprised you didn't just name him."

             
Holmes smiled grimly. "Unless I am mistaken," he said, "he is called 'the Ferret.' His real name is Dietrich Loomer. He is supposedly the head of a local anarchist group that calls itself the 'Secret Freedom League,' although I believe that he himself receives orders from someone else."

             
Moriarty clapped his hands together. "I knew it!" he said. "You see, Holmes, we should team up more often."

             
"I don't think so," said Holmes.

             
Moriarty chuckled.

             
"How do you know this?" Lord Albermar asked.

             
"A Shugard Seuss revolver was found in Paul Donzhof's apartment. It's the same make and caliber of weapon as the one used in the assassination of the duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz," Holmes explained. "But, as Professor Moriarty established, it was not the actual weapon used in the crime. Therefore it had been placed there to incriminate Donzhof. The gun was found on the top shelf of a wardrobe in the bedroom. When I examined the wardrobe I found a small clot of dirt on the bottom of the door frame, left there by a shoe when someone stood on the door frame to place the revolver on the top shelf. Your son, or anyone else taller than about five foot three, could have placed the Shugard Seuss on the top shelf without standing on the door frame."

             
"And how did you deduce that this short man was a burglar or housebreaker, and—how did you put it?—a confirmed scoundrel?" Moriarty demanded.

             
"There were tell-tale scratches on the front door lock, made by a lockpick or similar instrument.
As to his having been in the apartment before: he brought a pry bar with him to pry up the strongbox under the bed, so he must have known of its existence."

             
"And his being a scoundrel?
Do you mean something beyond the fact that he was a burglar?"

             
"Oh, yes," Holmes affirmed. "If there was a plot to implicate Paul Donzhof—let us continue to call him Paul Donzhof—this burglar didn't initiate it. It was a small piece of some larger scheme, and others told him what to do. His masters,
whomever
they might be, sent him up there to hide the gun, and so implicate Donzhof. They would not have wanted the apartment to look as though it had been burglarized, an act which might make the police less sure of Donzhof's guilt. Therefore the pry bar was
his own
idea. His greed was stronger than his instructions, and he had no particular qualms against going against the desires of those who were paying him."

             
"Was it not Horace who remarked that there is no honor among thieves?" Duke Albermar asked rhetorically.

             
"There you have the advantage of an extensive classical education, Your Grace," Moriarty said. "I never got much beyond Caesar and Quintilian."

             
The duke fastened his mild blue eyes on Sherlock Holmes. "And from this you were able to further deduce that the man was an anarchist, and could be found at a chocolate factory?"

             
"We should know shortly whether I was right," Holmes said, pulling out his pocket watch and glancing at it. "The police raid should take place any time now."

             
"Come, Holmes," Watson said, "
how
did you know about the chocolate factory?"

             
"I spent some hours hiding in a crate in the box cellar of the Werfel Chocolate Factory listening to anarchists prate their theories, while you were sitting in the
Café
Mozart drinking cold espresso," Holmes told his Boswell. "And the clot of dirt that I found in the wardrobe looked like the dirt that makes up the floor of the box cellar—a brownish-gray clay that I have seen nowhere else in Vienna. And when I brought it to my nose—I smelled chocolate!"

             
"I bow to the master," Moriarty said, inclining his head in Holmes's direction.

             
"If they catch this weasel, then the hand print on the wall should establish his guilt," Albermar said.

             
"Ferret," Holmes said. "Yes, it should."

             
"Fancy everyone's fingerprints being unique," the duke mused. "Who would have thought it?"

             
"It's a fascinating discovery, and should prove quite useful in criminal identification," Holmes said.

             
"You have come a long way toward relieving my anxiety," Duke Albermar said, "but the knot in my stomach won't fully dissolve until Charles—my son—is standing beside me.
Preferably in the library at Albermar Hall, our ancestral home.
I believe the library has always been his favorite room."

             
"Soon, Your Grace," Moriarty said.

             
"Now, as to this other business.
What is it that has brought you all here?"

             
"A matter of the utmost moment," Moriarty told him. "It would not be an exaggeration to say that every country in Europe stands at this moment on the brink of disaster."

             
The duke of Albermar drew away from the table slightly, as though afraid that he might be contaminated by the madness he was hearing. "What's that you say?"

             
"I have discerned a dangerous pattern in a series of seemingly unrelated events, including your son's misfortune," Moriarty told the duke. "If I am right, we must act now to prevent a deed
that might plunge the European continent into that general war that you once told me you feared."

             
"War?
Yes, I do fear that there will be a general war. But not during what's left of this century. Not for at least two or three decades. It's the legacy that I fear our policies are leaving for the twentieth century, and they will not thank us for it."

             
"It may come sooner," Moriarty told him. "There are forces at work to make that so. I believe I have puzzled out the greatest part of one of their plans, although one essential piece remains hidden. I have brought my comrades along because each of them has discerned a piece of this puzzle, and you might wish to hear it in their own words."

             
The duke of Albermar's eyes slowly scanned the group assembled around the table. "If you believe such a thing, of course I will listen," he said. "But I am extremely hurried now. Will this not wait for three, or possibly four, days?"

             
"These days are crucial," Moriarty said. "The tale should not take long to tell."

             
The duke leaned back in his chair. "Speak on," he said.

             
"Perhaps we should begin with your son," Moriarty said. "He had the misfortune to pick up a message intended for another." Moriarty looked to his right. "Madame Verlaine?"

             
"When I visited him in prison he told me of this," Madeleine told the duke. "He obtained a written list, almost by accident, from a man named Hermann Loge, a clerk in the Austrian Foreign Ministry. Your son cleverly hid it in his rooms, and the police who searched didn't find it. The professor and I went to retrieve it."

             
"Damn!" Sherlock Holmes said, leaping to his feet. "You were in that apartment before!" He pointed an accusing finger at Moriarty. "That whole business at the apartment was a charade!"

             
"Not a bit of it," Moriarty said. "I disturbed nothing, I merely took the missive I had come for and departed. It was then, while I was removing the police lock and unlocking the
door, that
I noticed that the door lock had been picked; but I assure you that I left no additional marks on the face."

             
"And the clot of dirt?"

             
"It was there."

             
"And the revolver?"