Michael Kurland - Victorian Villainy

We took rooms at the Hotel Athenes, carefully not knowing each other as we checked in. There would have been some advantage in taking rooms in separate hotels, but the difficulty in sharing information without being noticed would have been too great. Holmes, or rather Vernet, was to go around to the inns and spas in the area and discover which ones had public rooms where a group might gather, or more probably large private rooms for rent, and listen to the conversation of the guests. Stuhl would speak to various town officials about the very important subject of water, and partake of such gossip as they might offer. Town officials love to pass on tit-bits of important sounding gossip to passing government bureaucrats; it reaffirms their authority.

“Three white clothespins,” Holmes mused, staring out the window at one of the great snow-capped mountains that glowered down at the town. It was the morning of the 15 ^ th, and we had just come up from our separate breakfasts and were meeting in my room on the third floor of the hotel. Holmes’s room was down the hall and across the way, and had a view across the town square to the police station, and then the lake beyond. My window overlooked only mountains.

“The last line of that letter,” I remembered. “‘Proceed to Lindau on the Sixteenth. The company is assembling. The first place. Three white clothespins. Burn this.’ Very terse.”

“The first place implies there was a second place,” Holmes mused. “So it would seem they have met here before.”

“More than that,” I offered, “one of their leaders probably lives around here.”

“Perhaps,” Holmes agreed. “Consider: If the company is ‘assembling,’ then they are gathering in order to do whatever it is they are preparing to do. If they were merely coming together to discuss matters, or to receive instructions, then they would be meeting, not assembling. The study of language and its connotations holds great value for the serious investigator.”

“Even so,” I agreed.

Holmes-Vernet-went out that day and passed from inn to cafe to public house, and drank cassis and coffee and ate pastries. The man has an amazing ability to eat and eat without gaining weight and, conversely, to go without food for days at a time when on the track of a miscreant. I spent the morning studying a map of the town, to get a sense of where things were. After lunch I went to the town hall to see Herr Burgermeister Pindl, a large man in many directions with a massive mustache and a smile that spread broadly across his face and radiated good cheer. We sat in his office and he poured us each a small glass of schnapps, and we discussed matters of water supply and public health. He seemed quite pleased that the great bureaucracy in far-off Berlin would even know of the existence of little Lindau.

If you would impress a man with your insight, tell him that you sense that he is worried about a relationship, about his finances, or about his health. Better, tell him that he fears-justly-that he is often misunderstood, and that his work is not appreciated. If you would impress a civic official, tell him that you share his concern about the town’s water supply, its sewage, or its garbage. Within the first ten minutes of our conversation, Herr Pindl and I had been friends for years. But the smiling giant was not as simple as he appeared. “Tell me,” he said, holding his schnapps daintily in two chubby fingers, “what does the ministry really want to know? You’re not just here to see if the water is coming out of the faucets.”

I beamed at him as a professor beams at his best pupil. “You’re very astute,” I said, leaning toward him. “And you look like a man who can keep a secret…”

“Oh, I am,” he assured me, his nose twitching like that of a stout bird dog on the scent of a blutwurst sausage.

Extracting my very special document from an inner pocket, I unfolded it before him. Crowded with official-looking seals and imperial eagles, the paper identified Otto Stuhl as an officer in the Nachrichtendienst, the Kaiser’s Military Intelligence Service, holding the rank of Oberst, and further declared:

His Imperial Most-High Excellency Kaiser Wilhelm II requests and demands all loyal German subjects to give the bearer of this document whatever assistance he requires at all times.

“Ah!” said Burgermeister Pindl, nodding ponderously. “I have heard of such things.”

Thank God, I thought, that you’ve never seen one before, since I have no idea what a real one looks like.

“Well, Herr Oberst Stuhl,” Pindl asked, “what can the Burgermeister of Lindau do for you?”

I took a sip of schnapps. It had a strong, peppery taste. “Word has come,” I said, “of certain unusual activities in this area. I have been sent to investigate.”

“Unusual?”

I nodded. “Out of the ordinary.”

A look of panic came into his eyes. “I assure you, Herr Oberst, that we have done nothing-”

“No, no,” I assured him, wondering what illicit activity he and his kameraden had been indulging in. Another time it might have been interesting to find out. “We of the Nachrichtendienst, care not what petty offenses local officials may be indulging in-short of treason.” I chuckled. “You don’t indulge in treason, do you?”

We shared a good laugh together about that, although the worried look did not completely vanish from his eyes.

“No, it’s strangers I’m concerned with” I told him. “Outsiders.”

“Outsiders.”

“Just so. We have received reports from our agents that suspicious activities have been happening in this area.”

“What sort of suspicious activities?”

“Ah!” I waggled my finger at him. “That’s what I was hoping you would tell me.”

He got up and went over to the window. “It must be those verdammter Englanders,” he said, slapping his large hand against his even larger thigh.

“English?” I asked. “You are, perhaps, infested with Englishmen?”

“We have people coming from all the world,” he told me. “We are a resort. We are on the Bodensee. But recently a group of Englanders has attracted our attention.”

“How?”

“By trying not to attract our attention, if you see what I mean. First, they come separately and pretend not to know each other. But they are seen talking-whispering-together by the twos and threes.”

“Ah!” I said. “Whispering. That is most interesting.”

“And then they all go boating,” the Burgermeister said.

“Boating?”

“Yes. Separately, by ones and twos, they rent or borrow boats and row, paddle, or sail out onto the Bodensee. Sometimes they come home in the evening, sometimes they don’t.”

“Where do they go?”

“I don’t know,” Pindl said. “We haven’t followed them.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“Off and on, for about a year,” he said. “They go away for a while, and then they come back. Which is another reason we noticed them. The same collection of Englanders who don’t know each other appearing at the same time every few months. Really!”

“How many of them would you say there were?” I asked.

“Perhaps two dozen,” he said. “Perhaps more.”

I thought this over for a minute. “Is there anything else you can tell me about them?” I asked.

He shrugged. “All ages, all sizes,” he said. “All men, as far as I know. Some of them speak perfect German. Some, I’ve been told, speak fluent French. They all speak English.”

I stood up. “Thank you,” I said. “The Nachrichtendienst will not forget the help you have been.”

I had dinner at a small waterfront restaurant, and watched the shadows grow across the lake as the sun sank behind the mountains. After dinner I returned to my room, where Holmes joined me about an hour later.