Barbara Hambly - 02 TRAVELING WITH THE DEAD

"My dear Asher, a terrible mistake... a terrible mistake." Dr. Bedford Fairport fidgeted with the cuffs of his gray cotton gloves and flinched away from a stout blond policeman who came through the station-house duty room with a musically inclined drunk in tow. Much was made of Vienna 's reputation as "The City of Music." Asher wondered whether this was what its enthusiasts had in mind. The drunks with whom he had shared his cell the previous night had both sung, though not always the same songs. One was a Wagnerian, the other a disciple of Richard Strauss. It had been a long night.

"Mistake, hell." Asher closed his valise, having satisfied himself that its contents- including the key waxes and counterfeit baggage-room seals in the secret pocket-were untouched. A uniformed clerk offered him a release to sign, then a paper for Fairport. "Karolyi must have seen me when I got off to telegraph Streatham in Munich. I suppose I should be glad it isn't worse."

"The honorable Herr will be staying with Herr Professor Doktor Fairport?"

Asher hesitated; Fairport said, "Yes, yes, of course. Not an imposition at all, my dear Asher," he added, as the two crossed the worn black marble floor and emerged into the chill, misty sunlight of the Ring. "In fact, since I've agreed to be responsible for your conduct, I'm sure the police wouldn't have it any other way. It will be quite like old times."

Asher grinned a little wryly, recalling the clean, small bedroom above what had been the old stables at Fruhlingzeit, the sanitarium tucked away in the quiet slopes of the Vienna Woods.

"You must have spent an appalling night!" Fairport twittered.

"Hideously irresponsible-I shall write to the Newe Freie Presse about the ghastly misconduct of the police in putting simple witnesses wanted for questioning in the general cells! You could have caught anything in that cell, anything from tuberculosis to smallpox to cholera!" The old man coughed, and Asher remembered that Fairport had had tuberculosis-and smallpox-as a child. His milk- white skin was still marked with it, like ancient chewings of mice.

He did not look well now. But then, Fairport never looked quite well. Thirteen years ago, when he first met Fairport, Asher had been surprised when Maxwell- then head of the Vienna section-had told him the doctor was only fifty- four. Prematurely stooped, prematurely wrinkled, prematurely white-haired, he had the air of an almost-invalid that Asher did not consider much of an advertisement for his sanitarium.

The Viennese apparently thought otherwise. They flocked to the isolated villa and paid huge sums for "rest cures" and "rejuvenation" by means of chemicals, electricity, and esoteric baths. Looking down now at the bent little man beside him- even straight he wouldn't have topped Asher's shoulder by more than an inch- Asher wondered if Fairport's preoccupation with reversing the effects of age was part of his fury at the encroaching dissolution of his own body.

Fairport must be nearing seventy now, calculated Asher, and forced himself not to offer his help as the old man hobbled along the pavement. His face had the shrunken exhaustion of years, his hands-encased as always in the gray cotton gloves he bought by the dozen, washed after wearing once, and discarded weeklytrembled uncontrollably. Lydia, he found himself thinking, would have diagnosed something or other on the spot.

Even under clouds, Vienna had the air of brightness he recalled; the clifflike labyrinths of buildings cream or gold or brown with their pseudomarble garlands, their putti and grimacing tragedy/comedy masks; gilded ironwork, tiny balconies, great somber doors guarding flagstoned courtyards inside.

A short distance along the Ring a smart brougham drew up beside them, the black body of the closed coach varnished and gleaming, its brass hardware polished like gold. A big man wrapped in a coachman's long coat and muffler sat on the box, frowning under a simian brow ridge while a footman, equally tall, sprang from the rear platform to open the door. Asher reflected that the sanitarium must be doing well if the old man could afford this kind of turnout.

"You'll want a hot bath and a good rest, I daresay." Fairport gestured away his footman's proffered arm with a wave of his cane. "Thank you, Lukas... I've telephoned Halliwell-he's the head of the Vienna section these days, do you remember him?-to let him know you're in town, but this evening, if you're feeling up to it, will be early enough."

Asher considered. It was mid-morning, the mists from the canal barely diffuse in the bright air. Though they stood on the threshold of winter, the cold seemed not so raw as that of London or Paris, the damp not so bitter. The air had a soft quality, like rose petals. In the Volksgarten a few hardy citizens sat behind the line of chain and potted trees that demarcated the terrace of a small kaffee haus, and Asher had a flashing recollection of true Viennese coffee and the concentrated sinfulness of a Creme Schnitten. Fruhlingzeit Sanitarium, isolated among woods and vineyards, was restful and silent but about an hour's drive from the outskirts of the town.

"If you don't mind," Asher said slowly, "there are things I need to do here. Someone I need to trace, without delay."

"Karolyi?" Fairport's almost hairless white brows formed little arches in the fish- belly forehead. "His addresses are quite well known. A town house in Dobling and a flat on the Kartnerstrasse... I assume you're not interested in that ancestral castle at Feketelo in the Carpathians..."

"No." Asher shook his head. "No, someone else, someone whose name I don't know. And it may take me a little time in the Rathaus to find the records."

He knew it would have to be done, and his mind leaped ahead, calculating how long it might take and when the sun would set. He thought he would have time to do the thing in safety, but with an almost subconscious gesture he rubbed his wrist to feel, through glove and shirt cuff, the protective silver links.

"If I may abuse your hospitality so far, I think what I need to do is, first, find myself a public bath and get cleaned up, then start my search in the records office. How late might I come out to Fruhlingzeit without disturbing anyone to let me in?"

Fairport smiled, a dry little V-shaped quirk. "My dear Asher, this is Vienna! My staff remains active until nearly eleven, and I'm frequently at work in the laboratory until midnight. Right now there's no one staying at the sanitarium-we had some electrical troubles early in the week-so there's no trouble about that."

He fished in the pocket of his old-fashioned frock coat and produced a latchkey.

"If you don't see a light in my study or the laboratory, simply let yourself in. I'll have the old room ready made up for you, the one looking out onto the garden at the back, you remember?"

Asher smiled. "I remember."

His smile faded as Fairport climbed into the brougham-the footman Lukas had to help him- and drove away into the shifting traffic of the Ring, brasses winking like heliographs.

He remembered.

He remembered sitting for hours in the window of that whitewashed room, looking down into the overgrown courtyard whose high wall formed only a nominal barrier against the whispering high-summer woods, reading over and over the three telegrams he'd found upon his return from the mountains. Remembered not wanting to know what they told him.

All three had been from Francoise, sent on successive days. All three had asked for an immediate reply. But he'd seen her at the Cafe New York-his shoulder tightly strapped and a hefty dose of Fairport's stimulants in his veins-earlier that day. She had mentioned the telegrams in passing, but said they were nothing much.

It meant that she'd been checking on his movements in the period of time in which he was supposed to be ill rather than away.