Unknown (21 page)

The man nodded slightly,
as though we barely existed on the periphery of his existence.

"The famous
entertainer?" continued the sleuth. There might have been a
sudden flash in those dull eyes. I could not be sure.

"This really will
not do," said Holmes. His voice had a faint, chiding sound to
it. "They will never know what you did."

Hublein's eyes slowly,
reluctantly abandoned the wall, and an inch at a time his face turned
in our direction, the rest of his slight body remaining motionless.
It was like a diver allowing the buoyancy of his body to bring him to
the surface. When his head had made a forty-five-degree turn, he
seemed to be looking through us and beyond.

"They don't think
you stole the tablets, you know. They certainly don't know about your
great performance."

The dark eyes came
slowly into focus, regarding Holmes's expressive face and, I felt,
actually seeing him for the first time. The sleuth's words seemed to
have drawn him from another dimension.

"It's never been
done before, you know. Nobody ever thought of it but you."

There was a flicker of
understanding now, of interest.

"How do you know?"
His voice was husky, as though rusted from lack of use. I was
conscious of Hammer stiffening. Words from Hublein had startled him.

"I am Sherlock
Holmes."

The thin-boned, delicate
face was fastened on the sleuth, and he pushed a lock of dark hair
off his narrow forehead.

"To use the machine
against itself. A revolutionary concept."

The lips twitched again,
and a half-smile forced itself shyly onto the pale face with almost
translucent skin.

"It was a good
idea," he admitted. His words came easier this time.

"But you must have
had to practice. How did you learn to use the jimmy?"

Now there seemed an
actual desire to speak, to explain, to indulge a starved vanity.

"They had diagrams
of the tool in the files. Besides, you meet all kinds of people when
you work in cabarets."

"So you got some
tips from a swag man. Also some instruction on how to use a
glass cutter." Holmes might have been a professor congratulating
a student on good marks.

"I can do things
with my hands. I started out working with puppets."

"Before you took up
female impersonating."

Irritation flitted over
Hublein's face. "There was more money in the impersonating. I
could sing in a high key and dance enough to get by. Men in the
audience used to try to grab me. They felt like fools when I took off
my wig."

"But you never
liked it."

"No. People thought
I was a freak."

"So you wanted to
do something truly dangerous. Be a Robin Hood." Holmes corrected
himself: "William Tell."

The veil was completely
brushed aside from the eyes now. They glowed.

"It wasn't wooden
puppets or cosmetics and wigs. It was exciting, no make-believe. The
darkness, the silence, and the thrill when you got away and knew that
you had done it. You'd fooled them."

"Fooled everybody,"
commented Holmes factually.

"But I was fooled
in the end." The thought was a bitter one, and the shutters of
Hublein's eyes started to close again. I sensed he was beginning to
drift back into the catatonic escape, but Holmes was alert to
this danger as well.

"What about Frau
Mueller? That was the finest touch."

This bait proved
irresistible, and the performer was with us again.

"That was easy. No
one suspected me."

"Because you always
impersonated beautiful women."

The small face nodded
jerkily.

"Frau Mueller was a
crone. I blackened several teeth. Her wig looked like frayed hemp. I
penciled in lines and used a wart right here." A slender finger
indicated an area between chin and lips. "One look at Frau
Mueller was enough. She was an unpleasant sight. I had to give up the
cabaret work, of course."

"So that you could
pose as a night cleaning woman at headquarters. Not being an old or
arthritic woman at all but young and agile, you could fulfill the
duties of the job and have some extra time to search through the
Meldwesen files until you found the cards you wanted."

"The first four
robberies were trial runs. I wanted to do something big. Something
that would be in the papers and that people would talk about for
years."

"So you decided to
'steal the act' of Shadow Schadie."

Holmes's show-business
colloquialism pleased Hublein. "I had to practice for months.
But finally I mastered the suction cups. I am very light, you see.
That helped."

"And you turned
yourself into a veritable human fly."

Hublein nodded. "The
papers were full of the purchase, by Mannheim, of the golden tablets.
I thought that would be the great robbery, the one that would cause
the most talk. The tablets were so valuable that I could sell them
and retire. No more cabarets and no more Frau Mueller either. But
they were white gold. No fence would touch them."

There was anguish in
Hublein's face now and the suggestion of moisture in his eyes.

"I'd done it. I'd
worked so hard and planned so carefully and I had ended up with
nothing. When the Chinaman approached me and offered me so little for
the tablets, I felt my whole life was for nothing. I was a puppet
with no one on the strings. I sold him the tablets, and then . . .
and then. . . ."

The voice dwindled away.
The seated man's head slowly turned back so that his unseeing eyes
were fastened on the blank wall again. Heinrich Hublein had retraced
his steps back to the kingdom of forgetfulness, of silence, of
nothingness.

Holmes's eyes
encountered mine. There was a resigned expression in them, as though
he realized that he had no more bait to tempt the vanishing
personality back into the world of reality.

He signaled to Hammer,
who opened the cell door. Hublein was not conscious of our departure.

An aura of sadness
enveloped me when we left the poor, misguided, unbalanced man, but it
vaporized in the heat of excitement liberally spiced by wonderment.

"Holmes, how did
you ever deduce that Hublein was the perpetrator of five crimes? And
that he created the character of a spurious cleaning woman?"

There was a thin smile
on Holmes's aquiline features that I recognized as an indication that
he was pleased with himself.

"When von Shalloway
described the robberies in his office, did not something strike
you?"

I cast my mind back in a
determined effort to locate the telltale that had allowed Holmes to
cut the Gordian knot, but in my heart of hearts sensed that it would
elude me.

"Each crime bore
the trademark of one criminal who had a cast-iron alibi."

"The alibis were
happenstance. Think, Watson! The Morenstrasse robbery involved the
flat of a fence. In Bremen, the jewels were stolen from a suspected
smuggler. It immediately occurred to me that someone was using the
Meldwesen files not only to copy the methods of certain criminals but
to select the victims as well. Who, besides the officials, would have
access to the files? Someone invisible."

"Oh, come now,
Holmes!"

"Patience, old
chap. Mailmen have a certain invisibility. We see them on their
appointed rounds with such regularity that after a while we
cease to see them. A cleaning woman falls in the same category. And
we had Hublein, a female impersonator. The Germans file and list
everything, so I was able to learn that one of the nighttime cleaning
force, a certain Frau Mueller, failed to show up for work the day
that Hublein surrendered himself to the police. She has not been
located to this day."

"Until the elusive
Frau Mueller was unmasked by Sherlock Holmes," I stated
proudly. "Your discoveries will certainly delight von
Shalloway, but how do they affect us?"

"Hublein mentioned
a Chinaman who purchased the tablets from him at bargain rates."

"Chu San Fu?"

Holmes shook his head.
"An agent of his, no doubt. This was four years ago, and Chu was
still in the role of the collector. I suspect he secured the tablets
because they were too good a bargain to miss. Since then something
has happened that has made them precious to him."

We were almost back at
von Shalloway's office when another thought struck me.

"Hublein mentioned
white gold. What is that, Holmes?"

"Pure gold is
twenty-four carats. In modern times, most gold is mixed with an alloy
to provide rigidity. The most common, fourteen-carat, has a large
percentage of brass. Pink gold uses copper. White gold can be
produced in two ways: with nickel, which is inexpensive; or with
platinum, which is rarer and more valuable than gold itself. The
sacred tablets used platinum as an alloy, not for the sake of
rigidity, it being as malleable as gold, but for ostentation."

"No receiver would
touch the tablets because of the platinum content?"

"I think they
misled Hublein there. The man was not a trained criminal but merely a
mimic. A fence could have had the tablets melted down and then
separated the gold and platinum. I think the robbery was just a
little too hot, and it scared them off."

Not long thereafter we
returned to the Bristol Kempinski, leaving a delighted von
Shalloway in Alexanderplatz. The police chief with his unresolved
cases solved and the matter of Hublein cleared up as well was much
inclined towards hosting a victory dinner, but Holmes begged off, I
regret to say. He stated that duties beckoned, and von Shalloway was
too acute to inquire as to their nature.

Back at the hotel,
Holmes indulged in one of his disappearing acts. I suspect that
he beat a hasty path to the British Embassy and made use of the
diplomatic wire to contact his brother in London. What other messages
he may have sent or received I do not know. On his return we packed,
which was not time consuming since we were traveling light.

Now Holmes was intent on
reaching Egypt. I mentioned, somewhat snidely perhaps, that I
hoped the freighter carrying the relic stolen from the Spaulding
mansion had not altered its plan of sailing and beaten us to
Alexandria. Holmes, as usual, had an answer.

"The Hishouri Kamu
was missing two stokers just before they weighed anchor, Watson.
They were forced to sign on two new crew members: Burlington Bertie
and Tiny. The freighter is on schedule and will not reach Egypt for
some days."

So, Holmes, had planted
his men on the cargo ship to keep an eye open. I had thought him
somewhat casual about the Sacred Sword to which he attached so much
importance.

I suggested that we
augment our limited wardrobe at one of the fashionable Berlin shops,
but there was no time for that. Holmes booked us by rail to
Constanza, Romania. The train trip was dull, but there was a surprise
when we arrived at the port on the Black Sea. A carriage took us to
the waterfront, where we boarded a destroyer of Her Majesty's Navy, a
means of transportation provided without a doubt by Mycroft Holmes.
Wasting no time, the needle-thin craft traversed the Black Sea to the
Dardanelles, and soon we were pitching and tossing in the
Mediterranean.

I shall draw the curtain
of charity over this trip. Suffice to say that I was pale, wan, and
frightfully sick throughout. Holmes did his best, I must say, staying
with me in the little cabin in the officers' quarters that we shared.
In an effort to distract me from my misery, he did speak in unusual
detail about the matter that we were involved in, opening up a new
line of thought completely.

"You know, good
fellow, ancient Egypt was a literate society completely capable of
leaving a clear history, and after Champollion deciphered the Rosetta
stone, it was reasonable to expect answers to age-old mysteries.
But such was not the case."

"You feel the
golden tablets might unlock hidden doors?" I asked, and then
made myself available of the tin basin that Holmes had in readiness.

"Or I may be in
fear of it. We are very vague on how they built the pyramids, you
know, and have no idea of why they are aligned with the four compass
points. Or why the Sphinx and the Colossi of Memmon both face east,
parallel, by the way, with the axis of the great Amon-Ra temple at
Karnak."