Johannes Cabal the Detective (3 page)

“In ten days’ time the emperor, Antrobus II, will make an announcement to the people in Victory Square from the balcony of the palace. He will tell them that the time for living in the shadow of our neighbours is over, that foreign spies and agents will no longer be tolerated within our borders, that our climb back towards greatness starts now. At the same time, the secret police will move against known spies and their sympathisers. Their corruption of this country’s spirit will cease immediately, and patriot shall work with patriot to ensure that—Am I boring you?”

Cabal finished yawning. “My apologies. My sleep was disturbed. So, you wish to turn your country into a police state and eliminate any dissent. You’re not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last.”

“You disapprove.”

“I don’t care. People are cattle. Do as you will, it’s your country. I’m just wondering where I fit into your plans.”

“You’re focussed. I like that. I respect clear thinkers. These dissident factions have poisoned the people’s minds. We must act quickly or it will be too late.”

“A revolution.”

“A rebellion. Civil war. Which is, of course, what our enemies want. I … 
we
cannot permit that to happen. The emperor’s announcement will nip these rebellious movements in the bud. The police actions will remove the possibility of their reoccurrence. Then we can get on with making destiny manifest. But there is a small problem.”

Ah, thought Cabal. Now we come to the crux of it.

Count Marechal looked at the ceiling for a moment, frowning slightly as he tried to couch his next words as best he could. Finally, he said, “The emperor is as dead as a doornail.”

“For how long?” asked Cabal bluntly. There seemed little point in being coy, now it was plain what they wanted him to do.

“Three hours. He has been unwell for some time. We suspected the worst but hoped for the best. To no avail.” His upper lip twitched savagely. “The stupid old bastard. He only had to last long enough to make the speech, and then he could have died right then. It would have become a crusade on the instant. ‘We must fulfil the emperor’s dying wish!’ Yes, that would have been grand. And that”—he looked meaningfully at Cabal—“is the way it is going to be. The emperor will make his speech. Then he will die. In that order. Mirkarvia’s future depends upon it. As does yours.”

“Can’t you just declare, ‘The emperor is dead, long live the emperor’? Don’t you have a spare for emergencies?”

“The emperor’s son is eight years old, and none too bright. His Imperial Majesty dropped him on his head at an early age, and it shows. It would be necessary to declare a regent—”

“Who would be you, no doubt?”

“Who would be me, yes, but by the time such things were in hand we would be up to our necks in revolting peasants. The speech
has
to go ahead as planned.”

Cabal straightened his jacket. “I shall need my bag with
all
its contents. That includes the
Principia Necromantica
.”

“The book you tried to steal? The university greybeards won’t like it.”

“They don’t need to. Tell them they’ll have to make sacrifices for the greater glory of Mirkarvia. If they don’t like it, offer to have some of your secret policemen come calling to explain patriotism in detail.”

The count smiled wryly. “You should have been a politician.”

“I shall ignore that comment. I shall need a laboratory, and I shall need it now.”

“Naturally. Assistants?”

“I work alone. If you insist on having a spy present to report on my actions, he can sit quietly in the corner and stay out of my way. I give you your emperor doing a reasonable impersonation of a living person and you give me my freedom. That is the deal.”

“Very nearly. I’m afraid there is one item I cannot let you have. That handgun of yours, for obvious reasons. Tell me, why do you carry such a cannon? Its bullets are more than half an inch in diameter.”

Cabal shrugged. “A gun is a tool for killing. It isn’t an enterprise that calls for subtlety, only certainty.”

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

“But guns make it so much easier. Shall we go?”

T
hey were ready for Cabal. He was taken from the prison and smuggled into the Imperial Palace via an impressively abstruse secret route. A bathroom larger than some ballrooms he had seen had been scrubbed, disinfected, and fitted out with surgical tables and equipment. Plainly, his execution had been put off in anticipation of the emperor’s dying inconveniently. The knowledge irked him; he disliked being a pawn in somebody else’s game.

The late Antrobus II lay supine and naked on a sluice table, a trolley of instruments standing by. Sitting by them was Cabal’s Gladstone bag, and as he reached the table he realised that the instruments arrayed were his own, sterilised and ready. Out of interest, he opened the bag and found that Marechal had been as good as his word: everything was there—
Principia Necromantica
included—but for his gun.

He cast an eye over the dead man. By the look of him, Antrobus hadn’t been a great believer in exercise and diet. One leg looked gouty, and his gut settled about him like unset blancmange. Cabal made a swift estimate of the cadaver’s weight, counted the number of test tubes of reagent he had, and decided it wasn’t enough.

Marechal had sat down on the marble edge of a geyser and was just tapping a cigarette against his silver case when Cabal raised a cautionary finger. “No smoking. Does this place have a meat freezer?”

The count looked longingly at the cigarette before replacing it. “Yes.”

“Excellent.” Cabal drew a tiny amount of liquid from one of his phials into a five-millilitre syringe and injected it into the cold, motionless, imperial carotid artery. “This will start a catalytic reaction throughout the emperor’s cardiovascular system to slow down deterioration. The freezer will do the rest.” He took up his notebook and wrote rapidly. “While the emperor is on ice I shall be synthesising the necessary reactants. I shall require these components.” He tore off the sheet as he walked over to Marechal and placed it in his hands. The count read the list. Then he read it again, his eyebrows raising. “Time is of the essence, Count,” Cabal added sharply.

The count tapped the paper. “Two pounds of fresh human pituitaries. I don’t believe the imperial grocers stretch to fresh human pituitaries. This isn’t an easy list to fill.”

“That,” said Cabal, walking back to the emperor and taking off his jacket as he went, “is hardly my problem. If you want this vast quantity of blue-blooded lard to make his speech on schedule, fill it you will.” He hung his jacket from a wing nut on the surgical light stand and started to roll up his sleeves. “And fill it promptly.”

For a moment, the count looked as if he might say something. Then he changed his mind and stood up. “I’ll see to it you have your”—he glanced at the list again and curled his lip—“components.” He marched out, his boots making sharp clicks that echoed around the tiled walls.

Out in the corridor, Count Marechal snapped his fingers and his adjutant was at his side in an instant. The count handed over the list. “Get these together as soon as possible and have them given to Cabal.”

The adjutant, who was very much of the majority of aristocratic soldiers and maintained an apiary dedicated to the glory of his moustaches, silently mouthed the list as he read it. “I say, sir. What
is
a pituitary when it’s at home to visitors?”

“It nestles in the middle of the human brain, and it’s not the sort of thing one can voluntarily donate. Scour the mortuaries. We want them fresh, mind!”

“They don’t sound very big. It might take quite a few to make a couple of pounds of the blighters. What if we can’t find enough in the mortuaries?”

The count fixed him with his gaze. “Then find some donors,” he said with an emphasis that even Lieutenant Karstetz could fathom.

“Right ho!” said Karstetz, and clattered out in boots that were a lot brighter than he. He paused at the door and turned back. “Incidentally, sir. If this necromancer chappie delivers the goods and old man Antrobus sits up and does the business, d’you still want me to bump friend Cabal off?”

The count thought about it for a very short moment. “No, that’s one small change to the plan. When Cabal’s done his best, whether he succeeds or fails, you are not to kill him.” He let his hand drift to the hilt of his sabre. “
I
shall.”

A
ll over the city, causes of death were altered to allow the taking of brain samples. Men carried in with knives in their backs were pronounced dead of strokes. Some of the more principled mortuary staff saw fit to complain. “This is a nonsense!” a district coroner barked at Lieutenant Karstetz as they stood by a slab upon which lay the fresh body of a young man. “I utterly refuse to open this man’s head when the cause of death is obviously a sword wound to the chest! He may have needed his head examined before he got into the duel, but it’s far too late now.”

“No, I assure you, sir,” said Karstetz. “This man died of a seizure caused by a morbid condition of the”—he took a crumpled piece of paper from his sabretache and read from it—“pituitary gland.” He put the paper away again. “That’s in the brain, you know.”

“I know where it is! I simply fail to see how you can possibly see a sword wound and associate it with—Urgh!”

For Lieutenant Karstetz had lost patience, drawn his sword, and run the coroner through. He wiped his blade clean on a handy shroud and scabbarded it. “See?” he asked the assistant coroner, who had gone a horrible shade of frightened. “Sword wound to the chest and what did he die of?”

“A morbid condition … of the pituitary?” ventured the assistant.

“Good show! Knew you were the man for the job after poor old”—he waved vaguely at the dead coroner—“Herr Poor Old here turned up his toes. Anyway, be a sport and fish out the offending organ. Pop it in a jar when you’ve done and a little man will be around shortly to pick it up. Got to go—there’s an absolute epidemic on. Cheerio!”

C
abal worked slowly but surely as the necessary elements came in. He hardly slept, hardly ate, hardly spoke but to demand some new substance or piece of apparatus. His every move was reported to Count Marechal: every drop from every pipette; every process observed; his notes were stolen, copied, and returned every time he napped. The count studied them but found them impenetrable, some sort of personal cipher, and he passed them on to the Imperial Intelligence Section for cryptanalysis. Less impenetrable, to the count’s shrewd eye at any rate, had been Cabal’s demand for fifty pounds of freshly shaved cat hairs. The gaolers of Harslaus Castle would be wearing bandages for weeks. The sack containing the fruits of their painful labours sat, ignored, in the corner. The count knew petty revenge when he saw it, and he welcomed it here; it showed Cabal was more human than he liked to pretend, and that lurking somewhere within him was a sense of humour, albeit a cruel one. A man is known by his actions, and the count liked to know those he dealt with.

The day of the speech approached, and Cabal finally sent for the late emperor’s mortal remains. He thawed it in a circle of lamps that had been manufactured to his specifications, fuelled with a blend of oils that baffled and disturbed the small army of chemists Marechal had assembled. Cabal had Antrobus carefully placed on the cold white floor before surrounding him with a circle of five of the lamps—their glistening reflectors facing inwards—each vertex of the precise pentagon joined to its neighbours with fluorescent tubes filled with gases that, theoretically, shouldn’t fluoresce. The gas mixture had cost one of the artisans charged with their construction his sanity. Now he lay in a padded cell screaming about the infraviolet and the corners in time. Marechal deliberately left the technical report unread and ordered the destruction of all Cabal’s equipment when it had fulfilled its purpose.

The lamps and the tubes burned for exactly twenty-three hours before abruptly extinguishing themselves. All through the time Cabal had sat cross-legged, in a light trance, muttering some sort of mantra beneath his breath.

“Well, I don’t know if he’s the real thing or a fraud,” Karstetz commented late that evening, “but he’s frightfully good at whatever it is he’s doing. More Bikavér?”

The instant the lights went out, Cabal’s eyes rolled back down in their sockets and he jumped inside the line of tubes. He plucked a syringe case from his pocket, drew a quantity of faintly shimmering liquid from a bottle, and began injecting the corpse at specific points—the temples, the base of the throat, the solar plexus. Marechal had the misfortune to be the only person handy when Cabal needed part of the emperor’s bulk moved out of the way so that he could get at some of the less savoury locations. “What are you doing?” asked the count, making conversation in an attempt to distract himself from what he was doing and where his hands were.

Cabal said nothing as he drew a full fifty millilitres of the fluid, carefully positioned the point of the great steel needle, and pushed it in with some effort and the sound of separating gristle. “Do you know what the ka is?”

“No.”

“Ki?”

“No.”

“Chakra?”

“Ah, now that’s a sort of round throwing knife from somewhere or other on the subcontinent. Fearsome thing, in the right hands,” Marechal said with enthusiasm.

Cabal paused for half a second before carrying on. “And that’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Then I can’t explain it to you. Come back when your education includes the details of life as well as the commission of death.”

Count Marechal looked at Cabal, paling with anger. Cabal looked back at him evenly, noting both how very easy Marechal was to provoke and the scar on his cheek that seemed to be visible only when he was angry. “You duel, Count?”

The count brought himself under control. “I did, when I was at university. You mean the scar? Yes.”

Cabal seemed to have lost interest. He’d moved on to the corpse’s legs and was inserting the needle behind the patella of the right knee. “You can put that down now. Unless you’ve developed a personal attachment, of course.”