Johannes Cabal the Detective

“How may I help you, Fraulein?” he said, ignoring her question.

“Didn’t you hear anything?”

He drew breath to say he had slept through it, but changed his mind. “I heard something.” He looked out into the corridor and saw Colonel Konstantin, the Roborovskis, and — inevitably — Cacon milling around outside DeGarre’s door. “What’s happening?”

“I heard some sort of commotion coming from M. DeGarre’s cabin. Well, we all did.” She waved at the other passengers. “Now it sounds like he’s got his window open somehow.”

“Has anybody called for the officer of the watch?” He was answered by the arrival of Captain Schten himself, still buttoning his uniform collar.

“Ladies. Gentlemen. Kindly step back. I am sure there is nothing amiss.”

He made to knock on the door, but Cacon said, “You’re wasting your time there, Captain. I’ve been knocking until my knuckles are red raw.” Cabal noted that they plainly were not. “There’s no answer. Just the wind — whoooooo. Y’know what? I bet ’e’s done ’imself in.” He crossed his arms and looked both pleased and expectant, as if he anticipated that everybody would applaud his deduction and go back to bed, mystery solved.

The captain gave him a look that verged on hostility, and knocked sharply on the door. “M. DeGarre? This is the captain. Are you all right, sir?”

“You won’t get an answer, Capitano,” said Cacon. Irritatingly, he was right. Captain Schten listened for a moment, but all any of them could hear was the moaning wind beyond the door. Schten grasped the door handle and tried it, but it did not yield. He took a master key from his jacket pocket, unlocked the door, turned the handle, and started to open it while beginning an apology for the intrusion. Both the opening and the apology came up short as the door stopped abruptly in its travel.

“’is body’s probably in the way,” said Cacon, apparently knowledgeable in such things.

“Herr Cacon,” began Schten, his temper almost visibly fraying. Whatever he was about to say was thankfully lost when Colonel Konstantin interrupted.

“Herr Cacon,” the colonel said evenly. “Please return to your cabin. You are not helping affairs.”

“Eh?” The possibility of being less than vital in unfolding events seemed not to have occurred to Cacon. “Eh? Me? You can’t order me about, matey! I’m not in the army, y’know!”

“Sir,” said Schten, his temper reined back in the respite Konstantin had bought him. “As the captain of this vessel, you are under my authority. Please return to your cabin.”

“Oi, oi, oi!” Cacon was outraged by this attack on his dignity. “I ’ave as much right to be ’ere as anyone!”

“No,” said Captain Schten. “You don’t.” He summoned over the purser and a steward who had arrived and were standing uncertainly at the back of the group. “Take Herr Cacon back to his cabin, Steward. Make sure he stays there.”

Cacon was escorted away, still complaining. “This is a blinkin’ outrage! I’ll write a letter!”

“As you wish,” said the captain wearily. He waited until Cacon was gone before trying the door again. There was a distinct clunk against the handle after the first inch or so, and he could open the door no further. He regarded it grimly. “There’s a chair under the handle. M. DeGarre,” he called through the gap. “If you can hear me, please move away from the door.” He moved back to give himself space and kicked the door hard with the flat of his boot, just under the handle. They heard the chair bounce across the cabin floor, Schten already moving in to follow it.

Cabal was slightly surprised to find himself in the doorway a moment after Schten. His curiosity had, not for the first time, overridden his sense of self-preservation. Still, now he was there, it would be more suspicious for him to suddenly become all backwards about coming forward. So he stood just inside the door and looked around officiously, as if inspecting mysteriously empty aeroship cabins in which a chill wind whipped around his naked knees were all part of a Mirkarvian civil servant’s duties. Schten was already by the window, which was slid back along its track as far as it would go. He looked out into the darkness.

“He’s gone,” he said, his words almost lost in the howling wind. He shook his head. “Stupid, stupid man.” He slid the window shut with an angry slam. The sudden silence was almost shocking.

“How,” said Cabal, wondering how far he could let the uncomfortable persona of Herr Meissner slip in safety. Every degree was a relief. “How did he open the window? If it’s like mine, it’s fixed with a screw.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to Schten. He looked at the window again and seemed nonplussed. He cast his gaze around the room. “I don’t know, Herr Meissner. The windows can be opened when we are at anchor and in low-level flight, but my crew would have made the rounds of all the cabins and secured the windows when we began to climb.”

On the bed, he found the answer to this small mystery. A tool wallet lay open, its elasticated straps holding in place the sort of small spanners, screwdrivers, and other devices that a man with an interest in the mechancal might well carry in his luggage. One screwdriver was out of place, lying across its fellows. Beside it was the missing window screw. Schten picked it up and showed it to Cabal. “It was never foreseen that a passenger would have both the desire to open a cabin window at high altitude and the means by which to do it.” He sighed as he looked at the window. “A tragedy.”

“Why did he do it?” Konstantin had walked past Cabal to stand in the rapidly cluttering cabin. “He seemed in perfect equilibrium at dinner. Why would he return here with every appearance of good humour and then coldly and methodically put an end to himself?”

Schten shrugged. “Dinner was several hours ago. Perhaps he spent that time brooding over something. The man who undid that window may have been of very different composure to the man to whom we bid good night.”

Konstantin was unimpressed. “Brooding over what?”

“The boy was right. I have dedicated my life to science, and all it has brought is death. The victims of my machines cry out for justice. I shall give it to them.”

Konstantin and Schten turned to Cabal in astonishment. They found him leaning over a portable typewriter on the small writing desk. He was reading from a sheet still in place between platen and paper bail.

Cabal turned and looked at the two men. “He typed his suicide note. How very modern of him.”

Schten glared at him. “For God’s sake, Meissner! A man’s dead.” He made to remove the sheet from the typewriter. Before he could reach it, however, Cabal tapped a lever on the typewriter’s carriage twice smartly and then tapped a key. He pulled the sheet from the machine himself and regarded it sharply for a moment before handing it over.

“The inevitable investigation into M. DeGarre’s death will no doubt wish you to preserve this as evidence, Captain,” he said.

Schten was coming to the conclusion that he really didn’t like the meddlesome Herr Meissner. “What was the point of that, sir?”

“To give the police a comparison. I have repeated the last m of the message, as you can see. We are all witnesses that I typed it on this machine and, even to the naked eye, the two letters seem identical. Believe me, Captain, a thorough investigation would leave no stone unturned and no hypothesis unconsidered, including the possibility that this note was typed on another machine and left here to divert suspicion.”

“What? What? Are you serious, man? The door was locked and barred from the inside. Are you suggesting that the poor man was murdered and the murderer threw the body out of the window and then himself to follow?”

“I am suggesting it, yes, but not as a serious theory, only as a possibility. There are such things as parachutes, after all.”

“Parachutes? This is a civil vessel, sir; it has no need of parachutes. And before you suggest that this remarkable murderer of yours brought his own aboard, you should understand that we are travelling in near-total darkness over wooded mountains. No one but a lunatic would attempt such a jump.”

“There are such things as lunatics, Captain.” Cabal held up his hands to forestall Schten’s increasing wrath. “Peace, sir. I do not believe for a second that this is the case. While there are certain religious and political groups that encourage a degree of fanaticism in some of their members, that they may be used as expendable assassins, they are rarely subtle. I see no reason that any such organisation should want to kill M. DeGarre and then disguise