Johannes Cabal the Detective

fluttered away.

Miss Barrow watched her with mixed emotions, though none were sympathy. Even if Lady Ninuka was all that she seemed, that just made her a callous sensualist who hadn’t killed anyone, as opposed to a callous sensualist who had. It hardly made her a figure worth pitying in either case.

From the salon window, she watched Parila dwindle into the distance until finally it was lost in cloud and haze as the Princess Hortense gained height. With it went Cabal and, unhappy circumstance, the only person she’d trusted in the game of death she’d rejoined. Despondent and perhaps a little scared, she ordered a pot of tea — a drink she enjoyed all the more since realising that the Mirkarvians disliked it even conceptually as having too little alcohol or caffeine to be trustworthy.

An hour or so later, and on her third cup, she was reading a book on Mirkarvian history (a dismal study of a country that never learns from its mistakes, akin to watching a baby play with a revolver; something dreadful is sure to happen, and only the exact timing is in question), when there was some commotion.

Colonel Konstantin, still prickly after the Senzans had questioned him closely and been impudently thorough in searching his luggage on the basis that he was the most obvious manifestation of Mirkarvian militarism aboard, was looking out of the aft windows while smoking a foul cigar when he took it from his mouth with an expression of surprise and stared steadily through the glass. “What’s that fella doing, hmm?”

The Roborovskis came over to join him. “It’s one of those flying machines,” said Frau Roborovski.

“It’s an entomopter!” added her husband, in an enthusiastic tone at odds with his usual demeanour. “How wonderful!” When the Senzans sent a squadron of the machines to shadow the Princess Hortense toward Parila, he was the only person aboard who regarded them with anything but suspicion and trepidation. “They must have sent one to escort us out of their skies.”

The colonel, always prepared in a way that many Boy Scouts frequently are not, had already pulled a set of small prismatic binoculars of the Daubresse pattern from his pocket and was observing the distant aircraft. “No,” he said definitely, “it’s nothing like the other ones. I don’t see any weapons. I think it may be a reconnaissance model. Coming on damn quick.”

Miss Barrow joined them in squinting at the black dot against the white cloud. Amidst the speculation that murmured around her, she had trouble keeping a straight face. It was difficult not to be a little smug; not for the first time, she had read Johannes Cabal better than he knew. For a man with a stated hatred of the dramatic, she knew that he wouldn’t be able to leave the mystery of the Princess Hortense alone, and here he was, riding to the rescue aboard what was doubtless a stolen entomopter. She didn’t flatter herself for a second that he was doing this for anyone but himself, but the sense of knowing his mind before he did gave her a proprietorial sense of warm regard, like the owner of a well-trained dog.

After a few minutes, it was apparent to all with or without binoculars that the entomopter was of a design different from the Senzan fighters’, and that it carried no obvious weapons. It gained height until it was some little distance above the aeroship, and the last they saw of it was it slowly vanishing overhead until the salon ceiling got in the way.

Colonel Konstantin put his binoculars away. “That machine landed on us.” He looked towards the doors as if hoping a member of the crew would enter and make an explanatory announcement, but the crew was notable by its absence. Even the bar was unattended. “Just what is going on here?” He marched off to find out.

* * *

Just what was going on there was not immediately forthcoming. Indeed, the remaining passengers gravitated towards the salon and were eventually reduced to helping themselves to drinks from behind the bar. Colonel Konstantin returned in a bad humour, having been given short shrift by what few crew members he had been able to find. Apparently, the arrival of an unexpected visitor had caused quite an upset, and neither the captain nor any of his senior officers were available. Almost an hour passed before Captain Schten appeared in the door, just as Herr Roborovski was filling a stein.

“Ah,” Roborovski began apologetically, “we’ve been keeping a record of what’s been drunk, Captain.” But the captain just waved him to silence. It seemed that bar accounts were the least of his concerns at the moment.

“Exactly what has been going on, Captain?” asked Miss Ambersleigh. “There’s been a very queer atmosphere aboard this vessel ever since we arrived at Parila, and things just seem to be getting worse.” She would have expanded upon this theme, but Lady Ninuka shushed her sharply, and she sank into an aggrieved silence.

“The lady is correct,” said Konstantin, referring to Miss Ambersleigh and not Lady Ninuka, which is to say, lady is as lady does. “What in blazes is wrong with this voyage?”

Captain Schten looked at them all unhappily. Then, at the sound of boots on the floor behind him, he stepped to one side.

The man who walked into the salon was an utter stranger to Leonie Barrow, but she disliked him instantly. Perhaps it was the way that he looked at the passengers, with the disdain of a chess grandmaster faced with an opponent who refers to his pieces as “prawns,” “castles,” and “horsies.” He was a lean man in a black uniform that, despite clearly belonging to someone of high rank, bore few decorations and was all the more impressive for it. In truth, since he wore the Imperial Star at his throat it could pretty much be taken for granted that he already had all the others.

He carried a shako under his left arm, while in his right hand he held a typewritten sheet of paper. Lady Ninuka started to say something, but he quelled her with a glance. Once he had silence, he studied the paper, then slowly looked around the salon, checking every face. His brow clouded, and Miss Barrow had the very distinct impression that this was a man inclined to violence with very little provocation.

“Where is he, Captain Schten?” he said in a voice low with threat.

“Sir?” Schten looked at the newcomer as if they had previously been rehearsing a drawing-room comedy yet he’d just been given a cue from Macbeth. “I thought I explained. We — ”

“Two … scheduled departures. One … disappearance,” grated the man. “One … suicide. But there are five people missing here.” The violence in him was bubbling to the surface as surely as a geyser. “Where is he?”

The captain finally understood the specifics, if not the animosity, and quickly said, “You mean Herr Meissner? He stayed behind in Parila, but — I assure you — he is a loyal servant of Mirk — ”

“Herr … Gerhard … Meissner …” spat the man, “is in Harslaus Military Hospital, Captain. In a coma.” As he said this last word, he spun on his heel to glare at Captain Schten. Schten had two inches in height and better than forty pounds on the stranger, but he quailed before the man’s anger, and Miss Barrow saw that she wasn’t at all overdramatising his power. Schten was terrified of him, and that terrified her.

“The man who so easily pulled the wool over your eyes, Captain, is called Johannes Cabal. He is an agent provocateur. A saboteur! He assassinated our glorious emperor! He is the despised enemy of every Mirkarvian!” He was bellowing in Schten’s face by now, and Schten seemed to shrink with every shouted syllable, with every fleck of foam the raging man spat into his face. “And you, Captain … you have allowed him to escape justice and run off into his rat hole! If I didn’t need you, you moronic piece of garbage, I would kill you now.”

There was a horrible silence. Then Lady Ninuka said in a very small voice, “Hello, Daddy.”

“Hello, Orfilia,” said the man offhandedly, not turning his head.

Miss Barrow’s eyes widened. This, then, was Count Marechal, of whom even the bloodless Johannes Cabal was wary. Now she understood his reluctance to continue the journey. Indeed, she now shared it.

The count spoke quickly and emphatically, his mind already planning ahead. “How far are we from the Katamenian border?”

“About ninety minutes, sir.”

“At flank speed?”

“Less than an hour.”

Count Marechal grimaced. “It will have to do. See to it.” Captain Schten saluted, clicking his heels, and left the salon, apparently very happy to do so.

“Excuse me?”

Marechal looked over at the passengers and saw that a young woman with rather unruly blond hair had her hand up. “Who are you?”

“Leonie Barrow. Would I be right to think you’re Count Marechal?”