The librarian lifted his head, placed his pen on the table, and stretched his arms. “It's the last crate. I may as well finish.”
The venerable smiled and approached the desk. He picked up the book that the librarian was in the process of recording, and examined the spine. It read: Journal fur Freymaurer, 1784-1786, Volume IV.
“Do we have all twelve volumes?” asked the venerable.
“Of course,” said the librarian.
“Excellent,” said the venerable, stroking the binding. “All of the Truth and Unity papers. It will be an invaluable addition to our collection.”
The librarian picked up his pen again and began to scratch another entry into his register. The venerable was about to leave, but was momentarily distracted by a book lying open and facedown on the desk. He picked it up and glanced at a mezzotint illustration. Beneath the picture was a caption: Schaffer's design reproducing Schikaneder's staging. The illustration showed a snake cut into three sections.
Part Two
28
RHEINHARDT DID NOT FEEL comfortable in the morgue. Even when its hollow emptiness was enlivened by the sound of human voices it remained a forbidding, misanthropic place. For the umpteenth time he curled his finger into the fob pocket of his vest and tugged the chain. The hands on the watch face had hardly moved.
Where is he?
Suspended from the ceiling was an electric light. Its beam was directed by means of a low conical shade onto sheets, the topography of which suggested a recumbent human form. Beyond this concise column of illumination was an impenetrable expanse of darkness.
The cold was excruciating but Rheinhardt had given up blowing into his locked fingers. He had accepted that the nagging ache in his joints would in due course become a singing pain. Thereafter, he could only hope for the unsatisfactory solace of an anesthetic numbness.
The dense silence-so compressed that it had become tintinnabulary-was ringing in Rheinhardt's ears. He began to whistle a jaunty spirit-rallying tune of his own devising. When he reached the end of the second phrase, the caesura was filled by a long, protracted groan. Disconcertingly, it came from nearby. The faint yet disturbing rise and fall of the mortuary sheets confirmed that it was the corpse who had produced this mournful sound.
Rheinhardt was gripped by a paralyzing jolt of fear. His head pulsed and his heart knocked against the wall of his chest.
Is he still alive?
Impossible!
Rheinhardt ripped the uppermost cover off, revealing the face of a man in his fifties. It was a broad Slavic face, with high cheekbones and swept-back greasy hair. The blue lips were parted. Rheinhardt nervously placed the palm of his hand over the corpse's mouth but felt nothing.
“What on earth do you think you're doing, Rheinhardt?”
The inspector jumped. “Oh, Professor Mathias.”
The pathologist shuffled in and took off his hat and coat. “What's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost!”
“He groaned,” said Rheinhardt, gesturing toward the body. “I swear it. He groaned-like this.” Rheinhardt produced a plaintive moan.
“It's the gases, Inspector-the compounds released as the bacteria get to work on his last meal. They rise up and stimulate the voice box.”
Mathias hung up his coat and hat and took an apron down from a row of pegs. After slipping the top loop over his head, the old man tied the dangling side cords behind his back and shuffled over to the table.
“Good evening, sir,” he addressed the corpse. “And who-might I ask-do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“His name is Evzen Vanek,” Rheinhardt replied.
“A Czech?”
“Yes. He was carrying his papers. He sold chickens at the meat market.”
“Where was he found?”
“Near the Ruprechtskirche.”
“New to Vienna?”
“Arrived two months ago.”
“Ah, Evzen.” The professor brushed the man's hair with his fingers. “You should have stayed at home… Was not our citadel long undermined/Already by the Realm of Night?” The professor, his rheumy eyes bulging behind thick lenses, looked up at Rheinhardt. “Well, Inspector?”
“I don't know.”
“It was Schiller, Rheinhardt. ‘Melancholy.’ That should have been child's play!”
Mathias tutted and hobbled over to his cart, where he began a ritual with which Rheinhardt was all too familiar. The professor rolled up his shirtsleeves and proceeded to arrange and rearrange his instruments. A scoop was transferred from the bottom to the top shelf, via the second and third. A clamp was demoted. The largest drill was raised, examined, and then put back in exactly the same place.
“He was stabbed in the chest,” said Rheinhardt.
“Shhh!” Mathias pushed a vertical palm toward Rheinhardt as though repelling the interruption. He contemplated his array of instruments, and carefully placed a chisel next to a line of scalpels. “There we are,” he said-as if the elusive solution to a long-standing problem had suddenly presented itself. Turning to Rheinhardt, he added, “What was that you said?”
“He was stabbed in the chest.”
The professor turned the sheets back, revealing the upper half of the body. Vanek's shirt was dark, but the bloodstains were clearly visible. A vent showed where the blade had entered. The acrid smell of ammonia rose from the corpse's nether regions.
Mathias tried to undo the top button but the task was impossible. It was embedded in a crust of congealed blood. The old man inspected the gritty stains on his fingertips and lifted a giant pair of scissors from the cart. With workaday efficiency he cut the shirt from collar to hem and pulled the stiff cloth away. Two strips of chest hair were removed in the process. Rheinhardt averted his gaze. The sight and sound of the depilation was quite nauseating.
“Was he married?” asked Mathias.
“No.”
“Then let us thank God for small mercies,” said the pathologist.
Beneath the uncompromising light Vanek's wound was vivid: an angry red ellipse caked with a granular black excrescence.
Without looking back at the cart, Mathias reached out and snatched a magnifying glass from the second shelf. He leaned over the corpse and peered through the wide steel hoop.
“Interesting…,” he muttered. “Very interesting. Could you please step back a little, Inspector-you're stealing my precious light.” Reinhardt complied with the pathologist's request. “A stab wound- of course,” continued Mathias, “but somewhat irregular. The blade of a knife-properly so called-has a back and one cutting edge. The weapon used upon this gentleman had two cutting edges.”
“A sword?”
“Patience, Rheinhardt: festina lente.”
The old man carefully insinuated his fingers into the wound- a maneuver that was accomplished with the knowing sensitivity of a young lover. He closed his eyes and seemed to be entering a necromantic trance. Mathias swayed gently and mumbled to himself. In the sharp electric light, his exhalations became rolling white clouds that gathered over the corpse. He was like a medium, belching ectoplasm. Between each breath the old man's mumbling was disturbed by his asthmatic lungs, which produced an eerie harmonium-like accompaniment as the freezing air
