Simon cursed. He knew that somewhere here the solution of the secret had to be found. He could practically feel it. Furiously he returned the drawer to the closet to push it in and take out a new one. As he stood up he brushed against the pages that had already been lying on the table. They floated to the floor. Hastily Simon picked them up, but then he stopped. A document in his hand was torn on one side, as if someone had quickly ripped off part of it. The seal had been broken in haste. He glanced down at it.
Simon froze. The deed of donation! However it was only the first page, the rest had been torn off very neatly. He quickly looked through the documents on the table and checked the floor. Nothing. Someone had taken the document from the closet, read it, and taken away the part that was important to him—probably a sketch of the property. He did not seem to have had much time however, in any case not enough to return the document to the drawer. The thief had quickly shoved the piece of paper under the stack of the other documents on the table…
Simon shuddered. If someone stole this document, it could only be someone who knew about the key behind the tile. That meant Johann Lechner himself…or one of the four burgomasters.
Simon swallowed hard. He noticed that his hand, still holding the document, was trembling slightly. What had the patrician Jakob Schreevogl told him earlier about the meeting?
Could the first burgomaster himself be involved in this thing with the children? Simon’s heart beat faster. He remembered how Semer had questioned him a few days ago in his own inn and had finally advised him not to continue investigating the case. And wasn’t it also Semer who had always spoken against the construction of the leper house, purely in the interest of the town, as he said? Because after all, lepers before the gates of a trading town really didn’t look good? But what if Semer wanted to delay the construction work only because he suspected that a treasure was hidden on that piece of land? A treasure he had heard about from his close friend, Ferdinand Schreevogl, a member of the inner circle of aldermen, just shortly before his death?
Simon’s thoughts were racing. The devil, the dead children, the witches’ marks, the abduction of Magdalena, the missing hangman, a burgomaster as the puppet master of a monstrous murder conspiracy…All these were racing through his mind. He tried to bring some order to the chaos raging in his mind. What was most important now was to free Magdalena, and to do that he had to find the children’s hiding place. But someone had entered this room before him and had stolen the plan of that parcel! All he was left with was a first page on which the main facts of the donation had been inscribed. Desperately Simon looked down at the piece of paper with its Latin words. Quickly he translated them:
Dried up?
Simon stared at the small words at the very bottom of the document: dried up.
The physician slapped his forehead. Then he put the piece of parchment under his shirt and ran out of the stuffy room. Hastily he locked the small door and returned the key to the niche behind the tile. A few seconds later he reached the entrance of the Ballenhaus downstairs. The two bailiffs had disappeared. Most likely they had gone back to the inn to fetch more medicine. Without paying any heed to whether anyone noticed him, Simon left the Ballenhaus and ran across the market square.
But from a window on the other side of the square, someone was indeed observing him. When the man had seen enough he pulled the curtain shut and returned to his desk. Next to a glass of wine and a piece of steaming meat pie was a torn-off piece of parchment. The man’s hands trembled as he drank, and wine dripped onto the document. The red drops spread slowly across the document, leaving spots that looked like blood seeping out across it.
The hangman lay on a bed of moss, smoked his pipe, and blinked into the last rays of the afternoon sun. From a distance he could hear the voices of the guards at the building site. The workmen had already gone home at noon because of the May Day celebrations the next day. Now the two bailiffs assigned to guard duty were loafing around, sitting on the chapel wall, and throwing dice. Occasionally Jakob Kuisl could hear the sound of their laughter. The guards had pulled worse duty in their days.
Now a new sound was added to the others, a rustling of twigs coming from the left. Kuisl extinguished his pipe, jumped to his feet, and disappeared in a matter of seconds in the underbrush. When Simon tiptoed past him he reached for his ankle and pulled him down with a quick tug. Simon hit the ground with a soft cry and felt for his knife. The hangman’s face appeared, grinning, between the branches.
“Boo!”
Simon dropped the knife.
“My God, Kuisl, did you ever frighten me! Where were you all this time? I was looking for you everywhere. Your wife is very worried, and besides…”
The hangman placed one finger to his lips and pointed toward the clearing. Between the branches, the watchmen could be vaguely made out as they sat on the wall throwing dice. Simon continued in a low voice.
“Besides I now know where the children’s hiding place is. It is…”
“The well,” Jakob Kuisl said, finishing the sentence for him and nodding.
For a moment Simon remained speechless.
“But…How did you know? I mean—”
The hangman cut him off with an impatient wave of his hand.
“Do you remember when we were at the building site that first time?” he asked. “A wagon was stuck in the ditch. And there were barrels of water loaded on the wagon. At the time I didn’t think much of it. Only much too late did I wonder why someone would take the trouble of bringing water when there was a well there!”
He pointed over at the round stone well, which looked old and dilapidated. From the topmost row of stones, several were broken off and lay stacked up at the edge, as if to serve as small, natural stairs. No chain or bucket was attached to the weathered wooden framework above the circle of stones. Simon swallowed. How could they have been so blind! The solution had been before their eyes all this time.
He quickly told the hangman of his conversation with Jakob Schreevogl and about what he had discovered in the archives of the Ballenhaus. Jakob Kuisl nodded.
“In his fear, Ferdinand Schreevogl must have buried his money somewhere shortly before the Swedes arrived,” he mused. “Perhaps he did hide it in the well. Then he had a fight with his son and bequeathed the parcel together with the treasure to the church.”
Simon interrupted him.
“Now I also remember what the priest told me back then at confession,” he cried. “Schreevogl supposedly talked about it on his deathbed, saying that the priest could still do much good with the parcel of land. At the time I thought he meant the leper house. Now I think it’s clear that he was speaking of the treasure!”
“Someone among the moneybags in the council must have gotten wind of it,” growled the hangman. “Probably old Schreevogl told someone when he was drunk or shortly before his death, and that somebody has done everything possible to stop the construction at the site and find that damn treasure.”
“Obviously burgomaster Semer,” said Simon. “He has the key to the archive, so he was able to get his hands on the map of that piece of land. It’s quite possible that he also knows about the dried-up well by now.”
“Quite possible indeed,” said Jakob Kuisl. That makes it even more urgent that we take quick action now. The solution to the mystery lies at the bottom of that well. Maybe I’ll also find some clue regarding my little Magdalena…”
The two men fell silent for a moment. Only the chirping of birds and the occasional laughter of the watchmen could be heard. Simon noticed that he had forgotten Magdalena for a brief moment over all the excitement of the past hour. He was ashamed of himself.
“Do you think they could have…” he started and noticed how his voice was breaking.
The hangman shook his head.
“The devil has abducted her, but he hasn’t killed her. He needs her as a hostage, to make me show him the children’s hiding place. Besides, that wouldn’t be his way. He first wants to have his…fun, before he kills. He likes to play.”
