All nice and neat and dandy, I supposed. I still didn’t see what was so wrong with the clutter. Fifi was part of the clutter. Come to that, so was I.
The next telegram informed us the Thin Man was in Strasbourg.
‘Mabuse has a face in Strasbourg,’ the Prof explained. ‘As proprietor of a salle à manger. He was wearing that disguise a day after his visit to London. Many a courier of diplomatic pouches has been drugged and searched in that humble hostel by the main railway station. Our bloodhound has the scent!’
It was time to quit Paris. Our hosts knew what had happened in London, and we must have seemed like wounded beasts, fleeing. If ever there was a chance to kill us off without fear of reprisal, it was now. Irma invited me to dine in a private salon, more or less promising intimacies… even on the slim chance this was a genuine offer rather than a trap, I was inclined to make the play. Moriarty told me not to be a fool and produced tickets to Geneva.
It was our turn to leave luggage behind, but I carried the Von Herder with me.
XIII
Ever been to Geneva? It’s a clean city. The gutters are swept three times a day. On the streets the cobblestones are individually polished. The public conveniences are the most hygienic in the world. The tarts are scrubbed, efficient and copulate like the mechanical girl who comes out of the cuckoo clock. Even the rats have neat whiskers. The only thing dirty is the money.
If the Thin Man was following the money, the trail led here.
As we checked into the Hotel Beau-Rivage, Moriarty was handed a telegram. It fell to me to tip the bellboy — a French franc, hard Swiss cheese for him — while the Professor decoded the numbers and Greek letters he’d worked up as a special cipher for Sophy.
We had come to town ahead of the Thin Man, but he was on his way from Germany. Sophy reported that the detective, picking up clues found in that Strasbourg café, was interested in a Swiss banker, Adolphe Lavenza.
Without even looking at our suite, Moriarty hired a carriage to take us to the financial district — which, in Geneva, is three-quarters of the city. Zurich is worse, or better if you’ve an urge for that most overrated of criminal endeavours, bank robbery. That’s either out-and-out bandit foolishness which leads to getting shot by well-paid vigilante officers (if any institution can afford hired killers, it’s a bank — I’ve taken that shilling myself) or involves as much digging, blasting and carrying as any other kind of prospecting, with a consequent high risk of perishing in a cave-in or a mistimed detonation. Swiss banks don’t even have much negotiable loot on the premises: they bury their gold, and keep ledgers and IOUs to prove how rich their customers are.
From a coffee house across the road, we watched the Lavenza Bank for an hour. People came and went, most so respectable it was plain to the practiced eye that they were crooks, a few as close a Genevoise could be to low and shabby.
A clerical fellow took a seat at the next table, gulped a cup of molten dark chocolate, and departed without acknowledging us. I recognised Ueli Munster, the Swiss representative of Box Brothers. Whenever business brought him to London, Munster called upon Mistress Strict for a chastisement earned many times over in his financial dealings. The naughty banker left behind a copy of yesterday’s Times, which I snaffled as any Britisher curious for news from home might have. I turned with leaden heart to a notice of the Patterson raids, while the Professor slit open a packet of documents which had been concealed in the folded newspaper.
‘Adolphe Lavenza is Mabuse’s Swiss façade,’ Moriarty said, looking over Munster’s report. ‘His bank is the Great Unknown’s treasury. It played a part in the collapse of Baron Maupertuis. My disciple has ambitions to influence the economies of nations. He envisions a great bubble and crash after crash, an apocalypse of money. He sees further into the future than my brother, and marks out the real battlefields of the twentieth century: brokerages and banking houses. No armies or wonderful engines of war, but numbers. He has taken my methods, Moran. But he does not respect them. I see order. He wants chaos. Irreconcilable formulae.’
‘Bastard’s a damn anarchist!’
‘A poor label for what Mabuse is becoming. It will be almost a shame to stifle the monster in the crib. He might achieve a new kind of mathematics. But he is on the slate, Moran. The slate we shall wipe clean.’
‘Where’s the bloodhound? We’ve got to the quarry before him.’
‘I calculate the Thin Man will call on this address — without his travelling companion — in fifty minutes. We will cheat him of the kill.’
The Von Herder — our only luggage — was at the Beau-Rivage. I had my Gibbs pistol with me, though. And bare hands. The Times had put me in the mood to strangle a banker.
First, we needed to secure entry.
A respectable burgher, all pinstripes and pince-nez, emerged from the bank and strolled smartly round the corner. I held him against a wall by his throat while Moriarty determined which language to question him in. He spoke precise English. An Afghan tribal trick persuaded him to explain that a distinctive carte de visite was necessary to get past the front desk and secure audience with M. Lavenza. The card was surrendered by the caller, so he no longer had his pass. He said he could help us no more. Moriarty disagreed. We hauled him back to the main thoroughfare.
Within a few minutes, fortuitously, two men approached, carrying a wardrobe between them. One was fat, one thin. Our unwilling informant admitted he knew the men to be in Lavenza’s circle… then unwisely cried out for help. By the time the carriers had set down their burden to come to his aid, he was dead. Seconds after that, so were they. I broke the burgher’s neck and was stuck with a dead weight. Moriarty scientifically killed the workmen with his penknife. They were finished before they started bleeding. The Professor went through the fat man’s pockets and found two plain white cards punched with different queer-shaped holes.
This was all accomplished on a busy street, inside a minute. Passers-by paid no attention as we hustled slack bodies into the wardrobe — which was large and empty enough to accommodate them. Of different stations in society, they would not have sought or wished such intimacy in life. I reckoned them equals now.
A policeman marched up and I feared we’d have to cram in another, but his only interest was in making sure we did not leave furniture on the street.
‘It is untidy, an obstruction,’ he insisted.
I nodded to the Swiss constable and we hefted the wardrobe — not without difficulty, for obvious reasons — up to the entrance of the Lavenza Bank. The doors were opened by a liveried colossus. Moriarty presented the cards to a smart young lady, who posted them into a slit in a small, mechanical box. Gears ground and a red electric lamp flashed. We were told to leave the wardrobe and pass through a green-baize door.
In a small antechamber, we found upholstered chairs and a selection of German, French, Italian and English periodicals. All dull and financial. Nothing spicy. A voice boomed from the room beyond an inner door. Instructions were being issued in deep, rasping German. Someone — Mabuse as Lavenza, I supposed — outlined a plan for a daring robbery. Jewels from the Royal Collection of Ruritania, kept in Swiss vaults, were to make a rare public appearance at the coronation. An opportunity existed to seize them in transit from Geneva to Strelsau. Language aside, it could have been Moriarty talking. I sensed the Professor steaming. I was affronted on his behalf — Mabuse was plagiarising a classic Moriarty gambit. The sooner the copycat was in a bag and drowned, the better.