The look Smits flung him was bleak as a rock. “Can’t come here now. Away with you!” He peered, recognized the approaching visitor. “Can’t come here now, Doctor! Governor’s orders! The prisoners are about to riot, Sir, they think their bread ration is about to be reduced — a damned lie, but try to tell them that — Back, Sir! I says, Away with you! Don’t you hear — ” He gestured, said some words in a lower voice. Two captains and a number of ordinary guards began to trot forward, holding the rifles at the oblique, to bar his way.
He reached into his pocket and thrust holding his forearm up at the traditional forty-five degree angle, thrust out the Provo.
Sub-Governor, Captains, and guards alike, sweeping off their caps, fell on their knees in the mud; the Sub-Governor, who alone was unencumbered with a rifle, crossing himself repeatedly.
The Governor himself stood on the inner parapet, shouting at the prisoners below. All along the platform were guards, rifles pointing down into the yard. But no one could hear a word the
Baron was saying over the noise of the shouting and the ringing chains of the convicts. He turned his head, as Eszterhazy approached, and his mouth fell silent. That is, presumably it fell silent. At any rate, his mouth ceased to move. Eszterhazy stepped next to him and held up the Provo.
With one great and simultaneous crash of chains, the convicts fell on their knees.
A ringing, echoing silence followed.
“I have received this from the Emperor,” Eszterhazy said. “I bring you assurance that the bread ration is not to be reduced.”
They did not, after all, give three cheers for the Emperor. Perhaps it was shock. One man, however, in a loud, hoarse voice, half growl, half-shout: "Good old Bobbo/”
“No punitive measures will be taken .... this time .... but you are to return to your cells, at once!” The words were Eszterhazy’s. The Governor, speechless, gestured to the Sub-Governor. The Sub-Governor barked an order. All the rifles went цр — straight up. And stayed so. Down in the yard, someone (a trusty, by his red patch) cried, “Hump, tump, thrump. Jump!” The convicts fell into ranks, turned about, and, line by line, in lock-step, began to file out of the yard.
C/asA-clash-clash-clash.
C/asA-clash-clash-clash ....
The riot was over. This time.
The Sub-Governor gave a long look at the sketch which Eszterhazy showed him. (The Gbv-ernor was drinking brandy and looking at nothing.)
“Why, yes, Sir Doctor,” said Sub-Governor Smits. “Yes, I do remember him. You says to me, ‘This one’s got a bad lung, so keep him out of the damp if you possibly can.’ Which I done, Sir Doctor, which I done, inasmuch as we of the Administration of Guards are human beings after all, and not aminals like some would have it said.” Even up here, in the middle story of the old tower, far above the cell-blocks, the smell of sweat and urine and of disinfectant seemed very strong. “Consequently is why he left here alive and in better health than he come in.”
Eszterhazy stared. “It has been a fatiguing week, Sub-Governor. A fatiguing week.” On the mottled wall, Ignats Louis, bifurcated beard and all, looked down, benignly. “Assist my memory, please. When did I say this?”
Smits raised a rough, red hand to his rough, red chin. “Why .... Strange that I should remember, Sir — his face, not his name — and you not, with your great mind. But, then, I never was one much for writing and for reading. But I could remember by sight, as a boy, every beast in our township. — Well. When. Why, when you examine his noggin, Sir. Excuse me, Sir Doctor, we are rough men here. — When you give the first of them free no-logical examinations. Is when.”
And so, after much digging up of old records and after much checking and cross-checking of the prison files, it was found.
Number 8727-6. Gogor, Teodro. Age, 25.
Offense, Forgery, 2nd class. State, Confused. Remarks, Perhaps Dement. Prae.
And so on. And so on. And so on.
“Well, well ... I am much obliged. And now I must get back to Bella, and to think about this.”
The Sub-Governor rose along with him, said, casually, “And so you think, Sir Doctor, that this old lag, Gogor, he might be the one that’s tookenthe Holy Jewels?”
Eszterhazy once again looked at his Sovereign’s face. After a moment, he turned back to Smits. “Why do you think that?”
Smits shrugged, began to hold up Eszterhazy’s overcoat for him. “Well, I dunno for sure, of course. But they were cracked from old St. Sophie’s Crypt, it’s been in all the papers. They say, the papers, that it was,an amateurish job. Which it succeeded because the crib they were in, it was so old, the mortar was crumbly, and so on. “Amateurish,’ but the same time they say, ‘Professional tools may have been employed,’ Yes.”
Eszterhazy buttoned his coat. “Thank you, Smits. Yes — and so?”
“Well, Sir Doctor. It come into my mind as we were talking, this Gogor, he was in old cell 36-E-2. And who was in there with him? Szemowits, another fancy-writer (forger, that is). A chap I can’t recall his name, up for Rape, Second. And Old Bleiweisz. Do you recollect Old Bleiweisz? Well, he was a cracksman. One of the best, they tell me. Anyways, he said he was. Always talking about How To Do it, and how he Done It. And so, well, just perhaps, now the thought came to me, maybe that is how this Gogor — if it was him — how he got the idea of how to do it. You see....”
Eszterhazy, nodding, buttoned his gloves. “I see. An interesting thought. Would it be possible to speak to this Bleiweisz?”
But the Sub-Governor said it would not be possible. “He’s drawn the Big Pardon, as the lags say. He’s under the flagstone now. What was it, now, as done for him? Ah, yes.”
He opened the door, gestured Eszterhazy to pass ahead of him.
“It was lungs, that was it. Dunno why. He was healthy when he come in.”
Lobats did not seem to have gotten enough sleep, lately. He looked at the paper Eszterhazy had given him, blinked, shook his head. “What is this? Something about somebody sent up for a Forgery, Second, seven years ago? — Better take this downstairs to records, Doctor. I’ve got something, well, a lot bigger to worry about.”
Eszterhazy said that he was sure of (hat ... that he had suspected as much ever since he had seen Commissioner of the Detective Police Karrol-Francos Lobats so deep in conversation in the Pearl Market. Conversation with Jewellers’ Association President De Hooft. So deep that Lobats had not even time for a word with his old aquaintance and so-often companion, Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy ....
Was it unfair for him to be rubbing it in like this? Maybe. Maybe not. Eszterhazy did not want it thought that he, and everything that his immense knowledge and capacity had to offer, could be regarded as the toy of an idle moment, to be picked up, and to be set aside or ignored when someone else might want to ....
“This Forgery, Second, fellow may be the fellow you are so worried about. We will both need all the information on him you can find ... in Records ... or out of Records. Do you take my word for it? Or shall I show, shall we say, Authority?” He had begun to have a superstitious notion that he ought to be chary about displaying the Provo, lest overexposure might ... somehow ... dissipate its power.
Lobats said, heavily, “I take your word for just about anything. But I am not worried about a forger. I’m worried about —”
“A jewel theft. Yes.”
For all his heaviness, Lobats got up quickly from his chair. “Well, it has been known for crooks to change styles. I sure hope you are right.”