In the event, of course, it was Werthen who had to wait in the bitter cold for ten minutes. Gross made no apologies when he finally arrived, merely asking Werthen if he had got the sheets from Adler.
‘In my coat pocket,’ Werthen answered.
They mounted the steps to the vestibule, and inside the same hefty ex-military fellow was on duty at the information desk.
‘We would like to see Mayor Lueger,’ Gross said to the man.
This request was greeted by a plosive sound in the man’s nostrils: half snort and half snigger.
‘I’m sure you would. So would half of Vienna. Do you have an appointment?’
They had purposely not tried for an appointment, ensuring that the element of surprise would be on their side.
Gross nodded to Werthen, who pulled a folded front-page dummy of a newspaper out of his coat pocket.
‘Perhaps you could show him this. I believe he will see us.’
The guard took the newspaper and tossed it on to his desk along with other mail.
‘Now,’ Gross said with an authority to his voice that made the man sit ramrod straight.
‘I can’t very well leave my desk,’ he protested.
‘We will keep watch over it, right, Advokat?’ he said to Werthen.
‘Absolutely,’ Werthen agreed. Then to the guard: ‘You really should hurry. That is this afternoon’s edition and I believe Mayor Lueger might have something to say about it.’
‘Or should we tell Mayor Lueger later that his own vestibule guard was responsible for the end of his career?’ added Gross.
The man rose, suspicion written on his face. ‘This better not be some damn trick. When I come back, I expect to see you two waiting here.’
Gross saluted him. ‘We won’t budge from this spot.’
They waited several minutes as other well-dressed men entered and departed the vestibule. Each time steps descended the wide marble staircase they looked expectantly for the returning guard, only to be disappointed.
Suddenly the inter-office telephone on the guard’s desk rang. The abrupt jingle of it startled them at first, but then they returned their attention to the stairs. The telephone continued to ring. A most persistent caller, Werthen thought. And then the realization struck.
He picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ he said.
‘I am waiting,’ came the voice on the other end of the line. ‘Bielohlawek’s office.’
Werthen knew that high, resonant tone. It was Mayor Lueger himself.
They wasted no time in getting to the councilman’s office, not knowing what to expect there, wondering if they had over-played their hand. At least they had come armed, for at Gross’s insistence each was carrying one of the Steyr automatic pistols the criminologist always traveled with.
Reaching Bielohlawek’s corner office, however, they were met by the mayor’s bodyguard, Kulowski, who demanded to search them.
‘I assure you,’ Gross protested, ‘we have not come to assassinate your mayor.’
‘That’s as may be,’ the man growled.
Suddenly Werthen made a connection that had until this moment eluded him. It all added up now that it was clear that Lueger was in back of the Vienna Woods sale. Adalbert Kulowski was in fact the large beefy man Berthe had described, the man who had assaulted his father and chased the party away from the farmhouse in Laab im Walde.
‘Do you enjoy terrorizing women and children?’ Werthen looked the man straight in the eye.
‘What are you talking about?’ The man glared back at him.
‘About a little farmhouse at Laab im Walde. Sound familiar?’
Kulowski cut his eyes from Werthen for a fraction of a second.
‘The courts might have something to say about your tactics, Herr Kulowski.’
‘What’s keeping them, Kulowski?’ Lueger’s voice boomed from inside the office.
‘Indeed,’ Gross said with heavy indignation. ‘What is keeping us? Let us leave this bully to easier pickings. Come, Werthen.’
They brushed past the bodyguard, who by now was too confused to bother with his search.
Inside the room, Lueger sat behind Bielohlawek’s desk, and the councilman was seated in a smaller chair at his side. On the desk in front of them both was the mock-up of the front page of this afternoon’s Arbeiter Zeitung, which Adler had kindly supplied them with. The banner headline was upside down to Werthen, but he knew very well what it said, for he had written it:
Lueger to Sell Woods in Bid for Higher Office
A smaller headline underneath got the point across for any who could not interpret the main headline:
Man of the People Steals the People’s Woods for Private Gain
Under the two headlines was an article detailing the sale and naming those interested parties who were putting in bids, as well as their plans for development. It ended by elucidating Lueger’s own plans for the position of prime minister. The whole sordid business was laid out in plain, but sometimes breathless prose. Also written by Werthen.
‘I’ll sue if you print this,’ Lueger said, not bothering with introductions.
‘You will have to speak to Herr Adler about that,’ Werthen said. ‘I believe Herr Kraus will also be carrying a similar story in the next edition of Die Fackel. You might want to speak with him, too.’
Werthen wanted to make sure that Lueger understood that others were involved in this, as well. That others knew of their interview at the Rathaus today.
‘The censors would never allow it.’
Gross was impolitic enough to laugh at this. ‘I am afraid it is the Habsburgs who do the censoring around here. And they will be only too happy to have such news broadcast.’
‘You’ll regret this,’ Lueger snarled at them. ‘For as long as you both live.’
Neither responded to this threat, but rather stood in silence and let Lueger make the next move. Werthen’s hand slipped into his coat pocket and was comforted by the cold touch of the Steyr pistol.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘You are not the victim, Mayor,’ Gross said. ‘This is only what Councilman Steinwitz and Herr Praetor were attempting, before they were killed.’
‘Killed!’ Lueger stood as if an electric current had been shot through him. ‘Councilman Steinwitz shot himself in this very office. And of this journalist, I can only assume that a man with his predilections might meet with some very bad company.’
Werthen and Gross refused to be drawn into diversions from the issue at hand: stopping tomorrow’s sale of the Vienna Woods. They stood silently across the desk from Lueger as the mayor looked from one to the other.
Finally, ‘What is it you want?’
‘I should think that would be very clear,’ Werthen said. ‘Call off the sale. Neither Remington nor Wittgenstein would be very interested, I assume, with such adverse publicity,’ he said, pointing at the paper on the desk. ‘And your hopes for higher office, let alone another term as mayor, will be null if this is published.’
‘In your opinion,’ the mayor shot back.
Werthen shrugged. ‘Take your chances, then. The afternoon editions will be on the streets in three hours. Which gives you plenty of time to call this off and instead appear to be a heroic mayor who uncovered a despicable cabal out to privatize the Vienna Woods and foiled it.’
Lueger glanced at the front-page dummy in front of him. ‘Where does it say that?’
‘It doesn’t,’ Werthen said. ‘But it will, in this afternoon’s edition. A carrot for you and an assurance that you really will call off the sale.’
Lueger, despite his obvious anger, nodded in appreciation at the gambit. ‘You have given this some thought.’
‘We try,’ Werthen said. ‘Do we have your word?’
Lueger clenched his jaws violently.
‘Mayor?’ Werthen prodded him.
‘Yes, yes. My word.’
‘And you might tell Herr Kulowski that next time he decides to play rough with women and children there will be consequences.’
‘I have no idea whatsoever of what you are speaking,’ Lueger replied.