“Have you read Coriolis’s memoir on billiards?” Simone asked.
“No,” I said gloomily. “And I don’t plan to.”
“Well, I have,” Simone said. He finished me off with two shots and broke at last into his creepy giggle. I lay my cue across the table.
“There’s no one left to play with, Simone,” I said bitterly. “I guess now you can blow your nose in your prize by yourself.”
Simone grabbed the handkerchief and solemnly tucked it into his breast pocket.
“Excellent,” he said. “What shall we do now?”
I thought about this.
“I think I’ll have a shave. It’s almost lunch.”
“What about me?” Simone asked.
“You can play some pool with yourself,” I advised. “Or go to Olaf’s room. Do you have any money? If you do, they’ll greet you with open arms.”
“Ah,” Simone said. “I’ve already been there.”
“What—already?”
“I lost two hundred crowns to Olaf. He plays like a machine—not a single mistake. It’s not even interesting. I set Barnstoker on him. He’s a magician, after all, maybe he can pull a card trick on him…”
We went out into the hallway and immediately bumped into the child of Du Barnstoker’s beloved deceased brother. The kid stood in our way, its black bulging goggles gleaming brazenly at us. It asked for a cigarette.
“How was Hinkus?” I asked, pulling out a pack. “Is he totally soused?”
“Hinkus? Um…” The kid lit the cigarette and, curling its lips into a circle, puffed out some smoke. “Not totally, but he kicked the first bottle and started on another one.”
“Oho,” I said. “On his second already…”
“What else is there to do here?” the kid asked.
“Were you drinking with him?” Simone asked with interest. The kid snorted haughtily.
“Not likely! He barely noticed me. After all, Kaisa was there…”
It occurred to me that here was an opportunity to figure out definitively whether I was talking to a boy or a girl. So I laid my trap.
“You were in the pantry then?” I said insinuatingly.
“Yes. So what? The police don’t allow that?”
“The police just want to know what you were doing there.”
“The scientific community, too,” Simone added. It appeared that we’d had the same idea.
“Do I need a permit to drink coffee?” the child inquired.
“No,” I answered. “And what else were you doing there?”
Now she’ll… that is to say, it will say something like, “I had a nibble,” or “I wolfed down two sandwiches.”
“Nothing,” the child said coolly. “Coffee and pastries with cream. That’s all that happened in the pantry.”
“Sweets before dinner aren’t good for you,” Simone said reproachfully. He was clearly disappointed. I was too.
“As for getting drunk in the middle of the day: that’s not my cup of tea,” the kid concluded victoriously. “I’ll leave that to Hinkus.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered. “I’m going to go shave.”
“Any more questions, officer?” the kid called after us.
“No. Peace be with you,” I said.
The door slammed—the kid had retired to its room.
“I think I’ll have a little bite to eat,” Simone said, lingering on the landing. “Come on, Inspector—there’s still an hour before lunch…”
“I know what kind of a bite you’re looking for,” I said. “Go on, I’m a family man, Kaisa doesn’t interest me.”
Simone chuckled and said, “If you’re such a family man, can you tell me, was that a boy or a girl? I’m stumped.”
“Go play with Kaisa,” I said. “Leave the puzzles to the police… By the way, were you the one who pulled that prank with the shower?”
“I wouldn’t have dreamed of it,” Simone said. “If you want to know, in my opinion, it was the owner himself.”
I shrugged, and we went our separate ways. Simone’s boots pounded up the stairs as I headed for my room. The moment that I passed the door to the museum, I heard a crash, something toppled with a roar, there was the sound of glass breaking and frustrated grumbling. Without a second’s hesitation, I tore the door open and flew into the room, practically knocking Mr. Moses off his feet. Mr. Moses, who was lifting a corner of the carpet up with one hand, and in the other clutching his perennial mug, was looking with disgust at the overturned nightstand and the pieces of broken vase.
“Blasted rattrap,” he croaked at the sight of me. “Filthy den.”
“What are you doing in here?” I asked angrily.
Mr. Moses immediately lost his temper.
“What am I doing here?” he bellowed, jerking the carpet up with all his strength. Doing this, he nearly lost his balance and knocked over a chair. “Here I am, searching for the scoundrel who’s been tottering around our inn, stealing things from decent people, stomping up and down the hallway every night and staring through the window at my wife! Why the devil should I have to do this, when there’s an officer of the law on the premises?”
He threw the rug back down and turned to me. I took a step back.
“Maybe I should offer a reward?” he continued, working himself up. “The damned police don’t lift a finger until there’s a reward involved. All right—how much do you want, Inspector? Five hundred? A thousand? Very welclass="underline" fifteen hundred crowns to the man who finds my missing gold watch! Two thousand crowns!”
“You lost your watch?” I asked, frowning.
“Yes!”
“When did you notice it was missing?”
“Only a second ago!”
The jokes were over. A gold watch: that wasn’t felt slippers or a showering ghost.
“When did you last see the item in question?”
“Early this morning.”
“Where do you usually keep it?”
“I do not keep watches—I use them! It was lying on my desk!”
I thought this over.
“My advice,” I said finally, “is for you to write out a formal statement. Then I’ll call the police.”
Moses stared at me, and for a few minutes neither of us said anything. Then he took a sip from his mug and said, “To hell with your formal statement and the police. The last thing I want is for my name to fall into the hands of some grubby newspaper reporter. Why can’t you get to work on it yourself? I said I’d offer a reward. Do you want an advance?”
“I’m not comfortable intervening in this case,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I’m a civil servant, not a private detective. There’s professional procedure to be considered, and anyway…”
“All right,” he said suddenly. “I’ll think about it…” He paused. “Maybe it will turn up. Hopefully, it was all just another idiotic joke. But if the watch isn’t found by tomorrow morning, I’ll write your statement.”
We all agreed that this would be best. Moses went his way, and I went mine.
Who knows what new clues Moses found in his room. I had plenty of them in mine. For starters, someone had hung a sign on my door that said: “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I call the police.” I took it down, of course—but that was just the beginning. The table in my room appeared to be covered in hardened gum Arabic. Someone had poured it out of the bottle, which was lying in plain sight. In the center of the dried puddle was a piece of paper. A note. An utterly ridiculous note. In clumsy block letters: “MISTER INSPECTOR GLEBSKY: PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT A DANGEROUS GANGSTER, SADIST AND MANIAC IS CURRENTLY STAYING AT THE INN UNDER THE NAME HINKUS. IN CRIMINAL CIRCLES, HE GOES BY THE NAME ‘THE FINCH’. HE IS ARMED AND THREATENING DEATH TO ONE OF THE INN’S CLIENTS. MISTER INSPECTOR IS KINDLY REQUESTED TO TAKE SOME SORT OF ACTION.”