Under the false bottom Asher found ten small boxes of wax and wood, which contained impressions of keys, probably to the baggage car-possibly to all baggage cars in use on the line. Asher pocketed them and replaced the clothing. By the time Karolyi noticed they were gone, they'd be off the train.
The valise also contained two folded Personals sections of the London Times from successive dates, and these he dared not take away with him. Time was passing swiftly; he didn't have time to scan them, knowing that there would be no mark on the advertisement. He made a note of the dates, folded them as they had been, and replaced the valise above the velvet seat.
A traveler's chess set stood on the table, its men neatly ranked for a game. Ernchester's old-fashioned, fiddlebacked greatcoat hung near the door beside Karolyi's wide-skirted one; Asher checked the pockets quickly, wondering where the vampire would stay once they reached Vienna.
Back in his own compartment again, he rang for the porter, ordered dinner brought to him, adding with a wink and a couple of francs that he was indisposed. "You wouldn't have the English Times on board, would you?" "Certamente, sir," Giuseppe said, drawing himself up indignantly. "All the newspapers we have for our first-class passengers, of the latest editions." "How about last Saturday's? Last Friday's, too, if possible?"
"Hmm. That I don't know, m'sieu. I shall ask, shall look about the porters' rooms..."
"Discreetly," Asher said. "You don't need to bring me the whole thing. Just the Personals." He raised one eyebrow and tilted his head wisely, and the porter bustled away with the air of one who sees himself an experienced international intrigant.
And perhaps he was, thought Asher. In his position he'd have the opportunity. In any case Giuseppe returned with a much-battered copy of Saturday evening's Personals, retrieved from the porters' lavatory, and Asher spent the next half hour scanning it for whatever message had arranged the meeting between the vampire and the Hungarian.
Olumsiz Bey-Front
steps of British Museum, 7.-Umitsiz
Asher had to read it twice before he realized it was what he sought.
Olumsiz was Turkish for deathless-or perhaps undead. Umitsiz, for hopeless-or perhaps for the British form of the name Wanthope, the collateral name of the Earls of Ernchester, one of several under which Charles Farren had many years ago willed property to himself.
Curious. Why Turkish? Asher folded the paper, slipped it into his valise. Deathless Lord. Without Hope. Want-Hope. Wanthope. Deathless Lord...
Quite clearly Ernchester and Karolyi wanted to conceal their transactions. That would fit, if the other London vampires-who must surely read the Personals, nights being long for the Undead-frowned on an alliance. Would Grippen, the Master Vampire of London, know Turkish? Ysidro would, thought Asher, oddly uneasy at the memory of that bleached Spanish hidalgo who had, against the wishes of all the other London vampires, first sought his help. The Ottoman Empire had been a formidable power in the sixteenth century. It was conceivable that Ysidro, a courtier and sometime scholar, would know some of its ancient tongue. Conceivable, too, that the earl would. Certainly likelier than, for instance, Hungarian, which in that era had been the language of barbarians and herders, people without power in the West. Any of the other London vampires would almost certainly know German or French.
A Viennese or Hungarian vampire who had been made in the sixteenth or seventeenth century would very probably know the tongue of the armies that had repeatedly overrun his land.
Asher looked at the top of the paper again. Saturday, October 31-and no copy of Friday's paper. What, he wondered, had the summons said that made Ernchester so anxious to conceal his movements from the other London vampires, including his wife?
Who was it who called himself the Deathless Lord?
Even at ten in the evening the Vienna Bahnhof was the swarming center of the comings and goings of an empire. Stepping quickly from the train before it had even come to a complete halt, striding along the platform to mingle with the crowd, Asher felt the stab of homecoming-nostalgia, the pain of remembering. There was no city in the world quite like Vienna.
There were backcountry Jews in black caftans, tallis, and side curls being resolutely ignored by their frock-coated Germanic Reform co-religionists, Hungarian csikos in high boots and baggy trousers, a tattered rainbow of Gypsies. There were the Viennese themselves, ladies bundled in linen traveling coats and veils to guard against smuts, brilliantly uniformed men who might have been Lancers or postmen, children clinging to black-clothed governesses, and students in bright-colored caps. French, Italian, singsong Viennese German as unlike as possible from the tongue of Berlin blended with Czech, Romanian, Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian...
The air was redolent with coffee.
Vienna.
Illogically, as he made for the stand where the fiacres would be ranked-where Ernchester and Karolyi would head the moment the customs officials were through with their luggage-Asher found himself holding his breath, fearing that somehow, impossibly, he would meet Francoise.
He had dreamed about her, in his uneasy sleep that afternoon; a dream threaded with waltzes. She was walking along the Schottenring, past the marble and stucco and gilt of the great blocks of flats, through the crystal light of a spring evening. She looked not as she had looked thirteen years ago, but as she must look now, her hair almost completely gray, and lean as certain cats get as they age; rather like a cat in a gray walking suit tabbied with black lace.
I'm sorry, Francoise.
As he watched her, he had been piercingly aware of the ornate bronze gratings in the walls at sidewalk level, brushed by the gunmetal taffeta of her skirt. There was movement in the darkness, he realized, movement beneath the pavement under her feet; whispering in the shadows, eyes in the dark. Waiting only for the coming of night.
They were in Vienna as well.
Francoise, get out of there! he tried to shout. Go to your home, light the lamps, don't let them in. Don't speak to them, when they meet you on the pavement...
But because of what he had done, thirteen years ago, she could not hear him or would not heed. She walked on, and it seemed to him that gray mist drifted up through those bronze gratings and breathed after her down the street.
He shook the recollection away. It was not likely that he would meet her-she might not even live in Vienna anymore- and in any case, the love between them was past and done. And there was nothing for which he would trade the prospect of living the rest of his life with Lydia, that copper-haired, bespectacled nymph.
But still there was that ache in his heart whenever he heard the "Waltz of the Flowers."
"Herr Professor Doktor Asher?"
He turned, startled, halfway to the cab stand, his first thought, Not now!
Karolyi and Ernchester would be along in minutes.. -
Two brown-uniformed Viennese policemen stood behind him. Both bowed.
"You are the Herr Professor Doktor Asher who has just come from the Paris-Vienna Express?"
"I am, Herr Oberhaupt." The old Viennese custom of bestowing titles on everyone dropped immediately back into place, along with the lilting, slightly Italianate Viennese accent. "Is there a problem? I presented my passport..."
"No, no problem with the passport," said the policeman. "We regret extremely that you are wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of a man in Paris, a Herr Edmund Cramer. Will you be so good as to accompany us to the Rathaus?"
Shocked, for a moment Asher could only stare. Then a string of Czech curses caught his ear, and he looked around in time to see a couple of porters loading an enormous, brass-cornered trunk onto a goods wagon, observed by Karolyi and the Earl of Ernchester. Karolyi happened to turn his head and for a moment met Asher's eyes.