“Yes, Brigand,” the henchmen said. “Sure, Brigand! That’s the way we’ll do it, Brigand!”
“— and you, Vallackavo, go muck out the secret cell in the basement, and toss some clean straw into it —”
“Sorry, Brigand, the ceiling’s already fall in on the secret cell in the basement.”
“Then we’ll use the one up in the wall!”
No one had seen the Boustremovitch so excited since the time he had burned the Tartar’s toes; and when he shouted to them to Get Moving now!, they Got.
Count Magnus Calmar and Cornet Engelbert Eszterhazy absently observed a roughly-dressed fellow sitting in a doorway holding an empty bowl in his lap: propped against his body an equally-roughly-lettered sign bearing the initials of the words, Mute. Blind. Deaf. Mercy: equally absently dropped coins in it: continued their lighthearted conversation.
“You are sure that you would not rather go to Miss Betty’s?”
“I am quite sure.”
“Very well, then. I shall speak to my senior colleague, Lieutenant Knoebelhoffer, who is in the Equerries’ Room accounted rather knowledgeable on Gypsy dances and dancers; perhaps we may be able to arrange it for, say, later this evening — perhaps only tomorrow.”
“The sooner the better.”
“Agreed. Ah. By the way. Ahem. As we continue our educational walk,” they moved on, “you will observe to the left and across the street a rather smart new building which is the R.-I. Office of Commercial Statistics. Ahem.”
Magnus made a wry mouth. Then he gaped. Then he smiled a rather rusty smile. “Allow me to make a note of that... Baron Borg uk Borg will be pleased. Hm. I suppose they must have lots of statistics about stockfish.” He gave a faint sigh. They both moved forward to allow a train of six ox-carts laden with sacks of wheat to pass on along to Umlaut’s Mills from the Great Grain Dock, where they had been unladen off barges.
Eszterhazy said, “You produce a great deal of stockfish, your countries, I mean; do you not?”
Magnus gave a heavy sigh, pressed his hand to his brow. “Och, God! Yes! We catch fish and we dry fish and we catch it and we dry it and... You see: Frore stockfish is cheaper, Scand stockfish is better, and so each country feels justified in demanding regulation against the other: quotas, imposts, duties — och, God! And of course neither one wishes to allow the demands of the other. We catch it and we dry it and we boil it and we eat it and we eat it and sometimes we eat it with hot mutton-fat and sometimes without and we have still more of it than we can eat and more of it than we can export.... And so, lacking the money to import wheat, often we ... the people, I mean... are sometimes obliged to go without bread —” And he sighed, yet again, heavily.
Eszterhazy gave a sympathetic nod; sympathetic, yet abstracted. The Count Calmar had perhaps told him more about stockfish than he wished to know. The last of the heavy-laden ox-wagons had finally gone by, leaving behind a golden trail of grain spilled from some torn sack, which, as no one bothered to gather it up, the sparrows of the city had now begun to feed upon. Struck by some sudden and inchoate thought, he addressed himself to a woman of the people passing by with her shopping basket — “Excuse me, Mother, but what does stockfish cost these days?”
“Too much!” she snapped. “— when we can git it, that is! Thank God that bread stays cheap.”
Magnus’s face had assumed once more that familiar vacant, almost rough stare. “My dear Engelbert, I want a drink,” he said. “How does one say in your language, ‘glog’? Or, for that matter: ‘shnops’?”
Engelbert Eszterhazy noted — and reported — that they were quite near his Club; they at that moment passing in front of the smart new building, he stepped forward and bowed politely to a man who had just descended the steps with a portfolio under his arm. “Pray forgive my impudence, my dear Herra Chiefstatisticscouncillor, but —”
The man, under the double influence of being addressed by a title a full two grades higher than his actual one, and by someone with an immensely upper-class accent, stretched himself to his full height, puffed his chest, and said, “Command me.”
“We were wondering ... at the Palace ...” The man’s eyes began to pop. “. . . if there were any known reason why the commerce and trade between Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania and Far Northwestern Europe is not greater than it is. Surely my dear Herra you will know, eh?”
The chief (merely) clerk was obliged to swallow. Twice. “The reason is, my dear ... my dear ...”
“The Cornet Engelbert Eszterhazy for to serve God, the Emperor, and my lord Chief Statisticscouncillor.” He handed his card.
“The reason is one of the economics of geography, a matter to which I, heh-hem, have paid especial attention. To ship, let us say —”
“Let us say .. . oh .. . grain . .. wheat.. . just for instance.”
To ship grain (for example, wheat) overland through Russia was to observe first-hand that it could be conveyed faster by a Vloxfellow with a wheelbarrow. Via water? Down the Ister to the Danube and thence to the Black Sea, into the Mediterranean, up the Atlantic — one sees the problem? Ideally, such a trade should pass by railroad via a direct northern route into Austria-Hungary, and thence — “Why not?” — Because, why not, there was no direct northern route. Such a route would needs pass through the demesnes of the Titular Majesty of Carinthia, and the Titular Majesty of Carinthia refused to allow it on the grounds that all steam engineers were Scotchmen, and all Scotchmen were heretics and had cut off the head of the piously Catholic Virgin Queen Victoria. Furthermore, the smoke of the locomotives would smutch her new-washed laundry....
There being, alas, no glog available at the Club, the two young men had a shnops instead. They had a second shnops. Instead. Eventually and once again they parted in the Grand Lobby of the Windsor-Lido: at any event “Engli” would report back as soon as he could. In an excellent mood, the Count Calmar entered his suite and was about to open the door of the parlor when he noted that, for one thing, it was already open, and, for another, that the room behind it was not unoccupied.
“He is already late,” said the dry, grim voice of the Baron Borg uk Borg; it was not even an angry or even an annoyed voice. It was only — as always — a disapproving voice. “I had planned to read him this very short minute I have written, it is only ten pages, on the present state of the Triune Monarchy. But he is already late.” The scratch of a pen indicated the presence of the industrious Kopperkupp.
Magnus knew he could not, simply could not, enter and sit still for a ten-page minute; he tiptoed out and, observing in the small private lobby a pair of neatly-furled umbrellas, took one and put it under his arm. He could have given no reason why, so perhaps the two glasses of shnops would have to serve as reason.