Johannes Cabal the Detective

CHAPTER 16 in which much is explained and derring is done

“So now you’re an ace entomopter pilot?” remarked Count Marechal with mannered incredulity. He lit his fourth cigarette in a row and puffed smoke up into the thickening air of the salon.

“I wouldn’t presume to such a thing,” said Cabal. “Not least because I’m not sure what constitutes an ‘ace.’ I can take off, fly, manoeuvre a little, and land. I doubt that marks me out as a daring aeronaut, but if you say so.”

“And you managed a landing on a moving aeroship on your first attempt, did you?”

“In truth, I almost didn’t,” Cabal admitted. “I was very short of fuel on the final approach, and I doubt that I would have been able to make a second attempt. The lines across the roof — ”

“The arrestor cables on the flight deck,” Marechal corrected him with the testiness of the jargon martinet.

“Quite so. The lines on the roof were a nice innovation, but I think one really needs some sort of a hook on one’s entomopter to make the best use of them. The trainer I borrowed was not thus equipped. Or, if it was, I didn’t know which lever to pull to extend it. Not to worry. I set down fairly lightly, and the distinct possibility of falling off the front was happily curtailed by another entomopter that was parked up there. That would be yours, I assume?” Marechal paused in mid-drag, his cigarette quivering in his lips, which gave Cabal all the answer he needed. “I’d have them take a look at it before you use it again. I gave it a rather stiff wallop when I drove into it.”

“Oh, I’ve had enough of you, Cabal,” said Marechal, less languidly than he’d planned. He reached for his revolver.

“Don’t do that,” said Cabal in light reproof. “I haven’t got up to the point of all this, including why I came back.”

“We already know that. To play the hero,” said Marechal, although his hand paused, the fleshy base of his thumb resting on the revolver’s butt.

“I doubt that,” said Miss Barrow, and then looked uncomfortable when everybody stared at her.

“Miss Barrow is correct. Unflattering, but correct,” said Cabal, once again becoming the centre of attention. “I do almost everything for reasons that might be characterised as selfish. I regard my life as a vital thread in the ongoing march of humanity from protoplasm to — I don’t know, to be honest. Something slightly better than protoplasm would be a start. Therefore, anything that threatens my life now or later has to be dealt with. Paradoxically, that often means risking my life to secure my safety. The difference is that I risk it on my own terms.”

Marechal looked at him as if he’d delivered his little speech via a sock puppet called Mr. Mimsy. “Dear God, Cabal. Just how mad are you?”

“It really isn’t in your interests to kill me, Count, for reasons that will become apparent. That is, if I may be allowed to continue?” He took his pocket watch out and checked the time. Marechal interpreted the gesture to be a melodramatic expression of impatience, and waved him on to finish his story with an air of disgust.

“Thank you,” said Cabal. “Now, let me explain my understanding of the events that have occurred during this voyage. To be brief — ”

“That would be delightful,” muttered the count.

“To be brief … any crime is definable by the classic trio of motive, method, and opportunity. The recent occurrences are no different, but — to my chagrin — I concentrated on the most mechanistic of the three: the method. I thought if I could penetrate the mystery of how M. DeGarre was murdered in a locked room, then the other details would become apparent and the murderer unmasked. Well, I worked out how it was done, and it didn’t unmask anybody at all. The corollaries that it presented were suggestive, but I still could not focus on the members of the conspiracy.”

“A cabal, in fact,” said the count, much to his own amusement.

Cabal ignored him. “Opportunity is a difficult thing to make much of. With a police force to gather detailed statements and a timeline, perhaps something could be shaken out, but I doubt it. A large vessel with very few passengers, rattling around like peas in a coffee can. The periods that people are out of sight of one another are too great; any attempt to cross-reference alibis would be frustrated by the great blank areas.

“This leaves us with motive, and motive is critical here. Once I started to understand a few of the peculiarities of this journey, the reasons behind them weren’t far away.” He started pacing up and down: four steps one way, four steps back. “I had all manner of strange theories. The ship had Senzan agents aboard. No, it had Mirkarvian agents. Perhaps it had Katamenian agents. No, it had Senzan and Mirkarvian agents involved in some sort of shadowed battle aboard this ship. It became more and more ludicrous, and eventually I discarded these ideas. That was a mistake, because I was just one variant away from the truth.

“I shied away from such ideas because they continued to snowball in scale, and there comes a point where reasonable suspicion tends to paranoia. That was where I drew my figurative line in the sand, beyond which I would not go. What is paranoia to the rest of the world, however, is business as usual in this grubby little pressure cooker of penny-ante countries with overarching dreams.”

Colonel Konstantin sat upright, breathing heavily through his nose, but he said nothing.

“It was the silliest thing that made me realise it,” said Cabal. “A marionette show on a street in Parila. It was a little play that wouldn’t appeal to you, as it made light of the Mirkarvian fetish for matters military. It made me think of something I saw almost the first minute I set foot upon this vessel, and that made all else plain. Specifically, why DeGarre had to die.”

Miss Ambersleigh, who had read any number of novels involving the solving of nefarious crimes by sundry Walloons and landed gentry, was on the edge of her seat in bright-eyed excitement. “Because he was a Senzan spy?” she blurted out, and quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

Cabal ceased his pacing long enough to look directly at her. “No. No, Miss Ambersleigh. There is a Senzan spy involved in all this, but it wasn’t DeGarre. No, DeGarre died for being DeGarre. For being exactly what he appeared to be — a respected and world-famous designer of aeroships.”

Now it was Miss Barrow’s turn to be confused. “What? He was going to build a ship for the Senzans?”

“No, he was inadvertently going to prevent the Katamenians taking receipt of a dreadful weapon of war from the Mirkarvians.”

“But they searched the ship?”

“Yes, they did, and that was a masterly stroke of misdirection. All those tons of potatoes and turnips and other root vegetables too grimy to enumerate. Was that your idea, Count?”

Count Marechal smiled, and wafted his fifth cigarette in a casual salute of mocking acquiescence. In fact, the idea had come from a member of his junior staff, but it is the rôle of junior staff to make senior staff look good and take the blame for anything that might make the senior staff look bad.

“It was so obviously an attempt to hide something that the Senzans were all over those wretched piles of vegetables in a second,” continued Cabal. “They were so focussed on them that they gave the rest of the ship only a cursory inspection. Even if they hadn’t been otherwise engaged in bayoneting carrots, they probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Not like DeGarre; as soon as he was on the engineering deck, he would have been asking awkward questions. Why are the engines so overpowered? Why are the bulkheads so thick? Why is the flight deck — thank you for the correct term, Count — capable of holding so many entomopters?”

Konstantin was looking around himself with growing realisation and astonishment. “Ach, du lieber Himmel!” he muttered, having just managed to suppress saying something a great deal stronger.

“What is it?” demanded Miss Ambersleigh of anyone handy. “I don’t understand all this engineering talk. What is he talking about?”

“He’s saying,” answered Miss Barrow quietly, “that this ship is not a passenger vessel. It’s a warship.” Now she understood the delicacy of their position. DeGarre had been a nuisance, and had been eliminated with rapid efficiency. The fact that he was a foreigner and a man of some standing had not stayed the killer’s hand for a second.

“A warship? You sent me on a trip in a warship, Daddy?” Lady Ninuka was scandalised. “You told me the Princess Hortense was the finest ship in the skies!”

“And so she is. Just not a passenger ship. Princess Hortense — ” Count Marechal cogitated upon the name for a moment. “That name’s going, I can tell you. The Katamenians will give it a proper name, something you can be proud to go to war in. The Invincible, or something. Or the Stormcloud!” He warmed to the name immediately. “Raining death upon our enemies!”

Cabal raised an index finger in mild admonition. “Pardon me,” he said. “I was in mid-exposition.” Marechal made an exasperated face, but waved him on. Cabal checked his watch again, and continued. “It was supposed to look like suicide, but mistakes were made and, from there on in, they multiplied. The attack on me was made in a panic — it would have been far wiser just to leave me to my own devices. I didn’t actually find anything in the ventilation ducting; I was all set to go back to my cabin and forget about it. A murder attempt spoilt all that, and — more important — emphasised that DeGarre’s disappearance was certainly not due to suicide. Now they needed a scapegoat, which Zoruk, with his unseemly display at dinner, was perfectly suited to be.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Miss Ambersleigh, quite bewildered by so much naughtiness in the world. “Who are they? You cannot be referring to this gentleman?” She gestured at the count, although, being a lady by breeding if not entitlement, she was careful not to point. “He has only recently joined us.”

“They?” Cabal looked at her with mild surprise. “I’m very sorry, Miss Ambersleigh. I thought that was evident. They are very nearly everybody on this vessel. All the crew, and several of the passengers. They have all conspired in three murders. They also intend to kill, let’s see, Miss Barrow, myself, and, I’m afraid, you.”

Miss Ambersleigh seemed to shrink into her chair, her eyes wide and her mouth open with shock. This could not be. Ladies need fear only ruffians. Not gentlemen. Never gentlemen. She looked beseechingly at Schten. “Captain?” she said in wavering tones, but he could only look at the floor, his shame apparent.

“You can’t blame the captain,” said Cabal. “Or not completely. The first two killings were carried out under his orders, which is why such a hash was made of them. The captain is not a natural murderer; all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense does not come easily to a military man, does it?”

Captain Schten managed to look Miss Ambersleigh in the eye. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t want any of this.”

“He was just obeying orders, you see.”

Miss Barrow looked at Count Marechal, but couldn’t bear to speak to him directly. “His orders?” she asked Cabal.

“Yes, but not directly. Marechal here had his cat’s-paw aboard — the ship’s very own Mirkarvian intelligence officer — here to make sure smuggling the Princess Hortense through Senzan skies went according to plan. She was also the one who grew suspicious that Cacon and, I think, myself were not what we seemed. Cacon was the Senzan spy I alluded to earlier. She shadowed me in Parila, was spotted by Cacon, who shadowed her, I shadowed Cacon, and — after a bracing round of ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’ — she ducked out. Unhappily for Cacon, she took refuge in the very alleyway that led to the safe house where he was supposed to wait to be debriefed. He walked right into her, and she murdered him.”

Lady Ninuka became aware that a lot of eyes were on her. “Me? I’ve never heard such slander!”

“No?” said Cabal, all innocence. “There are probably men’s toilets in Mirkarvia where slanderous comments about you are commonly aired. If you pause to read the walls, you will likely find much that is libellous, too. You remember the difference, yes? Oh, sit down,” he said to the count, who had risen from his barstool to defend his daughter’s honour, such as it was. “You will get your chance to kill me anon. In the meantime” — he turned his attention back to Lady Ninuka — “yes, it would be slander, if I were talking about you. I have had brief but unpleasant dealings with Mirkarvian security. I understand that security and intelligence all fall under the same organisational heading in Mirkarvia — which is unusual — and go by the name of ‘Section A.’ Marechal here is the de facto head of it, but will the Section A field agent please stand up?” Nobody moved. Cabal tutted impatiently. “Oh, come along, Frau Roborovski. We haven’t got all day.”

Frau Roborovski folded her hands in her lap, but she said nothing. Nor did she need to; her lack of surprise and calm demeanour were all the reaction necessary.

“Hold on, Cabal,” said Miss Barrow, “you said the killer was a single woman. Frau Roborovski’s, well, she’s a Frau. She’s married.” She looked sideways at Frau Roborovski, who returned the glance coolly. Miss Barrow’s conviction wavered. “Isn’t she?”

“No,” said Cabal, disappointed at such ignorance. “Of course she isn’t. She’s an intelligence officer. Probably changes her identity six times before breakfast even when she doesn’t need to, just to stay in trim. Incidentally” — Cabal addressed Frau Roborovski directly — “what is your real name? There’s not much point in maintaining your alias now, and I dislike calling you by a nom de guerre.”

“Special Agent Lisabet Satunin,” she said in a clear voice. The fussy hausfrau image had slipped away entirely. Now she sat there, calm and confident as a chess player one move away from victory. “At your service.”

“Not mine, unfortunately,” said Cabal, “or I would already have set you on Marechal. Your ‘husband,’ though — You’re no agent, sir. When we first met, I spoke of dovecote joins when, of course, the term is ‘dovetail.’ I was a little distracted at the time, and I can’t even remember if I said it in jest or in honest error. I do know, however, that a real cabinetmaker — or even a spy passing himself off as such — would surely have reacted in some way. What is your rôle in all this?”

Herr Roborovski sat in embarrassed silence, unsure whether he was permitted to speak. Fräulein Satunin did it for him. “His name really is Roborovski, but he’s not a cabinetmaker. He is this vessel’s architect. He oversaw its construction and he will be spending some time in Katamenia to assist them in making her ready for war.”

“I like this,” Cabal confided to Schten. “I like being able to ask questions and get the answers without being lied to. I like the truth.”

“You were lying as much as any of us. A necromancer!” replied Schten, with a sulkiness unseemly in a man of his stature, both physically and professionally.

“I lied to save my life. You lied to take the lives of others. If we’re playing moral superiority, Captain, you’ll find even necromancers further up the ladder than you. As it happened, you gave me the single point of data that revealed the whole sordid business to me.”

Captain Schten’s face dropped. He glanced nervously at Marechal, who was lighting up his eighth cigarette. “I did?”

“You did, though you didn’t realise it. Nor, to be brutally frank, did I. Not until I saw those marionettes. You probably won’t be very flattered to hear that the puppet masters were remarkably good at mimicking the actions of Mirkarvian soldiers. Actually, it is probably closer to the truth to say that Mirkarvian soldiers are a gift to puppeteers because they behave like marionettes. A great deal of wheeling on the spot, and walking in lines, and — significantly — clicking of heels. Only military people do that, don’t they? It’s considered ill-mannered and slightly dangerous for civilians to do it. Yet, the very first time I laid eyes upon Captain Schten and his senior officers, they thought they were unobserved, and were busily snapping salutes and clicking heels at one another. The salutes are explicable; the heel-clicking from a crew that pretends to contain no military officers, less so.”

Schten winced, as well he might.

Cabal continued. “Once I was open to the idea that the conspiracy involved the crew, then everything that had happened more or less became self-explanatory. Zoruk never stood a chance. He was injured by having his wrist ‘accidentally’ caught in a door exactly as he claimed, but the steward then stated that Zoruk had engineered the accident, and that the door had closed on him with no great force. Why would we disbelieve the apparently disinterested and uninvolved steward? Well, because he’s an ass, but otherwise there’s no reason not to accept his account. All the time the real culprit, one of the bridge crew or possibly an engineer, is salted safely away on the top deck, he and his injured hand kept out of public sight while the captain continues the charade of checking everyone else.

“Once again, however, the ruse was flawed, the military mind turned to expedience rather than elegance to cover the lies, and Zoruk was hanged in an effort to create another suicide. You would have thought that after one dismal failure at staging a suicide, a different strategy would be attempted, but Mirkarvians seem to be great adherents of ‘If at first you don’t succeed, then repeat your failure until nobody’s left alive to comment.’” Cabal smiled with the benevolence of somebody watching an unlovable toddler walk under a table and bang his head painfully. “My main error was believing that the deaths were attributable to a couple of daring and dastardly spies of some hue, when in fact the malefactors were more akin to a third-string comedic music-hall troupe, led by a psychotic in a plaid skirt. There wasn’t a single bit of cleverness in the whole enterprise, just desperation and violence.”

There was a pause, and Marechal perked up, believing that the talk was over and he could now get on with killing Cabal. Miss Barrow spoke, however, and Marechal slumped back onto his barstool with an impatient grunt.

“There’s one thing, though, Cabal,” she said. “DeGarre was killed in a locked room with a chair stuck under the handle. How was that done?”

Cabal looked at her as if she were the slowest child in the class. “Isn’t that simplicity itself? Think, Miss Barrow. Was it truly a locked room? What about the misaligned tile in the corridor, and the missing candelabras on the dining tables?”

“The candelabras? You’re kidding? Anyway, you said they were irrelevant, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I was wrong. At the time, I thought they couldn’t be involved because it was inconceivable that they could be taken and returned without being observed by one or more stewards. Once you appreciate that it was one or more stewards taking them in the first place, that cavil is removed and the trick to DeGarre’s murder becomes apparent.”

Miss Barrow frowned, thinking. In her mind’s eye, she disassociated them from their proper purpose and saw them simply as objects. What, she thought, were their most important features? “They were ugly, really ugly. Curved, stylised swans, S-shaped. Made from steel, so they’re strong.”

“Ugliness,” said Cabal, feeling like a teacher with a brighter than average pupil, “is in the eye of the beholder. Limit your thoughts to the objective factors. Nobody can deny those.”

Curved and strong, she thought. Like steel hooks. “That’s mad,” she said. Then, “No. No, it isn’t. That would work. I think I see it.”

“You probably do,” said Cabal, not nearly as condescendingly as he might. “Well, then. Dazzle us with your deductions.”

Miss Barrow stood and, quite unconsciously, started to mimic Cabal’s pacing up and down. “It’s the first evening after the dinner. The captain is very worried about DeGarre seeing the engineering section. He is sure to realise that the ship is not what it pretends to be. They need some way to — I think the captain would have just wanted to put him off somehow. Killing DeGarre, though — ” She remembered Cacon breathing his last — twice — and how ruthlessly he had been put down. She looked at Fräulein Satunin, who returned her gaze dispassionately. “I think that was your idea, faked suicide and all. You come up with the suicide note, but locking the door won’t be enough. It might even draw attention to the ship’s officers, who I’d guess have passkeys. So, it goes something like this: There’s a discreet little tap at DeGarre’s door in the night. He answers it and there’s a steward there, probably two. They get in under some pretence. Then they kill him — they’re both military and have probably killed before. No blood, so he was strangled or smothered. They lock the door while — No, better still, one goes out while the other locks the door and leaves the key in the lock on the inside. He puts the chair under the door handle. He puts the previously typed suicide note into the typewriter. I think the note was actually typed on DeGarre’s own machine while he was in the salon after dinner in case anybody thought to check the typeface and wear patterns. It didn’t matter if the note didn’t exactly match up with its original position on the platen, since the plan was probably to pull it from the machine as soon as possible to prevent any comparison. But Cabal got there first. Anyway … the man still in the cabin undoes the window, and pushes DeGarre’s body out. How am I doing?”

“It was a steward and an engineer looking for a ‘pressure leak,’ and they chloroformed him,” said Fräulein Satunin. “But otherwise not bad.”

Miss Barrow blanched and stepped away from her as if she were contagious.

“Chloroform?” interrupted Cabal, his professional curiosity piqued. “I wonder why I didn’t smell it. Oh, of course. The open window. It was blowing a gale in there.”

“Cabal!” cried Miss Barrow. “He was alive when they threw him out!”

“But unconscious, probably all the way down. You’re quibbling over niceties, Miss Barrow. However he died, it was murder. Anyway, do carry on; the comatose M. DeGarre has just tumbled into darkness, both literal and metaphorical. What happened next?”

Miss Barrow glared at him, and took a moment to marshal her thoughts. “Then whoever is left locked in the cabin, presumably a small but strong man, feeds a rope out of the window. On the end of it is one of the candelabras. They’re steel — very strong, for what they are — and the arms are curved. Here it’s used as a makeshift grappling hook. Meanwhile, some other member of the crew had lifted the carpet tiles and gone down into the ducting. The tiles are replaced once they’re down there. In fact, they probably got into position before M. DeGarre was even woken. They open the hatch in the ship’s underside and feed out another rope with the other candelabra on it. With enough line and — I’d guess — the ship slowing down a little to reduce the slipstream, it isn’t long before the two lines meet and tangle. The man in the duct pulls up the rope, ties it off, and tugs on it. The man locked in DeGarre’s room ties his end of the rope around himself and then … he jumps.”

“Bravo,” said Fräulein Satunin simply.

“Then it’s just a case of drawing him up into the ship’s belly by brute strength,” finished Cabal. “I think there were probably at least a couple of men to do that. They clear up their gear and crawl back to the floor hatch to wait. When the corridors are quiet again, the carpet tiles are quickly lifted and the men allowed out. But — in all the haste — the tile is replaced incorrectly and … Well … Here we are.” He was thoughtful for a second. “I think that’s everything,” he said finally. Then, to Miss Barrow, he asked, “How was that?”

She grimaced. “Long-winded and smug.”

“Good … good,” he said complacently. As if remembering something, he pulled out his pocket watch and checked it again.

“Your time’s up, Herr Cabal,” said Count Marechal, stubbing out his latest cigarette and sliding off the barstool. He stretched. “Now, you die.” He reached for his revolver.

Cabal didn’t look up. “Possibly,” he said distractedly, still looking at his watch and ruminating.

“There’s no ‘possibly’ about it, you jumped-up conjuror.” Marechal drew his pistol and pointed it. “I’m going to shoot you, certainly once, probably two or three times, and then you’ll be dead and that will be that.”

“What about us?” said Miss Barrow. “Are you going to kill us?”

“Oh, Daddy!” said Lady Ninuka petulantly. It is true that people display different personae depending on company; the femme fatale had vanished in Marechal’s presence, to be replaced by a schoolgirl. “Don’t kill Miss Ambersleigh! I like her. She’s funny and drinks tea.”

Marechal rounded on them both angrily. “Will you all just shut up!” he barked. “I have had a very trying few days, and I just want a little me time to relax and unwind and kill Cabal. Is that so much to ask? Just stop being so bloody self-centred and let somebody else have a bit of fun, will you?”

“And what of me, sir?” Colonel Konstantin had risen from his chair. “What part have I in this plan?”

“You?” Marechal was surprised. “You’ll be a soldier about it and maintain secrecy. Believe me, Colonel, you were never considered a potential leak. Your record speaks for itself. I know that you are a true son of Mirkarvia.”

“I have always tried to be so,” said Konstantin with slow dignity. “By the values of the first empire of the Erzich Dynasty, I have always stood. In its every hour of need back through five hundred years, Mirkarvia has always known it could depend on the Konstantins to fight and bleed and die for her.”

“Yes, quite so. I think that’s what I just said, except more briefly,” said Marechal impatiently.

“You, sir,” snapped Konstantin, sticking out his jaw and looking down his nose at Marechal, “are not Mirkarvia. You, sir, are a jumped-up jackanapes who plays politics with the lives of our citizenry, tramples our honour beneath boots that have never seen a battlefield, and whores us out to a cesspit of barbarism like Katamenia as if we were nothing but mercenaries! You, sir, are a disgrace to your uniform and your title, both of which, it gives me no pleasure to remind you, were bought for you by your father.” Konstantin crossed his arms. “And he was a self-serving bastard, too.”

Marechal stood as if stunned. “I cannot count on you to keep this business secret, Colonel? Even though it is for your own country?”

“My own country? This is all your doing, Marechal; do not besmirch my country’s name with your dishonourable filth.”

The shot was very loud, and reverberated against the hard surfaces of the salon — the tables, walls, windows. Konstantin fell back into his chair, and nobody knew if the first bullet killed him outright, because Marechal advanced on him, firing twice more. The shooting was angry and inaccurate; the first bullet caught him square in the ribs just to the left of the sternum, the second was three inches higher, and the third was directly into Konstantin’s face at almost point-blank range.

“I —!” Marechal made to say something, but was so angry that the words caught in his throat. Finally, “Traitor!” spluttered out, blackened with petulant rage, and he pointed the pistol at the corpse as if to fire again. Miss Ambersleigh, who had cried out at the first shot, but was now somewhere beyond belief, sobbed in horror at the gesture, and Marechal, grimacing like a thwarted schoolyard bully, turned away.

Cabal was very disappointed by this development; he had been hoping that Marechal would empty the gun in a furious ecstasy, making it much easier for Cabal to murder him quickly and efficiently before he had a chance to reload. No, not murder, he reminded himself. It would be self-defence. Ah, the novelty of it.

Marechal looked around the room, daring anybody to speak, before returning his full attention to Cabal. He levelled his revolver, but Cabal was studying his watch yet again, this time with some perplexity. “What the hell are you gawping at, Cabal?” spat Marechal. He was already regretting shooting the colonel; he would have had to go, of course, but it could have been done less messily. It also meant that he couldn’t just shoot Cabal immediately, as he so urgently desired, without looking like an utter maniac. He made a conscious attempt to recover some dignity. “I’ve got a gun here, and you can’t drag your eyes off your watch. What is the matter with you?”

“Me? Well, apart from having a revolver aimed at me, very little. My watch, I fear, is running a little slow.” He finally looked at Marechal. “You know,” he added, taking Marechal into his confidence, “I had a feeling I should have dragged the explanations out for another minute or two.”

“They were quite long enough.”

“Well, I would have thought so, but without time to take proper titrations to make sure the concentrations were as advertised — and, of course, this hardly represents standard laboratory conditions with respect to temperature and pressure — my calculations might have been a little off. So frustrating.”

There was a distant boom, like thunder, but it reverberated throughout the Princess Hortense’s hull like a lump hammer against a tin bath, the deck lurching sharply to starboard for a moment. There were cries in the salon, and swearing from some quarters.

“Ah,” said Cabal, happily. “There we go.”

“What was that?” Marechal narrowed his eyes and aimed his revolver directly at Cabal’s head. “What have you done, Cabal?”

“Blown up No. 1 Etheric Line Guide. That’s the forward port one, isn’t it, Captain?”

But Captain Schten had already left the salon at a run. Cabal watched the door swing to after him, then confided to Marechal, “He’s probably got a lot on his mind at the moment.”

“You’ve done what, Cabal?” Marechal, pale and suddenly sweating, looked at Cabal over his revolver. He wanted so very much to fire, but he had an ugly feeling that he had been outmanoeuvred.

“I’ve outmanoeuvred you,” said Cabal, confirming those fears. “That first one was on a timer. The others — ”

“Others?”

“Of course, there are others. Not much of a threat if there’s no chance of escalation, is there? The others, as I was saying, are on long timers, but have a rather cunning anti-tamper device I came up with at short notice. It’s wonderful what you can hash together with the contents of a general grocery store and a pharmaceutical chemist’s shop. I suppose,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “I should really have mentioned that to Captain Schten before he rushed off. The business about the anti-tamper devices, that is; I don’t imagine grocers and chemists are very high on his agenda at present.”

Marechal was at the door in a few long strides. As he opened it, a steward almost ran into him from the other side. “Find the captain!” snapped Marechal, gripping the man fiercely by the shoulders. “Tell him not to disturb any devices he finds! Tell him Cabal has planted bombs and the slightest interference could set them off!” He released the man, who simply stood there wincing at his freshly bruised biceps. “Run, you idiot!” roared Marechal in his face. “All our lives depend upon it!” That was sufficient, and the steward bolted back the way he came.

Marechal wheeled around to face Cabal. “Very well, you whey-faced bastard. What do you hope to gain by this?”

Cabal, ignoring the slight, considered thoughtfully for a moment, calculated to irritate the count within the limits of his small temper. “I desired to put you in a position where you or — more accurately — the captain and the homicidal Fräulein Satunin would feel restrained from killing me. That’s one. I am also of the strong opinion that this aeroship should turn around and head back to Parila. That’s two. I must admit, I was not expecting you to be here when I arrived, Count, but since you are, I think the Senzans should have a chance to chat with you. That’s three, and final.”

Marechal stared at him; angrily, yes, but also rather sulkily. He shook his head heavily. “Forlorn hopes all.” He returned to his barstool, picking up an empty ashtray from a table in passing, lit a new cigarette, and regarded Cabal as a headmaster nearing retirement might regard a troublesome schoolboy who defies all attempts at discipline. “I don’t understand you, Cabal. You were free and clear. You don’t give a damn about what happens in this part of the world. Why would you come back? Bombs or no bombs, you’re not leaving this ship alive. I — ” He shook his head again. “I don’t understand you.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Cabal. “If you did, you would have gift-wrapped the Principia Necromantica for me, given me free passage out of your country right at the beginning of our acquaintance, and counted yourself lucky. I have dealt with greater forces than you, Count.”

“Don’t give yourself airs, Cabal.”

“He isn’t.” Leonie Barrow’s voice was quiet but clear. With Marechal’s eyes on her, she said, “Cabal is more dangerous than you can believe, Count. Both the angels and the devils fear him. He’s a monster, but an evenhanded one. I know he is capable of the most appalling acts of evil.” Her glance moved to Cabal, who was listening dispassionately. “I believe he is also capable of great good. But to predict which he will do next isn’t easy or safe.”

Marechal grimaced. “What is your association with this man? Public relations or something?”

“I loathe him,” she said with sudden venom. Then, more quietly, “And I admire him. You’re right; he didn’t have to come back. He’s taken a big risk, but I know he’s taken bigger. I can’t tell you whether he’s a monster or playing the hero right now, but I know one thing. You made the biggest mistake of your life when you made an enemy of him.”

Cabal raised an eyebrow and smiled a smile at Count Marechal so dry that you couldn’t have dragged a molecule of water out of it with fuming sulphuric acid. “I sound quite mythical, don’t I, Marechal? What wonders shall I perform next?”

“You can perform them from beyond the grave, Cabal. You’ve made a mistake.”

“Oh?” said Cabal, mildly curious. He drew out his pocket watch and checked it. “And what would that be?”

“You’ve told us that the other bombs have long timers. Soon we shall be across the border. There are cleared areas there. We can set the ship down and the engineers can deal with your bombs without fear of crashing out of the sky. Not that you’ll be there to see it. Checkmate, Cabal.” He drew back his pistol’s hammer slowly, with every sign of enjoyment.

“You would have a point, except that you have made an assumption. That I told the truth about the bombs.”

Marechal narrowed his eyes. “There are no more bombs, are there?”

“Oh, there are bombs. Just no anti-tamper fuses. I mean to say, as Miss Barrow so kindly intimated, I am terribly talented, but rustling up mercury switches out of thin air is beyond even my admittedly extraordinary abilities.”

“Even better,” Marechal said, smiling. “My only concern was that a heavy landing might trigger them. Thank you for removing that last lingering anxiety.”

“Oh, my pleasure. Really. But … I also lied about the timed fuses.”

Marechal’s smile slid off his face like a stunned monkey from a buttered banyan. “What?”

“They’re not actually very long.”

At which point the second bomb exploded.