The Great Game (7 page)

             
The train was entering that part of northern Italy between Lakes Como and Lecco called the
Brianza,
and the view out the dining room window was of terraced hillsides covered with naked grapevines ready to begin their summer's growth. In the distance were a scattering of cottages, sporadic freshly plowed plots of brown earth, and patches of somber woods. An
occasional walled villa with its complex of outbuildings would suddenly spring into sight and then disappear into the mist.

             
The fat man trotted up from the rear of the train and entered the dining car almost immediately after Benjamin and Cecily sat down. He lumbered by them, selecting a table three down and across the aisle. Barnett watched with amusement as he gingerly pushed and prodded at the wooden chair seat before lowering his bulk onto it and intently studying the bill-of-fare. About ten minutes or so later the dark adolescent also appeared from the aft end of the train, and, after a few whispered words with the fat man, crossed the dining car and exited the front.

             
"Curious," Cecily said. "Two of your four friends seem to have been holding a convention in the rear of the train."

             
"Perhaps they have acquaintances among the third-class passengers," Barnett suggested. "Or perhaps they were seeing to their baggage. The baggage car is at the rear."

             
"Perhaps," Cecily agreed, coldly.

             
"Listen, Dove, I don't want to fight with you. Honestly I don't," Barnett said, dropping his voice to a whisper. "But you surely wouldn't want me to say I agree with you when I don't. Would you?"

             
"If you knew how many times I had done just that for you," Cecily told him, "you would hesitate to ask. It seems that there is one law for the
Medes,
and another for the Persians." She pushed her plate of veal aside and stood up. "I am no longer hungry. I will meet you back in our compartment."

             
Barnett also stood, out of automatic politeness to his angry wife. There are times when anything you can do is wrong, and this, Barnett perceived, was one of them. Whether he exhorted Cecily to stay, returned with her to the compartment, or let her go by herself, she would not be pleased.

             
The cursed unreasonableness of women! Here he was, a reasonable man, behaving in a reasonable manner, being put constantly, and unfairly, in the wrong by his wife, who was usually the most rational, sensible of God's creatures. It was infuriating!

             
"I must apologize for this interruption." An oily, slightly shrill voice sounded in Barnett's ears as he stood there.

             
"You are, perhaps, the Barnetts? Mister and Mrs. Is that so?"

             
"Why?" Barnett asked, turning. It was the fat man, risen from his seat and hovering unctuously by Barnett's side. This was too much. Had the man been eavesdropping? Even so, what on earth could he want? Whatever it might be, Barnett was in no mood to deal with it.

             
"I do really apologize for this unseemly interruption," the fat man said. For a second his lips formed into a smile, which promptly disappeared. "The
conduttore
mentioned to me of your presence on this train. I was overjoyed at the coincidence. A fortuitous happening, surely, you will admit."

             
"Will I?" Barnett was conscious of the three of them frozen there by the fat man's rudeness; Cecily poised for flight, and he undecided whether or not to follow, and the fat man talking.
And talking.
And talking.

             
"But yes." The fat man paused, one hand on his cheek, and grimaced as though just stricken with a horrible possibility. "You are, are you not, the Barnetts of the American News Service?"

             
"That's correct," Barnett said, grudgingly. How could this man possibly know that? And why should he care? Perhaps there was, after all, something to Cecily's apprehension. On the other hand, if the man wanted to do anything besides merely speaking to them, he didn't have to follow them around until they were in the
carrozza ristorante
to do it.

             
"Good. Good," the fat man said. "It is as I thought. You will pardon the intrusion, but, with the most honorable of intentions, I must seize this moment to speak with you. It is a matter of some urgency and some—delicacy." He whipped a hand into his jacket pocket, and it came out again clutching a white pasteboard. "My card, if you would be so good."

             
Barnett took the card, glanced at it, and passed it to Cecily. Gottfried Kasper, it said in firm but delicate brown lettering,
scrittore e giornalista,
Milano.

             
"What can we do for you, Signor Kasper?" Cecily asked the fat man sweetly. "Please, sit down."

             
Barnett looked at her in amazement. "Yes," he said, choking back a comment, "please do." Cecily surely must have some reason for asking the fat man to sit—unless it was merely to show Barnett that she would prefer anyone's company to his right now. Or perhaps, since she suspected the fat man of some sort of chicanery, she was going to try to prove it. Barnett sincerely hoped that she was not planning to do any such thing.

             
"You are most kind," the fat man said, as he lowered himself gingerly into a chair on the aisle while Benjamin and Cecily regained their seats. He looked relieved, but perhaps that was just at being able to sit again. Hauling his bulk around, particularly on a moving train, Barnett thought, must be a constant battle.

             
"So you are a journalist, eh?" Barnett said. "Looking for work?"

             
"No, no!" Kasper held up one chubby hand in protest, as though to ward off the very suggestion. "Of course, if there were any way in which I could be of service to the great American News Service ... You have, perhaps, read my series on the aesthetic differences among
the capitals of the European monarchies? It had a brief European vogue about a year ago, and was translated into many languages."

             
"I don't believe so," Barnett said. "What was it called?" Cecily asked.

             
" 'An
Aesthetic Analysis of the
Fin-de-Si
è
cle
Styles and Manners of the Capitals of the European Monarchies.' It was well-received, if I may be permitted to say so myself. It evoked quite a bit of comment at the time. But it has not, as of yet, had the honor of receiving an English translation."

             
"Catchy title," Barnett commented.

             
Kasper turned and looked at him suspiciously for a moment, but decided to ignore whatever he saw there. "Do you think your American public would have any interest in an article of that nature?" he asked. "It is a heavily researched article and finds many similarities of thought among the more important European capitals."

             
"Send a copy to my London office," Barnett told him, "and I'll be glad to look at it. And now—"

             
"Ah, yes. Thank you for your attention. But that, of course, is not why I am imposing my presence on you, despite our lack of any sort of proper introduction.
Oh, no, no!"

             
"It's not?" Barnett found the man's protestations, accompanied with a lot of chubby hand waving, to be simultaneously irritating and amusing.

             
"Not at all, Mr. Barnett, far from it.
It is I who
have
an offer to make to you."

             
"You do? What sort of offer?"

             
"In this matter I represent the
Staatlicher
Ü
berblicken,
a monthly journal of conservative opinion published in the city of Zurich."

             
"I have heard of it," Barnett said, "although I don't read German. My wife does." He turned to Cecily.

             
"I know the magazine," Cecily said. "Tell me, Signor Kasper, what have you to do with it, or it with us?"

             
"I shall explain. You may know, then, that the
Staatlicher
Ü
berblicken
publishes a profile every month of an important, but little known figure of these closing years of the nineteenth century. Those
individuals
who have accomplishments which are of value to European civilization, but which have gone relatively unnoticed, are the subjects of these profiles." The fat man turned from Benjamin to Cecily and back, as though waiting for a reaction, and surprised that it was not there.

             
"Yes?" Barnett said. He glanced at Cecily, who gave an imperceptible shrug.

             
Kasper leaned forward and placed his palms on the table. "Mr. Barnett, you are a friend of the great criminologist and consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is this not so?"

             
"I am certainly an acquaintance of Mr. Holmes," Barnett replied, repressing a strong desire to laugh at the question. "I doubt whether he would consider me his friend."

             
Kasper shrugged. "An
acquaintance,
and a journalist. You are certainly the man we want. There is, as you must know, much curiosity and interest in the life and the professional abilities of Mr. Holmes. Several European police agencies are adopting his techniques for their own detective bureaus." He paused and took a wheezy breath, and then another. "Mr. Barnett, I would like to commission you to write, for the
Staatlicher
Ü
berblicken,
a profile of Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

             
Barnett stared at the fat man, speechless. There was hardly a less appropriate journalist in the world than himself to write such a piece. But how was the fat man to know of the enmity that existed between Sherlock Holmes and Barnett's friend and mentor Professor Moriarty? "Well," he said after a moment, "that is certainly an interesting suggestion. But I am not really the man for the task. I have hardly any time to do any writing at all anymore. And, although I have worked with him on several occasions, I'm hardly what would be described as a friend. Why don't you ask his associate, Dr. Watson, who has been recording various cases of his for the past few years?" Barnett couldn't escape the nagging feeling that there was something wrong with all this—the fat man, the meeting, the offer, and all—but he couldn't figure out just what it could be, or should be.

             
"The good doctor is not suitable to our needs," the fat man said. "He is not of the true journalistic tradition—the probing question, the in-depth answer, the letting of the chips to fall where they may."

             
The small, round-faced clergyman who had boarded the train with Kasper entered the dining car from the front, his black robes swishing about as he scurried up the aisle.
"Signor Kasper,"
he called in a low, intense, breathy voice,
"Desidero parlare con Lei, per piacere."

             
"English, please, Father Ugarti," Kasper said. "Pause for a moment. Allow me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Barnett. This is Father Ugarti, a man of the cloth."

             
Father Ugarti nodded, bobbing his head up and down rapidly and peering at them through his round, thick spectacles. His face creased into a large smile that showed many brown, discolored teeth. "It is pleasurable to be making of your acquaintance," he said. "You are an English couple on your honeymoon, perhaps?
Traveling through our romantic mountains and lakes.
You should find our countryside most interesting.
Most interesting."
He turned to Kasper. "I hate to seem impolite to your charming friends, but I must, after all, speak with you for a moment."