Thomas Ochiltree (7 page)

“The captain will excuse my appearance,” Röderer said sarcastically, rising from his bunk and making a vague gesture with his right hand.

Röderer’s tunic was unbuttoned, showing a non-too-clean shirt underneath. Von Falkenburg knew that officers under charges were expected to maintain normal standards of appearance. But perhaps the prison commandant thought Röderer was beneath worrying about.

“It’s hard to be a
fescher Leutnant
when you’re in the clink,” Röderer said. And certainly, a less “stylish lieutenant” could hardly be imagined.

“Of course, you dashing regimental officers don’t think we Staff officers can ever be
fesch.
That’s why you call us the bottle-greenies.”

Röderer’s tunic was indeed the bottle-green of the Staff Corps, rather than dark blue, like von Falkenburg’s.

“On the other hand,” Röderer went on, “the bottle-greenies think that
they
are far superior to the regimental officers. Indeed, some of them even thought that being on the Staff was
so
marvelous that
I
didn’t belong there.”

Röderer laughed – a short, unpleasant laugh that revealed his teeth – and made a sweeping gesture to indicate the walls of his cell. It was as if the fact that he was in jail disproved the contention of those who thought that he did not belong on the Staff.

Von Falkenburg noticed as he listened to Röderer that the man had a very broad Viennese working-class accent.

“What did you want Röderer? Money?” von Falkenburg asked.

“Ah, money. Money’s always nice,” Röderer said with a grin every bit as disquieting as his laugh had been, “but it wasn’t really,
really
the money. Do you want to know what it really,
really
was?”

Röderer paused for effect, like an actor, and then shouted, “I wanted to screw your whole Austro-Hungarian army!”

Röderer’s strange, ingratiating self-depreciation was suddenly transformed into hysterical rage, which was immediately followed by a fit of sobbing.

Von Falkenburg shifted uncomfortably on his feet. He had imagined the interview differently.

As it was, he could guess at least part of the truth, although it would do him no good. Röderer, as his accent clearly indicated, came from the working class. Somehow he had gotten into the cadet school. Perhaps he had had an ambitious mother – there were “officer mothers” just as there were “stage mothers.” At any rate, once commissioned, he had slaved and slaved, always trying to prove that he was brighter and harder working than his peers. And as a result, he was wound up on the Staff. Von Falkenburg could imagine the ecstasy Röderer must have felt when he was selected for the War College, the fantasies he had doubtless had of one day becoming a field marshal. It was true that regimental officers made fun of the Staff, but that was mostly out of envy.

Then Röderer had found that he could not put his social background behind him, brains or no brains, hard work or no hard work. The Emperor loved to say that all officers were equal, and that their position in society was equivalent to that of a nobleman. But in the real world, things did not work like that. Röderer, with his working class mannerisms and bad accent had not fit in, and had fretted himself to pieces.

Yet, von Falkenburg realized, there
had
to be more to it than that. There had to be something else that Röderer blamed the Army for, and that had turned him into a traitor.

Von Falkenburg noticed that Röderer’s eyes now seemed to be almost glowing. Was that excitement, or…what? There was sweat on Röderer’s forehead, and a febrile agitation to his movements. The memory of things a medical friend of his named Rubinstein had once told him began to return to von Falkenburg.

“Did you…did you bring it?” Röderer asked anxiously, the ingratiating note back in his voice.

“No,” von Falkenburg said, beginning to guess what Röderer was referring to, but puzzled by the request.

There was a look of panic on Röderer’s face.

“Who’s going to bring it? It is going to be brought, isn’t it?” he asked desperately.

“I have no idea, Röderer.”

The man looked at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then screamed “you’re lying! I know it! You just want to torture me!”

He clutched von Falkenburg’s tunic with a frenzy that made it hard for von Falkenburg to push him away. Then all of Röderer’s wild energy seemed to evaporate at once, and he fell back on his bunk, burying his face in his hands and sobbing, “I don’t understand! I don’t understand!”

So, von Falkenburg realized, that was it. Morphine, or something similar. The miraculous powder which took away the pain of existence. Röderer – who had doubtless turned to it to ease his professional and social anxieties and had come to blame the army for his addiction – was finished on this earth.

Then von Falkenburg remembered that he too was finished if he did not get some information out of the man. Röderer’s outburst suggested he had indeed engaged in criminal activity of some kind. But he was obviously incapable of having forged the evidence against von Falkenburg. There had to be others behind Röderer who had used him, and those others were the persons whom von Falkenburg had to discover.

“I’m von Falkenburg. The man you have falsely accused of being your accomplice.”

A broad smile spread over Röderer’s sweat-covered, haggard face.

“So, the elegant captain will soon be joining me here,” he said with evident satisfaction.
Von
Falkenburg. Very feudal. Mama was doubtless a fine lady, not a laundress.”

For a brief moment the satisfaction appeared to override the terrible physical hunger which was consuming Röderer, even though his hands still shook. But soon the hunger worked its way to the surface again, like a stain on a wall working its way through a coat of fresh paint. A grimace covered the man’s face, and it was only the tone of his voice that allowed von Falkenburg to realize that the grimace was supposed to be an ingratiating smile.

“Perhaps if you could get me some….”

“No.”

“Then get out, you bastard,” Röderer screamed, “Get out! Out! Out!”

Von Falkenburg realized that at present there was nothing to gained from Röderer. He might as well go.

The ride back to the Rossauer Barracks was a depressing one. The interview with his accuser had been useless. It was clear that Röderer – who had not even known who he was until he identified himself – had simply been told by others to accuse him. But who were they, and why had they singled
him
out as their victim? Now that he had failed to obtain any useful information from Röderer, he did not have a single idea how to pursue his investigation.

Well, von Falkenburg thought, if he had only a week to live, at least he could live it with Helena. My God, what a woman! Schmidt should have brought her answer to his note by now.

And Schmidt had. Eagerly, von Falkenburg tore open the little envelope that the orderly had propped up on the mantelpiece next to the clock. The note inside was short and to the point: “The Princess Helena von Rauffenstein regrets that she is unable to accede to the captain’s request for an interview, now or at any other time.”

Von Falkenburg gazed at the note with something of the same mixture of rage and astonishment with which he had heard the major’s accusation of treason the day before.

“Bitch!” he exclaimed as he crumpled up the note and threw it into the fire. “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!”

Von Falkenburg had been rejected by some women before, but never
after
he had made love to them. He stamped up and down the room, ablaze with anger and shame.

Then he stopped in front of the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece.

“Failure!” he said to his reflection through clenched teeth. He had failed to get any information from Röderer, and he had also apparently failed with Helena. What had happened? Had his lifetime supply of luck suddenly run out?

But self-pity, he knew full well, never accomplished anything. Helena, he told himself with a surge of resolve, would have just been a distraction from his investigation, and he was determined to bring that investigation to a successful conclusion. He had a whole life to win for himself, and there would be far better women in it than she!

Von Falkenburg called the commandant of the prison to say that he wished to talk to Röderer the next day. Perhaps by then the man would be somewhat detoxified, and he could get some sense out of him.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” the commandant said. “Lieutenant Röderer has just shot himself.”

The contempt with which the commandant had mentioned Röderer’s name earlier that day was now lacking. The man had, after all, made use of the revolver with one bullet that was customarily left in the cell of an officer under arrest on serious charges. Röderer had finally “taken the honorable way out.”

So now his sole possible lead was gone, von Falkenburg realized as he laid down the receiver. The fact that the witness against him was also gone was now unimportant, given the existence of von Falkenburg’s signed confession.

Outside, it was beginning to grow dark. Von Falkenburg realized that the first of his seven days was drawing to a close, and that he had achieved nothing. All he had succeeded in doing was to lose a woman he thought that he had. He knew now that he faced a useless, lonely week and a lonely, bitter death.

Von Falkenburg sat in the Café Landtmann next to one of the windows that looked out on the
Rathaus,
the City Hall with its Gothic spire. The sun was streaming in, and outside the weather suggested that spring really might have arrived. Von Falkenburg sipped his breakfast coffee and thought about Röderer.

The man had killed himself at the worst possible moment: after he had fingered von Falkenburg, but before von Falkenburg had been able to get any information out of him.

“Damn him,” von Falkenburg said to himself, “why the devil did his timing have to be so bad?”

Bad for von Falkenburg, anyway.

Von Falkenburg held the cup half way to his mouth as he reflected on the point. Röderer’s timing had been disastrous for von Falkenburg, which conversely meant that it had been perfect for von Falkenburg’s enemies.

Could they have had a hand in Röderer’s death? But how would they have gotten Röderer to shoot himself?

No, it looked like von Falkenburg’s idea led nowhere.

Unless….

This time, von Falkenburg sensed that he was on the right track. He paid for his coffee and left, looking around the street eagerly for a cab. Typically, now that he really needed one, none was to be found. Finally, one came by, pulled by a shabby gray nag.

“Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 19, please.”

Rubinstein had done well for himself. The apartment building had a lobby with a polished marble floor, and a bronze statue holding an electric light globe surmounted the carved newel post of the staircase. The elevator was on one of the upper floors, and von Falkenburg strode up the thickly carpeted steps rather than wait for it.

“Good day, Captain. Does the Captain have an appointment?” the receptionist asked. She was quite pretty in a businesslike sort of way.

“No. But please ask the
Herr Doktor
if he might have some time for Captain von Falkenburg. He knows me personally.”

There was the slightest hint on the receptionist’s face of the disapproval she felt for people – even handsome army officers – who did not make appointments in the regular fashion. Nevertheless, she conveyed his message to her employer, and a moment later reappeared to tell von Falkenburg that Dr. Rubinstein would see him now, and to usher him into Rubinstein’s office.

“Hello, von Falkenburg. What can I do for you? You certainly look fit enough, and besides, you have the skills of the regimental doctor at your command.”

The look of amusement on Rubinstein’s face as he said that showed what he thought of regimental doctors, who were said to rely on only two treatments: iodine and cod liver oil.

“Oh, I’m healthy enough,” von Falkenburg said, “but I need your medical expertise anyway.”

Without going into why he was asking the question, von Falkenburg described Röderer’s appearance and behavior, and then asked Rubinstein if he thought a drug might be involved.

“Sounds very much like it. Mophine, I expect. Detoxification is a
very
painful process.”

“Now,” von Falkenburg said, “supposing a person was deprived of the stuff and was told he had absolutely no prospect of getting it. Do you think he might kill himself?”

Rubinstein leaned back in his chair and thought for a while. “It’s not at all impossible,” he said finally. “The effect of morphine and related drugs is to produce a euphoria. When they wear off, there is an intense depression.”

“The person I am talking about was in a cell, facing very serious charges for which he was certain to be convicted.”

“An officer?”

“Yes.”

“The deprivation of the morphine could have been a decisive factor, taken on top of the other circumstances which would suggest suicide. As I say, morphine is a euphoric. If your man had kept taking it, he would have stayed on Cloud Nine. Instead, he was in intense physical agony, and in a mental state where his bleak future could have persuaded him to take the step which the idiotic honor-cult expected of him.”

“You fought a duel once back at the university,” von Falkenburg said with a smile.

“I know, and every day I thank my stars that I’m not in the Central Cemetery on account of it.”

“But you’d do it again?”

“Oh yes. I mean, when someone lets his anti-Semitism get as badly out of hand as that little idiot
Freiherr
von Probern did, one simply can’t let it pass. I’m glad no one got hurt, though. I couldn’t hit the side of a barn of course, since it was the first time I’d fired a pistol.”

“And von Probern was trembling too much to hold his pistol straight,” von Falkenburg added. It was the first duel he had attended as a second.

“One last question,” he went on. “How long after a person is deprived of morphine will the effects of the deprivation really begin to make themselves felt?”