The Devil's Opera(144)
Simon shivered.
“Money?” Sergeant Hoch asked.
“Big fight tonight,” Hans rasped. “Brought in a man from Hannover. Schardius ordered me to lose. I won.”
“How much?” Chieske asked.
“Fifty thousand dollars,” Simon said after Hans didn’t answer right away.
“Fifty thousand!” Incredulity overflowed from the sergeant’s voice.
“Dollars,” Simon responded.
A moment of silence reigned, broken finally by the up-timer.
“So, you’ve broken with Schardius, then?”
Hans rasped again, then said, “Yah, I suppose you could say that.”
“Give us what we want, and we’ll see to their safety.”
Hans seemed to soften a bit at that, as if up until this moment he had been holding himself rigid.
“Don’t know as much as you think I do.”
“Tell us what you do know,” Sergeant Hoch encouraged as he pulled out his notebook and pencil.
“The guys found dead in the river, at least the ones I heard about, had all crossed Schardius in some way. You seem to already know that. I don’t know anything about any of them except the last one, Delt.”
Hans paused and took a slow deep breath, hand at his side again.
“He sent me out to find Delt that night. I brought him back to the warehouse, and Schardius sent me out again. But I listened at the back door.”
Another slow breath.
“He talked to Delt for a minute. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but his tone was angry. Then he went out the front door. I’m sure that they killed Delt after Schardius left, and threw him in the river.”
Chieske pounced. “Who is ‘they’?”
“I don’t know if they all did it, or just one or two. It was the regular warehouse crew in the room. But the man you want is Ernst Mann, the warehouse foreman. If anyone knows Schardius’ secrets, it’s him. But he won’t talk.”
“We’ll see,” Chieske said. He looked over at the sergeant. “Got all that?”
He got a nod in response as Hoch put the notebook away.
Simon’s head was spinning with all the revelations. He was slightly horrified that Hans had had anything to do with the body he had found in the river months ago. But he was also glad that his friend’s involvement in the confirmed-murder of the man had been very minor.
“Right,” the up-timer said. “Go get your sister. I hope she travels light.”
“Simon, tell her to get dressed, bring all her money, and leave everything else,” Hans said. “Sergeant Hoch, would you go up with Simon and get her? The stairs…”
“Ah,” Hoch responded. “Pain?”
“Broken rib, maybe,” Hans muttered. “Cracked for sure.”
Both the Polizei men winced.
“You need to see a doctor,” Hoch said.
“In the morning,” Hans rasped. “Now, my sister?”
“Right.”
Sergeant Hoch beckoned Simon, and they started up the stairs together.
* * *
“Who is it?” a voice called from the other side of the door that Karl Honister had been pounding on.
“Detective Sergeant Karl Honister, Magdeburg Polizei. I need to speak to Johann Dauth.”
“Who?”
“Johann. Dauth.” Honister spoke slowly and distinctly, when what he wanted to do was ram his fist through the door and yank Dauth out to meet him.
There was a long moment of silence, but just as Honister was about to start pounding on the door again, it opened and young Dauth slipped out to face him, closing the door behind him. He had the look of someone who had just thrown on some clothes. His shoes not being fastened reinforced that idea.
Honister wouldn’t have cared if he had appeared naked and painted scarlet to ape the demons of Hell. He wanted information, and he wanted it now.
“Sorry, my wife’s in bed,” Dauth muttered.
Honister brushed that aside. “This won’t take long, Herr Dauth. I need you to remember something for me. It’s very important.”
“All right,” Dauth said, his tone a bit uncertain.
“The last time we talked, you said something about one of the merchants in town buying up silver coin.”
“Yah, that happens sometimes, usually when someone has to deal with a customer or a vendor outside the USE who won’t take USE dollars.”
“Was there anything unusual about this time?” Honister pressed.
Dauth’s youthful face wrinkled in thought.
“Well, there were a couple of things.”
“What?”
“There is usually a small discount charged in those kinds of transactions. The person asking for the exchange usually receives somewhat less than full value of what they’re exchanging.”