The Devil's Opera(152)
Miklos shrugged as he put the paper money away and closed and stored the pistol cases. A man dressed that well wouldn’t be unknown in the city. He’d find him if he ever needed to. Besides, he’d be back when he needed more bullets and caps.
* * *
“…so I checked with some of the other merchants’ clerks, and most of them supported Herr Dauth’s account. It appears that Master Schmidt was paying a steep premium to acquire quite a bit of silver coinage.”
Otto Gericke watched as Detective Sergeant Karl Honister spread his hands above the folder sitting before him at the table. The sergeant had been ordered to give this update to Captain Reilly and himself by Lieutenant Chieske. Knowing the lieutenant, there was a reason why.
“You think there’s a connection?”
That was from the captain. Honister lowered his hands to the table and interlaced his fingers.
“I can’t prove it yet, but there almost has to be a connection between a large amount of USE dollars going missing, and at or near the same time a merchant doing everything he can to scrape together silver coinage, even to the extent of paying ruinous fees or converting even more valuable assets, such as gold. There is something not right there; I just can’t put my finger on it. And I don’t have a motive for it, either.”
Ah, now it became apparent. Gericke stirred.
“My brother-in-law was not a happy man when his consortium did not receive the award of the contract for the expansion of the hospital. He blamed me for it.”
He shrugged. “If he is involved, one reason might be to buy the money from whoever stole it originally. Even paying those fees, if he got a good enough discount in buying the dollars from the murderers, then he could still make a tidy profit. And he has sufficient business connections that the money might never be seen here in Magdeburg. For all we know, it may already be split up and on its way to Hamburg, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or Venice.”
“But that’s still more ‘what’ or ‘how.’ The question is still why would he be involved in this?” Honister asked.
Gericke finally put into words the suspicion that had begun to form in his mind the day of the explosion.
“Georg Schmidt is ordinarily a very sharp man who stays within the limit of the law, but he is also what the up-timers would sometimes call petty. He will nurse a grudge until it dies, then take the bones of it and hang it on the wall as a relic. Perhaps—just perhaps—he may have crossed the line into vindictiveness.” He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, eyes closed. “He was very angry.”
Gericke lowered his hand and looked at the two police officers.
“Your thought that the fire, the murders and robbery, and the explosion might have a common thread? Look to Georg Schmidt. And if you find evidence, pursue it. The fire, I might have overlooked.” Gericke shook his head. “Although, with the Committees of Correspondence involved, I probably couldn’t have even done that. But the murders, and the deaths from the explosion added to it all? No, those cannot be overlooked, or we will have anarchy in the streets. He must be either cleared or indicted, and soon.”
With that, Gericke stood up.
“I will be in my office if you need me.”
* * *
Andreas Schardius opened the envelope from Grantville. He had commissioned a researcher in Grantville to identify this Johnny Depp that Marla Linder had indicated she valued so highly and provide all the information available on him. The report had arrived today. Unfolding the pages, he skimmed the cover letter with its polite language. He tossed that page aside, and moved on to the report.
“What?”
That exclamation after reading the first few lines was the only sound he made until he reached the end of the report. But the paper began to curl and crumple as his fingers tried to draw into a fist.
When he finished the report, he sat there, every muscle in his body locked, breath ripping into and out of his nose, head lowered, and tremors of rage coursing through his body.
An actor? Marla Linder had dared to compare him to an actor? And one who hadn’t even come back through the Ring of Fire with Grantville at that?
His planned revenge crumbled to dust.
Schardius shot to his feet, grabbed his chair, raised it, and almost smashed it against the wall behind his desk. After struggling for a few seconds, he managed to restrain himself and set the chair back down on the floor.
He felt a little better, then. His mind wasn’t in the total grip of rage, at any rate. Grabbing his hat and coat, he flung open the door, startling the office workers gathered outside his office. A moment later, he was on the street.
He wasn’t aware that he was being followed.