The Ludwig Conspiracy(120)
“What do you want the book for?” he asked. The two gorillas to the right and left of Luise Manstein hadn’t moved an inch, yet it seemed to Steven that they were just waiting for a pretext to fire their Uzis at him. “To prove that King Ludwig was murdered? Professor Liebermann would have done just that.”
“I suspect it’s about something very different,” Zöller said, speaking up for the first time. His voice sounded curiously calm, almost apathetic. “Something beyond the power of your imagination, Herr Lukas. This woman is . . .”
“Silence, you scoundrel!” Luise leaped off her wooden throne and pointed the little Derringer straight at Zöller. Her hands were trembling, her eyes cold and piercing. “Why I need that book is no business of anyone here. All that matters is for me to have it in my hands at last. For the damn riddle to be solved after more than a century.”
Zöller took a step back and held his tongue, but Sara intervened.
“I suspect that Uncle Lu was about to say, ‘This woman is a total nut case.’” She turned to the bookseller. “Come on, Steven! Look at her! She thinks she’s a new Ludwig, and these thugs are her paladins. You can’t get crazier than that. And this giant monkey here,” she added, turning furiously to Lancelot, who was just behind and towering above her, “is just her favorite toy knight.”
“You have made Lancelot very angry, Frau Lengfeld.” The head of Manstein Systems sat down on the stool again, but now her voice was cold as steel. “Very angry. You are part of his fee, did you know that?”
Lancelot grinned, then winked at Sara with his one sound eye.
“I’ll make you an offer, Frau Manstein,” Steven said. He opened his rucksack and went over to the gallery, holding the little cherrywood chest. “I’ll give you the book. The book and the little treasure chest. And in return, you let us go. The police would never believe us anyway, and you’ll save yourself a great deal of trouble.”
“She’ll never let us go.” Zöller shook his head. He seemed like an old man again. “We know the secret of the book, or at least almost. And what’s more, we could always tell the police about this lady’s large-scale art theft.”
“Art theft?” Sara asked, baffled. “What are you talking about?”
A slight tic on the industrialist’s face showed Steven that Zöller had found out something important. The two guards to the left and right of the throne exchanged nervous glances.
“You can deceive millions of tourists, maybe the castle administration as well, and a few self-styled experts, Frau Manstein,” Zöller growled. “But you don’t deceive me. I’ve taken a very close look at the bed, the washstand, and the rest of the furnishings of the castle, and I’ve taken photographs. It’s only a matter of tiny details, but I’ve seen too many pictures of the original fittings and furnishings to miss seeing the difference.”
“Nonsense,” hissed the industrialist. “The copies are perfect.”
“The copies?” Bewildered, Steven looked from Uncle Lu to Luise Manstein. “What copies?”
“Herr Lukas, do you really think that Manstein Systems accepted the commission in Neuschwanstein just for the prestige of it or out of pure love for humanity?” Zöller laughed quietly. “A leading German IT company renovates a dusty castle? Sees to unimportant details like personally hiring the security staff? That struck me as odd all along. When I had a chance to take a look at the furniture in the royal bedchamber today, I couldn’t believe it at first. I thought I must be mistaken. But now I know that we are witnesses to one of the greatest art thefts of the century. For that very reason alone, Madame here isn’t about to let us go.”
“Are you saying that all the furniture and works of art in the castle are only . . . duplicates?” Steven remembered how thin and cheap the wood of the king’s bedside table had looked to him just now. Could it be possible? All at once he felt as if the ground had been pulled from under his feet.
Most of this stuff is just smoke and mirrors . . .
“I don’t know exactly how many pieces of furniture,” Zöller said. “The bed, the chairs, and the washstand in the bedchamber, in any case. Presumably on the nights when Manstein Systems’ people were installing the security system, they gradually dismantled everything here, bringing in the duplicates at the same time. The furniture in the study and the dining room also struck me as a little different. And here . . .”
He looked curiously up at the ceiling, where the great chandelier hung, with nearly a hundred candles.