The Ludwig Conspiracy(18)

Sighing, Steven picked up the yellowing notebook again and leafed through it. “That doesn’t change the fact that the book was written in code. Nothing but odd signs, and now and then a jumble of capital letters. If I only knew . . .”

Suddenly he stopped dead.

“What is it?” asked Sara.

“The book your uncle was asking me about,” Steven began thoughtfully. “The diaries of Samuel Pepys . . .”

“What about them?”

“As far as I know, they were written in a kind of code, too. An early seventeenth-century variety of shorthand.”

Sara frowned. “What about it?”

“I bought the book online,” Steven said, “but I haven’t looked inside it yet. I may be wrong, but . . .”

He went over to the computer and typed Pepys into Search. It took him some time, but at last Steven found the right site. His heart leaped.

“I was right,” he said. “See for yourself.”

Sara jumped off the sofa and padded over to the bookseller. Together, they stared at the screen. A cryptic script flickered on the monitor, consisting mainly of flourishes, lines, and dots. Only a few recognizable English words stood out.





The art detective whistled softly through her teeth. It was the same coded script the king’s assistant had used in his diary.

“Shelton’s shorthand from the seventeenth century,” Steven said. “Samuel Pepys used it in his diary to keep all his affairs secret from his wife. It wasn’t decoded until two hundred years later. Your uncle must have guessed something and came to me to check his suspicions.” He shook his head. “Who’d have expected a little French assistant doctor to write his diary in an antiquated secret code?”

“Theodor Marot studied history as well as medicine in Strasbourg,” Sara said. “He obviously qualified with distinction. Nice work!” She patted Steven on the shoulder. “The competitor progresses to the next round of the game. Although that brings us to another problem: how are we going to decipher the damn thing?”

Steven clicked back two pages. “It says here that Shelton wrote a manual for his shorthand in 1635. It’s called Tachygraphy. That’s ancient Greek—it means ‘fast writing,’ and . . .”

“Okay, Professor, I don’t need a lesson in ancient Greek—I need one in stenography,” Sara interrupted him impatiently. “So what about that manual?”

“You ought to let me finish what I’m saying, dear Ms. Art Detective,” Steven said. “I was about to tell you that not only do I have Pepys’s diaries in my stockroom, but I recently acquired a copy of Tachygraphy. A very rare book.” He tapped his forehead. “Nothing like keeping a good inventory in your head.”

Thoughtfully, Sara took a third menthol cigarette out of her crumpled pack.

“My compliments, Herr Lukas,” she replied dryly. “Through to yet another round of the game. At this rate, you might yet be the champion. But to do that, the two of us have something else to do first.”

“And that is?”

Sara’s face disappeared behind a cloud of white menthol-scented smoke. “We have to get over to your stockroom as fast as possible to fetch that book. Before the Cowled Men take it into their heads to rummage around there some more.”





7





WHEN THEY REACHED the westend district, it was well after midnight. Most of the trendy pubs, sushi bars, and cafeterias had closed, and there wasn’t much going on in the streets. A few cars searched for one of the rare parking spots; otherwise, the place was deserted. The drone of Turkish music reached their ears from somewhere. If TV sets hadn’t been flickering like strobe lighting behind several windows, one might have thought it was a dead city.

Steven wasn’t sure just how deeply he should get involved. From what Sara said, the men who were after the diary would kill for it without a second thought. They had tortured a man to death over it already. On the other hand, the discovery of Marot’s diary was a real coup, any antiquarian bookseller’s dream. If it was really written in Shelton’s coded script, and they could decode it, and if it gave information about the death of Ludwig II, all Steven’s financial worries would be over, not to mention the publicity he would get. Der Spiegel, Stern, Focus—they’d all be writing about his discovery.

But suppose it’s a forgery?

The forged Hitler diaries sprang to Steven’s mind. They had plunged Stern magazine into the greatest scandal in German media history. He decided to be wary, for safety’s sake, but the diary held an almost magical attraction for him.