My carriage thundered, at vertiginous speed, past the royal residence and down to the Isar River, then along it, until finally the Reichenbach bridge was in sight. Von Strelitz was still on my heels. I turned left and raced into the dirty neighborhood of Au. The houses to my right and left were low and slanted sideways, the alleys narrow and winding. The beggars and day laborers watched, astonished, as two elegant horse-drawn cabs rattled through this impoverished area. Some of them shouted encouragement, assuming that we had arranged an illicit carriage race.
Suddenly a herd of lowing cows and bleating goats came out of a side street ahead of me and to my right. I slackened the reins and just managed to shoot past the animals before they leisurely trotted across the alley. I heard the agent cursing loudly behind me. But it did him no good; the beasts went not a jot faster.
When I looked around once more, I could see the furious von Strelitz on the box of his cab, bringing his whip down on several cows and trying in vain to force his way past the beasts. Grinning, I turned forward. At the next bend in the road, I took a sharp right, got the cab behind a hay wain, and jumped down from the box, dripping with sweat. I had shaken off my enemy—for the time being.
And I had indeed found out what Count Dürckheim must have suspected: they wanted to certify the king insane! Certify him insane, and depose him.
I knew that I had to tell Ludwig about this monstrous plan at once, even if it meant risking my life. Von Strelitz would certainly move heaven and earth to keep me from reaching LINDERHOF Castle, where the king was staying, and he would do it at once. Maybe his henchmen were already waiting for me at the city gates. But I LOVED the king, and that LOVE was stronger than my fear. That was the key that could open the door of truth to the world.
Only a little later, I had taken refuge in the narrow alleys of the Au district. But for a long time I could still hear the bark of von Strelitz’s pistol in my ears. It was not to be the last time I heard it.
FHRT, LALJEDIE
9
THE RAMSHACKLE HORSE-DRAWN cab tossed Steven roughly back and forth. He felt the cobblestones under its wheels as distinctly as if his back were being dragged along the road. His mind buzzed with all he had learned over the last few hours. To make things even worse, the driver began shouting at him in a high-pitched voice.
“Wake up! Hey, wake up!”
Intrigued, Steven realized that the driver was a woman. Furthermore, the rattling noise had stopped. It was not the cab shaking him, but a hand tugging at his creased sleeve. Finally he sat up, blinking, and drowsily rubbed his eyes. Sara Lengfeld was standing in front of him, grinning and offering him a mug of steaming coffee. The open diary lay on the table among picture books and crumpled Post-it notes; he must have fallen asleep reading it. Sara had put a woolen rug over his legs in the night.
“Drink this,” Sara said. “There’s something I have to show you, and you’ll want to be in full possession of your faculties for it.”
“How . . . how long have I been asleep?” Steven asked, gratefully accepting the mug. The image of the dead man in his shop flickered briefly before his mind’s eye, and he reacted with a start. “The diary . . . I decoded several pages. I must have nodded off.”
Sara smiled. “It’s late morning. Also, you snore like a buzz saw.” She pointed to Steven’s unshaven face. “And you drool in your sleep.”
The bookseller, embarrassed, passed his hand over his lips. After falling asleep in the leather armchair, he felt as worn out as if he had genuinely been riding in a nineteenth-century posting coach. He probably looked terrible; pale, with tousled hair, bad breath, and unshaven. And of course his razor was back in his own apartment. It was high time he went back there. Maybe last night’s precautions had been overly paranoid.
“Listen, Sara,” he began. “It’s about time we stopped playing games and . . .”
She waved this remark away. “If you’re afraid I’m going to fall in love with you, don’t worry about it,” she interrupted him. “You’re not my type. Much too old.” She grinned. “Just a little joke. But the way it looks, you probably will have to stay here with me a while longer.”
Steven looked at her, baffled. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Then drink up your coffee like a good boy and follow me.” The art detective looked at her watch. “It’ll be eleven in a moment, and there’s something on TV that you definitely ought to see.”
“But what . . . what’s this about?” asked Steven, shaking his head. “Aren’t you interested in what the diary says? It’s a fascinating eyewitness account, and . . .”