Reading Online Novel

The Ludwig Conspiracy(64)



“On my word of honor, I really had nothing to do with . . .” Steven began, but Sara interrupted him.

“You haven’t told us yet what you know about the book,” she said in a loud voice, changing the subject. “Obviously it’s far more than we’ve managed to find out.”

“Very well.” Breathing heavily, Uncle Lu rose from his chair and adjusted his pants. His stomach hung over his belt like a squashed medicine ball. “It’s about time I let you into my holy of holies. And bring that with you, for heaven’s sake.” He pointed to the little box containing the diary. “It mustn’t fall into the wrong hands no matter what.”

Without another word, he shuffled toward the door at the back of the room.





“YOU’RE . . . ER, renovating?”

Disappointed, Steven looked around the room on the other side of the door. He had expected a library, a study, at least a desk covered by documents. But what he saw was a combination of a living room and a temporary toolshed. Newspapers were stacked on a shabby armchair; an old Bakelite telephone stood on an otherwise-empty bookcase along the back wall. To the left was a row of old crates that had once held fruit, with assorted drills, screwdrivers, and a sledgehammer sticking out of them.

“Forgive the mess, but I have to extend the place again,” Uncle Lu said. “And since my wife died—God rest her soul—my housekeeping here has left something to be desired. You get to feel increasingly lonely.”

Steven nodded sympathetically, although most of his sympathy was for the dead woman who had put up with this eccentric for so long. He also wondered where Zöller was planning to build an extension in this little house with all its nooks and crannies. At a loss, the bookseller looked at Sara, who merely shrugged.

“What’s the point of this?” Steven whispered to her. “The man’s a compulsive hoarder. How is he going to help us?”

“Shut up,” Sara hissed. “Look over there.”

Steven turned back to Uncle Lu, who now stood by the empty bookcase and pushed it aside, breathing heavily. Behind it, an opening came into view, with a flight of stairs leading down beyond it.

“Careful, the stairs are very steep,” Zöller said, going ahead. In surprise, Sara and Steven followed him along the narrow downward climb, and finally reached a dark cellar. When Zöller switched on the light, the bookseller gasped.

The room was at least as large as the entire ground floor of the house above them. Shelves of the finest grained cherrywood reached to the ceiling on all sides and were crammed with books, folios, and files. In the middle of the cellar stood an old mahogany table, with a brand-new computer, a laser printer, and a scanner on it. Halogen lamps fixed to steel cables bathed the scene in muted light.

“My cabinet of curiosities,” Uncle Lu announced. “It contains everything that has been written about King Ludwig.” He pointed to the opposite wall. “And there’s another room behind one of the bookcases; I’m extending it at the moment. The torrent of rumors and information about the Fairy-tale King never dries up.”

Steven stared, open-mouthed, at the vast archive. He knew several large private collections, but this exceeded anything he could have imagined.

“How . . . how many books do you have here?” he asked reverently.

“Exactly three thousand one hundred fifty-seven,” Uncle Lu proudly replied. “Some of them are in Japanese. Some are even in Finnish. As well as countless files, newspaper reports, and much other information that I’ve scanned onto my hard drive. It’s astonishing what an echo a single man can set going all over the world. But here we have the most valuable item.”

Zöller went up to a framed oil painting of the king hung between two bookcases. When he took it down, a safe came into view. The old man laboriously entered the combination and finally took out a bundle that he placed reverently on the desk.

Only at a second glance did Steven realize that he was looking at a torn, pale summer coat. On the back there were two black-rimmed holes the size of marbles. The entire garment was flecked with bloodstains.

“The king’s coat,” Albert Zöller whispered. “The coat he was wearing on the night of the murder.”

Sara stuck her finger into one of the frayed black holes. “They really were made by gunshots,” she said. She turned to Zöller. “But how do you know that this is really the coat the king was wearing at the time of his death? It could have belonged to anyone.”

Uncle Lu shook his head vigorously. “The coat comes from the estate of an old countess who credibly convinced several people in the 1950s that it had belonged to the king. She herself always insisted that Ludwig had been shot and the coat exchanged at the scene of the crime.”