The Empty Mirror by J. Sydney Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

arrested for murder. His life may depend on an alibi.”
    “And I do not think you understand, Herr Werthen. A man is a man. His word must mean something or he is nothing. We all know that Gustl is less than perfect. It is just that
he
doesn’t realize that. I for one will not take that away from him. Surely the police cannot believe he is a mad killer. We will take our chances, thank you very much.”
    “We?”
    She merely looked at him, her alabaster skin bearing a faint skein of glisten over the lips. She was hard as nails, but also playing a game. A risky game, a gambler’s game.
    “It is Gustl’s decision. I am here to ask you not to try and convince him otherwise.”
    “Does his mother know of his …”
    “Infidelities?” she offered. “Of course. But not of his bastard child.”
    She said the word with a harshness that spoke volumes about her true feelings.
    “She is a weak woman. Her heart. News of such a thing might-no, surely would-cause her harm. It is Gustl’s decision,
Advokat
Werthen. We must both honor that.”
    “The fools,” said Gross, seated in a straight-back chair in the office of Inspektor Meindl at the Police Presidium overlooking the plane trees of Schottenring. “They’re playing to the press. What evidence could they have against him?”
    “My position exactly,” said Meindl, a diminutive man, even smaller than Werthen remembered. He sat behind an expanse of cherrywood, nestled in an immense armchair that looked as if it might have done service to a medieval potentate, all of which made the man seem even smaller than he was. On the wall behind him was the usual photographic portrait of the emperor, muttonchopped and scowling; next to it was a smaller portrait in oils. This depicted a noble-looking head topped by a shock of white hair. Just at the bottom of the frame the artist had hinted at the vast chestful of medals that the man wore. Werthen knew who this man was immediately, for he was almost as recognizable as the emperor himself: Prince Grunenthal, the éminence grise behind Franz Josef. That the picture was in oils suggested to Werthen that the prince might well be Meindl’s sponsor, which would account for the man’s meteoric rise in Vienna.
    “That there is the possibility of some mistake is why I welcome this visit.” Meindl smiled at Gross, ignoring Werthen.
    Today he is on our side, Werthen thought. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
    Meindl was clean-shaven and pink-cheeked and wore a pair of the newly invented spring-bridge, tortoiseshell pince-nez. “I strongly advised against a too precipitate arrest. But the criminal police are, as you note, Doktor Gross, under the gun as well as understaffed. The citizens want results. They demand results. And your Herr Klimt
seemingly
presents an easy target. An outsider, someone who flaunts bohemian behavior, who insists on leaving the official art league to set up his own gallery. All artists are a bit unstable then, are they not?”
    “So he is to be tried for being an artist?” Werthen said. “Absurd. I see no real evidence.”
    “There is the matter of the bloody rag found in his studio,” Meindl replied, still focusing on Gross.
    “A bloody rag does not a crime scene make,” Gross noted. “We are still several years away from determining whether such blood is even human in origin.”
    “Klimt says it is his cat’s,” Werthen added. “The cat in question got in a fight recently. It lost.”
    Meindl pursed his lips. “Then why was the rag hidden?”
    “Hardly hidden,” Werthen protested, finally getting Meindl’s direct attention. “It was among a bag of rags Klimt uses to clean his brushes. And if it was actually the blood from the unfortunate Fräulein Landtauer, don’t you think he would have destroyed it?”
    “Absolutely,” Gross concurred. “If anything, one would think the presence of the bloody rag proves the man’s innocence. He has nothing to hide.”
    “Perhaps it was his bizarre form of