This choice: Continue reading "The Mystery of the Wandering Wizard" • Go Back...Chapter #46The Mystery of the Wandering Wizard (3) by: Seuzz   Chapter Three
The Wizard of Zagreb
"I don't think we were chasing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," Frank said. "The simplest hypothesis is that we just lost him on a switchback."
"But what about the skid marks?" cried Joe.
"They could have belonged to another car. Even if they were only a few days old, they would have looked fresh."
"Okay, what about the tire tracks on the highway shoulder? Someone went sailing over that ravine, and there was nothing below."
"It was all clear?" their father asked when Frank remained silent. "No place where a car could have rolled away?" Joe shook his head. "Then either someone had an accident and the car has since been towed away, or it really did fly off into the clouds."
"We should rule out the accident hypothesis first," Frank said. His tone was truculent.
"You should do that tomorrow," their dad said. "At the latest, tomorrow's newspaper would have a story about an accident that bad."
"You really think maybe it did fly away?" Joe asked excitedly.
Their dad smiled faintly. "You boys know enough not to rule out that kind of possibility."
"I'd like to think we would have seen a car flying off across the canyon," Frank said. He pulled his lower lip thoughtfully. "I don't want to think we were that unobservant."
"Check on it tomorrow," their father said, in the tone of someone giving an order. "In the meantime, you can listen to what Father Ed has to say when he gets back. Are you boys hungry?"
"You just cleaned up the kitchen," Joe said cautiously. He was hungry but didn't want to cause unnecessary bother.
"And you can clean it up when you're done." Their father rose and left.
Frank and Joe laid plans for how to investigate the mysterious automobile as they raided the refrigerator and pantry, preparing themselves plates of roast beef sandwiches and chips and dill pickles and wedges of sharp cheddar cheese; Frank had a cola and Joe drank an orange soda. They cleaned up after themselves before sitting down to eat.
They were still munching on their early supper when they heard the front door open and close. They exchanged worried glances. Voices drifted from the other room. Then the speakers came into the kitchen.
Father Ed's eyes gleamed mischievously as he took in the two boys. "I hear you had a run in with Caractacus Potts this afternoon," he chortled. You had to give the man this much credit: though he didn't like being the butt of a joke, at least he could see and appreciate the humor in almost any situation.
Joe took a deep breath. "Father, I—"
But the cleric waved him to be quiet. "You just sit there and look cute. If you open your mouth you'll start being cute again, and then I'll have to take another walk to cool off."
"I'm trying apologize, you big—!" Joe jerked in his chair as Frank kicked him under the table. "I'm sorry," he muttered.
"Hmph. You could demonstrate your regret by making me a sandwich."
Joe's mouth fell open, then closed grimly. He started to get up, but Father Ed told him to sit down.
"The padre just got back from Europe last week—" the boys' father began.
"By 747, not automobile," Father Ed cackled. Joe wondered how much needling he and Frank would have to endure before the priest felt satisfied.
"He was at a medievalist conference in Vienna," their dad smoothly continued as he and Father Ed sat down. "While there, he heard some interesting news."
"There was an art theft," Father Ed said. "Perpetrated by someone with a twisted sense of humor." His eyes glinted as he looked at Joe. "Vienna. That's your old stomping grounds, eh, Franz? Can you account for your whereabouts last week?"
Joe bridled, not at the joking accusation that he might be mixed up in a theft, but at the use of his real name. Alone among the Stellae, Father Ed refused to call him and Giuseppe by their preferred aliases of "Joe" and "Frank."
"Vienna is in Austria," Joe muttered, and crossed his arms. "I was born in Germany."
Father Ed snorted and declined to follow up on his gibe. "Anyway, a painting got stolen and replaced by a forgery. Not a very good forgery, either. It was missing its subject."
Frank and Joe exchanged a glance, then looked at their father. "Dad, can you take over the story," Frank asked in a faintly complaining tone.
"It was a portrait of a man standing in his study," Father Ed said angrily. "It showed him standing by a bare table in front of a bookshelf. He was holding an astrolabe. The forgery that got put in showed the study and the bookshelf and the table. Sitting on the table was an astrolabe. But it didn't contain the man!"
Frank and Joe again looked at each other, and each tried to visualize what Father Ed had described. Frank leaned forward. "So the thief stole the painting, then put up another painting that made it look like the man in the painting had put down the astrolabe and vanished?"
Father Ed's laugh was like a hiss. "Quirky, isn't it? For all the world, it looks like the thief stole the man from inside the painting while leaving the painting itself behind! Of course, that's absurd. Everyone knows you can't steal something out of a painting." He looked puckish.
"But you're saying that's exactly what happened," Frank said slowly. He knew the cleric well enough to guess he didn't accept the official explanation. "Who was it a portrait of?"
"Hieronymus von Gerssdorff. He was a sixteenth-century alchemist and magician. Rather a nasty fellow, by all accounts. Rudolf the Second had him locked up a couple of times. You know all about him, eh, Franz? It was all part of Germany back then."
"So it was a German magician, so what?" Joe said irritably. "I'm American now—"
"Von Gerssdorff made his home in Zagreb," the boys' father said quietly, coming to Joe's aid.
"Zagreb, Slovenia?" Frank asked.
"No, Zagreb, Nebraska," Joe retorted sarcastically.
Father Ed exploded in a honking laugh. "He's a lot more fun when it's someone else on the receiving end of his pointed bits, eh, Giuseppe?" he chortled.
"As the catamite said when—" Joe started, then clapped his mouth shut. He looked around. Luckily, no one had heard him.
"The point is," said his father, "that the magician subject has vanished from the only known portrait of the magician." He folded his hands. "Now, possibly this is only the work of pranksters with a knowledge of the esoteric. Or—"
He didn't finish. He didn't have to. Or else it was a crime that only the Stellae Errantes would be equipped to handle. Possibly it was the start of something so sinister that only the Stellae Errantes would be able to forestall it.
"So what do we know about von Gerssdorff?" Frank asked. It was the first step in any investigation: laying out all the known facts.
"I've already asked John Reilly to put together a dossier," his father said. Reilly was the unofficial one-man research department for the Stellae. He knew an alarming lot about lots of alarming subjects, and he could find out a lot more on any subject with amazing speed. "The little he could tell me off the top of his head comports with what Father Ed has said. Von Gerssdorff was interested in the usual kind of thing. Immortality, transmutation of the elements. Vivisection, though not of the medical kind."
Joe felt a chill down his back. There were lots of ways of taking a human being apart, and not all of them left a mark on the body. The forms of dissection that left people walking around with no apparent harm were far worse than the ones that left bits of flesh and bone scattered about. He glanced at Frank, and saw that he had also turned rather pale in the face.
It seemed better to concentrate on the theft. "How would you steal something out of a painting?" Frank mused aloud.
"No," said Joe. "The question is why they would steal something out of a painting. Figure out the why, and you figure out what they stole."
"We know what they stole," Frank objected.
"We know what it looks like they stole," Joe said. "Figure out what they really stole, and you'll see how they did it."
"Frank isn't wrong, Joe," his father said. "If you figure out how they stole it, you can figure out what they stole, and then maybe you can figure out why they stole it." He smiled. "Any question will lead eventually to the answers we want. It's a matter of figuring out which questions will yield answers most easily."
"So which one do we start with?" Joe asked.
"All of them. But if you want my advice—" He raised an eyebrow.
Joe and Frank squirmed in their chairs. This felt like a test, and it seemed wrong to begin it by asking for a hint. They said nothing, and their father said nothing either. He only grew more and more amused.
Finally, Joe couldn't stand it any longer. "What would be your advice, Dad?" he blurted out.
He chuckled. "My advice would be that you start with the police."
"Interpol?" Frank asked. "The Vienna police?"
"No, the Olympia police."
Frank blinked. "What would they know about the case?"
"About on Gerssdorff? Nothing. But they could tell you pretty quickly whether there was a car wreck out in the hills within the last few days."
Joe buried his face in his hands as the two men they called "Father" (in different senses) burst out laughing at the boys discomfort.  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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