Anarchistbanjo's World

Madame Bluebeard by Karl Hans Strobl and translated by Joe E Bandel

First Chapter
Police Commissioner Mirko Bovacs was at a loss.
No, he wasn’t merely at a loss—he was utterly
despairing. In all his years of service, nothing like
this had ever happened. With an extraordinary—
charitably, one might say superhuman—keenness of
mind, he had identified, among Abbazia’s
international crowd, the long-sought Innesvar bank
robber in an unassuming Mr. Müller. And now, Mr.
Müller refused to be arrested, perched instead on the
roof of his small house, firing wildly with two
Brownings.
This defied all precedent. Once discovered, a
criminal was supposed to concede defeat and submit.
That, at least, was what any respectable crook was
expected to do. No serious trouble was to be caused
for the police; one simply vowed to play more
cautiously next time.
Initially, news of the bank robber’s unmasking
spread fear and horror among the spa guests. To think
they were exposed to such dangers! Patrons of the
Hotel Royal, where Mr. Müller had dined several
times, were beside themselves with agitation. “You
really don’t know who you’re sitting with anymore,”
said Hofrätin Kundersdorf. The young poet
Bystritzky, who consorted only with elderly ladies
and spared young girls not a glance, added dutifully,
“This Müller… a man of the world… who’d have
thought!”
But when word got out that the bank robber was
defending his stone cottage up in the vineyards,
refusing to let any policeman near, the mood shifted
to amusement. Soon, the beach and promenade lay
deserted. The public had flocked to the vineyards as
if to a fair, keeping a safe distance, of course, and
seeking cover behind walls and houses. It was
5immensely entertaining to watch the police and
gendarmes at a loss, and to see Mirko Bovacs darting
about behind a gamekeeper’s hut, wringing his hands.
Whenever a policeman or gendarme peeked to
check if Mr. Müller was still on the roof, a shot rang
out. The head ducked back faster than a seal’s. “What
am I to do? What am I to do?” wailed the
commissioner. “I’m becoming a laughingstock. This
rogue is humiliating me before all of Europe. Damn
him… he must come down. I’m ruined if we don’t
get him. What crook will respect me then? Every
lousy Italian pickpocket will laugh in my face.
They’ll spit on my boots.” He roared at his men:
“You scoundrels, you cowards, go hide behind your
wives’ skirts, you bastards, you toads! You’re truly
made of clay God forgot to fire. Get moving… it’s
your duty… I’ll report you all!”
But Constable Kristic, unshaken by anything,
replied, “Commissioner, it’s our lives at stake. What
do you expect? Duty’s duty. But where’s it written
we must let ourselves be killed when we can just wait
until hunger drives him down?”
“So, you’d starve him out?” the commissioner
shouted. “We could wait forever. Do you know if
he’s got supplies for a year? Or two? We might all be
dead—or pensioned—by then. If we could at least
reach the neighboring house, fifteen paces away…”
“Sir, what good’s that?” Kristic countered. “If we
show ourselves, he shoots. He’s capable of picking us
off. He’s already hit one gendarme in the foot. And
Schusterschic got two holes in his cap for not
ducking fast enough.”
The commissioner peered cautiously around the
corner. “What’s he doing? What’s he doing?” he
stammered. “He’s mocking us. He’s pulled out a ham
sandwich and is eating calmly. I’ll have a stroke,
6Kristic… has anyone seen such a thing? He’s eating a
sandwich right in front of us.”
Mr. Müller’s composure won the spa guests’
admiration. Even Hofrätin Kundersdorf couldn’t
withhold praise for his cool-headedness, and
Bystritzky chimed in with aphorisms on masculinity
and the grandeur of criminal characters.
As the day passed without change, bets were
placed on how long Mr. Müller would hold out. The
English dove into the wagering with zeal. Lord
Stanhope bet a hundred pounds that the splendid
bank robber wouldn’t be brought down for three
days. No one took the bet, knowing Stanhope’s
uncanny luck.
“You can safely take the wager,” said an elegant
man of about thirty-five to the hesitant group. “Go
on, dare it. This Mr. Müller will be in police hands by
tonight.”
Lord Stanhope eyed the stranger calmly. “How
can you claim that?” he asked slowly. “And if you’re
so sure, why not bet yourself?”
“I don’t bet,” the stranger replied, “when I know
the outcome for certain.”
“How can you know the outcome?”
“How? Because I’ll bring that man down myself.”
With a polite, curt bow, he descended toward the
beach.
Half an hour later, the stranger approached
Commissioner Mirko Bovacs with a greeting. “Sir,
what do you want here?” Bovacs shouted. “There’s
shooting. Don’t cause trouble.”
“I’m here to end the shooting,” the elegant
stranger replied.
Bovacs’s jaw dropped. His mind stalled. Clinging
to the one remaining faculty—that a commissioner
7must never lose composure—he rubbed his hands
together. But they felt like someone else’s hands.
“Sir…” he said, “how will you…”
“That’s my concern, once you permit me to
assist.”
“I warn you, don’t rely on the night. We saw that
scoundrel has a barrel of pitch on the roof. He’ll
likely light it when it’s dark.”
“I won’t wait that long. In twenty minutes, it’s
over. Be ready to seize him when I have him.”
Shaking his head, Bovacs watched the stranger
step from the gamekeeper’s hut. A shot rang out from
the roof, but the man was already behind a garden
wall. Bovacs marveled at the transformation. The
polished gentleman, master of decorum, became an
Indian. His body stretched like a lithe animal’s, limbs
propelling him in an almost impossible crouch, half-
lying, always concealed by stones, moving swiftly
and surely once he found his path.
After minutes, he vanished into a pile of rocks
above. For Bovacs, an agonizing wait began. It galled
him to owe a volunteer, but it beat prolonging the
siege. “A blessed candle for Saint Joseph in Fiume,”
he vowed silently, “if this works.” Kneeling, he
watched the enemy. Beyond the two houses, a green
evening sky spread, bottle-glass clear, sharpening
every outline. Mr. Müller sat at the roof’s edge,
smoking. A tiny light gleamed, a blue-pink cloud
around his head.
Suddenly, a figure shot from the neighboring
house’s horizon—like a devil in a puppet show.
Müller flinched, raising his Browning, but a thin
snake whipped across, coiling around him, biting
fast. No shot fired…
Bovacs saw Müller leap up, but the snake
tightened. Bovacs sprang, dancing, shouting, drawing
8his saber, striking stones. The rooftop struggle
thrilled him, maddening, a beauty like a falcon’s
flight or a heron’s strike. But the puppet play against
the glass-green sky ended. Müller staggered, arms
pinned, and vanished.
“Go, go!” Bovacs roared, charging up the hill with
his men. Below his stronghold, Müller lay, bound in
tough coils, immobile, face blue-red. The lasso’s end
was in the stranger’s hand, peering over the roof’s
edge.
The policemen and gendarmes pounced on the
criminal, hauling him from the ground, eager to
display their zeal. Mirko Bovacs approached the
stranger as he descended from the roof. “Sir,” he
panted, exhilarated, “ask anything of me. I’m entirely
at your service.”
“Then, please, give me a light,” the stranger
replied. He’s not as young as he looks, Bovacs
thought, as the match flared near the man’s face. The
stranger took two puffs on his cigarette, coiled his
lasso, tucked it into his pocket, and slipped sideways
into the darkness of the now-fallen night, nodding a
brief farewell to the commissioner.
That same evening, news of these events swept
through Abbazia. Those who hadn’t witnessed the
spectacle borrowed their friends’ eyes to catch a
fleeting glimpse. The authorities were irredeemably
ridiculous, Mr. Müller earned sympathies, and a halo
crowned the stranger. To Bystritzky’s chagrin,
Hofrätin Kundersdorf declared him a most interesting
young man. Bystritzky bristled when his elderly
ladies found other young men intriguing.
At ten o’clock, Court Secretary Ernst Hugo
returned from a sailing trip in the Quarnero,
ravenous. As he devoured his beefsteak, Franz,
standing respectfully behind his guest’s chair,
9recounted the day’s events. Suddenly, Hugo stopped
eating. He raised his napkin as if to wipe his mouth,
let it fall, brushed his mustache with the back of his
hand, and turned to Franz. His eyes were wide.
“Good Lord!” he muttered, “that’s none other than
my friend Ruprecht. It can only be Ruprecht.”
It was indeed Ruprecht von Boschan, confirmed
the next morning when Hugo arrived for breakfast at
the Hotel Kaiser von Österreich. The hero of the
previous evening sat on the terrace between two stout
pillars resembling petrified prehistoric rolls. He
stirred his coffee with a silver spoon, a Times before
him, but he didn’t read, gazing instead at the sea, blue
and silver-embroidered, swelling beyond the terrace.
“Ruprecht!” Hugo cried, striking his famous embrace
pose, Roman One, capital A. He performed it twice—
first with the right arm, then the left atop—looking
like a two-winged windmill, his massive hands
poised to spin.
“You’re still a mad hen,” Boschan murmured,
yielding to the hearty embrace.
“Where’ve you come from?” Hugo asked.
“From down there,” Ruprecht replied, gesturing at
the blue sea.
“From the water? Are you Venus Anadyomene?
Or posing as a sea god?”
“I’ve been testing a submarine.”
“Dangerous?”
“Eh—manageable. Not much to it. It wasn’t a
French submarine.”
“And before?”
“Before, I did some high-altitude climbs in the
Himalayas.”
“Sapperment! How high?”
“Between seven and eight thousand…”
“And before?”