Read Online The Keeper of Hands by J. Sydney Jones - Free Book Online

he hurries from the concert hall, hoping that no one has witnessed his shame. He spends the rest of the night worrying about his lost reputation – only to discover in the morning that the baker has had a stroke and is dead. His guilty secret is safe. Recovering, Lieutenant Gustl resumes his aggressive ways and makes plans for a duel that he is certain to win.
    Werthen read this play when it was first published as a serial in the special Christmas editions of the
Neue Freie Press.
It had caused a firestorm of protest from the military-loving conservatives, who pilloried Schnitzler for depicting the army in a bad light. The gutter press had resorted to their tried-and-tested theme: anti-Semitism. A writer for the satirical journal
Kikeriki
asked what more one could expect from such a “Jew writer.” In fact, the same writer averred, the cowardly lieutenant of the title was most likely a Jew himself.
    For Werthen it was not this implicit indictment of the military that made
Lieutenant Gustl
interesting; instead, it was the manner in which Schnitzler told the tale. ‘Interior monologue,’ the critics were calling the device. The entirety of the story was told from inside the mind of the lieutenant, a bold new method Werthen thought.
    Werthen had now reached Frankgasse 1, where the portal was guarded by three putti-like stone warriors, seemingly Roman legionnaires, on the façade overhead. The street door remained unlocked during daylight hours; he checked the name-plates to see which was Schnitzler’s flat before entering. He noticed that Schnitzler had never bothered to change his brass plaque announcing him as an ear, nose and throat doctor.
    Several minutes later he found the flat on the second floor and was about to ring the bell when suddenly he was gripped from behind by a pair of thick and exceedingly strong arms. He tried to struggle free, but the man had him in an iron grip.
    ‘
Gott in Himmel
, if it isn’t Advokat Werthen!’
    Werthen would have recognized that choirboy’s voice anywhere. And now, as the owner of the voice appeared, he saw he was right. A week for reunions with the criminal class, it seemed: first Fehrut and now Herr Prokop.
    ‘Let him go, Meier,’ said Prokop, in that high sweet voice which ran counter to his pugilist’s appearance.
    Released, Werthen was able to gather his breath again. ‘What are you doing here, Prokop?’ He swung around and the hulking Meier smiled down at him sheepishly. Both of them were dressed in their usual work clothes: tattered suits and dented bowler hats. Prokop, Werthen noticed, had not had dental work done since their last meeting – he was still missing a front tooth. And Meier’s left little finger had now healed, its stub missing the last joint. Hazards of the trade.
    ‘I suppose I should be asking you the same question, Advokat,’ Prokop said. ‘Herr Doktor Schnitzler described everyone he knows who might pay him a visit. You were not on the list.’
    ‘You’re working for Schnitzler?’
    The two of them nodded in unison.
    ‘Whatever for?’
    ‘Half-crown a day each,’ the literal Meier answered.
    At which Prokop merely shook his head in disgust. ‘Ah, then you haven’t heard, have you? The Herr Doktor suffered a vicious beating not three days ago. We have been engaged for protection.’
    ‘Klimt recommended you?’
    A smile appeared on both their faces.
    ‘Herr Klimt never forgets a favor,’ Prokop said.
    Indeed, Werthen and the painter Klimt had earlier secured the services of these two toughs when their lives were endangered by an
eminence grise
at the Habsburg court; Werthen had also later employed them to watch over the composer Gustav Mahler when someone was trying to kill him.
    ‘It is good to see you both again,’ Werthen said brightly. ‘But how is Schnitzler? Can he receive a visitor?’
    Meier and Prokop exchanged glances, puffed out their lips and stared at Werthen.
    ‘Perhaps you could ask,’ Werthen suggested. ‘You