Chapter 12 death and compass

To Mandy Molina Vidya Of the many problems that Lonnrot has dealt with with bold and astute analytic powers, there is none more strange, and one might even say, than the series of bloody events that periodically culminated in the scented Villa Trisle Roy. Unbelievable.Eric Lenrott certainly failed to prevent the last crime, but it is undeniable that he had foreseen it.Although he did not guess the identity of the murderer who assassinated Yamolinsky, he guessed the secret nature of this series of crimes and the involvement of "Red" Sharah (another nickname is "Playboy" Sharah).The criminal, like many others, swore to kill Lonnrot, but Lonnrot was not intimidated.Lonnrot claimed to be a pure reasoner like Auguste Dupont, but he was also an adventurer and even a gambler.

The first crime was committed at the North Hotel, a tall prismatic building on the banks of the Yellow River.The tower had the hideous whiteness of the sanitarium, the division number, and the filth of the prison. On December 3, a gray-bearded, gray-eyed man, Dr. Marcelo Yamolinsky, a representative of the Podolsk region at the Third Talmudic Seminar, came.We'll never know whether he liked the Northern Hotel: he accepted it anyway, a state of mind that had accompanied him through three years of fighting in the Carpathians and three thousand years of oppression and anti-Semitism.The hotel gave him a room on the R floor, facing the luxurious suite of the Governor of Galilee.Yamolinsky ate his supper, prepared to go sightseeing the strange city the next day, put his many books and few clothes in the closet, and went to bed with the lights off before midnight. Lilly's car driver). At 11:03 am, December 4th, an editor of the Yiddish newspaper called; Dr. Yarmolinsky did not answer; he was found in the room, wearing an old-fashioned hood He was almost naked in a robe, his face was slightly purple-black, and he fell at the door leading to the corridor; a dagger was stuck deep in his chest.Two hours later, the door was full of journalists, photographers, gendarmes, and police chiefs Treviranus and Lonnrot among them, arguing peacefully.

"There's no need to find bones in eggs," said Treviranus, waving a fat cigar. "Everyone knows that the governor of Galilee has the best sapphires in the world. Someone wanted to steal the gem, went to the wrong room, and broke in here. Yamolinsky was startled and got up, and the thief had to kill him. Your opinion Woolen cloth?" "It's possible, but not fun," Lonnrot said. "You will object that reality does not have to be interesting. My reply is that reality does not have to be interesting, but it cannot help making assumptions. There are too many elements of chance in your assumptions. Here the dead A rabbinical doctor; I'm inclined to explain it purely in terms of a rabbinical doctor, without much regard for a hypothetical misadventure caused by a hypothetical thief."

Treviranus said unhappily: "I'm not interested in the Rabbi's explanation; I'm only interested in catching the murderer of this stranger." "Not too unfamiliar," Lonnrot corrected him. "Here's his complete works." He pointed to a row of tomes in the closet: A Discussion of Mystical Philosophy, a Discussion of Robert Flood's Philosophy, a copy of Sepher Yacy Ra, a Biography of Baal Shem, a History of the Hasidim, a treatise (in German) on four-letter names, another on the Pentateuch A monograph on the terminology of the book.The Chief of Police looked at the books with awe and even disgust.Then he laughed.

"I'm a poor Christian," he said. "Take all these tomes, if you like; I can't waste my time on Jewish superstitions." "Perhaps the crime has something to do with the history of Jewish superstition," murmured Lonnrot. "Just like Christianity," the editor of the Yiddish newspaper ventured to add.He is short-sighted, does not believe in God, and is extremely timid.No one paid any attention to him.A police detective finds a sheet of paper in a small typewriter with an endless sentence on it: The first letter of the name has been pronounced. Lonnrot suppressed a smile.He suddenly became interested in collecting books or studying Hebrew language and culture, so he ordered the detectives to pack the dead man's books and send them to his apartment.He ignored the police investigation and buried himself in the books.An octavo volume records the teachings of Israel Baal Shem Taub, the founder of the Devotional sect; There is a book on the theme that God has a secret name, which summarizes his ninth attribute, eternity, that is, the immediate knowledge of the past, present and future of the universe, just as the Persians believed that Alexander the Great of Macedon could see it from a crystal ball. see everything.Legend has it that God has ninety-nine names; Hebrew linguists believe that this incomplete number is due to the fear of even-number magic; name.

A few days later, the editor of the Yiddish newspaper interrupted his research.The editor came to talk about the murder; Lonnrot talked about the names of God; the editor claimed in a three-column story that Eric Lonnrot, who was investigating the case, had been studying the names of God lately , in order to discover the murderer's name.Lonnrot, accustomed to the simplistic style of news reporting, was not offended.One publisher, finding that people were willing to buy any book, published a paperback edition of "History of the Hasidim." On the night of January 3, a second crime occurred in a very desolate place in the western suburbs of the capital. At dawn on the 4th, the military police patrolling on horseback in this area found a man in a cloak lying at the gate of a closed paint factory.His face was covered with blood, as if wearing a red mask; a dagger was stuck deep in his chest.There are several characters written in charcoal on the red and yellow rhombus pattern on the wall.What words did the gendarme decipher... That afternoon, Treviranus and Lonnrot went to the remote crime scene.On the left and right sides of the car, the city is gradually disintegrating; the sky is getting wider and wider, the houses are rare, and occasionally a brick and tile factory or a poplar tree can be seen.They reached their bleak destination: the pink adobe walls of the side streets seemed to reflect the unbridled sunset.The deceased has been identified.He was Daniel Simon Acevedo, a bit of a celebrity in the old northern suburbs, who had climbed from handlebars to constituency thug to thief and informer. (His unique death seems to be in keeping with his status: Acevedo is the last representative of a generation of gangsters who are better at wielding a dagger than a pistol.) The charcoal writing reads:

The second letter of the name has been pronounced. The third crime occurred on the night of February 3.Just before one o'clock the telephone rang in the office of Police Chief Treviranus.It was spoken by a guttural man, who apparently did not want to be identified, who said his name was Ginzburg (or Ginsburg), and would provide information on Acevedo and Yamolins for a reasonable fee. Information about the murder of the base.Noisy whistles and horns drowned out the voices of the informers.Then, the phone disconnected.Treviranus did not rule out the possibility of a joke (it was Carnival these days), but he found out that the call was from the Liverpool Hotel in the Rue de Toulon, a street that smells of salt water. Dior carts and dairy shops, brothels and Bible peddlers.Treviranus spoke to the innkeeper.The proprietor, Blake Finnegan, an Irish ex-convict and now surprisingly well-dressed, told Treviranus that the last person to use the hotel telephone was a lodger named Griffith, who had just spoken to A few friends are out.Treviranus hurried to the Liverpool Hotel at once.The proprietor stated the circumstances as follows: Griffith had rented a room above the pub eight days earlier.The man with the high nose and gray beard and poor black clothes; Finnegan (Treviranus guessed he had reserved the room for a clerk) demanded an exorbitant price; Griffith paid immediately He opened the rent, nothing else.He almost never came out, and ate dinner and lunch in his room; he never showed his face in the bar.That night, he went downstairs to Finnegan's office to make a phone call.A carriage was parked in front of the hotel.The coachman did not move; several neighbors remembered that he was wearing a bear mask.Two men dressed like clowns got out of the car; they were both small, and everyone noticed that they were staggering drunk.They broke into Finnegan's office blowing their trumpets; hugged Griffith, who seemed to know them, but treated them coldly; exchanged a few words in Yiddish—Griffith low The guttural, high-pitched falsettos of the two men spoke—then they went upstairs together.A quarter of an hour later the three came down cheerfully; Griffith staggered as if he were as drunk as the two men.He was stuck between the two masked clowns, standing a head high and staggering to and fro. (A woman in the bar remembered the yellow, red, and green lozenges on the mask.) He stumbled and fell twice; both times he was lifted up by the clown.They walked towards the nearby rectangular dock, got into the carriage, and disappeared in a blink of an eye.The latter scribbled an obscene figure and a sentence on the corner slate as he stepped on the running boards of the carriage.

Treviranus read the words.Almost as expected, the sentence reads: The last letter of the name has been pronounced. He then checked Griffith-Gintzberg's room.There was a spatter of blood on the floor; a cigarette butt of a Hungarian brand in a corner; annotation.Treviranus, enraged by the sight, sent for Lonnrot.Lonnrot didn't bother to take off his hat and leafed through the book as soon as he arrived, while the police chief questioned conflicting witnesses about the possible kidnapping.At four o'clock in the morning, they left the hotel.On the crooked rue de Toulon, where they stepped on the littered confetti left over from the carnival, Treviranus said:

"What if what happened tonight was just a drill?" Eric Lenrot smiled, and solemnly read out the underlined paragraph of Chapter 33 of "Studies": The days of the Hebrews begin in the evening and end in the evening of the next day . The other party tried to ridicule him: "This is the most valuable material you got last night?" "No. More valuable is a word Ginzberg said." The afternoon papers did not ignore the deaths or disappearances. The Sword Cross compares these events with the strict discipline and schedule of the last Hermit Congress; Ernest Palast denounces "a secret and controlled anti-Semitism" in the "Martyr". The intolerable delay of the campaign, which took three months to exterminate three Jews"; "Italian" ruled out the appalling hypothesis of an anti-Semitic conspiracy, "although many insightful people could not understand the triple mystery. Get Better Answers"; the South's most famous gunman "Playboy Red" Schalach asserted that such crimes would never occur in his area, accusing Police Chief Franz Treviranus of negligence.

Treviranus received a large, sealed envelope on the evening of March 1.He opened it to find a letter signed by Baruch Spinoza and a detailed map of the town apparently torn from a Bedeg travel guide.The letter predicted that there would be no fourth crime on March 3, because the paint factory on the west, the hotel on the Rue Toulon, and the hotel on the North were "the precise vertices of a mysterious equilateral triangle"; the map was drawn in red ink this perfect triangle.Treviranus patiently read the geometrical argument, and sent the letter and the map to Lonnrot—these inexplicable things were only for him.

Eric Lonnrot studied it carefully.The three locations are indeed equidistant.Time is symmetrical (December 3, January 3, February 3); space is also symmetrical... He suddenly felt that he was about to solve the mystery.A compass and a compass complete his sudden intuition.He smiled, muttered his "four-letter name" which he had only recently learned, called the police chief and said: "Thank you for the equilateral triangle you sent last night. It solved my problem. Tomorrow, Friday, criminals will be in jail; we can rest easy." "Then they have no plans for a fourth crime?" "Because they are planning the fourth crime, we can rest easy." Lonnrot said and hung up the phone.An hour later, he boarded a Southern Railway train for the abandoned Villa Trisle Roy.To the south of the city mentioned in my story, there is a small muddy river that has become silted up with dumped garbage and sewage waste from tanneries.On the other side of the river, there are many factories in the suburbs, and hooligans are at ease under the protection of a Barcelona boss.Lonnrot thought to himself that the most famous of them all, "Red" Sharah, would do anything to learn about his secret visit, and couldn't help laughing.Acevedo was an associate of Shalah; Lonnrot had considered the possibility that Shalah was a fourth victim.Then it was ruled out again... In fact, he had already solved the mystery; the simple circumstances, the facts (names, arrests, procedures of interrogation and sentencing) no longer interested him.He wanted to relax, to rest after three months of ongoing investigations.The solution of the crime, he thought, lay in an unknown triangle and an ancient Greek word, and the riddle had been solved; he was ashamed that it had taken a hundred days to figure it out. The train stopped at a silent freight station.Lonnrot got out of the car.It was an afternoon as desolate as the dawn.The air on the vast plain is damp and cold.Lonnrot strolled across the fields.He saw dogs, a wagon on the avoidance line, a white horse drinking by a pond on the horizon.As he wiped the darkness, he saw the rectangular watchtower of Villa Trisle Roy, almost as tall as the surrounding black gums.There is, he thought, only one dawn and one evening (whitening and sunset in the east and west) before the hour that those who seek the name look forward to. The irregular perimeter of the villa is a rusted iron railing.The door is closed.Lonnrot thought that there was little hope of getting in through the gate, so he circled a long circle along the railing.He went back to the closed gate, and almost mechanically reached through the rail and found the latch.The creaking sound of the iron caught him by surprise.The door was pushed open with difficulty. Lonnrot walked among the eucalyptus bushes, stepping on the fallen leaves that had been withered for many years.The house of Villa Trisle Roy, seen up close, is full of useless symmetry and grotesque repetition: a cold statue of Athena in one dark niche faces another in another; A balcony is exactly the same reflection; each of the two stone steps has double rows of handrails.A double-faced statue of Hermes casts a grotesque shadow.Lonnrot walked around the house as he had just done around the villa.He looked everywhere; he found a shuttered door at the foot of the landing. He pushed open the door: several marble steps led to the basement.Lonnrot intuited the architect's preference and guessed that there were also stone steps opposite the basement.Sure enough, he found it, stepped up the stone steps, and raised his hand to push open the floor door of the exit. A ray of light led him to the window.He opened the window: a full yellow moon outlined two dry fountains in the desolate garden.Lonnrot inspected the house.From the front room of the restaurant and the corridor, there is always the same patio, or the original patio turns around.He went up the dusty staircase to the circular vestibule; countless images were reflected in the mirrors facing each other; he didn't bother to open the window anymore, because the window was always the desolate garden, only from different heights and angles; Inside were furniture covered in yellow covers and spiders curled up in their webs.A bedroom caught his attention; a solitary flower stood in a porcelain vase; at the slightest touch, its dry petals fell away.On the third floor, the last, it seemed to him that the house was boundless and expanding.The house wasn't really that big, he thought.What makes it bigger are shadows, symmetry, mirrors, long years, my unfamiliarity, solitude. He climbed the spiral staircase to the watchtower.The moonlight came in through the diamond-shaped glass on the window; the glass was yellow, red, and green.He suddenly remembered something and couldn't help being dumbfounded. Two short and strong men sprang upon him ferociously, subdued him, and disarmed him; another tall, greeted him gravely, saying: "It's hard for you. You saved us a day and a night." That's "Red" Sharah.Two men tied Lonnrot's hands.Finally he breathed a sigh of relief and said: "Shalah, are you looking for that secret name?" Sharah was still standing there as if nothing had happened.He did not participate in the brief scuffle just now, and only reached out to take Lonnrot's gun from his partner.He spoke; Lonnrot heard in his voice a weary sense of triumph, a hatred as thin as the universe, a sorrow not much less than that hatred. "No," Sharah said. "I was looking for something more ephemeral and fragile, I was looking for Eric Lonnrot. Three years ago you arrested my brother in a casino on the Rue de Toulon and put him in jail. I got the police in the stomach One bullet, thanks to the men who rescued me from the gunfight in a carriage. I suffered for nine days and nights in this desolate symmetrical villa; the high fever tortured me to death, and the hideous man who looked at the sunset and the sunrise The double-faced statue of Janus made me sleepy and waking. I ended up loathing my body. Two eyes, two hands, two lungs were as horrible to me as two faces. An Irishman tried to convert me Christianity; he kept repeating to me the gentile saying: All roads lead to Rome. At night, this metaphor made me more delirium: I felt that the world was an inextricable labyrinth, although some roads lead to the north and others lead to Rome. To the south, indeed, all lead to Rome, the cell in which my brother suffered, and the villa of Trisle Roy, also Rome. On those nights, I swear by the double-faced god and all the gods of fever, in the A maze was built around the man who put my brother in prison. I built the maze, safe; the building materials were a murdered pagan scholar, a compass, an 18th-century sect, a Greek word, a dagger, a family Rhombus pattern for paint factory. "The first step in the plan of action was purely accidental. I had previously conspired with several partners - Daniel Acevedo among them - to steal the sapphire of the magistrate of Galilee. Acevedo betrayed us; we advanced He got a sum of money, he bought wine and got drunk, acted a day early. He was in a daze in the big hotel; broke into Yamolinsky's room at two o'clock in the morning. Yamolinsky couldn't sleep at night, got up Writing. He just wanted to write an article on the name of God; just finished writing the beginning: the first letter of the name has been pronounced. Acevedo threatened him to keep quiet; Yamolinski held out his hand for Ringing the bell, trying to call the hotel security guard; Acevedo stabbed him in the chest. It was almost a reflex action; half a century of violent life had taught him that killing is the easiest and safest thing to do... Ten Two days later, I read in the "Yidigi" that you want to find out the mystery of Yamolinsky's murder from what Yamolinsky wrote. I read "History of the Hasiding Sect"; do you know The awe of daring to pronounce the name of God has given rise to the teaching that that name is secret and omnipotent. I know some Hasidims who have even sacrificed human beings in search of that secret name...I know you guess Hasidim The rabbis sacrificed the Rabbi; I'll make you think you're right. "Marcelo Yamolinski died on the night of December 3rd; I chose January 3rd as the day for the second sacrifice. He died in the north of the city; the second sacrifice would be more appropriate in the west. Daniel Acevedo was a necessary victim. He deserved what he deserved: he was impulsive and a traitor; if he was arrested, our whole plan would be over. Our men stabbed him; to connect his death to the last time , I wrote the second letter of the name on the diamond pattern of the paint shop has been pronounced. "The third crime took place on February 3rd. As Treviranus guessed, it was just a drill. Griffith-Ginsburg-Ginsburg was me; I wore a fake mustache A week in that shabby room in the Rue Toulon, waiting for my friends to kidnap me. One of them stepped on the step of the carriage and wrote the last letter of his name on the stone slab. This sentence announces Says a series of crimes is three. Ordinary people understand it that way; but I've inserted signs over and over so that you, the reasoner, Eric Lonnrot, know that the crimes are four, and that strange things have happened in the north of the city. , something happened in the east and west of the city, which requires something to happen in the south of the city; the four-letter name, which is the name of the god, JHVH, has four letters; the pattern of the clown mask and the paint factory all suggest four. I am in Lestown A passage in the book is underlined; that passage states that the Hebrews counted the days from the evening of the first day to the evening of the second; thus stating that the murders occurred on the fourth day of every month. I sent someone to wait for that Triangle to Treviranus. I expected you to add the missing point. The point that makes up a perfect rhombus predetermines the exact spot where a murder is going to take place. I pre-planned it all, Eli C. Lenrot, in order to lead you to the desolate Villa Trisleroy." Lonnrot avoided Shalah's gaze.He looked at the trees and the sky outside the hazy yellow, green, and red diamond-shaped glass windows.He felt a little cold, and an objective, almost nameless sadness.It is night; a useless whine rises from the gray garden.Lonnrot considered the question of symmetry and periodic death one last time. "You have three extra lines in your maze," he said finally. "I know a kind of Greek labyrinth with only one straight line. How many philosophers get lost on that line, and a simple detective will certainly lose his way. Next time you try to track me down, Shallah, you might as well start in a labyrinth." False (or commit) a crime in one place, then commit a second crime in a place B that is eight kilometers away from a place A, and then do a third crime in a place C that is four kilometers away from places A and B, that is, in the middle of the two places. Then Wait for me two kilometers away from A and C, that is, D in the middle of the two places, just as you are going to kill me now at Villa Trisleroy." "The next time I kill you," Sharah said, "I'll give you that kind of maze, that one-line, invisible, never-ending maze." He took a few steps back, then, aiming very carefully, squeezed the trigger.