The Paris Enigma Read Online Free PDF

past and my compassion for his present continued to grow—and he asked me to accompany him to the Green Room.
    Without any special emphasis, as if he were telling me of a decision made by someone else, or by simple inertia, he told me that I would be his acolyte.
    â€œBut you said that you would never have an assistant.”
    â€œThe word never shouldn’t exist; that way we would be less inclined to make promises we can’t keep. This title, in spite of our situation, will be handled with due formality and announced to The Twelve Detectives.”
    In that moment, mentioning The Twelve Detectives seemed incongruent and at the same time it gave me hope. It was as if Craig once again invoked his power to invent and amaze, reviving all that I believed in. For a few seconds I saw the image of my name in the “In Hushed Tones” section of The Key to Crime .
    The detective rubbed his eyes like he was waking up from a sleep that had lasted days and he continued, “You do know this position won’t last long. This is my final case.”
    My body tensed involuntarily, and my firm voice complemented my martial stance.
    â€œI hope it won’t be your final case; I hope it’ll be a new start. But if it is, if the day when all the city’s murderers can sleep easy has arrived, then there can be no greater honor than having a small role in your farewell.”
    Craig nodded distractedly at my words.
    That day I started to work. The magician had already violated his obligation to appear at the police station and had fled the city. I visited all the hotels where he might have stayed. Once in a while Craig came with me. I was expecting the classic dialogue between acolyte and detective to develop between us. The Hindu, Dandavi, who worked for Caleb Lawson, pretended not to understand anything because he was foreign, which forced Lawson to explain everything to him in great detail; the Alsatian Tanner spoke in almost a whisper, and only raised his voice when Arzaky surprised him with a brilliant revelation; Fritz Linker, assistant to Tobias Hatter, the detective from Nuremberg,asked such obvious questions that he could easily be taken for an idiot. All the other detectives talked to their assistants, but we proceeded in silence. I rehearsed silly phrases, I was taken in by obvious ideas, by the luster of appearances, and I always had a cliché on the tip of my tongue, leaving room for Craig to dazzle me with the secret logic of his thinking. But the detective never spoke, and we walked through the night as if there was nothing more to be said.
    The owner of the Victoria Theater, a tremendously fat man who had been a tenor in his youth, let us poke around, afraid that the criminal notoriety of the artist would bring him problems with the law. The theater was a labyrinth that not even he knew very well; the basement levels and the wings stored sets from old shows. In the half-light we banged up against Venetian bridges, plaster storks, and Chinese palaces. Whispers could be heard at the back of the endless basement, as if not only sets were stored there, but the entire casts of forgotten plays as well.
    Renato Craig went about looking for clues, but it was clear that his despondency was preventing him from carrying out an in-depth investigation. It was no secret that Craig hated theaters, a dislike that was well known to all the students at the Academy, and even to any reader of The Key to Crime . Although he is remembered as the first detective in Buenos Aires, Renato Craig was actually the second. The first one was named Jacinto Vieytes, and he was a tracker who came here to live after some resounding triumphs in his detective work. Vieytes managed to apply trail guide methods to urban crime. And while his skills, when employed in hotel rooms, society halls, and railroad stations, didn’t yield such spectacular results as when he was studying hoofprints, trails in the grass, or bonfire remains,