Free The Empty Mirror by J. Sydney Jones

dinner, I should think.”
    In the event, Doktor Sigmund Freud was not at home. His practice was closed for the month of August, a sign announced. He could, in an emergency, be reached at the Pension zum See, Altaussee, Salzkammergut. The sign was dated August 10; Sigmund Freud had therefore not been in Vienna the night of Liesel Landtauer’s death.
    “Well, I’d say we’ve earned ourselves a drink before dinner this busy day,” Gross said as they stood examining the sign outside Berggasse 19. “Pity, though. I was looking forward to discussing my work with the man. Heard he is developing some new therapy for nerve patients. A talking cure, he calls it.”
    “That so?” Werthen, who had himself lain on Freud’s couch, said nothing. If Gross could have his secrets, then so could he.

FIVE
     
    T hey were meeting him at the Café Landtmann near the Burgtheater; the choice of the venue was their guest’s. Werthen was still objecting as he and Gross sat at the small marble-topped table to await the arrival of Theodor Herzl, onetime dandy, feuilletonist, and playwright, and more recently founder of Zionism and author of
The Jewish State
.
    “Meindl himself said that the Jewish angle was not worth investigating,” Werthen reminded the criminologist.
    “Since when did you take traveling orders from Meindl? I believe you once accused him of having a second-rate mind.”
    Gross’s elephantine memory could at times be annoying, Werthen thought. Especially when it dredged up uncomfortable truths.
    The more Gross became obsessed with the possibility of a Jewish ritual crime, the more Werthen’s latent Jewishness came to the fore. He thought it had been well buried by education, money, and conversion to Christianity, but suddenly it reared up in him like an unbidden dragon. He bristled at the suggestion of Jewish bloodletting; it had in fact been the Jews who had suffered, who had lost their blood at the hands of the Christians of Europe for centuries.
    Gross had called in a favor from another former student, now an editor of the
Neue Freie Presse
, where Herzl had, until recently, been an editor and essayist. This former student managed to talk Herzl into a brief meeting in the midst of his hectic work life. Scheduling an interview with Herzl to discuss ritual killings or to look for leads to radical Jews capable of such deeds seemed the basest act of demagoguery on Gross’s part. Werthen had not credited him with such behavior.
    Yet Werthen was going to attend the interview, for his curiosity had gotten the better of him. Herzl’s was one of those names that drew public attention in Vienna of late. It was only days away from the Second Zionist Congress, to be held in Basel, and Herzl had assembled Jewish notables from around the world to help plan the new Jewish state, either in Palestine or Argentina. Werthen wanted to know what drove such a man; how he could go from assimilated Austrian to the spokesman for the Jewish state almost overnight?
    He recognized Herzl at once as he came through the double doors of the café. He was not a large man, but his long, thick beard was imposing. It gave him the air of a biblical patriarch. Herzl conferred with the headwaiter, Herr Otto, for a moment and was directed to their table. Gross and Werthen both stood to greet the man.
    “Good of you to come on such short notice,” Gross said, extending his hand to Herzl. “I know you are a busy man, what with the Zionist Congress and your own writing.” He motioned Herzl to the bentwood Thonet chair set aside for him.
    Introductions were made, and when Herzl made the usual polite response,
“Es freut mich,”
Werthen was almost shocked by the dissimilarity of his appearance and voice. The imposing patriarch, impeccably dressed in a dove-gray suit which looked to have been tailored by the noble firm of Knize on the Graben, was suddenly diminished by a voice only a few registers below a castrato’s.
    Gross did not seem to notice, but