Berlin Conspiracy Case

The case began with a phone call. It sounded urgent, grave, a matter of life and death. I could hardly turn it down.

The caller was a man who claimed to be a servant at the home of Baron von Stirk. The housekeeper had made the call, he said. He was speaking in hushed tones, so much that I had to ask him to repeat himself twice.

"What's the problem?" I asked him.

"The...the Baron is missing," he replied "We haven't seen him since this morning."

I frowned, then remembered myself and quickly wiped away the expression from my face. This was an important client for me; one that would bring in more money than any other case had in years. "Well, if you don't know where he is, why exactly did you call me?"

A pause on the other end of the line, then him again: "I heard you're good at finding people." His tone was apologetic.

"Yes, but..." I sighed and rubbed my temples slowly with my fingers as I stared out the window into the street below "In case you haven't noticed men like me are hard to find these days."

"I'm willing to pay whatever." He sounded desperate now. "Whatever it takes."

"This better not be some kind of trick." I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth as I thought of what this would mean for me if it were true. If he wasn't lying, I was looking at half a dozen police checkpoints between here and there, each one more likely to take exception to a white man driving around Berlin after midnight than one closer to sunrise.

"You can check up on me," he said quickly. "Go by his place and ask around. Anyone will tell you who I am."

"All right," I sighed again "I'll go see what's wrong."

* * * * *

When I got there the first thing that struck me was just how little anyone actually knew about what was going on. The Baron's driver had apparently dropped him off just fine that morning but never returned for him later in the day when expected back at his residence (a stately mansion nested nicely between two others nearly identical to it). A few servants admitted they'd seen him walking out of his study that morning in a pair of slippers but couldn't remember whether or not he'd been dressed well enough for an event or if he'd simply set out for a stroll outside in his nightclothes. No one seemed worried about it though; after all, everyone knew that Baron von Stirk was eccentric and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that HE knew what HE wanted when HE wanted it. Still, someone (probably the housekeeper) had called me and here I was trying my best not to draw too many stares as I turned over every stone and checked behind every doorframe for clues as to where HE might have gone off to this time. It wasn't until mid-afternoon that it hit me: von Stirk wasn't really all that eccentric after all anymore; not since his son died in WWI anyway. Nowadays even HE didn't dress up like a clown anymore or try to convince people he could walk through walls or levitate during dinner parties (all things he'd once done regularly). In fact, some said his behavior had become so normal that he'd become boringly predictable in recent years; such an easy target for those looking to hurt him or squeeze some kind of advantage out of his position within society that they often forgot he WAS even still alive at all most days (not unlike his son before WWI). Then something else hit me: no one knew where HE lived these days because HE didn't want them knowing - because HE wanted privacy for HIS sake and HIS alone - NOT theirs! And suddenly everything clicked into place: Baron von Stirk hadn't disappeared anywhere! He'd only LEFT! Gone AWAY from everything! Suddenly everything made sense...