Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard Page A

supercilious air of somebody who’s put down that specious argument before. “They’d like you to think that, wouldn’t they?” No further indication of who the mysterious conspiracy of “they” might be was forthcoming.
    The woman at Cacon’s other side started talking about how lovely it was to be away from that tiresome trouble back home, and Cacon had opinions on that, too. Cabal was unsurprised to discover that Cacon had been a tiger in his youth, a sergeant with the grenadiers. “Clickety-snitch,” he kept saying, to represent the pin being pulled and the spoon springing clear of an armed grenade. Cabal found something almost touching in the man’s self-belief, a faint tremor of empathy. Cacon seemed to live in his own little world, and where the real one impinged upon his it was always … disappointing.
    Cabal looked around for other distractions. As the steward had intimated, the men outnumbered the women by a ratio of more than two to one. From his own place and running clockwise, he let his gaze slide from diner to diner, as a second hand sweeps a path around a watch.
    To his immediate left was Miss Leonie Barrow, and he regarded her with an outer dispassion and an inner sourness for a few seconds before moving on.
    On Miss Barrow’s left was an old soldier, a brilliant deduction that Cabal based upon the man’s no longer being young, and his wearing an impressive collection of medal ribbons on the breast pocket of his dinner jacket. The fact that the captain had called him “Colonel Konstantin” also helped. The dinner jacket in question was rather old-fashioned in style, featuring the sort of high collar normally seen only in regimental histories in these days of loud ties and ill-considered cuff links. The colonel was also old-fashioned in his manners: attentive to the ladies and sober to the gentlemen. He nursed his wine slowly, waving away an increasingly distressed steward, who seemed to regard topping up glasses as a religious duty. Cabal was pleased that Konstantin avoided war stories, and intrigued that he also avoided current affairs.
    “Is this your first flight, Colonel?” Captain Schten asked.
    “In an aeroship, yes. I’ve been up in the observer’s seat of a few entomopters, though.” He gestured vaguely with his fork. “This is a great deal more comfortable, Captain. She’s a fine vessel.”
    “You’ve flown in an entomopter?” said Miss Barrow. Konstantin turned to her and, as he did so, his demeanour shifted slightly from that of a professional speaking to a professional to the pleasantly avuncular.
    “Indeed I have, Fräulein, and trust me when I say that this is a far more pleasant way to fly. I have had need to see the land from above on some occasions, and an entomopter reconnaissance was the best way of doing it. I am an infantryman through and through, though—I cannot tell you what a relief it was to set foot on terra firma once more.”
    “Herr Meissner here used to be a cavalryman,” said Miss Barrow. Cabal’s fork stopped en route to his mouth.
    “Really?” Konstantin regarded Cabal with a neutral stare. Then he smiled. “You would have broken your lances on one of my squares, sir, let me assure you.”
    Cabal smiled, too, a purely technical exercise. “I do not doubt it, Colonel,” he replied without the faintest idea what Konstantin was talking about.
    Next to the colonel was a floppy-haired youth, which is to say, he was perhaps five or so years younger than Cabal. Cabal had, however, worked hard to cram such grotesque quantities of responsibility, activity, and learning, both theoretical and practical, into every one of his days, that his years became akin to dog years. This youth, whom—after muttering into his chest when questioned by the colonel—Cabal had finally been able to name as one Gabriel Zoruk, swung from moodiness to airs of unwarranted moral superiority, depending upon how out of his conversational depth he found himself. Cabal