Chapter 5: The Case of the Unconventional Umlauts
State of Thuringia-Franconia/Saxony Border
Wednesday, August 1, 1635
“Why are we freezing our butts in the mud on the Reussian front?” Stefan Kirchenbauer had complaining down to a fine art.
“Stefan, it is summer. The ground will dry out from last night’s rain in a few hours,” Ditmar Schaub began.
“Und it is not really the Reussian front.” Hjalmar pointed southeast. “Most of Reuss is over that way.”
“But you do not know why we are on the Reussian Front, either.” Stefan’s tone was triumphant.
“We are here because Colonel Stieff thinks it’s a good idea,” Edgar Neustatter reminded him. “He did not say why, but you know what sort of mission Colonel Stieff hands out. He obviously expects something to happen.”
“Nein,” Stefan disagreed. “Saxony will not attack.”
Grantville
Monday, July 16, 1635, Two Weeks Earlier
The door to the lab opened, and Sergeant Gunther Wiener stepped inside and closed the door. Georg Meisner looked up from the fingerprint card he was scrutinizing.
“Georg, Chief Richards wants you to take your kit over to the Moose Lodge.”
Georg looked up. “Oh? Has there been a burglary?”
“Nein. He said to sit down at the third table and wait.”
“Wait? For him?”
“All he said was, ‘Tell him to do it.’”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Georg Meisner was sitting at the third table in the Moose Lodge. His crime scene kit was on the table in front of him. So far, he hadn’t seen anyone besides a receptionist just inside the front door.
A door in the back of the room swung open, and a dark-haired man of medium height crossed the room with a confident stride.
“Georg Meisner?”
“Ja.”
“You may refer to me as Leutnant Johann Schmidt.”
Georg felt his eyes widen. “I have heard that name before. But I heard he was blond.”
The man smiled and dropped into a chair across from Georg. Georg slid his kit further down the table so he could see Schmidt.
Schmidt came straight to the point. “The border between Reuss County and Saxony is far from a straight line. In one place, Saxony is only a few miles from Grantville.” He looked at Georg sharply.
Georg nodded.
“Twice recently—that I know of—SoTF National Guard patrols have been found far out of position. An investigation uncovered written orders in both cases, as well as written orders in a third case which a captain chose to disregard on the grounds they were in error. Fortunately for his career, he was correct.
“I trust you understand war with Saxony is imminent?”
“Ja, of course,” Georg agreed.
“Someone is moving our forces out of position. If I show up to investigate, they will stop. If MPs do anything unusual, they will stop. I would like you to investigate the theft of some horses.”
Georg shook his head. “What?”
“You will discover the horses, well-fed, in a village south of the Kamsdorf mines where an associate of mine has placed them. The thief himself will never be found.”
“I understand,” Georg responded. “He is another Johann Schmidt, is he not?”
“You catch on fast. In the course of your investigation, you will examine all of the movement orders for the border area and attempt to discover who issued the false orders.”
Georg thought. “Were the orders issued in the name of actual officers?”
“Yes. We have investigated. Colonel Blackwell and General Schmidt agree with our findings. These officers themselves are not behind this plot.”
“This is good to know,” Georg told Schmidt. “But . . . ”
“But you want to look for yourself. I respect that. Chief Richards has offered to have you driven to Camp Saale tomorrow morning and stay for a few days. Colonel Blackwell can arrange for anything you need.”
“And you were never here,” Georg muttered.
“I knew we picked the right person for the job. Wait five minutes before you leave.”
Leutnant Johann Schmidt left through the back. Georg counted to a hundred three times before lugging his kit back to the police station.
Camp Saale
Tuesday, July 17, 1635
Late the next morning, Georg found himself seated at a table in Camp Saale’s records office. It wasn’t much more than a cramped room with a row of file cabinets against one wall and a single table. A couple of them were of up-time manufacture, but most were down-time-made. Two clerks were at his disposal. He’d begun his investigation by requesting he not be told which orders were forgeries. Next, he’d found out from Colonel Blackwell these clerks hadn’t had access to the orders until after the units had been discovered to be out of position.
To his surprise, most of the pages were typed.
“Ja,” one of the clerks responded. “Orders are typed when possible. Sometimes it is not, but many orders are planned out days or even weeks beforehand.”
Huh. Georg opened his kit and took out writing paper, a quill pen, and an inkwell. His own notes would have to stay here, but perhaps he could discern some patterns. Over the next few hours, he wrote out lists of characteristics of each order. Colonel Blackwell came in toward the end of the day.
“Making progress?” he asked.
Georg gave him credit for not wincing when he saw the stacks of papers. “Each stack is still in order.”
Blackwell waved it away. “My clerks can refile everything once you’ve finished. But what have you found?”
“I have some ideas,” Georg said. “But for one of them, I need to consult someone in Grantville.”
“Who?” The colonel sounded interested.
“My sister.”
“What?”
“I will not tell her why I want to know, but I found an interesting feature in a few of these orders. I think she might be able to explain it,” Georg stated.
“If anyone asks, remember you are trying to find some horses,” Blackwell reminded him.
“Ja.”
* * *
A police car dropped Georg off at home, well after dark. He tried to enter quietly but had no experience at coming home late. His father came downstairs as Georg shut the door.
“Georg!”
“Ja.”
“I thought you were going to be away for a few days.”
“I did, too, Father, but I found a clue I hope Katharina can explain to me.”
“Why? What does Katharina have to do with this?” Johann Meisner demanded.
“Nothing. But she’s been studying Hebrew.”
“Oh, well, if it is Hebrew, she might not mind getting up—and getting cold.”
Georg winced. His sister really liked staying warm. But he went upstairs and knocked on her door anyway.
“Mmmmph.” At least it was what Georg thought he heard. He knocked again.
“Try not to wake up the Schmuckers,” his father requested.
The Schmuckers were the latest new arrivals among the Brethren to stay with the Meisners.
“Kat, the police need help with languages.”
A few seconds later, Georg heard feet hitting the floor. Then Kat’s door swung open. She emerged with a blanket wrapped around her nightgown.
“Will I need my notes?” she asked.
“I just need you to look at something,” Georg assured her. He led the way downstairs, turned on the lights, sat down at the kitchen table, and wrote out a couple sentences making sure he put umlauts below the letters instead of above them.
“What does this look like to you?” he asked.
“Like someone does not know the difference between an umlaut and a tsere,” Katharina answered.
“A . . . what?”
“A Hebrew letter. Well, a vowel point. What the up-timers call a long E.” Katharina shook her head. “Their language is broken.”
Georg didn’t bother to ask whether she meant English or Hebrew. Maybe both.
“Would someone who knew Hebrew write like this?” Georg asked.
“No. Someone who uses Hebrew every day probably would not bother with vowel points,” his sister told him. “Scholars, though . . . ”
“What about someone typing?” Georg asked, as an idea began to form.
Camp Saale
Wednesday, July 18, 1635
A police Cherokee took Georg to Camp Saale early the next morning. A couple units on their morning run passed him as he made his way to Colonel Blackwell’s office. Scott Blackwell was standing outside. Georg saw him return salutes as various soldiers passed by.
Blackwell was watching him approach, too. “You look uncomfortable. Did you find something out?”
“No. I mean, I did. But what makes me uncomfortable is all of this.” Georg waved a hand at Camp Saale in general.
Colonel Blackwell raised his eyebrows.
“I am Brethren.” Seeing Blackwell didn’t understand, Georg added. “Anabaptist. Almost all surviving Anabaptists are pacifists. Or were until the Croat Raid.”
“Really?” Blackwell seemed surprised, but shrugged it off. “Let’s go to the records room, and you can tell me what you found.”
Georg noted Blackwell had soldiers standing guard outside the building.
“I want those horses back,” Blackwell stated.
Once inside, Georg went straight to the smallest stack of papers. “I do not know if you can answer this question,” he began. “Or even if you may answer it. Were these reports sent by one of Nasi’s people?”
Blackwell’s eyes widened. “What makes you ask?”
“These umlauts below their letters.” Georg showed the colonel what he meant. “I thought they looked Hebrew, and my sister says they are Hebrew vowel points.”
Blackwell rifled through the stack. “These are legitimate. I know . . . Never mind the details. A friend of Nasi may have provided a typewriter on short notice . . . Is that enough?”
“Ja. Dank. I will treat those as genuine reports and orders,” Georg assured him. “It’s a feature of the typewriter—built in by an artisan who had keys left over from a Hebrew typewriter, I think.”
“So your idea didn’t pan out?”
Georg blinked at the English idiom. “Ja. Now I can see the rest more clearly.” He realized Blackwell was waiting. “I need a few more hours, I think.”
Blackwell excused himself and left him to it.
* * *
By mid-afternoon, Georg had found most of what he was looking for. He sent one of the clerks to find the colonel. Blackwell arrived in short order.
“Colonel.” Georg gestured toward two orders he’d set aside. “Are these two of the false orders?”
“They are indeed,” Scott Blackwell told him. “How did you know?”
Georg glanced sideways.
“Oh. Right. You two look like you need a coffee break,” the colonel told the clerks.
After they had left, Georg said, “Dank. I know you trust them, but I think you do not want many people to know this.” He took a deep breath. “I have looked through a lot more records than just the border patrol orders, trying to find the missing horses.”
Blackwell nodded.
“It was helpful. I’ve found differences between how your soldiers write orders.”
“Like how each radio operator’s Morse is unique?” Colonel Blackwell asked. “I can’t tell, but the radio operators always know who is sending from the other end.”
Georg nodded in agreement. “They call it their ‘fist.’ There is no way to record the fist in the typed order, but it is something like what I mean. The typed messages aren’t all the same.”
“You mean like the lowercase Os and Es on this one are mostly filled in?” Blackwell asked. He shrugged at Georg’s surprise. “I got it from a detective show I saw on television back up-time. But it seems very subjective.”
“I could match them under a microscope,” Georg told him, “but I suspect the false orders were written on the same typewriter as the real ones. But it does not matter—I know how to tell which orders were changed. See how the umlauts in this message are correct?” He handed Blackwell a page from one of the stacks of genuine orders.
“Yes, of course. Some down-timers are very insistent about them, so I have told my radio operators to send them properly.”
Georg picked up another page, from the second stack. “This clerk omitted the umlauts.”
“It’s not the clerk. It’s the radio operator. The radio operators copy down what they receive on a message sheet. The clerks are supposed to type them up exactly, including any mistakes. If a message is confusing or misleading, we want to document that.”
“Why not have the radio operators type the messages themselves?” Georg asked. “Would it not be faster?”
“Yes, it would. But they claim the typewriters make so much noise they cannot hear the dots and dashes,” Colonel Blackwell explained. “So they scribble the message in pencil as it comes through. A runner takes the messages downstairs to the clerks. One clerk types a message, another checks it. Then a runner takes one copy to the recipient, and a second copy goes in the files.”
“Dank, Colonel. This is very helpful. So the clerk omitted the umlauts because the radio operator did.”
“Right.” Blackwell stabbed the message form with an index finger. “Here are his initials. James Ritchie. One of the Scots. I’ve told him . . . ” Blackwell sighed. “I’ll chew him out again.”
“I would rather you did not, Colonel,” Georg said. “At least not until this is over.”
Georg handed over an order from the third stack. “This one uses an e after the vowel instead. It is a fairly common practice. Some teachers do not approve,” he added in a dry tone.
Scott Blackwell cracked a smile. “They sound like a couple of my officers.”
“Then there is this fourth stack with the umlauts below the letters. The radio operator would have sent these with proper umlauts, and one of the typewriters has the wrong key. But this message contradicts those, and . . . ” Georg picked up one of the two orders he’d set aside and handed it to Blackwell.
“Colons?” the colonel demanded. “COLONS used in place of umlauts!”
“ . . . is the false information,” Georg concluded. “As for colons used for umlauts, I have seen it at Grantville High.” He indicated the other order. “And this is the only other order I have found with colons following the letters which should have umlauts, so it is the second false order. I have not found the third. Do you know which one it is?”
“I do.” Blackwell surveyed the table with a dubious expression. “Do you have any idea what you did with the orders from the second half of June in the Schleiz sector?”
They had to call the clerks back in, and it still took the better part of an hour, but they found it.
“Colons,” Blackwell confirmed.
Georg waited until Blackwell dismissed the clerks again. “It seems to me the orders with colons instead of umlauts would not have been sent by radio. A colon is an extra character to send. An extra E after a vowel is just one dot, but whatever the Morse code for a colon is, it must be longer.”
Colonel Blackwell was nodding before Georg finished explaining. “You’re right. Radio operators will do anything they can to make messages shorter. It’s why Ritchie leaves out umlauts altogether. No radio operator is going to add a colon.”
“Then someone is either typing out these false orders here, or he is bringing a pre-typed message form in with him.”
“Someone has compromised one of our radio operators or clerks.” Blackwell’s voice was grim. “I think we can eliminate anyone sneaking in. He would have to compromise at least two sentries, and he could not count on there not being other radio operators or clerks present.”
“I agree. I will check the false orders for fingerprints, although at this point I doubt I will find any. I do not suppose any clerks or radio operators have recently quit or left the National Guard?”
“No.”
“Maybe there will be a fingerprint.”
* * *
A sentry saluted before opening the door of the communications tower for Colonel Blackwell. Georg followed him inside and up the stairs, bringing the crime scene kit with him. In the room at the top of the tower, four operators were seated in front of radios, while two more sentries watched the door. Only the sentries acknowledged Blackwell. Georg assumed the operators’ communications protocol took precedence over officers.
“I need to leave one man on duty,” Blackwell told him.
“Is one of them Ritchie?” Georg asked.
Blackwell gestured toward a sandy-haired man in the far corner.
“Keep him,” Georg suggested. “I already know how he types.”
“Listen up,” Colonel Blackwell commanded. “Everyone except Ritchie, take a walk.”
After three of the radio operators trooped down the stairs, he nodded to the two sentries and tapped his holster. “You, too. I’ll take guard.”
“Jawohl, Herr Oberst.”
Georg circled the room. Each operator had a radio, a notepad, and several pencils. At each station, a number of sheets had been torn from the pad and stacked to one side. Colonel Blackwell checked the loose sheets at the three now-unoccupied radios and then turned them over.
“How often are these radios cleaned?” Georg tried to make the question casual.
“They get wiped down with a damp cloth and a weak bleach solution daily.” At Georg’s raised eyebrow, Blackwell shrugged. “Last year, the radio operators passed around the winter crud for what seemed like forever. Somebody got hold of Dr. Phil’s Ethereal Essence of Common Salt and cleaned the whole tower. Sergeant swears it made it go away. So he makes them wipe their equipment at the end of their shifts.”
Georg smiled and opened his case. He took out a jar of white powder, a brush, and a roll of tape. He started at the far end, and a while later, he had fingerprints transferred to an index card.
Georg moved on to the next radio. It was painstaking work, and he smiled to himself as he imagined the radio operators enjoying an extra-long break. At last, he straightened.
“This clerk has loop fingerprints. The one on the end has arches on a couple fingers.”
George turned to the third radio, the one next to Ritchie. After bending over it for a while, he straightened and stretched.
“Does this man not touch his machine?”
Ritchie gave a sharp laugh. “Not if he can help it. He is a neat freak.”
“Und I need to check yours, too,” Georg told him. “What is your rank?”
“Corporal, sir.”
“I need just a few minutes, Corporal Ritchie.”
“And you don’t need to tell the others what he was doing,” Colonel Blackwell added.
Georg and Blackwell went downstairs to the records room. Blackwell sent the radio operators and the sentries back to their posts.
“Now what?” Blackwell asked.
“Now I fingerprint the typewriters.” Again he started on the far side of the room. “Ah, here is the one with the tsere key.”
Georg examined the key with interest, then he dusted the typewriter for fingerprints. Then the next, and the next, and the next.
“Does each clerk use the same typewriter?” he asked.
“Yeah. They don’t have to, but they tend to.”
After a couple minutes, Georg’s head came up from the typewriter in the left corner of the room. “Who sits here?”
“Müffling. Why?”
“I’ve got a whorl here.” A few minutes later, he added, “I have a lot of whorls here. At least three different ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whorls are less common than loops but more common than arches.” Georg spoke in an absent-minded tone. “Now a whorl partially obliterated by a chemical burn cannot be too common.”
Georg stepped back from the typewriter. “How long has this clerk been here?”
The colonel frowned. “I don’t know. I was stationed in Würzburg from ’32 to ’34. As best I can remember, Müffling was here when I moved up here. Why?”
Georg took a deep breath. “I think I have seen these fingerprints before. In the apartment of a Saxon agent. Who took classes at the high school and may have picked up the colon-for-umlaut there.”
“I think we should bring them all back in,” Blackwell said.
“Unless you want to leave him in place and just tell Leutnant Schmidt,” Georg suggested. “Someone might spot the Saxon agent behind this.”
Blackwell considered it for about two seconds. “Then let’s not leave any clues ourselves.”
They hurriedly swept up all the fingerprint powder they could.
A short while later, Blackwell sent one of the outside sentries to find the clerks.
He returned a little while later with two radio operators, two clerks, and the two upstairs sentries in tow. “At the mess hall, sir,” he told the colonel.
Each radio operator nodded as he filed past Colonel Blackwell and went upstairs. Downstairs, Georg watched the clerks take the second and fourth seats. He and Blackwell exchanged glances.
Blackwell raised his voice. “I thought you had something on those horse thieves, too, Georg. It’s too bad it didn’t pan out. We’ll have to try something else.”
Blackwell turned toward the row of typewriters. “Men, do any of you remember messages about a couple dozen horses being brought in from Swabia?”
“No, sir!” they chorused. One added, “I would remember, sir. It is not ordinary.”
“It is unusual,” Blackwell allowed. “Where is Private Müffling? I should ask him, too. Just to be thorough.”
Georg studied physical evidence, not people. Moreover, he was about as far from the military culture as it was possible for a young man to be in Grantville. But even he could tell the two radio operators had just gotten tense. Each was half-turned in his chair, and as close to a position of attention as it was possible to be in such an awkward posture.
“I am not going to rip his head off,” Blackwell promised. “I didn’t give you a return time. But I would appreciate it if he turned up soon. Sooner we close this out, sooner I can send Georg on his way.”
Georg had to hand it to Blackwell for his casual approach.
“We do not know where he went, Colonel Blackwell,” the clerk in the middle said. “We went to the mess hall . . . ”
Blackwell nodded. “Naturally. Carry on, men. If you see Müffling before I do, send him over to my office with anything he might remember about some horses from Swabia.”
“Yes, sir!”
Blackwell gestured toward the door and ushered Georg out. Once they were outside, and the door was shut, his demeanor changed completely.
“Soldier,” he ordered one of the sentries, “do you know where the officer of the day’s office is? Near the main gate?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Tell him I want Camp Saale locked down—but do it quietly and then come to my office. I want Sergeant Reinhart there, too.”
A couple hours later, Georg was led to another of the buildings erected as a barracks in the fall of 1633. Now it was offices and meeting rooms. Colonel Blackwell arrived a few minutes later, having taken a different route. A third man stepped into the room. He was short and stocky with a fair amount of gray hair.
He asked one question. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Colonel Blackwell answered. “One of the MPs at the gate remembers seeing Müffling. He had no reason to stop him. Soldiers go into Saalfeld for one thing or another all the time.”
“Start from the beginning, if you would, sir.”
“You know about the forged orders,” Blackwell began.
“Yes, sir.”
“Georg Meisner here saw something we should have seen right away. In the forged orders, the umlauts were written as colons after the vowel. He says he’s seen that before, at Grantville High. He thinks he has also seen Müffling’s fingerprints in an apartment in Grantville.
“Someone should be here with Müffling’s file in a few minutes,” Colonel Blackwell continued. “I want to see if we can list the dates when he could have been in Grantville.”
“Tell me about this apartment, bitte,” the third man requested.
“It was rented by Tobias Sprunck,” Georg began.
The man muttered something under his breath. Aloud, he said, “I am familiar with the case.”
“Sir, there were four spots on a table in the second bedroom, the one Sprunck had converted to a laboratory.” Then he remembered something Barbara Kellarmännin had said. “Or a trophy room.”
Both officers shrugged.
“Four small circles, arranged in a rectangle, spots with no dust on an otherwise dusty table.”
The third man muttered something again. “A typewriter. You think Sprunck wrote those orders himself and gave them to Müffling.”
“Ja, sir, I do.”
The other officer looked at Blackwell. “I think he’s right.”
Blackwell nodded. “If Georg is right—and I think he is—Saxony is going to want to do something when the war starts. Or maybe right before. When they move someone out of position, I need someone else ready and waiting.”
“I think I know just the unit,” the other man said.