The Great Game by Michael Kurland

perhaps, since she suspected the fat man of some sort of chicanery, she was going to try to prove it. Barnett sincerely hoped that she was not planning to do any such thing.
     
                  "You are most kind," the fat man said, as he lowered himself gingerly into a chair on the aisle while Benjamin and Cecily regained their seats. He looked relieved, but perhaps that was just at being able to sit again. Hauling his bulk around, particularly on a moving train, Barnett thought, must be a constant battle.
     
                  "So you are a journalist, eh?" Barnett said. "Looking for work?"
     
                  "No, no!" Kasper held up one chubby hand in protest, as though to ward off the very suggestion. "Of course, if there were any way in which I could be of service to the great American News Service ... You have, perhaps, read my series on the aesthetic differences among the capitals of the European monarchies? It had a brief European vogue about a year ago, and was translated into many languages."
     
                  "I don't believe so," Barnett said. "What was it called?" Cecily asked.
     
                  " 'An Aesthetic Analysis of the Fin-de-Si è cle Styles and Manners of the Capitals of the European Monarchies.' It was well-received, if I may be permitted to say so myself. It evoked quite a bit of comment at the time. But it has not, as of yet, had the honor of receiving an English translation."
     
                  "Catchy title," Barnett commented.
     
                  Kasper turned and looked at him suspiciously for a moment, but decided to ignore whatever he saw there. "Do you think your American public would have any interest in an article of that nature?" he asked. "It is a heavily researched article and finds many similarities of thought among the more important European capitals."
     
                  "Send a copy to my London office," Barnett told him, "and I'll be glad to look at it. And now—"
     
                  "Ah, yes. Thank you for your attention. But that, of course, is not why I am imposing my presence on you, despite our lack of any sort of proper introduction. Oh, no, no!"
     
                  "It's not?" Barnett found the man's protestations, accompanied with a lot of chubby hand waving, to be simultaneously irritating and amusing.
     
                  "Not at all, Mr. Barnett, far from it. It is I who have an offer to make to you."
     
                  "You do? What sort of offer?"
     
                  "In this matter I represent the Staatlicher Ü berblicken, a monthly journal of conservative opinion published in the city of Zurich."
     
                  "I have heard of it," Barnett said, "although I don't read German. My wife does." He turned to Cecily.
     
                  "I know the magazine," Cecily said. "Tell me, Signor Kasper, what have you to do with it, or it with us?"
     
                  "I shall explain. You may know, then, that the Staatlicher Ü berblicken publishes a profile every month of an important, but little known figure of these closing years of the nineteenth century. Those individuals who have accomplishments which are of value to European civilization, but which have gone relatively unnoticed, are the subjects of these profiles." The fat man turned from Benjamin to Cecily and back, as though waiting for a reaction, and surprised that it was not there.
     
                  "Yes?" Barnett said. He glanced at Cecily, who gave an imperceptible shrug.
     
                  Kasper leaned forward and placed his palms on the table. "Mr. Barnett, you are a friend of the great criminologist and consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is this not so?"
     
                  "I am certainly an acquaintance of Mr. Holmes," Barnett replied, repressing a strong desire to