Kronberg Crimes 01 - The Devils Grin

Court of Kings College where its mighty vaulted ceilings with delicate fans of stone, criss-crossing like the arteries of a large organism, made me think of being swallowed alive. One blink of my eyes and I wiped my surroundings away, focusing only on the imaginary scarlet spot straight ahead.
    Stark opened a door to a small lecture hall. I counted fifteen men wearing stern expressions, aged mostly above fifty, with the older sitting in comfortable armchairs surrounded by younger men. Most talked quietly and smoked. Upon our entry, the chatter slowly faded.
    My eyes swept over the room; it was no ordinary lecture hall. Dark and intricate wood panels decorated the walls. Pictures of more than twenty haughty-looking men, bewigged, robed and framed in gold, hung all around the room.
    Stark coughed and all heads turned in his direction, all but mine. I kept my gaze straight at the most distinguished men, trying to spot the leader.
    ‘Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce Dr Anton Kronberg, England’s leading bacteriologist. He studied medicine at the Leipzig University and took regular internships at the Charité in Berlin, where he also defended his thesis. After that, Harvard Medical School rewarded him with a fellowship for four years.’
    A few men nodded approvingly, and Stark continued with a smile. ‘Then London had the honour to welcome him. His work on infectious diseases at Guy’s Hospital made him a well-known scientist in all of London’s hospitals. But his visit to Dr Koch’s laboratory in Berlin with his breakthrough in the isolation of tetanus germs made him an internationally renowned bacteriologist. His colleagues describe him as driven, hard-working, and highly intelligent.’
    Stark turned to face me as he announced, ‘He came here today following our invitation, and will give a presentation on his recent work – tetanus, and the isolation and characterisation of the causative agents.’
    I inclined my head in acknowledgement and entered the podium. I was used to giving presentations for much larger audiences and my nervousness usually peaked just before starting a talk. But once I stood in front of my always exclusively male listeners, I felt calm washing over me, because I was in disguise. Today, I felt no nervousness whatsoever; there was nothing but cold drive.
    I used a determined and low voice to grab their attention and not distract them with strong variations in pitch or volume. ‘My dear colleagues, it is a great honour to speak to you today, here in this lecture hall where the greatest anatomists have spoken before me.’ I made a sweeping move with my arm, indicating the men in the paintings. ‘Yet, the topic of my talk differs very much from those of my predecessors.’
    Here I took a few seconds to let the information take effect.
    ‘My field of research is young, but advancing at unimaginable speed — bacteriology. We bacteriologists deal with the greatest evils for mankind — diseases such as tetanus, cholera, typhoid, anthrax, and bubonic plague — to name but a few. We study how disease spreads and how the battle against their causative agents, namely bacteria, can be won. I will focus my talk today on tetanus and its recently isolated germs.’
    I turned to the blackboard and drew a plot of the numbers of tetanus fatalities in London during the last thirty years. My audience was glued to my lips and to my hand leading the chalk over the slate.
    After one hour my presentation was finished. The men rose to their feet and clapped. Several of the older men approached to shake my hand and congratulated me heartily. After some small talk, they agreed to meet up with me in a more private setting back in London in three days.

    ~~~

    I sat in my tattered armchair in my small single-room apartment in Tottenham Court Road. Leaning far back with my feet on the scarred coffee table, I stared at the ceiling with half-closed eyes. It was the only flat surface in this room that had no wallpaper peeling off. The ceiling, though, was perfectly homogeneous. I hated distraction. Other than that, emotions were a stranger to me now, while my mind slowly revolved around the presentation, the audience, and the visible social bonds and tensions between those men.

    ~~~

    Three days later, Stark called at my apartment and we took a private brougham. I noticed the freshness of the two chestnuts, their coats were gleaming and dry, no froth seeped from the corner of their mouths. Our