SCENE TWELVE   Stephan Aynsley's home, south of Baltimore

Their 'grand endeavors' had failed, utterly.  At the moment they came closest to triumph, circumstances once more altered cases to defeat and destroy them. Stephan Johannes Aynsley, Herr Professor Doctor, Fellow of the Zurich, Munich, Amsterdam and Vienne Medical Societies, appointee to Emperor Franz Josef's entourage of physicians, sat in the empty laboratory of his empty house and contemplated his failures. And they were many and they were excruciating. He'd had the sharp taste of victory's laurels in his mouth, now he tasted cold ashes. Motives he cared not to describe or to label had taken him into Baltimore that day. Riding his black Lipizzaner stallion, a gift from the Imperial stables in Vien, the Austrian paid no heed to the clear, early autumn day, to the carts and light rigs and wagons passing him on the road, nor to the throngs on Baltimore's old, cobbled streets. There was only one place, only two persons in that whole city Aynsley sought for. When he found them, and knew their condition, then the rest of the world might take shape around him once more.

Liesl Marguerite had defied his wishes, once again. She'd left Aynsley's home, her home before sunrise. And she hadn't gone alone. Remiel Julien Boudin, a wealthy, power-hungry man Liesl was fond of saying she 'brought' to her uncle and to their 'grand endeavors', left at the same instant. Liesl hated riding, and detested the plebian necessities involved in that activity. She was an Aristocrat, after all, or would have been one, if this beknighted land had the good sense to cultivate a royal class. Therefore, Aynsley knew his niece must have accepted Boudin's open invitation to ride into the city in his phaeton, an overly decorated, overly weighted contrivance, well suited to Boudin's over-arching ambitions. What led Aynsley to carry his small physician's valise with him, the Austrian couldn't have said. What led him to stride up the staircase in the Maryland House Hotel, up to an even more crowded hallway, he couldn't comprehend. Neither the tools in his valise, nor his years of training in Zurich, in Munich, and in Vien were any use once he entered that scene, using as his alias the name of Liesl's late paternal uncle, Randall Branoch. The girl he sought was dead when he arrived, and thankfully so, the professional physician within the grieving uncle knew. Liesly was free now, to rejoin her sisters, her parents in whatever she thought of as 'Glory'.

Aynsley had only two more obligations to carry out himself now; to determine the status of his failed Courier, and to keep his own solemn oaths. Carefully listening more than talking, Aynsley learned that 'the madman' fled back through the Presidential suite and then 'vanished'. One part of the patterning held, after all, the Austrian bitterly considered. Months of learning by rote a well furnished maze, blindfolded, allowed Courier to escape, friend and foe alike. A few more judicious questions told Aynsley how events at the Maryland House unfolded, unraveled, more like, he thought.

Stephan Aynsley had no doubt that his thwarting-ally, his supportive-enemy, Boudin, absconded with Courier as thoroughly as he had with Liesl. The Georgian was a man of property, of parts and of wide reaching influence, all fueled by the assets he'd kept in Cuba, Haiti and in Brazil, during the Conflict. He was a man of strong habits, strange tastes and a deep need for vengeance. Liesl found that resonance with her own drives, Aynsley knew, magnetically attractive. Liesl was dead now, past vengeance, past hatred, past hurting. Courier, Aynsley found, following up his questions, his knowledge of Boudin's properties, was now an empty spirit, a silenced heart, a helpless, and half-buried child. Neither of the mad beings he'd followed to Baltimore would leave with him now, or ever. He had only one 'endeavor' left to complete.

In the wreckage of his expensive, irreplaceable vials and beakers, in the ruins of his notes and charts, in the silence of his once hectic laboratory, Stephan Johannes Aynsley thought over his wasted life and kept his final promises. Cold with his own failings and foibles, Stephan Aynsley lifted an oil lamp from the desk of his attic-study. Once more he surveyed the ruins of all plans and promises and pleadings. With a curse, the Austrian flung the lamp and its burning contents into the sea of paper he'd created. And somehow, amazingly, the Austrian found himself tautly smiling as the fire licked and spread and grew. Then, as the flames touched the threshold of his study, the physician 'cured himself' with a lethal dosage of morphine, sat down at his desk, and died.

A heavily sealed, oilskin-wrapped package, locked in an iron strongbox, at his feet now, would be discovered at the appropriate moment, by the appropriate persons. The Austrian's last journal, last letters, last will and testament, and his daguerreotypes of Liesl, her mother, sisters, baby brother and father lay within. No matter what else occurred now, in it's proper time, his last endeavor would reach its 'proper ends'. Clearly, 'the One' who'd revealed himself as Aynsley's True Enemy, Remiel Julien Boudin, had forgotten the old Viennese proverb Liesl was fond of reciting. 'Revenge is a dish,' the people of the old, Imperial city liked to say' Best served cold.'

They'll believe they are done with their greatest danger, when they find me he thought at the last. May they not wait too long, as I did, Remiel Julien, old friend, before learning exactly how wide of the mark they are!