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原作者：Ben Stroud
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德国大侦探摩尔的侦探生涯。
（怎么这么长，翻到吐血)
The Moor 侦探摩尔 Ben Stroud 作者：本·斯特劳德 The Moor's Origins
摩尔的来历 The earliest known record of the negro detective Jackson Hieronymus Burke—the Moor—is an advertisement he ran in several Berlin newspapers in 1873, promising discretion and modest fees. We know nothing of his cases from this period, but, having traced the address given in the advertisement to one of the city’s poorer quarters (Prenzlauer Berg), believe they would have been limited to the lowest kind of work: finding stolen dogs, tracking suspected adulterers. After the advertisement, Burke drops from history until the fall of 1876, when he leaps from obscurity with a single feat of deduction. 关于黑人侦探杰克森·谢尔罗尼姆斯·伯克——侦探摩尔的最早记录是他在几份柏林报纸上刊登的一个广告，夸口他的谨慎侦查和合理收费。对这个时期他的案件，我们毫不知晓，但是广告上所附的地址是柏林市最贫的地区之一--普伦茨劳堡伯格（Prenzlauer Berg），因此他处理的案件应该是些最简单低级的：找回偷走的狗，跟踪可疑的通奸者。 这份广告刊登后，伯克消失了一段时期，直到1876年的秋天，由于一起案件的成功侦破他终于从默默无名中出人头地了。 & All of Berlin had been baffled by the disappearance of the renowned theatre critic Wolfgang Metzger. The police searched the sewers, dug up his mistresses’ back gardens. They questioned actors whose abilities he had maligned, impresarios whose shows he had damned. Neither the body nor evidence of foul play was found. Then, two weeks later, a letter appeared in the newspaper: Metzger had not disappeared, but had murdered his twin, a wealthy hay merchant, and replaced him. The letter, signed by Burke, described how he had uncovered the truth when he visited the twin’s villa to offer his services. He’d been directed to the stables and, finding the man there, noticed the horses shying from his touch. “With that I understood all,” he added with the confident flourish he would keep for the rest of his career. The twin’s servants might not have recognized a difference between Metzger and his brother, nor the twin’s wife, but the horses, with their keen animal sense, had betrayed the critic, who had hoped, by impersonating his brother, to avoid his debtors.
知名的戏剧评论家沃尔夫冈·梅茨格的失踪使整个柏林为之困惑。警察们搜寻下水道，在他情人的后花园里掘地三尺。他们还询问那些表演能力受梅茨格抨击的演员，那些作品被他咒骂的戏剧导演。可是犯罪的尸体或是一点其他证据都没找到。两个星期后，报纸上刊载了一封信：梅茨格没有消失，他谋杀了他的双胞胎兄弟——一位富有的干草商人，并且替代了他。这封信是伯克签认的，他在信里描述他去富商家的别墅中办案时是如何发现真相的。他被仆人指领到马厩中，他注意到马匹对“主人”的触碰很敏感。“看到这儿，我明白了一切。” 他自信满满地说，而这种自信将会在整个侦探生涯中陪伴着他。双胞胎商人的佣人可能无法辨别梅茨格和他兄弟之间的细微差别，即使商人的妻子也无法辨认，但是拥有敏锐动物知觉的马匹可不同，它们出卖了这位评论家。他本来还希望借扮演他的兄弟能逃脱追债人。 & The city was shocked by this revelation and amazed by its deliverer. Everyone had the same question on their lips: who was this man, and where had he come from? Even now we can only speculate. Burke never spoke of his past, nor of how he came to detection. One rumor holds that he was born a slave on a Texas sugar plantation in the early 1840s, another that he was the son of a New Orleans freedman. Records suggest that a negro detective—called, simply, El Negrito—practiced in Havana during the Civil War, but no proof connects him to Burke. We only know that Burke was American, that he was in his thirties when he arrived in Berlin, and that at the start of his career—in which he would solve over 700 cases and be memorialized in dozens of dime novels—he already possessed powers to rival the French masters Vidocq and Devergie. 全城都被这个结果震惊了，人们对案件的侦破者感到惊奇。每个人都想问同样的问题：这个侦探是谁？他来自哪里？即使现在，我们也只能猜测这些问题，因为伯克从未谈及他的过去，或是他是如可走上侦探之路的。有人传说他出生在19世纪40年代，是德克萨斯州一个甘蔗种植场的奴隶，还有人说他是新奥尔良的自由民。有记录曾指出一位黑人侦探（叫做艾尔小黑人）在南北战争时期曾在哈瓦那侦查过案件，但是并没有证据将他与伯克相联系。我们唯一清楚的是伯克是美国人，他来到柏林时已经30多岁了，而且他的侦探生涯开启之时已具备与法国侦探大师维克多（Vidocq）、戴弗吉（Devergie）相媲美的侦探能耐。他共侦破了700多件案例，多部侦探小说中都描写过他，以此作为对他的纪念。 & Soon Burke’s photograph began appearing in shops, alongside etchings of the stable scene and a pamphlet, by a hack named Frisch, promising to teach its readers the detective’s secrets. He was invited to dinners, asked to salons—it was now, in the flush of his first triumph, that a columnist for the Zeitung, remarking on Burke’s color, gave him his nickname when he declared Burke their Othello, their Moor. 很快，伯克的照片就出现在大小商店中，此外还出现了关于那个马厩场景的蚀刻画和一个画家弗里希所做的蚀刻小画册，他许诺过要为读者揭秘这位大侦探。他受邀参加晚宴，加入艺术聚会——第一次小试身手后，时报的一位专栏作家在谈到他的肤色时，把伯克称作他们的奥赛罗，他们的摩尔，这是他外号的来历。 & His Appearance 伯克之相貌 One must be wary of the newspaper and dime-novel illustrations, which often colored him darker than he was, thickened his lips, bulged his eyes. He was of middle height—five feet, seven inches tall—and possessed a slight paunch, a rather large brow, and a strong nose with a rounded tip. His eyes were hazel, his skin a deep chestnut, his mouth often shaped into a slight smile that, as the Kaiser famously remarked, simply said, “I know.” He never cultivated a moustache, kept his hair cropped close. 要当心报纸和那些便宜小说中的插图，因为这些图片常常把伯克描绘成一位肤色更黑的侦探，拥有加厚的嘴唇，圆鼓鼓的双眼。伯克身材中等，有5英尺7英寸，略微发福，一双浓密的眉毛，鼻子坚挺，鼻头圆润。他的眼睛淡褐色，皮肤深栗色，嘴角常挂着浅浅的微笑，就像德国皇帝调侃的那样，仿佛在说：“我知道。”他从不留胡子，头发总是剔得很短。 & As for his dress, he wore English-cut suits of either gray or black wool, his sole ornaments three watch fobs hung from a golden chain. The fobs never changed, and any schoolchild in Wilhelm I’s Berlin could name them: the gold ship’s wheel to commemorate the Rhine Barge Mystery, the miniature shield presented to him by the Munich police in honor of his role in solving the Dubbel Murders, and the platinum-mounted bear claw given to him by the Prince von Schlieffen after he rescued Christiana, the prince’s intended, from her gypsy kidnappers. He wore them at all times—whether he was pursuing a clue in the sewers or lecturing the Reichstag on the criminal mind—perhaps as a warning of his constancy to those who would oppose him. 穿着方面，伯克穿英式剪裁的西服，灰色或黑色的羊毛西装。他唯一的装饰品是三条穿在金链上的表链。这三条表链从未换过，任何威廉一世时期的柏林学童都能说出它们的来历：一条缀着金色轮船方向盘，用来纪念莱茵河驳船神秘事件；一条是微型盾牌，是慕尼黑警局为他在杜柏尔谋杀案的侦破中所作贡献的奖励；一条是铂金的熊掌，这是从吉普赛绑匪手中解救王子施里芬的未婚妻克里斯蒂安娜后，王子赠送伯克的礼物。不管是在下水道搜寻线索，还是在国会中作罪犯动机心理演讲时，他都一直带着这些表链，借此他可能想对他的敌人报以警告——他始终坚定不移。 & His Rooms, pt. 1 伯克之房间 （第一部分） Not long after the Case of the Murdered Twin—when he began receiving regular commissions and collecting handsome fees—Burke moved from Prenzlauer Berg to Fasanenstrasse, on the far side of the Tiergarten. He occupied the entire fourth floor of his building. Rooms upon rooms circled the courtyard, and over the years he fitted them out to his exacting specifications. There were the main living quarters, of course, and the famous sitting room where he met his clients while reclining on his settee—to heighten the flow of blood to his brain, it was said. Then there were the rooms for his collections: one for the ordered cartons of lint and hair from the chief criminals of the Continent and B one filled with jars of soils from around the world, which he employed in the identification of dirts f and one for weapons of every description: blackjacks and saps, trays of bullets and blades, a kris from the Dutch East Indies, even an atlatl from the Polar regions. The chief of these rooms was the library. There he made his experiments, and there he kept his famous blue-morocco volumes—a vast collection of books and pamphlets, ranging from studies of African beetle carapaces to treatises on the patterns of broken glass, used in the study of clues. 双生儿案件侦破后不久，伯克开始定期接受案件，赚了一笔可观的钱，他从普伦茨劳堡伯格搬到了远在蒂尔公园另一边的法撒南斯塔瑟（Fasanenstrasse）。他独占了整幢建筑的第四层，庭院周围是他的一间间房屋，多年以来，他一直严格按照自己制定的规则设置这些屋子。其中包括大卧室，还有他躺在长椅上会见客户的著名客厅，据说他这样躺着是为了增加流向大脑的血液。接着，是他的收藏室: 一间放置摆得整整齐齐的纸盒，里面装着来自欧洲大陆和英国的要犯们的衣服线头和头发；一间盛满了装有世界各地土壤的罐子，这些都是他在犯罪现场鉴定泥土灰尘时收集的；还有一间是各种各样的武器——棍棒、铲子，一盘盘子弹和刀片，一把来自荷属东印度群岛的波状短剑，甚至还有极地地区的梭镖投射器。其间最为重要的是一间图书室，伯克在这里展开他的实验，这里还藏着他最赫赫有名的蓝摩洛哥藏书——这是一个巨大的书籍收藏，是为他的线索研究服务的，从对非洲甲虫的外壳到对碎玻璃的形状，各种研究论文，应有尽有。 & His Mounting Fame 名声崛起 With each new case (the Mystery of the Blue Hussar, the Case of the Poisoned Toothpowder) his fame swiftly grew. German bakers began producing the Moor’s Torte, a coffee-flavored pastry studded with “clues” (sultanas), and Moor Clubs spread across the Continent and in England—members blackened their faces and were given the details of a crime that must be solved by the end of the afternoon. Soon Burke was maintaining correspondence with other men of note (Javadpur the philosopher-rajah of Panjistan, Lord Roscomb the industrialist, Oscar Ilsberg the Swedish Darwin), and in 1884 he was summoned to Japan by Emperor Mutsuhito to solve the Golden Crane Murders plaguing the imperial family. 随着每个案子的成功解决（如蓝色轻骑兵神秘事件，牙粉投毒案件），伯克的名气迅速攀升。德国的面包师们烘烤出了摩尔大面包，是一种咖啡口味镶有“线索”（小葡萄干）的糕点；摩尔俱乐部在欧洲大陆和英国也蔚然成风，会员们涂黑自己的脸，被告知案情的细节并被要求在黄昏前侦破案件。很快伯克就和其他一些名人有了往来，其中有亚法普尔（Javadpur）——潘吉斯坦（Panjistan）的首长，实业家罗斯可姆勋爵（Lord Roscomb），瑞典的达尔文——奥斯卡·伊尔斯伯格(Oscar Ilsberg)，1884年，伯克被明治天皇召唤到日本侦破发生在皇室家族的金鹤谋杀案。 & It was said that his nemesis was a past-master of the bassoon, his instrument having once belonged to the only man he’d killed with his own hands. 据说伯克的劲敌曾是一位巴松管大师，他的乐器曾属于一个他亲手杀害的人。 & By 1881 one could open the newspaper on any given day, anywhere on the Continent and even in the United States, and read about Burke—that he had recovered a stolen jewel for the State Museum or hunted the vitriol-thrower Kurtz, that he had been seen having champagne with an actress at Dressel’s or sitting in Prince von Krollstein’s box at the opera, or that he had received some new recognition from the Kaiser or beaten the Prince of Wales at billiards. One famous article recorded the foods Burke ate in order to discover which aided his thinking (plums and kidneys, the reporter decided), while a number of others provided phrenological analyses of his skull, citing the enlarged organs of Comparison and Human Nature as the seat of his mental prowess. 到了1881年，在任何一天，在欧陆甚至是美国的任何地点，你翻开报纸就能读到伯克的新闻——他找到了国家博物馆丢失的珠宝，他抓到了泼硫酸的库尔特，他在德雷塞酒店与一名女演员喝酒庆祝，他坐在克鲁尔斯塔因王子包厢里观看戏剧，或者他又得到了皇帝新的封赏，他玩桌球击败了威尔士王子。有一篇著名的文章记录了伯克的饮食，想要发现是什么赋予了他锐利的思维——作者得出“是李子和动物肾脏”的结论。其他一系列的文章对他的头骨进行骨相分析，引用骨相对比论及人类天性说证明较大的脑袋是他超人智慧的基础。 & His Nemesis 伯克之劲敌 In the course of his career, Burke battled many adversaries: the confidence man Reynolds, the assassin Fiori, the archspy Countess von Perlitz. But greatest and most dangerous of all was the shadowy crime-broker Heinrich Bloch. 侦探生涯中，伯克击败过许多对手：有不可一世的雷诺兹，刺客菲欧利，大间谍女伯爵珀尔里茨。但最强劲、最危险的莫过于来去无踪的海因里希·布洛赫了（Heinrich Bloch）。 & In the fall of 1886, six-year-old Liesl von Eberbach, the daughter of the Interior Minister, was stolen from her home. Within a day letters began arriving at the papers bearing blood-spotted scraps of her dress. The letters asked no ransom, made no demands, but warned the girl would be killed in a week’s time. None could understand the kidnappers’ motive, nor find the faintest trace of their whereabouts—the letters bore postmarks from around the empire. Liesl’s father called Burke in to investigate, and with only a water stain and a sample of dust he determined she was being held in the Aquarium by two henchmen in the pay of Henri Guillard, the French ambassador’s attaché. Liesl was rescued, the city relieved, the Interior Minister supremely grateful. 1886年的秋天，内政部长六个月大的女儿丽索尔·冯·艾伯巴赫（Liesl von Eberbach），从家中被劫走了。当天部长就收到了劫匪的信，上面还贴有婴儿血迹斑斑的裙子碎布。信上没有要挟赎金，也没有其它要求，只是警告孩子会在一周内被杀害。没人明白绑匪的动机，也不知道他们的行踪，因为绑匪的信件盖上了全国各地的邮戳。丽索尔的父亲找来伯克调查这起案件。伯克仅仅根据一个水印，一把土样就定论孩子被两个绑匪劫在水族馆中，而这两个人是法国大使专员亨利· 圭尔勒德（Henri Guillard）的手下。丽索尔被解救出来了，全城都松了一口气，内政部长对伯克极其感激。 & But Burke was not satisfied. He recognized in the plan’s design a genius far beyond Guillard’s—its purpose, in terrorizing Liesl’s father, was to force his resignation and cause the German government to fall. Burke couldn’t question Guillard—he hid himself in the embassy, claiming immunity—but when he tried the henchmen they gave him a name, Bloch. They never met the man, they said, nor knew who he was. But it seems they had told Burke enough. The next morning they were found murdered in their cells. 但伯克并不满意。他意识到这起案件的策划者是远比圭尔勒德高明的天才，其目的是恐吓丽索尔的父亲，迫使他退位，并致使德国垮台。伯克无法询问圭尔勒德——他藏身在法国大使馆，宣称他有豁免权——但是询问那两个手下时，他们招出了幕后黑手的名字——布洛赫。他们说从未与这个人谋面，也不知道他是何方人物，但这些似乎对伯克已经足够了。第二天，这两个人被谋杀，死在了监狱中。 & In the months and years that followed, Burke devoted himself to the study of Bloch, yet he discovered little about the fiend, why he turned to crime, or how he came to dominate it. The bastard son of Joachim Bloch, spice merchant, and his Javanese mistress, Heinrich Bloch was given the running of his father’s spice house at a young age and used it as a front throughout his career. Living in the Nikolaiviertel as a simple burgher, Bloch had a perfect cover. But Burke knew that Bloch arranged the bombing of Grand Duke Alexey’s carriage during his state visit, masterminded the Reichsbank Jewel Robbery, and plotted the mine collapse at Augsburg, in which a hundred men died. It was said that Bloch controlled a network of a thousand c that he was a past-master of the bassoon, his instrument having once belonged to the only man he’d kille that as soon as he’d planned and seen the execution of a thousand crimes he would retire from the spice house and return to Jav that he demanded souvenirs from each of his terrible schemes and kept them in pine cabinets: a golden bolt from Alexey’s carriage, the preserved finger of one of the Reichsbank’s murdered clerks, a lump of bloodstained ore from Augsburg. 接下来的数月以至几年里，伯克致力于研究这位布洛赫，但他所获甚少，他仍不清楚布洛赫为何要犯罪，为何要让生命充满罪行。这个恶棍是香料商约阿希姆·布洛赫与他爪哇妻子之子，他青年时期就接管了父亲的香料厂，并把这个工厂作为犯罪生涯的前线。他一直居住在尼古拉小区中，作为一名普通市民是他极好的掩饰罪行的方式。但是伯克知道，在布洛赫出国游行时他设计了大公阿里克谢（Duke Alexey）马车爆炸案，策划了德国国家银行的珠宝盗窃案，谋划了奥格斯堡煤矿坍塌，致使上百人死亡。传闻布洛赫在城中控制了一个千人罪犯的地下网络；他曾是巴松管演奏家，他的乐器曾属于唯一一个他亲手杀害的人；人们还传说一旦策划并且见证了一千起罪行，他就会从香料厂退休，回到爪哇，呆在船上生活；每一起恐怖的犯罪活动后，他都要求得到一个纪念物，并将之收藏在松木陈列柜中，包括阿里克谢马车上的一条金门闩，德国国家银行案中受害员工的一只手指标本，一堆奥格斯堡爆炸案中染满血迹的矿石。 & For six years Burke pursued Bloch but failed to prove his guilt in any crime. Some claim that Burke could have done so, but that he took a connoisseur’s pleasure in tracing each of Bloch’s plots and allowed him his freedom to ensure there would be more. Most, though, find such a suggestion preposterous. At the end of six years, in the winter of 1892, Bloch disappeared. The spice house was boarded up. Every trace of Bloch was gone. When Burke mentioned this to the papers, he said he suspected some new villainy but could not name it. 伯克花了六年时间追查布洛赫，但是未能找到他任何一起案例的罪证。有些人说，伯克本可以做到的，但是他是以一种鉴赏的眼光进行布氏阴谋的侦查的，他从中获得了乐趣，并且放过了布氏以保证他能享受更多的乐趣。然而大多数人认为这种假设荒谬至极。六年的侦查结束时，在1892年冬天，布洛赫消失了，香料厂也被封上了。关于布洛赫的蛛丝马迹荡然无存。伯克对报纸谈到这点时说，他怀疑这其中有什么新的罪恶，但他不能挑明。 & His Rooms, pt. 2 伯克之房间（第二部分） A tantalizingly brief mention in a catalog of homes of the celebrated, published in 1890 and discovered only recently, describes a room in Burke’s house holding a dozen glass curios filled with ceramic blackamoors. “Some stand nobly, others ride steeds, and yet others kneel and bear gifts,” the catalog reads. “Blackamoors of all shapes and sizes, bareheaded or in turbans and fezes.” His clients sent them, which tells us much, but what tells us more is that he kept them. For all our research, Burke himself remains a mystery, yet here we have a clue. He had a passage of Pushkin etched on a brass tablet and mounted beneath the central curio, which the catalog gives thus: “He felt that he was for them a kind of rare beast, a peculiar alien creature, accidentally brought into a world with which he had nothing in common.” He was perhaps not as at home in Berlin as is commonly assumed, and with this passage as a lens, we can see traces of a deep melancholy in Burke’s dinners alone at the Café Bauer, his solitary trips to the shore.
于1890年出版最近才发现的一本介绍名人家居的辑录中，有一段幽默的简介，描述的是伯克的一间屋子，里面置有不少玻璃古董，而古董里还装着许多陶瓷黑人。这份辑录写到：“一些高贵地站着，其他的骑着骏马，还有一些跪地并揣着礼物。这些陶瓷黑人各式各样，大小不一，有的光着头，有的戴着头巾和毡帽。”伯克的顾客赠送了这些礼物，这让我们明白了许多，但是更使人受启发的是他保存了这些礼物。尽管做了许多研究，伯克对于我们来说仍然是一个迷，但从这条信息我们可以发现一些东西。伯克在一个铜质平板上蚀刻了普希金的一段文章，把它装饰在中间的一个古董下。辑录中这样写到：“他认为对于其他人来说，他就是个罕有的怪物，他是一个奇怪的外星生物，无意间落入这个世界。在这里他与其他人没有任何共同之处。” 与人们通常设想的那样不同，在柏林他可能并没有归属感。通过这篇文章，我们可以窥见，当伯克独自一人呆在鲍尔咖啡馆进餐时，他的内心是如何被深深的忧郁缠绕，他的生命就是一次孤独的旅程。 & How does one compare Burke’s cases, weigh the greatness of his reasoned deduction in one against that required for another?
人们该怎样比较伯克的案件？矛盾的是他们崇敬他一起案子中理性的推理，却又反对他对另一起案子的追逐。 & There were yet other rooms whose contents we do not know, entire hallways unrecorded by history. Here speculation enters. Perhaps he had a dozen bedchambers, choosing among them depending upon his temper. Sometimes, thinking of Burke’s end, I picture him roaming the halls on a long night, never finding quite the right room. 还有一些属于伯克的长廊没被历史记载，其他房间的陈设内容我们也无法知晓。疑问来了。或许伯克拥有很多卧室，他根据心情选择哪一个用来就寝。有时我会想着伯克的目标，幻想一幅画面：他在漫漫长夜游荡在长廊上，永远找不到合适的房间入眠。 & His Love 伯克之感情生活 Despite the invitations to hunting parties and long weekends at castles, or the occasional notice about his being seen with an actress, Burke’s life was solitary. He explained this as a necessity of his profession, claiming in one of his more famous maxims that a detective must form few attachments. But that did not mean his heart was immune to tender feelings. Through careful study, we have discovered evidence of a great passion. 尽管受邀参加猎奇聚会和周末城堡里的社交，或者偶尔有人指出看见他和某位女演员呆在一起，伯克的生活终究是孤独的。他解释这种状况是职业需要，在一篇著名的箴言中他宣称，离群寡居造就神探。但是这可不意味着他已对温柔之情免疫了。仔细的研究后，我们发现了他一场轰轰烈烈爱情的证据。 & In the summer of 1885 Burke was called to Wiesbaden to investigate a spate of jewel thefts. While pretending to be on holiday—attending the spa’s gatherings, circling the room with a glass of the waters—he met an Englishwoman named Olivia Ashdown. They were soon seen strolling through the Kurhaus Kollonade and riding the funicular up the Neroberg, arms locked, engaged in long, close conversations. Never before had Burke so doted on a female. But the other bathers disapproved. Helmut Strauss, the noted horseman and one of Burke’s acquaintances, warned him that he went too far, that all were talking of his dark hands on her white bosom. 1885年的夏日，伯克接受调查威斯巴登市（Wiesbaden）泛滥的珠宝盗窃案。他假装是去度假，参加了许多温泉聚会，在这里他一边享受泉水一边在四周漫步。他认识了一位叫奥莉维亚·阿释道恩（Olivia Ashdown）的英国女人。很快，他们俩就于库洛纳德疗养宫四处闲逛，一起乘坐索道缆车登上尼罗山，他们手挽手，肩并肩，沉浸在两人无尽的私语中。伯克从未如此喜爱过一个女人。其他一些度假者则有些意见。赫尔穆特·施特劳斯是伯克有名的马夫，对他很熟悉，他警告过伯克，说他逾越雷池了，所有知情的游客都在谈论伯克是怎样用黑手对这位女士上下其手。 & Burke promptly broke with Olivia, but after he solved the case (an elderly waiter was the thief) he stayed in Wiesbaden for a week. Such lingering is unprecedented—he always returned swiftly to Berlin at a case’s conclusion—yet this time he retired to a cottage above the city and sent for champagne and lobsters. Though the newspaper accounts make no mention of Olivia, it takes little effort to determine their break had merely been a ruse. When Burke finally returned to Berlin, the papers reported his surprisingly happy demeanor. With these details we have reconstructed the week he must have spent with Olivia: the long mornings in bed, the tender suppers in dishabille. 伯克解决了案子（一个老服务生是窃贼），之后迅速地与奥莉维亚分手了，但他在威斯巴登又停留了一个星期。这可是前所未有的，一直以来案件结束后他会立刻返回柏林，可是这次他选择在威城山顶上的一座别墅里休息，他还给手下、仆人分发香槟和龙虾大餐。报纸上没提到奥莉维亚，但不难下结论伯克与情人的分手不过是个计谋。伯克回到柏林后，报纸惊奇地报道他如沐春风的举止。根据这些细节，我们推测那个星期伯克一定是与奥莉维亚呆在一起，与爱人享受美好的早晨，也分享随意的浪漫晚餐。 & The evidence of Burke’s relationship with Olivia is scant, but it weighs heavily. Three months after Wiesbaden he was dining at Dressel’s when he received word of another rash of thefts, this time at Bad Homburg. He left immediately, taking the express. Yet no record exists of the crimes at Bad Homburg, nor at any of the other spa towns to which he was summoned every three months, and where he would stay for a week, lodged in seclusion outside of town. He never commented on these “cases,” except to call them delightful. 关于伯克与奥莉维亚的情人关系证据很少，但是却十分重要。离开威斯巴登三个月后，他正在德雷塞酒店进餐，又接到了另一场连环盗窃案的通知，这次发生在巴特洪堡（Bad Homburg）。他拿着快件，立即离开了饭店。每三个月他就要被召唤去解决其他城镇温泉度假村的案件，关于这些案子没有任何记录，洪堡的这起也是这样，他住在那里，与世隔绝。伯克从不谈起这些案件，只是评论它们“令人愉快”。 & His Greatest Case 伯克之最成功案件 How does one compare Burke’s cases, weigh the greatness of his reasoned deduction in one against that required for another? 人们该怎样比较伯克的案件？矛盾的是他们崇敬他一起案子中理性的推理，却又反对他对另一起案子的追逐。 & The Wannsee murder reportedly gave him the most fits. A body was found in an industrialist’s hunting lodge, arranged on a bier of pages torn from directories and volumes of Goethe. No one could identify the dead man, who was stripped of all his clothes. Burke took months to solve the case. The oddest is the Ware Murder, in which the murderer hired Burke to solve the crime. Or is it the Bamberg Mystery, in which the bludgeoned duke seemed to come back to life? Then there are the cases he solved in single sittings, like the Theft of the Frankenheim Clock, the Affair of the Red Letter, the Case of the Hidden Blackmail, or the recovery of Wutter’s collection of rare ferns, stolen in the light of day. Is that Burke at his most brilliant, his mind so keen he needn’t leave his study? Such cases are too numerous to count. The case that caught the most international attention was that of the Taskmaster: an under-clerk in a shipping office who had organized an army of women—the daughters of the city’s chief families—by sending them letters threatening them with slanders. He had ordered them to set the fires for neither profit nor revenge, but for his pleasure alone. 侦破万赛案使伯克获得了最多的荣誉。人们在一位实业家的狩猎小屋中发现了一具尸体，摆在电话薄碎纸片和一本本歌德著作之上。这具尸体被扒光了衣服，无人能辨认他的身份。伯克花了数个月调查这起案件。陶器杀人案则是最奇怪的案件，杀人犯竟然雇用伯克来侦查案子。而班贝克事件最神秘，那位被打死的公爵最后又死而复生了。还有一些案件，伯克仅调查了一次就解决了，比如弗兰肯海姆大钟盗窃案，红信事件，神秘勒索事件，以及光天化日之下遭盗窃的乌特尔的珍奇蕨类。是不是伯克正处于人生最得意之时，他思维是如此敏锐以致不出实验室就能轻松侦破？这样的例子真是数不胜数。伯克获得国际声誉的案件是工头案，一个船务公司的小公务员组织了一批女性，她们都是来自城市中显赫家族的大家闺秀，他寄信给她们以诽谤相威胁。他命令这些女性放火，不为钱财，也不为复仇，只是出于寻乐。 & When questioned on the subject, Burke would chuckle—a chuckle that stirred shivers in the listener, the reporters wrote—and say his greatest case was yet before him. 记者曾报道，当问伯克他对这些轻松解决的案子有何看法时，他呵呵大笑，笑得让人颤抖——他说最成功的案子还在等着他呢。 & The Attempts On His Life 生命威胁 We know of three serious attempts made on Burke’s life.
我们了解伯克一生中所受的三次致命威胁。 & The first came one evening while he was leaving a theater. A man ran up to him and stabbed at him with a dagger. The attacker missed, the blade passing through Burke’s coat, and was overpowered by a policeman. Burke identified him as Dr. Fulberg, a government scientist who’d been ruined when the detective uncovered the Mosquito Ring’s plot to steal the War Ministry’s supply of quinine. 第一次发生在一天晚上，伯克正准备离开一所剧院。一个男人跑到他面前，以短刀向他刺去。刀片划过伯克的外套，袭击者逃跑后被警察制服了。伯克辨认出这个袭击者是福尔伯格博士，这位被称作蚊子指环的政府科学家曾试图从军队供给中偷走奎宁，但被伯克大侦探识破了，他的职业生涯因此毁于一旦。 & Then the Black Lion, a band of anarchists that Burke had foiled multiple times, caught him halfway up the Siegess?ule and shot at him. He escaped with only a slight wound. 另一次是黑雄狮的攻击，这是一个无政府主义组织，伯克阻止了他们多次的计谋。他们在伯克前往胜利柱（Siegess?ule）的途中抓住了他，并向他开枪。伯克死里逃生，只受了点轻伤。 & He ignored invitations to the Imperial Palace, and was cited twice for drunkenness, once for horsewhipping a prostitute. 伯克拒绝为皇家宫廷服务的邀请。他接受了两次庭审，一次是因为醉酒，一次是鞭打妓女。 & In the third attempt, an assassin, working for a consortium of villains—perhaps Bloch, though the connection was never firmly made—snuck into Burke’s rooms with the intention of garroting him in his sleep. The assassin got lost in the halls, and as he wandered from room to room Burke crept up behind him and stuck him with a blow dart from his collection, putting him instantly to sleep. 第三次的袭击者是一个为黑社会工作的刺客，他可能是布洛赫的手下，尽管没有确凿的证据证明这点。他偷偷溜进伯克的房间，试图用绳子勒死他。但是迷宫似的房厅使他迷路了，当他在一间间房子中瞎转时，伯克已经跟在了他的身后，他用收藏的一把标枪将他打倒，刺客即刻昏睡了过去。 & Doubtless there were more, but they have not been recorded. Once, when asked about the attempts, Burke said he did not mind. “Let them come. Very well. But they mustn’t touch—” At that he broke off. When pressed, he refused to say anything else, though it is generally agreed he was referring to the harrowing events of the Schott Affair, which had passed just months before. 无疑还有其他的袭击，但都没得到记录。一次有人问他遭受袭击的事，伯克说他并不在乎。“让他们放马过来吧。这样最好了，但他们绝不要碰——”说到这他突然止住了。记者追问他，但他拒绝再多讲一句，大家普遍认为他所指的是几个月前才发生的令人痛心的肖特事件。 & The Schott Affair 肖特事件 Aside from the gossip at Wiesbaden, the only other specific mention of Olivia Ashdown in Burke’s history—and perhaps the greatest evidence of his love for her—comes in the middle of his investigation of the murder of the mirror magnate Johannes Schott. In 1893 Schott invited his family, as well as Burke and several old army friends, to his country mansion to celebrate his birthday weekend. But just before the first night’s dinner, Schott was found stilettoed in his study. At Burke’s insistence the police sealed the mansion while he examined the rooms and conducted interviews, and by the next morning he had discovered Schott’s son’s gambling debts, his valet’s true identity (he was Schott’s nephew), and a suspicious ash pile in the garden. Burke was about to question the rest of the staff when he received an unsigned telegram. To the consternation of the police and the papers, Burke fled to Bad Kreuznach. 除了威斯巴登的绯闻之外，另外仅有一次提及奥利维亚·阿什道恩的是在伯克调查镜业巨头约翰内斯·肖特（Johannes Schott）的办案过程中，这也许是他与奥维利亚爱情最有力的证据。1893年，肖特邀请家人，伯克，还有一些老朋友参加他在乡村庄园举办的生日聚会。但是第一天晚餐之前，肖特被刺杀在他的书房里。在伯克的要求下，警察封锁了整个庄园，他则得以检查每个房间并访寻庄园里的人。第二天早晨，他发现了肖特儿子的赌债，并且了解到儿子仆人的真实身份是肖特的侄子，在花园中伯克还找到了一堆可疑的灰烬。他正准备继续调查其余的佣人，这时却收到一封匿名电报。伯克迅速赶往巴特克罗兹纳赫（Bad Kreuznach），这让警察和记者大吃一惊。 & There, the telegram had told him, Olivia—later identified by the papers as “an unknown woman”—lay dying. She had been poisoned, and as the doctors treated her, Burke contributed his knowledge of antidotes. The toxin was rare, taken from the back of a Borneo toad, and, despite the telegram’s warning, she had not been given a lethal dose. Once Olivia was beyond danger, Burke returned to the Schott mansion. Within an hour he identified the murderer as Schott’s wife, and as he questioned her she confirmed his suspicions, confessing she had arranged Olivia’s poisoning with the hope of stopping him. When Burke asked how she knew of his love, she answered, “I have a friend.” Scarcely before the last word had passed from her lips, she fell back in her chair. Knowing she was caught, she had swallowed a generous dose of prussic acid. 电报上说，奥利维亚在克罗兹纳赫已奄奄一息（之后报纸称她是一位“无名的女性”）。她被下了毒，抢救她时，伯克竭尽所能运用解毒知识帮助医生。这种毒药非常罕见，是从婆罗州蟾蜍背部提取的，电报上警告她命垂一线，但是下毒的剂量还不足以使她丧命。奥利维亚摆脱生命危险之后，伯克回到肖特庄园。不到一个小时，伯克就查出凶手是肖特的妻子，讯问时凶手证实了他的猜测，承认为了阻止伯克她安排了对奥利维亚的投毒。伯克又问她是如何知晓他的爱人，她回答道：“一个朋友帮助了我。”就在说出最后一个字时，她倒在了椅子上。知道她落网后，这个凶手吞了大量的氰酸毒药。 & The identity of Frau Schott’s “friend” remains unknown. Some hold that it was Bloch, that he had stepped briefly out of retirement to give Frau Schott the plan, merely to unnerve Burke. Others believe Frau Schott was a secret devotee of the Reverend Stoecker, who, along with his attacks on Jews, had begun deriding the government’s reliance on “this trained ape in man’s clothes.” At any rate, Burke’s love for Olivia had become known to the criminal world, and now he had to choose between her and his profession. He endangered her, and she made him vulnerable: any fiend who wished to thwart him need only threaten Olivia. His decision seems clear. After the Schott Affair, the record of his cases contains no more false entries of jewel thefts in spa towns. 肖特夫人的这位“朋友”再也无人知晓了。一些人认为他是布洛赫，猜测他暂时重出江湖并指导肖特夫人安排了这一出计谋，就是为了击垮侦探伯克。其他人则认为幕后人物是教士施图尔特，他一直攻击犹太人，并且嘲笑政府依靠这位“穿着西服的人猿”，而肖特夫人就是他的秘密信徒。无论如何，伯克对奥利维亚的爱算是在罪犯群体中公开了，现在他必须在爱人和事业中做出抉择。他使爱人陷入了危境，而爱人使他变得软弱，任何想要打败伯克的人只消威胁奥利维亚就够了。伯克的选择很清楚，肖特事件结束后，他的案件记录再也没出现过温泉度假村之类的珠宝盗窃案。 & Des Mohren Dilemma 莫恩的困境 Not long after the Schott Affair, Burke received perhaps his highest honor. In the winter of 1894, an opera inspired by his career, Otto Offenbüttel’s Des Mohren Dilemma, opened in Berlin. Set in seventeenth-century Rome, Des Mohren Dilemma intertwines a detective, Burccino, with the fate of two unfortunate lovers, Alberto and Francesca. At first Burccino rebuffs their entreaties for help. By the opera’s end he rushes to save them, only to find he is too late. 肖特案件之后，伯克获得了一生中的最高荣耀。1894年的冬天，一场戏剧——奥托·奥芬布特尔的莫恩的困境在柏林开演，这场演出灵感来自于伯克的侦探生涯。戏剧的背景设置在17世纪的罗马，它描绘的是侦探波西诺遇上一对不幸的爱人，阿尔贝托和弗朗西斯卡。一开始波西诺拒绝了这对爱人的求助，戏剧结束时，他却回头竭力拯救他们，但是已经太迟了。 & Two anecdotes survive from the opera’s run. The first occurred during the second intermission on the opera’s opening night, after Burccino has unknowingly aided the villain in his plot to divide the lovers. Burke was smoking in the salon, chatting with Prince von Krollstein and a stoop-shouldered general, when a drunk junker in a lancer’s uniform accosted him. “You fool!” the junker cried as he tottered up to him, taking hold of Burke’s sleeve and scowling. “How could you? Those poor young things. How could you? Fool!” 戏剧上演过程中有两件轶事。第一件发生在开演当晚的第二次幕间休息时，情节发展到波西诺无意中帮助了一个恶棍拆散这对爱人的计划。伯克在戏院包厅中抽着烟，与克罗斯塔因王子和一位驼背的将军正在交谈。这时一个醉酒的酒鬼穿着轻骑兵制服，摇摇晃晃地朝他走来，他抓住伯克的衣袖，皱眉大叫到：“你怎么能这样？那些年轻人多可怜！你怎么能这样对待他们? 你个混蛋！” & All in the salon turned toward them, and for a moment Burke was startled. Then, he smiled and said, “I’ve been asking the same question. I find this Burccino rather blind.” The strained moment passed—the junker, swaying on his feet, was pulled away by his friends—and received only a slight notice in the papers. And yet is this incident not a brief foreshadowing of what was to come? 看厅的人都朝他们看过来，伯克震惊不已，一时间不知所措。接着他微笑着说：“我也想问同样的问题。我觉得这个波西诺真是个无知的混蛋。”紧张的时刻过去了，酒鬼步伐蹒跚，被朋友架走了，对这件事报纸上只轻描淡写了几句。这个插曲是不是某件即将发生的大事件的伏笔呢？ & The second anecdote concerns Burke’s reaction to the opera itself, which he attended every night of its run. His constant presence became a piece of Berlin gossip as those in the audience noted that he always wept during Burccino’s first aria, after Burccino refuses the lovers and laments that he was not fashioned for love but reason alone. 第二件轶事是伯克对这出戏剧本身的反应，他每晚都来给演出捧场。他不断的观看成了柏林的八卦谈资。演出中波西诺拒绝那对情人后，哀叹他不是为情所造，而是为理性而活，接着唱起第一次咏叹调。有观众注意到，每当演到这时，伯克都要流泪哭泣。 & The Last Months 最后的岁月 The next year, Burke worked with a frantic brilliance, crisscrossing the Continent, completing investigations in the span of hours, sometimes minutes. Stolen pearls in Nimes followed by poisoned bread in Konigsberg, blackmail in Prague followed by a kidnapping in Rotterdam, counterfeiters in Worms followed by a druidic murder in Rügen. He turned nothing down, allowed himself no rest. For the first time since the Case of the Murdered Twin, he tracked lost dogs and followed adulterers. Observers noticed a sharp change in his behavior. He didn’t smile. He was cruel to waiters, short with clients, dour with reporters. He ignored invitations to the Imperial Palace, and was cited twice for drunkenness, once for horsewhipping a prostitute. Except for the tinge of desperation that infused his labors, one might consider this period a florescence. It was as if he knew. 第二年，伯克疯狂地工作，创下了职业的辉煌。他穿梭在欧陆地区，数小时，有时甚至几分钟就侦破案件：从尼姆的珍珠盗窃到哥尼斯堡的面包投毒，从布拉格的敲诈案到鹿特丹姆的绑架案，从沃尔姆斯的假币案到吕根岛的督伊德教谋杀案。他对案件来者不拒，不给自己丝毫休息时间。自从第一次的双胞胎案件后，他又再一次接受了寻找宠物狗和跟踪通奸者的工作。他不再微笑，他对侍者变得残苛，对客户变得冷漠，对记者变得严厉。他对皇家工作的邀请置之不理，而且接受了两次庭审，一次是因为酒醉，一次是因为鞭打妓女。但除了对待工作的一丝绝望外，这个时期可称得上是伯克的辉煌岁月。似乎他也知道这一点。 & The Millburg Scandal 米尔伯格丑闻 On December 5, 1895, the War Minister visited Fasanenstrasse and disclosed to Burke a grave predicament. He had made a secret bargain with Russia: in exchange for 3,000 Millburg rifles (whose precision was unmatched), the Czar would quietly transfer a strip of land along the China Sea to German hands. But the rifles had been stolen in transit, and the Czar’s minister was furious, accusing the Germans of duplicity. Were the rifles not recovered, an international crisis would be unavoidable. 1895年12月5日，战事大臣访问了法撒南斯塔瑟并向伯克揭露了德国一场严重的困境。他和俄罗斯之间进行了一场秘密的博弈：与俄国交易一批3000只来宾强，这些枪精确度无与伦比，而沙皇将会悄悄地向德国转让沿中国海的一片陆地。但是运输途中，这批卡兵枪被盗了，沙皇的外交大臣十分恼火，指责德国言而无信。如果卡兵枪没能找回，一场国际冲突就在所难免。 & That evening Burke traveled to the far edge of Silesia, the site of the theft, and once there followed a set of subtle clues (specks of foreign soil in the snow, a dropped button, a twisted leaf) south and west across the Austrian frontier. At Pressburg he cabled the Minister that he was certain the thieves were traveling by river barge. But the next day the Minister received a disturbing report. He’d sent several of his own agents to aid Burke. They’d taken rooms for the night in a tavern, and when they called on Burke in the morning they found he was gone. His night candle was burned to a nub, unreadable notes and sketches lay scattered on his table, and his bed was unused, his small traveling bag still beside it, unpacked. There was no sign of a struggle, and the agents hoped Burke had simply taken a morning stroll to order his thoughts. But with each passing hour they knew: wherever he was and however he got there, he was already far away and would not be returning. The Minister confined himself to his office and sent a barrage of conciliatory telegrams to the Russians while he awaited more news from his men, whom he’d ordered to search the riverbanks for Burke’s corpse. 当晚，伯克被运送至西里西亚的遥远边境——盗贼的基地。一到达那里他就在奥地利边境追踪起一些蛛丝马迹：异乡雪地里的踪迹，一粒掉落的纽扣，一片蜷曲的树叶，东西南北四处寻找，他没有忽视任何区域。他在普雷斯堡（Pressburg）给战事大臣发电报，说他已确定盗贼正在乘坐驳船逃走。可是第二天大臣接到一份令人不安的通知。他派出几位亲信去协助伯克，他们住在客栈度夜，第二天叫伯克起身时，他们发现侦探不见了。伯克的蜡烛燃得只剩一点烛头，一些无法辨认的笔记和草稿散在桌子上，床铺没有动过，他的小旅行包摆在床边，也没有打开过。他们看不出争斗的痕迹，只是希望伯克为了理清思绪老早出去散步了。但是随着时间一点点流逝，他们意识到，不管伯克在哪，也不管他是怎样到达那里的，他一定在千里之外了，而且可能回不来了。大臣继续呆在办公室，他给俄国大臣发了一份安抚电报，以阻止他采取进一步的措施，同时他命令手下在河岸周围搜寻伯克的尸体，并且等待他们更多的新消息。 & Burke’s life and career give rise to hundreds of unanswered questions, but perhaps most vexing of all is the matter of those three days on the Danube.
伯克的生活和职业生涯引出了众多未解的疑问，其中最令人困惑的恐怕是多瑙河上的三日事件了。 & Then, three days later, Burke turned up in Istanbul. He was found by an Armenian dockworker in the hold of a barge. His mouth was gagged, he was tied to a chair, and the rifles were stacked behind him. On his lap lay a note: “To the Ottoman Government, with my Compliments—Bloch.” 三日过后，伯克出现在了伊斯坦布尔。一个亚美尼亚码头工人在一艘驳船的驾驶室发现了他。他的嘴被堵住了，那些来宾枪就堆放在在他身后。他的腿上有一张纸条，上面写道：致奥托曼帝国，我诚挚的道贺。——布洛赫 & What happened next is at the same time baffling and inevitable. The papers accused Burke of treason—an accusation the Minister encouraged, as it distracted from his own role in the blunder—and the people swiftly followed, hurtling rage at one who, not a week before, they had adored. Was it his color? Or that, so used to his successes, they could not understand his failure, could only interpret it as treachery? They said he had organized the theft of the rifles and planned all along to deliver them to the Turks. The Berliner Kurier claimed that for years Burke had been a secret agent of the Sublime Porte, that in exchange for the rifles he was promised a principality of his own and a fully stocked harem. They printed a cartoon of him dancing for the Kaiser while in the background Sultan Abdul Hamid laughed. The Münchner Telegraf wrote that his brutish nature had finally overtaken him, that his being tied to a chair was a cheap ruse. The Zeitung interviewed Police Commandant Fuchs, who assured reporters there was no secret archfiend Bloch and excused Burke’s claims otherwise as the delusions of an overstrained mind, while the Frankfurter Abendblatt opined that it was natural that the Moor should help the Ottomans. They referred to his duskiness, and to the blood of southern climes coursing through his veins. 接着发生的事让人痛苦，但也是不可避免的。德国报纸控告说伯克犯了叛国罪，战事大臣对此加以支持，因为这会转移人们对他失职所犯下大错的指责。普通群众也人云亦云，不到一星期前人们还敬重这位大侦探，现在对他的愤怒却飞一样剧增。这是他肤色的原因吗？还是人们早已习惯了他不断的神勇破案，不能理解他为何会失手，所以只好将之解读为叛国？人们料想他组织了这出来宾枪盗窃案，并且一路谋划把枪支运给了土耳其人。柏林邮驿报声称多年以来伯克一直是土耳其政府的间谍，作为对这批来宾强的奖赏，他会得到自己的侯国，并且享有妻妾无数。德国人还画了一幅漫画，伯克在德国皇帝面前阿谀起舞，而背景中土耳其苏丹——阿普杜勒·哈米德（Abdul Hamid）则阴险地大笑。慕尼黑邮报写到伯克的野蛮天性终于打败了他，他被绑在椅子上不过是个把戏罢了。时报采访了警局局长福克斯，他向读者证实并没有什么大魔王布洛赫，并解释伯克的声明只是过度紧张造成的幻觉，而报纸法兰克福·阿本特布拉特认为摩尔大侦探帮助土耳其人再自然不过了。他们把这归结为伯克的黑色皮肤和南方气息在他血管中流淌的结果。 & When Burke returned to Berlin—the Turks kept the rifles but sent him back—angry crowds gathered beneath his windows in Fasanenstrasse, calling for his expulsion. He refused to defend himself, said nothing of how he’d been caught or what had occurred during the three days of his disappearance. Within a week he was confined, for his safety, to a cell in a police station near the Ostbahnhof, where he received the news of each fresh development—that a mob had rushed into his apartment, overturning
that the Moor Clubs had be that, at the Reverend Stoecker’s urging, people across the empire were building bonfires and burning the albums they’d filled with photographs and clippings of his adventures—with a stoic acceptance. 土耳其人留下了来宾强，但把伯克遣会了德国。伯克回到柏林后，愤怒的人群聚集在他法撒南斯塔瑟家中的窗下，要求驱逐他出境。他拒绝为自己辩护，对他被劫持和消失的三天时间里发生了什么只字不提。之后不到一个星期，为了保护他，伯克被关押在奥斯特火车站附近的一座警局监狱中，在那里他能了解事态发展的每条新消息，如一个暴民冲进了他的公寓，把土壤藏柜打了个底朝天；摩尔侦探所很快就解散了；在施图尔特教士的鼓动下全国人民以一种斯多葛派的赞同情绪燃起篝火，焚烧了伯克的相册集和他的冒险剪辑簿。 & But by the time he was delivered to the French border, he was visibly broken: meek as an invalid, given to shaking. Our only record of him at this moment comes from the diary of one Sergeant Heinz. Not one of the newspapers sent a reporter—interest in the Scandal having been swept aside by a suicide pact that had claimed a member of the general staff and a junior officer’s wife—and when Burke’s guards let him go, he walked through the Belfort Gap and out of history. Some believe he settled in Tunis, others that he became a hotel detective in New York, but no one knows for sure. 当伯克被送往法国边境时，他“遍体鳞伤’,显得脆弱不堪，羸弱得就像是位残疾人，不住地颤抖。他这个阶段仅有的记载来自一位军士海因茨的日记。没有一家报社派出了记者，人们对这件丑闻的兴趣被一起自杀事件转移了——是总参谋部的成员和一位低级办公员妻子的自杀协议。护卫伯克的警卫放走了他，他穿过贝尔福海峡，自此消失在历史中。一些人说他在突尼斯定居了，一些人说他在纽约开了一家旅店侦探所，但是没人能确认这些。 & The Final Mystery 最终神秘 Burke’s life and career give rise to hundreds of unanswered questions, but, so many decades after, perhaps most vexing of all is the matter of those three days on the Danube. His complete silence on the subject has divided the followers of his career into two hostile camps. The first holds that everything is as it appears. Bloch trapped him. The villain’s vanishing had been a ploy, giving him years to plot Burke’s downfall. He planned every detail, foresaw every effect—even how signing his name on the note would only stoke the people’s doubts. The proponents of this theory say it was only a matter of time, that even one of Burke’s intellect must someday stumble. To pretend he couldn’t, they claim, denies him the hallmark of humanity and puts any doubter in line with those who turned against him. He might have recovered from the Scandal, they say, were he not a negro. 伯克的生活和职业生涯引出了众多未解的疑问，但几十年过去后，其中最令人困惑的恐怕是多瑙河上的三日事件了。他对这起事件的缄默使他的事业追随者分成了两个敌对阵营。一个阵营认为事情正如它看上去一样，是布洛赫绑架了他。这个恶棍的消失是个策略，他花费数年设计了这件导致伯克身败名裂的阴谋诡计。他策划了每个细节，预见了每个结果，甚至是如何签上自己的姓名以使人们产生怀疑。这种理论的支持者说，这只是个时间问题，即使是伯克的天才智慧也总有一天会衰退。他们说，如果装作这事不会发生，只是拒认人类的弱点，只会增加怀疑者队伍的人数。他们认为，如果伯克不是黑人，他可能早就从丑闻带来的伤害中恢复了。 & But others find this account laughable, call the appeal to humanity so much posturing, and counter that in ascribing such foresight to Bloch we rob Burke of any. They grant Bloch his scheme but argue that Burke would have been too clever to play into the fiend’s hands. Noting his erratic behavior in the months leading up to the Scandal, they suggest Burke wanted to retire. Knowing there would be constant demands for his return, that only if he were disgraced would he be left alone, he made perhaps the cleverest move of his career: he walked willingly into Bloch’s trap, understanding all that would happen and seeing in it freedom. 另一派则认为这种解释十分可笑，把事情推卸给人性本身过于作势了，他们反驳道这样抬举布洛赫的深谋远虑就等于否定伯克的所有天赋。他们虽然承认布洛赫的阴谋，但争辩说伯克如此聪明怎可能落入这个恶魔的陷阱。他们提醒人们注意伯克数月来古怪的举动预示着这次丑闻的发生，他们猜测伯克想要退休。伯克本人明白一旦退休，人们会不停地要求他复出，而只有以这般的羞耻终结侦探生涯，他才能得到安宁。这可能是他职业生命中最狡黠的任务了：他自愿落入布洛赫的圈套，他知道将要发生的一切，也从这一切事情中看见了自由。 & There’s no way of knowing what happened during those three days, how Burke came to be tied up in the barge’s hold, and so we’re forced to choose blindly between the two theories, the choice becoming less about the truth and more about the Burke the chooser prefers. But doesn’t an opportunity lie in the absence of fact? That is why, taking elements of the second theory, I propose a third, one I’ve never shared: after Olivia’s poisoning, forced to decide between her and his career, Burke chose as he should have—he chose love. At Olivia’s bedside in Bad Kreuznach he plotted their retreat from the world, crafting the Scandal—there was no Bloch on the barge, Burke arranged the theft of the rifles himself—not to aid the Turks, but to ensure his fall. Only then would they be left alone to live out their years in peace and contentment, perhaps in the French countryside, perhaps on some Greek isle. There’s no evidence, of course. The decision he made after Bad Kreuznach appears plain, as do its consequences. But as long as we don’t know his end, why not grant him this last happiness? After all, where does history exist, except in our imagination? Does that make it any less true?
相关译文来自无觅插件
长长长长长~~侦探类有意思，翻译的挺好！
译者辛苦了！
长长长长长~~侦探类有意思，翻译的挺好！
谢谢支持啊。
译者辛苦了！
不辛苦，不辛苦！Thanks!
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