The Man Who Plundered the City: An Asbjorn Krag Mystery

By Sven Elvestad and Mitzi M Brunsdale

When a series of audacious thefts take place in the city of Christiania (current-day Oslo), Detective Asbjørn Krag must deal with a master criminal who has his measure - or does he? From the dark brickyards on the city's outskirts to the bright lights of the Grand Hotel, Krag must use all his skill to turn the tables on the gang and their myster

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kabaty Press
• Release date: Oct 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9788395556258

Sven Elvestad

Sven Elvestad, who also wrote under the pseudonym Stein Riverton, was one of Norway's greatest crime writers. A journalist by training, he was the first foreign journalist to interview Adolf Hitler and was famous for stunts such as spending a day in a circus lion's cage. His first novel was published in 1907 and he went on to write nearly a hundred novels, many featuring detective Asbjørn Krag. Only a few of his works have ever been translated into English, despite enjoying widespread success across Europe. Norway's yearly Riverton prize for the best crime novel is named after him.

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Introduction

Although Norway, like all of Scandinavia, is now recognized for its distinguished contemporary crime fiction (" Scandinoir "), its 180-year history of the genre deserves to be better known, encompassing about 1300 crime novels and short stories. Norwegian crime fiction may appear as placid on the surface as a serene summer pond, but under the microscope of a Norwegian storyteller, dark and often lethal microscopic organisms of greed or jealousy or sex lurk, gradually infecting individuals with insatiable criminal urges that prove fatal to both their victims and themselves. As Feliz Philippi pointed out in 1902, Norway’s severe mountainous geography isolated its people, making them brood and doubt and often despair, factors in antisocial behavior. Contemporary critic Claus Elholm Andersen also sees Norwegian crime fiction, usually built upon police or detective procedure, more focused on subtleties in the puzzle than other Scandinavian works.

About half of Norway’s crime fiction output has appeared in the past thirty years, fueling Norway’s unique reading obsession, Easter crime, the annual ten-day holiday when one in four Norwegians stocks up on mutton, eggs, chocolate wafer bars, and cozy crime paperbacks (possibly aquavit, too) and heads for lonely mountain or fjord-shore cabins to wallow in fictional murder. The rest wrap up in wool blankets at home and savor their cocoa and crime novels there, books comprising 55% of all fiction sold in Norway’s bookstores during the two weeks before Easter. Traced by some observers to pre-Christian Viking sacrificial rituals to ensure a good harvest, the Easter crime tradition began the day before Palm Sunday, 1923, when Oslo’s Aftenposten featured a headline advertising The Train to Bergen Robbed Tonight, a student-produced crime novel that set off a national uproar.

Already, however, Norwegian crime authors had been publishing popular detective stories, drawing on previous groundbreaking work, notably Mauritz Hansen’s The Assassination of Engineer Roolfsen, 1839, arguably the world’s first crime novel. It features a talented private detective, predating by two years Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, whose C. Auguste Dupin became the prototype for a plethora of fictional sleuths. Around 1900, Norwegian authors were experimenting with detective short fiction featuring eccentric Holmesian heroes, especially journalists who became prominent when Norway gained its independence from Sweden in 1905. The best known of them, now considered the father of modern Norwegian crime fiction, was Stein Riverton, 1884–1934, born Kristoffer Elvestad Svendsen and later known as Sven Elvestad.

In youth Elvestad had had his own trouble with the law by being caught embezzling from his employer. He changed his name, moved to Christiania (now Oslo), and worked as a journalist, engineering sensational stories featuring himself, one of them recounting a day he spent in a cage with a circus lion. Elvestad began his 100 or so novel and short fiction career when he was 17, working from his experiences with actual policemen in Christiania and initiating the procedural form dominant in Scandinoir today. Starting in 1907 his Great Detective was Asbjørn Krag, an enigmatic middle aged retired police detective with a goatee and pince-nez, strong police connections, and mental processes that strongly suggest the little grey cells of Agatha Christie’s far more famous Hercule Poirot. In 1908, Elvestad presented another central figure, Knut Gribb, a clean-shaven policeman, under the pseudonym Kristian F. Biller. Confusion has subsequently resulted from the later publication of Elvestad’s Gribb novels under the name Riverton, featuring a quite different Krag, a policeman who looks like the original Gribb.

In 1909, as Riverton, Elvestad published a novel considered his masterpiece, The Iron Chariot, an Asbjørn Krag thriller set at a seaside resort and employing a complex plot that connects two violent deaths with a local ghost story, possibly inspired by Conan Doyle’s 1902 The Hound of the Baskervilles. American Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective who pioneered powerfully authentic private eye fiction, notably The Maltese Falcon, 1929, greatly admired The Iron Chariot. Olso’s Dagbaldet placed it second on its 2009 25 Best Norwegian Crime Novels, and Jo Nesbø, one of today’s leading Norwegian crime authors, put The Iron Chariot on his list of the five best Norwegian crime novels of all time, praising Elvestad’s slow-paced style and his colorful use of detail. Nesbø called Elvestad a vital source for early crime writers, revealing he had read this novel himself after he wrote his own first one and implying that he had improved his own writing thereby. Elvestad also had introduced a plot device used 16 years later by Agatha Christie in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926, both presenting and hiding the solution to the crime. The Iron Chariot helped open Norway’s first Golden Age of crime fiction, which roughly paralleled Britain’s more famous similar Golden Age of mysteries of the 1920s and 1930s, dominated by Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, and Ngaio Marsh.

Elvestad traveled to Sweden and other European countries around 1914, broadening his outlook with an exposure to Freudian theories of the subconscious. In 1915, as Riverton, he published the Krag novel The Man Who Plundered the City, which appeared in an English translation by Frederick H. Martens, 1924. The novel’s episodic plot opens when a Christiania police chief, befuddled and stymied by a four-week-old locked-room jewel theft, is forced to call in Asbjørn Krag, a private investigator of bulldog tenacity and enormous intelligence. A criminal mastermind appears to be responsible, causing Krag to unleash his own deductive prowess and keen interviewing ability to discover the ingenious method behind the apparently impossible crime, a pattern repeated though the series of increasingly large larcenies which follows, even including the brazen theft of the police chief’s own home’s furniture. Using disguises, proficiency with relatively obscure skills like criminal sign language, a cunning acting ability, and a Holmes-like use of morphine to heighten his senses, Krag untangles crimes that appear impossible to solve by ordinary human capabilities, conceived by a master criminal whose genius highlights Krag’s own.

Norwegian mainstream literary critics initially deplored popular crime fiction, consigning it to ‘pulp" status. Possibly responding to them, Elvestad chose not to employ Krag in works which followed The Man Who Plundered the City and used a more modern realistic narrative style which emphasized psychological motivations like greed. The Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian Biographical Encyclopedia) considers his later work uneven, judging only some as high class thrillers. Though very little scholarly commentary on Elvestad’s crime fiction exists, his pseudonym inspired the name of the Norwegian Crime Writers’ Association, Rivertonklubben. Norway’s highest crime fiction honor is the Riverton Prize.

Elvestad’s Man Who Plundered the City may also be memorialized in the social, moral, or political message seen often at the close of contemporary Norwegian crime novels, since Elvestad’s plundering Master Criminal acted from non-homicidal and even altruistic motives. Critic Nils Nordberg describes much of today’s Norwegian crime fiction as a reflection of Norwegians’ old puritanical worry that whatever is purely for pleasure must be, somehow, sinful. Or at least fattening, perhaps the result of a ten-day Easter crime-reading binge on mutton, eggs, chocolate wafer bars, and paperback crime fiction—and possibly aquavit.

—Mitzi M. Brunsdale

CHAPTER I

The Robber of

the Villa Rosenhain

"I ’ll go as far as to say, remarked the Chief of Police, as he laid down some papers which he had just read very carefully, that my men have done all that was humanly possible in this matter. Yet they have only wasted their time. Today we are just where we were four weeks ago, and have not made a single step ahead in solving the mystery. It stands to reason that the public is beginning to show signs of nervousness. And the worst of it is that general attention has been called to the strange and mysterious nature of this series of crimes. If there is another robbery like that of the ship-chandler, Vogt, the public will be seriously alarmed. And in that case the police will be to blame, as usual!

Don’t get the idea in your head that I am afraid of the newspapers, or the steps public opinion may take in that case. I know that the police have done everything that possibly could be done. But you can realize that too great an interest on the part of the public may easily interfere with the course of our investigations. For that reason it is not only desirable, but it is absolutely essential for us to get results of some kind. At any rate, we must prevent any repetition of these crimes, for they would be sure to cause excitement. And since I want to leave no stone unturned, I have decided, after consulting my most trustworthy lieutenants, to ask the aid of a man whose ability is recognized by the majority of the public, and whose bulldog tenacity and intelligence I am the first to acknowledge.

Such were the wellweighed words spoken by the Chief of Police in his office on the afternoon of August 23rd, 1909, and the person to whom he was speaking, private detective Asbjørn Krag, sat listening to him with a discouraged air, without saying a word, and sucking a black cigar.

Arranging the papers on his desk, the Chief of Police went on: As I have already told you, he said, we have a few, a very few clues.

At these words Krag raised his eyes, but they did not meet those of the Chief, for the latter was bending over his papers.

It must be said, murmured the tall, thin, serious official, that we do handle things pretty well in Christiania now. Even in New York or in London a series of mysterious crimes like those on record here would attract attention. No doubt you have seen what little has been published in the papers about what has happened? For a long time I have suspected that these crimes, in spite of the differences between them, can all be traced back to the same source. They all point to one and the same mastermind. And now the newspapers are beginning to hint the same thing and that means a scandal! Or, to be more exact, it means a ‘sensational disclosure,’ one of those infernal sensations which so often have held us back in our work. We must take care that nothing of the kind happens.

The Chief of Police stopped for a moment, and then went on: The whole thing began when the home of Stefanson, the bank president, the Villa Rosenhain, was entered on July 23rd, at ten o’clock, P.M.

Ten-thirty, P.M., murmured detective Krag. It was the first word he had spoken for some time. The Chief looked a bit surprised, glanced at his reports again, then nodded.

Right, said he. You will remember that the president was giving an anniversary party, and while the party was going on, his wife’s jewels were stolen. They were worth ten thousand crowns. There was no clue to show how the robber had entered the house, and the jewel-case had been opened quietly by an experienced hand.

I remember. The jewel-case was in Mrs. Stefanson’s room, and the doors to the rooms adjoining were locked. The guests were near at hand, but no one heard a sound. Mrs. Stefanson’s room was on the first floor, but all the windows were found locked from the inside. All this I know.

Very well. But do you know that not one of the stolen jewels ever has been recovered? As a rule, in the case of such robberies, we can find a clue in our own pawn-brokers’ shops, or in those abroad. But these jewels disappeared without leaving a single trace. We have investigated in Christiania, New York, London, Paris, Berlin—but not the very smallest pearl of Mrs. Stefanson’s handsome collection ever has turned up. What do you think of such a robbery?

The robber must have been someone who was staying inside the house at the time.

The Chief of Police slapped his reports down on the desk impatiently.

The servants, yes, the servants, he said. But we could not find a single suspect among them.

Among the servants? murmured Krag and once more raised his eyes.

I know what you mean, growled the Chief, angrily. Of course a detective can suspect anyone and everyone. But don’t ask me to suspect the ladies and gentlemen who were Stefanson’s guests that night. One and all, they belong to Christiania’s upper circles. They included the cashier of his bank, and members of the bank’s board of directors, Stefanson’s personal friends, all of them socially prominent. So far as I know all of them are very wealthy men, and it is simply ridiculous to imagine that they could have been guilty of this wretched jewel robbery. Besides, you must not forget the next robberies. Three days later several valuable contracts were taken from the ship chandler Bjørneby’s private safe. The safe had been opened in the same clever way. Then, a week later, the safe of Wold, the retired financier, was plundered in the same fashion, while he was entertaining company. And the thieves got away with twenty thousand crowns in gold and notes. The old miser had no faith in banks, and always kept large sums of money in the house. Of course we investigated every one of his guests, and it turned out that not one of them had been a guest at Stefanson’s affair. You saw the advertisement in the paper?

I did.

Wold had noted down the numbers of five one thousand crown notes that were lying with the gold. We have published the numbers of these notes in practically every paper in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. We have sent a warning to every exchange bank abroad, yet we have received no report of any attempt to pass one of these bank-notes. You must admit that it is enough to drive one mad. And now we come to the pockets picked in the National Theater at the special performance on August 5th. Five gentlemen in the orchestra were robbed of their bill-folds, and even the king’s guest, Prince Chira of Siam, lost in the foyer of the building his grand cross of the Order of St. Vladimir, set in diamonds, and a very valuable stick pin. This does not seem to have anything to do with the safes which were robbed and broken open, yet I suspect that the same shrewd criminal was at the bottom of it. He seems to be a fellow who prefers to operate in places where some sort of festivity, with music and dancing, is going on. And he must be a robber who is bored to death with burglary along old-fashioned lines. For one cannot help thinking that it must be much harder to do ‘professional’ work of the kind when there are many people present, than in the silence of the night, when it is dark and everyone is asleep. But now we reach the last case, the strangest one of all.

You mean the daring robbery at No. 54 Pine Street? asked Krag.

The Chief of Police nodded, and drew from his bundle of reports a small scrap of paper on which were written a few type-written lines.

You will see, he said to Krag, as he handed him the scrap of paper, what a daring criminal the fellow is.

Krag took the paper and read the mysterious message it contained:

If you wish to find the thief of the Villa Rosenhain, you must pay attention to the revolver-shot which will go off tonight, at eleven thirty-seven in No. 54 Pine Street.

The Chief of Police pressed an electric button.

And now, said he, we will have in the man who heard the shot and saw what happened.

A newcomer entered the office. He was a muscular man of about thirty-five, with a red-cheeked, good-natured, smiling face. But the eyes in this good-natured face were uncommonly quick and watchful. Krag at once recognized him and gave him a friendly word of greeting. It was Police Inspector Helgesen. He had come to the big city as a farm boy, and entering the police force, had proved himself so clever and able that he had rapidly advanced, and now held a position of confidence.

Well, you gentlemen are old acquaintances, growled the Chief of Police, so no introductions are necessary. You probably know what it is all about, Helgesen. It is the Stefanson business.

Turning to Krag, he went on: We have reviewed the crimes which were committed after the first house-breaking in Stefanson’s Villa Rosenhain. Tell us, Helgesen, what happened the other night in No. 54 Pine Street.

Helgesen sat down at the table, and as soon as he saw that Krag was to be drawn into the game, became interested.

Yes, said he, "if you can find an answer to that riddle, you are a very clever man, for it is about the most complicated and difficult case with which I ever have had anything to do.

As soon as we received the mysterious letter, Helgesen continued, "we did not lose a moment finding out who lived at No. 54. It was a one-family house, the property of the immensely wealthy Captain Karstens, who married a daughter of Rydberg, the bank president—you know who I mean. I sent men out into the neighborhood to pick up what information they could, got in touch with the servants, etc., and in a couple of hours’ time we knew that, to summarize briefly:

"1. Captain Karstens lived at home.

"2. He was giving a party on August 7th.

"3. He was expecting fifty guests.

"4. He was looking for good extra help to wait on these guests.

"5. Among the guests the Ambassador from Mexico was the only foreigner. All the others invited were Norwegians, mostly from Christiania, and mostly officers, though there were also a couple of university professors and one artist, the well-known comedian Trybel. There is the list, Krag.