The Case of the Deceitful German is a book in Red Dead Redemption 2. It is the 18th in a series of mystery novels starring Aldous Filson.
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London lay enveloped in a thick blanket of fog. It hung like a blanket that has been hung up from a place you hang things from, and the ancient but bustling city, the most wonderful and awful place in the entire world, was both pretty and sinister, like a young girl who tempts a bachelor into marriage or a jewel that tempts a man into murder. These were my thoughts as I sat by doing the things a gentleman does while idly waiting for an adventure to start at the beginning of a story.
And just as our last adventures had ended, so a new adventure was about to begin. I knew it and Aldous Filson knew it. Even our rooms knew it, or they seemed to, as an expectant air hung about the place much like the fog, both hanging together, like two friends who live together and ejaculate together in surprise.
And that, dear reader, is precisely what we did next. "My god!" I ejaculated. "Upon my word!" gasped Filson.
Yes, even Filson, the most brilliant man in the Empire, detective, yogi, sage, scientist, organist, raconteur, occasional thief, patriot and expert in a thousand other subjects besides, even he was surprised. "Upon my word," he repeated, still surprised. "What are you doing here?" For standing in front of us, as if he had not been last seen locked up in a tower on a tropical island awaiting certain doom, was the worst man in all of Europe.
The most dastardly, most Germanic, most domineering and injudicious. Baron Von Schwarzheart. Needless to say, his weapon was drawn.
"I did not come here for revenge, Herr Filson," he drawled, Germanically.
"Then why are you here?" I spluttered, enormously.
"Firstly, to prove that even the best man in Great Britain is no match for a German aristocrat, something the look in both your faces demonstrated as I walked through the door, and secondly, to offer you a deal."
The Baron's eye patch twitched as he spoke. Only a fool would trust a man like him. And Filson was no fool. He was an Englishman, first and foremost.
"I make no deals with the likes of you, Baron. But I acknowledge that your escape surprised even me, and it is over five years since I last ejaculated in surprise."
"Whereas I do almost every day," I interposed.
"That's because, my dear friend, you are one of life's innocents."
I was stung like a person who has just been stung by a bee or even a scorpion by this admonition that cut me hard. But, I grinned and bore it, for Filson could be unkind but I forgave him. And, now I think of it, he was like a scorpion, cunning, baffling and with a sting in his long tail. This was something the Baron had forgotten. London was shrouded in mysterious fog, the German was cunning, and yet Filson was more foggy, mysterious and cunning than both of them combined.
In a trice, he had disarmed the Baron and had a rapier held quivering against his chin.
"Now, my dear Baron, if you don't want me to penetrate you like a fish with this sword, tell me just who your are and what you are doing."
"I'm the Baron Von Schwarzheart," he gasped, but as he spoke, his disguise began to slip. Stood before us was not a German at all, but, even worse, a woman.
Trivia[]
- The penny dreadful can be found among Hosea's things in camp at the start of Chapter II.
- Another book in the Aldous Filson series, The Case of the Shrew in the Fog, can be found at the Hagen Orchards. Retrieving it is an item request of Hosea's.
- These crime novels, and the character of Aldous Filson, parody the short-stories and novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from 1887-1927, starring consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.
- This book could mirror the short-story A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), which is famous for being the first story whereas the character of Sherlock Holmes is surprisingly outsmarted by a woman named Irene Adler.
- As an addendum, "Adler" is a surname of German origin. And in this book, both main characters display repulsion towards the "deceitful German".
- This book could mirror the short-story A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), which is famous for being the first story whereas the character of Sherlock Holmes is surprisingly outsmarted by a woman named Irene Adler.