Automatically Klacel looked down at the desk. Between the covers of the thick leather binder were about fifty sheets of good quality cream paper covered with the Monsignor's handwriting. It was obviously a document of importance.
"Thank you for seeing me," he said, "these are good boys, and something is very wrong here, but not them. Perhaps a good compromise would be to let Dr Auspitz discipline them in some way. Not punish them too much, but just enough to satisfy all the parties?"
Schrattenbach looked up sharply. "I will decide what is to be done," he said before he realized that he was giving away too much, a fact he saw instantly from the tiny smile around Klacel's lips. Perhaps he had underestimated the monk.
As soon as an oak paneled door separated them, both men began to think about what they had just learned and what they intended to do about it. Surprisingly they both came to the same conclusions, but from different directions. Josef Schrattenbach took a wholly pragmatic approach. Obviously no one in their right mind would have brought a silly, stupid schoolboy incident to the attention of an important member of the Bishop's staff without some ulterior motive, and it was that motive that interested the Monsignor. The key players were Abbot Napp, Brother Gregory and Brother Timothy, so Schrattenbach went over in his mind what he knew about them. Napp was a constant irritant to the Bishop, and therefore to himself, but Napp, despite his cleverness, had given the impression of someone caught unawares by this incident. Brother Gregory was dismissed at once; a genius scientist and teacher but a total neophyte in any political intrigue. Which left Brother Timothy. Schrattenbach thought long and hard about Brother Timothy.
On the other side of the door, Brother Matthew was paralleling the same lines of reasoning. Unlike his innocent friend, who had once nominated Brother Timothy for membership in the Natural History Society, Brother Matthew had few illusions about Brother Timothy. Many years ago, he had been cheated out of a valuable teaching post by Brother Timothy, and more recently he was sure that Brother Timothy had helped the Bishop attack the Monastery (Chapter 2). By all accounts it had been at the urging of Brother Timothy that the Board of Trustees had cut the Freikinder program at Mendel's school and hurt his 'sparrows', and it had been Brother Timothy who had caught the boys stealing the book, if indeed they had stolen the book. In this whole incident, the name of Brother Timothy featured very prominently.
Also, he is a very ambitious monk, thought Monsignor Schrattenbach, a man, like myself, who wishes to go far. We have a lot in common. Perhaps Brother Timothy is using this incident in two ways; he wishes to weaken Abbot Napp - by manipulating the Board of Trustees, and he wishes to embarrass Brother Gregory, a potential rival?
The more he thought about it, the more he liked this interpretation. But what to do about it? At one level he resented being used by Brother Timothy for his own advancement, but at another level he admired the audacity and the skill with which he was doing it. Josef Schrattenbach was a person who enjoyed watching a skilled worker at his craft, and Brother Timothy was showing all the signs of being a skilled artisan. It was the latter thought that decided things for the Monsignor. He disliked Napp and understood Brother Timothy, in any fight between them he would take the side that weakened Napp - which in this case meant supporting the prosecution of the two boys.
Not once in his deliberations did he consider the possible guilt or innocence of the Tomin brothers, it was not relevant.
Those poor boys, thought Brother Matthew, what they must be going through if they were innocent. He liked the Tomin brothers and he supported the program that gave them an education. As well as helping his friend Brother Gregory, he must also try to help the Freikinder program survive the attentions of Brother Timothy. But how?
To collect his thoughts he sat once again on the oak bench and started analyzing the situation from the beginning, but he quickly found himself in a dead end. There was no evidence he could find or produce that would clear the boys during any sort of formal inquiry. The only witness was Brother Timothy and if he testified that he had seen the boys take the book, then no one was going to doubt their guilt. If Brother Timothy was using this incident for his own purposes, as Brother Matthew suspected, then nothing would get him to change his mind and say that the boys were innocent. No, that line of reasoning went no where. So, what to do?