In a monstrous rage Untercommandant Heinrich Darmstaedter stormed into Monsignor Schrattenbach's inner office rudely brushing aside the feeble attempts of an equerry to stop him. "Schrattenbach," he shouted, "what is the meaning of this!".

Putting down his pen with a sigh, the Vicar General looked up from his desk and into the eyes of his irate visitor. "Heinrich, please take off your coat, sit down and tell me why you are so upset".

"We had a deal," the head of the Politikteil section of the Moravian Staat Polizei continued to shout, ignoring the equerry's feeble pulling at his sleeve. He waved one of the new telegraphic messages in the direction of the Monsignor. "I have just been informed that the Hussite Klacel slipped across the border into Italy yesterday using a Reise-Pass issued here in Brno by the new Abbot of St. Thomas. We had a deal, Schrattenbach, I would not move against Klacel until that monk Timothy was the new Abbot. Why did he give Klacel a passport, so he could escape?"

"Sit, sit down Heinrich, please," the Vicar General begged his not too unexpected guest. Monsignor Schrattenbach had been anticipating this call for the last couple of days, and had a good bottle of schnapps ready and waiting. He poured two generous glasses and took one to a steaming policeman.

"So, Klacel has escaped you. That is a pity. I suppose this also means you did not find, or capture, the woman Novotna either?" He did not wait for a reply. "Well, it looks as if neither of us got what we wanted".

He returned to his desk and took out a sheaf of papers from a slim folder on his desk. "Despite your famed information network, I see that you are not up-to-date with the goings on at St. Thomas' monastery". He took out a stiff card of cream stock on which there was some formal printing and a handwritten name. "You will probably be getting your invitation soon. Mine was hand delivered only yesterday, and I'm still wondering how best to reply. It does put the Bishop in an awkward position". He passed the invitation card to the Untercommandant.

On it Darmstaedter read that Monsignor Schrattenbach was invited to attend the inauguration of the new Abbot of St. Thomas' on the following Sunday. It was signed, 'Abbot Mendel'!

"Mendel!" Darmstaedter shouted, "Mendel! I thought you had arranged for the monk Timothy to be elected the next Abbot. What is going on here? Why did this happen?"

"An exercise in pure democracy, my dear Heinrich," Schrattenbach told him, trying to keep a grim smile out of his voice. "At their last Chapter meeting the monks voted by 12 to 1 to elect Brother Gregory their next Abbot. It was a free choice by a formal Church body carried out in the fairest of circumstances, and Mendel was the one they chose. There is very little either you, or the Bishop, can now do about it. As long as his health lasts, we will all have to live with 'Abbot Mendel' for many years to come".

"You still have not said how you allowed this to happen," Darmstaedter growled grimly, although he now knew how Klacel had found it so easy to get his Reise-Pass; his good friend and new Abbot had signed one for him.

"That is a bit of a mystery," Schrattenbach said, taking back his invitation and closing the file on his desk. "All was going well, and my information was that Brother Timothy had more than enough votes to carry him to victory. Anselm Rambousek and the Prior had both withdrawn from the race, only Mendel was voting for Klacel, and did so right up to the end, and all the other monks had been persuaded by your letter to vote in our favor".

"So what happened" came almost a shout.

"Something very strange and unexpected," he was told by a Vicar General who had put the clues together almost at once, but wanted to see if the policeman could do the same. "The day before the election an electronic-telegraphic message arrived at the monastery from the Chancellor of the University of Cracow. It was delivered to Brother Timothy that afternoon. It contained an offer he could not refuse. If he could start at once, he would be made the next Professor of Natural Philosophy that the University was about to appoint. The job was his if he wanted it and the salary offered was very, very generous".

A look of understanding began to move across Darmstaedter's face. "So he took it?"

"He would have been a fool not to have taken it".

"But the position of Abbot at St. Thomas is a more prestigious position than that of a Professor in Cracow," the Untercommandant realized at once.

"That is the strange part," the Monsignor agreed, "and there are still elements to this story there I cannot fully understand. But it may have something to do with a late night visit to the monastery by our good friend Otto Grunewald. Whom, I hear, is now making some very fine red cloth for the Countess".

"What are you saying? Grunewald somehow convinced Brother Timothy to take the teaching job, but how did he know of it?"

"Hummmm, if I were a suspicious man I might just consider the long string of coincidences here. Those scientist monks have been working on a secret project for Grunewald for several months, possibly the chemistry of a red dye. On the day that the formula comes to Grunewald, so that the Countess can get her dresses, the Chancellor of Cracow University, who is related to the Countess by marriage, suddenly decides to offer an obscure monk in Brno a decent teaching position in his prestigious institute. A strange string of events that are possibly not connected, or are they? What do you think?"

It took a moment for Darmstaedter to make all the connections. "So," he breathed at last, "Grunewald arranged it all. He arranged for Brother Timothy to drop out of the election for Abbot in exchange for a teaching job in Cracow. Thus the only candidate left was the monk Mendel. That's how they did it!" He seemed pleased at his conclusions and that he could finally understand what had happened. "Then Mendel signed the Riese-Pass for Klacel, and he escaped! Devilishly cunning. Why did you not see this coming, Schrattenbach?"

"I have had encounters with those monastery monks before," the Monsignor admitted ruefully, "and I have always found it wise never to underestimate them. But this was an outcome I was not expecting. They seem to have had better sources of information than you or I, and had some way of exerting influence on both Grunewald and Brother Timothy, that is not clear to me - yet. But I intend to find out, if only for my own satisfaction".

"Is there nothing we can do?

"Very little. Oh, we can always make life difficult for Mendel. Now that he is Abbot we can really twist a few screws and make his life more miserable, but that is a poor and petty revenge. I am man enough to admit that they got the better of us on this occasion. But I am surprised that your sources of information were not better!"

There was little more to say, and eventually the Untercommandant took his leave, but unlike his clerical colleague, he vowed to himself to make the life of the new Abbot one filled with daily misery. He had wanted to arrest the Hussite Klacel himself, very badly!

Thus it was that the Monsignor found himself alone at the inauguration of the new Abbot, and later found himself talking to the recently elevated monk. "Congratulations, Abbot," he said, shaking the offered hand. "I hope to have a long lasting and productive relationship with you in the future. We have many goals in common, and I hope we can work amicably together in the years to come".

"I'm sure we will," Abbot Mendel assured him, pushing his glasses back on his nose and peering at the Monsignor, who, somehow, suddenly looked shorter and less threatening.

"I thought that you were more interested in science and research," the Monsignor could not help saying, despite the fact that he was determined not to let Mendel gloat about his victory. "I had not realized that you wished for an administrative position, or I would have helped you more".

"Oh, you helped quite enough," the Abbot said quietly. A subtle change had come over Mendel since his elevation, and more than one person had noted it already. "But if I ever need any letters of recommendation, you will be sure I will call on you first. You seem to have a lot of skills and practice in that area". He moved on to his other guests, leaving the Vicar General with a slight redness around the collar and a moistness under his arms.

"What happened to Brother Matthew," he asked Brother Joseph a bit later.

"As far as we know he went to America," he was told. "It is a wild and untamed land with lots of opportunities. He was feeling too, er, confined here, and was worried that his freedoms would be further restricted it he stayed around". He too left the Bishop's principle aide feeling slightly uncomfortable.

It was not until the summer that, in his own blunt way, Otto Grunewald was able to put the last piece of the puzzle in place. "Oh, that Klacel fellow, yes, I remember him. Nasty piece of work, never liked him. Tried to blackmail me once, you know. He wanted me to force the monk Timothy out of the monastery and pack him off to Cracow. Not hard to do, apparently the monks knew all about the forged letter, something to do with the ink not being right, and I simply told Brother Timothy that if he did not give up the Abbacy and take the Professorship I would tell everyone all about it. Lucky you weren't involved with that one, vicar! Heh?"