Das Geheimschloss

A Berlin banker’s gilded life fractures when masked extortionists slip a scarlet-edged ransom note beneath his silver-plated breakfast tray: deliver the combination to the subterranean vault or never see his tow-headed heir again. Into this lacquered labyrinth strides Fräulein Clever—trench-coat sculpted from moonlight, eyes like switchblades—posing as a private stenographer while mapping every creak of the parquet, every tremor of the butler’s left eyelid. She trails whispers through velvet corridors, deciphers Morse tapped by a captive child on a cast-iron radiator, and unmasks the castle itself as an accomplice: tapestries that breathe, staircases that pivot, a grandfather clock whose pendulum spells death in ironclad strokes. By the time the final reel dissolves into sodium glare on the Spree, the fortress has coughed up its ghosts, the ransom has turned to ash in a brazier of deceit, and Clever strides out with the boy on her hip and a smile sharp enough to slice the city’s fog.