Trojan Gold

Elizabeth Peters

Trojan Gold A Vicky Bliss Mystery

TO DOMINICK

with respectful admiration, admiring respect,

and much affection

One

FIRE STAINED THE NIGHT. THE SKY ABOVE the dying city was an obscene, unnatural crimson, as if the lifeblood of its people were pouring upward from a million wounds. As he fought through the inferno he missed death by inches not once but a dozen times. The conquerors were already in the city. Another enemy army was closing in from the west; but the horde of refugees, of whom he was one, fought their way westward with a desperate, single-minded intent. Throughout history, always the barbarian hordes had come from the east.

Unlike the others, he was not concerned with his own survival, except insofar as it was necessary in order to ensure the survival of something that meant more to him than his own life. This city would fall to the barbarians as other imperial cities had fallen—Rome, Constantinople—and the battle and its aftermath would add more wreckage to the monstrous mound of shattered beauty—dead children and mutilated women and torn flesh, burning books, headless statues, slashed paintings, shattered crystal…. One thing at least he would save. How he would do it he did not know, but he never doubted he would succeed. He knew the city, knew every street and building, though many of the landmarks had vanished in pillars of whirling flame and heaps of smoldering rubble. He would get there first. And in the lull between the flight of the vanquished and the triumph of the conquerors, he would find his chance.

He was more than a little mad. Perhaps only a madman could have done it.

That’s how I would begin if I were writing a thriller instead of a simple narrative of fact. Exactly how he accomplished it will never be known; but it may have been something like that. I only wish my part of the story had started with such panache—the death throes of a mighty metropolis, the fire and the blood and the terror….

What am I saying? Of course I don’t really wish that. But I could wish for a slightly more dramatic start to this tale than a stupid petty argument with my boss’s secretary over a stupid petty bit of office routine.

I love my work, and I don’t really hate Mondays. I hated this Monday morning, though, because I had a hang-over. I am not a heavy drinker—I know, that’s what everybody says, but in my case it’s true. I make it a rule not to overindulge, in any fashion, on a work night. There were reasons—not good reasons, but reasons—why I had broken the rule that Sunday. They have no bearing on this story and they are nobody’s business but my own. Suffice it to say that I was late to work and not happy to be there. If I had been in my normal sunny morning mood, I probably would not have overreacted when I saw what Gerda had done.

Gerda is, as 1 have mentioned, my boss’s secretary; and my boss is Herr Doctor Anton Z. Schmidt, director of the National Museum in Munich. The National is small but what’s there is “cherce,” to quote one of my favorite film characters. The building and the basic collections had been contributed to the city back in the eighteen hundreds by a Bavarian nobleman who was as eccentric as he was filthy-rich, which is one of the reasons why our present collections are a bit unusual. For example, we have the most extensive collection of antique toys in Europe. We have a gem room, a medieval-art section, and a costume room. The noble Graf von und zu Gefenstein also collected ladies’ underwear, but we don’t display that collection, fascinating as it is to students of costume. At least the people who request access to it say they are students of costume.

The point of all this, in case you are wondering, is that our staff isn’t large. Although Gerda has the title of Secretary to the Director, she types all our letters and takes care of most of the office work for the staff. No problem for Gerda; she is inhumanly efficient. She is also very nosy.

Since I was late, I wasn’t surprised to see that Gerda had taken advantage of my tardiness to mess around with my things. I wasn’t surprised, but I was irate. If I had told her once I had told her a hundred times to leave my desk alone. Those heaps of debris are sacred to me. I know where everything is. If people start tidying up I can’t find anything. Gerda had stacked everything. She is a great stacker—nice neat piles, sorted by size instead of content, every corner squared.

She had also replaced my desk blotter. The new one lay there pristine and dead; gone was the old one, with its vital store of information—telephone numbers, shopping lists, addresses of shops, and notes on books I wanted to read…. And smack in the center of the nice new blotter was my mail. She had opened every letter and every parcel. The envelopes were stapled to the letters, which meant that in order to avoid tearing the latter, I would have to pry off the staples, breaking half my nails in the process.

I kicked the nearest filing cabinet. Hopping and swearing. I went behind the screen that concealed the really important objects in my office—the sink and hot plate and coffee maker—and plugged in the last-named article. I fully intended to kill Gerda, but I figured I had better have a cup of coffee first. Otherwise I might stumble on the stairs and break a leg before I got my hands around her throat.

While I drank my coffee, I glanced through the mail but found nothing that improved my disposition, especially after I broke a nail prying off a staple. It was the usual assortment: notices of meetings, circulars from academic presses offering books nobody could afford on subjects nobody knew anything about, and letters from students asking permission to use the collections or to reproduce photographs.

The stack of mail was pyramid-style, with the largest items on the bottom. I worked my way grimly down to the base—a coarse brown envelope approximately 8 by 10 inches in size. One of those well-known plain brown wrappers? It was plain enough; no sign of writing, not even my name. The heavy tape sealing the flap had been slashed, leaving edges so sharp I cut my finger when I reached into the envelope. Gerda’s famous paper knife, honed to the keenness of a headsman’s sword. One of these days someone was going to stab her with that knife. It might be me.

She hadn’t stapled the enclosure to the envelope, probably because her diabolical tool could not penetrate the heavy cardboard on which the photograph was mounted. It was a black-and-white photo, probably enlarged from a snapshot; the faintly fuzzy focus suggested amateur photography. As I stared at it, a flash of memory rose and fell in the murky depths of my alcohol-fuzzed mind, but I couldn’t get a grip on it. Yet I knew I had seen a photograph like that before.

The subject was a woman. The skin of her face had sagged and her thin mouth was set in a straight, expressionless line. She could have been any aging Hausfrau, except for her costume. A fringed diadem several inches wide encircled her brow. From it dangled ropes and chains of some metallic substance. Her earlobes were pulled down by more chains and dangles; the bodice of her plain dark dress was almost hidden by necklaces, row on row of them.

I turned the photograph over. The back was plain gray cardboard, with no inscription or photographer’s imprint. Why the hell had someone sent me a picture of his mother dressed up for an amateur theatrical performance? His mother the soprano? She didn’t resemble the conventional contralto stereotype; her chin sagged with the weariness of age, and her features were pointed and meager, like those of a rain-soaked bird. But the gaudy fake jewelry suggested one of the more exotic operas, such as Lakmé or Aïda.

I inspected the envelope again. It was still blank.

Eventually the caffeine penetrated my brain, and I gathered enough strength to pry myself off my chair. There was a pile of work waiting for me, but I decided that first I would go and kill Gerda.

My office is at the top of one of the towers. There are four towers, one on each corner, plus battlements and machicolations and all the other accouterments of nineteenth-century pseudo-medievalism. The Graf was as loony as his king, mad Ludwig of Bavaria, and both of them loved to build castles. It’s fashionable to sneer at Ludwig’s taste, and I admit he went overboard on the interior décor—all that writhing gilt and those enormous Wagnerian paintings—but anyone who can contemplate unmoved the fairytale towers of Schloss Neuschwanstein framed by the misty mountain-tops hasn’t got an ounce of romance in his/her soul.

I chose my office in part because of the view. There are windows all around, looking out over the rooftops and towers of the city that I love like a native daughter—the twin green onion domes of the Frauenkirche and the lacy stonework of the Rathaus tower, the Isar winding gracefully between banks that are green in summer and snowy-white in winter, and the bustling traffic of Karlsplatz with the clock tower and the gates and the shops. You can keep your Parises and your Viennas; give me Munich any day. It’s one of the happiest, handsomest cities in the world.

Another reason I chose to perch up in my airy aerie was for purposes of privacy. There is no lift, and people who want to see me have to want to see me very badly before they will tackle five flights of stairs. Even Gerda doesn’t do it often; I suppose the chance to pry during my absence had been too strong to resist. I keep telling myself that climbing stairs is good for the figure, but I must admit that I don’t tackle them myself unless I want something rather badly. This morning I wanted Gerda.

The director’s office is on the second floor, but I had to go all the way down and then climb the central stairs, since the towers connect to the main building only on the first level. By the time I reached Gerda’s room, I was full of adrenaline and pent-up rage.

She had been expecting me. I heard her typewriter start to rattle as I opened the door. She kept on typing, pretending she hadn’t noticed me, even after I stamped across the room and stood beside her desk. When I saw what she was wearing, I became even more annoyed. The turtle-neck knit shirt, in bright stripes of shocking pink and pea green, was an exact copy of the one I had worn to work the week before.

This was a form of flattery, and it should have touched me. My hair is blond; Gerda’s is brown. Gerda is five feet and a fraction; I am a fraction less than six feet. I am a bean pole, Gerda is a dumpling. For some crazy reason, she wants to look like me.

What woman in her right mind would want to be six feet tall? How can you look coyly up at a man from under your lashes when your eyes are on the same level, or higher? How can you find skirts long enough to cover your knees? Put a pitchfork in my hand, and I look like a farmer; put a spear in my hand, and I look like an undernourished Valkyrie. I’d much rather be cute and cuddly like Gerda—well, maybe not quite that cuddly—and it infuriates me when she tries to imitate me, especially since the clothes that look okay on me don’t suit her at all.

I slapped the edge of the desk with the photograph. It cracked, like a pistol shot. Gerda jumped. “What’s the idea of opening my mail?” I shouted. “How many times have I told you not to open my mail?”

I yelled in German. It’s a good language to yell in, and I added a few expletives to my rhetorical question. Gerda answered in her meticulous, stilted English.

“That is impossible to calculate. It is also a meaningless question. To open the mail, it is my duty. In order to direct each piece of mail to the proper destination within the museum, it is necessary that I should investigate—”

We went on that way for a while, in a mixture of languages. My voice kept rising; Gerda’s remained studiously calm, but her cheeks got pinker and pinker till she looked like a kewpie doll. The whole thing was ridiculous. Yelling was making my head ache, and I regretted having started the fight. We all knew Gerda’s habits, and we all made damned good and sure none of our personal mail was directed to the museum. I wondered why I was doing this and how I could stop.

I was saved from retreat by Schmidt, who came barreling out of his office and added his bellow to the general uproar.

“Was ist’s, ein Tiergarten oder ein Museum? Cannot a man absorb himself in study without two screaming females interrupting his thoughts? Die Weiber, die Weiber, ein Mann kann nicht—”

“You sound like The Merry Widow,” I said. “Calm yourself, Herr Direktor.”

“I calm myself? Whose screams were they that interrupted my contemplation?”

“Not mine,” said Gerda smugly.

“I knew that,” Schmidt said. “What is it this time?”

“You know,” I said. “You’ve been listening at the keyhole. You couldn’t have heard us unless you were listening. That door is six inches thick.”

Schmidt’s pudgy little hand stole to his mustache. He started growing it to compensate for the complete absence of hair on his head, and it has got out of hand. I think his initial model was Fu-Manchu, for Schmidt has a deplorable taste for sensational literature. Unfortunately, Schmidt’s mustache came out pure-white and bushy. He’s about Gerda’s height, a foot shorter than I, and that damned mustache was the only touch needed to turn him into a walking caricature of a quaint German kobold or brownie—round tummy, twinkling blue eyes, and an adorable little pink mouth, like that of a pouting baby.

He didn’t deny the charge. “The post,” he said. “Again the post. What is it today—a letter from, er, grr, hm, a close friend, vielleicht?”

He leered and sidled around the desk trying to sneak a peek at what I was holding. I handed it to him.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Schmidt. My er, grr, close friends don’t send passionate love letters to me at this address. If they did, they would cease to become close friends. I don’t know who sent this, because Gerda has removed the outer envelope and, probably, an enclosed explanatory letter. Now I haven’t the faintest idea what it means or what I’m supposed to do about it.”

Schmidt’s pink forehead crumpled into rows of wrinkles. “Sehr interessant,” he muttered, worrying his mustache. “Now where have I seen this face before?”

“Something strikes a chord,” I agreed. “It looks like a theatrical costume. Hardly the sort of thing we’d want for the collection.”

“Nein, nein. And yet…What is it that strikes me?”

Gerda cleared her throat. “I recognized it at once, Herr Direktor. When I took the course at the university last spring—or perhaps it was summer—yes, it was the Herr Professor Doktor Eberhardt’s course in the minor arts of Asia Minor—”

I was tempted to lunge at her. She’d had hours to check on that photograph and make fools of her two educated bosses. Schmidt was just as infuriated. “Get to the point,” he shouted, glaring.

Gerda looked smug. “Surely the very-highly-expert doctors recognize the photograph. It is that of Frau Schliemann wearing the treasure of Troy. If you recall, it was in 1873 that the distinguished archaeologist found the mound of Hissarlik, in what is now Turkey, and identified it as—”

“You need not summarize the career of Heinrich Schliemann,” said Schmidt, with heavy sarcasm. “Hmm. Yes. Possibly you are correct. It is not, of course, my field.”

It wasn’t my field, either. All the same, I should have identified the photograph. Every art historian takes introductory courses, and every woman worthy of the name is fascinated by jewels. Gerda had one-upped me with consummate skill, and it was for that reason, I think, that I pursued the matter. On such low-down, petty motives does our fate depend. If Gerda had not tried to show off, and made me look stupid—if I hadn’t been suffering from a well-deserved hang-over—I would probably have returned to my office, tossed the photo into a “pending” file, and awaited the expected, irate inquiry from the sender. Which would not have come.

Instead, I said sharply, “What did you do with the outer envelope?”

Schmidt was still studying the photograph with a puzzled frown. Without looking up he asked, “How do you know there was another envelope?”

“Because this one is blank—no address, no stamps, no postmark. Come on, Gerda; there had to be an outer envelope. What happened to it?”

Gerda’s eyes shifted. Mine followed the direction of her gaze. Her wastebasket was not only empty, it was as clean as my kitchen floor. Cleaner—I have a dog. “You threw it away?” I yelled.

“It was covered with filth,” Gerda said, with a fastidious curl of her lip. “Stained and dirty—one could scarcely read the name.”

“Was there a return address?”

“None that I could read. The dirty stains—”

“Postmark?”

Gerda shrugged.

Schmidt followed me out of the office. I asked him where he was going, and he said simply, “With you.”

“Why?”

“You are going to look through the trash for the missing envelope.” Schmidt savored the phrase. “The missing envelope…A good title for a thriller, nicht?”

“It’s been used. Probably by Nancy Drew.”

Schmidt didn’t ask who Nancy Drew was. Maybe he knew. As I said, he has deplorable tastes in literature. “And,” he went on cheerfully, “a good beginning for an adventure.”

“What makes you think this is the beginning of an adventure? If,” I added, “one can apply that melodramatic word to the unfortunate incidents that have marked my academic career.”

“I hope it is. It has been six months since our last case. I am bored.”

Since Schmidt’s only contribution to my last “case,” if it could be called that, was to be pushed into the local slammer by a group of suspicious Swedes, his use of the plural pronoun might have been questioned—but not by me. He was still sulking about missing most of the fun. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I didn’t want to encourage him either. I had had enough “cases,” or “adventures,” or, more accurately, “narrow escapes.”

Not that I expected the mysterious photograph (damn! another thriller title) would lead to any such undesired development. It wasn’t really mysterious, only odd, and if I could find the covering letter—there must be one, Gerda had simply overlooked it—the oddity would turn out to be odd only in the academic sense. Like most academicians, I had received my share of crank letters. Some were communiqués from the lunatic fringes of historical scholarship—like the woman who claimed to be possessed by the ghost of Hieronymus Bosch. Before her family got her committed, she sent me fifteen huge canvases she had painted under his spiritual direction. Some were from amiable ignoramuses who hoped to sell us some piece of junk they had dug out of the attic. This would probably turn out to be something of that sort, and my present quest was a real waste of time and effort. Possibly an explanatory letter had been sent under separate cover and had been delayed in transit. In any case, if the idea was important enough to the sender, he or she would write again when I failed to reply.

Having arrived at this reasonable conclusion, did I return to my office and my duties? No, I did not. I was still annoyed with Gerda, and an odd, provocative sense of something not quite right about that photograph was beginning to trouble my mind. With Schmidt trotting happily at my heels, I threaded a path through the maze of corridors and rooms that constituted the basement of the museum. The plan represented the Graf’s vague idea of a medieval undercroft, complete with model dungeons and torture chambers. Schmidt had tried to set up the usual labs and studios, but the workers had gone on strike, even after fluorescent lighting had been installed and the rusty shackles and implements of torture had been removed. Von Blauert, our chemist, complained that he kept having nightmares about being shut up in the Iron Maiden. So Schmidt resignedly moved the whole lot up to the top floor, and the cellars were used only for storage of nonperishable items. There was also a door opening into the sunken enclosed courtyard behind the museum, where the trash from the museum ended up in big bins that were picked up bi-weekly by a local firm. The courtyard did double duty as a staff parking lot, which was how I knew about the trash.

Hearing our footsteps ring in dismal echoes along the authentic-stone-paved passageway, Carl, the janitor, opened the door of his room. His face lit up when he saw me, and he greeted me with flattering enthusiasm. At least it would have been flattering if I had not known that I was not the object of his adoration. It was my dog he doted on.

There’s an antique witticism that runs, “I don’t have a dog, he has me.” Caesar is a Doberman, big as a pony and slobberingly affectionate. I had to bring him to work with me one day when the exterminators were dealing with an infestation of some strange little purple bugs in my house. Carl was in the courtyard when we arrived, and it was love at first sight, on both parts. Carl was in the habit of paying a formal call on Caesar every few weeks; he always brought presents of bones and took Caesar for a long walk.

I had to give him a detailed rundown on Caesar’s health before he allowed me to question him. Yes, he had emptied Gerda’s wastebasket that morning. He emptied her wastebasket every morning and every afternoon. No, the trash men had not collected that day; Tuesday and Friday were their regular days. Certainly, we could prowl around in the trash all we liked. He hoped we enjoyed ourselves.

He didn’t offer to help, and I didn’t ask, since I couldn’t tell him what I was looking for. I only hoped I would recognize it if I saw it.

Snowflakes trickled down out of a pewter-gray sky as I climbed on a packing case and peered down into the bin which, according to Carl, held that day’s garbage. Schmidt, who would have needed a ladder to reach the same height, jumped up and down to keep warm and demanded that I toss down an armful or two so he could help me search. I was tempted to give him a bundle of the riper refuse—the remains of people’s lunches, from the smell—but controlled myself. A handful of papers stopped his outcries; he hunkered down in the lee of the bin and began sorting them, happy as a puppy with a moldy bone.

Cold had turned Schmidt’s pink face a delicate shade of lavender by the time I found the envelope. It should have been on the top of the heap; but in the manner of all desired objects, it had slid down into a corner, behind a soggy paper bag containing two apple cores and the crusts of a Gorgonzola-and-wurst sandwich. For once Gerda had not exaggerated. The paper was filthy. A disfiguring brown stain covered much of the envelope. It was an old stain, hardened and dark; and although I am not particularly fastidious, my fingers were slow to close over it.

A shiver ran through me. The shiver was not one of apprehension; it was freezing out there. I only wish I did have premonitory chills when something awful is about to happen to me. Then I might be able to avoid it.

I dragged my purpling superior from the papers he was examining. Once inside, we examined my find.

“Ha,” Schmidt cried eagerly. “Blood!”

“Mud,” I said shortly. “Schmidt, your imagination is really deplorable.”

“There is no return address.”

“Oh well, I tried. Now I can forget the whole thing.”

“But, Vicky—”

“But me no buts, Schmidt. Don’t think it hasn’t been fun; we must meet and pick through garbage again someday.”

“Where are you going now?”

“To the library. I have work to do.”

I had work to do, all right, but not in the library. I stayed there only long enough to get the book I wanted. Then I took it upstairs to my office.

The snow was falling more heavily now; it formed a lacy, blowing white curtain around the walls of my room. I felt much better. Nothing like a little exercise and a yelling match to restore a lady to perfect health after a night on the town. I spread my clues out on the desk and settled down to study them.

The envelope first. There was no return address, at least not on the part of the envelope that had escaped the obliterating stain. After prolonged rummaging in my desk drawers I found the magnifying glass Schmidt had given me for Christmas one year. Schmidt expected me to use it while I crawled around on the floor looking for clues in the dust—something I hardly, if ever, do. I actually had used the glass a time or two in the preliminary stages of authenticating a work of art; sometimes all it takes to spot a fake is a close-up look at the brush strokes or the machine-drilled “wormholes.”

On this occasion the Holmesian accessory was of no help. Under magnification, the blurred letters of the postmark were larger but no more legible. The first two letters might have been a B and an A. Bad something? There are hundreds of towns in Germany named Bad Something. The opaque dark stain covered most of the back of the envelope and a good third of the front, including the areas where one might have expected to find a return address. Even under the lens I couldn’t see any traces of writing.

I filled my sink with water and dunked the envelope. It was of heavy paper coated on the inside with a thin layer of plastic, which had prevented the stain from spreading to the inner wrapping. I was wasting a lot of time on something that was probably a peculiar practical joke; but when I returned to my desk and opened the reference book from the library, I knew why my curiosity had been aroused. Gerda had been only half right. Superficially the photo I had received did resemble the famous photograph of Sophia Schliemann decked out in the gold of Troy. But mine was not a picture of Sophia. It was of a different woman—wearing the same jewelry.

Not the same jewelry—a copy. It had to be a copy, because my photograph had been taken quite recently. The woman’s hairstyle, the photographic technique, and a dozen other subtle clues obvious to a great detective like Victoria Bliss proved as much.

Besides, there was a calendar on the wall, visible behind the woman’s shoulder. It read “May 1982.”

The gold of Troy had vanished, never to be seen again, in the spring of 1945.

I felt it begin—a warm, delirious flush of excitement rippling giddily through my veins. A harbinger of adventure and discovery, of mysteries solved and treasure restored to an admiring world? More likely a harbinger of certifiable lunacy. I slammed the book shut and planted both elbows on it, as if physical restraint could contain the insanity seeping from those pages like a dark fog, inserting sly tendrils into the weak spots of my enfeebled brain. I swear the damned book squirmed, as if struggling to open itself.

I pressed down harder with my elbows and dropped my head onto my hands. I knew what was wrong with me. I was bored and depressed and disgustingly sorry for myself, otherwise I would never have given the insane hypothesis a second thought.

Christmas was only a few weeks away, and this year I couldn’t afford to go home to Minnesota. They would all be there for the holidays—Grandmother and Granddad Anderson, my brothers and their families, including Bob’s new baby son whom I had never seen. Mother and Grandmother, the world’s greatest Swedish cooks, would be baking, filling the house with the warm rich smells of cinnamon and cloves and chocolate and yeast; Dad would be decorating the tree and Granddad would be sitting in his favorite chair telling Dad he was doing it all wrong and trying to pick fights about politics with his “damned liberal grandchildren”; and the kids would be screaming with excitement and punching each other and trying to figure out how to break into the closet where their presents were hidden….

I was all alone and nobody loved me.

But even as I watched a fat tear spatter on the cover of the book, my unregenerate memory was trying to recall what I knew about the gold of Troy.

My field is medieval European painting and sculpture. However, in my line of work, it is necessary to become something of a Jack-of-all-trades, since museums can’t afford to hire experts in every specialty of art history. I had had to learn about jewelry, since we have one of the best small collections on the Continent. And the career of Heinrich Schliemann is a fable, a legend, a children’s book come to life.

Schliemann was the original Horatio Alger hero. He began his career as a stock boy, sleeping under the counter of the store at night, and ended up a millionaire merchant. Once he’d acquired his wealth, he dumped his business interests and turned to the subject that had obsessed him since his daddy had read to him from Homer. Unlike most historians of his time, naïve Heinrich believed the Homeric poems were literally true. The credulous merchant was right, and the historians were wrong. Schliemann found Troy. At the bottom of the trench he had cut across the city mound, he came upon a disintegrated wooden chest that held the treasure of a vanished nobleman.

Schliemann had found more treasures than any amateur deserves to find. He’d dug up another hoard at Mycenae a few years later. But it was the first one, the Trojan gold, that fired his imagination. He decked his beautiful wife Sophia in the jewels for the picture that had been so often reproduced. Perhaps the divine Helen had worn these very diadems, earrings, chains, and studs…. Actually she hadn’t. The gold didn’t come from Priam’s Troy, but from a period a thousand years earlier.

That was about the extent of my knowledge of Schliemann’s find. I knew even less about the disappearance of the treasure, though that event was as dramatic as the circumstances of its discovery.

Schliemann had presented the gold of Troy to a German museum, over the objections of his Greek wife, who felt it ought to remain in Greece. The Turks also claimed it, since Hissarlik, the site of Troy, was on Turkish soil. If the gold had turned up—which of course it hadn’t…But if it had, the question of legal ownership would present an interesting tangle.

Nowadays, excavators can’t remove a potsherd without the permission of the host government, but in the nineteenth century, archaeology was a free-for-all, and possession was nine-tenths of the law. The major museums of the world owe their collections of ancient art to methods that are at best highly dubious and at worst downright dishonest. The Greeks have never stopped complaining about the Elgin marbles and the Aegina sculptures; the Egyptians still want Nefertiti to come home. But the marbles remain in the British Museum, and the Aegina pieces are in the Glyptothek in Munich, and Nefertiti has gone back to a case in a Berlin museum after a brief vacation in a bomb shelter.

Like Nefertiti, the gold of Troy had been removed from its museum during World War II and placed in safekeeping. Somewhere in Berlin, that was all I knew. The Russians had been the first to reach Berlin. And that was the last anyone had seen or heard of the Trojan gold.

If I had given much thought to the matter, which I had not, I would have assumed the Russians had taken the gold to Moscow, along with other little odds and ends like factories, the Pergamum altar sculptures, German nuclear scientists, wristwatches, and the like. But surely, I mused, most of that stolen property had eventually resurfaced—hadn’t it? The factories had turned out steel and concrete for Mother Russia, the scientists had helped build lots of lovely missiles; even the Pergamum sculptures had been returned to a museum in Berlin. East Berlin, that is.

If the Soviets had returned masterpieces like the Pergamum sculptures, why hadn’t they returned the gold of Troy?

The book popped open again; I’m sure I never touched it. I placed the two photos side by side and picked up my trusty magnifying glass.

The reproduction in the book was of poor quality, and my photo was grainy and blurred. I couldn’t make out the finer details. I could see, however, that there were minor discrepancies I had not observed earlier. The pieces were the same—necklaces, earrings, diadem—but they weren’t arranged in quite the same fashion.

Since I knew that Sophia’s jewelry was the genuine article, the differences should have convinced me that the second set was a careless copy, right? Wrong. You see, the museum displays of ancient jewelry, all shiny and polished and pretty, are the result of long months of repair and restoration. The originals didn’t look like that when they were found buried deep in the earth; they were often tumbled, twisted heaps of bits and pieces, and sometimes it is anybody’s guess as to how the pieces went together. Was this flat jeweled ornament attached to that golden chain, or did it form part of the beaded girdle whose beads have tumbled from the rotted cord? Was this dangle an earring or a pendant or part of a crown? I could not remember what condition the Trojan gold had been in when it was discovered, but it was a safe bet that a certain amount of restoration had been necessary. The differences between the two sets were the sort one would expect to find if two restorers—two authorities—had disagreed.

My copy certainly was a first-class forgery.

Another tear plopped onto the book, spotting Sophia’s face. I scowled and wiped it off with my finger. I ought to be ashamed of myself, succumbing to self-pity and Heimweh. That’s all it was, a touch of homesickness. Nothing to do with…. anything else.

Two

“THEY” SAY HARD WORK IS THE BEST CURE for depression. I can think of several things that are more effective, but since none of them were immediately available, I applied myself diligently to a long-overdue article for a professional journal and didn’t stop until I was interrupted by the telephone. It was Schmidt, inviting me to lunch. He takes me to lunch once or twice a week so I can regale him with Rosanna’s latest escapades.

Rosanna is the heroine of the novel I’ve been writing on and off for nigh onto five years. I suppose you could call it a historical romance, though the history is wildly inaccurate and romance is a very feeble word for Rosanna’s love life. So far she has been abducted by sultans, outlaws, highwaymen, degenerate noblemen, Genghis Khan, and Louis the Fourteenth, to mention only a few. (I said the historical part was inaccurate.) Rosanna has never been raped because it is against my principles to contribute, even by implication, to the “relax and enjoy it” school of perversion. However, she has had quite a few narrow escapes, and I wouldn’t exactly claim she was celibate. I have given up any idea of submitting the book to a publisher, since it has become too absurd even for a historical romance, which, believe me, is very absurd indeed. I go on with it because it amuses Schmidt—and me.

Some instinct told me that Schmidt had an ulterior motive that day, but I accepted anyhow. After I had put on my boots and coat, I looked at the sink.

The water was a sickly, sickening brownish red. I pulled the plug and let it run out.

Schmidt never climbs the tower stairs except in cases of dire emergency, which is one of the reasons why I chose that particular office. He was waiting for me in the Hall of Armor, adjoining the tower; as I descended, I heard him talking to the guard on duty. I caught the punch line—“But, mein Herr, it is your mustache!”—followed by a chorus of guffaws from Schmidt and his stooge. Everybody laughs at Schmidt’s jokes, even though they are all culled from the Bavarian equivalent of Joe Miller’s book. A director has certain prerogatives.

I stepped over the velvet rope with its “Eintritt verboten” sign, greeted the guard, tucked Schmidt’s scarf into his collar, and led him out. It was still snowing. There was almost no wind, and the soft white flakes fell gently from the tarnished silver bowl of the sky. Traffic had stirred the streets into a sloppy slush, but the towers of Munich’s myriad churches looked as if they had been frosted with vanilla icing.

We went to our favorite Bierstube, which specializes in a particular variety of heavy dark beer to which Schmidt is addicted. (There are few varieties of beer to which Schmidt is not addicted.) Schmidt ordered Weisswurst and got it, even though the church bells had already chimed twelve. He ordered a lot of other things, too, including an entire loaf of heavy black bread and a pound or so of sweet butter. I sipped daintily at my own beer and waited for him to get to the point, knowing it wouldn’t take long. Schmidt thinks he is sly and subtle, but he is mistaken.

After the waiter had brought the first course, Schmidt tucked his napkin into his collar and stared fixedly at me.

“That was not Frau Schliemann in the photograph.”

“I know.”

“You know? Oh yes, you, you always know.” Schmidt stuffed his mouth with wurst and masticated fiercely. Then he mumbled, “Mrshwenill.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Miss Know-It-All.”

“Ms. Know-It-All, bitte.”

Schmidt grinned. I reached across the table and removed a speck of wurst from his mustache.

“So what shall we do?” he asked.

“What can we do?”

“Have the wrapping examined to see if the stain is blood,” Schmidt said promptly.

“We could.” And of course I would. I had known that ever since I saw the brown-red water. Since we did a lot of work with fabrics, we had a fairly well-equipped lab at the museum. If that particular test was beyond our chemist, I had several pals in the police department.

“But what if it is blood?” I went on.

“Human blood!”

“So what if it is human blood? We can’t trace the damned thing; there is no return address. Perhaps the sender will follow up with a letter.”

“And perhaps he is no longer in a position to do that,” said Schmidt. “It took a lot of blood to make a stain that size, Vicky.”

His illogical, melodramatic conclusion irritated me all the more because it was exactly what I had been thinking.

“You ought to write thrillers for a living, Schmidt,” I snarled. “Which reminds me. Madly jealous at being supplanted in the affections of the King, Madame de Maintenon has accused Rosanna of practicing witchcraft. Would you like to hear—”

“No, I would not. At least not at the present time. Why do you refuse to discuss this matter? Most probably the photograph is a childish joke, but if there is the slightest chance it is anything else…. You have a flair for such things, Vicky. All of us develop a certain instinct, which is nothing more than long years of experience working with antiquities; but yours is stronger than most. If the jewelry in the photograph is not the original, it is an excellent copy, nein?”

“Yes,” I said.

Schmidt’s fork, with its impaled chunk of sausage, stopped midway to his mouth. Weisswurst is really quite revolting in appearance; I will spare you the comparisons. I averted my eyes.

“What is it?” Schmidt asked solicitously. “There is in your voice a note of grief, of tears repressed—”

“There is nothing of the sort. Your imagination is getting out of hand.”

“Ach, so? Then with the tactfulness for which I am well known, I will pass on to matters of documented fact. Since you are this Ms. Know-It-All, I presume you are well acquainted with the details of the fall of Berlin in 1945.”

“No, I am not, and what’s more, I don’t want to be. Art history may be a cop-out, but at least it enables me to focus on the positive achievements of the human race.”

I had meant the statement as a criticism—an indictment, if you will—of myself; but Schmidt’s sudden sobriety showed I had hit a nerve. Then, too late, I remembered something I had been told by Gerda, who really was Ms. Know-It-All. Schmidt had been a member of the White Rose, the Munich student conspiracy against Hitler—and he had lost many of his friends, including the girl he had hoped to marry, when the plot was discovered and the ringleaders were savagely executed. If the story was true, and I had no reason to suppose it was not, Schmidt had even stronger reasons than I to retreat from the contemplation of man’s inhumanity to man.

I didn’t apologize, since that would only have made things worse. After an interval, Schmidt’s cherubic countenance returned to its normal, cheerful expression. He went on without referring to what I had said.

“The most valued exhibits from the Berlin museums had been removed to a bunker in the Tiergarten—the zoo.”

“I know what Tiergarten means.”

“Ha! But you don’t know, I will bet you, that many of the objects taken away by the Russians when they entered the bunker have now been returned. The Gobelin tapestries, the Pergamum sculptures, the coin collection of Friedrich the Great…”

One up for Schmidt. I had known of the Pergamum sculptures, but not the other things. Naturally, I wasn’t going to admit my ignorance.

“All right,” I said, with an exaggerated sigh. “Let’s admit for the sake of argument that both preposterous premises are right. The gold in the photograph is the genuine article and the stain on the envelope is human blood. We’re still up the creek without a paddle. We have no idea where that photograph came from.”

Schmidt’s cheeks gyrated as he tried to chew and nod at the same time. Swallowing, he patted his mouth daintily with the tail of his napkin and then remarked, “Too true. What a pity that the one man who might lead us out of our dilemma is no longer among the living.”

I reached for a piece of bread and busied myself breaking and buttering it.

Schmidt is so classically, overpoweringly cute that people tend to forget how intelligent he is. And I swear there are times when I think he can read my mind. Not that a high degree of ESP was required in this case. The word “copy” inevitably brought John to mind. Also the words “fraud,” “fake,” and “crook.”

Sir John Smythe he called himself, among other names—none of them his real one. The title was equally apocryphal. He had once admitted that John was his first name—not very informative, even if it was true, which it might not be. He was the most accomplished liar since Baron Münchausen.

His physical appearance varied as extravagantly as his name. The underlying structure, the basic John Smythe, was inconspicuously average—about my height, rather slightly built, with no identifying characteristics. In repose his features could only be described as pleasantly unmemorable, but they were capable of a rubbery flexibility any actor would have sold his soul to possess. The color of his hair and eyes varied, according to the circumstances (usually illegal); but, as I had good cause to know, he was fair-haired and blue-eyed. The only features he had trouble disguising—from me, at least—were his lashes, long and thick as a girl’s, and his hands. Deft, skillful hands, long-fingered, deceptively slender…

“Shall I ask the waiter for more butter?” Schmidt asked sweetly.

I looked at my plate. On it were five pieces of bread, each buried under a greasy yellow mound.

“No, thanks, this will do,” I said, and bit into one of the slices. The slippery, sliding texture of the butter against the roof of my mouth made me want to gag.

Schmidt is a canny little kobold. He didn’t refer to the subject again. He didn’t have to. The damage had been done, though not by him. By the photograph, the fake, the fraud.

I left work early, and when I got home that evening I did something I had sworn I would never do again. The portrait was buried deep under a pile of cast-off, out-of-date business papers. Usually it takes me days to find a needed receipt or letter, but I had no trouble finding this particular item.

The portrait was not a photograph, or a sketch, or a painting. I had no snapshots of John; I doubt if many people did. He had good cause to be leery of cameras. But the silhouette had been cut by a master of that dying art; the black paper outline captured not only the distinctive bone structure and the sculptured line of that arrogant nose, but also a personality, in the confident tilt of the chin and the suggestion of a faint smile on the thin, chiseled lips.

People claim wine is a depressant. It never depressed me until that evening. I sat on my nice newly upholstered couch with my nice friendly dog sleeping at my feet, sipping my nice chilled Riesling Spätlese, and my mood got blacker with every sip—black as the scissored outline at which I stared. It might have been the chilly hiss of sleet against the windows. It might have been Caesar, moaning and twitching in a doggish nightmare. Sometimes dogs seem to have happy dreams. I had always assumed they grinned and whined at visions of bones, and overflowing food dishes, and friendly hands stroking them. What then were the subjects of canine nightmares? Giant cats the size of grizzly bears? Perhaps Caesar was reliving the tribulations of his youth, before I adopted him. I would never forget my first sight of him, bursting with fangs bared and eyes blazing out of the darkness of the antique shop I happened to be burgling. His keeper had kept him half-starved and beaten him to make him savage…

John was one of the gang—art swindlers, forgers of historic gems. He boasted that half the great art collections contained copies he had substituted for the priceless originals, and he was particularly proud of the fact that the substitutions had never been detected. Not for him the armed attack, the murdered guards, the crude, grab-it-and-run techniques of lesser craftsmen. John abhorred violence, particularly when it was directed against him.

However, he had killed at least one man. I couldn’t complain about that since the man he killed had been doing his damnedest to murder me.

John had vanished under the icy storm-lashed waters of Lake Vippen six months earlier, taking with him the aquatic assassin who had picked me as victim number one. The body of the man he killed had been found a few days later. John had never been seen again.

The scenario was as romantically tragic as any I could have invented for my unending novel; and all the surviving participants had been suitably moved, including Schmidt, who had insisted on helping erect a suitable monument to the fallen hero. Schmidt was determined to regard John as a kind of Robin Hood, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. John did confine his depredations to the rich, but that was only because poor people didn’t have anything worth stealing, and the only charity to which he contributed was himself. Of course John had never happened to rob Schmidt’s museum. And Schmidt is a hopeless sentimentalist.

Schmidt is not, however, a fool. He had enjoyed wallowing in sloppy tears over the heroic dead; but once the glow wore off, he had probably reached the same conclusion I had reached—namely and to wit, that the memorial might be a trifle premature. The event had given John a heaven-sent opportunity to avoid a number of people whose greatest ambition in life was to nail him to a wall by his elegant ears. The man he had killed was the head of a gang of thieves who would probably resent the death of their leader and the loss of their jobs, particularly since John had been trying to steal the loot from them all along. John was also an object of passionate interest to the police of several countries. His presumed death would wipe the slate clean and give him a chance to start over.

At first I didn’t doubt he was still alive. For weeks I expected to hear from him—one of those absurd communications in which his quirky, devious mind delighted. Once he had sent me a forgery of a famous historic jewel. Another time, it had been a single red rose—another fake, a silk copy of a real flower. But six months had gone by without a word from him….

Is it any wonder I thought of John when I received an anonymous photograph of what appeared to be an excellent imitation of a museum treasure? Cryptic messages, copies, and forgeries were the trademarks of Sir John B. Smythe. Was this the message for which I had been waiting? Waiting was all I could do. I did not know how to get in touch with John; I never had known. Of course, if I was mistaken about his survival, a spiritualist medium was probably my best bet.

Yet this particular communication had sinister overtones that were not characteristic of John. His frivolous attitude toward life in general and his dubious profession in particular had gotten him into a heap of trouble. As he had once sadly remarked, some of his colleagues had no sense of humor. They kept misinterpreting his little jokes (at their expense) and wanting to beat him up.

The grisly bloodstain on the envelope wasn’t John’s style. Unless the joke had backfired. Unless the blood was his.

The shiny white cardboard reflected the lamplight, enclosing the black profile in a soft golden halo. The inappropriateness of that image brought a sour smile to my lips. The smile turned to a grimace as I remembered what I had done that afternoon.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect it struck me as the most idiotic move I had ever made—and I speak as one whose career has not been unblemished by foolish actions.

I had put personal ads in the major newspapers of the world. All of them. Figaro, Die Welt, La Prensa, Neue Zurcher Zeitung, II Corriere della Sera, ABC, the New York and London Times….

Even now I hate to admit I did it. However, a lot of underworld characters use the personals as a means of communication, and I knew John sometimes read them for the sake of amusement. I felt certain the message would capture his attention. It read: “Rudolph. Not roses, Helen’s jewels. Michael and Rupert no problem. Contact soonest. Flavia.”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Few people would understand that string of absurdities, but I knew John would; the single red rose he had sent me came from the same corny old novel. The reference to Michael and Rupert cost me an extra twenty bucks, but I thought I had a better chance of arousing John’s interest if I assured him the villains were out of the picture.

Caesar moaned. The wind wailed. The sleet kept on falling. The wine was gone. I was all alone and nobody loved me. Worse than that—I was drunk and all alone and nobody loved me.

Which only goes to show that those boring clichés about optimism are true. “Tomorrow is another day; it’s always darkest before the dawn.” Unbeknownst to me, a lot of people were concerned about me—thinking, worrying, caring, talking. The most provocative of the conversations might have gone something like this:

It began with commiserations, half-ironic, half-furious, on her husband’s death.

“But there was nothing else to do! He had made up his mind. He was actually on his way to the Postamt, to send the photograph. I had to act quickly!”

“Stupidly, you mean. You have silenced the only man who knew where it was hidden.”

“Perhaps he told her. A note, a letter, sent with the photograph—”

“And now you’ve lost that too. What the devil could have become of it?”

“I tell you, I don’t know! Someone may have found it lying in the snow—”

“Are you sure that was the only copy? Did he communicate with anyone else?”

“No—I don’t think so…How can I be sure? Any of them might—”

“Shut up and let me think.”

A long silence followed. She ran shaking fingers through her hair, nibbled on her bitten nails. Then the voice at the other end of the wire said, “I have received nothing. That would suggest that she was the only one he confided in.”

“Yes. Yes. We can deal with her—”

“As you dealt with the old man? I forbid it. Do you hear? Keep that degenerate follower of yours under control. Leave it to me.”

“Yes, my darling. I am sorry—”

“Rather late for regrets, isn’t it?”

Tears filled her eyes, smearing her heavy makeup. “Don’t be angry with me. You will break my heart. I promise, I will do whatever you say.”

“Do nothing. Keep searching. Notify me at once—at once, do you hear?—if she communicates with you. In the meantime, I will take steps to correct your mistake.”

“You think you can—”

“I have several ideas,” the far-off voice murmured.

For the next few days I was followed around Munich by little fat men—or, sometimes, little fat women. They were all Schmidt. He loves dressing up in funny costumes. I wouldn’t dream of destroying his illusion that he is a great detective, so I pretended not to recognize him. I didn’t try to lose him either, which wouldn’t have been hard.

I would have lost him if I had been doing what he thought I was doing—heading for a rendezvous with the mysterious, the enigmatic Robin Hood of crime. Schmidt assumed that though John had vanished from the rest of the world, he had kept in touch with the love of his life. Maybe he had—but obviously I wasn’t it.

The stain on the wrapping paper was human blood, all right. This fact, among others, convinced me John was not the sender. The sight of blood made him sick—especially, as he had candidly admitted, his own. Nor would he have left me hanging in limbo. He’d have sent a follow-up message.

I studied that damned photograph, with the naked eye and the magnifying glass, until every detail was imprinted on my brain. If there was a hidden clue, I failed to find it. Schmidt had no better luck than I. He kept stealing the photo, and I had to keep stealing it back; and I knew that if he had found something I overlooked, he wouldn’t be able to resist bragging about it. I made a point of arriving early at work so I could intercept the mail before Gerda messed around with it. I infuriated the switchboard operator with my daily demand of “Are you sure no one else called?”

She was sure.

Except for Schmidt’s comedy routine, it was a dull week. Even his appearance as a pint-sized Erich von Stroheim, complete with monocle, didn’t cheer me up. Schmidt’s eye muscles weren’t up to the job of retaining the monocle, it kept falling out, and whenever I looked back at him, all I saw was his rotund rump as he pawed at the snowdrifts looking for his prop. That pursuit ended when some woman started beating him with her purse and accusing him of trying to look up her skirts. I guess he talked her out of calling a cop. I didn’t intervene, since I wasn’t supposed to know who he was.

I’m not one of those unfortunate people who sink into a deep depression during the holidays. Usually I love Christmas, and Weihnachten in Bavaria is lots of fun. Streets and shops were strung with greens; Christmas trees sparkled in every square and plaza. The Kristkindlmarkt was in full swing, as it had been for over a hundred and fifty years; booths and stands crowded the square under the shadow of Der Alte Peter, who is not an elderly gentleman but an elderly church. In the evening, lanterns and candles and strings of rainbow lights shone like fallen stars in the blue dusk, and trumpeters on the church tower played the old carols; the clear, bright notes drifted down like music from heaven, blending with the gently falling snow. Every variety of Christmas decoration was for sale, from gilded gingerbread to handmade ornaments; and I lingered at the booths featuring the lovely carved creches. I couldn’t afford any of the ones I wanted, so I bought Pfeffernüsse and sugared almonds for Schmidt, and a gilded bare branch strung with hard candies—a kindly compromise of the old legend in which the saint brings sweeties to the good little children and switches to the naughty ones.

In other words, I did my damnedest to cultivate some Christmas spirit. I had only limited success. The gold bracelet I bought mother recalled the glitter of Helen’s diadem; a street sign reminded me that the small town of Dachau was only a few miles away and made me wonder why I was worrying about the fate of a few chunks of lifeless metal, compared to the wreckage of human life in that awful cataclysm.

Even the toy stores didn’t cheer me up. German toy stores are superb, but I was pretty sure my nieces and nephews would prefer copies of American superheroes made in Taiwan to the beautifully crafted castles and storybook dolls and stuffed, cuddly animals. I loaded up on heroes for the kids and consoled myself with a stuffed kitten. I adore stuffed animals, but I have a hard time building a collection because Caesar keeps eating them. The kitten was lifesized and amazingly lifelike—a Siamese with seal-brown ears and tail, a pink nose, and blue glass eyes. At the moment, however, I was not too fond of blue eyes, what with Schmidt dogging my every move and John not dogging me….

I also bought a robe and nightgown. They were Italian-made, sheer white batiste dripping with lace and embroidery. After I got back to work that day, I spread the robe out across the desk and stared at it. I cannot honestly say I do not know what possessed me to buy such a useless, extravagant item. I knew exactly what had possessed me. It wasn’t even my style; as my mother keeps insisting, I look better in tailored clothes.

When the telephone rang I lunged for it, hoping the caller would be someone interesting enough to take my mind off my increasing insanity.

At first I didn’t recognize his voice. Even after he had identified himself, I remained doubtful. “Are you sick or something? You sound funny.”

“Humor is not my aim,” said Tony. “This is a business call.”

“The word was ill-chosen,” I admitted. “Seriously—are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Illinois, of course. Are you going to the meetings this year?”

“Which meetings? Oh—Turin. No, I don’t think so.”

“You went last year.”

I had not taken him seriously when he said the call was business; one never knows when the IRS may be bugging one’s telephone. But the formal, almost accusatory tone was not like the Tony I knew.

“Last year the meetings were only sixty miles from Munich,” I explained patiently. “And there were several sessions on art history. Are you going?”

“Yes. I—uh—I had hoped to see you.”

“Well, you won’t unless you stop over in Munich.”

“May I? I wouldn’t want to interfere with your plans—”

“Tony, you sound like Miss Manners’ older brother. I’d love to see you. I can’t think of anything I’d like better. I have no plans—I’ll be all alone—”

“What about that weird little boss of yours?”

“Schmidt,” I said in exasperation. “His name is Schmidt, as you know perfectly well. I usually do spend Christmas with him unless I go home, but this year he’s going to his sister’s. He can’t stand the woman—she’s one of those tightlipped disapproving types—and he hates her husband, too; but she trapped him and he couldn’t think of an excuse—”

“Oh,” Tony said, in a sepulchral bass rumble, like Boris Karloff. “All right. How does the twenty-first suit you?”

I assured him nothing in this world or the next would give me greater pleasure than to pick him up at the airport on December 21.

“Okay,” Tony mumbled. “See you then.”

The click of the far-off receiver caught me with my mouth open and my rapturous enthusiasm half-expressed. He sounded as if he was even more depressed than I was. Instead of cheering one another, we might end up in a joint suicide pact. Then something else hit me. Tony had not asked me to marry him.

Tony always asked me to marry him. He had been asking me for years. One of the reasons why he disliked Schmidt was that he blamed the old boy for luring me from the primrose path that led to the cottage door and the little frilly aprons and the houseful of babies. This was completely unjust, since I wouldn’t have married Tony even if Schmidt had not offered me a job.

Not that I wasn’t fond of Tony, who is tall (really tall, I mean, six inches taller than I am), dark, and handsome, if you like the lean aesthetic type, which I definitely do. I met him at the midwestern college where we were both starving instructors, and we had spent one wild summer in Germany on the trail of a lost masterpiece of medieval sculpture. The successful climax of the hunt had won me a job offer from Schmidt, and it hadn’t hurt Tony’s career either; he was now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago with a consultative post at the Art Institute.

I loved Tony, but I wasn’t in love with him—nor was I in love with the idea of marriage as such. I’m not knocking the institution; it seems to work fine for a lot of people. But not for me. Not for a while, at any rate.

Anyway, he had probably decided to propose in person. That must be the explanation. I had only imagined he sounded odd. Maybe he was recovering from flu. Maybe my own evil mood had affected my hearing. He was always good company—dear old Tony—a face from home, someone with whom to share the festive season….

I started to feel more cheerful. Things were working out after all. It was a good thing John had not responded to my loony message. There were no two people I was less anxious to introduce than John and Tony. Unless it was John and Schmidt.

John’s failure to respond didn’t mean he was dead. He might not see the advertisement. He might see it and choose not to reply. A superstitious man might regard me as something of a jinx. Not only had I wrecked several of his business ventures, but I had been indirectly responsible for the infliction of grave bodily harm upon his person. The ad had only appeared a few days ago. He might yet…

If I married Tony, I would never have to spend Christmas alone ever again.

When I realized what I was thinking, I was so horrified I rushed out of the office and then had to go back for my coat. I really must be cracking up if that struck my subconscious as a legitimate excuse for matrimony. Christmas comes but once a year, for God’s sake.

The rest of the week was uneventful except for snow and sleet and Schmidt’s incompetent imitation of Super-Spy. Like the dim-witted heroine picking wildflowers along the railroad track, I was blissfully unaware of approaching danger. Actually, that isn’t a very good analogy. Trouble came at me, not along a single track, but from all directions at once, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to jump out of the way.

Gerda and I had a date to go and see the Christmas crèches at the Bayrisches Museum. We were friends again; we fight at least once a month, when she says or does something that bugs me and I yell at her, and then she cries and I apologize. It’s a tradition. Visiting the crèches was also a tradition, by Gerda’s definition. I think we had done it twice before. I agreed to go because she cried, and because it seemed like a fitting part of my campaign to work up some Christmas spirit.

The crèches really are sensational. Some are small settings of the traditional manger scene, like the modern versions people put under the tree, but the best ones are vast panoramas that would fill an entire living room—miniature reproductions of village scenes, with shops and stalls and houses, and all the inhabitants pausing in their daily chores to watch the Magi riding toward the stable. The most elaborate of them come from Italy, and they feature painted terra-cotta figures dressed in real velvets and brocades in the case of the Magi and their entourage, and detailed reproductions of contemporary peasant costumes in the case of the villagers.

Some of the scenes are so complex that you can see them over and over again and still find charming details you missed before. If I were a snob and a hypocrite, I would claim that Gerda’s naïve enjoyment enhanced my own more sophisticated expert’s appreciation, but in fact I got as big a kick out of it as she did.

“Ach, Vicky, see the little boy stealing apples from the fruit stand!”

“He’s the spitting image of my nephew Jim!”

“Do you think they had apples in December in the Holy Land?”

“Who cares? Look at the woman nursing the baby and gossiping with her neighbor on the next balcony.”

The corridors along which we moved with snail-like deliberation were dimly lighted in order to display the Krippen in their lighted cases to best advantage. The place was crowded, but the church-like atmosphere kept voices low and manners gentle. Except for the children. The little ones squealed with delight, the older ones with frustration as they tried to squirm through the barricade of adult bodies between them and the exhibits.

I hoisted one little imp up onto my shoulder, winning a thank-you from his Mutti, who had a baby in one arm and a bag of baby paraphernalia in the other. Gerda wrinkled her nose and moved away; like many self-professed sentimentalists, she really hates children. The imp and I discussed the scene; he was far less interested in the Christ Child and “die süssen Engelkinder” than in how the Kings stayed on the camels.

I put him down and joined Gerda at the next exhibit. She was showing signs of restlessness, for which I couldn’t entirely blame her. Even the miraculous birth pales after a dozen repetitions. “Look,” she muttered, poking me. “That man—he has been following me.”

So had a lot of other men, women, and children. I glanced in the direction she indicated and decided she was engaging in some wishful thinking; the light was poor and her follower moved on as I turned, but I caught a fleeting glimpse of a clean-cut profile, spare and handsome as a hawk’s, before darkness obscured it.

“He looks familiar,” I said thoughtfully.

“I suppose you think he is following you,” Gerda said.

“I don’t think he is following either of us. Gerda, you’re getting testy. Hunger, I expect. Let’s have a little snack; we’ve improved our minds long enough.”

After she had been stuffed with whipped-cream cakes and coffee, Gerda’s temper improved. We returned to work arm in arm, figuratively speaking.

I never lock my office door. I don’t keep anything valuable there, and the guard on duty in the Armor Room is supposed to prevent unauthorized persons from going up the stairs. I was only mildly surprised to discover that the lights were burning. Usually I turn them off when I leave, but I had been distraught, distracted, and bewildered when I left. I thought nothing of it until I approached the desk and looked at the untidy pages of my manuscript.

I’m always impressed by characters in books who can tell at a glance that their belongings have been searched. They must be compulsively neat people. Normally, I wouldn’t notice anything unusual unless my papers had been swept onto the floor and trampled underfoot. But I distinctly remembered struggling over a description of a Holbein miniature just before Tony’s call put an end to my labors. The page now on top of the pile began, “quivered as her slender aristocratic hands strove in vain to veil their rounded charms from the Duke’s lascivious eyes.”

Schmidt was the obvious suspect. He was always trying to find out what Rosanna would do next. But he wasn’t desperate enough to climb all those stairs, and as I glanced around, I saw other signs of disturbance: the drawer of a filing cabinet gaping open, a pile of books spilled sideways.

My first reaction was not alarm or annoyance, but hopeful anticipation. I had been waiting for something to happen. Maybe this was it. It, not John; if he had searched the office, I wouldn’t notice anything out of place.

Schmidt had finally gotten around to making a copy of the mysterious photograph. (I deduced that from the fact that he had stopped swiping it.) I kept it in the top right-hand drawer of my desk.

As I reached impetuously for the drawer, it did occur to me to wonder how the intruder could have passed the guard down below. He had been on duty when I came in; he had nodded and mumbled a sleepy “Grüss Gott,” but he had not mentioned a visitor.

There was a blur of motion and a grating rattle, and something sprang out of the opening, striking my hand with a sharp prick of pain. Something serpentine, brightly colored. I jumped back with a scream, nursing my stung finger, where a bright drop of blood gleamed like a ruby. The snake fell to the floor.

It was a toy snake. My scream turned to a roar of rage. There was only one person who would play a childish joke like that.

Not Schmidt. He doesn’t have a dram of meanness in his whole chubby body, and it takes malice to make a practical joker. No, it had to be Dieter. Dieter Spreng, assistant curator of preclassical art at the Antikenmuseum in Berlin, frustrated comic and would-be lecher. His credentials would have gotten him past the guard…. And he was probably still in the office. Practical jokes are no fun unless you can observe the hysteria of your victim. I pushed aside the screen concealing my domestic appliances, the only place in the room where anyone could hide.

He was doubled up and shaking with suppressed mirth, his arms hugging his midsection. Finding himself discovered, he let the laughter burst out in a genial baritone shout that was so contagious I felt my wrath fading.

“All right, Dieter,” I said. “Come on out and fight like a man.”

He straightened up and brushed his thick brown hair back from his flushed, grinning face. “Caught you, didn’t I? Herr Gott, what a scream! You could play Isolde—”

“Caught me is right.” I displayed my finger. Dieter’s wide mouth drooped; he caught my hand and pressed it to his lips.

“I will kiss it and make it well. Ach, Vicky, I am so sorry; the spring must have broken—”

“Oh, yeah?” I retrieved my hand and retreated to my desk. In the act of sitting, I had second thoughts and sprang up as if I had been stung. Dieter’s mouth still sagged in clownish chagrin, but his brown eyes sparkled with amusement as he watched me. “No, no,” he said soothingly. “There is nothing on the chair; I have given up the whoopee cushion. It was too crude.”

I lowered myself cautiously into the chair. Nothing burped, whooped, or grabbed my bottom, so I relaxed. Dieter picked up the little plastic snake and shoved it under my nose. “See, there is no needle or pin to sting. As I thought, the spring was too tight; the wire broke and scratched you. Let me kiss it again—”

“Never mind. I’ll live.” Studying his arrangements behind the screen—a chair, a half-drunk cup of coffee—I added, “You made yourself comfy, I see.”

“But I could not smoke.” Dieter lit one of his awful Gauloises and puffed out a cloud of blue smoke. “I thought you would smell it and be suspicious. Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, thanks, it might be loaded with saltpeter or laxatives. What are you doing here?”

He pulled up a chair and provided himself with an ashtray by dumping out the paperclips in a small ceramic bowl. He was dressed pour le sport, as he was fond of saying, in well-cut boots and ski pants and a cable-knit sweater in a heavenly heather blend that set off his rosy cheeks and bright brown hair. The antique silver ring on his right hand glowed in the lamplight as he knocked ashes off his cigarette.

“I am in Munich to consult with Frick at the Glyptothek,” he explained seriously.

“No, you’re not.”

“Of course I am not.” Dieter grinned. “I could not get the museum to pay my travel expenses unless I consulted with Frick. I am on holiday, in fact; I hoped I could persuade you to join me for a few days of skiing.”

“No, thanks. When I go on holiday I want to relax, not be on guard for snakes in the bed and buckets of water on the top of the door.”

“I don’t play jokes on the ladies who share my bed,” Dieter said, reaching for my hand.

“That’s not what I hear. Elise—”

“Oh, Elise.” Dieter’s fingers wriggled under the cuff of my sweater and squirmed up my arm. “One cannot resist teasing Elise; she is so funny when she is angry. You are different.”

“How?”

“You are much bigger than Elise,” Dieter explained. “You might strike me.”

“Good point.” Dieter’s arm was now entirely inside the sleeve of my sweater, and his eyes were crossed in intense concentration as he tried to stretch his fingers a strategic inch farther. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” I inquired with genuine curiosity.

Dieter put his cigarette in the ashtray. “I am thinking perhaps it would be better to start from the other direction—”

I pushed him away and pulled my sleeve down. “You are weird, Dieter. If I ever did decide to play games with you, it wouldn’t be in my office.”

“In a mountain chalet, then, with the snow falling and a fire on the hearth and a large furry bearskin in front of the fire—”

“I’m afraid not. I can’t get away right now.”

“Next week, then?”

“Sorry, I’m busy.”

“You are always busy.” Dieter lit another cigarette. “Why is it you always say no to me?”

I wasn’t sure myself. Dieter’s round face and dimples made him look like a kid, but he was well past the age of consent and not unattractive. Stocky and compactly built, he was an inch or two shorter than I, a consideration that didn’t seem to concern him any more than it did me. He was good company, when he wasn’t pulling chairs out from under people, and very good at his job. In a few years, when Dr. Fessl retired, he would probably be head curator—no mean accomplishment for a man in his mid-thirties. I loved him like a brother, when I didn’t hate him like a brother. But I had no desire to go to bed with him.

“Maybe some day,” I said soothingly.

For a moment I had feared he was really hurt by my excuses, but if so, he recovered quickly.

“Who is my rival?” he demanded in tragic accents. “Who is it I must kill to win your love?”

“It’s none of your business, actually,” I said. “But if you mean whom am I seeing next week—it’s Tony.”

“Tony. Ah, dear Tony.” Dieter chuckled and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “He looked so funny, when the chair broke under him—those long, thin legs and arms entwined like pretzels. How is he?”

I coughed and brushed at the smoke. “He’s fine, I guess. How is Elise?”

“I have not seen her for months. I hear her marriage is finally ended.”

I wondered how much Dieter had had to do with the breakup of that marriage. To judge from Elise’s complaints, it had not been a very stable arrangement anyway; but if her husband had got wind of her fun and games with Dieter during the meetings the year before…

We gossiped about old acquaintances for a while—academicians are no more immune from that vice than other people—and then Dieter got up to go. “I don’t suppose you will have dinner with me,” he said dispiritedly.

“Thanks, but I’d better not. I have to work late.”

“I will see if Gerda is busy, then.”

“You leave Gerda alone.”

“Why? She is a little plump, but I like ladies with something to hold on to. And she deserves a thrill, poor girl—” He ducked my half-joking swing at him and ambled toward the door. “Perhaps I will telephone next week, if I am still in Munich. I would be so happy to see dear old Tony again.”

I said that would be fine, though I had a feeling Tony wouldn’t be so happy to see dear old Dieter. He had too often been the butt of Dieter’s jokes.

Dieter didn’t quite close the door when he left. I slammed it shut and heard a grunt of surprise and a chuckle, and then the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. A cursory search of the room confirmed my suspicions. He had been a busy little lad. There was prune juice in the coffee pot and another wind-up toy in the filing cabinet—a tin bird that flapped its wings and cackled maniacally over a tin egg.

These offerings having been disposed of, I went back to work and actually finished the Holbein section of the article. Crazy Dieter had cheered me, not so much with his antique pranks as with…Well, why not admit it? A girl wants to be wanted, even by a man who likes women he can hold on to. It never rains but it pours, I thought complacently.

Pride goeth before a fall, and complacency before a kick in the fanny.

I worked late, partly to make up the time I had taken off to gad with Gerda, and partly in the hope of avoiding the worst of the rush-hour traffic. I was still feeling quite pleased with myself when I wended my way through the dungeons and out into the parking lot.

My car wouldn’t start.

I loved my little Audi, which I had owned for only a few months. It was the main reason I couldn’t afford a plane ticket to Minnesota that year. It was cute and foxy-colored, in keeping with its name; it had fake velvet upholstery in an elegant pale gold shade, and a stereo and a tape deck and fancy wheel covers. It had given me faithful service, and it got fifty kilometers to the gallon.

So, naturally, I got out and kicked the tires and called it bad names.

The janitor had left, but the night watchman was on duty. Hearing my curses, he emerged from his cubbyhole and joined me under the hood. The only thing he was able to contribute was a flashlight; he didn’t know any more about engines than I did, and after we had tried all the obvious easy things, to no avail, he suggested a mechanic. I replied with only a forgivable degree of sarcasm that it was a brilliant suggestion that never would have occurred to me, and where did he think we would find one at this hour?

He said he’d get right on it. I decided I might as well go home—there was no telling how long repairs would take. I went grumpily back into the building looking for Schmidt. His car was in the parking lot, but Schmidt himself was nowhere to be found.

There was nothing for it but to take the tram and then a bus; I live in the suburbs, near Grünwald, on account of my dog needing a yard.

The trams were still crowded with late workers and Christmas shoppers. I had to stand, squashed in between ranks of wet, tired, annoyed people. Shortly after we left Residenzplatz, I spotted Schmidt. He was wearing a bright red-and-green babushka with strands of gray horsehair sticking out all around the edges, a pair of dark glasses, and a purple scarf over the lower part of his face, to hide his mustache. I had no trouble seeing him, despite his diminutive stature, because nobody was anywhere near him. It wasn’t hard to understand why people were giving him a wide berth; he looked like an escaped lunatic.

There was a lot of inadvertent contact as people Were shaken, jostled, and pushed against one another; but all at once a specific contact brought me bolt upright and fuming. I turned my head and found myself staring into the wide innocent hazel eyes of a man standing directly behind me. He was the only one who could have given me that impertinent pinch; but instead of voicing my displeasure, I stood gaping in paralyzed silence. The only thing that kept me upright was the press of bodies around me.

He was dressed like a proper young businessman, in a dark tweed coat and snappy Tyrolean hat with a Gamsbart in the band. A trim dark mustache framed his mouth. What had he done to make his mouth look like that—so soft, so pink, so primly innocent? His mouth wasn’t soft; it was hard and knowledgeable and very far from innocent….

My own lips felt as if they had been sprayed with quick-drying lacquer. They were still half-parted and incapable of speech when he turned away. His timing was perfect. Before I could get my shaken wits together, the tram jolted to a stop at one of the major transfer points and people crowded toward the doors. He mingled with the others; several other men were wearing hats like his.

I started clumsily after him, stumbling over shopping bags and feet, but I knew the futility of pursuit. He would have been among the first off the tram; and before I could follow, he’d be gone, swallowed up by the rainy darkness.

An acerbic comment from a stout Hausfrau called my attention to the fact that I was sitting on her lap. The tram had started, throwing me off balance. I apologized and removed my offending person. She touched my arm.

“Entschuldigen Sie, Fräulein—I did not realize…You are ill? Sit down, here is a place….”

By the time we neared the end of the line and my transfer point, I had recovered. The tram was almost empty. I checked to make sure Schmidt was sitting in splendid isolation at the far end of the car, his face concealed behind a book he was holding upside down, before I reached into my coat pocket.

My pockets are usually a disgrace, bulging with objects—tissues, half-eaten candy bars, coins, keys, receipts, shopping lists. I had no trouble identifying John’s contribution to the clutter, though it was no wonder he had had a hard time squeezing it in. The stiff paper felt cold on my fingers as I pulled it out.

It was a postcard.

The Saint Columba altar piece is one of the gems of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and a picture of it is a reasonable method of indicating a rendezvous point—not only a specific building, but a specific room in a large, rambling structure. But surely it was a diabolical coincidence that he had chosen a card showing one of my favorite details—the head of a man, beaky and handsome as a hawk, oddly familiar.

When I got off the tram, my bus was waiting, headlights cutting through the fog, steam snorting from its exhaust like the extrusions of a dragon with stomach trouble. I started to board it. Then I turned toward the chubby shadow that hovered in the gloom behind the lights of the station.

“Come on, Schmidt,” I said. “You don’t want to miss this bus; they only run every half hour.”

Three

SCHMIDT HAD NOT OBSERVED THE ENCOUNTER. I didn’t think he had, but I wanted to make sure. That was my primary reason for blowing his cover, as he put it; but I was also concerned about the little madman’s health. When he removed his bright purple scarf and blew his bright scarlet nose, I saw that he had the beginning of a nasty cold. I persuaded him to retain the babushka, in order to protect his bald head; although I must say the horsechair and the mustache made an unusual combination.

He was a little sulky at being found out, but the prospect of a convivial evening with his favorite subordinate soon cheered him. (I know I’m his favorite; it would be disingenuous of me to deny it.) I told him about Dieter, and he was chuckling over the plastic snake when we reached the house.

Caesar was delighted to see him. Schmidt was not so delighted to see Caesar. I helped Schmidt up off the floor and settled him in a chair. By the time I had fed Caesar and let him out and let him in and wiped his paws and removed Schmidt’s wet shoes and socks and rubbed his feet with a towel and hung his soggy babushka to dry and provided him with beer, food, and an ashtray for his smelly cigar, I was devoutly thankful I had not strayed down the path of domesticity, frilly aprons, and babies. On the other hand, a baby couldn’t be more of a nuisance than Schmidt.

After he had had a few beers and eaten the gargantuan meal I prepared, he decided to spend the night. He often did that when he had had a little more to drink than was legal, or whenever he had left his car at the museum. I fished out the flannel nightshirt I keep for such occasions, stuffed him full of cold remedies, and tucked him in bed.

Then, at last, I had leisure to think about what had happened.

It wasn’t John’s reappearance that shook me so much as my reaction to his reappearance. Typical, that epiphany—including the pinch—but I wondered if he had chosen a personal appearance instead of a more discreet response, via letter or telephone, in the hope of getting an unguarded display of emotion from me. He had certainly gotten one. No vapid heroine in a romance novel could have put on a better show—sudden pallor, pounding pulse, weak knees. Worse still, I had recognized him instantly, disguise and all. “Love looks not with the eyes but with the heart….” Or was it “with the mind”? John would know. He was always quoting Shakespeare.

The back of the postcard was blank except for the printed legend identifying the picture and the artist: Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400), Anbetung der Könige. My face must have looked just as blank as I studied it, for one essential piece of information seemed to be missing: the time of the assignation. Unless he expected me to stand obediently in front of the damned painting from opening hour to closing every day until further notice….

I worked myself up into a state of righteous indignation before I noticed the faint pencil line under one of the dates. Fourteen hundred…hours? Two P.M.

“Oh, cute,” I muttered. Caesar raised his head and looked at me inquiringly. “It’s all your fault,” I told him.

The accusation was totally unjust, but Caesar lowered his head and looked guilty. That must be why some people like dogs; they can be made to feel guilty about anything, including the sins of their owners. Cats refuse to take the blame for anything—including their own sins.

Schmidt was fit as a fiddle the next day and generously credited my TLC for curing his cold. His gratitude did not prevent him from trailing me when I left the Museum for what was supposed to look like a late lunch. I ditched him without difficulty or compunction by running a changing light on Sendlingerstrasse, under the very nose of a traffic cop. Schmidt tried to go through on the red and of course got pulled over.

Since there had been no date or day of the week specified on the postcard, I assumed I was supposed to turn up at the earliest possible moment, i.e., the following day. I wondered what John would have done if Rogier van der Weyden had been born in, say, 1860—and then cursed myself for stupidity. Naturally he would select a painter whose vital statistics coincided with the time he found convenient.

On a wintry weekday when most people were busy Christmas shopping, the museum was not crowded. There were only half a dozen art-lovers in the room dominated by van der Weyden’s glorious rendition of the Nativity; a quick glance assured me that John was not one of them.

Strictly speaking, the painting is not a Nativity. Christian iconography is painstakingly specialized. Except for the Crucifixion, no subject was so popular with artists as the birth of Christ, and every separate incident has its own designation and its own artistic traditions. This painting, which had once adorned an altar in Cologne, shows the Adoration of the Magi—the Anbetung der Könige. Though the Virgin is not at the center of the canvas, the composition is so admirable that the beholder’s eye is led inexorably to where she sits holding the Baby on her knee. A benevolent brown cow looks admiringly over her shoulder as the first of the Kings kneels to kiss the outstretched hand of the Child. The colors are wonderful, they smolder on the canvas—the Virgin’s rich blue robe, the scarlet mantle of the second Magi, the crimson-and-gold brocade tunic of the third King.

I’ve had a crush on that King since I was sixteen. He is dressed in the height of fifteenth-century fashion, his full-flowing sleeves falling to mid-calf, his legs (a little thin, but not bad) encased in skintight hose. He has just swept off his cap to honor the Holy Family and his brown hair falls in wavy disarray over his forehead. If I ever saw a man who looked like that…

Suddenly I realized that I had seen a man who looked like that. No wonder the half-glimpsed profile of the man who (Gerda hoped) was following us had looked familiar. The same oblique shadows under the cheekbones, the same sharp angle of the jaw, the same indentation at the corner of the firm lips. What was more, I knew that man—or his double. A man I hadn’t seen for almost a year…

John had to jog my elbow before I noticed him. He begged my pardon in clipped idiomatic German and moved away, but not before I had seen his nostrils flare with annoyance. The conceited creature had expected to find me palpitating with girlish expectation, instead of intent on a work of art.

I followed him on a seemingly leisurely tour of the exhibits; actually it didn’t take more than ten minutes for him to reach the exit. Once on the street, he set a pace sufficiently brisk that I would have had to run to catch up with him, which, for a number of reasons, I was not about to do. Turning the next corner, he stopped at a parked car and unlocked the door. I arrived as he opened it; he stood back, motioning me in with a graceful bow. Perfect timing, as usual.

The car was a BMW, the latest model, black, sleek, and glossy. I got in. John got in. Neither of us spoke while he drove, with painstaking attention to the laws of the road, along Gabesbergs-trasse, past Königsplatz, with its museums and its pretentious pseudo-Greek gateway, and finally onto a quiet side street where he pulled in to the curb and stopped. He sat watching the rearview mirror until a Fiat that had been behind us went on by. Then he turned to face me.

His eyes were still hazel, but the mustache was no longer in evidence. His eyebrows were darker and bushier; you would be surprised how drastically a small change like that can alter a person’s appearance. There was a new scar on his face, perceptible only at close range—a thin white line running from the corner of one eye across his temple and under his hair.

I had thought of a number of things I wanted to say in that first private confrontation—some cutting, some subtly sarcastic, and all, of course, cool, calm, and detached. Now that the moment had come, I couldn’t speak or move. All I could see was that small pale scar, surely the memento of his encounter with my would-be killer. It had barely missed his eye. I wondered how many other new scars marked his body. I wondered why he had taken such a terrible risk…and, most of all, I wondered why he just sat there, staring dumbly, as I sat staring back at him.

Finally his eyes shifted; they scanned my face, with painstaking slowness, feature by feature. Then he raised his hand. One fingertip touched my cheek and glided lightly from the cheekbone to the corner of my mouth, along the curve of my jaw up to my ear, where his other fingers joined it to twine through my hair, cupping the back of my head. I was not conscious of other movement, his or mine, until our lips met.

He withdrew as delicately as he had advanced, settling himself behind the wheel as behind a barricade and presenting another barricade in the form of a bland, impassive profile.

“Cigarette?” he inquired politely.

“I don’t smoke. How trite of you, John.”

“I have become trite—commonplace—conventional. High time, wouldn’t you say?”

He was not as cool as he pretended. There was the slightest possible tremor of his hand as he reached for the lighter. I thought I was doing better until I realized I was still leaning toward him, lips parted and expectant, hands reaching. I sat up, smoothed my skirt, and folded my hands primly in my lap.

“So you’ve become respectable. What have you been doing since I saw you last?”

“As you say, I’ve become respectable. Nice little cottage in the country, nice honest job….”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it, any more than I could help asking the next question.

“Nice little wife?”

That shocked John out of his calm. “Good God, no. What a horrible thought.”

I didn’t say anything. After a moment, John inquired, “And you?”

“I don’t have a wife either.”

The curl of his lip showed what he thought of that cheap quip. I didn’t think much of it myself.

“It’s only been six months,” I said. “I’d have to be a fast worker to locate and capture a husband in that space of time.”

“You’re too modest. I assumed you always had a few candidates waiting in the wings.”

“And that I would be so devastated by your presumed demise that I would seek solace in the arms of the first personable male who made me an offer?”

John blew out a smoke ring. “You knew I wasn’t dead.”

“I was…almost sure.”

The catch in my voice was slight—and, I assure you, unpremeditated—but John caught it. I was afraid he’d laugh or make some mocking reply. Instead his bushy eyebrows drew together, and there was no amusement in his voice when he said, “I suppose you feel I ought to have sent you word.”

“Not at all. Neither of us is under any obligation to the other.”

“Neither? You ungrateful wench, I risked a horrible death for your sake.”

Just like old times, I thought, and sailed happily into the fray. “My sake, hell. I may have been first on the death list, but you were a close second. It was kill or be killed, buster.”

“That is a highly questionable assumption. I swim like an eel. I could easily have made my getaway while he was slaughtering you and the old gent.”

“The old gent raised a memorial to you.”

“I know. What a tasteless monstrosity,” John said disgustedly. “Honestly, Vicky, couldn’t you have exercised a little control? Those mourning cupids, with bums like cups of custard, weeping through their doughy fingers—”

“I designed those cupids, I’ll have you know.”

The muscles at the corner of his mouth quivered. I went on, “Unfortunately, I couldn’t persuade him to use the motto I favored.”

“Which was?”

“‘He hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows.’”

The muscles gave up the fight and stretched into a broad, appreciative grin. “Oh, lovely. Couldn’t have done better myself. Well, I appreciate the thought, darling. Shall we call it square? The absolute dreadfulness of that monument makes up for any neglect on my part.”

“Square,” I agreed. It was the only possible way of dealing with John, forgetting the past and letting bygones be bygones. If I started adding up all the aggravations he had caused me, I’d get mad, and I was about to ask his help.

“So what are you up to now?” John asked curiously. “I dare not hope it was for the sake of my beaux yeux that you framed that enticing advertisement.”

“You are right about that. It was eye-catching, wasn’t it?”

“Caught mine, certainly.”

“In which newspaper?”

I hadn’t really expected him to fall for it. He chuckled. “That would be telling. So what’s the scam, love?”

I told him.

The story sounded even more tenuous and fantastic than I had realized. John didn’t sneer or snicker, but he wasn’t enthusiastic either. Lips pursed, he shook his head. “Is that all you’ve got? It’s a picturesque scenario, my dear, but…”

“I can show you the photograph,” I said. “If the jewels are copies, they are damned good ones.”

“No need,” John said abstractedly. “You’re the expert; I accept your conclusions.”

I was absurdly flattered by the compliment; he didn’t hand them out freely. Then he added, looking at me from under those curly long lashes, “Did you by chance wonder whether I sent you the photo?”

I shrugged. “Your name does leap to mind whenever the question of art forgery arises.”

“Thank you,” John said sincerely. His brow clouded; he then said in a wistful voice, “I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it. It could be the quintessential swindle of all time. Do you know what happened in Berlin on the night of May first, 1945?”

“Yes,” I said shortly. I don’t neglect essential research, even if it doesn’t make for pleasant reading. “At least I know the outlines. Some of the most prized objects from the Berlin museums, including the Trojan gold, were in a bomb shelter in the Tiergarten bunker. It was a fortress—massive concrete walls, antiaircraft batteries bristling from walls and roof—”

“Containing troop quarters, a hospital, and an air-raid shelter for fifteen thousand people,” John said. “Because of its strong fortifications and its location, in the grounds of the zoo in central Berlin, it was one of the last places to be taken. In fact, it wasn’t taken; the commandant surrendered after the general order had gone out at midnight on the first of May. The Russians entered the bunker several hours later—before dawn.”

“So it was still dark,” I said. “Raining, too—”

“Rain was the least of it.” John lit another cigarette. “The city was a scene from the inferno—church spires burning like giant candles, Russian tanks rumbling along Unter den Linden and the Wilhelmstrasse, screaming mobs fighting their way through the flaming, rubble-strewn streets. There was a heavy artillery bombardment, and hand-to-hand fighting, throughout the zoo and park area. The commandant of the Tiergarten bunker told his men that those who wanted to try breaking out before the surrender could do so.”

“So people were going in and out—”

“Mostly in,” John said. “What you must realize is that the Russians were not a homogeneous group. The first ones to reach Berlin were highly disciplined shock troops; the terrified inhabitants, expecting the worst, were surprised and relieved when they were treated with relative decency. The second wave was something else again—a motley medley of illiterate tribesmen from the steppes—Karelians, Kazakhs, Tatars, Mongols, you name it—who could barely speak Russian and who had never seen a light bulb or a W.C.”

“I know that. And I don’t want to hear—”

John went on as if I had not spoken, his voice, as cool and dispassionate as that of a lecturer. “There were thirty thousand people crammed into the shelter in the bunker—twice the number it had been designed to hold. There were patients in the hospital, nurses, doctors, guards. The commandant handed over the keys; the Russians went in. Then, to coin a phrase, all hell broke loose. Patients were shot in their beds, nurses—” He broke off at my involuntary gesture of protest and a bleak smile touched his lips. “War is hell, as they say. While all this was going on, the Russian troops reached the third level, where the museum treasures were stored.

“What happened then is anybody’s guess. The Soviets never turned over the museum pieces to the joint commission on missing and stolen art. Some of them have resurfaced since, but it is conceivable that the gold of Troy is still thriftily stored away in a Kremlin vault. It may have been lost or destroyed during the journey east. A group of those untutored laddies from the steppes may have smashed it to fragments in the boyish exuberance of victory. They wouldn’t have realized its value—”

“There is another possibility,” I said. “Someone may have got to it before the Russians did. Someone who did know its value. In all that pandemonium, he could have smuggled it out of the building and out of the city. It didn’t bulk that large. Schliemann bundled the whole lot into his wife’s shawl when he removed it from the excavation.”

“Anything is possible,” John said. He thought for a second and then added, “Almost anything. See here, Vicky, there are a number of points about that scenario of yours that make my hackles rise. Why was the photograph sent to you? Why didn’t the sender give you more information? Your advertisement was a wee bit misleading, you know. Black Michael and Rupert of Hentzau may not be hiding in the woodshed, but something nasty is; the bloodstain you described didn’t come from a cut finger. If the sender is still alive, why hasn’t he communicated with you?”

“He could have had an accident.”

“Tripped on a cobblestone and cut himself on a beer tin,” said John in his most disagreeable voice. “And some kindly passerby found the envelope and posted it?”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” I said. “First you tell me there’s no evidence and then you imply—”

“That the only evidence is bloody,” John said poetically. “Either way, I don’t like it.”

“Then you’re not interested?”

“No.”

The flat finality of his refusal caught me unawares. I stared at him, disconcerted and surprised; he shifted uneasily and turned away. “Give it up, Vicky. You’re wasting your time.”

“Just tell me one thing. Are there any rumors in the art underworld about the Trojan gold?”

“I have severed my connections with that ambiance,” John said primly. “I am leading a life of quiet, honest—”

“Sure you are. That’s why you’re in disguise—why you keep looking nervously in rearview mirrors, why you are so astonishingly well informed about the Battle of Berlin and the architecture of the Tiergarten bunker.”

“Oooh, what an evil, suspicious mind you have,” John murmured. “I know a lot about a lot of things, my dear.”

“Military history is not your specialty. Would you care to swear on something sacred to you—your own precious hide for example—that your interest in the gold of Troy has not been recently reawakened by some of those rumors I mentioned?”

“You cut me to the quick.” John pressed his hand against his presumably aching heart and gave me a soulful look. “In order to dispel your suspicions and restore that perfect amity that should mark our relationship, I will make a clean breast of it. I owe the information to my dear old dad.”

The statement surprised me so that I forgot, momentarily, that he hadn’t denied the allegation. One tended to think of John as self-engendered, like Minerva from Jove’s headache.

He went on blandly, “You’d remember every grisly detail, too, if you had heard them as often as I did. The Battle of Berlin was the old boy’s favorite topic of conversation when he got to reminiscing about the good old days in general and his own heroism in particular. He’d rave on for hours about how Churchill tried to convince the Allies to drive through to Berlin, and how bloody Eisenhower held back. He had studied the subject intensively, and I was the only one who’d listen to him. Or rather, who could be coerced into listening. I was young and frail and helpless—”

“And abused and whatever,” I agreed. “Is that why you became a pacifist?”

“Because of Papa’s ghoulish war stories?” John grinned. “I wouldn’t call myself a pacifist. It’s impossible to convince some people of the error of their ways without hitting them as often and as hard as one possibly can. I’m simply opposed to people hitting me.”

“Emulating dear old Dad’s heroism is not your aim?”

“Emphatically not. Which is why I am presently avoiding publicity. In case it has slipped your mind, I am still being sought by the police of several countries, including Germany.”

“Public enemy number one.”

“More like number one hundred and ten. I never aspired to greatness. Neither do I aspire to spending ten to fifteen years in prison.”

“So you won’t help me.”

“No.”

“All right.” I reached for the handle of the door.

John’s hand closed over mine. “Don’t be a sorehead. Let me buy you a drink and we’ll reminisce about old times.”

“No, thanks. You can drop me at my car if you will. It’s parked near the gallery.”

Conversation during the drive back was minimal. His brow unclouded, his hands light on the wheel, John whistled tunefully as he drove. I recognized the song: “Oh Mistress Mine, Where Are You Roving?”

Good question. John acted like a man who was at peace with the world, having fulfilled a tedious duty to an old acquaintance. His behavior was unexceptional, his logic was unassailable—and he had been courteous enough to refrain from hinting, even obliquely, that I must have invented the whole preposterous story as an excuse for trying to locate him.

I could have killed him.

“That’s my car,” I said, pointing.

“I know,” said John, driving past.

“Of course you do. I should send you the mechanic’s bill.”

“I trust it wasn’t excessive,” John said anxiously. “There were only a few minuscule wires dislocated.” He turned the corner and stopped. “This is a bit more private,” he explained. “I presume you’d rather not be seen in my company.”

“You mean you’d rather not be seen in mine.”

“Just a precaution. You do have an untidy habit of attracting predators.” Before I could reply to this blow below the belt—the most recent set of predators had been put on my trail by John himself—he leaned across me and opened my door.

I took the hint. For fear of scraping his precious tires, he had stopped a safe distance from the curb, and I stepped out into six inches of icy slush.

I turned. “I won’t bother putting an advertisement in the papers when I find the gold. You’ll see the headlines.”

“Would you mind letting go of the door?”

“Oh—sorry.”

Instead of closing it, he remained stretched out across the seat, peering up at me from under lowered brows. “You aren’t going to take my well-meant advice?”

“No.”

John’s frown deepened. “Do you know something you haven’t told me?”

“A few ideas are swimming briskly about in my head,” I said. “But they needn’t concern you. You aren’t interested.”

Still prone, he took a card and a pen from his pocket. “I might be able to extend a few tentacles into the old-boy network. See if anything is stirring.”

I watched him scribble on the card. “I’d appreciate that. But please don’t bother giving me a phone number; it would just turn out to be the Soviet chancellery or the Society for the Prevention of Extramarital Sex.”

John grinned reluctantly, but held on to the card. “I’ll be in touch. We might have dinner. Or perhaps a spot of extramarital—”

“Sorry. I’m saving myself for Tony.”

“Who’s Tony?”

“An old friend of mine. He’s coming all the way from Chicago to spend Christmas with me. He’s an assistant professor—six-five, tall, dark, and handsome.” I don’t know why I went on talking; I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “If Tony should fail me, I’m afraid I would have to consider Dieter’s application before yours. He’s shorter than you are, but he’ll be a curator at the Antikenmuseum by the time he’s forty. A nice, honest job.”

John propped his chin on his hands and politely smothered a yawn. “Do go on,” he urged. “How far down the list am I?”

The slush had soaked through my supposedly waterproof boots and my feet were getting numb. “Never mind,” I snapped. “I’ll be seeing you. Or not, as the case may be.”

“Take this.” He handed me the card.

“Well!” I said, examining it.

John’s smile shone with seraphic innocence. “It’s an answering service,” he murmured.

The door slammed; the car pulled away.

“Bastard,” I said, staring after it.

I had spoken English; but many Münchener understand the language. A woman passing along the sidewalk stopped and looked at me. “Aren’t they all, dearie,” she said.

It was a good thing I had to keep my foot on the gas as I drove back to work. Otherwise I’d have been tempted to kick myself.

Though I felt sure he hadn’t meant to do so, John had given me a clue with one casual question. He hadn’t asked why the photograph had been sent to me. He had asked why the photograph had been sent to me. The stress made all difference. Why send it to me, of all people? And why in heaven’s name hadn’t it occurred to me to ask myself the question?

I knew why I hadn’t asked myself, and the answer did me no credit. Vanity, all is vanity, saith the poet. Whom else would a repentant thief look up but the great Victoria Bliss, art historian extraordinaire and famous amateur sleuth?

Which was nonsense. I wasn’t famous. In the field of pre-Hellenic art, I wasn’t even well known. I had not written on the subject or lectured about it.

Somewhere, at some time, I must have met the sender of that photograph, talked to him—bragged, more likely—about my status and my expertise.

I had no opportunity to explore the hypothesis that afternoon. When I dashed into the museum, already ten minutes late for a meeting, Schmidt was lying in wait for me. He was furious—not because I was late, but because I had eluded him earlier—and I had to stand there in my wet, icy boots while he bawled me out.

The meeting lasted for over two hours, and then I had a dozen odds and ends to deal with. When the long day was over, I drove straight home without bothering to see whether Schmidt was following me.

The first thing I did was to call the number on the card John had given me. It turned out to be an answering service, just as he had said. I had expected some kind of practical joke, and it wasn’t until the bored voice asked for whom I was calling that I realized I didn’t know.

“John Smythe?” I mumbled, making it a question.

“I am sorry, we have no client of that name.”

Hot with fury and embarrassment, I was about to hang up when it hit me. “Schmidt,” I said. “John—Johann Schmidt.”

“Your message?”

“Never mind,” I growled, and hung up.

Caesar growled too, and lunged for the phone. The strange black object had offended me; he was anxious to mete out the punishment it deserved. I pushed him away and was about to replace the phone when it rang. The caller was Schmidt, suggesting he drop by and take me out to dinner. I didn’t ask where he was; I suspected he was calling from the kiosk on the corner. I told him no, I didn’t want to go out, I was catching a cold, I had a headache and a lot of work to do. He didn’t believe me. Finally I hung up on him.

The phone kept ringing. Schmidt again; then Gerda, wanting me to go out with a cousin of hers who was in town for the holidays. I know what Gerda’s cousins are like—she had set me up with a blind date once before—so I declined. Schmidt called again. Another friend called, asking me to a party I didn’t want to go to. Schmidt called again. After that I unplugged the phone.

It took me some time to get the things I wanted together. The appointment books, receipts, and letters made a dusty, depressing heap on the coffee table—four years of my life reduced to a pile of papers. There was a pot of black coffee on the table, too, and Caesar’s head was on my feet. I didn’t have the heart to push it off, even after my toes went numb. Poor guy, he led a boring life—not even a pile of paper to remind him of past triumphs and past failures. He was alone all day; though he definitely preferred people to other forms of animal life, I suppose he’d have settled for a squirrel or even a mouse to keep him company. I had no mice, and although there were plenty of squirrels around, I couldn’t leave Caesar outside when I was away from home. Not only did he bark maniacally at the slightest sound or movement—to the extreme annoyance of my neighbors—but he could get over or under or through any fence constructed by human hands.

I sipped my coffee and gloomily contemplated the pile of papers. I had been meaning to organize them for lo these many years.

Somehow I wasn’t at all surprised when the first paper I plucked out of the pile turned out to be the bill from that funny little hotel in Trastevere. A bill for one night…and I had spent the first few hours of that night repairing the damages John had sustained during what someone—not me, I assure you—might refer to as the Roman caper. The bruises, cuts, and bullet holes had not impaired what he quaintly referred to as his vital functions.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror across the room, and even though nobody could see me but Caesar, I hastily wiped the foolish smile off my face. Damn the man, why couldn’t I stay mad at him? And why had I kept the hotel bill? I had been on an expense account, but I had not submitted that bill because I’d have had to explain to Schmidt why it was for a double room and a quite excessive amount of room service…. Actually, I had planned to present the bill to John. He had left it for me to pay—the first time, but not the last, he had pulled that stunt.

“Bastard,” I said halfheartedly.

“Grrrr,” said Caesar.

I threw the hotel bill in the wastebasket. Next to go were a few crumpled travel brochures from Rothenburg, the delicious little medieval town in Bavaria where Tony and I had spent one summer tracking down the Riemenschneider reliquary. More fond memories evoked—the grim black tower and the grisly crypt at midnight, the mummified face of a long-dead count of Drachenburg glaring up at us from the coffin we had violated, Tony bleeding all over my best nightgown after being stabbed by a walking suit of armor…. The men in my life didn’t have an easy time of it. One could not help wondering why they kept coming back for more.

Tony really had not sounded like himself. Had that worm finally turned? If the data for which I was presently searching substantiated my half-formed hypothesis, the question might have a new and poignant meaning.

The next lot of papers was quickly sorted—family letters, pictures of nieces and nephews, postcards, more travel folders. Among them was a letter from my friend Gustav in Sweden, enclosing a snapshot of the famous memorial to John. It was even worse than I had remembered. Weeping cupids, a lugubrious life-sized angel with ragged wings draped unbecomingly over her bowed head, scrolls and drooping flowers and banners hanging limp at half-mast, and, as a crowning touch, two huge lions, modeled after the one at Lucerne, with muzzles resting on their outsized paws.

I fished the hotel bill out of the wastebasket and put it in an envelope with the snapshot and a few other odds and ends—every scrap in my possession that had reference to John Smythe, Esquire, alias Johann Schmidt, alias Al Monkshood, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. Mark it “Bygone follies of my youth” and file it…in the fire.

However, I do not have a fireplace, so I crammed the papers back into the carton from which they had come and got down to business. The brief journey into nostalgia had convinced me that my hunch was correct, and that I had not overlooked any other possibility. I knew what I was searching for. I had taken the pictures only the year before, but they were jumbled in with all the snapshots I had been meaning to sort and put in albums for ten years, so it took a while to find them. I spread them out across the coffee table.

I am not a good photographer and my camera is a cheap Instamatic, but it is hard to take bad pictures of Garmisch-Partenkirchen when the mountains are capped with snow and the wind blows strong from the south, producing brilliant blue skies and air clear as crystal. Garmisch is in the Bavarian Alps, about sixty miles south of Munich. The Winter Olympics were held there—long before my time—and the facilities provided for the Games have made Garmisch a popular winter resort. It is also an ideal spot for a conference—lots of hotels and meeting rooms, as well as certain sources of entertainment, such as bars and restaurants, which are just as important, even to serious souls like the members of the International Society for the Study of Ancient and Medieval Antiquities.

A group of us had decided to avoid the high-priced hotels of Garmisch in favor of a more picturesque ambiance. The gang of six, Dieter had named us; and it was Dieter—wasn’t it?—who had found the hotel in a small village southeast of Garmisch. Transportation was no problem since three of the group had their own cars, and there was a little, lumbering local bus. Anyway, we didn’t attend many of the meetings.

Gasthaus Hexenhut was as charming as Dieter—if it was Dieter—had claimed. I had taken several pictures of it, with the pointy-topped hill that had given it its name looming up behind it. The sign over the door claimed “seit 1756,” and although the hotel might not have been that old, the building certainly was. It had green shutters and wooden scrollwork under the eaves, and painted sprays of flowering branches encircling the doors and windows. Balconies outside many rooms offered guests spectacular views of mountain scenery, crowned by the perpetual snows of the Zugspitze. The big comfortable rooms were furnished with antiques and with magnificent tile stoves, warmer than central heating. There were down comforters on all the beds, and the restaurant featured food as unpretentious as it was excellent.

I had persuaded one of the waiters to take a picture of the entire group in front of the hotel. There was Tony, towering over the others; me next to him; Dieter next to me—his left hand was behind my head, making a graphically suggestive gesture. Then Elise Cellier of the Louvre, slim and petite in her fancy blue ski outfit. Rosa D’Addio from the University of Turin was as dark as Elise was fair and as sternly intellectual as Elise was frivolous. Sandwiched between them was a man I had known only by reputation until that meeting: Jan Perlmutter from East Berlin. He was built like one of the Greek statues in the museum of which he was an official, but his most conspicuous feature was his hair—tight fair curls that clung closely to his beautifully shaped skull and shone with the rare glint of true red-gold.

Poor Rosa had taken one look at Jan and had fallen flat on her face, literally as well as figuratively; there was an icy patch on the pavement, and she was so busy staring at him she forgot to look where she was walking. Though Elise was supposed to be with Dieter, she was not unmoved by the Greek god; Jan spent a good deal of his time trying to elude one or the other or both. Maybe he didn’t always try. I paid little attention to the proceedings; Tony and I were renewing old acquaintances. If Tony hadn’t been there, I might have taken a friendly interest in Jan myself. Or I might not; his humor was a bit too heavy-handed and his manners were too formal for my tastes. In fact, I had been a little surprised when he asked to join our frivolous group.

The conference had officially ended the morning I took the pictures. We were celebrating, looking forward to a few days of skiing, drinking beer, and so on. Especially so on. We must have had a few beers already, to judge from some of the antics I had photographed: Dieter burying a wildly gesticulating Elise in a pile of snow; Dieter upside down in a snowbank with only his feet protruding; Jan gravely constructing a snowman as anatomically accurate as the medium allowed, assisted by both Elise and Rosa; Tony leering insanely into the lens of the camera in blurred close-up.

That was the last of that group; dodging Tony, I had slipped and fallen and sprained my ankle. So, while the rest of them were on the slopes the next day, I languished in the hotel with my foot up.

The manager of the hotel couldn’t have been sweeter. When he learned of my misadventure, he sent flowers, food, wine, and his own cane—a stout, solid article decorated from foot to curved handle with the little metal-and-enamel insignia that are the badges of local hiking societies. Reading the cane occupied me for a good fifteen minutes and amused me no end. With its aid, I was able to hobble around; and later that evening, when my so-called pals had abandoned me to whoop it up in the nightclubs of Garmisch, Herr Hoffman invited me to join him for a brandy.

He explained with grave courtesy that he thought I might be getting bored with the four walls of my room, and that was certainly true; but the contents of his private sitting room would have been worth a visit even if I had been able-bodied and otherwise occupied. There were several examples of the painted peasant furniture called Bauernmalerei, including a huge Schrank, or cupboard, as fine as any I had seen in the Bayrisches Museum. Each of the double doors had a pair of painted panels—formal bouquets of tulips, roses, and lilies. The creature comforts were nice, too—twenty-year-old brandy; a fire blazing on the open hearth, a fat, purring Siamese kitten to warm my knees and lick my fingers; and a Brahms quartet playing softly in the background.

I had asked Herr Hoffman to pose in front of the hotel the day we left. I had meant to send him a copy, but had never gotten around to it. One doesn’t get around to things, that’s the trouble with the world. But I had had the decency to make a small return for his kindness, stopping in Garmisch and ordering flowers to be sent to his wife, who was in the hospital.

He hadn’t dwelt on the fact, had only mentioned it by way of apology for her absence, but I could tell he was deeply devoted to her and very worried about her condition. They had been married for almost forty years. It was hard to tell how old Hoffman was; his hair and eyebrows were pale pure silver-blond without a touch of gray, and he had one of those faces where the skin looks as if it had been glued to the bones, with no excess left to sag. Not handsome, probably not even in youth, but distinctive and distinguished-looking.

I didn’t have to look for additional evidence. I knew. But I looked anyway. The receipt for the hotel bill wasn’t among the miscellaneous papers I had examined. Since I had been an official representative of the museum and expected to be reimbursed for my expenses, I had filed the bill with my business papers, so I found it without difficulty. The Gasthaus Hexenhut wasn’t one of your modern computerized chains. Hoffman had written the bills himself. I had studied the stained envelope till my eyes ached; the spiky angular handwriting was as familiar as my own.

There had been six of us at the hotel that week—myself and five others. In the past few days, I had heard from two of the five. Tony had gotten a sudden urge to visit me, and Dieter had shown up in my office with a plastic snake. Perhaps the answer to John’s casual question was more complex—and more ego-deflating—than I had realized. Perhaps I was not the only one to have received a photograph of the Trojan gold.

Hoffman had spent more time with me, but he knew the others and their credentials. We had all registered under the names of the institutions we represented. It wasn’t too unusual for Tony to pay me a visit. It wasn’t unlikely that Dieter should drop in. But that made two out of five, and unless I was getting paranoid (which was quite possible) a third member of the group might also be in Munich. I had not known Jan well, and I hadn’t noticed his resemblance to the man in the painting by Van der Weyden, probably because of Jan’s hair, which was so conspicuously gorgeous, it drew the eye away from his other features. (The principle is well known to experts in disguise, I am told.) I had not seen the hair of the man Gerda had pointed out, only his spare, unadorned profile. If it wasn’t Jan Perlmutter, it was Jan’s twin brother.

I was sitting there pondering the meaning of it all and wondering what I was going to do about it when the doorbell rang. The sound split the stillness of the room like a scream; I jumped and Caesar bounded to his feet howling like the hound of the Baskervilles as he plunged toward the front door. A crash from the hall marked his progress; it also marked the demise of my favorite Chinese vase.

I kept the chain in place when I opened the door. It had stopped snowing and the wind was rising. Schmidt’s mustache flapped wildly in the breeze.

“Abend,” he said brightly.

“What are you doing here at this hour?”

“It is only ten o’clock. You have not gone to bed.”

“I was just about to.”

Schmidt stamped his feet and hugged himself, pantomiming incipient freezing to death. “Let me in.”

“By the hair of your chinny chin chin,” I muttered. “Oh, hell. Come in.”

Schmidt led the way to the living room, shedding his hat, coat, scarf, and gloves as he went. I picked up the coat, hat, scarf, and one of the gloves, and pried the other one out of Caesar’s mouth.

Already comfortably settled on the couch, Schmidt awaited my attentions. “Coffee?” he said in contemptuous disbelief, indicating the pot.

“What did you expect, Napoleon brandy?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Schmidt.

“No brandy, Schmidt.”

“Beer, then.”

“No beer. You are not spending the night and I am not going to drive you home and you are not leaving my house in a state of vulgar inebriation.”

Schmidt sighed. “Coffee.”

“Coffee,” I agreed.

When I came back from the kitchen with a fresh pot and an extra cup, Schmidt was looking at the snapshots. His mustache was twitching with pleasure. Schmidt loves looking at snapshots. He also loves having his picture taken. If he is anywhere in the vicinity when a photographer is at work, the finished product will have Schmidt or part of him somewhere in the background.

“You have not shown me these,” he said indignantly.

“I had forgotten about them.” I sat down on the couch beside him. “I took them at the ISSAMA meetings last winter.”

“I had deduced as much,” said Schmidt, contemplating a photo of Tony, who was pointing, in the idiotic way people do, at the Zugspitze. “It is not good of Tony. He looks drunk.”

“It was cold. That’s why his nose is so red.”

“Ha,” said Schmidt skeptically. “Oho, here is Elise. I have not seen her for two years. She should not make her hair that strange shade of pink.”

So it went, with Schmidt making catty remarks about his friends. Schmidt knows everybody and he adores conferences; he had been sick in bed with flu that year, or he would have insisted on going along. I expected his encyclopedic memory would falter when it came to Jan, but I was in error.

“Perlmutter,” he announced. “Bode Museum, East Berlin.”

“Very good, Schmidt.”

“I have an excellent memory for faces,” Schmidt said, twirling his mustache complacently. “I have met this Perlmutter only once, but never do I forget a face. It was in Dresden; he studied then under Kammer. Young, he is, but brilliant, it is said. Hmmm. Now who…”

Frowning slightly, he studied the last of the snapshots. I said casually, “Oh, that’s just the hotel where I stayed.”

“But who is this fellow? Wait, no, don’t tell me; I will remember in a moment. I never forget a face.”

“You’ve never seen this face. It’s the owner of the hotel.”

“He looks familiar,” said Schmidt.

“He does not. Come on, Schmidt, you’ve already scored, don’t overdo it.”

“I have seen him. I know I have seen that face somewhere. But I do not remember the hotel. In Garmisch, you say?”

“Uh—yes, that’s right.”

“What is his name, this man?”

“Hoffman.”

“Hoffman…Yes, there is something familiar….”

I thought he was showing off. If I had known he was telling the simple truth, I’d have changed the subject even faster than I did.

Schmidt wouldn’t go home. After polite hints had failed, I told him point-blank I was tired and wanted to hit the sack. He waved my complaint aside. “It is a holiday tomorrow; you can sleep late.”

“What holiday?”

“I have declared it,” said Schmidt, giggling. “For me. I must do my Christmas shopping. I am the director; I can make a holiday when I want. I make it for you, too, if you are nice. We will go to shop at the Kristkindlmarkt.”

“Depends on the weather,” I said. “I feel a little snuffly tonight; the cold I mentioned—”

“Fresh air is good for a cold,” said Schmidt. “Now let us open a bottle of wine and look at more photographs. Where are the ones you took of me at the Oktoberfest?”

I had not intended to take pictures of Schmidt at the Oktoberfest. I had intended to get an overall view of that giddiest and most vulgar of Munich holidays, not only for my own scrapbook, but to send home in the hope it would encourage my brother Bob to pay me a visit. Since my mother would see the pictures too, a certain amount of discretion was necessary; the snapshots had to be vulgar enough to entice Bob and restrained enough not to scandalize my mother. I never sent the photos. Schmidt was in every damned one of them. I believe his aim was to demonstrate the variety of things that can be done with a stein of beer—in addition, of course, to drinking from it.

I did not open a bottle of wine. At midnight Schmidt switched from coffee to Coke and demanded more snapshots.

At twelve-fifteen the telephone rang. This prompted a ribald comment from Schmidt, which I ignored. Some of my friends have no idea of time, but I had a premonition about the identity of this caller; and I was right.

“I understand you telephoned earlier,” said John brightly.

“I didn’t leave a message.”

“My heart told me it was you.”

“Your heart, and the fact that you never bothered to tell me—” I bit my lip. The cold fury in my voice had aroused the interest of my inquisitive boss; he turned to stare and I moderated my tone. “So what’s new?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nihil, niente, nichts. No rumors, no information, no news. If the subject we discussed earlier has aroused interest, it is not in the quarters with which I am—was—familiar.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“It didn’t take you long.”

“Efficiency is my most admirable characteristic.”

“You have so few of them.”

A chuckle from John and a more intense stare from Schmidt reminded me to control my temper and my tongue.

“My, my, what a sour mood we’re in,” said the jeering voice at the other end of the line. “I didn’t expect gratitude, but you ought to be relieved at the absence of activity.”

Since I could not think of a reply that would not further arouse Schmidt’s suspicions, I remained silent. After a moment, John said, “Do forgive me, I neglected to inquire whether you had a guest.”

“I do.”

“Tony? Dieter? Tom, Dick—”

“Schmidt,” I said between my teeth.

“Who is it?” Schmidt demanded. “Is it someone I know? Does he wish to speak with me?”

“Shut up, Schmidt,” I said.

“Perhaps I had better ask leading questions,” John said.

“Why bother?”

“Tit for tat. Have there been any new developments?”

“No.”

“Hmmm,” said John.

“You said you weren’t interested.”

“Not under any circumstances whatever. I cannot conceive of any contingency that would persuade me.”

“Then you have no need to know.”

“Er—quite. Look here, suppose I ring you tomorrow. A late report may yet come in.”

“Who was that?” Schmidt demanded as I hung up.

“A friend of mine.”

“You did not sound very friendly,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt finally left at about one-thirty. As I pushed him out into the night he called, “I will telephone you at nine o’clock. We must get an early start.”

I nodded agreeably. At nine the next morning I expected to be halfway to Garmisch.

Four

AT NINE O’CLOCK I WAS JUST LEAVING MUNICH. I had overslept. I figured Schmidt had probably done the same, so I wasn’t worried about his following me. I was worried about two other people.

I lost more time taking a roundabout route through the suburbs instead of heading directly for the autobahn. The sun was trying to break through clustering clouds, but the side streets were slick with packed snow. I had to concentrate on my driving and try, at the same time, to keep an eye on the rearview mirror.

I didn’t expect to have any difficulty spotting Dieter. He was such a ham he wouldn’t be able to resist some silly trick. Having observed no bright purple Beetles painted with vulgar mottoes (Dieter’s last-owned car) or vehicles driven by gorillas or mummies, I turned onto the autobahn and put my foot down. The suggested speed limit is 130 kilometers per hour, but nobody pays much attention to it; I got in the (comparatively) slow lane and gave myself up to introspection.

Painful introspection. I wasn’t too pleased with myself. There is nothing wrong with having a positive self-image, but when self-esteem blossoms into conceit, it is apt to cloud one’s judgment.

Whether the photograph was a hoax or a swindle or a sales pitch, it was reasonable to assume the sender would not limit himself to a single sucker. Until the previous day, I hadn’t been able to pinpoint a particular group of prospects; but I should have made some phone calls to colleagues and asked whether they had received anything unusual in the mail.

On the other hand, nobody had telephoned me either. That made me feel a little less culpable. Either I was the only one Hoffman had contacted or the others were being devious—like me.

Schmidt it was who said it: “If there is the slightest chance…” The acquisition of the gold of Troy would be the museum coup of the century. Well, maybe not the century—there have been others—but a coup of mythical proportions. We’re no nobler than anybody else. We talk about cooperation and mutual assistance in the lofty name of scholarship, but let some prize come on the market and we’re in the arena with knives swinging. Competition stops short of assassination, but not by much. I could tell you some stories….

It was hard to avoid the conclusion that Hoffman had communicated with the others. They might even have information I lacked—a return address that had not been obliterated, a note or covering letter of which I had been deprived by Gerda’s interfering nosiness. They were behaving precisely as I would have expected if such a contingency had occurred.

Dieter would be intrigued and amused, and perfectly willing to spend a few days on a possible wild-goose chase, so long as the geese were nesting in one of his favorite vacation spots. Tony would call me on some pretense and wait to see if I would mention the peculiar photograph I had received from that dear old gentleman at the Gasthaus Hexenhut. My failure to do so would persuade him I was up to my old tricks, trying to track down a prize without cutting him in on the deal. Our first treasure hunt had begun with a challenge: “I’m smarter than you are and I’ll prove it.” I had no reason to suppose he had become any less competitive.

Jan was an East German. My vague notions of satellite politics had convinced me that half the people in Eastern Europe worked for the KGB, if that’s what they call it these days. He would have a stronger motive than any of us to locate the gold. If the Soviets didn’t have it, their poor little feelings must have been badly wounded by the suspicions of the world; it would be a nice publicity ploy for them to rescue it and return it—to Jan’s museum, where else?

So far, I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of either of the women. That didn’t mean they weren’t around. It also didn’t mean they were. Elise was not the world’s brightest little lady, for all her academic qualifications, and her specialty was Renaissance sculpture; of all the group, she would be least likely to recognize or respond to the Trojan gold. Rosa was brilliant, but utterly devoid of imagination. I could see her glancing at the photograph and tossing it aside as just another crank communication.

There was only one jarring note in my composition. I simply could not see that gracious, kindly old gentleman as either a practical joker or a seller of stolen goods. That was why I was on my way to Bad Steinbach to confront him personally instead of calling or writing.

Still no purple Beetles in the mirror. Nor a sleek black BMW. If John intended to follow me, he wouldn’t use a car I might recognize….

One might reasonably ask why, since I had taken the trouble to locate John, I was now so determined to avoid him. I asked myself the same thing, and I knew the answer, even though I hated to admit it.

Putting that insane advertisement in the newspapers had been tantamount to yelling, “Anybody down there?” into the depths of the Grand Canyon. I had not really expected a response. In a way, I had not really wanted one.

Why do people have a hopeless need to glamorize things and people? It was impossible to turn John into a romantic hero when he was on the scene; he simply refused to behave like one. He was always making silly remarks or setting up a situation in which he looked like a fool. He could move fast enough and hit hard enough when he had to, and he could think even faster, but my most vivid memories of him were memories of deliberate foolishness. The only pure, unmarred memory was the last, when, stripped and sleek and deadly, he went over the side of that leaking boat into the icy water and risked his neck for someone else.

If he had never turned up again, I could have cherished that image and worked it into something beautiful. Or if he had come rushing to my side murmuring clichés—“I tried to forget you—I tried to stay away—It was for your sake, my dearest, I’m not worthy to black your boots—but I couldn’t resist you, your image has been enshrined in my heart…” Hell, I could invent page after page of dialogue like that. So could John.

Instead he had popped out of nothingness like a demon in a horror movie, shocked me into a coma, pinched my bottom, handled me with the tolerant amusement of a man who had rediscovered some forgotten trinket—a toy he had enjoyed playing with once upon a time…. And he had turned me down flat when I asked for his help. Let’s not forget that. He had turned me down. If he had had second thoughts, it was for reasons of his own, and that possibility made me very uneasy. I didn’t believe his claims of virtue and respectability for a moment. He was still a crook, and a crook was the last thing I needed.

I was startled out of my sullen meditations when a car whizzed contemptuously past me and cut back into my lane so sharply that it grazed my left front fender. The driver was a little old lady with blue hair; she made a remarkably rude gesture at me as she went by. After that I concentrated on driving.

The streets of Garmisch were full of vacationers, winter-sports fans, and cows. The cows are part of the local color, and they have the right of way. They were not the only distractions; the shop windows bulged with goodies, including some gorgeous ski and après-ski costumes. I managed to get through the town without incident, bovine or otherwise, and took the road to Bad Steinbach.

The highway climbed steadily up into the foot-hills, passing through pine-shrouded shadows and out again into the sunlight of open meadows frosted with white. The sky ahead was a deep pure blue, framing the majestic outlines of the snow-capped Alpine peaks. I wished my mood matched the serenity of the scenery; the closer I got to Bad Steinbach, the more my vague sense of apprehension deepened.

The village huddles on a few acres of level ground, with the high hills enclosing it like a rampart. Some of the streets leading off the central square go up at a thirty-degree angle, and outlying houses cling precariously to the slopes. The roads that give access to them looked like tangled white ribbons against the deep green of the pine-covered hills. A broader panel of snow slashed across the side of the Hexenhut—the ski slope, one of the trickiest in the area because of the trees bordering it so narrowly. A lift operates from the station behind the hotel; I could see a bright car swinging in its ascent as I pulled into a parking place near the central fountain, with its oversized statue of Saint Emmeram. The fountain was dry now, and a fringe of icicles lengthened the saint’s beard.

(In case you are interested—and I can’t imagine why you should be—Emmeram was one of the first missionaries to the heathen Bavarians. He died in 715 or thereabouts.)

Most Bavarian villages look as if they had been designed for a production of Babes in Toyland. The Marktplatz of Bad Steinbach is no exception. On one side the serene, austere facade of the St. Michaelskirche gives no hint of the baroque fantasies within. The two adjoining sides are lined with houses and shops, fairytale quaint with their wooden balconies and painted fronts. Some of the balconies were draped with bright red geraniums, and I gaped at them for a moment until I realized they must be plastic. Facing the church, on the fourth side of the square, is the hotel. The only discordant note is the town parking lot, but it has to be there because they’d have had to blast out a piece of the mountain to get any more level ground.

In the summer, there are tables and bright umbrellas outside the hotel restaurant and the cafés. At least I assume there were, since that is the custom; I had never visited the village in the summer. There were no tables outside that day. However, the restaurant appeared to be doing good business, to judge by the people passing in and out.

Like the English, the Bavarians eat all the time. Unlike the English, they have not invented separate names for their various snack times; instead of elevenses and teatime and whatever, they refer to all of them as Brotzeit. It was just past 11 A.M. A reasonable time for Brotzeit.

The first thing I noticed was that the lobby had been modernized—not extensively, just enough to add a few jarring notes to what had been a charming period ambiance. There was a souvenir counter with racks of cheap beer steins and dolls dressed in Bavarian costume and pillows embroidered with mottoes like “I did it in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.” The old wooden registration desk had been replaced by a shiny plastic structure. Hoffman wasn’t on duty. The man behind the counter was someone I had not seen before—young and heavy-set, inappropriately attired in a short-sleeved gaudy print shirt. I didn’t linger but went straight through into the restaurant.

It had undergone a similar transformation. The tables were more numerous and closer together, and each one boasted a vase of tacky plastic rosebuds. The bar was a modern monstrosity, frosted glass blocks with colored lights behind them.

Eventually one of the waitresses made it to my table. She was squashed into one of those Salzburger dirndls that you’re supposed to buy several sizes smaller than your actual measurements. They are fastened across the midriff with hooks as stout as industrial steel, and the excess flesh thus ruthlessly compressed billows up over the low-cut bodice into the cute little white blouse, and sometimes beyond. When she bent over to ask for my order, I was reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies—when Walter Matthau, confronted by a similar exhibition, screams, his eyes bulging, “Don’t let them out! Don’t let them out!”

They didn’t get out. I ordered beer and examined the menu the girl had given me. The featured item was something called a Bavarian burger—ground veal and sauerkraut on a bun.

The omens were not auspicious. I had hoped I’d find Herr Hoffman in his usual place behind the desk. He might be elsewhere in the hotel or the village—or the world—but the implications of that bloodstained envelope were getting harder to deny. The refined old gentleman I had known would never have countenanced such vulgarities as plastic rosebuds and souvenir cushions.

I drank my beer and tried to figure out what to do next. There would be nothing unusual in my asking for Hoffman; anyone who had stayed at the hotel would remember him and he had been particularly kind to me. If my forebodings were mistaken, and I devoutly prayed they were, I would simply show him the photograph and ask him what it was all about.

If Hoffman was out of the picture, permanently or temporarily, it might be Frau Hoffman whom I would confront. I had never met her, but I assumed the woman wearing Helen’s jewels must be she; she was the right age, at any rate. I couldn’t think of any reason why I should not be equally candid with her. She was obviously in her husband’s confidence.

If I asked for the manager and found myself facing a total stranger…Play it by ear? I keep thinking I’m good at that, even though events have often proved me mistaken. In this case there wasn’t much else I could do. I paid my check and went back to the lobby.

The concierge behind the counter kept me waiting while he answered the phone and made busy work with piles of papers. He kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I was impressed. At close range, I understood why he was shivering in short sleeves; every move he made was shivering in short sleeves; every move he made was designed to show off his muscles. Biceps bulged, pectorals popped, and everything else undulated. He had tousled his brown hair in deliberate imitation of a popular American movie star, and his full lips were set in a pout derived from the same source. After he had snapped at the girl at the switchboard, for no reason I could see, he turned to me with what he obviously believed was an ingratiating smile.

“Your pardon, Fräulein; we are very busy today.”

Full pink lips and exaggerated pectorals happen to be the two male characteristics I most abhor. I didn’t hold them against him; what I held against him was the smirk on his face as he looked me over.

“Are you?” I said.

“You wish a room? We are booked, but perhaps there will be a cancellation….”

His hand—open, palm up—rested suggestively on the counter. I gave him a dazzling smile. His fingers curled like fat white worms exposed to the light.

“You weren’t here last year,” I murmured.

“No.” He shrugged, setting off an obscene upheaval of chest and shoulder muscles. “This is not my profession, you understand. I am helping a friend in her time of need. My name is Friedrich Sommers—but I hope you will call me Freddy. As for the room—”

“No, thanks. I’d like to see Herr Hoffman.”

Asking for the manager doesn’t make you popular, even in big hotels. Freddy’s smile wavered. “If there is a complaint, Fräulein—”

“Nothing like that. I just want to say hello to him.”

“I am sorry to inform you that Herr Hoffman is deceased.”

I had expected it, and, after all, I had scarcely known the man. But I didn’t have to feign distress. “I’m so sorry. When did it happen?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Was he ill long?”

“He was not ill. It was an accident. He was struck by a car.” Freddy’s smile had passed into oblivion. “Are you by chance…Are you a friend?”

“No. I stayed here last year. He was very kind to me.”

There was no obvious reason why I should have been so cagey, yet I found myself reluctant to give him my name. I didn’t like Freddy. I had not liked his face or his muscles or his smirk, and I liked his suspicious scowl even less.

“Perhaps you would like to speak with Frau Hoffman,” he suggested.

I had been about to ask if I might. The fact that it was Freddy’s suggestion made me wonder whether I really did want to. There was no retreating now, though, so I nodded and Freddy picked up the telephone. He raised one hand to his cheek when he spoke; it muffled his words to some extent, but my hearing is excellent.

After he hung up, he informed me that Frau Hoffman would see me, and indicated where I was to go. I remembered the corridor; it led to the room where Hoffman and I had spent such a pleasant evening a year ago. I must admit I felt a little like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

Freddy must have been under the impression that I didn’t understand German. That was stupid of him. I had not used the language when I spoke with him, but if he knew who I was, he must be aware of my proficiency in the language of the country where I presently resided. And he knew who I was. What he had said was: “She is here. Yes, the one you told me to watch out for. She is at the desk at this moment, asking for the old man.”

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice is reported to have remarked.

The friend Freddy was helping in her time of need had to be Frau Hoffman. I would not have expected the sedate elderly woman in the photograph to hobnob with a character like Freddy, but people don’t always behave the way you expect them to. The Hoffmans were childless. Maybe Freddy had appealed to the widow’s frustrated maternal instincts. Or maybe he had a kind heart under an unprepossessing exterior. Be fair, Vicky, don’t judge people by appearances.

A door at the end of the hall opened. Sunlight from the room behind the figure blurred its outlines; I was quite close to her before I realized she was not the woman in the photograph. She was much younger, probably in her twenties. Her face was vaguely familiar, though.

“Frau Hoffman?” I asked uncertainly.

“Yes.” She stood back and motioned me to enter. “And you are the—you are a friend of my late husband?”

“I hope I may call myself that, though I only had the pleasure of meeting your husband once. You were in the hospital at the time, I believe.”

I didn’t really believe it, because I had remembered where I had seen her before. She had been a waitress in the restaurant. Friedl. The name came out of nowhere, as it does sometimes; I had heard it repeated often enough. The customers were always yelling for Friedl, especially the male customers. From waitress to wife to widow in less than a year…Quick work, and nice work if you can get it.

The promotion had not improved her looks. The waitress’s uniform of tight-waisted dirndl and low-cut blouse had suited her slight but well-developed figure. She had had thick braids of brown hair that she wore coiled over her ears, and a fresh, pink-cheeked face. Now her hair was cut short and bleached almost white. She wore an ultrasuede suit that must have cost a bundle, but it was too tight across the chest and the apricot shade didn’t flatter her complexion. She was heavily made up, and her nails were blood-red, long, and pointed.

“The hospital?” she repeated blankly. “That wasn’t me. You must be speaking of my husband’s first wife. She passed on last January.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and again I spoke sincerely.

She had certainly done her best to efface all traces of her predecessor. The room had been charming, filled with fine old furniture and beautiful shabby rugs. The painted Schrank was gone, as were the carved chest and the Persian rugs. Wall-to-wall carpeting in a shrieking shade of blue concealed the hardwood floor, and every stick of furniture was teak, glass, or chrome.

“Then you are the new owner of the hotel?” I asked.

“Yes.” She snapped the word out, as if my idle question had contained a challenge. “It has not been easy,” she went on, with the same air of defiance. “But I can do it. Already I have made many improvements.”

I couldn’t bring myself to congratulate her on the improvements. Still feeling my way, I said, “I hope you have good help.”

I was thinking of the hotel staff that had kept the place running so smoothly the year before, but Friedl interpreted the comment differently. With a betraying glance at a door that I assumed led to another room of her apartment, she murmured, “Freddy—Mr. Sommers—has been a great help to me. He is my—my cousin.”

“I’ve met Mr. Sommers.”

Belatedly remembering her manners, she offered me a chair, which I accepted, and coffee, which I declined. I had decided that my smartest move was to keep my mouth shut and let her make the first move. She didn’t waste any time. “Did you get a message from my husband?”

I put on an expression of innocent bewilderment and countered with a question of my own. “Why, did he write to me?”

That was her chance. If she had said yes, and gone on to explain, I might have leveled with her.

Her eyes fled from mine. “I—uh—no, I don’t think…I wondered…Why did you come, then?”

“I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Herr Hoffman was very kind to me last year, so I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

“I see.” She chewed on her lower lip and tried again. “He often spoke of you.”

“Did he?”

“Oh yes. Often. He admired you. Such a learned lady, so clever, so intelligent. You had talked together—of many things…”

“Yes, we did.”

She leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “What did you talk about?”

“Oh—lots of things. Art and antiques…” I paused invitingly, but the only response was a blank stare, so I went on, “Books, music—he was very fond of Brahms—cats…He had a beautiful little Siamese kitten. I hope it is flourishing?”

“Flourishing? Oh, the cat.” Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. “I got rid of it. I hate the creatures. They are so sly. Besides, it was scratching my beautiful new furniture.”

“I see.”

“Did he speak of anything else?”

If I hadn’t taken such an intense dislike to the wretched woman, I might have felt sorry for her. She was trying to find out how much I knew without giving anything away, but she was going about it so clumsily that she had betrayed more than she realized.

I said, “I see you’ve redecorated this room.”

“Yes. Yes, I could not live with such dirty old things. This is much more cheerful, don’t you think?”

“Cheerful” was not the word I would have chosen. In fact, the room was depressing, for all its bright colors and gleaming chrome. She had ruthlessly swept away not just inanimate objects, but the memories, the traditions, the long years of affectionate living they embodied. The fact that she had done it without deliberate malice only made the desecration worse; it was a symbol of the triumph of mediocrity over beauty and grace.

Ordinarily, I would not have been guilty of the bad taste of trying to buy a dead man’s belongings from his widow of barely two weeks. In this case I didn’t hesitate.

“If you haven’t sold the furniture, I’d like to buy it.”

“Buy it? All of it?”

“I was thinking of the Schrank. Perhaps some of the other pieces.”

Again her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you want them?”

“Tastes differ,” I explained patiently. “You like modern, I like antiques.”

“I have already sold them.”

Couldn’t wait to get them out of the house, I thought. Two weeks…

There was a sound from the next room—a muffled thud, as if someone had stumbled, or jarred a piece of furniture. Friedl started violently.

“Oh, do you have company?” I asked. “I’m sorry, you should have told me you were busy.”

“Oh, no. No, there is no one…It must have been the—the cat.”

The cat that wasn’t there. Quite suddenly I was overcome by a burning desire to escape from that sterile, horrible room and its occupant. I rose to my feet. “I mustn’t take up any more of your time. Perhaps you could tell me to whom you sold the Schrank. He might consider an offer.”

Now she seemed as anxious to be rid of me as I was to be gone. She gave me a name and directions, and let me show myself out. As I passed through the lobby, I noticed that Freddy wasn’t at the desk.

The address she had given me wasn’t far. No place in Bad Steinbach is far from any other place in Bad Steinbach. When I reached the fountain I stopped for a moment, to consider the new developments, and to get a grip on myself. The interview had left me shaken and off-balance.

Friedl and Freddy made a much more believable equation than Freddy and the late Frau Hoffman. I wondered whether Friedl had waited until after her husband’s death to begin the affair.

I told myself I mustn’t let my dislike of the woman prejudice my judgment, but it was no use; I felt about Friedl the way Friedl felt about cats. All prejudice aside, however, her behavior had been highly suspicious as well as highly inept. She knew Hoffman had intended to communicate with me. So why the devil didn’t she come right out and say so? What was she trying to hide?

An answer came readily to mind.

If Friedl’s intentions were honest and honorable, she should have welcomed the opportunity to confide in a responsible person—the very person her husband had planned to consult. If she knew about the treasure and intended to keep it for herself…I found that alternative much more plausible, and it explained some of the peculiarities in her speech and manner. She suspected Hoffman had written to me, but she wasn’t sure. Then it had not been Friedl who mailed the envelope. Had Hoffman himself staggered, dying, to a postbox and pushed the envelope stained with his own blood through the slot with his last burst of strength? That scenario was a little too much even for my Rosanna-trained imagination. But then, who had mailed it? Was the blood Hoffman’s? He had died suddenly, by violence….

Much as I abhorred dear little Friedl, I wasn’t ready to accuse her of mariticide. Not yet. It was no strain on my imagination to believe her capable of fraud, however. Yet even that assumption didn’t explain her insistent questions. She had had two weeks in which to dispose of the gold, or move it to another location. That’s what I would have done if I thought my husband had spilled the beans to an outsider. Then I’d sit tight and look innocent, and if some nosy female from a Munich museum came snooping around asking leading questions, I would tell her I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was raving about. Gold? What gold? What would a simple Bavarian innkeeper be doing with a museum treasure? Sorry, Fräulein Doktor, but I’m afraid too much learning has addled your brain.

I had to allow for the obvious fact that Friedl wasn’t the smartest woman in the world. I had not mentioned my name, to her or to Freddy, and she hadn’t even had the basic intelligence to pretend ignorance of my identity. I hadn’t said a single word that betrayed any knowledge of a secret or contradicted my statement that I was playing a simple social call; yet I had a feeling that Friedl was now as suspicious of my intentions as I was of hers, and for all the wrong reasons. My insistence on acquiring the Schrank had been a mistake, if an innocent one. I wanted it because it was beautiful; she thought of it only as a possible hiding place. Sometimes I think God must like stupid people, he gives them so many breaks.

Well, there was nothing I could do about it now. I brushed the snow from my pants and started walking across the Marktplatz. The shop she had mentioned was just off the central square, a couple of doors up one of the narrow streets. It wasn’t an antique shop, as I had supposed. The sign read “Müller—Holzschnitzerei,” and the small display window contained toys and ornaments carved out of wood, of the type sometimes referred to as “folk art.”

Bells chimed softly as I opened the door. There was no one in the shop. From an open door at the back came the sound of tapping and a smell that made my nostrils quiver appreciatively. Fresh wood shavings, hot glue, and pipe tobacco blended into an aroma as seductive as the finest perfume. My grandfather’s workshop smelled like that; I had spent many happy hours there as a child, hammering nails into wood scraps and making doll wigs out of curled shavings.

The tapping stopped. A man appeared in the open doorway, squinting at me through thick glasses.

He was short and square, with big gnarled hands. His shoulders filled the doorway from side to side. A light behind him made his hair shine like a silver nimbus.

After I had explained who I was and what I wanted, he put his pipe in his mouth and smoked in meditative silence for several seconds, without taking his eyes off me. Then he nodded and gestured. “Herein, Fräulein.”

I followed him into the workshop. It was wonderful; tools were scattered over a long wooden table and sawdust had drifted like dun snow. He pointed, and then I saw it: a painted door, leaning disconsolately against the wall, splinters of wood hanging from the broken hinges.

“Oh, no,” I exclaimed. “What happened to it?”

My unconcealed distress pleased the old man. His formal manner relaxed, and he said, “That is how it was when I found it, the pieces piled in the courtyard ready to be burned. She was good enough to sell it to me.”

I damned Friedl with a few well-chosen words—in English, since I knew a man of his age and background would think poorly of a lady who used vulgar language. He got the idea from my tone, if not from the actual words, and his eyes were twinkling when I looked at him.

“Just so,” he said. “Don’t distress yourself, Fräulein. I can repair it. That is my trade, at which I excel. I have no real talent for creating, you understand, but for restoration, there is no one better. Do you still want to buy it?”

“Yes. Please.”

I didn’t even ask the price. At that point, I’d have been willing to hock my car and mortgage my house; this was a rescue operation, not a commercial transaction. How could Friedl have done such a stupid thing? She must have hated him, to destroy an object that would have brought a fancy price from any antique dealer.

“What happened to the other furniture?” I asked.

The old man shrugged. “It went, I believe, to a dealer in Garmisch. I could not afford to pay so much as he. One moment, Fräulein, I must finish this piece before the glue hardens.”

He settled himself on a stool, put his pipe carefully in an ashtray, and picked up the piece he had been working on—a carved head with a grotesque yet humorous grin—surely a caricature of a living model. The nose had been broken off; I stood watching as the old man carefully glued the nose, or a reproduction of it, into place.

“So,” he said. Swiveling slowly on the stool, he faced me, his hands resting heavily on his knees. His face was as rigid as the wooden one he had just repaired, hardened by harsh weather and long years. His hair clung to his skull like a white fur wig. Then his leathery cheeks cracked into deep lines and his thin lips curled up at the corners.

“So,” he repeated, “you are the so-learned Mädchen from the museum. Did you get the letter, then?”

“You sent it?” I gaped at him. “But how—why?”

His smile stiffened into sobriety, though a spark of amusement remained in the depths of his eyes. “I mailed it, I did not send it. There is a difference.”

“You are right. There is a difference. I…Can I sit down?”

“Please.”

He picked up an oily rag and passed it carefully over a backless chair inches deep in sawdust.

“Thank you,” I said meekly. “Would you mind telling me how it happened?”

“It does not take long to tell. I was working late in the shop, as I often do. I heard the sounds from the Marktplatz. They were the sounds of death,” the old man said simply. “The car did not stop; it accelerated and went on. I had expected him, you see. He had said he would come that evening. I went as quickly as I could, but there were others there before me; they made a circle around him. I saw only one shoe. I knew it, and pushed through them. His blood soaked the snow and spread as I bent over him. He knew me. He had no breath to speak, but he moved his hand—pushed the letter toward me. I knew what he wanted. We had been friends a long time.”

He picked up his pipe and slowly tapped out the dead embers.

“I’m glad,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but he understood.

“Glad there is someone to mourn him? Yes. The only one. She…” He turned his head aside and spat neatly into the pile of shavings beside him. Then he went on in the same calm voice, “It happens to old men, even those who should know better. After Amelie died, he was verrückt—crazy with grief. A man needs a woman, and she knew how to use her advantage.”

“I’m sure she did. But…Do you know what was in the letter?”

“I do not open mail addressed to other people. It was so important to him that he thought of it with his last breath; that was enough for me. But I knew your name. He had spoken of you.”

“What did he say?”

His eyes glinted. “That if he were forty years younger he would go to Munich to see you—and perhaps to do other things.”

For some absurd reason I felt tears coming to my eyes. I gave him a watery smile. “If he had been forty years younger, I probably would have done them. He was a good man.”

“Yes, a learned man. Not like me; I am only an ignorant worker, with no more than Volksschule. But he liked to talk to me.”

“He never said anything to you about…” I didn’t hesitate because I didn’t trust him. I hesitated because I didn’t want his blood reddening the snow in the Marktplatz. “About why he might want to get in touch with me?”

“No, nothing. When he spoke of you, it was in connection with art.” The old man’s face was stiff with pride. “Yes, we talked of such things, the scholar and the ignorant peasant. He loved beautiful things, and no craftsman worthy of the name can be indifferent to a fine work of art.” His fingers caressed the surface of the sculptured head. “This would have hurt him. Often he spoke of the destruction of beauty—the statues broken, the paintings slashed by barbarians. So much lost. So much that can never be retrieved.”

His voice was as deep as a dirge; it reminded me of the passage in the Brahms Requiem when the soft voices mourn in grieving resignation. “Behold, all flesh is as the grass, and all the goodliness of man is as the flowers of the field; for lo, the grass with-ereth….”

I knew I was going to break down and blubber if I didn’t get away. “I must go,” I said, rising. “I’m afraid I am interrupting your lunch.”

“No, I have this with me.” He reached for a paper-wrapped sandwich. “Will you share? It is good ham and cheese.”

I refused with thanks; but a rustling noise heralded the appearance of someone who was definitely interested in the offer. As the sleek fawn body slid out from under a bench I exclaimed, “Surely, that is Herr Hoffman’s cat.”

“Yes. Her name is Clara—”

“After Clara Schumann,” I said with a smile. “The great love of Brahms’s life. I’m so glad she’s with you. Frau Hoffman said she had gotten rid of her, and I was afraid…”

“I would not let Anton’s pet come to harm.”

The cat leaped onto the table with the air of spontaneous flight common to Siamese. It sauntered casually toward the sandwich, looking as if food were the farthest thing from its mind. The old man pulled out a chunk of ham and offered it; after sniffing the morsel, the cat condescended to accept it.

“I am not a lover of cats,” Müller admitted. “And this one does not love me; she misses Anton. But we respect one another.”

“That’s about the most you can expect from a cat,” I said, holding out my hand. I didn’t expect the aristocratic animal to respond; in fact, her initial reaction was a long hard stare from eyes as blue and brilliant as—as other eyes I knew. After she had finished the ham, she sauntered toward me and butted my hand with her head.

“She does remember me,” I said, flattered.

“No doubt. She is very intelligent, and very choosy about her friends. It is a compliment.”

The cat began to purr as my fingers moved across its head and behind its ears. “Would you like to have her?” Müller asked.

I pulled my hand away. Deeply affronted, the cat turned its back and sat down with a thump. “Good God, no. I mean—I can’t. I have a dog—a Doberman. They wouldn’t get along.”

“She is company for me,” the old man admitted, lowering his voice as if he were afraid the cat would hear and take advantage. “But she will outlive me—she is not two years old. I would like to think she will find a home when I am gone.”

“Oh, that won’t be for a long time,” I said firmly.

I gave him my card, and he promised to let me know when the Schrank was ready. Clara relented and allowed me to scratch her chin. I was almost at the door when Müller’s quiet voice stopped me.

“There is some reason why you came, isn’t there? Something beyond coincidence and kindness.”

“I don’t want…” I began.

“I don’t want either.” He grinned broadly. “At my age I have not the time or the strength for distractions. There is work I must finish before I die. But if there is a thing I can do for my friend, you must tell me.”

“I will tell you,” I said.

“That is good. Go with God, Fräulein. I hope you will not have need of His help.”

I hoped so, too, but the picture was looking blacker and blacker. Müller’s description of Hoffman’s death had shocked me badly. Hit and run? There was no evidence of anything more sinister, but it was, to say the least, an ugly coincidence that Hoffman had actually been on his way to mail the letter to me when he was struck down.

I was so distracted I almost walked past my car. Pausing, I heard my empty stomach protest; Herr Müller’s ham sandwich had reminded it that lunchtime was long past. I hesitated, trying to decide whether to eat in Bad Steinbach or drive on to Garmisch. Then I saw something that decided me. It was a familiar maroon Mercedes, parked, with unbelievable effrontery, only a short distance from my car.

I marched straight into the restaurant without going through the lobby; and there he was, at one of the best tables near the window. The table was piled with platters, some empty, some in the process of being emptied. He had been watching for me; he raised his hand and waved furiously.

“I saved you a place,” he announced, indicating a chair.

“A chair you have saved, but not a square inch on the table.” I sat down. “Don’t tell me you followed me, Schmidt, because I know you didn’t. How did you get here?”

Schmidt waved at the waitress. She responded a lot faster than she had done for me. “What will you have?” he asked. “The Bavarian burger is very interessant.”

“I’ll bet it is.” There was enough food left on the table to feed a platoon. I ordered beer, then changed it to coffee, and began browsing among Schmidt’s remaining entrees. He protested, but I told him it was for his own good. He ate too much anyway.

“So,” I said, reaching for a sausage. “You haven’t answered my question.”

He was so pleased with himself he didn’t bother bawling me out for trying to elude him. “Pure deduction,” he said, grinning greasily. “Sheer, brilliant detective work. Ratiocination of the most superb intellectual—”

“Specifically?” I suggested.

“I recognized the man in the photograph you showed me.” Schmidt snatched the sausage out of my hand. “I told you I had seen him before. You thought I boasted, but it was the truth. Never do I forget a face, or a name.”

“Schmidt—” I began.

“I thought about it as I drove home last night,” Schmidt went blithely on. “It worried at me, you understand. I thought he must be connected with art or antiquities, or I would not know him, and I had also on my mind this matter of the Trojan treasure; and suddenly, snap, click, the pieces went together. I had seen articles by this man in old journals. After I got home I found them. Guess, Vicky, what the articles were about?”

“Schmidt, please don’t—”

There was no stopping him, he was so pleased with himself; his voice got louder and louder as he continued. “Troy! Yes, you will not believe it, but it is true, he was on the staff of Blegen during the excavations of the late thirties. To make it certain, I looked up the excavation reports and found in them a group photograph. He was there, standing next to Blegen himself—much changed, yes, but the same man, only a student at the time, but appointed in 1939 to the post of assistant in pre-Hellenic art at the Staatliches—”

His voice rose in a triumphant bellow. Half the people in the restaurant were staring. I picked up a piece of celery and shoved it into his mouth.

Schmidt’s eyes popped indignantly. He hates celery, and any other food that is good for him.

“For God’s sake, Schmidt, don’t broadcast it to the whole town,” I hissed. “You shouldn’t have come here. They are already suspicious of me, and now you’ve made matters worse.”

Schmidt swallowed the chunk of celery he had inadvertently bitten off, grimaced at the rest of the stalk and pushed it aside. He looked a little subdued.

“How can I help but make a mistake when you lie to me?” he demanded. “You tell me the hotel is in Garmisch, which is not true; I must ask at the tourist bureau, to find the Hotel Hexenhut in Bad Steinbach. The earliest this morning I have telephoned you, to tell you what I have learned, and there is no answer. I rush to your house and no one is there—the poor dog, he is crying in the basement—”

“I called Carl and asked him to stop by after work, to feed Caesar and take him for a walk,” I said. Schmidt had me on the defensive, and not just on Caesar’s account.

“He needs a friend,” Schmidt said seriously. “You should have another dog.”

“Two dogs like Caesar and I wouldn’t have a house,” I said. “Don’t change the subject, Schmidt. I didn’t know about Hoffman’s academic background.”

“Ha, is it true?” Schmidt’s pout changed to a broad, pleased grin. “Has Papa Schmidt put over one on the clever detective?”

“It’s true,” I admitted. “I underestimated you, Schmidt, and I apologize. That information answers one of the questions I’ve been asking myself: What was a Bavarian innkeeper doing with a museum treasure? It wasn’t until late last night that I discovered he was the one who sent me the photograph. I—uh—I got so excited I went rushing out without calling you—”

“You see the difference between us,” Schmidt said reproachfully. “I rush to see you, you rush away from me.”

“All right, all right—I grovel, I apologize. Look here, Schmidt, the situation is more complicated than I thought. We are going to have to proceed with caution.”

“Oh yes, I know.” Schmidt nodded complacently. “I am very careful, Vicky, in what I say. And I have learned much. The woman in the photograph is the first Frau Hoffman—”

“I assumed it was.”

“Yes, you assume, but I know. I have seen a picture of her, it is the same woman.”

I put my hands to my head. “Schmidt. You didn’t—you haven’t seen Friedl?”

“If Friedl is the second Frau Hoffman, yes, I have seen her. By the way, that young man at the desk behaves very strangely, Vicky. When I ask for Herr Hoffman and explain I knew him once, many years ago, he turns a strange color and cannot talk sensibly. Do you suppose…What is the matter, Vicky? Have I done something wrong?”

“Yes, dammit! You shouldn’t have…Oh well, maybe it doesn’t matter. What did you say to her?”

Schmidt insisted he had given nothing away, and if his version of the conversation was correct, it was true—except that his mere presence was enough to alarm a conspirator. He had been deliberately vague about where and when he had known Hoffman, and he had (aber natürlich!) said nothing about the gold, or about a bloodstained envelope. How he had talked Friedl into bringing out the family album I could not imagine; I was surprised that she hadn’t disposed of it as she had disposed of Hoffman’s other personal possessions.

“Poor girl, she is in a state of great distress,” Schmidt said sympathetically. “I advised her to go away for a holiday; her nerves are in terrible condition.”

“Schmidt, you are such a push-over,” I snapped. “She’s a cheap little tramp who married Hoffman for his money and is now trying to steal his—his prize possession for herself.”

“That is a terrible thing to say! How do you know?”

I gave him a brief rundown of what Friedl had said—and what she had not said. “What’s more,” I added, “I’m beginning to wonder whether she knows where—it—is. She tore that Schrank apart. Why would she destroy a valuable object unless she was looking for something?”

“It may be that she does not know for what she is looking,” Schmidt said shrewdly. “It would not be necessary to destroy a piece of furniture to make certain there was not hidden in it something so large as—as what we are seeking.”

“Good point. Maybe she hoped to find a clue—a map or a letter.”

Masticating, Schmidt shook his head mournfully. “I cannot believe so lovely a young woman would behave with such duplicity.”

“Believe it. I’ll tell you something, though—I’m beginning to suspect she is not acting on her own. She is unbelievably stupid. When I was talking to her, I felt as if I were conversing with—with a ventriloquist’s dummy, that was it. Someone had told her what to do, but not how to go about it.”

“Aha,” said Schmidt. “Cherchez I’homme!”

“I think you’ve got it, Schmidt. A woman like that always has to have a man around. Oh, hell. I don’t want to discuss it here. Let’s go.”

Schmidt swept a measuring glance over the table, popped an overlooked morsel of cheese into his mouth, and nodded agreement. “The lunch, it is on me,” he announced, summoning the waitress with a lordly gesture.

“It sure is,” I agreed, surveying his bulging tummy.

Not until Schmidt had risen and was waddling toward the door did I get the full effect of his costume—bright red, fitting him like a second skin. It was so appalling I let out a yelp. “Schmidt!”

“Was? Was ist los? Was ist’s?” Schmidt spun around like a top, bellowing in alarm.

A hush had fallen over the restaurant and every eye in the place was focused on us. I grabbed Schmidt by the seat of the pants (there was very little slack to grab) and the scruff of the neck and propelled him out the door.

We stood by his car arguing. Schmidt was hurt because I didn’t like his outfit—”so fitting for the season of Weihnachten”—and he didn’t want to go home. He was having fun.

We were still arguing when someone came running out of the hotel, calling my name. It was Freddy. “I am so glad I caught you up,” he exclaimed. “Frau Hoffman hoped you would return; she said to tell you a message. There was a bridal chest, very old, belonging to Herr Hoffman, that was given to a friend of his. Perhaps he will be willing to sell to you.”

Schmidt began bobbing up and down and gesturing at me. His face was almost as crimson as his suit, he was so excited. The word “chest” suggested an accompanying adjective—“treasure”—and he was reacting like a child reading Edgar Allan Poe.

“Where does the friend live?” I asked, hoping it was someplace like Paris or Lhasa, and that I could talk Schmidt into catching the first plane.

“Not far from here. I can tell you….”

He rattled off directions, adding helpfully, “It is only several miles from the town.”

“I know it, I know it,” Schmidt cried. “Thank you, my friend—vielen Dank.”

Freddy went running back to the hotel and Schmidt unlocked the Mercedes. “You are following me,” he insisted, forgetting his grammar in his excitement. “I the way am knowing.”

“Wait a minute, Schmidt—”

It was too late. He almost ran over my foot.

I got in my car and took off after the old lunatic, cursing aloud. If I had been on my own, I would have deliberated long and hard about pursuing that oh-so-convenient lead. I probably would have ended up pursuing it, if only for the sake of the chest, which I remembered well. It was a beauty. But I seriously doubted that it contained the gold of Troy.

The first few miles weren’t bad going. Then Schmidt, who drove with an assurance that suggested he really did know where he was going, turned abruptly into a side road that plunged steeply up the mountainside. After a while I shifted into four-wheel drive. I’d have signaled him to stop if there had been anyplace to turn around, which there wasn’t. Snowplows had carved out a single narrow lane; banks of glistening white rose high on both sides. I prayed he wouldn’t meet a car coming down. Occasionally a sidetrack would wind off through clustered pines or up rocky banks toward an isolated dwelling. Otherwise there was no sign of human life.

I wasn’t happy about the situation, but I didn’t start to get really worried until after we had gone fifteen kilometers. The road had twisted and curved so often I had lost my sense of direction, but as it turned out, we weren’t more than a mile from the town. I found out in the most direct possible fashion; rounding a sudden curve, I saw the damned place down below—straight down. The plows hadn’t had any problem disposing of the snow in this spot; they had just pushed it off the edge of the cliff.

I leaned on the horn. Schmidt responded with a cheerful beepity-beep, and the Mercedes disappeared around another steep curve, its rear end wriggling like a belly dancer’s navel. We went around a few more bends, with Bad Steinbach flashing in and out of sight down below; finally, to my relief, the road leveled out. It was then that the thing I had feared finally happened. Suddenly the Mercedes swerved, bounced off a snowbank, and headed straight for the opposite side. There was no snowbank on the side. The drop wasn’t sheer—not after the first twenty or thirty feet.

I started pumping my brakes. Luckily the process had become automatic, because every ounce of my concentration was focused on the wildly weaving vehicle ahead. Schmidt was fighting the skid, but he was losing. There was something wrong with the Mercedes, it wasn’t a simple skid…. At the last possible second, he managed to sideswipe a tree. If he hadn’t done so, he’d have gone over the edge.

I was out of my car before the echoes of the crash had died, running frantically toward the wreck. The Mercedes was skewed sideways; the front wheels were off the ground, still spinning.

Schmidt was slumped over the wheel, his poor pathetic bald head shining in the sunlight. Of course he wasn’t wearing his seat belt; he never did, the damned fool…. I wrenched the door open and reached for him.

The bullet spanged off the rear fender with a sound like a cymbal. The echoes rattled so furiously that I thought it was a semiautomatic. Before they died, another shot sent them flying again. Missed me by a mile…but there were a lot of potential targets. My tires, me, Schmidt, the gas tank…As I tugged frantically at Schmidt’s dead weight, I could have sworn I heard a gentle trickle of liquid. I didn’t need my imagination to tell me the tank was already ruptured; I could smell the gas.

Terror lent strength to my not inconsiderable muscles; I gave a mighty heave, and Schmidt came out like a cork from a bottle. Somehow I kept my feet, towing him as I backed away. I might be doing him a deadly injury by moving him, but we’d both be fried like Wiener schnitzels if that gas tank went up.

God, he was heavy! I couldn’t move fast enough. I felt as if I were towing a cast-iron statue, as if my feet were mired in glue. The air at the back of the Mercedes quivered, distorted by fumes, by heat…. How long before it blew?

Schmidt lay like a stuffed toy, his hands trailing limply. I could have sworn there was a smile on his face, damn him—bless him—oh, Schmidt, I thought, don’t die. Don’t just lie there and make me drag you.

I was still moving, but it didn’t feel as if I were. My feet went up and down, as if on a treadmill, and the scenery didn’t change, the wrecked car didn’t get any farther away. It occurred to me that I ought to get myself and Schmidt behind that convenient snowbank. I could have managed the first part of the program, but not the second; dragging Schmidt was hard enough, lifting him was out of the question. Was that a flicker of flame I saw, in the shaken air?…

He only brushed me in passing, but my knees were like wet noodles, and when he hoisted Schmidt up over his shoulder, I sat down with a solid thud.

“For God’s sake, this is no time to take a rest,” he said breathlessly. A hand clamped over my arm and yanked me to my feet.

The hand was in the small of my back when we reached the snowbank, but I didn’t need its pressure to send me up and over. I had a flashing glimpse of Schmidt sailing through the air like Santa Claus falling from his sleigh; then I landed face down in the snow and tried to burrow under it as the world went up in flame and thunder.

The echoes of the explosion went on for a thousand years. After they had died, I decided it was safe to raise my head. The first thing I saw was Schmidt’s face, less than a foot away. Cold had reddened it to a shade only slightly less brilliant than the crimson of his suit, and rivulets of frozen blood traced fantastic patterns across his forehead. But his eyes were wide open and when he saw me, his chapped lips cracked in a smile.

I grabbed him by his ears and rained passionate kisses on his dimpled cheeks and bright red nose and grinning mouth. “Schmidt, you devil—you crazy old goat—are you all right, you damned fool? Oh, Schmidt, how could you be so incredibly stupid, you idiot?”

Schmidt giggled. A voice behind me remarked in saccharine tones, “This is the very ecstasy of love.”

I rolled over. John was sitting with his back up against the packed snow of the bank, a cigarette in one hand. He was wearing a rather effeminate pale blue down jacket and darker pants. A ski mask, patterned in lozenges of navy and green, gave him the look of a tattooed Maori warrior.

“Thank you,” I said formally, “for saving our lives.”

“A pleasure, I’m sure. And now, if you will forgive me—”

He started to rise. I threw myself at him and grabbed his ankle. “John, there’s a man out there with a rifle—”

“Not any longer. However, if I don’t waste any more time chatting with you, I may be able to discover which of your numerous enemies has been missing from his or her appointed place. Do excuse me.”

“Wait, wait.” Schmidt was snorting and flailing around in the snow like a red octopus. “I have questions—many questions—”

“I’m sure you do.” Even white teeth flashed in the mouth hole of the mask.

I said resignedly, “Schmidt, meet Schmidt.”

“Schmidt?” My boss’s bellow of laughter made the echoes ring. “Ha, yes. Schmidt—Smythe—very good. I am so glad—”

“Yes, well, my rapture is also extreme,” John said politely. He twitched his foot out of my numbing grasp and rose lithely to his feet. “Vicky, you’d better get Kris Kringle to a fire and a doctor. Auf Wiedersehen.”

He scrambled over the bank and disappeared from sight. I got to my feet, ignoring Schmidt’s breathless appeals for assistance, information, and so on, and was in time to see the pale blue outfit disappear in the trees. A moment later an automobile engine started up, revved a few times, and faded. He had been following me the whole time. That diabolical road had required so much of my attention I hadn’t watched for following vehicles.

Schmidt’s Mercedes was blazing merrily away. I hoped it wouldn’t start a forest fire. My own car was closer to the blaze than I liked.

“Wait here,” I told Schmidt. “I’ll turn around and come back and collect you.”

By the time I had reported the accident and taken Schmidt to be overhauled by a doctor, night had fallen on the charming mountain village of Bad Steinbach. I was prepared to spend the night—though not by choice—in the Gasthaus Hexenhut if Schmidt’s injuries demanded it, but he had come out relatively unscathed—only a bump and a cut on his forehead, which had hit the steering wheel. All those layers of fat had protected his body; he didn’t even have a cracked rib. However, he was out of sorts because the doctor had slapped a large-sized Band-Aid on his wound instead of swathing him in bandages like a hero in the movies, so I agreed to stop in Garmisch to replenish his strength, i.e., eat.

He insisted on one of the best restaurants in town. He was paying, so I didn’t object. When he had eaten his soup and a big hunk of saddle of venison, mit Preiselbeeren and all the rest, he announced that he was now feeling well enough to discuss our next move.

“What next move? We’re going straight back to Munich and you are going straight to bed.”

“There are many things we must discuss,” said Schmidt seriously. “To think I have seen him at last—the great, the famous Sir John Smythe!”

“The infamous Sir John Smythe. You didn’t see him, you only saw that mask.”

“I would have known him anywhere,” said Schmidt romantically. “Who else would appear out of thin air to save us from a flaming death? But you, Vicky—you have deceived me. You were not surprised to see him. You knew he was still alive—you have been seeing him, making love with him all these months—”

“Schmidt, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I think you’re jealous.”

Schmidt’s petulant scowl relaxed. “It was very nice when you were kissing me,” he said.

I couldn’t help smiling. “I am rather fond of you, you old goat.”

“Yes, but that is another thing. Always you say rude things to me, even when you thought I was dying. You blamed me for the accident, but it was not my fault, was it, if some madman shot out the tire of my car? I was driving magnificently until that moment—”

“You were driving like a maniac, as you always do. Hadn’t it occurred to you that we had been sent on a wild-goose chase, possibly into a trap? If I had been alone, I’d have turned back long before it happened.”

Since this was a valid complaint, Schmidt chose to ignore it. “How did he get there ahead of us?”

Since this was a valid question, I chose to answer it. “I wondered about that myself. He might live up that way, in the hills; a telephone call from the hotel could have sent him out to ambush us. Or there may be a trail from the valley, a short cut.”