The Trojan Horse

CHAPTER ONE

I read the writing on the back of the visiting card and then turned it over to look at the name. Paul Severin, 155 Neath Street, Swansea. It seemed familiar. I looked once more at the writing on the back. ‘As a criminal court barrister you will know my name,’ it ran. ‘You will, therefore, realise how urgent it is that I should see you.’ The initials P. S. followed. Paul Severin — Swansea. The name and place went hand-in-hand in my memory.

And then suddenly I knew, and I told my clerk to get me the file of the Daily Express. It seemed incredible. Yet it was not altogether unnatural. I had specialised in the defence of criminals, and some success with what had been considered doomed men had given me a certain reputation. But it offended my sense of decorum, mainly, I think, because no one — least of all a barrister — likes to have his conscience set a problem.

When my clerk returned with the file, he said, ‘Won’t you see him, Mr Kilmartin? He seems very excited. It was all I could do to prevent him from coming right in after me.’

‘In a minute, Hopkins,’ I said. ‘In a minute.’ I took the file from him and put it down on my desk. ‘What does he look like, Hopkins?’ I asked, as I scanned the pages of recent issues, working backwards.

‘He’s a rather short gentleman, on the plump side. His face is pale and a bit unshaven-looking, and his nose is — well, he looks to me a bit Semitic, as you might say, Mr Kilmartin. He’s wearing a bowler hat and glasses.’

‘What else, Hopkins?’ I asked.

‘An old brown suit and a dark blue overcoat. They’re both very dirty.’

‘He doesn’t sound very attractive.’

‘No, he looks a proper old money-bags. I don’t think he’s English.’

‘His name certainly isn’t,’ I said. Then I found what I had been looking for, and knew that I was right. Mr Paul Severin was wanted for murder. I dismissed my clerk and told him I would ring when I was ready to see my visitor. There was the story right in the middle of the front page. As my eye glanced down the column, it all came back to me, and there was a photograph of a tubby little Jew, untidily dressed, with a straggly tuft of a beard that gave him the appearance of a rather elderly goat. He wore no glasses, and even in the photograph his eyes were the central feature of the man, large and widely set under the big domelike forehead with its thick black eyebrows. The caption over the photograph was, ‘This is Paul Severin. The Police Want Him.’

I glanced at the date — February 2. He had been at large for just on a fortnight. It seemed a long time for a man of such unusual appearance. My eye strayed back to the story. Generally speaking, murders in wartime are not regarded as particularly good copy. For one thing, they make macabre reading for all those whose loved ones are daily facing death, and for another, war makes life suddenly cheap and a reader automatically wonders what all the fuss is about over one more person killed. But some murders can stir the imagination even in war-time, and this was one of them.

It was the cold-blooded ruthlessness of it that made it front-page news. There had even been half a column of it in The Times and I remembered that it had been the subject of a leader in the Herald on the demoralising effect of war.

I turned to the issue of February 1, which gave the story of the actual murder on an inside page. Then I went over to my file of The Times and in the issue for that date found, as I had thought, half a column, giving the bald facts of the case. I went quickly through this to refresh my memory. Paul Severin’s real name was Franz Schmidt. An Austrian Jew, he had fled to England after the Anschluss on a false passport. He had gone to Wales and established contact with his wife’s family, who had a small stamping works just outside Swansea. Though his wife was dead, these people appeared to have gone out of their way to help him. They had allowed him the use of a small workshop at their works, so that he could continue experiments that he had been engaged upon in Austria — he was an engineer. They had found him inexpensive lodgings in the better quarter of the town and had done everything to make him feel at home. And then, when the money that he had managed to get out of Austria was exhausted, they had taken him and his daughter into their own house and had financed his experiments.

That was the background against which the murder had been committed. It was the kindness and generosity of this Welsh family to a refugee that made it so horrible. The head of the family was Evan Llewellin, the brother of Schmidt’s wife. The rest of the household was composed of Llewellin’s wife and mother. Evan Llewellin appeared to have been the generous one. The elder Mrs Llewellin had told reporters that she had always distrusted Schmidt, had distrusted the use of another name, and had suspected that her daughter had not really died of pneumonia. Schmidt, she told them, had had a strong influence over her son from the start. He was always asking him for more money for his experiments and she said that most of the capital of the Llewellin family had been sunk in this way.

The murder itself was unusual and macabre. Evan Llewellin’s body had been discovered by the works foreman in the main stamping-room. An automatic drill had pierced his skull and, transfixed like an entomological specimen, his body was bent rigid over the machine. It was a peculiar way to kill a man, and one that would only appeal to an engineer who understood how to work the machines. It appeared that both Llewellin and Schmidt had been working late. When the police had arrived, the light was still on in Llewellin’s office and the plans for certain stampings for aircraft gun-mountings at which he had been working were still lying on his desk. Schmidt had not returned that night, and, in fact, had not been seen again. The safe had been opened and, on the evidence of the foreman, more than £1,000 in cash, representing a week’s wages for the workmen, had been taken.

The case seemed clear enough. I turned back to my desk and my eye fell on the telephone. I hesitated. I had no doubt of the reason Schmidt had come to see me. But I had never yet defended anyone whom I had believed guilty of premeditated cold-blooded murder. Frankly, I did not want to see the man. My imagination, always a little too vivid, could picture so clearly that wretch who had befriended him, transfixed by one of his own machine tools, and I had a horrible sense of revulsion at the thought of meeting Franz Schmidt face to face. I took a step towards the phone, my mind made up.

At that moment there came the sound of a scuffle from the outer office and the door of my room burst open to admit an elderly Jew in a bowler hat. Behind him I had a glimpse of an outraged Hopkins, murmuring explanations. ‘I must apologise for intruding upon you like this, Mr Kilmartin.’ The man spoke English in a quite pleasant tone. For a second that sense of revulsion gripped me — revulsion tinged almost with fear. And then the mood passed and suddenly I saw, standing on my warm red Axminster, not a coldblooded murderer, but a dirty, friendless old man who had been hunted by the police for two weeks. I remembered that no man should be judged before he has been heard in his own defence. Clearly he had come to me to say what he had to say, and I knew that I had no right to hand him over to the police unheard.

‘That’s all right, Hopkins,’ I said. And as the door closed I waved my visitor to the chair on the other side of my desk.

As he came forward he took off his hat and his glasses. I paused in the act of sitting down and glanced at the photograph that stared up at me from the Daily Express file. There was no doubt about the identity of my visitor. All he lacked was a beard.

‘I see you recognise me,’ he said, as he sat down opposite me. His eyes held mine. They were large and dark and strangely bright. He looked like a dealer in second-hand clothes, with his sallow face blued about the jowl by the stubbly growth that had once been his beard, and his ill-fitting clothes. But, looking into those dark eyes, I saw only the intelligence of the man. Behind this nondescript exterior was a great brain and I began to have a horrible doubt. Yet when he spoke he seemed sane enough. He apologised again for forcing his way into my room. His voice was soft and musical and very quaint, with its accent coloured by Austrian and Welsh and the usual handicap of people of his race. ‘I feared,’ he explained, ‘that your natural instinct as a citizen might override adherence to the code of your profession. I hope you will accept my apology.’

I nodded. I took out my case and lit a cigarette. I could feel his eyes watching me.

‘I am accused of a particularly callous and brutal crime,’ he went on. ‘If I had done it, I could have expected mercy from no one. I trust you will pardon me for fearing that you might be over-hasty in your judgement. I have a particular reason for not wishing to fall into the hands of the police yet. I have come to you because I must confide in someone — in someone upon whose discretion I can rely. It had to be someone, moreover, whose opinion carried some weight in official quarters.’

At that I stopped him. ‘Even if you were to convince me that you are innocent of this crime,’ I said, ‘it is not in my power to persuade the police — nothing short of a direct alibi will do that.’

He shook his head slowly and his rather full lips twitched into a wry smile. ‘That is not the reason I came to see you,’ he said. ‘Though I shall hope that, if the time comes, you will agree to defend me. No, I came here because, having followed your cases closely — in my leisure hours I have been something of a student of criminology — I considered you to be a man of sufficient discrimination to know the truth when you heard it. I considered you also a man of great determination — more, of great tenacity — once convinced of the justice of a cause. The obstinate tenacity of your nature is the secret of your success at the bar. You will pardon this analysis of your career. I was endeavouring to explain why I had come to you. I have a story to tell that few men would believe, very few indeed, coming as it does from the lips of a man who is supposed to have committed a particularly brutal murder. But you have had great experience of criminals and some understanding of murderers. If you do not believe me, no one will. But I feel that, if I can convince you, there will be one man of unimpeachable honesty who will not rest until he has exposed the cancerous growth that is bedded deep in the heart of this great country.’

Towards the end he had grown somewhat excited and I was conscious all the time of those dark bright eyes fixed unblinkingly upon me. ‘You speak in riddles,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will be a little more explicit.’

Then he told me his story. It was a strange fantastic tale. And when he left me I could not decide whether it was the story of a madman, or the truth. It had to be one or the other, for I was convinced that it was the truth as far as he saw it. But whether the strain of the last few years had snapped a great brain or whether all that he had told me had actually happened, I could not decide. But this much I knew. It was not so strange or fantastic a story that it could not have happened. And whilst logic rejected it as the tale of a man whose brain had become unbalanced, my knowledge of psychology argued that the quiet, straightforward manner in which he had told it to me was proof of its reality.

It had not been just a story of the murder. It had been his whole life-story. Sitting there in the chair opposite my desk, with the firelight playing on his face, he had been sufficiently convincing for me to agree not to tell the police anything for a week, when he would come and see me again.

But it was the end of his story that had weakened my faith in the rest. He had risen to go. And his voice became suddenly excited and his eyes blazed with the light of the fire in them. ‘If I shouldn’t come to you next Monday,’ he said, ‘will you go round to my lodgings and take the face from the barbican? You are clever. You will understand. The clue is cones of runnel.’ After the quiet matter-of-fact way he had told me his strange but consistent story, this departure into the melodramatic came as something of a shock.

I told him so and he smiled that rather wry tired smile and said, ‘I don’t believe you will think so next Monday. I have a feeling that I shall not see you again.’

‘But when the police catch you, I will come and see you, and we will arrange about your defence.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It is good of you. But it is not the police I fear. When I told you there was someone else after the plans beside the Calboyd Diesel Company, I meant it. Germany wants them too. They discovered I was not dead and what Fritz Thessen had told them whetted their appetites. But if I told you who their agents in this country were, you would laugh at me and I should be discredited in your eyes. But when I am dead, you will know it, and then you will know who murdered my friend Llewellin. Goodbye, Mr Kilmartin.’ He held out his hand and, as I shook it, he said, ‘I cannot thank you enough for listening to me so patiently. I shall hope to see you next Monday. If not, I have your promise to go round to my lodgings?’

His face was perfectly serious. I nodded. I could do nothing else. His grip on my hand tightened. ‘I think you will find it is not a case for the police — at first.’ Then he fished in his pocket and pulled out an envelope. ‘That is a letter for my daughter, Freya, when you find her. The address of my lodgings is written in the corner.’ He put it on my desk and, replacing his glasses and picking up his bowler hat, turned and went out of my office.

I sat down and tried to puzzle it out over a cup of tea. The man’s story was convincing, at any rate in part. I couldn’t believe he was a murderer. His point about Evan Llewellin being a bigger and younger man than himself, and the impossibility of his having held him under the drill with one hand while he operated it with the other, was sound enough. And yet it was fantastic. All that about Nazi agents after his diesel engine plans and the murder being a frame-up to get him out of the way. If they had wanted him out of the way and were prepared to kill a man to achieve their ends, it would surely have been much simpler and much surer to have killed him? Who was he suspecting of being a Nazi agent that I should laugh at the accusation? And all that rigmarole about how the Calboyd Diesel Company had queered his pitch at the Air Ministry by saying they had tested his engine and considered him a crank. The story was real enough to him. Of that I was certain. But he saw events with a distorted mind. Up to the time of his escape from the concentration camp the story was certainly accurate, but the rest, though based on truth, seemed to have been coloured by an unbalanced mind. God knows what he had suffered in that concentration camp! He had not gone into details about those two months. But, judging by what I had heard of other such camps, it would have been sufficient to affect the balance of a sensitive and brilliant mind.

But then there was that point about Llewellin being stronger than he. On a sudden impulse I picked up the phone and asked my typist to try and get me Inspector Crisham at the Yard. Crisham was in and knew enough about the case to answer my query. ‘We realised that difficulty,’ he said. ‘But the men were on friendly terms and it wouldn’t have been impossible for Schmidt to get Llewellin to bend down to examine something under the drill. Part of a gun-mounting was found under it. More probably Llewellin bent down to adjust something and Schmidt seized his opportunity and pulled the drill lever over. What’s your interest in the case?’ I explained hastily that it had interested me and I wanted to clear up a point that had been worrying me. I rang off before he could ask any more questions.

Well, that disposed of that difficulty. I was a fool not to have thought of it for myself. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I could picture that long low-ceilinged stamping shop just as Schmidt had described it to me only a few minutes ago. It would have been littered with machine tools, and there would be odd lengths and shapes of metal lying on the oil-soaked floor, and it would echo to the hollow sounds of footsteps as Schmidt came up from his own workshop to accompany Llewellin home. And Llewellin would show Schmidt the gun-mounting he had been working on. Perhaps it was complete save for one or two more drill holes and he had brought it over to the drill, switched the machine on and then bent down to adjust the position of the mounting. And Schmidt, standing beside him, short of cash and wondering about the future, yet knowing there was a whole week’s pay in the safe and the key in Llewellin’s pocket, had decided to kill him on the spur of the moment, as he saw the man’s dark head come directly beneath the revolving point of the drill. That must be how it happened. And I was the only person who knew where Schmidt was. I looked down at the envelope on my desk. The name of Freya Schmidt stared up at me, written in that neat scholarly hand. And in the top right-hand corner was his address — 209 Greek Street, London, W.l. I had only to ring Crisham and give him that address and Schmidt would be safely behind bars by the evening.

Even now I am surprised that I did not. It wasn’t the fact that I had promised to wait until next Monday before doing anything that stopped me. If I had thought the man was dangerous, I should not have hesitated. I think it was that letter to his daughter. I felt I ought to trace her first, or at least try to prove to my own satisfaction whether Schmidt’s story was true. I could not help remembering that he had convinced me at the time. It was only the melodramatic close to the interview that had cast doubt upon the rest of the story. I ought to try to prove it one way or the other. But how could I? That was the extraordinary part about the story. He had not offered me an alibi or anything concrete like that. His story was that he had come into the stamping-shop, seen Llewellin’s body, had gone into the office and had seen the safe open with no money in it, and had known at once that he had been framed.

I lit a cigarette and tried to think it out. Then I picked up the letter and ran my pencil round under the flap. Inside was a single sheet of paper. I glanced through it and then put it back in the envelope and resealed the flap. An affectionate farewell from a man to his daughter. The phrases run in my memory now, and whenever I think of them I have a sense of guilt at having intruded upon something very precious to two people who had suffered much and loved each other greatly. Short though it was, the letter said everything there was to be said, and the words remain with me as something very beautiful. The man’s sense of impending death showed quite clearly between the lines. He did not fear death. But he feared for his daughter’s safety in the face of a danger that, reading the letter, I could not believe was unreal. This fear showed in the postscript which read, ‘The man with whom I have left this letter is Mr Andrew Kilmartin. He knows my story and will have all the information that up to the time of my death I had obtained concerning Them. He will advise you. But until They have been unmasked, promise me to give up the work and disappear. I shall not rest happy if I think you are in danger.’

To read that letter was to feel that he had found it necessary to return to my chambers to bind a wavering man to his promise. How could I ring Crisham after reading that letter? It was not the letter of a madman — or was it? That beauty, that sincerity might all come of madness. I had seen cases like that before. If only he had told me where I could get hold of Freya Schmidt. She held the truth of the matter. But he had told me nothing to guide my next step except that melodramatic stuff about taking the face from the barbican and the clue being the cones of runnel.

At that moment the clerk came in to inform me that the court had just phoned him to say that the case of Rex v. Lady Palmer would be heard the next day, instead of on Thursday. It was a dangerous driving case, and though I did not imagine it would take long, it was one of those troublesome briefs that take a lot of preparing. The change of date made it imperative that I should get down to it right away. I decided to do nothing about Schmidt for the moment. I had given my word and there was that letter. I was convinced that he was not dangerous.

I spent most of the following day in the court and returned to find that I had been briefed at the last moment for a drug peddling case due to be heard at the Old Bailey on Thursday, the K.C. who had originally been briefed for the case having suddenly joined the Ministry of Supply. This rush of work gave me little time to consider the case of Franz Schmidt. But I was able to make one inquiry. On the Wednesday night I dropped into the Clachan, which is quite close to my rooms in the Temple. I had a drink with one or two of the Fleet Street boys whom I knew and was introduced to a fellow in the Press Section of the Air Ministry. On the offchance that he might be able to find out something, I asked him to see if the contracts branch of the Air Ministry knew anything about a man called Franz Schmidt or Paul Severin, and if so, whether they had approached the Calboyd Diesel Company and had been told that he was a crank. ‘Oh, you’re expecting to be briefed, are you?’ he said. Then he turned to the others and said, ‘There’s a wee bit news for you, boys — Mr Kilmartin to defend Franz Schmidt.’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I’m just interested, that’s all.’ My tone was final and they accepted it that way. But the fellow phoned me on Friday morning, just as I was leaving for the court, to tell me that I was quite correct. A Paul Severin had approached the Air Ministry in July, 1939, with the request that they test for aircraft use a diesel engine he had produced. He explained that it was much lighter than any at present in existence as a result of the use of a special alloy he had discovered. He was very secretive about the alloy and was full of conditions as to how they should test it. He wouldn’t let the engine out of his sight. The Air Ministry had then got on to Calboyds’, who handled all their diesel engine experiments, and had asked them if they knew of Severin. They had replied that he had already approached them and that they had tested the engine. The metal he had used was a well-known durable alloy and it had not, in their opinion, been sufficiently strong to stand up to the pressure it would have to bear. They had described him as a crank who was a little unbalanced.

Well, that was one part of his story corroborated. But was his interpretation of it right? His point had been that here was a big industrial firm queering his pitch in an effort to force him to sell the plans and the secret of the alloy to them outright. But supposing Calboyds’ summing up had been right? I had no time to go into the matter more closely, and I decided to wait till Monday. If he didn’t turn up then, it was a case for the police.

I completed the drug case on Monday morning and returned to my chambers somewhat dispirited. The case had been hopeless from the start, and as briefs had been much fewer since the outbreak of war, I liked to be successful with those I did obtain. Schmidt had not called. I went out and had lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand as an antidote to depression. I did not return to my chambers until past three. Schmidt had still not arrived. I sat in my office and smoked a cigar. The brief spell of work had exhausted itself. I had not a single case in prospect. I found myself involuntarily listening for the sound of someone entering the outer office. I had tea. There was still no sign of Schmidt. I let Hopkins and the typist go. There was nothing for them to do.

By five o’clock I was no longer waiting impatiently for him to come. I knew he would not come and I was wondering what I was to do. The most obvious course was to get in touch with the police. But I remembered his words about not finding it a case for the police at first. And there was that letter. The man had seemed so certain that he was going to die. I owed it to him to go round to his digs and make a few inquiries. Nevertheless, it was a police affair. I ought at least to get Crisham to come along with me. I rose from my chair by the fire and crossed to the phone. I hesitated on the point of lifting the receiver. That stuff about the face from the barbican and the clue being the cones of runnel. I could hear Crisham’s soft sardonic chuckle. He was a hard-headed man, who believed in facts — and nothing else. He’d come, of course, but he’d say at once that the man was mad, and his only interest would be to trace Schmidt’s whereabouts.

I went over to the door instead and got my hat and coat. My mind made up now, I hurried out of my chambers and up Middle Temple Lane and hailed a taxi in Fleet Street. We ran through a darkened Strand and by way of St Martin’s Lane to Cambridge Circus. I was deposited outside a derelict-looking house practically opposite the stage door of the London Casino. It had once been a shop, but the windows were boarded up and the place had a shut look. I paid off my taxi and then flashed my torch on to the door. The figures 209 showed black against the cracked green paint, and below was a little sign which said ‘Isaac Leinster, Bespoke Tailor’. I found an electric bell, that had lost its covering, and rang. No sound came from the other side of the door. I waited, and then rang again. No one answered. I knocked on the door. Then I stepped back and looked up. The aged brick face of the house towered above me, blank and sheer.

I played my torch over the door again, looking for another bell to ring, and I saw that it was not quite shut. I pressed against it, and it opened. I went in and found myself in a bare passage, with two dustbins in it, leading to uncarpeted stairs. I hesitated. I was not over keen on walking into a house on Greek Street that I did not know. But in the end I climbed the stairs and on the first floor I found a door with ‘Isaac Leinster’ on it, and there was a line of light showing beneath.

I knocked and heard feet shuffling across bare floorboards. The door swung open and a small man with thick lips and a bald head stared at me out of little beady eyes. ‘Vat is it you vant?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said, ‘but I’m looking for a friend of mine who lives here.’

‘Vat is ’is nime?’

I hesitated. What was his name? He surely wouldn’t have given it as Severin? Then in a flash I remembered what he had told me about his parentage. ‘Mr Frank Smith,’ I said and I began to describe him.

The other held up his hand. ‘I know. But Mr Smith is not ’ere now. ’E ’as ’ad an accident and is in ’ospital.’

‘Which hospital?’ I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘’Ow do I know?’ he complained. ‘A gent goms ’ere on Thursday, says ’e ees from the ’ospital and can ’e ’ave Mr Smeeth’s clothes. Vat do you vant?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I left some rather important scientific papers with him. He promised to let me have them back by last Friday and I’ve got to give a talk on them tomorrow evening.’

He looked me up and down, and then said, ‘Veil, you’d best go up and look for them. Another three days and you’d ’ave been too late. ’Is rent is due on Thursday and I’ll ’ave to clear all ’is junk out You’ll find the door open. It’s right at the top.’ And with that he closed the door.

I went on up the stairs and eventually came to the top landing from which a wooden staircase, obviously put in at a later date, rose sharply to a green-painted door. I climbed this and knocked at the door. There was no answer, so I pulled the string of the latch and went into what was apparently a penthouse. I switched on the light. It was a largish room, the ceiling sloped to a skylight, which was boarded up because of the black-out. It had probably been built as a studio, for there were glimmerings of the artistic in its construction that were noticeably absent from the rest of the house.

The furniture appeared to be the sweepings of the second-hand market. There was a double bed in the corner under the window, all brass and cast iron, two old kitchen chairs, an uncomfortable-looking Victorian armchair, complete with a very dirty antimacassar, a dresser of plain wood and a little mahogany table that had been good, but was now split right down the centre. In the far corner was a sink, half-filled with dirty dishes. The place was indescribably filthy and very untidy. There were crumbs all over the floor where vermin had got at a loaf, which lay crumbling on the table.

I looked round in some bewilderment. ‘Go round to my lodgings and take the face from the barbican,’ Schmidt had said. A barbican was the outer defences of a castle. How could there be a barbican in this hovel? There weren’t any pictures and there was nothing that looked remotely like a barbican. I couldn’t even see a face anywhere. A sense of frustration seized me. I had been so busy recently that I had not bothered to think out the significance of Schmidt’s words. Or were they just the ravings of an unbalanced brain?

I went over to the dresser and pulled out one of the drawers. There were clothes in it and some handkerchiefs that were clean and had the ironing creases in them, though they were jumbled up with the rest. I tried the next drawer, and here again clean clothes had been jumbled up in an untidy heap. The man from the hospital must have been in a hurry in his search for the right clothes. But why should he have been in such a hurry?

I turned and looked at the room again. It was untidy, but the untidiness was methodical. The bedclothes were all bunched up and loose where the mattress had been flung back, the tattered linoleum was bent up all round the walls and the books in the little bookcase by the fireplace were not all the right way up. The room was not untidy because it had been lived in. It was untidy because someone had searched it thoroughly.

A little pile of books on the floor caught my eye because on the back of them I noticed a woman’s face and it had suddenly given me an idea. I went forward and picked it up. It was an Ethel M. Dell. I knelt down and went slowly through the bookcase. On the second shelf, in a batch of five that had been put back upside down, I found what I was looking for. It was a recently purchased thriller and on the jacket was a man’s face framed in a barbican. It was called The Face from the Barbican and was by Mitchel Cleaver. I stood up and flicked through the pages. But there was no letter there, nothing written. I felt disappointed. Then I began to consider what Schmidt had meant by the cones of runnel. I thought it possible that it might be the title of another book.

As I bent down to run through the bottom shelf, I heard the sound of a door closing and was immediately conscious of the house that lurked in the dark below me. I stood up and went to the door. All was silent as the grave. Then suddenly a stair creaked, and then another. I heard the creak of the banisters and, in the silence, I could hear a man’s deep breathing on the staircase below me. I thought of the man who had searched the room before me. Had he been looking for what I had found?

I switched off the light and waited. There was no place to hide. I could hear the man’s breathing quite plainly now as he climbed to the landing immediately below me. Had they been watching the house or was it one of the people who lived there? Why had Schmidt been so certain he would die? The man reached the landing, and I sensed him turn towards the last flight. I braced myself. By lifting myself on the banisters I could use my feet.

‘Is any van there?’ It was the voice of the Jewish tailor. A sense of relief flooded through me. ‘Yes, I’m just coming down,’ I said, and switched on my torch. He was standing on the landing below with his hairless head craned up towards me.

‘Did you get vat you vanted?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, as I came down the stairs. ‘I’ve taken the papers and also a book I lent him.’

He nodded. ‘If you see ’im, tell ’im I vill ’ave to let the room on Thursday unless ’e pays me the next veek’s rent. A man ’as got to live, yes? But I vill keep ’is things in my shop vor a week, tell ’im. I do not vish to be ’ard.’

I thanked him and hurried on down the stairs.