opened onto the stone stairs, and then up to the little apartment. I showed the detective how the bookcase was really a door and then led the way into the secret room.
But the German sender/receiver was gone.
“It was there on that table. And next to it was the gun that’s on the floor in Elena’s bedroom. The Walther. I’m afraid you might find my prints on that, Inspector. I handled it when I came in here and found the radio this morning. Just to see if it was loaded.”
“I see,” said Luger. “Is there anything else you want to tell me, sir?”
“Only that I didn’t kill her.”
Luger sighed. “Try and look at it from my point of view,” he said, almost gently. “There was blood on your trousers when we arrested you. By your own admission your fingerprints are on the probable murder weapon. You were sleeping with the victim. And, to cap it all, when you came here, with some cock-and-bull story about spies, you even tried to interfere with evidence. Yes, I’ll thank you to hand that button over. The one you picked off the floor when you dropped your cigarettes in the bedroom back there.”
I took out the button, scrutinized it momentarily, and then handed it over to the inspector. “It’s not one of mine. Sorry.”
“Did you think it might be?” asked Luger.
“As a matter of fact, no. But I don’t suppose that matters.”
“We’re not fools, sir,” said Luger, pocketing the button.
“Then you’ll already have noticed that none of my coat jackets is missing a button.”
“I have noticed that. So I’m still trying to fathom why you picked it up.”
I shrugged. “I guess I was hoping to meet a man who’s missing a coat button.”
“Of course it might have been there a while,” admitted Luger. “Still, it is evidence. Not as good as a gun with fingerprints on it, however. Your fingerprints, you say?”
“As well as the murderer’s.”
“It’s a pity that radio wasn’t here,” said Luger. “That might have made things very different.”
“I imagine that the same person who killed the Princess must have removed it. And for the same reason. To conceal the fact she was a German agent. Something must have spooked him.” I sighed as I realized what might have happened. “I think that must have been me. You see, I searched the house last night when everyone was asleep. At least that’s what I thought at the time. Someone must have seen me and decided to cover their tracks. The fact is, Inspector, I believe I’ve stumbled on a plot to kill the Big Three.”
I handed over the plaintext message. There was no sense in hanging on to it now. I was inches away from being charged with murder.
“I believe this message was received by someone, very likely the murderer, using that missing radio.”
Luger glanced at the message. “It’s in German,” he said.
“Of course it is. It was sent from Berlin. ‘Mordanschlag.’ That’s the German word for ‘assassinate.’”
“Is it?”
“German intelligence is my speciality. I’m with the OSS. That’s the American intelligence service. I’m the president’s liaison officer with the agency. It’s imperative that I speak to the head of the president’s Secret Service detail as soon as possible. His name is Mike Reilly.”
Cash appeared in the doorway. “No German radio, sir?” he asked.
“No German radio. And don’t let anyone touch that gun in the bedroom. The professor here has confessed his fingerprints are on it.”
“Actually, no. I said you might find them.”
Inspector Luger leaned forward. “Shall I tell you what I think happened, Professor Mayer?”
I groaned inside. It was easy to see where his elementary thought processes were going with this.
“My friend is dead, Inspector. And what you think about that is of little interest to me right now.”
“I think that sometime during the night, when you were in bed with Princess Pontiatowska, you had an argument. A lover’s quarrel. So sometime this morning, you shot her.”
“As complicated as that, eh?” I shook my head. “You must read a lot of novels.”
“We leave the complications to you. This was very simple. All this stuff about a German radio is complete nonsense, isn’t it? Just like the story about there being a plot to kill the Big Three.”
Luger advanced slowly on me, followed closely by Sergeant Cash, until I was close enough to smell the tobacco and the coffee on his breath.
“It’s bad enough that you should murder a woman in cold blood,” said Luger. “But what really pisses me off is that you should take us for a pair of fucking idiots.” Luger was shouting now. “German spies? Plots to kill the Big Three? Next thing you’ll be telling us that Hitler is hiding in the fucking cellar.”
“Well, I didn’t see him when I was down there this morning.”
“Why don’t you tell us the truth?” Cash said quietly.
“I don’t like Yanks,” said Luger.
“For the first time since you opened your big trap you’ve said something that makes sense. This is personal.”
“You were late for this war, just like you were late for the last one. And when you do finally bother to show up, you all think you can treat us like poor relations. Tell us what to do, like you owned this bloody war.”
“Since we’re paying for it, I think that gives us a say.”
“Tell us what really happened,” murmured Cash.
“You’ve told us a pack of bloody lies, that’s what,” bellowed Luger, taking hold of my coat lapels. “You’re full of shit, mate. Like the rest of your bloody countrymen.”
Cash grabbed hold of Luger’s arm and tried to pull him off me. “Leave it, guv,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”
“I’m going to have this bastard,” and Luger tightened his grip on my lapels. “That, or the truth, so help me.”
“You boys have got quite an act here,” I said, grabbing hold of Luger’s wrists and wrenching them off my coat. “It’s a real shame to waste it on someone who’s seen it performed before. By better actors, too.”
“The truth,” yelled Luger, punching me hard in the ribs.
I lashed back, catching Luger with a glancing punch on his jaw. Cash stepped in, just managing to hold us apart. Glancing sourly at Cash, Luger said, “Get him out of my sight.”
They drove me back to the Citadel and locked me in a hot stinking cell. I sat down on the solitary wooden bunk and stared into the solitary slops bucket. The bucket was empty but it seemed to be where my life was headed.
Toward the end of the day, I heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. His powerful, sonorous voice drifted through the still air of the Citadel. The sound was soothing, something felt as much as heard.
A minute after the muezzin had finished, the cell door opened and I was ordered out. A uniformed policeman marched me upstairs to a large room where Donovan, Reilly, and Agent Rauff were seated around a table. In front of them was the plaintext message I had given to Inspector Luger. I didn’t mention it. I was through volunteering information.
“It seems that the British want to charge you with the murder of your lady friend,” said Donovan.
I poured myself a glass of water from the decanter on the table.
“How about it? Did you kill her?”
“Nope. Someone else killed her. Someone who wanted to conceal that she was a German spy.” I nodded at the table. “I found that message in the radio room.”
“Would this be the radio room without a radio?” Rauff asked.
“Yes. I guess the person who took it away was worried that someone like you was going to shoot it.”
“This German spy you claim killed her,” said Rauff.
“Yes. You know, German spies are not at all unusual in the middle of a war with Germany.”
“Perhaps it just seems that way,” he said, “because you manage to make it sound like there’s a plague of them.”
“Well, we are in Egypt. If there’s going to be a plague of spies anywhere, it would have to be here. Along with lice and flies and boils and Secret Service agents.”
The artery on Rauff’s sweating neck started to throb. It was hot in the room and he had taken off his jacket
