'I think it's also best if for obvious reasons you were to say nothing of this evening's events to the police if they should come to say that they have indeed found her. I'm afraid that they might make things very awkward for you if you seemed to know that she had been found before they did themselves. As I'm sure you will appreciate, the police aren't very enlightened when it comes to understanding this sort of thing, and might ask you all sorts of difficult questions.' He shrugged. 'I mean, we all have questions concerning what comes to us from the other side. It is indeed an enigma to everyone, and one to which we have very few answers at this stage.'
'Yes, I can see how the police might prove to be awkward,' I said. 'You may depend on me to say nothing of what transpired this evening. My wife as well.'
'Herr Steininger, I knew you would understand.' He opened the front door.
'Please don't hesitate to contact us again if at some stage you would wish to contact your daughter. But I should leave it for a while. It doesn't do to summon spirit too regularly.'
We said goodbye again, and walked back to the car.
'Get me away from here, Bernie,' she hissed as I opened the door for her. By the time I had started the engine she was crying again, only this time it was with shock and horror.
'I can't believe people could be so so evil,' she sobbed.
'I'm sorry you had to go through that,' I said. 'Really I am. I'd have given anything for you to have avoided it, but it was the only way.'
I drove to the end of the street and on to Bismarkplatz, a quiet intersection of suburban streets with a small patch of grass in the middle. It was only now that I realized how close we were to Frau Lange's house in Herbertstrasse. I spotted Korsch's car, and pulled up behind it.
'Bernie? Do you think that the police will find her there?'
'Yes, I think they will.'
'But how could he fake it and know where she is? How could he know those things about her? Her love of dancing?'
'Because he, or one of those others, put her there. Probably they spoke to Emmeline and asked her a few questions before they killed her. Just for the sake of authenticity.'
She blew her nose, and then looked up. 'Why have we stopped?'
'Because I'm going back there to take a look around. See if I can find out what their ugly little game is. The car parked in front of us is driven by one of my men. His name is Korsch, and he's going to drive you home.'
She nodded. 'Please be careful, Bernie,' she said breathlessly, her head dropping forwards on to her chest.
'Are you all right, Hildegard?'
She fumbled for the door-handle. 'I think I'm going to be sick.' She fell sideways towards the pavement, vomiting into the gutter and down her sleeve as she broke her fall with her hand. I jumped out of the car and ran round to the passenger door to help her, but Korsch was there before me, supporting her by the shoulders until she could draw breath again.
'Jesus Christ,' he said, 'what happened in there?'
Crouching down beside her I mopped the perspiration from Hildegard's face before wiping her mouth. She took the handkerchief from my hand and allowed Korsch to help her sit up again.
'It's a long story,' I said, 'and I'm afraid that it's going to have to wait awhile yet. I want you to take her home and then wait for me at the Alex. Get Becker there as well. I've a feeling we're going to be busy tonight.'
'I'm sorry,' said Hildegard. 'I'm all right now.' She smiled bravely. Korsch and I helped her out and, holding her by the waist, we walked her to Korsch's car.
'Be careful, sir,' he said as he got behind the driving wheel and started the engine. I told him not to worry.
After they had driven away, I waited in the car for half an hour or so, and then walked back down Caspar- Theyss Strasse. The wind was getting up a bit and a couple of times it rose to such a pitch in the trees that lined the dark street that, had I been of a rather more fanciful disposition, I might have imagined that it was something to do with what had taken place in Weisthor's house.
Disturbing the spirits and that sort of thing. As it was I was possessed of a sense of danger which the wind moaning across the cloud-tumbling sky did nothing to alleviate, and indeed, this feeling was if anything made all the more acute by seeing the gingerbread house again.
By now the staff cars were gone from the pavement outside, but I nevertheless approached the garden with caution, in case the two S S men had remained behind, for whatever reason. Having satisfied myself that the house was not guarded, I tiptoed round to the side of the house, and to the lavatory window I had left unlocked. It was well that I stepped lightly, because the light was on and from inside the small room could be heard the unmistakable sound of a man straining on the toilet-bowl. Flattening myself in the shadows against the wall, I waited until he finished, and finally, after what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes, I heard the sound of the toilet flushing, and saw the light go off.
Several minutes passed before I judged it safe to go to the window and push it up the sash. But almost immediately upon entering the lavatory, I could have wished to have been elsewhere, or at least wearing a gas- mask, since the fecal smell that greeted my nostrils was such as would have turned the stomachs of a whole clinicful of proctologists. I suppose that's what bulls mean when they say that sometimes it's a rotten job. For my money, having to stand quietly in a toilet where someone has just achieved a bowel-movement of truly Gothic proportions is about as rotten as it can get.
The terrible smell was the main reason I decided to move out into the cloakroom rather more quickly than might have been safe, and I was almost seen by Weisthor himself as he trudged wearily past the open cloakroom door and across the hallway to a room on the opposite side.
'Quite a wind tonight,' said a voice, which I recognized as belonging to Otto Rahn.
'Yes,' Weisthor chuckled. 'It all added to the atmosphere, didn't it? Himmler will be especially pleased with this turn in the weather. No doubt he will ascribe all sorts of supernatural Wagnerian notions to it.'
'You were very good, Karl,' said Rahn. 'Even the ReichsFnhrer commented on it.'
'But you look tired,' said a third voice, which I took to be Kindermann's.
'You'd better let me take a look at you.'
I edged forward and looked through the gap between the cloakroom door and frame, Weisthor was taking off his jacket and hanging it over the back of a chair.
Sitting down heavily, he allowed Kindermann to take his pulse. He seemed listless and pale, almost as if he really had been in contact with the spirit world. He seemed to hear my thoughts.
'Faking it is almost as tiring as doing it for real,' he said.
'Perhaps I should give you an injection,' said Kindermann. 'A little morphine to help you sleep.' Without waiting for a reply he produced a small bottle and a hypodermic syringe from a medical bag, and set about preparing the needle.
'After all, we don't want you feeling tired for the forthcoming Court of Honour, do we?'
'I shall want you there of course, Lanz,' said Weisthor, rolling back his own sleeve to reveal a forearm that was so bruised and scarred with puncture marks, that it looked as if he had been tattooed.
'I shan't be able to get through it without cocaine. I find it clarifies the mind wonderfully. And I shall need to be so transcendentally stimulated that the ReichsFnhrer-S S will find what I have to say totally irresistible.'
'You know, for a moment back there I thought you were actually going to make the revelation tonight,' said Rahn. 'You really teased him with all of that stuff about the girl not wanting to get anyone into trouble. Well, frankly, he more or less believes it now.'
'Only when the time is right, my dear Otto,' said Weisthor. 'Only when the time is right. Think how much more dramatic it will be to him when I reveal it in Wewelsburg. Jewish complicity will have the force of spiritual revelation, and we will be done with this nonsense of his about respecting property and the rule of law. The Jews will get what's coming to them and there won't be one policeman to stop it.' He nodded at the syringe and watched impassively as Kindermann thrust the needle home, sighing with satisfaction as the plunger was depressed.
'And now, gentlemen, if you will kindly help an old man to his bed.'
I watched as they each took an arm and walked him up the creaking stairs.
It crossed my mind that if Kindermann or Rahn were planning to leave then they might want to put on a coat,
