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.
“
“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?”
